I hereby state my interest.
Name: Ehretia Minilna, 'Erie' to friends.
Gender: Female
Race: Forest Nymph, a race of humanoid plant-infused beings with green skin, plant features, and a very long lifespan
Class: Ranger/Druid
Age(Date/Place of birth): 59 (though it's the equivalent of 20 human years) (born in Yunuth, Nimwoods)
Alignment: Neutral Good
Hair: Green with a red streak across
Eyes: Blue
Language(s):
Native: Fae (woods dialect)
Fluent: Common, Elvish (woods dialect)
Rudimentary: Various including Centaur, two Gnomish languages, and Orcish (plains dialect)
Sexual Orientation: Bisexual (slightly prefers men)
Occupation: Explorer, Fighter-for-hire, sometimes scout or guide
Weapon Choice: Halbert, magic
Religion: The Fae have a full pantheon, and outright ignoring any of their Gods is considered risky (though it's sometimes done to display dedication to a particular deity by spurring others they dislike). Ehretia pays tributes to all but prioritizes Cretheis, the personification of the horizon and guardian of travellers and hospitality
Magic Abilities/Innate Powers:
Fae body: Ehretia is a Nymph, which means her body is a mix of mammal and plant. She can gain energy from sunlight by photosynthesis, but otherwise she's exclusively carnivorous. The thorns on her body secrete a toxic agent that prevents blood from clotting and prevents wounds from healing. Her fingers end in claw-like nails that can cut flesh and leather but not piece anything metal or stronger. Her mouth comes with short fangs between sharp teeth and her saliva has the same toxicity as her venom. She moves 20% faster than humans of her size tend to, which makes her very fast by their standards in running and physical feats. On the flipside, she is physically slightly weaker, her bones are more brittle, and she is quite sensitive to temperatures outside of medium comfortable ranges.
Forest magic: Ehretia draws upon the circle of being to cast her magics. By tapping into Birth, she can heal beings by touch, restore energy to exhausted people and animals, boost the growth of plants and neutralize many poisons. By tapping into Decay, she can inflict necrotic wounds not unlike mace hits on any flesh she touches, have plants wither and die as she touches them. As a very young Fey, she can only affect what she directly touches, with very little leeway, but her grasp can pack a punch for good or ill.
Family/Friends/Allies: Nymphs that venture out of the woods into greater society are expected to be positive representatives for the Fae, and Ehretia is from a well-off house within her native Fey City, so both in and out her forest she maintains respectful relationships with former employers, close and distant relatives (all are Nymphs, though), as well as former allies.
Ehretia has worked with Thril on no less than three separate occasions. The first time it involved finding and subsequently eradicating a bandit encampment in a dense and hard to traverse forest, the second time a hunt for a Hydra that had moved into a trading route, and the latest instance was an excavation of an old temple since overrun by wildlands. Initially the nymph preferred to keep her distance to the sellsword, as she became very nervous around his ice magic (a type that Ehretia as a part-plant is very sensitive to). After running into him a second time though, she thawed (heh!) a bit and found the man a very useful ally to hang around when vicious beasts were around, and by the third time she didn't mind joining him for drinks during the lulls in the action of the guarding and foraging duties. How the sellsword reacted to the green-skinned young woman who ate meat raw but with excellent table manners, is up to him.
[May edit in the future as more characters join]
Likes: Exploring, dancing, music, swimming, hunting, nature, pretty clothing
Dislikes: Fire, cold, dry environments, having to sit still or be quiet, polluted places, disrespect towards her or her race
Strengths: Wildness survival, navigation, adept combatant, healing magic, agility, good-mannered, well-educated, driven
Weaknesses: Naive, holds grudges, prone to overreaction, physically weak, unable to cope with certain extreme environments
Fears: Disgrace, humiliation, fire
Personality: Energetic and outgoing, Ehretia likes to make friends and likes hanging with friends. She's honourable and fairly dependable, which are good qualities for an adventurer. Being raised rich and secure, and being taught to value connections and appearances as much as actual wealth, she's quite generous and welcoming to others. But if she feels slighted, she makes a 180 and can go full throttle against someone. She very much can show that crossing the Fae, intentionally or otherwise, is a very bad decision to make.
Background:
The Fae aren't a race, they are a group consisting of many kinds of creatures that have a greater than average attunement to magic. Not all get along with each other, but those that do tend to form enclaves around 'uncivilized' areas where they build their own cities within the wilds, some quite old, that form a counterbalance against the surrounding civilizations. Some of these form city-states or otherwise ignore outside rule, but others have good outside relations and even have sworn fealty to rulers if the Fae consider it worthwhile to align them fully.
The forest nymphs, a race of human-like Fae whose defining characteristic is that they are more plant than most creatures but still a lot more mammal than, say, dryads, are a relatively common race amongst the Fae. They're similar in size to humans, green-skinned and usually green-haired (though colour variations are known to occur), with plant features in their body ranging from bark skin to roots growing out of their body to leaves opening between their hair. They take over 40 years to mature, and then can live up to 1000 years old, though most die by 500. A forest nymph city is fairly spacious, often built between forest trees over a large area with very low population density, centered around a more proper large building where the city leadership resides. Their society is based around family dynasties, with their long lives meaning key figures of power can shape the city developments over hundreds of years.
Nymphs don't often leave their cities, but they are allowed to and young Nymphs that are of age sometimes make treks to see the outside world before they settle into home life. Outside nymphs are either called
Dirrigers, or
Banished, if they left by force, or
Hinnu, meaning
To return, if they've chosen to leave but are expected to re-join their house in due time. When a Nymph decides to take extended time to venture into the lands of the 'civilized' races, often the ones just surrounding the wildlands the Nymphs protect, they tend to take jobs that let them satisfy the wanderlust that drew them out of the forest in the first place. They make excellent scouts, pathfinders, or magical warriors (depending on their education and aptitude for magic), and are quite sought for these positions. As their society places a high emphasis on long-term relations, Nymphs tend to gravitate towards nobler or more respected clientele. Some human or elven trading houses have long-standing connections to specific Nymph families to provide spots for their offspring to travel with them into new ventures, and at least one elite archaeological society loves to bring them on their explorations. It's not unheard of to find Nymphs who settle down outside the forest in mundane jobs or fall in love with someone while on their journey and stay out to start a family, but it is very rare.
Ehretia is a Hinnu, a Forest Nymph who has chosen to leave her family for a while to go explore the world outside the one she grew up in. She was born the second child of four, in a branch of a minor noble family within the forest city of Yunuth. The city is located in a forest the humans call the Nimwoods, and many (human) generations ago after some mild altercations the Nymph city acknowledged human rule and laws on paper, and since pays taxes, maintains roads though the area, does a fair bit of trade with the civilized cities, and generally does what they need to do to stay on the human's good side. Over a long childhood (she didn't come of age until she was 50 years old) Ehretia gained a good education and a good understanding of outsiders, as her direct family was in charge of maintaining and securing one of the few key trade routes through the Nimwoods. They got rich off duties and services to the caravans, and quite a few Nymphs worked under them to provide housing, food and water supplies, and sometimes other things to the traders.
Ehretia was never truly enthusiastic over the life ahead of her. Middle management wasn't really her style. She preferred to do things hands-on, tackle things personally, and she drank in stories that traveled across the roads about faraway exotic lands containing all sorts of creatures and peoples. Before she was forty, Ehretia declared her intention to travel out. Her parents didn't make an issue of it, she wasn't first in line and it was a trait of the young to want to see what was beyond the horizon. So when she was fifty-one years old, Ehretia was given all she needed and passage along with a caravan to start sightseeing.
The first year went roughly as expected, but Ehretia's parents had provided her with enough money to last about a year. Then she would return, they'd no doubt thought. Ehretia didn't want that, so she signed up for an expedition to find a caravan that had gotten lost in wolf country. From there the ball got rolling: one job led to another, Ehretia's exotic background made her sought after, and her skills grew quickly. She had a taste for the wilds, as much a pathfinder and trailblazer as she was a sellsword, and if you had a problem that didn't stay within city walls Ehretia Minilna was the gal you needed - for a price, of course. While initially she served as supplement to fighting forces, her skill with her light halberd has let her carve out her fame with blood as well.
Ehretia never had a real 'breakthrough' job, as she doesn't often do jobs by herself and fame shared is rarely as great as fame won alone, although she's by no means modest about her deeds. She's a capable fighter, a potent mage, a deadly hunter, and over the past seven years she's been racking up an impressive record and a good success rate. She's also playing for more than subsistence now, as her price keeps rising.
Other:
Ehretia and Dani crossed paths on less friendly terms: About two years ago Ehretia was part of the escort of a caravan packed with artisan wares and expensive materials, along a fairly dangerous route. When one of the wagons had some mechanical issue and was lagging behind, Ehretia slowed down her own pace alone. Before she or the driver knew what happened, bandits sprung their ambush and jumped on the cart. Ehretia was armed, but outnumbered, and spent the time swiping at mobile fairies which sometimes were there and sometimes turned out to only exist to her eyes specifically. Dani's group made off with a small fortune worth of things while Ehretia was occupied and reinforcements were still doubling back across the road. The whole thing left Ehretia with a black mark on her reputation for getting ambushed in forest terrain as a nymph, cost her most of the pay for the contract, and she has not forgotten the scar-marked face that did it. She's not going to be happy to work with any bandit, much less one that outplayed her.
Dealing with the same.