Name: Kayra Stromsong
Age: 29
Gender: Female
Race: Harpy
Sexual Orientation: Homosexual
Follower of: Kayra had been solely dedicated to Venea, and after her death, hasn't been able to deal with the thought that she may have to pledge allegiance to someone new when her goddess's replacement comes along. In her mind, she's Venea's mage, and will be so until the day that she dies.
Occupation: Mage of Air
Personality: A once happy, carefree, energetic, spitfire of a harpy has been reduced to the quiet, timid, and shy woman that most people see today; in the wake of Venea's death, she is just outright depressed. A lot of her spirit was killed when her wings were taken from her and her body abused. No longer one to go out seeking adventure and having fun messing and fooling around with friends, Kayra now spends most of her time either in her home or in the Goddess of Air's temple, tending to her studies or training, or serving Venea in what ever way she thinks that she can. She is a lot shyer now than she used to be, drawing away from contact with people unless doing something where she has to interact them, and she has calmed down quite a bit when compared to how she was when she first arrived in Liresul. Instead of going out and seeing what fun she may find in the city, she's more likely to sit in her gardens, tending to her plants or reading a good book, or even simply sitting and listening to the birds sing. And even if she is out of her home and in the city, and someone manages to get her to stick around in talk, she doesn't have much to say, and someone would really have to work at it to get her to open up.
Unless the person talking to her is a male. Then, unless she has a friend or someone she trusts with her, she'll do whatever she can to get back to her home or the temple. After her attack at the hands of bandits gave her a deep fear of being raped again, and so she avoids all men. And because she was never really open with the fact that she liked women back when she had been that open, outgoing girl, she doesn't see herself as able to find a special someone any time soon, if at all. She isn't confident enough in herself anymore to even go out and try looking. Not that it mattered to her.
Her biggest, most tightly kept secret was that she had fallen in love with the Goddess that she owed everything too. But she wasn't naive enough to think a powerful deity could ever see a lowly, weak thing like her in the same light. Plus, Venea had only been growing closer and closer to her bodyguard. So she loved from a far, devoting herself to doing anything she possibly could to make the Goddess's life easier.
The attack left her with more than a fear of men. Constant nightmares and pain from where her wings used to be serve to remind her daily of what she has lost, and because of that, she battles depression. It comes and goes, not that many seem to be able to tell when she is depressed and when she isn't. It's clear that she misses the freedom of the sky, of being able to fly, and half of her motivation for bettering her skills with her magic is the hope she might be able to fly again someday. She eventually did achieve that goal, only for her spirit to be broken a second time when Venea's death arrived soon after. Naturally, Kayra blamed herself. Maybe, maybe if she had spent less time being so selfish and working to her own gain, and instead has worked towards better her skills in a way she could have protected or saved Venea, they could have avoided the mess of a world that the live in now...
In her recent depression, she's pretty mucked locked herself away from the world. Her body exists there, but her mind may as well be gone. With a little bit of effort the right people can get a response out of her, but it is always short before she once again retreats into herself. In recent days she has even become suicidal; first seen when the Felori took Liresul and she refused to leave the city (she ultimately was forced to leave), and now with a vial of poison she wears on a necklace. Someday, hopefully soon, she'll be brave enough to drink it, so she can rejoin her beloved Goddess.
However...If someone pushes all the wrong buttons in all the wrong ways, the depressed, withdrawn woman
will snap. For a few brief moments, her spine is back and all of the fire she had been missing for nearly a decade now returns, and someone is going to get hurt. She'll stay in that rage until she either exhausts herself, she's knocked out, or someone overpowers her, bringing her back to her senses.
Appearance: 
~~Kate Beckinsale~~
Although she now does her best to hide how she looks behind her mage's robes and cloaks, Kayra is a stunningly beautiful woman. She stands at about 5'11", on the tall side for a woman, but that could be attributed to being a harpy. Not that anyone can tell she is, anymore. Part of the more human looking kind of harpies, all she had to show off as part of the race were two, beautiful, snow white wings. Now all she has are two long, jagged and ugly scars where he wings had been chopped off.
When actually dressed so that other's can see it, Kayra has a slim hourglass figure, perfect curves in all the right places. She used to enjoy showing off those curves. Now, however, they're carefully hidden under robes and cloaks. Because of this, and the fact she stays inside most of the time, a once healthy tan has reverted back to the pale skin she had before her previous travels, giving her a "softer" look.
Kayra doesn't let her dark brown hair get too long, and the length it's at now, falling to just past her shoulder, is about as long as she likes it. She doesn't style it in any particular way, just letting it fall loose and pushing it back when it gets in her way, and she ignores comments from friends who say how great it might looks if she lets them do something to it. Her eyes are also brown, a bit dull now because of her depression, but catch her in the right mood, when she's actually doing something she enjoys or that makes her happy, and they'll gain back some of the shine they had before.
Note: Even so long after Venea's death, Kayra has yet to stop wearing the black of mourning. Robes or clothing of any other color are absent from her wardrobe.
Weaponry: Kayra doesn't really carry weapons, even after her attack several years ago. She has trained to protect herself with her air magic, but just in case, she does keep a small knife on hand. A string tied through the hilt keeps it ties to her arm. All she has to do is move her arm a certain way and the string loosens, and the knife falls down into her hand, ready for use. And she knows how to use it, from her life before becoming a devoted follower of Venea.
The question is just whether she'll ever have enough backbone again to use it when she needs it.
Strengths:Kayra's biggest, and probably her only, strength is her magic. For several years straight she had herself locked in her home, simply going over magic theory, teaching herself and practicing to control the air as finely and precisely as she could. It was all in the hope for finding some way to use her magic to fly again; to her credit, she can make herself fly with her magic. The years paid off, but it doesn't stop there.
So far she has only ever used her magic for offensive purposes once, against the Felori when they were attacking Felori. In her desire to protect Venea's beloved home, she did things she never thought of doing before. She pulled the air out of people's lungs, leaving them to suffocate. Strong bursts of wind knocked attackers off of walls, or thrust them up against walls with enough force to break bones. The air would solidify around some enemies, crushing them, or freezing bullets in place.
She tires quickly when she goes all out, however, and even then, apparently the only time she can do those things is when she loses all sense of herself and dips into rage.
Weaknesses:A lot...She has no social skills what so ever. She fears men, so right there she can barely interact with half of the world's population. And ever since she had been kidnapped and abused by the bandits, she's had practically nothing in terms of self-confidence and esteem. A person with the right words coming off of a barbed tongue could easily make the already broken woman break down and cry, or drive her into further depression.
She's too busy moping and living in the past to be of very much use to anyone until, somehow, someway, someone snaps her out of it and gets her back on the right track.
History:Kayra was born in Liresul on a complete accident. Her parents were drifters, bounty hunters actually, and they didn't need the burden of a child. At the same time, they didn't want to get an abortion and kill the baby. So with the help of the temple, Kayra's mother gave birth, and the baby was handed over to a family that didn't mind raising a harpy child. As soon as her mother was able to travel her biological parents left, and she never saw or heard from them again.
The family who adopted her ran a tailors and carpenters shop in the city. Her mother, actually, was the carpenter and her father the tailor. Strange, but they were rather successful, and Kayra grew up rather comfortably. Sure, she knew she was adopted, as her family was all human. She didn't mind, and despite some jerks in the city who made fun of her, she got by alright. A healthy self-esteem and parents who taught her to ignore people who only wished to hurt her.
Even so, she grew up as a bit of a spitfire. Always full of energy and a need to explore, her parents had a hard time keeping track of her. She was always going out and wandering around the city, and usually getting herself in trouble when that harpy sense of justice kicked in. More than once she found herself in trouble with the guards when she tried to take justice into her own hands, and eventually, it got to the point that her parents decided that maybe some time spent out of the city, out traveling Meliora, would calm her down a bit.
Well, it sort of worked. Her mother decided to pack up shop for a while and took her along as she decided to go home to the Imperial City. The trip itself was uneventful. And once they were in the city, Kayra found it to be more or less the same as Liresul. Just bigger...Much bigger...Much, much bigger. And many more lawbreakers around...
It was in the Imperial City that she had her inspiration to try and become a mage. She was fifteen, and exploring the part of the city where most of the temples were. Finding the temple dedicated to the Air Goddess, and remembering that Venea had her main temple in Liresul, she decided to go inside. On the steps a man rushed by her, coins falling from his hands as he tried to hold onto the money he had grabbed from the donation plate. It didn't take her very long to catch him, taking to the air and more or less falling on him. When priests from the temple caught up and she handed him over she was invited back to see the High Priestess for a reward.
What would have been a simple present soon turned into a discussion between the young harpy and the priestess. Up until now, despite being a harpy and living in Liresul, Kayra hadn't really dedicated her life to any deity. She was simply too young to put any consideration in it. After listening to the priestess talk, though, and learning that Venea protected many harpies in her city (something that Kayra suddenly realized explained why so many of her kind were there), she decided to return to Liresul with her mother and go to the temple, abandoning the plans of becoming an Imperial Guard like she had been thinking.
She moved to Liresul and spent time getting to know people around the temple, becoming friends with different priests and priestesses and mages. People around the city liked her; she brought a certain flair with all of her energy that people just liked. She didn't seem like the most responsible at first, but she worked on it. She did manage to calm down a bit, not attack criminals as often as she used to...And by the time she was eighteen, she had convinced Venea to allow her to take the trials to become a mage.
--
Trial: Venea sent her into the mountains to find another mage that had left the city a while ago...and hadn't come back. While it struck Kayra as odd that a mage would get lost that easily, she accepted, and after packing some supplies, headed off to the mountain. After only a day of searching, though, she realized something. There mountains were very big. They covered a lot of land. And she had absolutely no idea just where the mage was. Had he gone this way? Or that way? How far had he gone, and how did she know that he had returned while she was out searching?
Well, believing she would be told somehow if that did happen, she set out. And even with her wings to help her cover ground and make scaling different area, it was hard work. She wasn't used to traveling terrain like this, as she was pretty much a city girl, and not a traveler or adventurer like others who took the trials. Her food supplies didn't last as long as she had thought they would, her clothes seemed to find every loose branch to tears themselves on...and worst of all, the farther she went in, the dirtier things got, the harder it was to keep her wings clean.
The worst part of the search came when she ended up stumbling on several bear cubs. The mother, who of course had to be behind her, didn't like that so much. She couldn't take to the sky to avoid the bear and so she started to run, tripping over roots, tearing her clothes, and all sorts of other pain and bad things. She eventually got away from the bear by taking a tumble down a rocky hillside, scraping and banging herself up rather well, and loosing several feather out of her wings. She was in sorry shape, and just about ready to call it quits. Nothing could be worth this. But as she picked herself up from her fall, she realized she was in an abandoned camp, with a clear trail to follow.
What she had thought would take a few days ended up taking a week, but she found the "missing" mage. Thankfully he had some food, and once she rested a bit, they made their way back to Liresul, where she presented the mage to Venea, and was granted the ability to use magic.
As happy as she was, Kayra spent the next few days recovering from her ordeal in the mountains. When she finally felt up to celebrating her accomplishment, she decided to head back to the Imperial City. During the past five years, her family had moved there, her parents opening bigger shops for their respective trades. However, she would never make it...
Her new-found abilities made her a bit overconfident. That added in with that harpy sense of justice that got her into trouble so many times before almost sealed her doom when she found a small group being attacked by bandits. She tried to intervene, to save them, and ended up getting herself captured. What followed irreversibly changed her life.
She was a beautiful woman, with a beautiful body, that those bandits enjoyed for several days as they tried to break a mage. It wasn't often they could gets their hands on one, after all. She fought, though, doing everything she could...To no avail. They hacked off her wings, cauterized the holes where they had been by heating up their blades in fire and pressing the flats of their blades to the skin...She spent four days their captive, drugged so that she was more "responsive" to their lusts...It was all a hellish blur to her. When she was found and rescued, she would only repeat one thing over and over. "They stole the sky...They stole the sky..."
Kayra would wake up one day in Venea's temple in Liresul. She was never given the full story of how she was saved. Had Venea saved her, had her knights saved her...She didn't care. The point was that the goddess saved her life, and Kayra felt indebted to the deity. While she was recovering, she made a vow to herself to serve Venea in anyway that she possibly could to repay her for saving her life. To do that, she never left Liresul again, getting a house close to the temple.
The attack had changed her, almost to the point that no one recognized her. A once energetic, outgoing, fun loving girl was now only a shadow of her former self. She took to wear clothes that hid as much of herself as possible. She shied away from contact with men, kept herself either locked away in her house to wandering the temple, doing whatever she could to assist Venea. In time she had to herself she practiced her magic, dead set on never allowing something like that to happen again to her. She would die before going through that again...
For years she trained herself and practiced her abilities, doing her best to ignore the whispers about her. She only stopped with her magic when she had to help out in the temple, as she had become the unofficial garden keeper for the goddess, making sure the area was always beautiful for Venea. She didn't get to see the goddess as much as she would have liked, but such a thing was understandable. Venea was an incredibly busy and important woman, she wouldn't have time for a lowly mage like herself. But, slowly, the harpy started to fall in love with Venea, and once she realized it she locked the secret away.
Everything changed, though, when the goddess was assassinated. Venea's death struck Kayra particularly hard, as she blamed herself for her beloved deity's death. After the funeral she locked herself away again, barely eating, rarely sleeping, only coming out at night when no one was around and going to Venea's grave. Just like the gardens, she kept the grave area as well tended as she could. She was alone in the world, as for the longest time, the goddess had been the only person who believed in her, the only person the harpy could call a friend.
And then the Felori arrived...
As very few people believed she could be of any help, she was ignored when the call for defenders arose, although she served where she could in tending to the wounded. When the evacuations started, she stayed away. There was no way she could leave Liresul. She had remained in it's walls for a decade, serving the goddess she had loved. Instead of leaving, she had gone to the temple, as the walls were breached and Felori poured in. Determined to die defending Venea's grave, there was no way she would let these savages desecrate such a holy place, she did manage to kill a good number of the invaders. She was shot twice but still going, before Mazrin Cintalen and some knights still in the city came to her rescue. The last of the Felori around her were killed, and when Kayra refused to leave, Mazrin knocked her out and brought her out of the city with the last of the people fleeing.
As such, she ended up in the same place as the Ame sisters and Mazrin. Her depression has claimed her again, she she tried to keep herself separated from the rest of the survivors and refugees. Many seem to prefer it that way, as very few people want to be seen with the mage that didn't help in the defense of the city.
Magic: Kayra has extremely refined and precise control over her magic, thanks to having spent nearly all of her time since her attack studying and practicing. She can do the things the average mage can, and so much more. She can fly, for instance, something that, as far as she knows, only Venea herself had been able to do before. She can pull the air out of someone's lungs, although it is a brutal tactic she rarely resorts to. The full extent of her powers she isn't even sure of, as she is afraid to fight, and since her attack has only used her powers in battle once, defending Venea's grave. However, she is certain she is next to worthless in battle anyway, and people would be better off going to air magi such as Arashi Ame.
Degree of Study: Close to a decade of hard, nonstop study and practice.
RP Post Sample: 
Kayra Stormsong
