Phaenna

An adventurer in Kimaris who specializes in rescue work, but you can expect her help in just about anything. For the right price, sure, but Phaenna can afford acts of charity too.

Good luck trying to talk to her otherwise, though.

To Strangers:

Phaenna is a composed individual who can be relied on whenever the going gets tough. That said, there isn't much warmth or kindness to her manners. It simply means when she has a complaint to voice, she adds all the necessary pleasantries before lunging for the jugular. Small talk is somewhat terse but not unkind, and really, she much prefers silence to idle chatter. May we please return to the subject at hand, now?

To Friends:

The passive-aggression smooths out once she begins to trust someone. For Phaenna, it is a way to snake around the unpleasant necessities of the professional world and not a default state of being. What is her default is the need for quiet and directness. She is outright poor at small talk - if left to carry on a conversation without relying on business or niceties, she ends up floundering for the most "normal" topics imaginable. It takes a real friend to bring out more interesting thoughts from her: the state of Wywish politics, how she tries to trace back summoner lineages, the acoustics of a dungeon...

To Themself:

Phaenna does not think of herself. Her body is little more than an unwieldy tool. Her time training and adventuring is time spent not thinking.

If she ever stops being useful, who would even check that she was gone? At most, people would worry over her tamed monsters rampaging without her control. And yet, she does not know what the alternative is. People do not want to talk to Phaenna. Why would they? She shies away from all contact. Her best features are her skills as an adventurer - and not the social ones. No matter how hard she works as a monster-slayer, mailwoman, educator...the world still grinds people beneath its heels, and she cannot do a thing to comfort people about that.

But so long as she lives, she will help. And so she keeps going.

Childhood

The little town of Uvall was relatively peaceful. They were remarkably self-sufficient, so the lack of contact with the greater Kingdom of Wywick didn't trouble them. Still, their spot near a dungeon saw regular monster attacks, so followers of the Church of Aether saw their chance to "rescue" these poor people. Namely, Phaenna's family.

They brought with them money, materials, and weaponry. In return, they pressured the town to follow their ways - for access to the magitech they brought, indulgences would have to be paid. Uvall became tumultuous. Sure, these strangers brought fine goods with them and promised future safety, but wasn't this a bit much? How had they sinned in the first place, using so little magic in the firet place?

The religious tensions left Phaenna in an awkward spot. She was two years younger than the next kid (who was himself an outcast - so really, closer to six years younger than the next). But, her family's position wound up giving her an in with the older kids.

As Phaenna's family held power in Uvall, harming a hair on her head could have threatened the livelihoods the town had come into. Playing nice with the spoiled brat of Uvall was the path of least resistance, especially when she could smuggle you and your friends some neat stuff. Phaenna was ever curious and known to hound any passersby thoroughly - about their gear, what monsters were like, why they even bothered with the town...and she often managed to nab trinkets and junk from them. She was always much too curious about technology and monsters and spellcasting for her family's tastes.

To Kimaris

Life was boring for Phaenna. Nobody was brave enough to rock the boat with Aetherism - at least, not as consistently and eagerly as Phaenna did. Where the rest of the town fell in line or drifted away, Phaenna threw a fit any moment she could. Her experiments, trials, and mishaps led her to realize that she was a summoner - although she could never solve who else in her famiy was - and that opened a much bigger world for her budding interest in magic.

She was not a naturalborn genius or even a particularly dedicated scholar, but she was a daredevil. The dungeon near Uvall needed regular clearing out. Whenever she caught wind of a group heading in that direction, she'd beg to go with - or better yet, sneak out with them. The town couldn't always stop her, and she got to enjoy quite a few years of pretending to be the much older, more experienced adventurer she dreamed to be.

The last attempt at this did not go so smoothly. It had been a particularly bad day, or week, or month for Phaenna. The fighting with her family had peaked as they desperately tried to reign her in. She was nearing her late teens, after all, and so she'd have to start thinking about what she would do for the family, the town, the people. And how could she just leave them all behind for the city? Doesn't she know that she has to carry on their teachings and care for them into their old age?

Somehow, they believed she was safe and sound at home. But Phaenna had plenty experience of sneaking out by then. This was routine for her.

There was a strange adventuring party at the dungeon when she got there, and they asked too many questions for Phaenna's liking. When she ran in and they followed, it felt like the start of a game. And really, it was fun to show off how much more knowledgable she was about the area! And really, how could she have known that the adventurers were there because of reports of the inner walls weakening? It's not like her family ever told her anything except that she had to uphold the tenets of the Church, or how she had to stop visiting the dungeon all the time, or...

A wave of monsters exploded out of the depths that day. Avoiding them was practically a matter of luck. Rushing back to Uvall still took much too long, and the party had already been battered and exhausted from fending off the monsters and protecting Phaenna on the way back. It was a mess - but somehow not as much as it could have been.

Phaenna would never forget seeing the Byrd kid tear into those monsters.

Guardian Blades

After causing one of the worst incidents in all of Uvall's known history, Phaenna was summarily cast out.

Her folks said banishing her would be the ultimate good for the town. Proof of how much they valued the people over even their own kin. The trip to even the next town over was precarious, and even moreso when Phaenna was tossed out with nothing but the clothes on her back. Whether her family actually would have taken her in if she had begged and promised to change her ways or not, Phaenna didn't know. Something told her no - so she was at a loss.

But the adventurer party that had come by were still hanging around, and they saw no reason for Phaenna to be left to die in the wilderness. For one, Phaenna was a long ways off from being an adult. Killing a kid for being a kid was against their morals, even if she was a right pain in the ass. For another, she proved herself capable despite her idiocy. They gave her combat training on the fly - enough that she could hold her own against most little monsters. Survival skills came with - foraging, hunting, navigation, whatever they could pass on to keep her from being deadweight. She took to it quickly out of necessity.

They landed in Kimaris eventually, and so Phaenna was registered as part of their guild. She started from the bottom like everyone else, but it certainly didn't hurt that she had some decently respectable adventurers mentoring her, now.

Kerri • oh, him...

Phaenna has no idea how to even approach Kerri. It feels disingenous to try and befriend him now after all these years. Avoiding the social outcast label herself meant she left him to bear it alone. But, well, maybe he could use a little help getting into the adventuring business anyway...?

Physical

• Slight build with no visible tone.
• Horns and nails are painted - by default, they're transluscent and white.
• No fur, just soft hair in all the normal human spots.

Demeanor

• Always poised - doesn't slouch or lean against things idly.
• Her expressions tend to feel flat. Body language is limited and handled as close to her body as possible, like she doesn't want to snag herself against anything.

Style

• Soft fabrics and metal plate.
• The most she does is paint her horns and nails. No makeup to hide her eyebags, no skincare routine, and an only occasional brush of her hair.
• Always in warm colors. Tends to avoid pastels and stick to deep, vibrant hues.

• would use 3-in-1 shampoo. beware