Elsa van Mere

Elsa van Mere
"I don't steal. I always leave something behind. Sometimes, I just do it without asking."
IC Information
Pronunciation:	Elsa vahn Meer
Race:	Miqo'te
Gender:	Female
Citizenship:	Garlemald
Age:	25
Birthdate:	5th Sun, 3rd Umbral Moon
Height:	5'2", 157.5 cm
Hair Color:	Red
Eye Color:	Blue
Romantic Status:	Single
Current Residence:	Limsa Lominsa
Religious Views:	Ambivalent
Occupation:	Thief, Mechanic
OOC Information
Player:	Argent Wren
Server:	Balmung
Timezone/Hours:	CST / Variable
Other Characters:	None

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Elsa van Meere is a Garlean Miqo'te who has recently moved to Limsa Lominsa.

General

Personality

Having grown up in the company of a thieving group, mostly composed of males, Elsa has a significant amount of male mannerisms and is no stranger to more crude jokes. Also due to her childhood habits, she attempts to be extremely disarming and personable, most of her dialog teasing, joking, or deflecting in nature, if not just plain ridiculous. Elsa prioritizes freedom above all else, not easily giving it up, but when she does finally connect with another person her loyalty is unwavering.

While she still has scars from her time in the Garlean military, most notably due to her mishap during her last job, she is still unable to stop interesting things from finding their way into her hands. To make up for it, she “trades” items instead, leaving something else in place of the object, usually without telling the owner. Though many consider this a fine line, Elsa doesn’t think too hard about it.

Also due to her time among the thieves and military, Elsa doesn’t always have a grounded sense of identity; she takes great pleasure in changing her appearance regularly, most notably with hats, which she believes are critical not only to an outfit, but to a person’s presence of mind. Furthermore, the one thing she feels she can still steal is accents; she may seemingly switch at random, or spend hours perfecting the difference between fisherman from two nearby villages.

Description

Elsa's Tattoo.

Due to Elsa’s habit of changing appearance and even accents, it can be difficult to nail down an exact description of her. She tends to keep her hair short, and naturally it is a dark red, though she’s been known to dye it to fit a persona. Her eyes are a light blue, and she carries the same short, lithe body style held by most miqo’te. She tends to keep her tail wrapped around her center, a habit from her days roaming the streets.

On her left shoulder is a small tattoo of a wing, a deep crimson mark that signals her membership in the Garlean century the Crimson Wings. Small scars, made by daggers or close calls with arrows, can be seen across her body, though she prefers less revealing clothing so they are often not visible.

History

The Streets of the Garlean Empire

In 1553, Elsa van Meer was born to the union of a Gridanian Miqo’te slave and a young Garlean naval captain. A woman with a child not being particularly desirable as a slave, the young captain threw both Elsa and her mother out into the street. Elsa spent most of her childhood on the streets of the Garlean Empire; she was vaguely aware of her mother’s heritage, but given her surroundings, the fate of nations was not something she spent a significant amount of time considering. By the time she was twelve, Elsa’s mother, working as a courtesan, had contracted a number of illnesses; with her mother on her deathbed, Elsa signed on with one of the local thieving gangs, picking up baggy clothes, a more personable attitude, and male habits to make herself fit in.

She had a significant talent for trinkets finding their way into her hands, but as the gangs became more violent, she slowly picked up sword work as well. No matter how bad thing went, Elsa seemed to have a natural “luck”; wind would blow at just the right time or her opponents would mysteriously trip. Even as gang leaders changed, Elsa was kept on as jobs seemed to just go “right” when she was around.

The Garlean Military

Despite Elsa’s “unnatural luck,” in early 1571 a job with the thieves went awry and she and her cohorts were captured. Given the choice between execution and conscription, Elsa took the latter. She was shipped to Ala Mhigo, where she took part in some of the initial campaign before the Battle of Carteneau. As a prisoner conscripted into the military, she was placed in a century known as the Crimson Wings, an offshoot consisting of prisoners whose names are stripped and replaced with numbers, meant to take on tasks with a high mortality rate. Given her experience as a thief and familiarity with stolen Magitek, Elsa served as an Immunes, specifically trained for infiltration and engineering explosives and weaponry. Elsa rarely speaks of this period and prefers to forget it entirely when possible, but there is an underlying tone that she is not proud of her actions during her time in the legion. Her left shoulder still holds proof of her former status, a crimson wing tattooed across the skin.

Under pain of death, Elsa resisted deserting until later a few months before the Battle of Carteneau; order to remove an Eorzean installation, her part of the job was to make a tricky bow shot through a window, placing a line for infiltration. Normally an excellent shot, that day her "luck" went against her and the wind seemed to push the arrow through the breast of a young mother outside the compound. It was the first time Elsa had observed her own responsibility in the death of innocent; ordered to go on, she escaped instead, fleeing to Ala Mhigo.

Still, Elsa has never forgiven herself for the mistake; even now, she is unable to hold a bow without shaking and each month she pays a courier to carry half her earnings to the family.

Ala Mhigo and Setting in Limsa Lominsa

Obviously a deserter, and without pay or supplies, Elsa returned to her old habits on the streets of Ala Mhigo, where she eventually ran into an an old soldier, serving as a constable in the region; rather than turn her in and hang her, he negotiated with her, having his own misgivings about the course of the Empire's war. He spent the next few months, until Carteneau, showing Elsa the work of a constable and offering her an opportunity to atone for some of her past.

After the Battle, as Garlean citizens returned to the Motherland, Elsa’s savior was called back to Garlemand. Not wanting to return to her life on the streets on the Empire, or be hanged as a deserter, Elsa stayed behind in Ala Mhigo; though life was little better there, she felt she could at least continue attempting to atone by furthering her mentors work, if only in an unofficial capacity. She spent much of her free time working as a mechanic for many of the pieces the army had left behind. However, as she continued to live in Ala Mhigo, her “luck” grew more erratic; bursts of wind would come suddenly out of a clear day or torches would suddenly flare up in an empty hallway. Now in Gridania, she began to research the aether; fearing her lack of control, she eventually made the decision to leave Ala Mhigo behind and travel to Limsa Lominsa, in hopes of receiving assistance from the Arcanist’s Guild.

Tendencies & Quirks

Likes Hats Trading Jokes

Dislikes Reading Pets Enclosed Spaces

Hobbies/Talents Accents Mechanics (Garlean Weaponry) Infiltration

Affiliations

♥ Romantic Interest ♥ Sexual Desire ♥ Platonic Love ● Good Standing ● Neutral Standing ● Poor Standing

Friends ● ~In Progress~

Acquaintances ● ~In Progress~ Enemies & Rivals ● ~In Progress~

Rumors

Frequent ● ~In Progress~ Occasional ● ~In Progress~

Rare ● ~In Progress~ From Player Characters ● ~In Progress~

Misc

Theme Songs

Theme General Combat

Song TBD TBD

Artist TBD TBD

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