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Carianna Mareleth
Pronunciation: CAR-e-AHN-nah MAAR-leth

Forum ID Alera Tai'var
Plot Cian's Quest
Carianna is © Alera Tai'var.
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Carianna’s Gallery
Age 27
Birth Year NRC 503
Gender Female
Race Human
Homeland Roid, Valis

Physical Description

    Carianna, or Cari, is a beautiful, but modest looking woman. She looks young by appearance, as if she was not more than twenty. Her body appears to be slim at first glance, but under the image, she has well toned muscles. Her muscles fit her body in size and are apparent on her bare arms. She has scars from weapons on her hands, including one on the palm of her hand that looks as if she took a blade and drew deep into it. Her long blonde hair drapes behind her and is put into a ponytail.

Height 5’10” Hair Color Golden Blonde
Weight 135lbs Eye Color Hazel
Build Toned Skin Color Pale

Clothing and Armor

    Carianna does not wear the normal clothing or equipment that a priestess of her type would wear. Carianna wears a simple white shirt that is too large for her torso that could be worn by a man. She has ropes that she ties it close to her body around the waist. With this, her shirt still shows her slim frame. Her sleeves are baggy until they get to her elbow. Special tempered bracers extend from elbow to wrist on her arms, keeping her clothing from being overly baggy. The bracers are tempered metal and have several small dents in them from recent weapon impacts. The metal is plain and without design. The bracers, albeit specially made, appear to be cheaply done. Cari has a simple pair of pants over her legs and some worn traveling boots on her feet. Overall, she doesn’t look like much of a priestess.

Weapon Description

    None.

Class Cleric
Occupation Priestess of Rada
Weapons None
Armor Steel Bracers
Equipment Here
Horse Yes
Magic System Clerical
Patron God Rada
Stats
ST 11
EN 10
AG 12
IN 17
LU 9
PB 15

Abilities

    Carianna’s abilities as a priestess are not as powerful as most who have studied magic as long as she has. She has trained in the use of healing, like most have, and can heal wounds including some broken bones and seal flesh wounds, but if the person she is healing is about to die, there is nothing she can do except dull the pain. She can create an invisible barrier in the shape of a dome around her and several other people if they are close to her. The barrier protects against magic and physical attacks, but cannot hold up against very powerful spells or some very strong physical attacking.

    Cari can send a ripple of Rada’s power out to her companions to bless them with protection against magic and reduce injuries taken, but it will not help them fight. She can also immobilize up to a small group of people. The spell weakens the targets to the point that they can barely stand. This effect is short-lived, but it is enough to escape or restrain the targets before it wears off. Finally, Cari can use Rada’s power to create a soothing effect over people. This spell is meant to banish the emotions that incite fighting of any kind and make the targets calm and docile. Although Cari’s abilities are weaker considering the amount of time she has spent studying the magic, the abilities she has are very honed for her level of ability.

Personality

    Carianna seems to have two different faces. The first is the shy girl. Carianna is still afraid of being touched, and shies away from physical contact. From time to time, she will shudder when she is reminded of her past and rarely reveals such things. Instead, she tries to keep a happy face on and is hopeful for the future. The other side is a little hot-headed and overly eager to solve problems. Carianna has the tendency to jump right into a problem, such as a fight, and try and solve it for people. But, overall, she is very kind and caring. She gets frustrated, though, when people get to arguing and cannot talk about things calmly. Carianna can get cynical as well, but usually will apologize afterwards.

Alignment: Neutral Good

Quotes: “Sure. I believe in non-violence. But go ahead and see where that belief takes you when a big man is almost on top of you with a bastard sword ready to drop on your non-violent body.”, “See that? That’s a poor kid. See that man over there? He has some money. Good money. If you teach that poor kid how to be like that man over there, that poor kid probably won’t end up so poor. Why did I have to think of that?”

History

    Carianna Mareleth was born under the roof of a poor family in Roid’s slums. Her mother died the day after Carianna was born due to the birth. Her husband, a man by the name of Jeron, was not in mourning for the loss of his wife. His wife had come with a decent dowry and they were by no means in love when they wedded. The man was disturbed by her death and the fashion it had come about, but no more than that. What worried him more was that he had a baby daughter with no mother. He had no way to provide for a baby without a mother to care for it. The man would look down at his child and see what little money he had to feed his mouth going to the child for a nurse maid. He just couldn’t stand giving it off to a girl who would just end up like his wife. In his mind, he saw sending her off as the only choice. If she could just find a family with money, she would be fine. He dropped her on the doorstep of a full orphanage and ran away.

    The orphanage provided little solace for the growing child. With no other place to put the child, the orphanage headmaster brought the child in and found a nursemaid that could care for her. The nursemaid was a volunteer, which was far too rare in the times. Carianna grew up with blinders on in the orphanage. The nursemaid who cared for her thought the child was irresistible and spent her workless time with the child, trying to lighten the severity of her situation. By the age of twelve, the orphanage was falling apart. There wasn’t enough money to keep it going. When the orphanage closed, they tried to send children to other places to be cared for, Carianna got lost in the many needy children and ended up on the street. When the orphanage building was abandoned, Carianna would sleep in it if no one else had claimed it. She would sit in the visiting room, now stripped bare, and remember the kind lady that took care of her. She never knew her name. She just called her “auntie”.

    Carianna had a hard life during the next four years of her life. She had to result to a life of crime to provide for herself. There was no work for a young girl from the slums. She snuck food from the wastes of merchants whenever possible. The merchants that passed by or lived in Roid were wasteful, like they were anywhere else. Their disposals held eatable food. She searched road markets whenever possible for lost purchases or left behind products to sell or barter for food with. She struggled until the age of sixteen, where she appeared more like a young woman than a child. Then things changed. She could get money. But her life was worse with the money...

    Carianna met a man that offered her something she could not refuse. Money. But the money was not free. Not free by far. It required work. And the work was more horrid than starving. The man could see the beauty under the dirt and knew that she would earn money and be “successful” in any one of the brothels that hid in Roid. And what choice, she would think, did she have? She searched harder and harder for other answers. But this man’s offer was all she had. She was no good. She was scrawny and weak. She had no skills. All she had was a bit of looks. And looks got her a job as a cheap whore down near the slums. What other choice did she have?

    Carianna, known as “Sweetie” by the patrons of the brothels she moved around in, took the money she could get from this job. She sold her body to the owner of the brothel so he could sell it to the lonely men of Roid. At night, she would cry in the decrepit orphanage building, seeing nothing but the horrible events that happened that day, and then all the days before. But, at least, she could feed herself bread and water from the market instead of robbing it. Unfortunately, she was robbed of something every day she went to work. She was robbed of her humanity.

    At the age of nineteen, Cari didn’t go to work. She refused to be used anymore. She couldn’t stand going to work and showing her body off and pretending to seduce men while screaming in her mind to stop. She couldn’t do it. She shuddered in fear every time she thought about it. She decided that she had to stop. She didn’t enjoy her work as brothel owners think their women should. She was afraid to return. Afraid to live another day as that desperate woman. But she couldn’t turn herself around.

    That day, the brothel owner chased her through the city. He refused to let her go. She was his favorite girl and considered her to be nothing more than a possession to hold and play with however he would wish. He hunted her down and she ran down the streets in fear of going back. She could run fast enough, but not as fast as the owner. He caught her, but not in the place he would have wished. He finally caught her in front of Roid’s temple to Rada. Outside stood several members of the priesthood, speaking casually. The man caught her, turned her around, and threw her to the ground. He yelled at her that she was nothing more than a whore and she would never be any more than one. He grabbed her and lifted her up, grabbing her chin and making her look at him while she cried in despair. People watched, but did not interfere. A few of them knew the reputation of the brothel owner, who owned several businesses in the shadier parts of Roid. The priests were startled by the display of abuse that went on. One broke away to stop this act of violence. The brothel owner shrugged him off as he slapped her again, letting her drop to the dusty road in a heap. Cari curled into a ball, sobbing in pain. Moments later, the brothel owner laid on the ground, paralyzed by the power of Rada and guards were there to break up the situation. The disreputable man was taken away and Cari was taken into the temple to be cared for.

    When Carianna had gathered herself, she tried her best not to impose on the people there, but they always insisted on helping her. She was not asked who she was, where she came from, or why that man was after her. They did not ask her a thing. They took her for who they saw and just chose to be kind. Carianna was amazed by their kindness. She had never seen people with such good will. She would often ask them why and they would just tell her that it was part of Rada’s hopes for mankind. When she was well, she told the priests and priestesses that she couldn’t stay. The head priest pulled her away from the others kindly and brought her into a private room. He told her that he did not know what had happened to her or what her past was, but that she was welcome to stay on and learn the faith of Rada. Carianna looked out the window at the harsh world, then down at the floor that she had been walking across and the kindness of the others that walked upon it. What else could she do? She didn’t want to go back to the rest of the world. She simply responded, “What does it take to get a membership?”

    From that point on, Carianna lived in the temple. The Head Priest there, who had taken a liking to her and her kind and bright soul, took on the task of teaching Carianna everything about Rada and educated her on the ways of magic. He instructed her how to do much more than magic, though. She learned how to educate people. This was something Cari took in as best possible. She decided that she had lived a hard life, but it wasn’t worth crying over. There were more important things, such as ensuring no one else had a life like hers. Carianna used the grand libraries of Roid and the personal ones of the temple to pull subjects that would be useful for the people of the slums. She knew the young and lost children would not come to the schools to learn. They probably didn’t even know it existed. Carianna took school to them. She educated the kids and adults alike in writing, mathematics, business, and the like. She taught them basics of trades that didn’t involve a lot of manual labor. She taught the men business tactics and bartering tactics. Carianna did not learn things such as business itself, but memorized parts of books to bring to the people. She spread the word of the schools to these people and got people to come. Every once and a while, she would visit the orphanage where she used to have her best memories. She always prayed there to Rada, hoping that other children were lucky and were doing well. She knew, though, that most probably weren’t. She rarely thought back to those times. She had better memories then. The memories of more recent events in the temple brought a smile to her face.

    Carianna soon began to understand, however, that the world wasn’t all nice. She used to know that truth. The temple made her forget. Fights were still commonplace, despite her wishes that they wouldn’t exist at all. From growing up as she did, she knew that a kind word wouldn’t stop a fight. She would even go as far as to think that they were naive for thinking that simple faith in a god would save them from the edge of a sword. Despite the suggestion of the head priest, she went out to a blacksmith with what money she had and he forged her a special protective set of bracers that stretched the length of her wrist to elbow. He instructed her that they should stop a sword if she had the muscle to stop the swing. She paid and left. For the next few years of her life, she would be a different kind of priestess.

    Carianna took up training outside of the temple on her own. She found several different men throughout the years to help her train. She trained physically whenever she had time. She went to them for two purposes. She wanted to learn to be able to defend herself from a melee enemy. She wanted to be able to disable the target without actually hurting the target. For five years, she studied combat and the offensive moves that could be used. She learned the warning signs of an attack and she learned how to stop it dead in its tracks. She learned to disarm just about any weapon from a person of considerable skill in combat by using moves at unexpected times and using their own power to her advantage. She learned to block attacks with her bracers and she learned how to frustrate and confuse someone. She learned to keep herself alive in a fight and to defeat an enemy without actually attacking the enemy at all. It was a difficult thing to do, but she studied hard and she learned from many different fighters of different skill levels. She was even taught sword handling so that she could use a sword, if disarmed, to block other attacks or even bluff with.

    Her combat preparations were frowned upon by the temple, but they had no real reason to tell her not to. She was not learning how to fight. She was learning how to survive if someone wanted to fight with her. She defended herself with fiery determination whenever someone mentioned it. If Carianna had learned the holy magic like other priests, she would be a more powerful priestess with magic. But with her other trainings, she is less able. Many see that as a bad thing, but she doesn’t. Now, Carianna Mareleth lives with the temple she started with in Roid. She is known in the slums for her constant charity and helpfulness with everything. People from the slums have been able to rise from their poverty and earn a steady income thanks to her classes. The children that wander the streets come to her for help and she helps. She even entertains people when they are sad on the streets. Carianna uses her imagination and talents in the arts to perform for the poverty stricken. She thinks that if they are just cheered up a little, their lives will be so much better. She was finally succeeding in life, and helping others do the same. It was a dream come true, and she hoped Rada smiled on her works as she smiled on the effects of those works.

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