Ariana is fairly tall, about 5'9", and has a medium build, not exceptionally slender but not fat either. She's rather well-muscled, discreetly of course, and definitely athletic in appearance. Her hair is absolutely pure black, no hint of any other colour, and cut to just below her earlobes in a pageboy style. She never does anything with it except brush it, really. Her eyes are a steely blue-gray, and ever-so-slightly tip-tilted at the corners. This, combined with her dark skin and black hair, give her a vaguely oriental look. She's not a raving beauty, but she is attractive enough, although a bit rough around some edges.
Ariana looks good in just about any given style, but she favours casual, comfortable clothing. A favourite outfit is long pants and a tanktop, with a button shirt tied up over her midriff if the weather is chilly. Colours range from whites to bright primaries, and her style and colour choice will vary considerably given the situation. She prefers pants or shorts over skirts, and arm-baring shirts over long sleeves.
Personality
Ariana is very self-confident, and hates to admit she doesn't know something. She's loud, brags somewhat about her abilities, and knows no shame about it. She's also devoted, loyal, and friendly to a fault. She doesn't let her past get to her, no grudges or anything, although she can and does get angry. Usually it's a slow, cold kind of anger, often triggered by someone's honour being shamed. She likes to party, and even though she may be underage, she drinks occasionally.
Her morals are ..... interesting. That is to say, she holds them for herself, and sticks to them, but not for anyone else. "Do what you want, just don't make me do it," is her motto. She wouldn't do drugs other than alcohol, and she's not a virgin either, although she's not loose. She feels emotion is very important in why you do a thing.
Faults
Ariana doesn't know the meaning of the word 'unfriendly.' She'd be friendly to a mass murderer, simply because she believes in decency to everyone. She's also very self-confident, and that can be rather offensive, since it often shows itself in bragging. She has this rather stubborn refusal to admit she's wrong about things, too.
Pluses
Ariana is VERY very loyal. She calls her friends 'my people' and that includes a wide range of people. She likes to take care of people, and will defend her 'people' at the drop of a hat ..... or glove. She's a fierce fighter, both vocally and physically, and she's fairly good at both.
Family: Ariana's family, naturally, lives in the Welsh mountains, and thus has little effect on her at school. She is the middle daughter of 3. Her eldest sister, Luned (Welsh Gaelic 'shape'), being 24, is well-established in her own household near home, and her youngest sister, Dwynwen (Welsh Gaelic 'pleasant and holy'), is entering fourth form in school at home. Her mother, Gwenhwyfar (Welsh Gaelic 'white wave'), is an RN and her father, Rhys (Welsh Gaelic 'enthusiasm'), owns a print shop.
Friends: Ariana is not any kind of loner. She may not be a super-hip, popular girl, but she likes a crowd around her. Her clique, as of now, consists of only 3-4 girls, and a male hanger-on.
Ciarrah Macleod (Gaelic 'black / dark')
Ciarrah lives up to her name, being dark-haired, dark-eyed, and utterly gorgeous. She's moderately intelligent, wildly flirtatious, and supremely silly. Count on her to provoke giggles in any situation.
Ashlynn Campbell (Gaelic 'vision')
Ashlynn, at the moment, is co-leader with Ariana. She's red-headed, pale, and crazy! Half the crazy things they do are thought up and instigated by her. She loves practical jokes, and her favourite person to play them on is a lower sixth student named Morgwenna Meirw. Not that Morgwenna notices.
Teleri Gwyn (Welsh Gaelic 'enough')
Teleri is small, shy, and quiet. She's fairly ordinary in appearance, with brown hair and blue eyes, and is usually found with her nose in a book. In fact, she specifically bought her purse because it would hold a hard-back book! Despite her bookishness, Teleri will usually willingly cast aside her latest novel for whatever fun is in-progress.
Niamh Maclyn (Gaelic 'lustrous')
Niamh is new to their clique, and seems a bit shy to join in on the wild fun Ashlynn likes to start. She's blonde, a bit chunky, and given to wondering aloud what the ECA heads might say about their fun. Surprisingly, it's usually Teleri who shuts her up.
Gareth MacKay (Gaelic 'harmless')
Gareth may or may not be related to that Aisling MacKay who runs with Morgwenna. He does resemble her to some extent, red hair and all, but then he resembles Ashlynn, too. He's into dancing, which leads to him and Ashlynn spending a lot of time together clubbing around Edinburgh.
All of Ariana's clique are first year students at ECA.
Lovelife: Ariana is by no means a virgin. Her self-confident attitude tends to put some guys off, and she has a depressing history with males. Right now, though, she's very unattached.
Possibility Lovelife: Being that she's unattached, the possibility is fairly good, although Ariana's predatory, and he might not survive the attempt! Truthfully, she is demanding on her chosen male, but she's also utterly faithful and devoted. She doesn't ask more than she's willing to give herself.
A note: Ariana only admits to heterosexuality, but given certain innuendoes that often pass between her and Ashlynn, who is frankly bisexual, she may be leaning in that direction, if not already bisexual.
School: Edinburgh College of Art
Grade: first year
Major: BA - Design and Applied Arts: Jewelry and Silversmithing
Status in School: mediocre. She's a first-year student, for heaven's sakes! She hasn't truly had time to establish herself as of yet, although if old patterns hold true she'll gather or attach a small clique and split the leadership of it with some close girl-friend.
School Schedule: (Note: I am basing the courses and schedule on my own, American, college, therefore discrepancies should be corrected by someone familiar with ECA and not blamed on me.)
9:00-10:30, MWF - Glass and Architectural Glass
1:30-3:00, MWF - Religion
10:00-noon, TTH - Graphic Design
12:30-1:30, TTH - Cultural Studies
2:00-4:00, TTH - Jewelry and Silversmithing
Performance in school: Being a first year student, Ariana does as well as can be expected, A's and B's, although she despises any course that seems to be a repeat of anything she's had before and may consequently get lower marks in it.
History / Life:
Ariana has lived all her life in Wales, and attended school there. This college life is the first time she's spent any significant time away from both home and family. Naturally, they took a lot of vacations, and Edinburgh was one of her favourite places, but visiting and living are two totally different things! She got to be a maid of honour in her sister Luned's wedding, which she adored. None of her school friends chose to come to Edinburgh for college, so she pretty much is starting over with that ..... in fact she broke up with her last boyfriend over her choice of schools. She's still a bit raw over that ..... Truly told, Ariana's lived a normal life. Normal mischief, normal grades, normal friendships .....
Well, except for that freakish ability to detect when people are hurt .....
This ability is a gift she's had for as long as she can remember. If she touches someone who's hurt physically, she can tell that they're hurt. It's not that she feels their pain or anything; she just knows that they have a hurt somewhere. She can sometimes tell where, although that's not dependable. Since it is such a minor ability, and there's little visibility about it, she's never caught any grief over it; most often her family teases her about having a kind of Sight, like the Irish Second Sight, and she just grins and teases back about where she must have gotten it from.
If you asked Ariana about her life, she'd look at you and say, "Well, most of the milestones back there are headstones; I'm so glad I have this fresh start." According to her, she's bungled a lot of relationships, and is just as glad to be somewhere new, although she misses her family terribly. They support her in everything she does, and they are her second refuge. Her first, of course, now, is her clique. Ariana, when she isn't in class, spends a lot of her time with the clique - hell, she shares an apartment with Teleri! She's very devoted to her schoolwork, though. One reason she lives with Teleri as opposed to, say, Ashlynn.
However, since she came to Edinburgh, she's been having strange dreams ..... most of them seem to be flashbacks, and a lot of them involve her as this Sailor Nuada. Many of the more recent ones involve failures of some kind, whether they be failure to Heal someone, or failure to protect. She endured a week-long series detailing a failure of some kind in a Council called Annwn that left her haggard and crying. However, she's coming back from that experience, and right now she's just curious about what the dreams mean.
Annwn History:
Speaking of ..... Sailor Nuada was a powerful person on Annwn. For a time she herself ruled the Council, but due to circumstances stepped down. At the time of the Division, she was considering a return to the leadership, in fact, but died in battle before her wish could come to pass. As a battle leader, few surpassed her in both tactics and in caring for the soldiers under her command. She would willingly sacrifice herself to protect and heal those people, which is the source of her vote in Council to go to protect the Moon Kingdom. She felt, firstly, that people in need should be helped if at all possible; and secondly that those in power should be supported, possibly at cost. She condemned those who voted otherwise as cowards and oathbreakers, and in the final Council meeting asserted that Lugh wished it and as Leader his wishes should be upheld, no matter the cost. Her loyalty in the matter was only surpassed by her courage in battle.
Sailor Nuada now is just waking up, and her former qualities may be deeply buried. It remains to be seen if those qualities will re-emerge in the coming battles.
Titles: Soldier of Battle and Healing
Fuku: Nuada's colours are a soothing teal green and a deep purple. Her fuku is the normal fuku, no changes at all. Her shoes are zip-up-the-side leather boots in the purple.
Symbol: a silver drop
Challenge: As Sailor Nuada, I represent the duality of battle and healing. You cannot hope to find to face my twin powers and win!
Henshin item: a silver teardrop-shaped pendant necklace
Henshin: Nuada Silver God Power, Make-up!
Ariana closes her eyes and calls out her henshin phrase. The silver teardrop begins to glow brightly and the glow radiates outward to encompass all of her body. When her entire body is outlined in silver, the glow suddenly flares brilliantly and contracts around her body, forming the parts of her fuku by flowing and then hardening. The henshin finishes by a cascade of silver hiding Nuada for an instant. When she reappears, she poses, some random pose she makes up on the spot.
Offensive Attack: Silver Daggers Flowing
Nuada calls out these words and flings the fingers of her right hand toward the target. At the farthest stretch of her arm, her hand appears to harden to silver and the fingers fly off and toward the target, turning into silver dagger-shapes as they do so. When they impact, instead of sticking into the target, they melt and spread all over, encasing the target in a continuously flowing shell of silver. Of course, Nuada's hand never truly hardens, nor do her fingers REALLY come off. But it's a nice optical illusion.
This is pretty powerful, but it's a straight line-of-sight attack. Think of wielding it like you'd wield arrows; it has to be aimed and have a straight line to the target. However, it is strictly targeted and can be counted on not to harm anything other than the specified target. Walls and things won't block it either; the silver flows over, under, through, and around such obstacles. The only sure defense against it is to keep moving so there is no clear targeting, or have a completely spherical shield.
Again, using it is much like using arrows; there is a finite number of times she can use it. Although this isn't a material component to the attack, the number of silver beads ranged around the silver teardrop of Nuada's henshin necklace tells how many 'charges' she has on this attack. One of the pluses, however, is that unlike arrows it can be targeted for multiple people, provided they are fairly close together.
Protection Attack: Silver Healing
Nuada whispers these words under her breath, and a silver glow rises from her hands as she places them on or next to the wound. The glow covers the wound, and the rate of healing is greatly accelerated.
Nuada's defensive attack isn't really an attack, or defensive. It draws on her mundane ability to detect wounds in someone, and is her transformed ability to heal such wounds. To heal, she has to be able to touch the wounded person. She can only heal physical wounds, and while she doesn't draw the wound into herself, she does have to put out at least half as much energy as it would take for a body to heal the same wound on its own. Broken bones, gut slashes, minor bruises ..... all are healable, but the drain on Nuada is correspondingly greater the more life-threatening the wound is. The fastest way for her to recoup the energy loss is to eat something high in sugar right then, and get a good meal and rest within the hour. Unfortunately, no one can help her with this either; the only possible way to ease the energy loss would be for her to have access to some powerful artifact, like the ginzuishou or Nuada's legendary sword. Also, the energy limitation prevents her from overcoming death, a fact that figures painfully in some of her Annwn memories / dreams.
Ariana / Nuada as reviewed
Writing sample:
Ariana slammed the small hammer down too hard on the delicate silver link she was working, breaking yet another one. With a muttered curse, she flung the shattered link back into the melting cauldron, dropping the hammer on the work surface. A strong-fingered hand raked back through her short black hair and smeared the sweat from her upper lip.
Swallowing another curse, Ariana stalked outside, stretching her arms to the sky. "Be damned if I'm going to waste any more silver making BROKEN links - 's too rhegi similar to what happened in last night's dream."
~dream sequence~
Sailor Nuada screamed out, "Silver Spiral Bolt!" and raised her hands to the sky, drawing bolts of pure silver power out of the heavens and casting them at the faceless enemy. Already worn to the bare bone, she could no longer even summon shock at the sight of her power warping away from the shape-shifting enemy. "Plentyn siawns," she muttered, the weary curse escaping her. That blast had drained the last of her purely magickal power from her, leaving only her carefully hoarded personal energy, energy she now turned to healing her wounded comrades dotting the field.
A whispered "Look....." and the screech of the Battle Raven was all the warning she had. She twisted to look up and behind her - and froze. In the final, precious seconds, Nuada could not move, trapped by shock and fear, and the blast she could have shielded at least her patient from engulfed both of them in darkness .....
~end dream sequence~
Sternly holding her hands away from the silver teardrop worry-stone, Ariana smoothed her hair and strode back to her tiny apartment to collect her climbing tools. Perhaps, with strong, solid, dependable rock about her, she could forget the unsettling dreams ..... and the way her hand always seemed to creep to the silver necklace now when she felt threatened. The silver necklace Sailor Nuada had been wearing in her dreams .....
"No. I won't think of it anymore." She said firmly, hand on the doorknob.
"Won't think of what, Silver?" Ashlynn materialised out of the shadows of the hallway, and Ariana's hand leapt to her throat.
"Iesu Grist! Ash, don't DO that! I almost died of fright!"
"You HAVE been jumpy lately. I know what, though ..... there's this new waiter at the club downtown, and he's absolutely scrumptious. Let's go coax him over here and play." Ashlynn licked her lips just a bit, and Ariana grinned, relaxing.
"Ash, you are the most frankly sexual girl I know. Let me get changed."
((rhegi=damn, plentyn siawns=bastards, Iesu Grist=Jesus Christ))
© Panya Covin-Gwynn & PawPrint Productions.