Shelav Adranni

Overview

Name: Shelav Adranni
Species: Human
Age: 29
Height: 5’10”
Weight: 155 lbs.
Hair: Dark Brown
Eyes: Gold
Skin: Fair
Occupation: Arcane Guard
Place of Birth: Near Elbion
Affiliation: the College
Home: Elbion

Appearance

Credit to Andrew Chou: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/5JLNP

Skills and Abilities

Shelav has focused her energy and training into two fields: swordsmanship and warding magics. Both of her areas of study and expertise are constantly being honed and are defensive in nature rather than offensive. Her knowledge of magic is highly specialized and thus limited. She can create a powerful protective spell, but cannot summon so much as a spark of flame to attack with. She leans on her more mundane weapon skills to defend her charges, which has its advantages against enemy casters: one cannot dispel or counterspell common steel. More mundane threats face significant difficulty in getting through her magical protections. She often walks a razor's edge, balancing between the drain of her wards or other magics and the physical demands of combat, but dedication and training have made it much easier to keep her footing.

Personality

As soft-spoken and gentle to her charges as a warrior can come, Shelav takes her duty to protect Elbion's mages, particularly the youngest and least trained among them, incredibly seriously. She takes little leisure time for herself, split between her duty and her quest for self-mastery, but she loves it that way. Shelav lives and breathes the protection of others and considers it a sacred duty even without the input of a higher power. Her outlook is optimistic at its core and she could never be described as dour, though she is usually serious. Anyone who threatens her wards, however, come face to face with an entirely different and entirely more unpleasant side of Shelav. Her temper is volcanic, difficult to stir up but devastating once it arrives, and the one trigger without fail is an attack against those she protects. In moments like that, she is not as inclined to offer quarter as she might be when the attack is directly fixed against her.

Biography & Lore

Shelav's pedigree is somewhat unusual, the daughter of a capable swordswoman and a potent necromancer. Her talent for magic was seen as stunted by her father and did nothing to endear her to the man. Once he stepped away and lost interest, her mother stepped in and offered her an intense education in the way of the blade. This lasted only up to a point, when her father's interest in her was suddenly rekindled for a reason that seemed entirely more malicious than her mother wanted. Thus, Shelav found herself shipped out of her own village straight for the College, where her unwelcome father would not be able to reach her.

Her native desire to protect people crystallized early in her training, when she defended another student from a summoning experiment gone wrong. That display of swordplay and a surprisingly powerful ward from the young girl prompted a radical change in her training: she was no longer a mage in training, but picked to be a guard for the College. She took to it like a fish to water, growing by leaps and bounds in over the course of the fifteen years she has spent at the College. She loves her home fiercely and has devoted herself to the protection of its mages without a second thought. Most of her days are spent either guarding or learning more of magic and the arts of combat. At the moment, she is proficient in both of her areas of specialty, but the strive for self-improvement underscores almost everything she does.

References