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Name: Aya Hikasa
Age: 26
Class: Laguz (Beast)
Special: Wolf
Character Skill: Wildform
Affinity:
 
Personal Fault: Reality Also Has Defeats: When under 50% HP, -15 Eva.
Personal Skill: Exulting Passion: If an ally is reduced to 0 HP within 2 spaces of Aya, gain +1 to the Beast Gauge.
Personal Skill: Follow My Way: When initiating attack on other Beast Laguz, +15 Crit.
/ Personal Skill: Make My Story: If the opponent has 100% HP, deal +2 damage.
 
Preferred Stats: Strength, Speed
Transformation Type: Receive +3 Beast Gauge on reducing an enemy to 0 HP.
 
Level: 5   

Initial Stats - Progression Spent: (335%/335%)
Transformation Bonuses: +3 STR, +3 SKL, +1 DEF, +3 SPD

HP: 20 (60%) [+5]
STR: 2 (60%) [+5]
MAG: 0 (0%)
SKL: 1 (50%) [+2]
LCK: 1 (15%)
DEF: 1 (50%) [+3]
RES: 1 (45%)
SPD: 1 (55%) [+5]
 
CON: 5
AID: 4
MOV: 5

Inventory:
Name  | Type ( ) |Rng|Wt| Mt | Hit | Cr | Ql
Claws  |     ---    |  1  |  - |  4 |  80 |  0 | -
Wildflower (3/3)

Bio:
There are many great individuals, and great families behind them in the history of the continent; great Laguz whose ancestors participated in the War of the Walkers and won much valor and acclaim, great thinkers who inscribed their names into history not with blood but with words and thoughts, the mind's weapons in the arena of debate where race did not rear its ugly head, great merchants who traveled the seas, bringing stories back from far-off lands and exotic animals and plants that the likes of their neighbors knew naught of, or great rulers, presiding over times of peace, uniting humans and Laguz under the same banner and bringing about untold ages of prosperity. Many of those names, for good or ill, have been carved into the hearts of Laguz and human alike, and many of them will be found in history for years, if not centuries to come.

The Hikasa family was not one of them.

Born in a backwater village in Geumho, Aya knew not much about the world beyond the river that bounded her childhood home. Traders scarcely visited their home village- they were no great craftsmen- and then only to exchange the essentials for grain grown here, which would inevitably be traded off to the humans who had more use for it. Aya's family were farmers, eagerly taking on the livelihood for somewhere stable to stay and friends to count on, having emerged from the Laguz who had yet to embrace settled life. For the most part, day in, day out, Aya's life was much the same; wake up early, check on the harvest, help her parents and older siblings go hunting for today's meals, eat at midday, help out the neighbors or maintain the homestead in the afternoon, rest for a while, meet with the rest of the village and then sleep to repeat it all over again in the morning. Nobody really thought anything of it; their homeland was best, after all, and there was no need to head out even as far as Daeson, let alone abroad, into the great unknown. Aya was no different, at first.

As she grew into her adolescent years, things changed. Her village grew larger, traders passing by more and more often. Her family had fallen upon hard times; their many children, the fact that they made little off selling the grain they grew and the general lack of opportunities at home, left them with very little to supply any of them. Aya took the initiative; approaching one of the traders, she asked them if there was any way she could work for them, if only to earn a little more money to send home to her family. Though her mother and father were sad, they knew, deep down, Aya had done the right thing; this was what needed to happen if their family was to survive the winters. So, Aya went off with the traders as a porter, helping to load and unload grain, and then as a guard for when the caravans carried valuable cargo. The money she earned, she sent much of it back home. This arrangement continued for a while, where Aya travelled the world with these traders, venturing not just to the city of Daeson, but over the border to Dashun and great Pinguo, into Sampia and even into unfriendly Morcia, though only for a while.

At first, Aya grew homesick, as all of her kind did. Indeed, many of her fellow Laguz on the caravan were often homesick on the long months away. However, eventually, Aya grew to love the world around her; the experiences of Laguz who were not from the smallest, most insignificant backwaters, humans (who by halves fascinated her and irritated her), the cultures she saw. She returned the first couple of times to her village, each time regaling her family with constant tales of the world beyond, but eventually, her mother kindly advised her to seek what she truly loved, after one final visit home. Aya had found something that was hers, the great wanderlust, the desire to explore. Setting out with provisions to last her a long while, Aya said one final goodbye, promising to write every so often and maybe, possibly, return one day, to her small corner of Geumho. Setting out to journey on her own this time, Aya often took on weird, odd jobs to support herself; after all, simply because she was a Laguz who could hunt her food did not mean she didn't need wrappings for the coldest tops where even her fur could not protect her, or ropes and supplies to ascend and descend the rockiest walls that even her legs could not carry her up, and the occasional bandage and herbs to heal her wounds, for not all of her travels were peaceful, and Aya had to learn to fight well to survive in some of the rougher corners of the world. And, from time to time, she just wanted something nice from places she'd been. All in all, travel was not cheap, and the lack of a constant job, though not wearing on her idealism, wore on her wallet.

The need for money drew Aya towards King Himos' offer of payment for mercenary jobs. Given the significant reward, and the prospect of helping a fellow Laguz, what reason did Aya have not to offer her helping hand?

Name: Karin Linden
Class: Rider Trainee -> Cavalier -> Duke Knight
Character Skill: Blossom
Affinity: crying
 
Personal Fault: Rioting Emotion: -15 EVA for one turn when an ally is downed.
Personal Skill: Go The Distance: If foe initiates attack on Karin and Karin can counter, +10 Crit.
/ Personal Skill: Undeniable Passion: Under 50% health, gain +15 Hit.
// Personal Skill: Smiling Heroine: If foe is at 100% health, +4 additional damage.
Preferred Stats: Strength, Speed, Skill
 
Weapon Profs: Lance (E)
 
Level: 1 (Trainee)
Total Level: 1
 
Initial Stats - Progression Spent: (330%/330%)
 
HP: 18 (70%)
STR: 4 (65%) [+2]
MAG: 0 (0%)
SKL: 4 (60%) [+1]
LCK: 2 (10%)
DEF: 3 (50%)
RES: 1 (10%)
SPD: 3 (65%) [+1]
 
CON: 5 [+14 mounted]
AID: 4 [+14 mounted]
MOV: 4 [+2 mounted]
 
Starting Weapon: Slim Lance
 
Bio:
Twenty years ago, the heroes who closed the Waygate and so ended the Chaos War came upon the fisherman's town of Undath, fighting their way through the village to escape their pursuers. One of the opponents the heroes faced was a young mage, trembling in her boots as the heroes defeated her allies, pressganged into service to apprehend the heroes, then escaped fugitives. However, the young girl did not face the fate that her superiors or her allies did for one of the heroes, a former pirate named Kyle, deciding he didn't want to kill an opponent so unwilling to fight, let her live and return to her people. That day, she was lucky; she was the only survivor of the forces that were pursuing the future heroes of the world, having been given the opportunity to return home, and so she lived to see the results of their struggle; she lived to see both the saving of the world and the chaos that resulted as Ixion fell apart in the aftermath.
 
In time, she settled down, moving to Kizamo to escape the chaos of Ixion's fracturing. Later, she would meet the man who would become her husband and the father of her child in one of the desert cities she eventually settled down in. However, she never stopped being curious as to what became of the people who saved her life that day, and so, even in the months before she gave birth to her daughter, she searched tirelessly for what became of them, for scraps of information, if nothing else to someday find the people who saved her life and thank them rightly. After all, she owed everything she had now to them; her life, her husband, her unborn child. It was only natural she'd try to find out about them, and this quest eventually fell to her daughter Karin, the mage, by now settled peacefully in her new life in Kizamo, content simply to take the opportunity when it arose rather than chase it, in order to raise her child.
 
After Karin was born, her home situation was somewhat tenuous. Her father was away on work very often- he, coincidentally, worked for the air transportation service Kyle ran- and so Karin's mother was left to raise her child alone for long periods, putting her quest on hold. She was content, albeit sometimes troubled- it was difficult to be an essentially single mother-, but she did her best to be a good mother to young Karin. She raised her daughter on the stories she'd uncovered, telling her of the great heroes whose path she had crossed ever so briefly. Most of all, however, she raised Karin to be generous, hardworking and kind towards others; for her, the essentials of being a good person, even a hero. The young girl was inspired by the values her mother had instilled in her and her stories. She knew even from childhood that she wished to be a great hero, and so sought to emulate the best heroes she could find, the ones who saved her mother's life and the ones who the world now held on a pedestal.
 
She scoured her mother's library and anywhere she could reach for knowledge on her idols. As she grew older and more independent, she spent long hours poring over and learning the very bases of magic to understand the papers of the legendary Catherine Hirana, sleeping on manuscripts of swordsmanship and magic manuals from the martial school Albert and Ketsuki ran in the mountains, spending hours reading up on Lilly's book of songs and history, even studying books on the artifacts that Harold Coronas, famed adventurer-archaeologist, had recovered from ancient ruins in the desert. On the martial manuals, she even began to teach herself their movements and the skills they taught, causing a few accidents. In the process, the girl gained an analytic eye, honing her skill and logging down all that she learned in the hopes of using it to improve herself to become the hero she wanted to be. Her mother encouraged her to chase her dreams, trying her best to provide for Karin's education in any case; if nothing else, it would give her something to live comfortably off of later in life.
 
She eventually realised, after long hours of study and practice and weeks of journeying, that her talent lay not in anything her heroes had done. She lacked the aptitude to be even a basic mage, let alone one like the legends she read about, and the elegant swordsmanship Ketsuki practiced was something Karin could not do. She could not fly a wyvern, nor play magical music, nor take stealthily to the shadows. She had an analytic eye and encyclopedic knowledge from many months of study, and a learned insight honed through seeing what could and could not be done, but she was just not cut out to be just like her heroes, in the end. Karin gave up her efforts to completely emulate her heroes, but neither her respect for them nor her knowledge was diminished. Her knowledge made her fit to be a scholar or at least be in training to be one, but she felt the life of a scholar was beyond her, her confidence in her abilities not quite as high as one might imagine.
 
The urge to be a hero still remained in Karin's heart, not because she wanted the glory and the fame that the heroes of Ixion had attained, but because Karin wanted to be the type of person who had inspired others, just as her heroes inspired her. Perhaps, one day, Karin hoped, she would be the kind of person who brought hope to others by their very presence. She eventually became trained as a cavalier, preparing to help assist the protection of Kizamo from the monsters of the desert; this was no heroic post, but Karin figured it was a way to help others in her own small, little way. However, news came of a hidden treasure in the great city of Auroch. Having never once been to Auroch before and her head still filled with the exploits of certain archaeologists, Karin's curiosity was piqued. She ventured out to Auroch, hoping to see the wonders of the great city for herself and to investigate the treasure; and perhaps, a lingering hope to have an adventure of her own, to tell tales of, just as her mother had told her stories as a young child.
 
Also, if the treasure was valuable? The Linden family got by, after all. But, perhaps, such a treasure would be a great way for Karin to thank her mother for being there for her, all those years, perhaps by letting her and their family live well. It seemed a fitting show of gratitude.