Post by cat sìth on Apr 29, 2016 17:00:05 GMT -5
Basic Profile
- Name: Piper Swift.
- Titles: Currently, Lord General of Trinsic.
- Affiliations: The Emerald Fist. Previously the Holy Fist and the Purple Guardians of Honor.
- Race: Human.
- Birthplace: Magincia, but there is nothing to suggest this other than her mentioning it in passing. She more commonly refers to herself as being from Trinsic.
- Place of Residence: She shares property with Chanticleer Reich in Trinsic and New Magincia.
- Apparent Age: 30s.
- Physical Description: She stands around 6’0” barefoot, or 6’2” in boots or armor, with a medium frame. She is strong but long limbed, seeming like she may be a bit gangly if not for her strength. When out of armor, she does, in fact, look like a woman. Honey-blonde hair reaches past her shoulders and has some slight waves, usually disheveled from wearing a helmet, but clean. Her eyes are a muted moss green and her complexion is fair, her skin looking like it isn’t often exposed to sunlight.
- Distinguishing Marks: A long, thin, faded scar runs diagonally down her right cheek. Another at her throat, but the injury doesn't seem like it would've been severe. The lower part of her left ear has been cut off. A strange mark, possibly runic, on the back of her neck by her hairline. It appears crude in fashion, a mix between cut and tattooed into her skin. Not very visible unless one goes looking.
- Accent: Noble enough but somewhat muddled, with Trinsican overtones. To those with the most discerning ears, her accent would have hints of an affectation or artificiality, suggesting different and lesser origins.
- Demeanor: Reticent but courteous, and not always very expressive. Carries herself well and usually seems composed. She would probably seem approachable in most circumstances.
- Armor, Equipment, and Attire: Most often seen wearing silver plate with gold accents and keeps her gear in good shape. The cloth she wears with it is usually dyed purple or the Reich family blue. Her breastplate bears a heraldic Rose of Trinsic in gold across the upper chest, and the rose adorns her shield as well. She regularly carries bludgeoning weapons and small dagger. Wears a ruby bracelet on her left wrist. When in plain clothes, she tends to wear high-quality materials, embroidered or otherwise embellished. Never seen in anything revealing or even particularly feminine.
- Other Notes:
- Piper has become known for keeping her oaths, and she tends not to give her word anymore unless she means to honor it, regardless of anything else — even if doing so involves something she finds distasteful or would prefer not to do. More than once, this reputation has meant that her word alone was enough to satisfy even enemies.
- She has a long and established history of despising undead, and vampires in particular.
- She is a skilled rider and jouster, having performed well in a number of such competitions.
- Her handwriting is surprisingly unrefined.
- Piper has become known for keeping her oaths, and she tends not to give her word anymore unless she means to honor it, regardless of anything else — even if doing so involves something she finds distasteful or would prefer not to do. More than once, this reputation has meant that her word alone was enough to satisfy even enemies.
Easily-Known History
NOTE: I’ve tried to keep this trimmed down mostly to main points from recent years to keep it from becoming too unwieldy while providing a brief overview of some older stuff. With an old and continuously-played character, there’s obviously more, but ain’t nobody got time for that, myself included lmao.
Not much is known about Piper’s early life. What is established, however, is that she has a past with both dark and transformative magic, as well as a period of captivity, but she rarely speaks of these things. Though Magincian by birth, Piper spent only a small portion of her childhood there and considers herself Trinsican instead. She is a familiar figure in Trinsic, having served the city in numerous capacities for many years — beginning with the Purple Guardians of Honor. She spent over a decade in the group, rising through the ranks to eventually become leader alongside her then-spouse, Thom Gryphon. Following their promotion, Piper resolved to train in melee combat to better defend herself and others. She gradually acclimated to heavier armor and weaponry, ultimately favoring axes and maces and studying paladin magics, in part under the tutelage of her predecessor Kodoz Tiberius. These years found her in conflict particularly with pirates, a variety of undead and their surprisingly numerous sympathizers, daemons, and what seemed an endless succession of evil mages and madmen. For some of these years, she was curiously close to a strange woman — a fellow Guardian known as Katherine Elle — until Katherine’s unexplained disappearance. All that is known is that Katherine turned her estate over to Piper before vanishing.
As a Guardian, Piper allied with Skara Brae and the Rangers of Spiritwood, and later, the Skara Brae Ranger’s Guild for a time. Together they contended with the murderous descendants of the witch Iliana Stower and all their machinations. After losing one particular skirmish, Piper nearly became a victim of the Hollowing: a dark ritual used by the Stowers to implant the soul of one into the body of another. Piper was rescued before this could take place, but the near-miss — along with all the other misery sown by the Stower family — left a lasting impression upon her. Another brush with dark magic around this time was at the hands of the most notable daemon faced by the Guardians: Bane. This daemon controlled a number of people over the years, including Thom, who even abducted Piper while under his influence. Piper herself was once compelled by the daemon, albeit briefly and to little effect. Aided by the rangers, the Guardians finally banished Bane for good, and she remains especially wary of anything daemonic as a result of her experiences with him.
When discord arose between the two ranger factions, Piper sided with her friend Tobias Cardont of Spiritwood through the bloody affair and the slayings of Katalin Blackwell and Rhys Jarrett by the Ranger’s Guild. She helped to oust Keeper Michael Mitre and Governor Guy Greywulfe, the latter of whom was proven to have connections to the murderous Broken Ankh cult that would go on to resurface in Trinsic and elsewhere. It was also during this period that she first encountered Chanticleer Reich, who then called himself John, upon his return to this shard. The two soon grew close and formed a devoted relationship. Shortly after his return, they and several others opposed the nefarious mage Merek Penrose of Moonglow and his Vadan’myr underlings. This conflict was retold in the form of a rather factually inaccurate stage play, much to Piper's chagrin.
Not long after these events, she came to be Knight-Marshall of the Holy Fist, working alongside others of the new city council to protect Trinsic and its interests. With the Holy Fist, she went on to fight Kalaric’s thieves, corrupt paladins, Governor Ine Dir’ath, necromancer Thalmain Shaste, Broken Ankh cultists, the Technocrats, and magical duplicates called In Quas Xen, among others. During a confrontation with the thieves over the Sextant of the Ancients — an artifact able to manipulate time — Chanticleer, Deraj, and the ranger Eodain were slain. This was not to stand, however, as the alleged creator of the Sextant, an unknown man shrouded in white like a time lord, used the artifact to reverse time for the fallen. This act negated their deaths but left the Sextant in the hands of the mystery man. Several months later, when an In Quas Xen was sent to murder Piper, her life was spared thanks to the interference of time magic. It was learned that the masked woman calling herself the Emerald Empress, an old ally of Chanticleer, had petitioned the Sextant-bearing “time lord” to move Piper forward in time, away from the would-be assassin. By accident, Piper became trapped, frozen in a statue-like state by unstable time rifts. She remained this way for three months before being freed by a strange sorcerer wielding a powerful ruby — another arrangement of the Emerald Empress. This incident left Piper unsettled, and whatever she experienced while trapped seemed to bestow upon her a newfound sense that the world, time, and reality were not as they should be.
Back in Trinsic once again, she was often at odds with the rabble-rousing Governor Ine Dir'ath and his followers until tensions escalated to outright violence. One bloody day, he was brought down by Piper’s fellow Guardian and former governor Lyra Darkstar, who lost her life in the process. In due course, a new governor was elected: the mysterious Lord Haxley. Piper assisted him in various matters, including a series of quests she personally undertook for the noble de Hugh family at Haxley’s behest. One of these quests ended with Piper discovering the violent murder of Frieda de Hugh by an otherworldly invader called a Technocrat — an incident she expressed feeling guilt over, and also the first of many confrontations with these invaders. Still another loss was suffered in the final clash with the Broken Ankh, when her comrade Deraj entered a dark portal to fight the evils within. He would seem to resurface much later in the company of necromancer Thalmain Shaste, though his mind remains severely addled, which Piper finds upsetting.
After several matters in Trinsic were resolved (some not so favorably) and the Technocrats driven out in a fierce battle, Piper and Chanticleer were approached by the Emerald Empress. She warned them to prepare for even greater threats yet to come, and she urged Chanticleer to reform his group from years past: the Emerald Fist. Piper agreed to join in the effort, as did others along the way. Together, the eccentric group formed the new Emerald Fist and went on to deal again with even more Technocrats, Thalmain Shaste, Stowers, and more, including some troubles with Nujel’m. From the beginning, they were thrust in the midst of an ongoing, years-long power struggle between the sorcerer Renthar and the time lord later revealed to be an alternate version of Haxley — the same two individuals involved with Piper’s stint stuck in time. No small part of their feud revolved around the rightful ownership of a powerful ruby stolen from Haxley by Renthar. This feud played a role in many of the Fist's misadventures, and instabilities in time and reality became oddly commonplace.
The so-called Time Shades were but one manifestation of such: younger “echoes” of deceased people from earlier points in their timelines. Piper was devastated when Chanticleer became a victim of his own altered timeline, erased from existence during a ritual intended to fix the Time Shade crisis. She was strikingly despondent and inconsolable for the months he was gone. Guided by the Emerald Empress, Piper and his friends did all they could to facilitate his restoration, performing a series of tasks and feats, both to secure the aid of necessary parties and to gather components for the prescribed ritual. Their efforts proved successful with the aid of Renthar and Time Lord Haxley, but not without the tragic loss of the Emerald Empress — revealed to be Chanticleer’s mother — in the completion of this ritual. Having been entrusted with the secret of the Empress’ identity, Piper had grown close to her in Chanticleer’s absence and openly mourned her fate. With Chanticleer restored, hostilities between Renthar and Time Lord Haxley resumed, and the Fist was forced to enter the fray. All sides were seemingly tricked by the enigmatic and feared Stower Twins, and Renthar and Haxley were trapped together within a sealed vault, baited by the promise of another ruby. Even still, the feud between the sorcerer and the time lord culminated in a brutal end with the murder of the latter by the former, bringing another chapter to a close. But the still-reeling Fist suffered yet another loss with the death of Ezekial Crowley, who gave his life to prevent a fated massacre of the Fist by the Technocrats. Piper was distressed by this series of traumas but turned her focus to supporting Chanticleer, seeming in some ways more protective than before.
The Present Day
Uncertain though the future now seems, Piper remains loyal to the Emerald Fist, in spite of — or perhaps because of — the many bizarre and harrowing ordeals they have faced together. In the wake of this upheaval, she has seemed somewhat directionless but still mindful of her duties.