Eleanor Ventulus Duvedirfel

Magical Talent / Affinity
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Many people in Kerodil are born with magical affinity, for some strange reason. In Inferia, they're drafted into the army, and in Kerodil, they're shunned, executed, and generally hated. It's best to hide magic, which is what most people do, Eleanor included. Because of this, her magic use is extremely limited.

Magic - Energy Manipulation
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Eleanor's primary magic use is in this field. Taught by Kain fucking Redwell, Wret Secundus, and herself, it's no surprise she's pretty damn good at this.

Melee - Claymore
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Leave your butter knives at home. Claymores are Eleanor's weapon of choice, and her group fighting style means the more enemies around her, the greater the damage inflicted by her giant-ass spinning death blade. William Wallace would be proud.

Melee - Swordsmanship (Overall)
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If it's pointy, Eleanor knows how to use it at least somewhat well.

Melee - Unarmed
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Eleanor's unarmed style mostly comes from her guard training (from two different units). So it's not great.

Misc - Perception
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Unusually acute eyesight generally increases one's survival chances in Durender. It helps to be able to see arrows and flying axes and the like. As for Eleanor, it helps her see things others would miss, and even see through illusions.

Ranged - Crossbow
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Part of Eleanor's training over the years included some in ranged weapons, namely the crossbow. Eleanor is a good shot, but a crossbow comes with its drawbacks, the most obvious being the winding process in between each shot.

53 years ago, Aurelus was conquered by Inferia. The Inferians had a massive army of almost all mages who swept through Kerodil like fire. With Kerodil conquered, Inferia quickly integrated their population, leading to more magic-sensitive people in Kerodil. They even went so far as to use a crude eugenics program to try to breed out "mundanity", or lack of magical talent.

The people quickly grew weary of this, and after roughly 32 years, a huge revolution was staged all across the Free Kingdom (which technically wasn't free at the time). Jacob Aurelius and a huge army of holy-magic-wielding paladins started with Aurelus and then won back every fief in the Free Kingdom, in a quick and bloody campaign. Eleanor's father was a part of this army. Though not magic-sensitive, he was still a useful warrior that used a claymore, like many Durenderans employed in those days.

Eleanor's father saw many horrid sights during the war, and the Reconstruction. Things he never spoke of to his family. When the fighting was over, Eleanor was 13. Her father pleaded with the lord of Durender, Lord Kornis, to exclude him from future battles, but was denied since every able man in Durender must be ready to fight at any given time. Still, the lord agreed not to call him away from home to war, and gave him Windcutter, an ancient, remarkable claymore that Kornis had no use for.

Things were peaceful, Eleanor and her family continuing to run their farm, free for the first time in a generation. Only 3 years would pass, however, before the Barbarian Tide. Deserters from the recent war, barbarian clans, and brigands all managed to unite long enough to form a massive army, which of course attacked Durender en masse, thinking it had the best loot. To make matters worse, Kornis II, who was to rule Durender after his father passed, was on a carriage ride outside the walls when the surprise attack came, and was quickly ambushed. Eleanor's father gave his life for him, and a 16-year-old Eleanor managed to hold of several bandits, defending his body (and the prince, who was busy whimpering).

Well, Lord Kornis took notice of all this, and allowed Eleanor to join the Knights, making her one of the youngest recruits, as well as the only female recruit in a ponderously long time.

Eleanor found it extraordinarily difficult to become a Knight, but somehow survived training. 3 years afterwards, her mother caught a terrible plague and died. Eleanor, fresh out of training, cared for her for three long weeks, but to no avail: she perished. It was soon discovered that Inferia had planted this plague during a skirmish, to weaken Durender. The Battle of the Breach, fought in the same year, was considered to be the most incredible of Eleanor's feats, but also one of Durender's few Pyhrric victories. Through the use of heavy siege equipment and tons of soldiers, Inferia put a small hole in Durender's wall, and sent troops through it continuously for a straight week. Cut off from reinforcements, her fellow Knights slain, plague-ridden, or simply exhausted, Eleanor managed to stay standing for several days, killing anyone who came through the breach. Thus, she earned the title Hero of the Breach.

Before the battle even began, though, Eleanor had ridden along with several other messengers, asking the fiefs in the Free Kingdom for assistance. So after a week of shoving men through a tiny hole in the wall, the Inferian Legion got nearly 10,000 men shoved down their throats.

After all of this heroism, Lord Kornis began fearing that people would want Eleanor as their leader. So, he adopted the Ventulus family into his own family, claiming they shared an ancestor. Eleanor was now a Duvedirfel.

Obviously, none of this sat well with Prince Kornis II. He tried (and failed) repeatedly to assassinate Eleanor, and after the king died of that damned plague, Kornis II generated instability that led to a civil war. Tired of all her food and drink tasting bitter with lethal amounts of poison, and of her own people dying, Eleanor elected to leave Durender forever.

Eleanor began travelling abroad as a Knight-Errant, and found herself near Aurelus. A couple of Knights were under attack by a huge bandit ambush, and she helped fight them off, saving the lives of the knights. The knights in turn convinced King Firelus II of Aurelus to let her into their ranks. So, Eleanor fought as a knight for Aurelus. Whilst in their service, she was mostly sent on raids against cultists and Demons and the like.

Eventually, her past caught up with her. After only 4 years in Aurelus' service, some scouts (ie: assassins) were sent looking for her. They lied to Firelus II, claiming that Eleanor had started the huge civil war in Durender and fled, leaving her followers to die. Naturally, the King was really pissed off, but liked Eleanor enough to just banish her forever so she could die by herself in the wilderness.

So, Eleanor went back to wandering. After trading away all fragments of her former life for food and shelter, she was left with only her armor and sword. She was an outlaw now, and welcome nowhere. So, naturally, she went to Gikarta.

In Gikarta, Eleanor worked for the super-corrupt guard, and managed to stay clean. This, of course, pissed off everyone, and the Guard arranged for her die during a gang bust. The ten guards sent with her, and the 10 gangers and their leader, all turned on her. Somehow, she managed to defeat most of the guardsmen and several gangers, fear driving the rest off. Were it not for her fancy armor, she certainly would have died. She still took an axe to her right shoulder, crushing the joint and ruining it forever. To this day, she experiences great pain in her right shoulder. In the fight, she also took a knife to the lower back, a near-fatal wound. Recovery took a long time, and as soon as she was able, she chose to leave Kerodil for good, boarding a ship to Talibar.

Despite all that happened, Eleanor still feels Kerodil is her home, and bears a love for it that nothing can shake.