Visha Sofka
Appearance and Equipment
* Chin-length red-orange hair, orange eyes, fair skin, 5'5", pronounced hourglass figure.
* Usually wears a simple light green shirt, dark blue pants and belt, brown knee-high boots, tan elbow-length gloves, maroon shawl with a fireball brooch, and utility girdle with a big brass buckle.
* Sometimes armed with a gnarled wooden staff. Useful channeling loci, staves. But Visha's staves often end up being burnt or broken.
Skills and Abilities
The Impassioned Blaze: The source of Visha's arcane talents, hers is a magic fueled by her own passion. That passion being FIRE. There is a certain inertia and momentum involved: burning things causes her passion to increase, which makes her magic stronger, and thus encourages her burn more things. A vicious circle. Conversely, with that same inertia and momentum, it can be hard to get started. Her magic gets weaker and pitiful when she is: tired, disoriented, confused, anything that disrupts her passion/awareness.
** Overuse of her magic leads to symptoms of delirium and dehydration, and eventually death if pushed too far.
** When sufficiently excited/impassioned, small upward gouts of flame will sometimes briefly manifest at the ends of her eyebrows and at her shoulders.
Pyromancy: Burn, burn, BURN! Young and inexperienced, but with plenty of zealous devotion to the craft, Visha is moderately adept at many facets of pyromancy. Lacking much formal training, her pyromancy has a wild and rough--barely controlled--character to it, seemingly dangerous to friend and foe and herself. The road to true mastery is going to be a long one.
Flame Resistant Ward: One intensely useful skill she learned during her short enrollment at the College of Elbion. A good-intentioned, kind-hearted professor (who was also a bit of a prude) helped Visha learn and become reasonably proficient at warding both herself and her clothing against her own flames and the flames of others. The cost of reagents can be expensive though.
Personality and Characteristics
Major
* Complete, unrepentant pyromaniac. Absolutely loves fire: seeing things on fire, setting things on fire, listening to fire, talking about fire, being around things that are fire. This very often gets her into trouble, but there is a solution! She's cognizant of the trouble she causes for herself, and (sometimes) uses small, contained tricks of pyromancy to manage her urges without destroying stuff.
* Bubbly, talkative, and a people-person despite her tendencies for arson. Poor volume control. WHAT'S AN INDOOR VOICE??
* Twitchy and excitable. Can make her jumpy. Try tapping her on the shoulder while she's unaware.
* Tends to really get into things that do enrapture her interest with an intense, single-minded focus.
* Flighty. Doesn't deal so well with commitment and responsibility. Perhaps a bit too free-spirited in this regard.
* Has an expansive sense of humor, and doesn't take many things seriously. Not really one to hold grudges, seek revenge, or be hurt for long.
Minor
+ Heavy sleeper. Energetic as she is while awake, she clocks out hard. Definitely not a morning person.+ Have you heard about the GREATEST pyromancer who ever lived, Maho "Jerik" Sparhawk?? HAVE YOU??
+ Enjoys cuddle time--especially beside a campfire.
+ Has exhibitionism as a little vice. This the result of many fire-related wardrobe mishaps.
+ Loves seafood and Elbionese pastas.
+ Afraid of heights. No, no, no, not going going to look down. Nope.
+ A decent baker, thanks to her parents. The pyromancy helps with that, fittingly enough.
+ Shushes people for no reason.
Biography and Lore
Embers
Fire. Fire.
Visha, starting as far back as she can remember, always watched the flame on the candle in her room dance and dance and it kept her up many hours into the night until her mother or father extinguished the light and put her to bed. She burned herself many times touching it. She even tried to taste it once--that wasn't good. To say that her parents were slightly concerned would be an understatement, but this was all they outwardly showed. Sometimes there would be news from about their neighborhood in Elbion about fires mysteriously being started, having to be put out, but...that couldn't be their Visha, right? Sure, she giggled when she heard the news, heard other people talking about those fires, but...she was their little girl. She was going to grow up to be a fine baker, just like them.
Or not. When Visha was ten years old, it was discovered that she had an affinity for magic. And though her parents had wanted her to continue the family profession with her brother, they were overjoyed nonetheless. She could attend the College, follow the path of learning and magic, and achieve great things.
Great things.
The Great Pyromancer
Only, Visha sucked at magic.
She had an affinity for it, sure. She was able to get enrolled in the College, but her ability seemed to fluctuate wildly. Some days she was decent. Some days she couldn't even manifest simple cantrips. Even, to her dismay, her early attempts at Pyromancy were awful, despite wanting desperately to become proficient in the discipline as opposed to all the others. If there was a way to cheat on a test or examination, Visha found a way. She did everything she could to somehow stay enrolled despite her failures. She wanted to learn Pyromancy. Yes, yes, she yearned, yearned, yearned for it, but something was just missing.
Then it happened. Maho "Jerik" Sparhawk, formerly a Professor at the College, came to destroy it and brought with him a MAGNIFICENT flame. While others fled for safety, stood against him, or cowered where they could during the attack, Visha simply watched from her vantage. Awestruck in the truest sense of the word. This man...he, within an instant, became a GOD to her.
And the Impassioned Blaze was born within Visha, her magic able to be focused and honed at last.
Expulsion
Fire! FIRE!
Only Pyromancy mattered. Every other study could kiss her ass. Hm, hm, hm, yes, yes, the fire danced between the palms of her hands now. She was getting better. You know what better often didn't include though? Control and restraint. Oops, burned a rug. Oops, burned my roommate's bed. Oops, set the garden on fire for the third time this week. Oops, what happened to my clothes? Oops, that professor who pissed me off lost that wreath of gray hair and now he's fully bald, ha ha ha! Oops, that girl who had insulted Maho Sparhawk had her soup flash boiled and spilled into her lap. Oops, her "Flaming Carriage race" down the streets of Elbion ended in disaster. Oops, people didn't like her trying to recreate Maho's attack as a semester project.
Eventually, the Maesters had enough. Between her recklessness and her concerning veneration of Sparhawk, the decision was reached to expel Visha from the College without the possibility of re-admission. You know what? FINE! The College did Great Maho wrong, it made sense they'd do his devotee wrong too. She'd just have to take what she'd managed to learn and head off on her own.
On the Road to Mastery
So her brother thought she was crazy. NO YOU! So Mom and Dad were worried. THEY SHOULDN'T BE! They were all as concerned about her idolization of Sparhawk as the Maesters, but they just didn't understand that by following him, by following his example, she too could become a great and powerful pyromancer.
And that was what Visha is setting out to do now. Travel into the world, follow the legend of Maho Sparhawk (who had died, ascended to true godhood, in the most GLORIOUS way imaginable), put her skills to the test, let her Blaze grow and grow, and achieve the mastery she ohhhhhh so wanted. Needed.
Oh yes. Yes. YES! The wider world offered many things to burn. And it was up to her to start the fire.
References
The Razing of GrayshoreAmbush at Farreach Woods
Being Rambled At
MY RIVAL!
Breakfast in Bed
The Shape of All Things
Rumors of War
NO YOU
Barbarism (Slain)