Caelia Silverarch

Caelia is a fairly standard midlander hyur, standing at five fulms and two ilms (5'2") and about one hundred and fifteen ponz (115lbs).

Her black hair is long, with red highlights she dyes in; normally kept up and out of the way - mostly, as her fringe is sideswept and is constantly moved out of her eyes. It's quite striking against the pale skin she has, while dark brown eyes regard the world with curiosity and, to most observers, a coldness. Usually.

While unseen, her hips sport what look like scars: aetherial tattoos, with the mark of Azeyma on the left, and the mark of Althyk on the right. They're normally hidden through a clever use of glamours, and will deny that there's any marks on her body otherwise if one sees through it. Why? Because that's how secrets are kept. Maybe you're just seeing things.

Caelia has a fairly untoned body, though she's slim and can lift small, not too heavy things herself, she has "noodly mage arms" as she's been told - mages aren't meant for heavy lifting, and it isn't needed to hold up a staff to cast. She can lift a bow and shoot a lightweight bow if needed, and she can usually push force into a dagger's blade if it needs to find itself in between ribs, but larger swords or weapons don't play well with her. She has no problem using her small stature to slip unnoticed into places, and while every problem can be solved with a fiery explosion of black magic, every problem should not be solved in that way - hence the sneaking. She's gotten good at it over the years. She does have a pretty rockin' bod though, and she uses that to her advantage if need-be.

Her preferred clothing style, while as functional as it can be, enjoys that zettai ryouiki aethestic - thigh-high stockings, short skirts (or shorts), and whatever comfortable shirt or a dress she feels.

Caelia is very prickly when you first meet her; distrust could likely be her middle name (it's not). She's fairly hard to get to talk or get along with when she's giving you a cold shoulder. The only exceptions to this seem to be younglings and the elderly.

Once Caelia starts warming up to someone, she may still be a little prickly, but it's usually more of a fond teasing or with less of an actual coldness behind it. Once she's indifferent to someone, you can likely get her to warm up to you... however, break any trust she's started to invest in you, and she'll drop you quickly. Or threaten to burn all of your hair off. One or the other.

A trusted bond, she's incredibly loyal and would put her life on the line, should it come to that, for someone she trusts and considers close to her. Breaking that trust is the worst thing someone could do to her, especially if the walls she unconsciously puts up have come down, even somewhat around someone, and will affect her in the future in how she opens up to someone.

Speaking of those same walls, regardless of how much she trusts someone, there will always be a degree of a wall she keeps up; it's not out of malice, just out of her own caution to not be hurt. While eventually most will come down, there will be some secrets that she won't tell - biggest one is her lineage and where she's from. Even if someone can see that her aether is old and of the White, she will deny it or act as if she has no idea what you mean. Since she's not sure who can be trusted with that information, in terms of who would want to use her like a science experiment or worse, it stays secret. Only one other knows, and that's her partner-maybe-significant-other.

Caelia Silverarch was born to Adela and Tynan Silverarch in the Orn Wilds, home to a hamlet built up by some Amdapori survivors of the Sixth Umbral Calamity. While most of the numbers of the 3 ancient city-states of Nym, Amdapor, and Mhach had melded with other nations, some had stayed out of all of that, and instead stayed in the regions they had fled to escape the floodwaters of the Calamity. As such, the Amdapor line in this case stayed seculded and hidden through magic - think the barrier surrounding Rhalgr's Reach, but a lot more powerful - though their secrets of some of their most powerful White Magicks were lost. As to not bring another Calamity down on their head, over the years most of the now-forbidden magic was separated in such a way that more than one person would be needed to cast it, if not outright forgotten save for a few people who kept the knowledge safe.

Caelia, however, was an anomaly - she is unable to cast the same magic as her bretheren, and instead wields the very magic that sought to destroy them so many centuries ago. Funny story on how all that went down!

When Caelia was 4 years old, some of her older friends kept teasing her that her magic wasn't as strong as theirs, as kids are wont to do. As she insisted more and more that it was so, stop teasing me, it finally came to a head when they finally dared her to take out her grandmother's book of forbidden and ancient magic and cast something from it. Caelia being a stubborn girl, agreed to do so, took her grandmother's book, and began her search for the most complex spell she could comprehend and actually say the words in the incantation. However, being so young, she didn't realize that it wasn't just the ability to say all of the big words correctly to cast, and the needed amount of aether was also a component of the spell, and because of that, her aether - and the spell - went wildly out of control. With her friends panicking and yelling for help, Caelia's parents rushed in to find their daughter a veritable ticking aether bomb and in the same panic as the children in the room, pooled their own magic together to save their child... at the cost of their lives. Her grandmother rushed in not long after to find her unconscious grandchild and aetherically weak son and dead daughter-in-law. Hearing what had happened as her son finally returned to the lifestream, she used her knowledge of the old ways to seal Caelia's memories, as well as the children in the room. She didn't wish for her son's only child to carry the burden and the guilt it would likely wrack her with to know she was the cause of her parent's deaths.

As the children grew, they ventured a little too close to Sharlayan, and they were found by the scholars there. Intrigued that people that they had all but thought integrated into modern society were still holding pureblooded lines, they invited the children, now in their teenage years, to talk with them and give them some information. While their hamlet elders were wary, they did tell them what was and was not all right to speak on to those in Sharlayan who were ever curious. It was during one of these excursions that, upon looking at their great library full of books and study, did a Soulstone call out to Caelia - one that she swiped for herself. It wasn't until she returned to her home and the safety of her room that she found it was a Black Mage Soulstone. Why it called to her, she didn't know, but she had heard enough from the scholars that Soulstones chose their masters (for the most part.) While she did eventually tell her grandmother, and then the rest of her friends and those she considered close, she kept it a secret as long as she could, not wanting to scare anyone that she had interest in learning the same magic that wiped out their ancient city. Once the cat was out of the bag, it was found more to be a boon than a curse, and the years leading up to the Sharlayans leaving their settlement in the Hinterlands behind gave her access to books and knowledge on the art of Black Magic - it was also in this time that she found she had a love for studying and learning of the different types of magic, and her frustration of her inability to use the magic of her people also began.

During these 12 or so years, she had built up friends with the children of the hamlet, though most were a couple years older than her, she still found a close companion who later became her lover in one Locke Grayleaf. He had always been her protector, never wanted to see her cry or get hurt, and fussed over her the most. Soon those feelings turned to love, and somewhere around her 17th year they were known to be dating. Nothing really notable happened in the time between the Sharlayans leaving and the Calamity in her 25th year beyond Garlean scouting ships crashing into the forests and Caelia making the merciless (or perhaps in very veiled mercy) decision to end the near-fatally wounded pilot's life before the ship was scrapped for their own purposes. All of the children (and the adults) knew that if they were found by the Garleans, life wouldn't be so pretty, and a worry that turned to an almost hatred was formed in Caelia - a few of her other friends had been going back and forth on how to deal with the soldier, but it was ultimately Caelia who said she would kill him as he was too far gone to mend with their magicks. When word spread of Nael van Darnus' plans and ideals, they saw more and more frequent Garlean visitors overhead going into Eorzea proper to fight the adventurers who rose against them. The night of the Calamity was seen from their homes, and when they awoke from everything after... well, they knew it was a spell most forbidden but couldn't remember much regarding it. It wasn't long after that things started changing.

There were plenty of other hamlets and small settlements around the fringes of the Wilds, where traveling merchants made their way through the paths to sell wares... but their visits dwindled to nothing over the coming months. Curious on what had happened, others ventured out to either not return, or return almost on their deathbed. All reports were the same: Bahamut had changed the ambient aether as the Seventh Umbral Calamity had been ushered in, and things would only grow worse for them. While the Hinterlands were largely unchanged, the sudden freezing of Coerthas and many trade routes that relied on what had been snowed over in Abalathia's Spine stopped, and soon hunger and sickness came. When the widespread sickness also came from parts of the land being poisoned by the aether changes, the hamlet called it what they thought it to be: a Curse of the Elementals. Seeing as how they had angered the Elementals so many centuries prior with their war with Nym and Mhach, they could only see it as the Elementals punishing them, though they didn't have next couple of years, a then-untreatable sickness ravaged the hamlet, taking many lives out as it spread. One of the lives taken was Locke's, and on his deathbed was Caelia allowed to see him - she had been much too upset and her grandmother dared not tempt the Elementals to poison her granddaughter if she were allowed unlimited access to his sickroom - and it was before he drew his last breaths that he handed her a ring and expressed how he was upset that the Twelve wouldn't allow him to marry her as he had planned to do.

Caelia had to be forcefully dragged out of the room as he passed on with a smile on his face.

After losing so many and trying to decide what they could do to survive, ranging from migrating out to the old and abandonded Sharlayan settlement, to settling one of the other abandoned settlements around them, or even just assimilating into one of the still thriving hamlets in the area. Ultimately, they found that too many were sick to make the move, and settled on the best sounding scenario: send out a few of those who were well enough to cover a long distance to be able to send back medicine, food, money, or whatever else would help them. Caelia was one of these, despite her protesting and anger at being chosen to leave. She and three others were packed up, given small gil reserves, and sent out to Eorzea, one of the last free of the Empire places left that was easy to get to. She chose to continue on to Ul'dah, taking on odd jobs for whatever she could feasibly do while living on her own and training in the Eorzean's Thaumaturgy art - she had to blend in somehow after already knowing what they were teaching her considering her ability as a Black Mage.

Eventually she ran into a job she couldn't do alone: while some other adventurers had cleared out Sastasha, there were still some pirates holed up in there that just wouldn't leave. So, Caelia begrudgingly sought out help from three others to escort her through. She had paid them off, sure, but it wasn't until after that the leader of the group, S'neha Qimi, gently let Caelia know she hadn't paid off her debt in full and she'd be a swabby for S'neha's Free Company, the Seaswarm Privateers, if it meant she'd pay off her debt, and if she ran? She would hunt Cae down and drag her back if she had to. So began her time with the Seaswarm, eventually moving up to be a go-between for the Swarm and an Ul'dahn Consortium of exotic and imported goods, with whom the Lalafellin owner covets a seat on the Syndicate... a bit of a dangerous thing. Caelia does that in her spare time between her odd jobs and the like, up to and including working as a free agent for Ishgard during the time of the Dragonsong War as a lookout. Couldn't have their soldiers possibly getting surprised by dragons, so why not outsiders?

In this time, Caelia met someone within the Free Company before he left: Terris Blackthorne. To date, he is the only one Caelia trusts with her life, and it's not only because they've been together for some time now. He had left the Seaswarm, but kept in contact with Caelia in some way. She stumbled on him after she had a run in with a rival Syndicate-trying Uldahn business's thugs gave her a beating... and she caught a few of them on fire, ultimately starting the underground rumour that there was a Thaumaturge that was able to cast spells without some sort of Foci which, wasn't entirely untrue either (what with jeweled ringbands and other Foci points on her that she adrenaline-rush casted when they attacked her.) When she found Terris, he took her in to make sure she wasn't found for a retaliation beating and/or death and to also make sure she was cared for as she healed up. He ultimately offered her a place to stay and told her "don't leave here 'til we know it's safe, I'll always protect you."

And Caelia being Caelia, decided to test out that last part by slipping out of Ul'dah and traveling to Costa del Sol. She figured if he really cared, he'd go looking for her, and look for her he did. He found her fairly quick and gave her a sound scolding about leaving, which only led Cae to ask how he found her so quickly. Turned out, he could sense aether but couldn't use it - and only one nation of people were unable to do that, the Garleans - and he had followed that trail, so to speak. He had no connections to his prior life of being in a shoot off of the Garlean's royal family as the Garleans are assholes when it comes to eating their own, though he didn't remember much of what had transpired. While it made Caelia wary, he eventually broke down many of the walls she had put up around her and she not only grew to trust him (and trust that he wasn't going to go back to being a crazy Imperial and haul her back to Garlemald to do whatever unspeakable things they'd do to a pureblood Amdapori) but they eventually got together. While she was gone, he gifted her a pet to keep her company, a red panda she named Kineta. She loves the red panda almost as much as she loves Terris, but she'd never admit that freely! He's been with her through thick and thin, up to and including extracting her out of the Dravanian Hinterlands when she had gone crazy with homesickness and fled home while working for Ishgard during the War. She was not lucky in coming back unscathed, as she'd been blighted with the Curse... but she had poor Terris worried sick after her regular letters stopped coming to him, so he found her on her own way home. Her grandmother had started pushing her in the direction of Astrology from Sharlayan since she couldn't use White Magic, and since then she's started undertaking other magical talents, though they aren't as refined as her Black Magic.

She can, with more knowledge, try to convert some magic to a way she can cast it. It takes some work, but that's what keeping your nose in books to study will do. She put this to use when she was contacted by someone she had met and talked about the old nations in the Fifth Astral Era - Inquisitive Mentor, a Roegadyn, had some old blight on him that ultimately Caelia helped remove with some help from one of his students - Anton Borneheld - and digging around the old Gubal Library. She got in contact with one of her close friends from her home who had been sent to look for Cae as her letters home had stopped (through her forgetting) and together they cast an old spell that they had converted over for Caelia to use. Any large casts wipes out a good chunk of her aether anymore, so she was out of comission for a while - but she's since bounced back; hopefully being far enough away from the source of her sickness will get her back in proper order. Until then, she's started sending things back home and hoping for the best.

Hello! I'm Raini. I'm a nerd, and if 35 is old to you, then I'm an old woman. I've been roleplaying in many mediums for at least 20+ years, though most of it has been text-based, starting on AOL in chat rooms and utilizing many methods since (Y!, MSN, LJRP/DWRP, D&D.)

I'm found on the Balmung server, usually closer to the evenings, on Caelia Silverarch. I do have a discord, but I don't give that out unless I know someone, sorry! You can message me in game, or over tumblr @amdapori!

I do:
Dark themesGeneral rpOne-shotsBending of the lore, because I too bend lore.
I don't do:
ERPShipping (on this character, she's taken!)CheatingGoku from Earth-but-not-really
I'm usually up for anything, but if you're not sure then hit me up and we can discuss something. If you want to forego the first meeting and go on to a second or third, or even if they've known each other for a while, I'm also down for that.

I can match writing styles for the most part, and I'm not picky whether you're a one or two liner, or paragraph roleplayer.

More to be added as I think of things, probably.