Fhaora is a tall, curiously pale woman in stark contrast to her dark eyes and hair. Her face is boyish, but not unattractive, and the same can be said about the build of her body. She is not lanky for her height, rather, her arms and legs have noticeable mass that give her an imposing stature. Broad-shoulders and modest hips give her torso a sturdy rectangular shape, with the exception of her average-sized bust. Her hands feature prominent veins and at any given time are riddled with a number of recently acquired cuts and scrapes in various stages of healing. In addition, the rough complexion of her ashen skin and coarse, damp hair can be attributed to her being perpetually soaked in the salty, abyssal water she constantly creates around her. The biting chill of the abyss leaves a layer of frost across her body, which rises from her in a fine mist as it evaporates. She has chapped lips and heavy dark circles under her eyes.
Clothing/Accessories
Wears a mask. Black underdress, scaled armor, navy blue surcoat with an inlaid silver key design, thick leather belt, heavy duty knee-high boots.
Personality
Generally speaking, Fhaora is not an individual the average person wants to be around. The inconvenient fact that she constantly creates abyss everywhere she goes has made her incompatible with civilized society. But there is more to it than that, as she reflects aspects of the abyss in a way that she personifies it. Above all else, the most obvious of these quirks is that she is silent, enough so that even people who have known her for a good length of time assume she’s mute. Not just speaking, but hearing any utterance of sound from her is incredibly rare. She only talks when she finds it incredibly necessary to do so, and those around to hear it would note the harsh rasp of her voice. She communicates through gestures and body language in general, and uses her bells to express specific things.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but something about her just seems "off". Her behavior can often be weird, almost alien, but that doesn't entirely explain just what is so unnerving about her. She is exceedingly patient, for example, to the point that it is actually disturbing. She carries herself with a languid tenacity that makes it clear she is in no hurry to get things done, and that those things will get done. Her powerful presence is overbearing in a way one would expect from a creature ten times larger than herself, coupled with the feeling of inevitability that accompanies a natural disaster. She is unfazed by things that would be devastating to others, shrugging them off with a hardened confidence. It's not that she's apathetic, she just accepts things that have already happened as inconsequential and focuses on responding to them effectively.
She largely relies on instinct to get through her day-to-day life, but beneath her primal demeanor lies a more thoughtful individual. Her approach to any given situation is what she considers the most efficient; in her case, efficiency is less about being calculating and more about pragmaticism. She is definitely an intelligent woman, but not extraordinarily so, and she finds it useless to over analyze something that she could solve in a much simpler manner. A majority of her decisions reflect this, whether it’s cutting her hair short so it stays out of her face, or the fact that she’s indifferent to luxuries that don’t serve a purpose other than making her comfortable. In fact, her utter lack of desire to simply “have things” results in a very utilitarian mindset. Anything that doesn’t have a practical use is dead weight to her, and she prefers to travel light. The sole exception to this rule happens to be her bells, which she is incredibly protective of.
Unfortunate as it may be, Fhaora applies this same logic to people. When she meets someone, they typically have a short window to prove useful to her in one way or another before her interest in them disappears entirely. Her methodology is slightly different when the person in question is hostile. When someone attempts to push her around, she pushes back twice as hard. In her mind, this serves two purposes: it makes it clear that she will not be stepped on, and it serves as a test for the individual in question. Those people who manage to stand up to her tests or catch her attention before she writes them off as useless are typically the only ones to gain her approval, and fewer still can say they earned her friendship. Veluhr is a special case in this regard, and like her bells, she is incredibly protective of him.
She likes pistachios.
History
Early on it is made clear she has magical potential, but neither of her parents are mages. turns out mom had an affair with a mage guy, damn. Shitty mom and not so shitty dad get a divorce. Dad gives Fhaora bells as a family heirloom gift thing. fhaora never explores magic and is never encouraged to by her mother or sister, they even act like they resent her. Fhaora is treated as an inconvenience by shitty mom and cruel older sister gets all the priority. fhaora social life is in the sucks as well. she starts babysitting in order to try and get away from it all, meets veluhr and becomes friends with him and their family. does this for a long time until edgy teenage years make her realize it's not filling the void or making her feel better. tries to drown herself but a desperate spark causes her magic to manifest and save her life, creating abyss all around her while she thrashes in the water. when she leaves the water she is treated like a freak and is run out of town like an animal. spends years without any huiman interaction, living isolated from society. becomes hardened, and kind of breaks. one day hears of an event in her hometown, where veluhr still lived. she goes and abducts him from the destroyed home he was staying in, and then they travel together. eventually they save knight gharland and they become group. then it is the present, yay
Combat Style
Abysswalker
True to her nickname, Fhaora's greatest strength lies in the abyss she leaves in her wake. A true master of her domain, she is immune to the negative effects of the abyss, which gives her immense capability to transform the battlefield to suit her. She constantly creates and spreads it over the course of a fight, moving it organically with the battle in order to maximize it's effectiveness. She doesn't like to have to build up her abyss from scratch each time she has a confrontation instead opting to bring a somewhat large body of it with her everywhere she goes; typically in the shape of a slow-moving overland wave or a river winding behind her. Once she has firmly established zone control, it is very difficult to take it away from her, and she will press the advantage.
Unsinkable
Second only to Fhaora's dominion of the abyss is her ability to persevere in a battle. She is resilient to damage and has plenty of endurance, allowing her to take an absurd amount of punishment. Accompanied by a strong level of sturdiness, it requires significant effort to physically move her against her will. She wears body armor, which further enhances her natural hardiness with another level of protection. On top of it all, her mental fortitude prevents her from caving to psychological warfare, and her sheer willpower allow her to force her body into action when it would otherwise refuse. The way she can endure a seemingly decisive blow and rise to her feet to continue is somewhat eerie, but in her mind it's as simple as falling down eight times and standing up nine.
Pragmatic
Above all else, Fhaora's use of her magic is meant to be simple and effective. She has become quite good at maximizing what she can achieve with minimal effort, and the way she manipulates her abyss reflects that. She doesn't see a point in creating complex constructs to hurt her enemies when her abyss is harmful enough on it's own. Instead, she floods the battlefield to make life difficult for her enemies, meanwhile she can wade through it like it's nothing. If she needs to block an attack directed her way, she steps backwards to manifest a dense wall of water immediately in front of her that takes the hit instead. When she feels it makes sense to end a fight and put her enemy down, she'll smother them in abyss with no second thoughts, and no hesitation. Her calm demeanor and straightforward methodology make her incredibly consistent in combat, and leaves few openings where she is not prepared to respond.
Swordswoman
When it comes to melee combat, if it comes down to it, Fhaora is competent enough with her sword to put up a fight. That's not to say that she is extraordinarily skilled, but she can handle herself well enough that it is not outside of her comfort zone. In fact, it wouldn't be wrong to say that she is more dangerous the closer you get to her, but that doesn't mean she prefers to fight up close. She relies on a combination of swordplay and manipulation of her magic that focuses on removing her enemy's ability to fight. Her strikes are aimed to cause lasting damage, meanwhile she draws in her abyss and floods the area in a radius around her to further cripple her target.
Inexorable
Cliffs, ships, even people; everything bows to the ocean eventually. In combat, Fhaora adopts the same kind of mindset when it comes to her magic. Plain and simple, the longer she spends in a given battle, the more formidable she becomes. The fact that she constantly creates more of her abyss during a fight, coupled with her incredible lasting power, makes her a force to be reckoned with. She is at her weakest at the very start of a battle, a fact she is exceedingly aware of, which she makes up for by drawing out her battles for as long as she finds necessary. She's perfectly comfortable abusing her natural stamina in a battle of endurance, and will happily go the distance against anyone who might try to keep up.
Magic Information
Abyssal Embodiment
Whenever Fhaora moves, the empty space her body once occupied is filled with abyssal water that retains the momentum of the action that produced it, like an echo. She literally leaves the abyss in her wake with each of her movements, the volume of which always equal to that of amount of space displaced. As far as she knows, this aspect of her magic is perpetual, and cannot be turned off or repressed. Her water has many properties of the depths of the ocean; including it's utter darkness, saltiness, frigidity and more interestingly, the sheer pressure of the deep sea. Her water is very dense as a result, causing it to have significant weight, pack a heavier punch and impact things as if it was much more solid than it is. As well as it's weight, the abyss imparts crushing force upon anything that becomes submerged in it, which becomes more intense as it continues to accumulate in one body. Aside from constantly producing abyss, her magic allows her to subjugate it. She is proficient at manipulating her abyssal water, but due to the nature of her magic, she can only control her own abyssal water and has absolutely no semblance of control over water from other sources, natural or otherwise. Additionally, she is immune to the negative effects of her abyss to an extent that she treats it like normal water, shrugging off it's intense cold, crushing pressure and crippling weight; she can even breathe the abyss as if it were air, hence her namesake, "Abysswalker". There exists latent potential to utilize aspects of her abyss more directly, namely the cold and darkness, though she has not explored them as of yet. While not particularly useful, her abyss has one more peculiar effect; it sustains sound that passes through it for extended periods, holding on to it in much the way a large body of water would.
From the Depths: Fhaora deals 20% more damage with Water, but takes 20% more from Earth. Cold, Hard: Fhaora takes 10% less damage from Blunt and Ice, but takes 10% more from Fire and Dream. Every Water Character Ever: Fhaora takes 30% less damage from Water, but 30% more damage from Lightning.
Under Pressure: All of Fhaora's attacks that do Water damage also do Blunt damage. At the start of any combat, weather "Abyss Storm" is applied. This does not over-write other weathers, and cannot be over-written. Every time Fhaora uses a water technique, the counter of Abyss Storm is increased by one.
Weather - Abyssal Storm[X]: At the start of their turn, all combatants (save Fhaora) take 0.1xMag Water/Blunt damage. This damage may be blocked, but blocks against this receive only half the usual Effective Defense reduction. This damage is doubled when Abyssal Storm has reaches 5 or more counters. At 10 or more counters, anyone who receives damage from this Weather is afflicted with Submerged.
(1) Status - Submerged: Speed is reduced by 20%.
Techniques
R0 - (T) Slash Attack (P | Melee) 0.5xStr, 0.8xSpd, No Cost (May become (Magic | Ranged) by reducing the EF and SF by 0.1. In this case, it's damage becomes Water.) [Slashing]
R1 - (N) Dive (P | Dodge) 0.8xSpd, -2 Mana (No specials.) [None]
R1 - (T) Briny Deep (M | Ranged) 0.7xMag, 0.8xSpd, -4 Mana (Increase EF by 0.2 against opponents below 50% health.) [Element]
R1 - (T) Crushing Waves (M | Ranged) 0.6xMag, 0.8xSpd, -4 Mana (Afflicts enemy with Submerged for 1 round.) [Water]
R2 - (T) Grasp of the Deep (M | Ranged) 0.8xMag, 0.8xSpd, -7 Mana (When this technique deals damage to an opponent afflicted with Submerge: Remove Submerge. Target is Paralyzed for 1 turn.) [Water]
R2 - (N) Water Walled (P&M | Block) 1.0xDef, -6 Mana (Reduces Physical damage taken by 20%.) [Water]
R3 - (T) Unyielding Torrent (M | Ranged) 0.5xMag, 0.6xSpd, -12 Mana (Can be cast consecutively, up to three times total in a single turn.) [Water]