Mai'Traya
Mai'Traya is a Drow of Zar'Ahal who trained in typical combat as a Drow warrior before finding her true passion in engineering. She now works on everything from armour design to siege engines - though her workshop is known as a very dangerous place since she has begun dabbling in alchemical reactions to include within her mechanical devices.
Appearance
A young-appearing woman with bright yellow eyes often obscured by protective goggles or magnifying glasses. Her hair is bright white like most Drow but her hair does show signs of irregular growth and inconsistent lengths from where fire has damaged her hair at different times - never beyond repair but enough to be noticeable.
She has well-developed shoulder and upper arm muscles from her very physically demanding work and the martial training - though with her thin neck this has led to her having something of a bobble-head look overall. Often she can be found wearing leather armour supported with metal plates of armour over different areas. When not in full armour, she maintains a thick leather workers apron instead.
She has well-developed shoulder and upper arm muscles from her very physically demanding work and the martial training - though with her thin neck this has led to her having something of a bobble-head look overall. Often she can be found wearing leather armour supported with metal plates of armour over different areas. When not in full armour, she maintains a thick leather workers apron instead.
Skills and Abilities
Intelligent and analytical, Mai'Traya is an inventor and engineer above all else - though she retains the martial training she was taught as part of her upbringing.
- Engineering
- As an engineer, Mai'Traya is capable of assembling siege weapons, crossbows and other feats given enough time to prepare. She is capable of assembling bridges and weapons both in and out of combat as she identifies herself as a "combat engineer".
- Alchemy
- As something of an inventor, Mai'Traya is a capable alchemist who specialises in using alchemical reactions to bolster her engineering works. This can be as mundane as creating oils that mean her siege engines are silent in their movements - or as explosive as managing to create arrows with perfect aerodynamics and alchemical payloads ranging from explosive to spreading fire to acidic clouds.
- Archery
- Trained in martial pursuits in line with her nature and culture as a Drow, Mai'Traya has very good aim and was almost selected to be a fully-focused archer before she decided to push for inventing. She remains most skilled with crossbows of her own design, including one with a cycling cylinder for automatic reloading.
- Mace
- When all else fails, hitting something really hard often works. Both in the workshop and outside of it, Mai'Traya has a knack for knowing how to hit something just right with a whole lot of blunt force.
Personality
Atypical to a fault.
Mai'Traya is a Drow who has no time for slaves or pleasures, poisons or politics. To a lot of her fellow Drow, she is an oddity and if she were any less useful to their war efforts than she was, she likely would have had her quirky nature hammered down flat by the culture as a matter of course. Instead, she was allowed to be "odd" because it helped her creativity and this has resulted in a lonely, maladjusted, young woman with an insatiable hunger to learn and develop as much as she can.
She is very aware of her "other-ness" within Zar'Ahal and because of this she tries very hard to be helpful to her fellow Drow, often creating weapons or armour for them without them asking. In these situations she also doesn't ask because while she has no fear of social rejection - she doesn't actually understand social cues either. There have been times where she has been caught actively measuring people in their sleep to ensure her latest creation will fit them just right.
Mai'Traya is a Drow who has no time for slaves or pleasures, poisons or politics. To a lot of her fellow Drow, she is an oddity and if she were any less useful to their war efforts than she was, she likely would have had her quirky nature hammered down flat by the culture as a matter of course. Instead, she was allowed to be "odd" because it helped her creativity and this has resulted in a lonely, maladjusted, young woman with an insatiable hunger to learn and develop as much as she can.
She is very aware of her "other-ness" within Zar'Ahal and because of this she tries very hard to be helpful to her fellow Drow, often creating weapons or armour for them without them asking. In these situations she also doesn't ask because while she has no fear of social rejection - she doesn't actually understand social cues either. There have been times where she has been caught actively measuring people in their sleep to ensure her latest creation will fit them just right.
Biography & Lore
To hear her tell it, Mai'Traya was born Brilliant and everyone else was born Boring.From a young age, Mai'Traya focused on learning as much as she could, avoiding social interaction like the plague until her mother forced her to attend functions. This ended when she was still very young when she made another girl cry by asking, very persistently, if she could dissect her pet spider's legs to see how the joints worked. When she was told no, Mai'Traya instead asked if she could see how the other girl's leg joints worked instead.
Hence the crying and a ban from any future birthday parties.
Her mother did her best to steer Mai'Traya towards archery as she showed a keen eye and accuracy without much training, but although she did follow this path to please her mother for a number of years, she continued to tinker whenever she could. When she came of age, Mai'Traya left the family home and bought herself a simple building just on the right side of the Slave Slums of Zar'Ahal - which she then turned into a workshop/studio apartment.
In recent years, slaves have learned to sleep through hammering and explosions both as Mai'Traya cackles in the dead of night as she delivers crossbows, ballista and more to the Drow as their gather their martial might.