Shalia Nix

Gender: Female

Age: 26

Group: Characters

Game: Chronicles of Arcadia

Physical Appearance

Shalia is slender and tall, around 5’9” with a build on the thinner side. Her eyes are a vibrant emerald green and black curly hair hangs to her waist, often kept in a thick braid decorated with a red ribbon. Her cheeks are permanently blushed and her skin is cooler to the touch than normal. Some have said she looks haunting with dark hair framing such pale, soft features and eyes that look almost lost. There are two small scars on her left eyebrow from a minor accident.
Nowadays she wears animal furs and strips of leather bound around her body, but favorites a coat made from a white mountain bear pelt. She has a wooden pendant with the carving of Koshnem’s banner, and a simple circlet around her head.

Personality and interests

If you knew Shalia in her youth, she was much more lively and kind. Since coming to the mountain, she has become more blunt and withdrawn, prioritizing emotional control in order to let her magik flow clear and stable. In the past year, her paranoia has increased drastically with the foreigners moving in closer and tensions between native groups practically on fire. She’s constantly on edge and ready to keep running wherever her feet may carry her--running like river water.
Typically disagreeable, Shalia wouldn’t consider herself to be friendly. Her humor is interesting to say the least and easily missed, often using taunts to get a point across and taking up a sarcastic or dry approach. Loyal if you give her something worthwhile in return. Biting as cold winter winds if you gain her disapproval which is easy to do. Underneath it all, she is burdened with the pitfalls of her past and endless discontent.

She holds a strange balance in the way she speaks--the odd mix of the Aghuli accent and that of a Mizaran one. Shalia has a sophisticated cadence, but frequently spews obscenities even a sailor would wince at making conversation with her sometimes jarring.
Mysterious, unpredictable, reserved--these are some of the first impressions she gives in terms of behavior. Teetering between the worlds of foreigner, native, and witch, she will always be alienated.

Interests in pottery/clay work, writing and poetry. She was raised learning many songs and instruments, and though nowadays she doesn’t have a lyre to pluck, she finds nothing more freeing than singing into the still emptiness of the Fang mountains.

Skills

-Elemental magik weaver (cryomancy-water, air, frost)
-Increased cold resistance
-Spear fighting (combat, throwing), general understanding with other pole weapons
-Some basic blade combat from time as a mercenary, better with daggers and shortswords
-Agility and endurance
-Multilingual (common tongue, Mizaran, and both the spoken and whistled language of the Aghul)

Background

Shalia Nix was born in the tiny village of Qinres located west of the Shrine-City Cambena, near the border of the Forsaken Lands. Her mother, Freya, was a potter and her father, Liang, a priest of Hoi.
Her father’s side of the family were all military. This is where he learned general combat and self-defense. The Nix family has always been adept in pole weapon fighting, and it is common for the men of the family to continue the combat tradition.
However, Liang and Freya were growing old and Shalia was their only child after extensive difficulty conceiving. Thus, Liang felt it was time to break tradition and pass the knowledge onto Shalia, as he had broken tradition himself by not spending the entirety of his life in armor and instead, the cloth. Shalia never learned much about her mother.

They moved to the holy city of Cambena to raise Shalia among a larger population and expose her to more aspects of life when she was twelve. It was here she took interest in the sea goddess, but still continued to worship Hoi alongside Liang not only to make him happy, but because she had been called a great beauty through her life and hated to disappoint. Shalia learned much from her parents and her father raised her with the thought that she, too, would begin temple training soon, though she never did. She was given multiple years of tutoring lessons with the family’s average wealth. What money couldn’t cover the parents made up for in their own wisdom.

However, the Nix family would never see what became of their daughter. After living in the city for a year, Shalia started to feel an unusual discomfort, almost claustrophobic. This place did not feel like her home, and she could sense what would later be magik itching under her skin like it was trying to crawl out after years of suppression. She loved her family, but she knew that this feeling was dangerous and powerful, like with one wrong move she could set something free. Hurt them or wrap them into a witch hunt. The feeling was ignored for years.

When she was sixteen, she ran away with a pack holding clothes, a pouch of coins, a long red hair ribbon from her mother, and the spear her father had given her--a pattern that would emerge throughout her life. Dropping everything and fleeing for herself.

What happened between then and finding her next home was a blur in her memory she still can't place.

Eventually, she met The Wardens, a group of mercenaries that many misfits called family. She met her future husband there, too--a kind soul named Jiyn. Proving herself to the group with a spear in hand, she had started the journey of a mercenary. She was proud to be a Warden. To have a found family. To meet the man of her dreams. Even if her unassuming frame didn’t give her the might of a warrior, she moved and struck swiftly like a viper which was equally valued.
But every moment she was alone, she could feel her fingertips grow cold, the water in her mug swirling while sitting completely still, or the gentle breeze from the window now slamming the shutters. Something tugged on her in those moments similar to what she felt in Cambena, and it had gotten worse. One late evening, the tugging became a call, and she could not calm the raging storm this time. Before disappearing into the night, she placed a gentle kiss on Jiyn’s forehead as he slept. She set out on foot in the rain and come morning, she would sell her fine spear for more traveling coins. In the coming days, she would volunteer just in time to settle in this strange world she had only heard whispers of. The realization that she had left the love of her life behind hit deeply after the harbor was merely a speck on the watery horizon. It was too late now; she had made her bed and would lie in it.

Shalia Nix had vanished without a trace, drawing nearer to the new land called Arcadia.

She survived the boat journey and the first winter in Ostiarium narrowly. With winter came the cult that had seeped into the vulnerable population and they were now a threat to her. She felt them chasing her witch’s shadow and knew she would not survive this time. Her magik grew stronger and so did the Creed’s influence, but the raw nature of Arcadia felt like a breath of fresh air for the young weaver. She knew nothing about the place, but it was an embracing sensation she could never express in words. Near the end of the season, Shalia took off in the snowy dead of night knowing she’d rather succumb to the cold or a wild animal than whatever had infected Ostiarium. She would become another forgotten name of a missing person after that winter passed, both here and in Helias. Perhaps she could die in those pretty mountains out there…they certainly caught her attention.
Halfway to the mountain range, she had run out of food and water, and her energy had been severely depleted. She passed out on the frozen plains, walking Zin's wobbly tightrope of death, and when she gained consciousness, she was being carried into the camp of the Aghul clan, surrounded by native eyes looking to see what the scouting party dragged in.
Her new life had just begun. A life that would see her standing at the War Chieftain’s side as his battlemage, and a home that would let her power flourish.

Reason for being in Arcadia

Fleeing potential persecution. She grew paranoid that the Noctua Inquisition would be on her trail or that she would hurt someone, deciding to leave everything behind. At the end of the first winter in Ostiarium, she fled once more to escape the Creed of Slivikhi and made her way into the wilds.

Trinket

Embroidered red hair ribbon and a carved jade wedding ring. One from her mother, one from her lover.

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This character is owned by: White_Caribou