Verasol
Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2022 10:06 am
Verasol
Arkanai
5'7", Athletic
6 Frost 4620 (21)
Introduction
Verasol was born as all healthy Arkanai are, brought into this life within the divine basin of Ganeron. Her parents were researchers. Her mother, Syestsulia, was a theologian, and her father, Ashyrok, was an Ecology professor at Gothen University. After she was born, their family stayed in Ganeron until Vera was 12, living with extended family while her father completed a long-term research project and accompanying thesis in hopes to return back to Gothenburg and ensure a grant for his next endeavor. Periodically Ashyrok left them throughout the year to return to academia, often at the end of Glade and would return sometime at the end of Searing. It was during his period of absences, in the summer, when Vera would spend most of her time with her cousins and grandparents while her mother tended to the local temples and participated in community outreach.
In Ganeron, Verasol learned about Arkanai culture and history, and their connection to Saryn, Venadak, Malek, and Kyrikain. She found the gods an endless source of intrigue, but it was the heavy-handed opinions of those around her that turned her off from the same devout dedication of her mother. Vera looked instead to the tangible, the local flora and fauna, to enjoy her free time. She yearned to paint or sketch them, but every effort fell short of her own need for perfection. Even from a young age, she struggled with failure. Her endeavors in art were quickly cast aside but enjoying the beauty of nature remained a constant.
For years even before her arrival, her mother and father had carved a name for themselves in the predominantly human city of Lorien. Ashyrok became the first full-blooded Arkanai to be accepted as a professor in the past century and the only Arkanai to ever exist in his department. Syestsulia found success socially and had become a sort of figurehead for the non-humans living in the East End. It many ways Lorien had been unforgiving for the couple, but it had also been bountiful. They only ever wished the same for their daughter.
When her father's research was finally completed, it was time to return to the home they had set aside when Syestsulia fell pregnant. The summer after Versaol turned twelve, they joined her father when he left Ganeron, saying goodbye to only life the girl had ever known. What replaced the magical hideaway in the North was a dark, dreary land filled with strange entities, inconceivable technology, and a house that couldn't feel less like a home.
From then on, she experienced a great deal of scrutiny from her neighbors and especially other children her age. She was bullied relentlessly, doubting her confidence in a land whose customs and culture were still so unfamiliar. Verasol, who had once been a well-liked and sociable child, suddenly withdrew, becoming introverted and reluctant as she entered her adolescence. Her mother's social acceptance was alien to her and inspired secret moments of jealousy, so Vera's relationship with her father improved. She started confiding in Ashyrok regularly, and in turn, he suggested solace in Academia.
On the days he was due to go to the University, Ashyrok would take her to the Archive where she could spend her evenings safe and out of trouble. The stacks were a sanctuary and having a place to heal eventually allowed Vera to toughen up in her own way. After reading about the trials of heroes regularly, the poor taunting of school children lost their touch. She started to regain her confidence and used those days to educate herself about the citizenship she had so regretfully inherited.
She garnered a basic knowledge of societal expectation and the land surrounding. She learned of Hallows. She read about The Omen, and He Who Is Returning. She gathered information about the Kindred and found herself... curious. Why, for instance, where so many diseased and blackened when Von Rabe flew white and unblemished? Outside of the religious propaganda she came across, Vera found no one who knew the answers to her questions- and even fewer willing to find out. It was at that point that her lifelong interest in nature expanded and evolved, for as she gained more knowledge of the world around her, the more she realized what was missing.
Others, humans the most grievous offenders, were apt to settle. Anything unfamiliar, uncomfortable, horrific, was valued in Rein only for how deadly or useful its body was, with any further scientific or humane explanation ignored in favor of religious or political fortuity. Vera wanted to see a creature's connection to the world or even to the divine, not because she was told it, but because she could prove it. By the time she was 16, she decided she would enroll in university and become the first credible researcher in the overlooked and disregarded field of cryptozoology. It has since remained a goal of hers to become a pioneer in this subculture of science.