Air Guardian
Sept 22, 2013 16:37:53 GMT -5
Post by Quetzal on Sept 22, 2013 16:37:53 GMT -5
Full Name: Aether Nomos (ee-ther noh-mos)
Other name: The White Phoenix, The Angel, 'what's that funny looking bird over there'
Race: Guardian
Side: Air Branch
Birthplace: Once the planet has cooled enough for oceans to form, she as born at the same time as the other Guardians, coming into existence out of the remnants of the gas cloud that had formed the planet, the rest of which became the atmosphere. It is hard to say where she came into being; the land has since shifted so that the exact location is now in the middle of a sea, but the land itself is currently underneath the Air Citadel.
Age: It's hard to keep track when you were born before mortal life existed on the planet. All she knows is that she was born at the same time as the other Guardians, but she's actually nearly a billion years younger than the planet. A good estimate puts her at three and half billion years old.
Gender: Female
Birthday: Days and years were both shorter back then and there was no system of marking the passage of time. Besides, when you're three billion years old, that's too many birthdays to bother with.
Eyes: A bright yellow-white; like the stars.
Feathers: Pure white
Weight: She's not massless - she isn't just a bunch of intelligent photons floating about, after all - but she is incredibly light at just a few pounds.
Height: Three metres tall in her natural form, but this can vary. She doesn't like increasing her size, seeing that as unnecessary, and can't reach more than seven metres tall anyway. Like air, however, she can fit through the smallest of gaps. It is hard for her to maintain a physical form at a different size to her natural one, although not so difficult to maintain a form the size of an average blackbird.
Abilities: Air manipulation - Good for defence as it can keep things away, but a pretty poor offense. This can also enable her to lift objects using pockets of dense air or even vacuums. She moves with the air, not through it, as its helps her and guides her. By manipulating the charged particles in the air, she can create lightning. This does cannot cover a great distance, excepting during a storm, when she can use what is already there to control the storm.
Control over physical form - As stated before, she can make herself a little smaller, but can also shrink to look like a normal bird. As a means of defence, she can change how solid her physical form is with some concentration; by becoming less solid and more like a gas, this is in some ways a better shield for her than a tough skin as attacks go through her (mostly it's like going through custard unless she focuses really hard). The less solid she is, the less visible. This has its drawbacks; she can't touch anything unless she's solid.
Influences creatures of the air - She cannot control them, and wouldn't anyway purely on moral grounds. She does have a natural affinity for communication with anything that flies; birds, bugs, even dragons, especially of the Air Branch, to some extent. Talking to them is easy for her, so for smaller animals she will usually have a request granted.
Hard to kill - If killed, like the other Guardians she will simply be restored to life. Her body will dissolve into the air until it reforms again, guided by the wind to the Air Citadel.
Preferred Weapon(s): Lightning or the air. She avoids conflict where she can, and if it's unavoidable, she prefers not to use physical attacks with claws or beaks.
Appearance: Three metres tall in her natural form, Aether's tail adds an extra couple of metres to her height. Her wingspan stretched to roughly seven metres. Her body has a sleek, elegant look to it, graceful and flowing like the wind. There is an obvious sense of power to that look, however, the grace being the same sort of deadly swiftness as that of the elves. Her pale yellow beak is streamlined and curves to a deadly point, her clawed feet armed with a crushing grip and piercing claws. Muscle is built strongly around her, especially at her shoulders to power her wings. She resembles a thin, slightly longer necked eagle in general shape. Her feathers are unlike an eagles', however. They are remarkably soft and silky, forming a tight lock which both allows air to pass along uninhibited to speed up her flight and acts as waterproofing. These soft feathers are pure white. Due to her own large size, they are larger than an average birds' feathers, and the thin multi-faceted layer on each one diffracts light, glittering all colours of the spectrum when struck with white light, similar to lots of tiny versions of rainbows formed by drops of oil on water. Back when she was a more common sight, these shimmering richly soft feathers were thought to bring great luck to whoever found them.
Her eyes shine with the same bright yellow of aging stars. This is not the same yellow as the eyes of other birds of prey, but has a twinkling white quality to them. They shine when struck by light at night much like the eyes of a cat. It is difficult to show facial expressions when you have a beak, so aside from the limited information from her eyes, it is rather difficult to gauge how she is feeling. Her gaze is warm enough to make her general look one of quiet interest. From the top of her head and some way down her neck sprouts a crown of longer feathers. These appear disorderly against the rest of her sleek form. Constantly windswept, the larger and fluffier feathers have a touch of colour to them. Reds, greens, blues, purples; the feathers making up the crest is not great in number but hosts representatives from all over the visible optical spectrum. Her tail feathers are similar in colour, but are more ordered. Her tail is just as flowing as the rest of her, guiding her through the air.
Her great wings have great strength. While she does not weigh much, their power enables her to fly faster than any other Guardian. Instead of flying through the air, she flies with it, using her kinship with it to shift the air around her to negate air resistance. The additional strength of her wings also means she can carry heavy loads including people if she so wished, although this is rare. The only things she will carry are any objects such as books she requires. These she carries in her talons. They appear like polished silver but are more like stainless steel in properties. Her feet are the only part of her body aside from her eyes and beak not covered in feathers. Here her bare pale pink skin is exposed, only here it is rough and tougher than under her feathers.
Aether's connections to the air enables her physical form to act like the air, too. She can expand and grow, although the limit to this is about seven metres tall. Far easier is shrinking. A size equal to that of a blackbird is her favourite and most comfortable aside from her natural size. Another air-like quality she can grant herself is not being a solid. While she can't just dissolve herself, this is still very useful. It isn't hard to give herself the solidity of, say, custard, which would slow a hit to her but still keep her solid. If she really stretches herself, she can manage to be the same consistency as water. Naturally this makes things able to go straight through her easily. There are a few catches, however. Firstly, the less solid she makes herself, the less visible she is. By the same she reaches the consistency of water she is no more than a faint glimmer. This can of course be useful if she does not want to be seen, but most of the time being visible is a good thing to her. The main issue with this ability is that things including attacks may pass through her, true, but she also passes through other things. Physical combat is therefore nigh on impossible using limited solidity as a tactic. Being hit by her in this state would be like being splashed. She can pass through walls and floors, but this is a slow process just as water takes a long time to seep through things. It is far easier for her to use the same method wind does and seek out a small crack before forcing herself through.
Personality: Aether is a bit of a loner. It isn't that she doesn't care about others, it's simply that she's very introverted and distant. She is quite the dreamer, her head often 'in the clouds', so to speak. Her thoughts are rarely wasted, however. She thinks big thoughts about how to better the world. Big decisions take much consideration for her, but smaller ones are done without thinking. At times she is hasty and quick to act, other times much more thoughtful. When in a thoughtful mood, she can isolate herself, finding people to be an unwelcome distraction. The only people she is truly never unwilling to speak with are the other Guardians. With everyone else, it can take a while to earn her complete trust but she will remain fiercely loyal to all she has befriended. To those she does not trust, she will still be kind towards. It is in her nature to be nice to everything. Her empathy is great, enabling her to see things from just about anyone's perspective and understand their actions. This helps her forgive people easily. Her trust is more important than her empathy when it does come to making allies. Just understanding someone won't make her trust them. She will only feel completely comfortable around a person after spending a lot of time with them, something which is hard to do since she likes (and has to, as a Guardian) to move between places a lot. The result is that she has few friends but many acquaintances.
Despite a slow growth of trust, Aether is slow to anger as her empathetic nature makes her believe anyone can be good. While she will not trust people with knowledge, favours or her thoughts and feelings, she will let things slide and as such is normally quite comfortable. She has a fairly serious and calm nature. She is not one to joke around, often not even getting it when people do try making jokes around her. Ordinarily, she will maintain this laid-back and relaxed yet serious nature, but there are some things that make her angry. A free spirit, things restricting freedom such as war or unjust laws will get her in a rage abnormally quickly. Her wrath is not a pretty sight. The calmness leaves her but the seriousness does not. Like the air, she becomes chaotic and energetic. Air can be a destructive element as the others can, this side to her nature shown in a rage. Full force gales will be hurled randomly, she will shout and attack with lightning-fast reflexes and actual lightning, and it will take a lot to calm her from this rage. She will barely think when angry, flattening friends and foe alike. She is capable of far more horrible destruction; the ability to manipulate air enables her to vacate air from an area, say a person, or even worse things - a lot of air in a small place means a lot of pressure. These means of damage are rarely used as they are too clever and precise for her rage and are so terrible she feels deeply troubled every time she attempts them. It is very rare that she kills people, but over the billions of years she has been alive the few she has killed in this way stay with her in her memories to cause great guilt. She cares about others, but has become quite detached from mortals after seeing them evolve, develop and die, making them seem less significant to her despite her wanting them to be happy.
--->Likes: Music, peace, friendship, flying, freedom, fairness, forgiveness
--->Dislikes: Betrayal, lying, underground, obnoxiousness
--->Strengths: Fast, agile, hard to hit, empathetic
--->Weakness: Physical combat, attacks are either inprecice (it's hard to target a hurricane at just the one person) or horrible (your lungs have air in them) so she avoids them, weakens when separated from fresh air such as underground or in stuffy rooms
Family: She is not genetically related to anything or anyone, but the other Guardians could be considered her family, and presumably something made her.
History: Upon creation, Aether found herself a confused creature alone in the skies. She came into being at the same time as the other Guardians, awakening out of condensed air in the atmosphere. The earth was barren, no plants creeping out of the seas, but the air began to stir with her wingbeats. She found the sea, meeting with the Water Guardian. It was there she discovered she was not alone, and saw the life stirring in the seas. She did not speak with him much since the bubbles and gasses absorbed in the waters were not enough to make her fully comfortable underwater, he could not join her in the skies, and she had business elsewhere. The Earth Guardian she found next, showing her plants that had made their way up the shores to the land. She was upset that there was no life in the skies. After a time, she found that she could use the wind to help the plants - their seeds would travel a long way, and she could spread them across the land. This brought her great joy. It was around this time that she found the other two Guardians, Ender and Inferno. All the Guardians she got along well with, a good thing as there was little to do to pass the time on the evolving planet. Animals stepped onto the land, and some took to the skies, much to her delight. She would fly with all creatures of the air happily.
Aether spent the years watching life on the planet grow and spread. Every now and then, something would dominate the earth, but after a few million years at best something would happen to destroy every last one of them, and life would rerun this cycle. The course of nature and the running of the world are completely beyond her control. She merely acted as an observer, learning, wondering what she was supposed to do, and occasionally finding a way to help in something she thought was right.
Then the dwarves came into existence, the first people of Alagaesia. Dragons lived there too, both races the most intelligent species Aether had ever seen. If there were some sort of grand scheme, this was the best dominant race she had seen yet. Being able to appear as a small bird, she was present at a great multitude of important events in history without anyone aware of her. She watched the dwarvern civilization swell, then turned her attention to the elves, Grey Folk, men and urgals as they too arrived. She worried that their extinction might be each other, but that never came to pass. The intelligent races spread far and wide, and she saw history repeat itself only with a better designed, fine tuned engine. She started to wonder if the gods had been experimenting and maybe had finally got it right. What she did know for certain by now was that she was there to guard the element of air. This role she did her best to stick to, although she did often wonder why she was alive at all.
A stir began between the elves and the dragons. She watched over Du Weldenvarden after hearing of an elf killing a dragon, eventually watching in a small size Eragon I becoming the first Rider. Her life seemed to have new purpose as she watched he and his dragon learn, spreading the Rider Order and making peace. This filled her with glee and hope. Perhaps this civilization could survive after all, if it could survive its own kind. Finally the Rider Branches were formed, and she revealed herself to the first Elder of the Air Branch. This was the first time all the Guardian's true identity was known by more than just the odd person they befriended. Together, she and her Elder built the Air Citadel over her birthplace where the power of air was strongest. Aether diligently worked hard as a Guardian. She protected the Citadel, made peace, taught, learned, and helped people. She had never had a true connection to the mortal world before, and it was over all too quickly. She protested the sealing of the Branches, but it was done nonetheless. Knowledge of her was lost along with the knowledge of the Branches. Upon the Branches' sealing, she dissolved back into the air, existing only as a haze of life drifting unconsciously along the wind.
At long last the Rider Branches were unsealed. The air forming Aether reformed, condensing back into her physical form. Not wanting to jump straight back into things, she took some time to get her bearings and learn about what had changed in her absence before deciding to talk with the other Guardians.
Other name: The White Phoenix, The Angel, 'what's that funny looking bird over there'
Race: Guardian
Side: Air Branch
Birthplace: Once the planet has cooled enough for oceans to form, she as born at the same time as the other Guardians, coming into existence out of the remnants of the gas cloud that had formed the planet, the rest of which became the atmosphere. It is hard to say where she came into being; the land has since shifted so that the exact location is now in the middle of a sea, but the land itself is currently underneath the Air Citadel.
Age: It's hard to keep track when you were born before mortal life existed on the planet. All she knows is that she was born at the same time as the other Guardians, but she's actually nearly a billion years younger than the planet. A good estimate puts her at three and half billion years old.
Gender: Female
Birthday: Days and years were both shorter back then and there was no system of marking the passage of time. Besides, when you're three billion years old, that's too many birthdays to bother with.
Eyes: A bright yellow-white; like the stars.
Feathers: Pure white
Weight: She's not massless - she isn't just a bunch of intelligent photons floating about, after all - but she is incredibly light at just a few pounds.
Height: Three metres tall in her natural form, but this can vary. She doesn't like increasing her size, seeing that as unnecessary, and can't reach more than seven metres tall anyway. Like air, however, she can fit through the smallest of gaps. It is hard for her to maintain a physical form at a different size to her natural one, although not so difficult to maintain a form the size of an average blackbird.
Abilities: Air manipulation - Good for defence as it can keep things away, but a pretty poor offense. This can also enable her to lift objects using pockets of dense air or even vacuums. She moves with the air, not through it, as its helps her and guides her. By manipulating the charged particles in the air, she can create lightning. This does cannot cover a great distance, excepting during a storm, when she can use what is already there to control the storm.
Control over physical form - As stated before, she can make herself a little smaller, but can also shrink to look like a normal bird. As a means of defence, she can change how solid her physical form is with some concentration; by becoming less solid and more like a gas, this is in some ways a better shield for her than a tough skin as attacks go through her (mostly it's like going through custard unless she focuses really hard). The less solid she is, the less visible. This has its drawbacks; she can't touch anything unless she's solid.
Influences creatures of the air - She cannot control them, and wouldn't anyway purely on moral grounds. She does have a natural affinity for communication with anything that flies; birds, bugs, even dragons, especially of the Air Branch, to some extent. Talking to them is easy for her, so for smaller animals she will usually have a request granted.
Hard to kill - If killed, like the other Guardians she will simply be restored to life. Her body will dissolve into the air until it reforms again, guided by the wind to the Air Citadel.
Preferred Weapon(s): Lightning or the air. She avoids conflict where she can, and if it's unavoidable, she prefers not to use physical attacks with claws or beaks.
Appearance: Three metres tall in her natural form, Aether's tail adds an extra couple of metres to her height. Her wingspan stretched to roughly seven metres. Her body has a sleek, elegant look to it, graceful and flowing like the wind. There is an obvious sense of power to that look, however, the grace being the same sort of deadly swiftness as that of the elves. Her pale yellow beak is streamlined and curves to a deadly point, her clawed feet armed with a crushing grip and piercing claws. Muscle is built strongly around her, especially at her shoulders to power her wings. She resembles a thin, slightly longer necked eagle in general shape. Her feathers are unlike an eagles', however. They are remarkably soft and silky, forming a tight lock which both allows air to pass along uninhibited to speed up her flight and acts as waterproofing. These soft feathers are pure white. Due to her own large size, they are larger than an average birds' feathers, and the thin multi-faceted layer on each one diffracts light, glittering all colours of the spectrum when struck with white light, similar to lots of tiny versions of rainbows formed by drops of oil on water. Back when she was a more common sight, these shimmering richly soft feathers were thought to bring great luck to whoever found them.
Her eyes shine with the same bright yellow of aging stars. This is not the same yellow as the eyes of other birds of prey, but has a twinkling white quality to them. They shine when struck by light at night much like the eyes of a cat. It is difficult to show facial expressions when you have a beak, so aside from the limited information from her eyes, it is rather difficult to gauge how she is feeling. Her gaze is warm enough to make her general look one of quiet interest. From the top of her head and some way down her neck sprouts a crown of longer feathers. These appear disorderly against the rest of her sleek form. Constantly windswept, the larger and fluffier feathers have a touch of colour to them. Reds, greens, blues, purples; the feathers making up the crest is not great in number but hosts representatives from all over the visible optical spectrum. Her tail feathers are similar in colour, but are more ordered. Her tail is just as flowing as the rest of her, guiding her through the air.
Her great wings have great strength. While she does not weigh much, their power enables her to fly faster than any other Guardian. Instead of flying through the air, she flies with it, using her kinship with it to shift the air around her to negate air resistance. The additional strength of her wings also means she can carry heavy loads including people if she so wished, although this is rare. The only things she will carry are any objects such as books she requires. These she carries in her talons. They appear like polished silver but are more like stainless steel in properties. Her feet are the only part of her body aside from her eyes and beak not covered in feathers. Here her bare pale pink skin is exposed, only here it is rough and tougher than under her feathers.
Aether's connections to the air enables her physical form to act like the air, too. She can expand and grow, although the limit to this is about seven metres tall. Far easier is shrinking. A size equal to that of a blackbird is her favourite and most comfortable aside from her natural size. Another air-like quality she can grant herself is not being a solid. While she can't just dissolve herself, this is still very useful. It isn't hard to give herself the solidity of, say, custard, which would slow a hit to her but still keep her solid. If she really stretches herself, she can manage to be the same consistency as water. Naturally this makes things able to go straight through her easily. There are a few catches, however. Firstly, the less solid she makes herself, the less visible she is. By the same she reaches the consistency of water she is no more than a faint glimmer. This can of course be useful if she does not want to be seen, but most of the time being visible is a good thing to her. The main issue with this ability is that things including attacks may pass through her, true, but she also passes through other things. Physical combat is therefore nigh on impossible using limited solidity as a tactic. Being hit by her in this state would be like being splashed. She can pass through walls and floors, but this is a slow process just as water takes a long time to seep through things. It is far easier for her to use the same method wind does and seek out a small crack before forcing herself through.
Personality: Aether is a bit of a loner. It isn't that she doesn't care about others, it's simply that she's very introverted and distant. She is quite the dreamer, her head often 'in the clouds', so to speak. Her thoughts are rarely wasted, however. She thinks big thoughts about how to better the world. Big decisions take much consideration for her, but smaller ones are done without thinking. At times she is hasty and quick to act, other times much more thoughtful. When in a thoughtful mood, she can isolate herself, finding people to be an unwelcome distraction. The only people she is truly never unwilling to speak with are the other Guardians. With everyone else, it can take a while to earn her complete trust but she will remain fiercely loyal to all she has befriended. To those she does not trust, she will still be kind towards. It is in her nature to be nice to everything. Her empathy is great, enabling her to see things from just about anyone's perspective and understand their actions. This helps her forgive people easily. Her trust is more important than her empathy when it does come to making allies. Just understanding someone won't make her trust them. She will only feel completely comfortable around a person after spending a lot of time with them, something which is hard to do since she likes (and has to, as a Guardian) to move between places a lot. The result is that she has few friends but many acquaintances.
Despite a slow growth of trust, Aether is slow to anger as her empathetic nature makes her believe anyone can be good. While she will not trust people with knowledge, favours or her thoughts and feelings, she will let things slide and as such is normally quite comfortable. She has a fairly serious and calm nature. She is not one to joke around, often not even getting it when people do try making jokes around her. Ordinarily, she will maintain this laid-back and relaxed yet serious nature, but there are some things that make her angry. A free spirit, things restricting freedom such as war or unjust laws will get her in a rage abnormally quickly. Her wrath is not a pretty sight. The calmness leaves her but the seriousness does not. Like the air, she becomes chaotic and energetic. Air can be a destructive element as the others can, this side to her nature shown in a rage. Full force gales will be hurled randomly, she will shout and attack with lightning-fast reflexes and actual lightning, and it will take a lot to calm her from this rage. She will barely think when angry, flattening friends and foe alike. She is capable of far more horrible destruction; the ability to manipulate air enables her to vacate air from an area, say a person, or even worse things - a lot of air in a small place means a lot of pressure. These means of damage are rarely used as they are too clever and precise for her rage and are so terrible she feels deeply troubled every time she attempts them. It is very rare that she kills people, but over the billions of years she has been alive the few she has killed in this way stay with her in her memories to cause great guilt. She cares about others, but has become quite detached from mortals after seeing them evolve, develop and die, making them seem less significant to her despite her wanting them to be happy.
--->Likes: Music, peace, friendship, flying, freedom, fairness, forgiveness
--->Dislikes: Betrayal, lying, underground, obnoxiousness
--->Strengths: Fast, agile, hard to hit, empathetic
--->Weakness: Physical combat, attacks are either inprecice (it's hard to target a hurricane at just the one person) or horrible (your lungs have air in them) so she avoids them, weakens when separated from fresh air such as underground or in stuffy rooms
Family: She is not genetically related to anything or anyone, but the other Guardians could be considered her family, and presumably something made her.
History: Upon creation, Aether found herself a confused creature alone in the skies. She came into being at the same time as the other Guardians, awakening out of condensed air in the atmosphere. The earth was barren, no plants creeping out of the seas, but the air began to stir with her wingbeats. She found the sea, meeting with the Water Guardian. It was there she discovered she was not alone, and saw the life stirring in the seas. She did not speak with him much since the bubbles and gasses absorbed in the waters were not enough to make her fully comfortable underwater, he could not join her in the skies, and she had business elsewhere. The Earth Guardian she found next, showing her plants that had made their way up the shores to the land. She was upset that there was no life in the skies. After a time, she found that she could use the wind to help the plants - their seeds would travel a long way, and she could spread them across the land. This brought her great joy. It was around this time that she found the other two Guardians, Ender and Inferno. All the Guardians she got along well with, a good thing as there was little to do to pass the time on the evolving planet. Animals stepped onto the land, and some took to the skies, much to her delight. She would fly with all creatures of the air happily.
Aether spent the years watching life on the planet grow and spread. Every now and then, something would dominate the earth, but after a few million years at best something would happen to destroy every last one of them, and life would rerun this cycle. The course of nature and the running of the world are completely beyond her control. She merely acted as an observer, learning, wondering what she was supposed to do, and occasionally finding a way to help in something she thought was right.
Then the dwarves came into existence, the first people of Alagaesia. Dragons lived there too, both races the most intelligent species Aether had ever seen. If there were some sort of grand scheme, this was the best dominant race she had seen yet. Being able to appear as a small bird, she was present at a great multitude of important events in history without anyone aware of her. She watched the dwarvern civilization swell, then turned her attention to the elves, Grey Folk, men and urgals as they too arrived. She worried that their extinction might be each other, but that never came to pass. The intelligent races spread far and wide, and she saw history repeat itself only with a better designed, fine tuned engine. She started to wonder if the gods had been experimenting and maybe had finally got it right. What she did know for certain by now was that she was there to guard the element of air. This role she did her best to stick to, although she did often wonder why she was alive at all.
A stir began between the elves and the dragons. She watched over Du Weldenvarden after hearing of an elf killing a dragon, eventually watching in a small size Eragon I becoming the first Rider. Her life seemed to have new purpose as she watched he and his dragon learn, spreading the Rider Order and making peace. This filled her with glee and hope. Perhaps this civilization could survive after all, if it could survive its own kind. Finally the Rider Branches were formed, and she revealed herself to the first Elder of the Air Branch. This was the first time all the Guardian's true identity was known by more than just the odd person they befriended. Together, she and her Elder built the Air Citadel over her birthplace where the power of air was strongest. Aether diligently worked hard as a Guardian. She protected the Citadel, made peace, taught, learned, and helped people. She had never had a true connection to the mortal world before, and it was over all too quickly. She protested the sealing of the Branches, but it was done nonetheless. Knowledge of her was lost along with the knowledge of the Branches. Upon the Branches' sealing, she dissolved back into the air, existing only as a haze of life drifting unconsciously along the wind.
At long last the Rider Branches were unsealed. The air forming Aether reformed, condensing back into her physical form. Not wanting to jump straight back into things, she took some time to get her bearings and learn about what had changed in her absence before deciding to talk with the other Guardians.
