Anna is the second child and only daughter of Richard Longsun, King of the Santonia province, richest and most powerful of all the provinces of the Rotakan Empire. Known as the "spitfire princess", she has a short temper and is a fierce fighter.
Brown skin, dark brown eyes (almost black), black hair. She's got a straight, strong nose, almond shaped eyes with long eyelashes, well defined lips, heart shaped face.
She's is the second child and only daughter with three brothers. Her older brother is set to inherit the throne, while her two younger brothers (twins) are mostly set to de-flower as much of the city's youth as they can get their hands on, preferably in a drunken stupor.
Andrea Sands is an orphan of the Ionia slave plantations and part of the same gang that Oliver Sands is in. She tends to be the more level-headed one of the group, preferring caution to risk and often is the one that will play devil's advocate.
Andrea is thin to the point of slightly malnourished, though that's normal for anyone with Sands as a last name. She's got a mop of curly blond hair, high cheek bones framing flat gray eyes, a strong jaw, and sunken cheeks.
Like most, this isn't the first gang she's been in, but it is the longest. She carries issues from a prior gang that was claimed by a purge, leaving her the only survivor. She is highly antagonistic, especially against anyone she feels is acting in a way that might jeopardize the gang.
She and Oliver often get in fights, as Oliver is impulsive and tends to have a more optimistic approach to…well, everything. Despite their contentious relationship, Andrea often goes out of the way for Oliver, something that has spurred rumors amongst the rest of their group.
Dia is a woman preoccupied with tech and for good reason. She has a gift that allows her to understand it in a way no one else can. Consumed with a driving desire to learn and create, Dia often ignores her friends, her own needs, and often just ignores reality itself to focus on whatever project she's working on. She's a woman in her head, but the real problems arise when what's in her head begins to make their way into the real world, a world not ready to handle what she's ready to create.
Medium height and build, a little weight but not considered overweight, dark brown (almost black) straight hair. She has light brown skin, slightly slanted brown eyes with a medium-sized, straight nose and thin lips. She would be considered somewhere between Asian and Puerto Rican on Earth. She unremarkable. She fits in and can be mostly ignored, which is how she prefers it.
Finley loves exactly three things in life: women, booze, and sword fighting.
Oliver Sands is a orphan of the Ionia slave plantations. Abandoned as a child, he's never met his parents. Despite living in the slave plantations, Oliver has never been a slave, which he sometimes regrets—slaves, at least, get to eat every day. He often does not.
Shortish height with a thin, wiry build. Reddish hair, brown eyes, hooked nose, thin jaw. Tends to carry himself with his shoulders back.
Oliver's attitude and mouth do not lend themselves well to authority, which has alienated him from just about any gang he's encountered. Bouncing from group to group, he eventually fell in with a small group living on the fringes of society, avoiding purges, and stealing to meet their needs.
Age: 14
A slight, short boy known for being very particular about his clothing along with an unnaturally precise sense of time. With Santonian heritage, he's got brown skin, dark brown hair, brown eyes, and he's very short—he'll be lucky to reach 5'.
Sal has a strong sense of style.
Almond eyes, black-silk hair, pale face, thin lips, delicate features that bordered on beautiful. Stan has a lithe, effeminate body. A dancer's body.
Stan was born to a middling, grain mercantile family in the port city of Chuazuan, Sutan. By the age of three, Stan demonstrated a troubling trait, the nascent ability to shape graescence. While having a trait is often considered a great boon, Stan's ability to shape graescence was so powerful his parents feared for his life. Faced with the choice of turning their three-year-old son to the Inquisitors, or hiding, they chose to hide.
Casters generally come in two types: slings and rails. Both are designed to fire some sort of small projectile at high speeds with relatively good precision (depending on the caster). Like any weapon, they come in a large number of configurations and styles with an equal breadth of quality. Generally, the configurations can be divided into two main styles, Handcasters and Longcasters, while the type of casters are divided into Slings and Rails.
Glass is a term used to describe the effect that occurs when "shaping" graescence into a surface. Since Shapers and Shielders are rare, the term is most often used to describe graetech weapons that shape graescence into pre-defined forms. Those who carry such expensive weapons are said to be "packing glass".
The Caldonian Rail system consists of a pair of stacked tunnels that wind through and between each of the major mountain cities of Caldonia. Each tunnel is lined with two thin rails upon which sit the railcars which move in opposite direction to each other. The railcars pull graescence from the rails themselves, powering a variety of graetech within the cars, causing the cars to hover above the rails, and providing power to accelerate the cars along the rails.
A drajin is a lizard, a very big lizard that's roughly the size of a large horse, maybe a little larger, used as beasts of burden. They are docile, lazy, and slow, with stubby trunk-like legs the size of a human torso. They have two bony ridges called a crest, following from their nose to wrap around their ear holes along the sides of their head. They have large, diamond shaped scales covering most of their body. Most are colored brown and grey, but there are rarer breeds with brighter colored greens and even reds.
Drajin tend to exist in one of two states: walking or sleeping. There's some debate (among the very few who care) as to when their 'sleeping' state is actually sleeping, or just some in-between state they slip into when they're not walking. The debate stems from the fact that they can move from their sleeping state to their walking state with virtually no transition, and that there doesn't seem to be a 'real' sleeping state.
Despite their slow, methodical pace, Drajin are used almost exclusively for transporting goods, usually as part of massive merchant trains. They are one of the few animals capable of (and practically the only animal willing to) power a sled for long periods of time, repeatedly. There've been attempts to breed faster Drajin, but the resulting breeds never have the sheer stamina the normal boring Drajin seem to possess.
A transfer town, situated along a semi-major merchant route in Santonia. It caters to two main markets:
- It's most important market are the merchant trains making their way up the eastern part of Santonia. As such, it contains a very large number of inns, restaurants, and Drajin stalls. It also provides storage facilities and a few…less reputable services targeting the lonely.
- It imports lumbers from a variety of villages, processing the wood which gets sold to a variety of regional brokers.