Alinda Lasaedra Veles

Alinda Lasaedra Veles

Female Human

Player: Spartan Hoplite

General Information
Full Name:	Alinda Lasaedra Veles
Nicknames:	Alley
Age:	42
Deity:	Athena
Alignment:	LG LN LE NG TN NE CG CN CE
Occupation:	Champion Paladin, Olympian Heroine
Faction/Rank:	Free League
Place of Birth:	Nelanther Isles, Toril
Physical Attributes
Height:	5'6"
Weight:	145 lbs.
Eyes:	Dark blue
Hair:	Brown, ponytail
Complexion:	Fair, lightly tanned
Physical Build:	Spare athlete
Physical Features:	Faint, lingering battle scars from a variety of weapons at various points on her body.
Skills
Swordsmanship, Armored Combat, Battle Tactics, Warfare, Horseback Riding, Diplomacy, Divine Spellcasting, Philosophy
Equipment and Items
CASUAL: a blood red or royal blue peplos, a cogsteel shortsword, sandals. SKIRMISH: Red leather armor with a red skirt, Phalanx of the Faithful, a recurve shortbow, and a simple spare longsword at her back, The Sanctified Soul and a cogsteel shortsword at her belt, immovable rods tied to her belt, fitted hellenic greaves, sandals. FULL BATTLE: polished hellenic bronze full plate with red skirt and corinthian style helmet with full front to back horsehair plume, scarlet cloak, The Sanctified Soul and immovable rods at her belt, simple spare longsword and a recurve shortbow at her back under the cloak.

Alinda Lasaedra Veles is a middle-aged champion paladin of Athena who has had a long and eventful career approaching the level of legend. Among olympians, she is regarded as something of a minor hero. Among planeswalkers, she is known as someone not to raise a sword against, as her combat prowess might as well make her a minor power in a fight.

Appearance

Alinda walks tall with grace, yet with the quick, measured stride of a soldier. Every muscle is well-toned and engineered to meet the demands of battle, her biceps bulge as large as some people's whole arm, her thighs could crush skulls. As a human who has adventured on the planes for over two decades, the tolls of time have started to weigh on her, but she has aged well, belying the appearance of someone in her thirties, despite being forty-two. Her hair is nearly always tied back in a loose, low ponytail by a simple red ribbon as it has since she first came to the Outlands. The tresses themselves reach almost to the small of her back. Of her myriad other features she has pouty lips, a bit of a snub nose, and a passably feminine figure of the common variety.

She rarely does herself up beyond washing off and combing her hair. Under the most formal of occasions she may apply a blood red lipstick, light makeup, and perfume which is almost invariably the scent of cherry blossoms. A bizarre exception crops up when what she calls a real battle comes along, where before it breaks out she will take a moment to put the same color lipstick on quite excitably.

Personality

Possessions

Blessed with an armory of some of the most powerful artifacts that most planeswalkers would be happy to ever own even one of, Alinda is rightly regarded as dangerous when she's prepared for battle. Even some of her casual clothing could be regarded as powerful artifacts. All were collected from numerous adventures on the planes doing favors for various powers over two decades, each having seen use in her service for many years.

The Sanctified Soul

A gleaming, silver longsword, hilt fashioned like a swept pair of celestial wings and emblazoned with a small symbol of the sun god Pelor. The holy avenger almost bleeds with the goodness contained within, said to be a piece of the soul of a Solar given willingly. Wafts of holy light glow off of it as if the blade itself stirred and blessed the very moisture in the air with the barest of touches. Many a friend has unwittingly offered Alinda a new sword, only to realize that she is well taken care of in that regard. It is the kind of sword a man will see once and may very well never see the likes of again in this lifetime.

Supposedly, the sword was originally forged either by or by the order of Pelor, as a powerful weapon which could channel the essence of its original recipient, the Solar Alphideus. For centuries he wielded the blade in an unending quest against evil, until he undertook a daring infiltration to learn of a secret plan in the works within one god of death's very divine realm, that of the Necromanteion of the Oerthian god Nerull. What he found was that Nerull and his greatest followers had created a magical plague they called the Reaper's Breath, which would sweep all of Oerth in a great culling, but no sooner had he discovered this had he been discovered himself. With what power he possessed, he unleashed the plague and drew all of it into his own body, and locked it away within himself to keep it away from his cult.

He existed with that in great pain for a long time, the disease destroying his body almost as quickly as it could be healed. Still he fought the agents of Nerull through the agony, intent on keeping the disease away from them even knowing that if he were to die he would return to Celestia and be free of his suffering. His only comforts were that the innocent were safe from this disease, and this sword and its holy, spiritual warmth that provided much reassurance. Alphideus had control, but in irony, this control would be disrupted by those concerned for his own well-being. Agents were dispatched to find what happened to him, but they did not return until at last adventurers from Ironridge were contacted, including a young twenty year-old Alinda.

Alinda and her companions penetrated into the undead walls of the Necromanteion and fought long through the horde of abominations until at last the god himself noticed, and swiftly arranged their capture. They were made to kneel before his throne of bones through threats and torture, and Alinda nonetheless accepted that no good would come from futile resistance here, not yet at least. Only then were they allowed to find he whom they sought, the Solar Alphideus, body ransacked by the disease that Alinda and her companions had only found the barest clues to. Before more could be revealed, the most powerful among Alinda's party, a sorcerer of old, summoned all the power he had left after resisting Nerull, and obliterated Alphideus' body so that he might return to Pelor, unknowingly unleashing the Reaper's Breath.

The five were immediately infected, and infected most potently. Their bodies were wracked with the same pain that Alphideus had endured for centuries, but their mortal bodies could only endure minutes of it at best. Alinda today, perhaps, could endure far more, but the Alinda of then was still young, still in training, and had only just begun to come into the fighter that she is now, and so even she could barely endure it. Nerull laughed, a long, low chuckle that reverberated off the very darkness itself. Their purpose done, he opened a portal to allow their escape. They crawled through, having only enough faculty to grab what remained of Alphideus' equipment, in case he should want any of it back. They never quite figured where they were deposited, a prime, probably Oerth, but just as quickly as they had arrived, their sorcerer ripped a portal to the Ethereal, where their bodies would not feel the pain.

The damage was done, however. The Reaper's Breath would soon claim lives all over Oerth for years to come, and though Alinda and her companions were cured by the divine favor of the norse gods in exchange for a favor in the future, it would not save the others on Oerth. But Alphideus forgave them just as soon as it had happened, they could not have known, and they acted in the way they thought best, for surely any would have seen Alphideus in that condition and assumed that it was from torture. Weakened considerably and feeling no shortage of sympathy for the mortals and their attempts, he left to them the artifacts that he had carried with him into the realm of Nerull, and to Alinda, he left The Sanctified Soul.

Phalanx of the Faithful

A massive, round shield emblazoned with the severed head of Medusa, a holy symbol of Athena. The less experienced may overlook it, as it is often overshadowed by the pure glow of Alinda's sword, but the wiser or the more learned may realize that her shield is more than what it at first appears.

The rhapsodes and bards speak of it as one of Alinda's stories, though its tale starts hundreds of years before in a corner of the Prime Material Plane where the world itself forsook the gods, rejecting them and their gifts and crafting a great barrier which kept them out. Even magic had a hard time sticking, the most powerful artifacts only able to summon the merest fraction of their powers, and none could summon enough power to break free of that world. Those who dwelled there got by without, and though religion existed, their powers did not noticably manifest.

Some say this is why the world fell, for some magic that slipped through the cracks of that barrier was the art of necromancy, and the dead rose. With none possessing the gifts to stop it, the necromancers reigned over the living and the dead until at last they defeated life forever and the world itself died.

Among the last gasps of this world were a holy order who fought against the lich lords for the life of their world. As the end came, they, with great sacrifice, forged the only divine artifact of their world, made with the unbreakable belief that the gods were truly out there, and poured into it the unanswered prayers of every man, woman, and child who had ever lived on their world, to any god. It was a shield, then humbly appearing as a plain, unadorned, round, metal shield, and the priests presented it to their last and greatest champion. Its power was good for what was on that world, but to the casual planeswalker it appeared to be but common dribble, yet when the knight raised this shield it is said that, for the first time, their god glimpsed his followers on this world and their plight, and he gave to his only champion the gifts and favor that might help him. Mightly did they fight for their world, and they came close, so very close, but on the steps of the greatest Lich Lord's throne did the only paladin of that world fall. He was piled with the others trophies of that dark lord's favorite conquests beneath his throne, the shield thrown along with him, the lich not realizing, out of ignorance, that the shield's power came not from the arcane, but from the divine, something unheard of for that world. Or so the myth is told.

It is not known how long the shield rested there, some rhapsodes say centuries, others millennia or longer, but long after the world had died did Alinda find herself walking upon it, along with companion planeswalkers of all walks of life, trapped upon the world's carcass by unfortunate circumstance. When Alinda first met the Dark Lord who slew the knight and his order, she wanted to end him to avenge those who had fallen, but her hand was stayed by her companions, for though she was brave, not all of her companions were so courageous when trapped on a dangerous world where their magic and equipment, especially those of divine sources, would not avail them. There, her companions made a dark deal with this dark lord to share the effort of escaping out the only portal off that world, a portal which could only be opened in a certain way, with a certain key, at a certain time, a key which the dark lord held. The planeswalkers would provide the location, learned from a forgotten library, and secure the gateway. So it was that in exchange for their escape, this lich would be allowed to escape as well, much to Alinda's disgust.

All knew that the tensions between Alinda and this dark lord were high. Many times had he taunted her to make a move, but her honor and her promise to help all of her companions escape left her unable to act. It was there, at the precipise of the now open portal, that the undead lord challenged Alinda to a duel, though not to the death, and Alinda accepted, and without spell, nor blessing, nor holy sword, but with her sheer will and battle prowess, she overcame him. The dark lord yielded, and Alinda warned him of what might come if they should meet again, or if she should ever hear of his dark deeds and where he might be. With no small sense of irony, the undead lord threw to her the knight's shield, this shield, as a trophy for her victory.

When Alinda first raised the shield, just as the knight had, three people were immediately surprised. The first was the dark lord, who saw first hand as the plain shield suddenly glowed and morphed to the form we know of it now, an impressive and noble shield impressed with the visage of the severed head of Medusa upon it, for it was no magic he had ever before seen. The second was Alinda, who suddenly felt Athena's gifts and watchfulness for the first time on that world, in wonder at the magic the shield, which she named the Phalanx of the Faithful, possessed, for it contained within it a divine conduit aimed by the faith and favor of its wielder strong enough to pierce the barrier just a crack so that the god beyond might see their champion, their glory, and their struggle. And such was Alinda's faith and favor that the Phalanx of the Faithful immediately reached out through the open portal, the shield finally free of the barrier's prison to reach out and touch the very gods themselves, and the third to be surprised, it is said, was the goddess Athena herself, who touched her cheek and knew instantly that the power of this shield rivaled the Aegis itself.

Athena's Embrace

A peplos of dyed silk perfectly fitted to Alinda's body somehow despite how it wraps around her, and giving quite a favorable impression of it. It falls all the way to her ankles, yet on one side opens all the way to her waist, and yet seemingly remains modest. The peplos glows faintly with an inner light, shimmering as she walks.

Alinda walks very comfortably in this, no matter the temperature or the weather, and for good reason. The peplos was given to Alinda to aid her in her escape from the Nine Hells of Baator by Athena herself. At one point, a wounded and naked Alinda found herself in the frozen layer of Cania, with seemingly no hope of escape. Through the raging blizzard, Alinda could not see any sign of a portal out, and the icy cold threatened to kill her with frost bite right from the start. Nevertheless, she trudged on through it as best she could, as far as she could while praying for guidance. A light answered her prayers, and when she stepped within it, a blessing from Athena herself healed her wounds, and upon her body was woven this very peplos. It resisted the cold of Cania, and later the melting temperatures of Dis admirably.

Athena's Embrace is highly favored by Alinda, and the magic it was imbued with turns away far more than merely uncomfortable temperatures.

Rhiannon's Spare Robe

A robe seemingly fashioned purely of vines, twigs, and leaves. Like Athena's Embrace, it perfectly fits to Alinda, though given its form it might be more appropriate to say it was grown that way rather than woven. It clings to her torso tightly, and from the lowest part of her waist down it falls in a dense canopy of leaves and vines as if to form the skirt of a dress. This bizarre outfit was a gift to her from a high up Seelie named Rhiannon. Caught up in an adventure involving Unseelie forging a mad alliance with Shar, Alinda, having originally thought herself showing up for a treaty negotiation for a noble house, ended up a prisoner, and later fighting for her life while others worked behind the scenes without her knowledge. It was fortuitous for them that Alinda was caught up, as when matters grew dark, Alinda occupied and killed most of the guards with naught but her cogsteel short sword and the dress she wore. The battle was vicious, and Alinda herself was severely wounded before the others finally reached her, and together made good their escape.

Though healed through magic and regeneration, Alinda's outfit had been ruined to blood-soaked tatters, only covering her in the vaguest of modesties by her own considerable efforts. She was brought with them to one region of the Seelie Court where she met the fey Rhiannon, clad in an outfit of vines, twigs, and leaves. So pleased was Rhiannon with their actions that she considered it a favor done to herself, even from the oblivious Alinda. Advised she was to not eat the food, despite her hunger, but also advised she was to ask carefully what she would receive in return. It might have also been noted that she should go ahead and take the favor, as fey are a fickle sort. Still struggling to not reveal everything, Alinda could think of nothing better than new clothing to replace the bloodied ribbons she now wore, and graciously did Rhiannon supply one, for from her own closet was Alinda thrown Rhiannon's Spare Robe.

It was much the same as the one Rhiannon presently wore. Alinda changed into it immediately while curious pixies spied, the paladin contenting herself with simply getting away from the non-fey. When she put it on, the vines tightened around her of their own accord until around her it made a comfortable fit, and the symbiotic nature of the plant led to it cleaning and healing her remaining wounds, even of dried blood seemingly soaked into the vines.

She emerged in comfort, and in comfort is she always on the occassions when she chooses to walk about with this plant wrapped around her body. The robe instills a small sense of confidence and assurance of beauty, perhaps because the plant makes a nice impression, or perhaps it is the will of the plant itself, or perhaps even simple accident. Its history since coming into Alinda's possession has not been the most exciting, for the more serious jaunts often call for Athena's Embrace or her armor, but it finds a little spot for itself, often being worn when she expects to meet members of the Seelie Court as a gesture of goodwill and gratitude.