Ella was born to the Baron and Baroness Kendrick of Ice. She was the fifth child of seven, and so had no hope of ruling, so she focused on her studies. After showing martial potential at a young age, her parents included combat training into the normal education of a noble woman. She trained under an old dwarf who retired from defending the north from monsters and had been retained by her parents to teach their children in the way of the sword. Tordek Ironhammer gave her the most well-rounded martial education he could, and so she studied a variety of melee and ranged weapons, gravitating to the sword, as most do, a selection of armor drawn from her elder siblings' old training gear, and military tactics of all types, from individual unit combat to massive armies, with a focus on the former, from many eras of history, including a few texts from the old continent. He also taught her Goblin and Giant, saying "An enemy's commands are like his deepest thoughts, lass. But this way, ye don't have to guess at his plan; he'll just tell you."
All during this, she was given the education of any other noblewoman; etiquette, how to survive in court politics, the 'civilized' languages (Common, Dwarven and Elvish), and so on. She enjoyed her language, politics and history lessons, but could never really get the subterfuge and machinations that her tutors tried to impress upon her.
Her martial training began when she was 10, and by 15, her parents had begun to look more seriously towards her future. Ideally, her parents thought, they could marry her off within three years to one of the sons of the local nobility of Norethra, but through numerous unfortunate events for the Kendricks, this became impossible. As they struggled to find something to do with her, Ella continued to train into a machine of war, and, as she liked to think, peace. She was still only 17 when Ironhammer permanently retired, and so with her parents forbidding her from leaving to go adventure while they scrambled to marry her off, she reluctantly joined the city's guard. There, she was bored out of her mind, since she was put on patrol duty, just walking the streets. Things got interesting when she and a few other unsatisfied recruits formed a vigilante group, finding and beating up criminals in the night. She had the time of her life: doing good for the community day and night and protecting the innocent from the bad guys. All very black and white.
Then things turned for the worse, as things do. Her and her friends had been tackling a large criminal network, and decided to assault them head on in one of their strongholds. One of the six went down instantly in a hail of crossbow fire and two more would be mortally wounded in the routed charge and subsequent retreat. The only reason the fallen received a proper burial is because the actual guardsmen had had a running operation that was primed to dismantle the network, and was able to recover their corpses. All of the would-be vigilantes were dismissed with dishonorable discharges, except for Ella, but only thanks to her parents pulling in serious favors.
She went on a short pilgrimage to various shrines on Norethra after being discharged, praying for the souls of her friends and forgiveness for failing them. When she returned home, her parents told her that they had finally decided to allow her to become an adventurer, since she was obviously going to do it anyway, so she might as well do it right. With the task of earning honor for the family and establishing and improving relationships with the mainland nobility (with the clear implication that those relationships should include marital ones), they put her on the next boat to the mainland, where we find her now.
Open to working in other players, even if it means scrapping a bunch of it.
Author
Topic: snip (Read 15320 times)