Elodie Sonata

Elodie Sonata
Gender	Female
Race	Hyur
Clan	Highlander
Citizenship	Gridanian
Age	33
Guardian	Llymlaen the Navigator
Occupation	Huntress/Mercenary/Adventurer/Security Guard
Job	Bard

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Character

General

Elodie is a huntress/adventurer by trade and an incorrigible flirt by reputation. Her height, figure, and waves of pink hair make her stand out in a crowd, and her welcoming nature, rather unique for a highlander, keeps that attention and usually ends up warming her bed. In fact, she's prone to turning any conversation to flirtation, especially ones where someone is probing her background a bit too hard; if they persist, her strategy is the fall back on outright lies, and laughing when the person catches on that her outrageous story isn't true. Those immune to her flirtation by virtue of being a professional contact, married, or young enough to be her child find that she almost has a feeling of an older sister, supportive and willing to give advice or simply lend a sympathetic ear.

Appearance

The first thing that most people notice about Elodie is her hip-length pink hair. After that, it would probably be her muscular arms and leg, and third may be the confident smirk as she notices you looking her up and down. She's not especially muscled or tall when compared with the rest of her clanspeople, but years of archery have toned her shoulders to the point where tight shirts with sleeves aren't an option, and the travel involved in her work keeps her legs strong as any other Hyur's. Strangely enough, she's extremely pale for her line of work and burns easily, and while she is covered in scars, bruises and burn marks, none of them are on her face

History/Timeline

Of Missing Authority Figures Show text

The woman known as Elodie Sonata was born in a tiny village near Halfstone a brunette under the name Mayella Goodfellow. Her father was a Highlander married to Roegadyn whom she was never sure was her biological mother (After all, if she were half-roe, wouldn't she be taller?) Her father was lost at sea was she was three, leaving only the image a bushy red beard on a man as tall as the Flame general. leaving her the only Highlander in the village. Her 'mother' worked as hard as she could to provide for the two with her fishing, but they frequently ended up eating her catches, until illness combined with overwork took her five years later. Custody was supposed to pass to her father's sister in the city proper, but the woman never came.

She scraped together what money she could and the townspeople were nice enough to give her scraps until her eleventh winter, when poor harvests all around meant they put their own families before an orphan. She took matters into her own hands with a string tied to a stick and several other sharpened sticks, copying the nearby Seeker tribes archers. It was a plan that really shouldn't have worked, but she managed to bag an elderly puk after a few outings, which she promptly roasted over a fire and ate half-raw. While she was doing that, a Miqo'te happened across and told her plainly of the intelligence of her plan while expressing disbelief that it had worked. The same Miqo'te stopped by a few day later to give her a proper bow, while she was busy vomiting up her last meal.

The next four years saw her develop her hunting skills, learning to how track and mimic animals in addition to becoming a better archer, and get in contact with her absentee guardian, who already had three mouths of her own to feed. Nonetheless, her aunt took her into her home once she was there, happy to have her now that she was another source of food and income. So happy, in fact, that she was willing to arrange a marriage between her niece and her eldest son, who unfortunately blabbed this plan to Mayella herself after attempting to force a kiss on her. The girl promptly went back to the dilapidated shack in her home village, having already made up her mind to be an adventurer, inspired by those in the city.

Of Traumatic Realities Show text

Upon her fifteenth nameday, she ate a meal of charred dodo and declared herself an adventurer, innocently oblivious to the fact that one usually registers with the Adventurer's Guild first. She took her weathered bow to Aleport in search of work and quickly found that her shy nature didn't lead to many job offers. So she adopted a mask of cheer, that occasionally landed requests to venture out of the city for pittances of gil. It was hardly the glorious life she had imagined, but she pressed on, feeding herself with her kills and sleeping just inside the gates by night and bothering everyone she could for work by day, undeterred even when she got pushed into a barrel of ale she nearly drowned in.

After some moons, she managed to find an important job to do, though the man she received it from was more eager to get her off his back than anything. Whether he had thought she wouldn't actually or simply didn't care about her fate, Elodie still wonders sometimes, but the teenaged Mayella eagerly carried out his request: to destroy the supplies of a crew that had been bothering his, the Serpent Reavers. She managed to light one box on fire before being discovered and promptly overwhelmed by pirates that were much larger than her and very angry. Her bow was snapped in half before her eyes, and that was the last she remembered before she blacked out.

She awoke aching everywhere, and her body moving despite that fact that she wasn't moving it. From there, she realized she was surrounded by the same men who had beaten her and broken the tool of her independence, some of whom were pantless. And then it registered why her hips were being rocked for her and she was too stunned and afraid to even cry as the Sea Wolf on top of her finished inside and passed her to his next comrade. When the men in the room had finished with her, laughing to themselves over how fiesty she was now, they placed her with several other women they'd captured. Some were empathetic, others felt she deserved it for her idiocy, and yet more were too absorbed with their own tears to pay her any mind.

The girls who hadn't completely broken clung to each other during the day, forming close friendships and cliques that tried the throw the others to the pirates first at night.

Of Resumed Dreams Show text

Dropped off in Limsa still praying for her companions, Mayella vowed to not let the experience get to her, and resumed working towards her goal of becoming a famous adventurer. So with a bit of help on the actual writing part, she signed her name in Baderon's book the same way women in her village had: Mayella Idriswyn. She was met with an immediate obstacle in the form of lacking a weapon or the money to buy one. So she took on various odd jobs, including one at the Bismarck that consisted mainly of the exasperated guild members trying to teach her how to cook properly, and one for the Sisters of the Edelwiess delivering messages she couldn't read.

That job in particular was one if her favorite, though over the course of it, it quickly became apparent that despite her cheerful demeanor, the days spent imprisoned and praying for the gruesome deaths of her captors had changed her: She smiled gleefully without so much as blinking when a guild member spattered her in blood fighting off an assailant, and in general had trouble showing empathy to anyone she wasn't close with, being far more reserved with her trust.

But she earned herself a new bow (at a discount even, many people were sympathetic to her story without her knowing they knew) before her 18th summer and some guildleves later, she had enough money to board the ferry to see the rest of Eorzea, specifically Thanalan and Little Ala Mhigo; For while she'd spent her eighteen summers in La Noscea, she always wondered what 'her people' would be like. And so off she went, opening up a hopeful new chapter in her life.

Of Visions Gone Awry Show text

Into Ul'dah she arrived, packed among the rest of her people in Pearl Lane. Finding work was difficult due to an abundance of people needing work and discrimination against Highlanders, but she managed to acquire a roof over her head by sharing the space under said roof with three other adventurers: Mumurisu, a shy lalafellin thaumaturge trying to make ends meet after his parents had passed away, Still Boulder, a Roegadyn who'd eloped with a Miqo'te and had been in the business of adventuring longer than any of his cohorts, and M'hanna, his Seeker of the Sun fiancee and a healer, who was fond of wearing feathers in her hair.

Work only came up once a week or so, but the four of them managed to scrape up enough work to survive, and within a few moons, Mayella had made a name for herself as an excellent archer; it was a small name, but it was enough for her to get offered a bigger job hunting down slightly more illegal prey, namely people. Perhaps had her friends been with her, they would have refused on principle and the girl would have realized that something was deeply wrong with her now if she saw no reason not to trade their lives for her livelihood. But they were not and she took the job with little hesitation, following the target for days before she shot him in bed, copying a technique she'd seen a Gridanian archer use in the Coliseum and fabricating an arrow of aether so as to hopefully make herself harder to track. Her own happened to be water-aspected, and it pierced the target's lung, drowning him in his sleep while the sniper watched, enjoying the thrill killing had earned her, and earning more money than the poor fishmonger's daughter had ever seen in one place in her life, though still an amount a professional would have probably laughed at.

The money paid the rent for the four of them and a few feasts besides, and so Mayella found no reason to stop, smiling as she took on the most dangerous prey (a euphemism she finds amusing, as her human targets posed less of a threat than even her first kill) by night and laughing with her friends by day, never even letting on what she'd done to acquire steady well-paying work.

Tendencies

Likes

• Stories - If she had been born to a wealthier family, Elodie may very well have become a scholar of history. As it stands, she devours and analyzes any and all tales her ears can come by.
• Anything with eggs - Duck is a close second, both of which she actually finds somewhat strange, seeing as she never particularly liked either as a child.
• Drinking - She isn't picky about what gets her drunk, which usually results in her drinking the cheapest moonshine she can find, but prefers sweet drinks.

Dislikes

• Fish - One can only eat something so long before they lose their taste for it entirely. As such, seafood is reserved for starvation situations.
• Public performances - While she knows she's talented, singing or playing in front of people she doesn't know makes Elodie feel vulnerable
• Assuming she's Ala Mhigan - While she considers Ala Mhigan Highlanders 'her people' and she won't deny it because it's a convinient cover story, she can't help but be inwardly annoyed when people just assume.

Rumors

Common Rumors

• "She's gotta be half-Midlander, hasn't she? You ever seen a Highlander that short and pretty?" - God's Quiver Bow
• "Heard she punched a guy for presuming she's easy. Don't know why, she's bedded every man from here to Coerthas, and most of the women, too!" - Drowning Wench Wench
• "How does she get all that work? Seems like she's always on the pearl or looking at papers..." - Annoyed Adventurer

Moderate Rumors

• "She charges extra if you have her working in Thanalan, the price-gouging whore..." - Amaajina & Sons Employee at the Ceruleum Plant
• "She was an Adder, but the way she can say those Sea Wolf names without a hint of trouble...You think she's Lominsan?" - Carline Canopy Customer
• "Didn't come at the same time, but the way she gets on with those Ala Mhigan refugees, she's gotta be one of them." - Quarrymill resident

Rare Rumors

• "Once saw her covered in blood and gore and she didn't even flinch. Might have even smiled a little. Creepy." - Unsettled Client
• "She's actually got loads of money! She invests the money from all that work into her client's companies." - Bitter Broker

Annotations

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