Asel
Appearance
Asel is aptly described as a very large bee. While some proportions are altered for bipedal movement, this description holds true for most polite conversation. She wears a steel breastplate and a few bits of custom armor on her limbs, all personally forged, but otherwise does not require clothing.
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Midge is a diminutive pixie, no greater than six or seven inches tall. She is entirely purple/blue and sports shimmering translucent dragonfly wings.
Skills and Abilities
Originally of the worker class, Asel is an extremely adept smith, capable of making quality arms and armor of nearly any design and use. Her work ethic is astronomical. She is a bee, after all, and sees her craft as her purpose in life.
Her natural exoskeleton provides adequate protection from most of life's troubles, although it is not nearly as strong as metal armor.
She has sensitive antennae and is able to detect faint smells and pheromones. She can produce her own pheromones for communication with her own kind or with bees (although she is still working on translating some of the more difficult concepts).
Her arthropod roots have given her extraordinary strength, and she is able to lift up to ten times her body weight with ease. This does not translate proportionally into offensive force (unless she throws a carriage at you), meaning that while slow, steady lifting is easy, she cannot punch the head from a horse. In general, however, she does not fight.
Asel has a telepathic link with a pixie named Midge. This is useful, as Asel's mouthparts are incapable of producing speech. Midge is able to translate back and forth, although sometimes the faerie's interpretations are muddled by her pugnacious nature.
Midge is capable of flight and limited pixie magic, most useful for mischief.
Asel can see the ultraviolet spectrum of light, and is capable of limited flight. However, her size prevents her from flying very quickly or very far.
Personality
Asel is calm, quiet, and prefers to focus on her work. Knowing that her purpose is to create fine and useful items, she is nearly always at a forge or peddling her wares. Though she forges items of battle she rarely ever engages in it herself, keeping true to her stoic and unflappable nature.
Midge, on the other hand, is boisterous, loud-mouthed, and feisty. Why she has chosen to follow Asel throughout her life is unknown, but the pair are inseparable. With the quality of Asel's works and the... insistence of Midge's salesmanship, the pair have made themselves a fine living.
Biography & Lore
It is highly unusual for a hymenopteran to leave the hive. It has been postulated that all individuals share a psychic link to their queen, and that individuality is unheard of.
Asel is not aware of this, and she left the Ixchel Wilds at a year and a half of age. She still retained her worker-bee sensibilities, however, and has taken that diligence and precision across Arethil.
Somewhere along the way she picked up Midge, and the pair have never parted since. Asel's long journey ended in Elbion, a place so full of magic and strange happenings that her race did not preclude her from finding success. By age two she purchased a forge of her own and has been smithing some of the finest weapons and armor the world has ever seen.
She ventures beyond the city from time to time, usually to sell her goods, but sometimes it appears as though she is called to wander for no reason at all. In the end she is always called back to her craft, and has been known to take up residence at foreign smiths to keep herself occupied on her travels. One thing is certain: wherever she goes, one can count on being well supplied.