Character concept of the week (Week 5, 2025) - Paladin

[Masked Insanity]

I'll post a new concept each week for as long as I care, or until my dance card completely fills up. You can take a look at previous concepts here (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=362643.0) so if this week does not tickle your fancy, feel free to take a look there.



Description:

An intense-looking female paladin of the Cleansing Light, standing just five feet tall but seeming larger in the plate-and-mail armor of the order. Like most cult priests, she wears pure, shocking white linen clothes, accented with yellow. Her hair is black and cut in a simple bowl-cut. When out of armor (a rarity even in civilized surroundings, speaking to the militancy of the cult), she follows the severe, restrictive style favored by th e Cleansing Light cult, with white linen cloth covering her from collar to toe even in the warm weather of Calsia

Her skin is weather-beaten bronze, with a few black freckles somewhat contrasting the businesslike, no-nonsense optics her creed imposes. Her nose is sharp and slightly hawkish, and her cheekbones pronounced - a face that could be called “full of character” if the observer was gentle, and “mannish” if they were not.

In contrast, though, her voice is soft and melodic, easily entering the soprano range. She speaks several languages fluently and at the rare moments she lets down her otherwise constant mental guard, enjoys wordplay and banter.

Background:

Sareet is a foundling left at the flame shrine of the Cleansing Light in the city of Calsia either immediately after birth or at the most some days after. As is tradition in her church, she was assigned an adoptive family and raised as a penitent to absolve her family for abandoning a child.

Most such children become menial servants for the Cleansing Light, scrubbing floors, serving meals or operating the interminable washing and bleaching businesses required for the exacting standards of grooming to be met. Yet some few display a particular talent early enough to avoid this fate. Sareet was one of these lucky few. She displayed a physical aptitude few children her age could even begin to match - running a mile was a fun diversion, and lifting logs some adults struggled with a good challenge. And thus, she was apprenticed with Asbakar Teth, then-master of sword acolytes.

Teth trained her in the sword, taught her all the honorable techniques - and when she mastered these at the tender age of fourteen, decided to  reveal to her the darker arts of the sword. Teth began to speak of poison and thrown sand. Probably just so she be prepared for actual combat rather than a righteous crusade. But she rejected these teachings outright, and reported them in her biweekly confessions.

Teth became an outcast, a target for the internal inquisition of the cult overnight. And maybe worse, had been careful enough not to be apprehended. Ever since,Sareet and Asbakar had been locked in a game of cat and mouse - with Asbakar tauting and testing Sareet, while she leads a one-woman crusade to apprehend her former mentor.

Sareet never stopped to ask herself why her former mentor might want to toy with her quite this badly

Intimacies:

Defining: Principle: I shall judge and shall be judged in turn.
Major: Tie: The cult of cleansing light (loyalty), Tie: Asbakar Teth (my arch-nemesis)
Minor: Tie: Magistrate Faifil (marriage prospect)

[Masked Insanity]

New week, new concept. :) Thanks for reading