Do you have any prior experience with Requiem? If so, please detail when (and what characters, if desired) you previously played?
Yes, been playing here on my first character about a week.
How did you hear about Requiem?
From my brother, Sammegarian/Leon Donovan.
CHARACTER QUESTIONS:
What will your character’s name be?
Aleksandra Melnik
Please briefly describe the physical attributes of your character, including age, looks, height, weight and any notable features:
The woman appears to be in her late twenties, with warm, lightly tanned skin. Her dark hair was kept quite short, the tousled layers framing her face. While typically called hazel, the color of her eyes is not so easily defined, the color shifting depending on the lighting and her mood.
She stands just shy of six feet tall, her figure quite a bit more slender than many Teramerian women, yet seemingly just as athletic. Several dozen scars, large and small, were scattered across her body. One prominent scar runs down the left side of her face and across her cheek, and another particularly deep one adorns her right shoulder, looking as if her arm had nearly been sundered from her body.
Please provide a few short paragraphs with pertinent details or notable qualities of your character’s history. This does not have to be exhaustive nor revealing of any information you wish to keep secret:
Born on the 16th of Dewfall, 1320, Aleksandra was the daughter of a Teramerian woman, Kseniya Melnik, and a Kaduraan immigrant named Mihai Grigorescu. She, like many born within the walls of Aleksandrov, had been named in the great city's honor. Like many a child in Teramer, she was only taught the basics of how to read, and just enough math to keep from being cheated at the market. Instead, she learned to staunch wounds, survive off of the land, and possibly most importantly of all, how to wield a blade.
The city had remained her home, up until mid Highharvest, 1333, when Kseniya's received news that her mother had fallen ill. The three of them moved to Kseniya's hometown of Sunza, a small mining town in the southern Galehorns, to help tend to Aleksandra's grandmother. It was here that Aleksandra remained, all the way up to the point that she came of age, and set out on her own for Aleksandrov, to serve both the church and the city that she still considered her home.
A few years later, Aleksandra joined in on a march lead by Lidiya Novikova, a Postulant and long time friend, up to Tudar Pass in the Northern Galehorn mountains. The pass was once a major trade route to the villages once dotting the coast to the north, but had been lost to the torment. Their goal was to retake the pass, to set up a foothold to be able to push into the blacklands, to reclaim the lands of their foremothers.
After several days traversing the old mountian road, they finally reached Tudar Pass, and the remains of the modest settlement that had once stood there. The battle in was hard fought, many of those around her falling to the afflicted. It felt as if for every one they fell, two more would take their place. By the end of the first night of fighting, they had reached the old fort, serving as a gate for the pass itself.
When they managed to breach the doors, however, things went from bad to worse. Hoards of afflicted, and greater Tormented spawn, poured forth from within the old fortress, immediately overwhelming the two hundred or so troops that were still on their feet. Novikova, who had been on the forefront of the group, was overwhelmed almost immediately, swallowed up by mass of undead as they advanced.
Panic overwhelmed the remainder of the group, who immediately began to fall back. It didn't take long for Novikova's second to sound the retreat, but it had been far too late for many. They were pushed back by the swarm of afflicted from the fort, right back into the remainder of the undead the group had initially pushed through to reach it. Those who could still stand fought hard to clear a path.
It was in this chaos that Aleksandra herself fell, the massive blade of one of the Tormented coming down from behind her, slicing straight through her armor, and right down to the bone of her sword arm. She fell, blinded by the pain, blood pouring down the side of her body. She couldn't recall anything beyond this point, save for being trampled, by both friend and foe, as she blacked out.
When she finally came to, she was being tended to by the Apothecary Corp, back in Aleksandrov, but the grievous wound had left her unable to use her right arm. Worse yet, the population considered the entire attempt to be a complete strategic blunder, those who participated as failures, and the ones that did return as cowards. Despite the years Aleksandra had served to protect the city, she was outcast from the guard for both her new perceived status and for her debilitating injury.
Once the wounds closed, she was sent back to her family in Sunza to recover. Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months as a deep depression set in. She felt broken and discarded, she felt even her own mother's scorn for her failures. Between being confined to the bed while she mended, and the sleepless nights spent staring up at the ceiling, she started to wonder if it had even been worth it to begin with. Surely retaking the lands to the north wouldn't bring back the once great herds, nor would it clear the blight from the land.
"Was there even a point?"
That's what she began asking herself, time and time again, but not just about that one battle. She had begun to question everything she had been raised to believe.
When her wound had finally healed enough that she could start using her arm again, she took up work at the mines. She may not have been able to swing a pick, but they allowed her to haul the rock and iron out. Now she could lessen the burden on her family that her presense had brought, while slowly regaining more use of that arm. That is exactly what she did for the next few years. Day in and day out, as many hours as she could manage. Eventually she was allowed to mine proper, earning herself some extra coin, and to start saving some for herself. She knew she had to, to eventually get away from this place.
Even this far from the capitol, everyone she knew had heard what happened. Nobody would speak to her outside of what they had to in the mines, and even her own family treated her as a pariah. Her mother often berated her for bringing shame on her, her extended family ignoring her presence. Only her father seemed to show her any care, and only when her mother wasn't present. It was him that one day, while her mother was out, handed her a small pouch of silver, offering a sad smile as he placed it in her hand.
"Go, Sasha." Mihai told her. "You'll never be happy again, if you stay here. Go somewhere, anywhere, that you can be appreciated. Somewhere you can be happy."
With a nod and tears in her eyes, she hugged him tightly, before hurrying to her room, taking the coin she had managed to save and scant more than a single change of clothes. She rushed out of the house, making sure to leave before her and her mother got into another arguement, and made her way to Aleksandrov one final time.
Briefly state your character’s intentions or motivations for entering the First Province:
To get about as far from Teramer as she can, to start a new life somewhere that she can be useful without being considered an outcast for her perceived past failings, with less of a reminder of the zealotry that had guided most of her life up to this point.
Scenario Response:
She quickly dug around in her bag as she neared the front of the line. After a few moments, she pulled out both her quarantine visa, and her travel papers. Clutching them in her hand, she thought back to the clerk in Aleksandrov. She hadn't recognized the woman, but she was certain she had recognized Aleksandra, as quick as she was to issue the visa without so much as a coin in return, to send her clear across the Republic and to her certain doom.
"At least their disdain has done me one favor." She thought to herself, shuffling foward as the next person moved up in line. She was certain that of all the places she could hae gone, this was the last place her father imagined she would go when he sent her off. But she had to. The former heart of the Republic itself. Something told her that if there were anywhere she could once again find herself, it was here.
When she finally stepped up to the officiant, she quickly handed over her documents. "Aleksandra Melnik, of Aleksandrov. I'm here to assist with the reclamation."
