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HISTORY
Franziska is the daughter of a proud Filelan family, the descendant of generations' worth of distinguished officers. Her mother coordinates security for important officials within the city, her father is the leader of a platoon of combat medics, and paternal grandfather is the Aluf for the northernmost region of the Edjerha territories, up in the mountains above Filela. Franziska was raised in a household that was almost an extension of a military camp. While her parents cared for her and her twin brother Iskander, both youngsters were taught the value of strict discipline. Displays of affection were very rare.

Franziska had a promising career as a soldier lined up when she was diagnosed with the Wasting Cough, one of the many debilitating health defects to which Ejderha are prone. She poured herself into academics as a result. At the start of her compulsory military service she was shunted from the main corps into a support unit, where her family's clout gained her a position training as a field engineer. It was her job to help design temporary bridges and bunkers for the forward troops.

Being too frail to fight on the front lines was a huge blow to Franziska, who began to feel alienated from her brother the squire. As time passed her desperation grew. Franziska eventually hatched a plan to use the confusion around the Battle of Nasaja to desert her post and flee into the cityscape, intending to go abroad and try to find a cure for her condition. This was the only thing that saved her from being massacred with the rest of her unit.

When Franziska discovered that her comrades were dead, she was overcome with guilt, and chose to forego her search in favor of joining the Red Claw (a resistance group in Sovya) to atone for her cowardice. Her combat ability was nonexistant, but she worked hard to learn technical skills from the humans around her, and her engineering experience was put to good use destroying bridges, sabotaging caravans, and exploding supply depots. She doggedly worked at improving her fire breath in order to be more useful in the field, eventually discovering that she had a talent for fire magic. Exploding things was easier when no explosives were necessary. After a few years Franziska overcame her past and became a respected member of the Resistance.

Unfortunately, Franziska's condition worsened, and the Cerastes occupational authority began to hunt for her more seriously as the infamy of the Red Claw grew. Her comrades decided that they needed to lie low, and that she needed to leave the city and get healthy in order to continue the fight. They exploded a warehouse full of flour as a distraction so that she could make her escape from Sovya with a group of hired pirates.

By this point Franziska wasn't the naive rookie that she'd once been, the girl who thought that a magical cure could surely be found with a little luck and a few foreign friends, but she was determined get stronger and return to Sovya. She would repay her debt and save her friends or die trying. It is Franziska's hope that working with the Asterion League will help her to find her cure.

At least, that's the cover story.

{Franziska is too sickly to serve as a frontline soldier, and she did join the Sovya Resistance after the Battle of Nasaja, but she is far from a deserter. Her family was part of the group that brought Ceydon to power. Through them, she secured a placement in Shabak - the Ejderha military intelligence office.

When it became clear that Nasaja was lost, the rookie agent accepted an assignment to keep an eye on both the Cerastese and the Resistance (many of whom are dissatisfied with Ceydon, as their city was lost relatively soon after her coup). Franziska was ordered to withdraw from Sovya when the Cerastes army's hunt for her threatened to expose her true origins. She feigned a downturn in her illness so that her comrades would help her to exit conquered territory without getting caught.

Franziska's new assignment is to infiltrate the Asterion League and covertly study the diverse combat techiques utilized there, in the hopes of finding something that will aid in the war effort. Her superiors are particularly interested in the flintlock pistol. They also would not mind if she kept an eye on what Piraya is up to, or reported information about Auguste and the Fin du Saison that could be traded to the Ravelle church.}

The Cerastes government would love to get their hands on Franziska, and she is also wanted for desertion by the Ejderha military.

The Wasting Cough is a non-fatal respiratory defect. Symptoms include coughing blood, chills, muscle spasms, stiffness in the back and wings, and occasional fainting spells as the result of overexertion. Franziska is not contagious.


Personality
Franziska is well-acquainted with physical hardship, but terrified of being an invalid, and that fear causes her a great deal of shame. She overcompensates for it by being disciplined, efficient, and insanely hard-working. Franziska takes pride in being both useful and realiable, and reacts very poorly to the insinuation that she can't pull her own weight. Her manner is brusque and forthright. She is almost frighteningly organized.

The fact that Franziska is so very controlled may be what helps her to be such an effective fire mage. All that repressed emotion has to go somewhere, and explosions are as good an outlet as any other.

"Fun" is not a part of Franziska's vocabulary. She does, however, have a sly, dry, barely-perceptible sense of humor, and life in the Sovya underground wore away a little of her military polish. Working for the Red Claw involved a lot of waiting, hiding, and biding time, so Franziska is more well-read in Human and Pennier literature than most Ejderha. Poorly-written serial adventures are her secret weakness.

Franziska performs her assignments to the best of her ability, but she wouldn't hesitate for a second to betray or abandon the League's interests in order to meet her own goals. Franziska desperately wants to prove that she can carry on her family's tradition of military excellence in spite of her condition. She is a patriot who always follows orders without complaint, and who has taken very little control over the direction of her own life. She has a idealized view of the honor of regular Ejderha military officers, and of her brother Iskander in particular.

For reasons that I hope are obvious, Franziska is extremely paranoid. This has kept her from forming any real romantic relationships, although there are probably a handful of rushed liasons in her past.


Common Knowledge
- Has some sort of condition, and disappears during her sick spells. Other Ejderha should be able to tell that this sickness is the Wasting Cough.
- Likes blowing things up a little too much.
- Is very curt with humans, particularly if they are from in or around Cerastes.
- Division Leaders may be aware of the semi-false version of her backstory.

Changed her history around quite a bit. I think this one is more in keeping with the personality I gave her!

Haha, yeah. We seem to have settled on basically the same job class!

With mine, I was trying to think of things a guerilla fighter would use. Franziska is a spy, but if she had a shinobi-type skill-set then her true occupation would be too obvious. I'm still fine-tuning her special skills, since I came up with the background before I went into the job-class stuff. I'd probably introduce tear gas if I thought I could get away with it. Her melee is low because she understands basic techniques (having been a soldier) but her constitution is too poor to carry them out.

I went with molotov cocktails instead of grenades since from what I understand, the tech level is only up to primitive flintlock pistols? So I'm not sure if grenades would be too advanced. You'd probably have to ask a mod. 3nodding

Thanks, dude! I can't wait to see what you come up for with Marcel's backstory. I think I might tweak Franziska's skills a bit to make her more blatantly fire-based and offensive (as suits her semi-draconic nature), as opposed it giving her that level three support skill, so they'd probably be using their weapons techniques for very different purposes.

From what you have written down, the two have very different personalities, so it sounds like it would be really fun to play them off each other. Anyone thinking that the Asterion League is like a proper military would probably sent Franziska into fits.

Whew! After a lot of waffling over Franziska as a ranged character, I hit upon the idea that making her a fire mage would fit the character's emotional development a lot better. I know that weak sickly mage is a bit of a cliche, but... weak sicky spy mages aren't?

Heh. xd

Finally time to polish up my prompt response!

Haha, yeah, sorry. I was in the midst of editing this when I was called away from the computer. She should read as Offensive Magic now, although she has a pistol as a backup weapon (which is why she ends with 10 in magic and 5 in ranged).

That's largely because you mentioned that Ejderha were eager to get their hands on guns. Clearly if Franziska is gathering intel on combat techniques, that's one of the first things she'd seek out. Firing a gun isn't as physically intensive as drawing a bowstring or even throwing a grenade (kickback aside), so it's perfect for her.

"Ejderha" is murder on my spellcheck. I really need to enter it into my dictionary in word, XD;. I keep wanting to change in to Einherjar.

I'm glad everything works well within the Ejderha fraomework! I tried to stay away from describing parts of the army structure or army culture much, since I figure that's Piraya's schtick. Things that Franziska thinks about the army might not necessarily be true. She grew up with military parents, but she's been out of contact with her family for years.

The Red Claw stuff operates under the assumption that there were still Ejderha civilians left in the Battle of Nasaja, and that many of them are still there. The government regards those civilians as a threat because they are effectively outside the traditional Ejderha socio-political structure, and they have good reason to resent Ceydon's leadership (nevermind that Piraya herself was not a Ceydon crony, from what I can tell). They've got bigger problems to solve right now, but in the future, who knows?

If I got the character, I'd probably have to work out exactly how much she gets to know about Piraya over PM. : )

Thanks for the commentary! It was really helpful.

That was what I was thinking. I didn't want to set Franziska up as an antagonist so much as someone who takes an interest.

What would the general Ejderha view of a cross-species marriage like PIraya's BE, anyway? Would that bring some stigma for Piraya? Franziska might be more tolerant than some, since she's lived in a multi-racial city for so long, but still She's also spent the last few years bombing humans.



Oh, absolutely! I recognise that a concept like this requires a lot of OOC cooperation from both sides. I don't want to have her discover secrets that other players don't want out there, and conversely, I don't want other players discovering HER secret unless it's been discussed and pre-plotted (I don't want them randomly getting "a supicious feeling" about her either, for that matter. Franziska isn't perfect, and she WILL slip up occasionally, but she's also good at her job, and a lot of her shadyness can be put down to the terrorist stuff). 3nodding

This whole concept was inspired by the single sentence in the weaponry section about how Ejderha would love to have gun technology, and for the most part I'd like to keep her snooping to techniques (the vast majority of which she can't use for herself, because she's sickly). I thought it was a cool way to do a spy character without creating a Generic Badass Shinobi. The Red Claw stuff was added in because I didn't want her to go the Asterion League as a total n00b - just young enough to be not completely jaded.

Franziska might investigate, say, how someone makes their grenades, but for the most part she doesn't have any real reason to CARE about people's sketchy pasts. Not unless they're from Cerastes or they antagonize her. She's not necessarily there to sabotage or piss off the League. That would undermine her mission. smile

As the character progresses she might stay true to her original objectives, or she might be be drawn more to the League through her relationship with other characters. I really can't say how that would go at this point. It would have to develop through the narrative. xd