[SentaiPink]

Name: Lapis Susan Connors
Age: 23 (as of Nov/Dec AV47)
Gender: Female
Appearance: Tall for a girl, at a staggering 6 feet. She has thick, long curling brown hair that falls to the small of her back that is usually carefully cleaned, styled and pulled back for her work. She has striking light hazel eyes and a lithe build making her somewhat willowy given her height. Lapis has the petite, pleasing facial features of her mother but otherwise has the dramatic curves and height from her fathers side of the family.

Personality:
Lapis has become a woman of some measure of pride in her work as a healer. It's something she's spent her whole life learning and cultivating, and it one of the few things she excels in. As trade master she's required to be personable and shrewd enough to negotiate for goods and services at fair or even discounted prices. She is skilled at this but considers it more of an act then a talent.

Personal relation ships with both family and friends have not, however worked out so well. She finds herself at ends with most of what little of her family she see's on a normal basis and her romantic endeavors have also gone poorly. The result of this is a rather sarcastic and dry Lapis that doesn't easily make friends as most probably couldn't stand to be around her.

She also suffers from a dangerous temper, while she's largely harmless she does lose her composure and believes herself often singled out when she does. As a result she gets very defensive and sometimes violent when the right buttons are pushed or should it be a particularly unpleasant day for her.

Lapis has an unsettling comfortableness with killing. Though she made an oath to herself she wouldn't kill anymore, her attempts around said oath to still end lives has been dangerous to others. She doesn't like her own capability for violence as she feels it makes her a poor doctor. However, she truly does believe there are people beyond help, and that there is a time when it's a mercy for them and others that they pass away. As quietly as possible...

Backstory:
Ravenna

Spoiler

Lapis was born in the Forbidden Lands in the chilly town of Ravenna. Far from the war of the mainlands and never bothered by any of the tensions there. Not that she had or has an idyllic life, Her parents (Rook and Ezri Connors) had arrived to Ravenna after a several year long journey over land with a number of other pilgrims. During which her elder brother Bishop was born, he was about 4 when Lapis came into the world and she immediately became the center of it. At least for her brother and father.

Lapis' earliest memories are of her father. He wouldn't let her go or set her down for long even when she bothered him while he was working the farm or brewing. Her mother didn't dote on her like her father did, but she still showed she cared and of the two children, Lapis got the brunt of both of their attentions.

As a child Lapis was very quiet and shy, she didn't talk to people much and generally took a while to warm up to strangers. This was abnormal for the Connors as both her parents and her brother suffered from no problem with being painfully honest and open with people. Lapis was a bit of a black sheep for this quality but loved all the same. Due to her shyness making friends outside of her brother was difficult. But eventually she became close friends with another child born in Ravenna, Estelle. Estelle’s family was close to Lapis', so much so that Estelle's mother, Zarkaylia, was called 'grandmum' by both Connors children.

Inspite of her shyness towards people, Lapis held no fear towards the outside world and the ruins common to the place they called home. She and her brother explored and played often while her father brewed and her mother helped repair town or build her ship. When Lapis was 4 her mother finished the ship and her parents planned to set sail to put the ship through its paces, planning only to be gone a few weeks. But those weeks past into months and then years.

Lapis held onto hope, like any child her age would. Her and her brother fell under the care of another family friend named 'Mittendri'. Who had done a good job to encourage that hope for a very long time. Finally, Zarkaylia could not stand to lie to the children, letting them hope for something she felt would never come. She told Lapis her mother and father were dead, which after so many years was easily what most people assumed. Lapis was of course devastated by this, and when she started to pull herself together, she began calling Mittendri ‘Mummy’.

Lapis rarely saw her brother during this time, so instead she took Estelle exploring with her. On one such trip, it had nearly ended with both of them getting shot by dusk fiends. The pair did not explore anymore after that, and for a while, didn’t see much of each other. It became obvious the girls needed some measure of defense, so Lapis got to start learning how to use a sword. Her grandmother, Zarkaylia, gave lessons to both her and Estelle. Training together was an excuse to do something with one another, but neither seemed as passionate about swordsmanship as their teacher. This wasn’t all Lapis was given to occupy her time and keep her from trouble, she also started to help the local healer, and learn from her. She was almost 8* when this started, and of all things, healing and herbalism seemed to fascinate her the most. Lapis didn’t have any fear of blood, and when people came looking for help she found it easier to talk to them. Little by little she started to unwind from her shy little world, and embrace the community that had helped look after her and her brother after her parents left…

Then Rook and Ezri returned after her 8th* birthday. At first Lapis and Bishop were overjoyed to find their parents alive and well. For the most part, unscathed from their time away. The ship they left on now had a motley crew made up of some people her parents came across in their travels; Two large ginger men from Linedia, named Maltim and Maltin; A Provincian doctor and Lucin healer named Dr. Lucas Slone; and a stoic and near silent warrior who would answer only to ‘Ra’. Ezri and Rook were weary of the news they heard of the goings on in town while they were away. While Lapis and Bishop were sheltered from the conflicts brewing between Lucin and Xitian factions within the town, they weren’t really safe from it. No one in town truly was. So their parents decided to take the children away from Ravenna and move some place quieter.

Lapis was not happy with this news, having finally opened herself up to the people around her, just to find she was going to have to leave them was infuriating. She pleaded and argued with her mother to let her stay but it made no difference to Ezri. Ezri felt she was protecting Lapis and her brother, and Lapis would come to resent her mother for it. Not just for that, but the reason their parents had been gone so long was that their criminal past had caught up to them. Making Rook and Ezri, for a time, hunted and wanted criminals. They didn’t return home or to their family for fear of bringing with them death and destruction on all of Ravenna. Lapis would blame Ezri for this as well. Rook was spared her ire because the young girl loved her father, without exception. So much so that she couldn’t accept he’d of done anything criminal without it being her mother’s fault. In most causes, this would hold to be a sound theory and one that Ezri could not dissuade the girl from. So, angry and deeply saddened, Lapis was forced to move from her childhood home to someplace new.

*Wibbly wobbly timey wimey, this character was growing up in the setting at 2x’s regular aging so while for most characters it was 2 years, for her she went from 4-8 in the time between her parents departure and their return. This will be inconsistent between her and Bishop’s application. Bishop is three years older.

Auria

Spoiler

Little did Lapis realise that her hot-headed reaction to moving to the warm and rainy Auria, along with her love for exploration and fearlessness, came from the mother she so stubbornly reviled. Auria however wasn’t the nether that Lapis had feared it would be, the small town was in the process of rebuilding from a volcanic eruption off the coast, and once they arrived they lived on the ship while Ezri and her crew was put to work in town. Lapis’s mother helped rebuild and lay the groundwork for their new home, and Rook’s new brewery. None of that got Lapis excited, it was the fact she was not alone. Not only were there other children in Auria around her age, but her grandmother Zarkaylia’s eldest daughter, and her family, lived there as well. Lapis made new friends with the youngest of Zark’s grandchildren, Zaira. The two quickly became inseparable, Lapis’ fearlessness was matched only by Zaria’s recklessness. The girls had numerous adventures in their own right, exploring the Aurian jungles, sometimes with Bishop and Zaira’s bother Caesar.

Ezri and Rook soon found Lapis needed to be occupied to keep her out of trouble and to an extent, Zaira. Ezri and her crewmate Ra continued to teach Lapis swordsmanship and start Zaira on her way. For the most part, against the wishes of Zaira’s mother. This wasn’t all though, the doctor Ezri hired for her ship moved into Auria with them. Though Slone was begrudged at first, he agreed to continue teaching Lapis about medicine and the human body. Lapis quickly started to grow on the otherwise sarcastic doctor and the pair became more than teacher and student, eventually Slone became Lapis’ friend.

In the years that followed the Connors built a new home, and a brewery in Auria. The family business kept Ezri busy and at times away from home, which suited the spiteful Lapis fine. She soaked up her father’s and brother’s attention in these absences and worked on her studies with Slone. The active life made the departure of the quick friendship she made in Zaira a little easier for her, but she no less missed her just as she did Estelle.

At 10, Lapis’ mother ended up pregnant and gave birth to twins. The birth was difficult on Ezri as she’d returned home from one of her trips abroad injured and in labor. Lapis was there to assist Slone with the difficult delivery that almost cost her mother her life. Her new siblings, Ruby and Knight, weren’t the only additions to her family. A mute Ko’ban girl arrived with Ezri, she seemed nice enough but it wasn’t until Ezri woke up did they learned the girl was called Copper. Ezri’s adoption of Copper didn’t sit well with Lapis, largely because the rest of the family accepted her and Ezri’s decision without question. Though none had been consulted.

In the years that followed Lapis and Copper learned to communicate through hand signals and gestures, and written notes. As it turned out, she was a sweet girl, kind and well meaning, but even Copper had her limits when it came to Lapis attitude towards their mother. Sometimes they quarreled but given time Lapis learned to tolerate her.

The majority of her time at the age 12 was spent with her teacher, Dr. Slone, and away from home. In her studies and just outright asking them, she learned of Slone’s time in the war of Veld, her father's own enslavement, her mothers piracy spurred on by the civil wars to follow. But it all seemed so alien to her, Slone disliked the wars so much he rarely would speak on them. Logically, she understood, but not very well. When she heard the portal to the Dusk Realm opened again, so far away from the wars and strife they caused, it was hard to put any of it into perspective. While the news seemed to unsettle her teacher and parents, she found it hard to relate.

By 13 Lapis started to settle into what life in Auria had become, she started to trust and make friends with some of the local kids. When she stole away from her studies she’d go and explore the sundrenched beaches with her brother and friends. But it wasn’t to be. Her mother’s past continued to haunt the family as an attempt to rob the Connors involved the supposed friends she and her brother had made kidnapping them. If not for Copper having followed them and freeing Bishop, Lapis would of been murdered then and there. In Lapis and Bishops efforts to escape, lives had been lost. The two young men that masqueraded as their friends and an older man Lapis had jumped on top of when he went to harm her brother. The violence shook them both deeply. Lapis had spent her time learning to heal and help people, killing someone felt wrong, worst of all it was also so much easier than she had ever anticipated. The guilt tore at her, and while her family assured her that it had to be done it was not something she easily, or ever really accepted. As a positive though, Lapis fully embraced Coppers roll in their family after the incident and started calling her sister in earnest.

In spite of being unsettled by this, life returned to normal after. The threat to their family was eliminated, life went on. Like it had never happened. Lapis struggled to return to normality after that. She withdrew a bit from other people and focused on her studies. Every so often, boys would come courting Lapis as she was quickly growing into a woman of note. But no sooner did her father or brother catch wind of someone trying to court her, did that someone disappear. It got to the point where Lapis even noticed, and inspite of her insisting they stop it continued to happen.

When she turned 15 she had little time to focus on her father and brother before her mother absconded with a great deal of gold. This happened just after a bitter discovery that Lapis’ father had a bastard son not even he knew about prior. Lapis assumed the worst in her mother and for once she got the better of her father as he too seemed to fear his wife had left him. Shockingly, Ezri returned, the gold had been taken to cover a shortage in a trade for their grandmother. Lapis’ mother vowed to stop traveling to make up for her absences in the lives of all her children by only traveling with them from then on. In an effort to mend broken fences and apologize for the scare, she had them pack for a get away far to the north.

The Return

Spoiler

They had gone to the town of Frosthaven during a festival for their get-away. The trip didn’t go as planned. Lapis’ frustration with her brother and father’s over protectiveness spilled over and she made a bad decision to spend time with a few older boys she met in the snowy town. Eventually theses boys invited her into the tavern to share a few warm local drinks. Lapis didn’t think anything of it, she grew up in a brewery, she’d had all manor of drink in her time. But they bought her drinks until she could feel the effect of the drink weigh in on her, and when she went to leave, they wouldn’t let her go.

The three boys tried to force themselves on her. Her resisting them blackened one eye and she managed to get a cut into one’s shoulder before they wrestled her sword from her. They very nearly succeeded in taking her innocence if not for Bishop having gone mad looking for his sister after she’d disappeared. Everything happened so quickly after Bishop burst in, the fight that followed remains a blur to Lapis, the last thing she clearly remembered of the incident was Bishop helping her out of the window while 5 lifeless bodies lay on the bloody floor. Her sword had blood on it but she didn’t even recall her part in the fight. Perhaps the guards had not expected the two to resist, and it was clear the boys that assaulted Lapis only had brute strength and numbers to overpower her with, they weren’t even armed.

Bishop and Lapis had to scramble to get back to their parents and after a frantic explanation, their mother barked orders to them, and Rook. Both parents hurried to get the kids onto the ship while the rest of the guard closed in. Rook managed to get to Copper and the twins headed back, but not before the guard started for the boat. From the deck, Lapis watched in horror as Rook yelled to get the guards attention, confessing to the killing, and disappearing into the group of furious men.

Lapis remembers screaming and crying as she watched, she could see them attacking her father but she was too far to do anything. The ship was too close to launch for Ezri to stop and go back for him. Though she tried, Copper stopped her mother before she fell into the frigid sea in the attempt. The family had set sail without their father, and in the icey waters Ezri had to be careful about how she navigated, turning back was hard, and slow. Lapis was certain her father was dead. The pain and anguish it brought her was beyond measure. She loved her father and the guilt of what had happened left her unable to move from the deck, just paralyzed with sorrow and pain.

Her mother and Bishop however, wouldn’t accept it. The two hatched a plan to sneak into town, find Rook or his body and bring him back. Lapis took no part in this, she waited at the ship for them, still unable to think or function beyond her own internal turmoil. It took hours but they managed to recover her father but the state he was in still keeps her up at night. He had been nearly beaten to the brink of death, he had fractures, breaks, bleeds, head trauma and fresh ugly bruises. She had to focus on him though, nothing else mattered but treating him. She worked steadily for hours, until she had spent her every bit of energy treating him and keeping herself together enough to do so. The long trip back afforded her the opportunity to monitor him and continue treatment, but a grim silence weighed over the ship the whole time.

The Connors returned home and Rook eventually woke. Her father would never see well without glasses again, and if he was very lucky, he might get to work again. Over a month after the incident in Frosthaven, notices of wanted murderers meeting Bishop and Lapis’ descriptions arrived. These wanted posters showed up in port towns across the forbidden lands offering a reward if returned dead or alive.

Some of the guard in Auria could be bribed by the Connors, but there was no buying a way out of the murder of 3 unarmed boys and a grand total 3 guards. Freeing her father had ended in yet more bloodshed that had been blamed on Lapis inspite of her not being there. Ezri and Rook did the only thing they could to protect their children. Reluctantly, before the Aurian guards closed in on their home, Lapis and Bishop were sent to their grandmother in Alroc.

*Additional Info*

• Forsthaven payed trade ships to deliver the wanted posters to port towns, but this only happened to apply to the towns their traders visited. So not every town received a poster, and it took a very long time for them to get as far south as Auria.
  
• Since towns in the Forbiddenlands are completely autonomous, (not under any single government or law) there was no expectation on the part of Frosthaven that anyone would act in the interest of the posters. The best the town hoped for is if the pair was killed somewhere else, they’d get word of it.
  
• The guards in Auria (At least the leadership) are frequently bribed by the Connors. Which means that a lot of trouble that should befall them they generally get around. The members of the guard that are not willing to be paid off jumped upon the opportunity to use the posters against the Connors family, even though there was no obligation to act.
  

Alroc

Spoiler

yes it's a list. I'll either write it later or not. RP is what it is, let me know if I forgot something.
Lapis arrives in Alroc disgruntled over having to leave home
Lapis becomes a healer in local clinic
Lapis and Bishop explore mushroom cave with Hector
Lapis more or less finds a friend in Chathra
Lapis reacquaints herself with her family in Alroc (Estelle and Zaria)
Lapis become primary healer in Alroc
Lapis remembers the end of the fighting in Frosthaven
Zarkaylia tries to help Lapis deal with the difficult memories.
Lapis and Zarkaylia fight often.
Lapis asks to help with trade in Alroc to patch things with Zark and keep busy.
Alroc dam breaks.
Lapis tends to Nadia then has her carried out
Lapis salvages what she can carry of the town treasury.
Lapis flees Alroc with the rest of the townsfolk

Capabilities:
Healing - Competent
Started learning at 8 under the healer Arua. Continued to learn from the surgeon and Doctor Slone in Auria and began treating patients of her own since she was 13.

Herbalism - Apprentice
Started at 8 as well and has continued up to recent. She can identify, trim, tend and grow most medical herbs. Doesn't know anything about any other types of herbs.

Brewing - Novice*
Lapis’s father is an excellent brewmaster, and her work as a healer sometimes requires some of the same work. Eventually she started to study brewing to expand her abilities as a healer and feed her new found taste for the product.

Tailoring - Novice*
Spy has started to teach Lapis how to sew and tailor clothing many years ago. She practices with her free time in the clinic, and has even managed to make herself some clothing. She doesn't advertise this skill to others as she's concerned her work isn't very good compaired to professionals.

Swordsmanship - Novice
Likewise started when she was young her knowledge of the human body and rigid application of form makes her a challenging partner and potentially deadly enemy. While having taken lives she has since sworn off killing, and as such has not been practicing as she should. [Dropped to Nov from App due to disuse, and lack of practice.]

Knowledge:
Sign language - Apprentice
Learned with Copper and Bishop so they could communicate to their mute sister, and so she and Bishop can talk in front of their parents without being understood.

Trade - Competent*
Lapis has been trade master for years now. She is mostly using resources provided to her by Zark, traders she meets and what she has left to her from her mother. Lapis has started to make connections between herself and the mainland and has started to accumulate a reliable network of connections for various goods.

*These skills were undertaken in Oct/Nov of 2014, and have progressed accordingly.