FR App

[galvanising]

CHARACTER

Name: Nell Voss
Canon/OC: OC
Journal: abjuring
Race: Human
Nationality: Ander, by way of Nevarra
Occupation: Ex-Circle enchanter, rebel mage
Division: Forces
Mage or Not: Y
Age: 30ish

History

Petronella Voss was born in the Merdaine region in the Anderfels to a working class family, the middle child of five. Her father was a stonemason and aspiring sculptor, her mother a laundress. When Nell was small, her parents sold everything they owned and moved the family across the country looking for work, eventually settling in Nevarra City. The family settled in well enough, until after an argument at dinner one night Nell manifested magic for the first time by setting their home on fire. Everyone got out safely, but it destroyed the roof and part of the building. Frightened and well-trained by Chantry teachings, her family promptly handed her off to the local Templars and Nell was enrolled at the Nevarra City circle.

Though she had some catching up to do when it came to book learning, Nell took to magic like a duck to water. Not the fiddly, scholarly bits of magic, but raw power and its harnessing. She excelled in the practical, hands-on courses and her obvious potential combined with her easy acceptance of Chantry supremacy allowed her to begin studying combat magic early, working with Force mages to learn to hone her control and precision without losing power. She excelled at her studies, and after her Harrowing was soon tapped to study with the Knight-Enchanters.

Nevarra City's circle used Knight-Enchanters in combat, as guards and also hunting maleficarum and in skirmishes along the borders with Tevinter and Orlais. She became close with her usual Templar companions, and came to think of them as friends and comrades, and believed they thought the same of her. But when mistakes were made and the time came to place blame, they turned on her with remarkable speed. Overnight, Nell found herself an outcast, and the blinders of ambition and privilege removed.

Enraged and disillusioned, she swung sharply in the other direction, becoming an outspoken member of the Libertarian faction, and behind closed doors a Resolutionist as well. Her rabble-rousing saw her moved to the remote and conservative Perendale circle, where her arguments fell on deaf ears. Life moved on, until the gathering at Andoral's Reach, which she attended. She voted to break with the Chantry, and then joined Fiona's army in the battles that followed. She broke with Fiona and many of the other rebels two years ago, supporting neither the peace proposed by Justinia at the Conclave nor the bargain with Tevinter. Instead she's been leading her own rebel cell, continuing the fight, until now.


Personality

Nell grew up in an environment defined by strict devotion and constant struggle. It made for an easy transition into Circle life, and set her up to buy in to the system automatically and without scrutiny. She worked hard, and she did well, and she was rewarded for it, and that fed her ambition for more and blinded her to the fact that others were suffering. When other mages complained, she scoffed. If instead of bitching they'd just follow the rules and be better, like her, they would be fine.

Her awakening was a rude one, abrupt and thorough. She had done everything right, been the perfect model mage, and still was worth nothing to the Templars or the Chantry. She's never gotten over her anger. At the injustice of her treatment, at the thwarting of her ambition, at being used as a mere tool, at not realizing for so long that that was what was happening. Her grudge, a potent mix of vengefulness, shame, and righteous fervor, simmers at the core of everything she does.

You wouldn't necessarily know it to meet her. She's got a quick smile and an easy laugh, and if often her tongue is sharp and her humor black it generally seems merry enough. She's perfectly capable of inflammatory rhetoric and willing to unleash it when she thinks it necessary, but isn't the sort to go around preaching her cause ad nauseum, not when there are more fun things to do (you catch more flies with honey, sure, but the most when that honey's turned to mead). There's no arguing that she lives up to some redhead stereotypes, with a fiery temper that burns fast and hot, and a reckless streak a mile wide. She's passionate, stubborn, and outspoken, a thrill-seeker who revels in risk and seems to survive on some mix of luck and sheer bloodymindedness rather than any care for self-preservation.

But she's deceptively calculating too, with a keen eye and a core of reserve that's well-hidden but unbreachable, as well as a fierce competence. It took substantial discipline to hone a precise touch out of her considerable magical power and to master the talents of a knight-enchanter, and that strict control exists both alongside and in opposition to her headlong pursuit of danger and dissolution. They combine into something darker and less flattering that she does her best to hide, the hard and guilty remains of long years spent fighting with savage intensity for first one side and then the other of a battle she knows better than most isn't truly black and white at all. There's a wariness in that subtle distance she keeps, too, because above all else she is determined never again to be made anyone's fool.

Opinions & Affiliations

Mage/Templar War: A necessary war that couldn't come too soon and shouldn't have ended so prematurely. Templars and Circles are an evil that must be eliminated for good, and that end justifies any means. (Secretly, in her heart of hearts, she knows there's more nuance to the issue and regrets some of the things she's done in pursuit of mage freedom, but you'll never make her admit that now.)

The Chantry: As an institution, it's been corrupted by hardliners and anti-mage sentiment. She doesn't hate the Andrastianism itself in general, though she's no longer personally a believer.

Tevinter: The way they live obviously has its points, but they also seem like creepy assholes who treat everyone who isn't super-rich like shit.

Qunari: Worse than the Chantry when it comes to their treatment of mages, brutal invaders who must be stopped.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Mage: Knight-Enchanter, force mage, blood mage. She's an absurdly powerful mage with 20+ years of training and experience, including 5-10 years of actual combat experience. The blood magic is newer, something she's learned since the breaking of the Circles. Her strengths lie in offensive magic, and in beating opponents with sudden, overwhelming displays of force. Defensive shields and barriers are some of her weaker spells, and she has no skill for things like fiddly glyphs or healing. She was named an Enchanter shortly before the circles fell, because she'd been on better behavior for a while and Perendale didn't have anyone else to train new Knight-Enchanters.

Fighter: Because of how Knight-Enchanter training works, she's also not terrible with an actual sword, though a trained warrior would certainly beat her handily. She's got some experience in brawls, and is a scrappy, dirty fighter in close quarters, but largely untrained. Her chief skill is that she's tenacious and willing to risk injury (to herself or others) for victory.

Leader: She's got a sharp mind, is reasonably perceptive, and capable of being strategic. But she has no real experience with real-world politics, or with the kind of exalted circles in which such things happen. Her knowledge of the world is spotty after being sheltered for so long, and her manners aren't quite up to snuff. She can be coarse and impatient, and is good at the big picture and the gritty details, but not so much the middle ground in between. While she's capable of leadership and has recently been acting as a rebel leader, the truth is she's both better and more comfortable following, even if she hates to admit it.

Rabble/Rouser: Good at drinking, gambling, and courting disaster. Good at riling up a crowd for good or ill, but not great at holding her tongue, especially when drunk or mad. Does not make good decisions in her personal life, to the point that it seems she may be deliberately making bad ones. Makes tavern-friends easily, but doesn't let many people close enough for real trust.

Inventory

↠ A staff, bladed, but otherwise not particularly special
↠ A simple sword hilt for spirit-blade purposes
↠ Clothes, an all-purpose knife, odds and ends

Motivation

She's not about let decisions about the fate of mage-kind be made without her input, and increasingly the Inquisition seems to be the place, and the entity, that will be making those decisions.