Delilah "Del" Valeriana

[del]

Name: Delilah "Del" Valeriana
Gender:Female
Age: 32
Species: Hare
Occupation: Long Patrol Sergeant

Physical Appearance:
Del is covered in thick, oft-messy russet red fur that seems to match her fiery personality. She has dark green eyes with a glint like she's always hiding some juicy secret. The sergeant has a lean and strong physique, built more for strength and paw-to-paw combat as opposed to agility and speed. Her body bears some marks of her past, most noticeably a thin gold scar that runs diagonally across her left eye. She also has a long split in her right ear.

Both of the haremaid's long red ears have several gold hoops in them. When not in uniform, she often sports golden bangles down her forearms; more evidence of her past life. However, she can typically be seen in her green regiment uniform, often paired with her green military beret that bears a large golden feather she found herself, and of which she can remove and use as a quill pen.

In another throwback to her former days, Del actually wields a cutlass; a fairly uncommon sight in the Long Patrol regiment. On her other hip sits a trio of small throwing daggers. She tends to use these for practical tasks, but can employ them as weapons when the situation demands it.


Possessions:
-Cutlass
-3 throwing daggers
-compass
-Star chart (another throwback to her nautical days)


Personality:
Del is a spitfire ball of energy and mischief. Still possessing much the same passions that the sailing life nurtured in her, she is irrepressible in her antics and has barely been able to tame her salty tongue. The officer seems to have limitless energy and can be seen up and wandering at any given hour. Day and night seem to have no meaning to the sea-hare and indeed she has scheduled training lessons with recruits in the middle of the night at times.

Del is a popular officer among the recruits, with her unorthodox techniques and anecdotes of life on the sea. But she is certainly not easy on her charges. She works her recruits to the brink, expecting nothing short of excellence. Many young patrollers switch out of her group, but the hares that stick it through are some of the most skilled and focused soldiers going into the regiment.

The female officer is youthful and mischievous. She enjoys teasing and joking with both her peers and her inferiors. She has a hard time taking things seriously, and it has caused some raised eyebrows from other officers, particularly her superiors. Having grown up on a ship, even the direst situations were met with a sense of humor, and for the most part the Long Patrol has been the same kind of environment, but sometimes Del seems to take it too far.

Obviously Del doesn't have a Salamandastron accent. She tends to speak with a nautical affectation, though she's managed to temper this in her years at the mountain. Having spent half her life traveling, she has learned basic communication in a couple foreign languages and is skilled at mimicking accents.

Del doesn't like her full name, and only her former crew even knows it. Since moving to Salamandastron, she has completely eradicated all evidence of her proper first name, signing only "Del" in all her official paperwork.

Strengths:
-Swimming
-Sailing, and almost anything involving water and the sea
-Languages and accents
-Using cutlass
-Paw-to-paw combat

Weaknesses:
-Conventional weapons, especially archery and long-range fighting
-Deaf in the same ear that has a split (from the battle in the north)
-Frequent bouts of insomnia
-Unfamiliar with Mossflower region (Locations, civilizations, customs, etc)

History:
Del was born on a ship, to a couple of sea-faring hares. Her lineage has no known tie to Salamandastron. The ship's crew, made up of herself, her parents and a ragtag group of other hares, otters, shrews and the odd squirrel had all the makings of a pirate craft, although it was actually a merchant vessel. That's not to say the crew hadn't had their fair-share of high-seas battles, usually with actual pirating crews. Although the crew tended to only engage fights for the greater good, they kept a tight hold of all the valuables they got their paws on, whether by honest means or not.

Spending the vast majority of her life sailing, Del didn't really know any different. As a child, she was expected to pull her own weight as a crewbeast, be it cooking, cleaning, crow's nest duties and even manning the sails. Even at port, the haremaid spent very little time on shore, choosing to stick to duties that kept her on the water. By her early teens she was a respected member of the crew, and joined some of her older comrades in trade agreements onshore. By the age of fourteen, she'd handled her first solo trade.

During the long, uneventful days at sea, Del would find various ways to entertain herself, notably getting her paws on a looted cutlass. With several skilled swordbeasts aboard, it was not hard to find creatures to teach her how to wield a blade. One particular burly otter crewmate became her personal trainer. She trained with him almost daily, fascinated by this new discipline that had been so foreign to her only weeks before. Her parents had no qualms with her training, although it probably wouldn't have mattered if they did. Del's parents believed strongly in the "it takes a village" method of raising children, and all the older crewmembers were as much her parents as her mother and father.

When Del was seventeen she was involved in a trade agreement on the Western shore, well north of Mossflower Country. The quaint, yet thriving farming village was made up of mostly moles and hedgehogs and a few mice. A vicious band of rats and ermine laid siege to the peaceable villagers during Del's visit, her shipmates finding themselves caught up in the thick of things. Outnumbered and utterly outmatched, the woodlanders became prisoners in their own village.

It wasn't until a large group of Guosim accompanied with a small band of Long Patrollers found their way to the village months later that their luck turned around. With the aid of the feisty shrews and powerful hares, they were able to overturn the tyrannical reign of the vermin, taking back their home. The coup had taken a couple weeks, since the villagers were still outnumbered even with the others. During the final battle, Del had taken a slice to her right ear, which ended up rupturing her ear canal and causing her to lose all hearing in the ear.

Del got to know many of the creatures with whom she was imprisoned, becoming particularly close with one of the Long Patrollers. It was her first time carrying a real conversation with a hare that wasn't on her ship, and the first time she'd ever even heard of the Long Patrol. She was impressed, intrigued, and for the first time in her life, a little jealous. When it came time to say goodbye, she'd arranged a little tryst with the young male patroller that she'd grown close to, an opportunity to say goodbye more personally. It was then that she found it unbearably hard to leave the luscious western shore, and the desire to learn more about the Long Patrol had been growing like a weed in her since the hares had arrived.

Making the most impulsive decision of her life, she approached her crewmates and informed them she'd decided to stay. They had not been the most receptive or approving audience and got into a heated argument with her about it. Finally they realized they weren't going to convince her otherwise, and there was an emotional farewell. Throughout the ordeal, Del still wasn't sure why she was doing this, but she'd made this life-changing decision for herself and intended to see it through. That evening she'd sat on the shore and watched her family, home, and livelihood drift into the sunset, disappearing beyond the horizon. It was the last time she ever saw the ship. The very next day she joined with the small group of Long Patrollers and traveled to the fire mountain with them.

Salamandastron was an extremely different experience for her. She'd had some difficulty acclimating to life on the shore, particularly life inside of a mountain. However, she quickly took the plunge and signed herself up as a recruit for the Long Patrol. Although older than most of the hares at her position, she was willing to start from the beginning and work her way up. She was diligent and focused and steadily worked her way up the ranks.


Relationships:
-Her old crew, which includes her family
-Long Patrol comrades

[Prankster101]

I see no problems. Nice job Tracy!

Accepted!

Prank





_{(Posted while still a staff member of this site)}