Kazarien Zerick
About
Ishgardian Countess today, a soldier of great brutality and fortune in the past. Following her survival of the battlefields at Carteneau, the haughty and hot-tempered noblewoman seeks only to fulfill her family's charter: Seek out artifacts of great power and keep them tight under lock and key within the Shadow Vault.
Description
Half-Elezen Half-Hyuren woman of roughly forty to fifty summers, but with a good complexion and athleticism that conceal this fact behind a facade of a woman in her early thirties. The scars of battle clearly line her otherwise fair skin, her musculature more akin to her Dravanian heritage than her noble's upbringing. Pale blue hair, usually found quite short or tied up in a utilitarian bun, and freckled cheeks.
Missing an eye, perpetually wears a black eyepatch to cover. Her remaining eye is piercing silver.
She is six fulms tall, and tends to carry herself with a confident air of almost arrogant superiority when relaxed.
Tends to wear mostly blacks and muted tones, partially due to personal taste and partually due to house colors.
Backstory (Any details within must be discussed before used in roleplay)
The House of Zerick
House Zerick was founded after the very first Thordan and his Knights of the Round returned with the body of the first Azure Dragoon. At first the notion was to enshrine it, but it was warned against to keep the artifacts that accompanied the body apart from the body and into the wrong hands, so the idea of creating the Shadow Vault was made. Though the first Count Zerick's name was lost to history, he and his moderate chapter of one of the larger main families was charged with maintaining and curating the Shadow Vault. Eventually, several generations later, their charter was expanded to also intercepting items worthy of being secured in the vault as threats to Ishgard.
As the Garlean Empire began to rise and the Dragonsong War began to heat up over time, House Zerick's charter coursed it more in the direction of intercepting Garlean goods rather than Draconic goods, and upon finding that some Ishgardian houses were in ownership of such Garlean items which deserved to be in the Shadow Vault, the family resorted more and more to subterfuge. In the interest of keeping the family above board, however, they were deployed to the Autumn War against Ala Mhigo along with the rest of Ishgard's retained military. During that time, they captured several unnamed artifacts for the vault, and upon reporting this to the Archbishop, it was determined that the Zerick House's aims would never be bound in the skirmishes of the Dragonsong War, but rather keeping Ishgard safe from other threats. It was for this reason that Count Kevros Zerick petitioned and put together the Zerick Outriders, a small militia group deployed frequently to aid various members of what would become the Eorzean Alliance, whose secondary goal it was to collect artifacts along the way as needed.
A Child in the Fields
Roughly 40 years before the Calamity, while on a rare scouting mission in the battlefields of the Western Highlands looking for one such artifact, Zerick's scouts happened upon a young girl with ferocious strength and a powerful aura around her. The only scrap of identity she had on her was difficult to discern, being in a sort of chicken scratched Dravanian: her name, Icavindr. Unaware of what this meant, when the young child was brought before Count Zerick, he took a shine to her and adopted her as his daughter, naming her Kazarien as she appeared to have little understanding of her identity. The adoption was of great benefit to the house, as it was discovered mere weeks before that the Count was incapable of siring children, and the former Countess had taken ill with an unknown disease. She would perish within the first year of Kazarien's adoption. Over time, Kazarien was groomed into being a fine if conniving and short-tempered countess.
Her rash nature, while a girl in her young twenties, would see her not only refusing but outright maiming a few potential suitors whose reprehensible attempts at taking her for their own would merit the response. Count Zerick was unwilling to watch his beloved daughter be treated this way, afraid she would turn into a closed-minded Ishgardian Noble, and felt she needed an extended leave from Ishgard where she could creatively use her exceptionally growing physical prowess to its full potential. She was put in charge of the Zerick Outriders and assisted in many skirmishes, introducing the notion of accepting bolstering from sellswords as certain events necessitated it.
Meanwhile, the house continued to churn on. Count Zerick's health declined greatly, being quite old and ill with a similar unknown disease which claimed his late wife's life. Kazarien, working in the field, was unavailable to receive word of her ailing father's condition. To aid him in his duties while ill, Archbishop Thordan VII encouraged him to take on one of the Archbishop's own cloister, a knight named Acel, to aid in administration. Begrudgingly he did until his daughter was able to return.
Then the Calamity struck.
Downward and Onward
At the battlefields of Carteneau, every Zerick Outrider and attached mercenary met their doom upon Bahamut's first sweeps. All but Kazarien. As the debris and firestorm rained down on Coerthas, its climate snapping from lush, peaceful temperate highland to bitter frozen ice and snow, Count Zerick passed away rather abruptly. There are multiple potential rumors: either he succumbed to his illness, the change in climate from the Calamity was too great, he died of a broken heart upon hearing that his daughter had likely perished on the battlefield, or that given what was to follow, Ser Acel may have poisoned him.
Kazarien, unknowing of her promotion to Countess, spent time issuing her apologies and consoling the families of the soldiers lost on the battlefield alongside her, then returned home. Ser Acel refused to give up the reigns to the household, ending in a merciless duel for honor which he had no hopes of winning. This slighted the Archbishop, for whom Ser Acel was a beloved retainer, and the newly minted Countess Zerick was censured in the courts. House Zerick was deprived of its voice, and during this time was when the Archbishop liberated the casket of the first Azure Dragoon when he went to Azys Lla to meet his fate.
Upon being censured and before Archbishop Thordan's treachery, Kazarien sought to instead use her ties of military service and clout amongst the landed elites in the three neighboring citystates to found a shell company each which handled business in a moderate, reasonable way while continuing her family's charter, intercepting artifacts needing to be contained in the Shadow Vault:
Reclamations United in Gridania, a company which specialized in maintaining ruins and logistical shipping via airways
Brasswyrm Tradepost in Ul'dah, a company which sheltered objects bound for auction and transit through Ul'dah's ground shipping lanes
Passenger Transport in Limsa, a company that fielded pirates that specifically targeted vessels bound for Garlemald
During a major assault on the city, while many dragons were being repelled at Ishgard's walls, massive destruction was wrought where Zerick Manor stood planned to be rebuilt years later in the Ishgardian Restoration. Meanwhile, House Zerick has been operating out of Reclamations United as it has the largest property.
Fortunately for Ishgard and the Zerick family's reputation, upon retrieving the casket from the Vault, Archbishop Thordan VII had it sealed so that nothing would be entering or leaving it until declared safe to do so by his office. Ishgard's current administration, the current leader of has reassured House Zerick that it would be back to operating order pending the reconstruction of Zerick Manor.