Sarona Gayle (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
inkedspell) wrote2025-01-01 10:07 am
inkedspell) wrote2025-01-01 10:07 am
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[OOC] Character Information for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
daybreakacademy
Name: Sarona Gayle, nickname is Sari
DOB: September 19th
Age: 15
School Year: : 10th Grade
Affiliation: Rune Guard, The Inkmetal Forge
Basics: Prodigy of a Rune Guild with the philosophy it is the duty of those with power to help those without, and to wear the proof of that proudly. She's a bit arrogant and thinks she's more benevolent than she really is. Loyal and protective of the weak, but also very little patience for people who enjoy mediocrity (in her opinion). Her family has been affiliated with a specific guild for generations and it's all but demanded of the children to be good enough to join it (as the guild is extremely selective) and if not at least help to support and fund it. But she aligned herself with The Inkmetal Forge instead. This Guild is known for tattooing the Inscriptions onto their own bodies for the sake of enhancements and quick access to specific abilities, including the ability to summon weapons and tools or power large machinery/armors. She came to the Academy to get more indepth studies outside of her Runework and is expected to finish top honors to achieve a specialized Inscription from the Head of the Guild to allow her to gain her own personalized Armor that she call upon at will.
Setting Information: Sarona was created specially as an OC for the Daybreak Academy setting (daybreakacademy), an OC and AU RP game on Dreamwidth. Premise | Powers | Secret Societies | FAQ
Appearance: Sari is tall for her age of at almost 5’11” and she’s still growing. She’s got a curvy athletic build to go along with that height. She has olive green eyes and dark blue hair that almost looks black that she keeps meticulously maintained in a thick wavy curl. Sometimes she pulls it up but usually she leaves it out, just pinned back away from her face. She has dark brown skin with warm undertone to it. Sarona walks and sits with straight posture. She walks tall with purpose and carries herself like she always knows where she’s going. She has seven tattoos, three of which are more visible, the long one on her right arm (with a long scar running through it), the one on her breastbone near her heart, and the one on the palm of her hand. Four other ones are on various parts of her body.
Backstory:
Sarona grew up in a prominent upper class family who was well-affiliated with the Runesmith Guild, one of the more affluent Guilds that has several branches spread in multiple locations. If you are part of a Guild or in the know about them, you’ve probably heard of the Runesmiths for their money and exclusivity. For being so “large” the Guild doesn’t admit many new members each year per branch (3-4 only), but they have been around for so many years that they’ve had time to build up their base. Once a Runesmith, it’s unlikely that the person will defect to a different Guild. There is too much status and prestige linked to being a member.
Sarona is the youngest of three with an older sister and brother. The Gayles are well-known within Runic circles for their support of the Runesmiths and fundraising for them, having had at least one person every generation accepted into the Guild, but often more. But her parents didn’t just expect one of their children to be good enough to be recruited by the Guild, they expected it of all of them, or so they said. Sari has always had a natural affinity for Rune works and Inscriptions. By the time she was five she had already learned how to inscribe stones to glow so that she had extra light in her bedroom (allowing her to stay up late reading or studying) and was building small Golems that she would Inscribe specific action Runes onto that would have them perform little jobs around the house to assist the housekeeper, and her son, who was Sarona’s best friend.
She was raised to believe that her family was truly among the Elites of the craft. That their connection to the Runesmith and prominent Inscriptionists made them better because they earned their place among the guild’s ranks. It was expected of them, but it wasn’t just given to them, she thought. Of course this seemed contradictory to a young girl who had to wear thick glasses because of her eyes and got sick easily. Her older brother picked on her a lot because of it, mocking her looks and poor health daily.
But what Sarona lacked in physical prowess she more than made up for in creativity, ingenuity and intelligence. So while she grew up seeing herself as lesser than her brother and sister in some ways, she had an ingrained belief that she was better than most other people in most ways and better than them at the Runework they were expected to excel in. The housekeeper, Ms. Halli, always supported her and even gifted Sarona her favorite book, The Scarlet Sentinel (the Scarlet Pimpernel for Rune Guards, basically).
This all came to a head when her brother got into the Runesmith Guild when she was 10. Her brother who positively sucked at Runic Inscription work. Her brother who had been jealous of her skills to the point of finding various ways of bullying her for years, but somehow managed to get into what she’d always been told was the most exclusive and demanding of Guilds? No, something wasn’t right there. And so she did her research. She casually asked questions of guild members she had some acquaintance with, and even some of the children. And when in doubt? She would speak to the servants. She knew the people who knew everything would be the people the Elites often ignored.
And what she learned changed everything for her. Sure, the Runesmiths were exclusive in their recruitment and had a vast amount of wealth behind them, but rather than using that wealth to promote greater advancements that would help all people, they horded the wealth while demanding more and kept all the benefits for themselves. And if you happened to have the right amount of money, you could gain the status of the name even if you wouldn’t be nearly worthy of the alleged difficulty of their entrance tests.
It was all a sham. Her parents gave them money and so her brother got to join the ranks as if he had earned it. As if he actually had the skills and motivation to be of any worth as an Inscriptionist.
And so it came when she was encouraged to join at 12 years old—a full five years younger than her brother had been—she hesitated. Because what was the value of putting so much effort into joining the guild now? Would her parents still expect her to excel enough to pass the tests and get in on her own merit? Would they simply pay off the Examiner to get her in without any of the fuss? Would she be able to push the guild into helping people, really helping people? Not just those with money and status, but the people like Ms. Halli and her son who didn’t have the luck of that privilege?’
Then the storm struck. A storm that may as well have been the Blight itself. The wealthy suburbs on the hill where Sarona and her family lived were marginally effected, but the poorer rural area where many of the house staff and employees lived was devastated. Trees ripped out from their roots, roofs torn from homes, cars destroyed, flooding from the river, there was so much destruction. Did the Runesmith Guild step up to help the people? Of course not.
But the Inkmetal Forge did. And Sarona would sneak out to watch them as they worked, seeing them use their armors to move debris or using special tools to help rebuild the homes, some even repairing the cars. And on each Runic she saw, there were these beautiful, flowing tattoos on their bodies. Inscriptions. It was awe-inspiring to her. And sometimes they would stop and talk to her, and she would ask them questions. So Many Questions. She wanted to know everything about them. She learned that they were a small guild that often traveled hundreds to thousands of miles across the country to help out during natural disasters and other major incidents to help rebuild the areas, either at a major discount if they were called, or completely free of charge.
It doesn’t take long for Sari to make her decision after seeing the Inkmetal Forge in action. She all but begs them to recruit her, and when they initially reject hered, the leader of the guild not believing she’s serious (she was only 12 after all), she refused to give up. She stalked them around town, providing them golems and tools with her own Inscriptions, and helped out where she could. This led her to falling ill and she would have collapsed had one of the Inkmetal Runeworkers not caught her and taken her to their makeshift hospital on site. They looked after her, but since she had never actually told them much about herself, they didn’t know her family name to call her parents. So for days they nursed her, even worrying that they would need to call the nearest hospital that hadn’t been affected by the storm, and somehow her family never even came to look for her.
It was Ms. Halli who revealed who she was, having come to their camp to provide a hot meal as a thanks to the Guild members. They asked her about the young girl that had been stalking about their camp and insisting on helping them and Ms. Halli knew immediately who it was, as she had noticed Sarona missing from her family’s estate days ago. They contacted her parents because they were actually responsible adults, only for her parents to collect her by way of telling Ms. Halli to bring her home with her.
When Sarona was better, she found out that the Runesmith Guild had heard about her efforts to assist the Inkmetal Forge and the Runework she had done helping them, only pressing her even more to join the guild. Her parents for once actually seemed proud of her. They praised her philanthropism and her creativity—of course turning it to make it seem as if they were fully aware of her actions and even encouraged it—but Sari was done with all of this. She rejected the offer right to their faces and said she’d already accepted an offer from the Inkmetal Forge (which, in reality, there had been no offer, but Sari knew what she wanted and wasn’t going to settle for something less than that).
And in the fight that followed between her and her parents—most of which Sari couldn’t even remember because so many harsh words were said and done—Sarona had come to one conclusion. Her parents were too flawed for her to obey. They were biased and corrupted by their own desires for wealth and status and there was nothing they could say she would believe anymore. And she said it right to her mother’s face. So her mother told her that she would either abide by their wishes, or she would be shipped off to a reform school overseas until she came to her senses. She wouldn’t be living in their house acting the way she was. No child of hers would be running off with some traveling Guild that covered their bodies in runes like Old World savages.
So Sarona snuck out once again—as her parents couldn’t keep her locked in when she could just Inscribe her own exit wherever she wanted—and struck out for the warehouse the Inkmetal Forge Guild had been renting while doing their reconstruction work. She banged on the door until someone let her in and demanded once again that they accept her as a new recruit. She told them she would follow them all the way back to Michigan if she had to. They either accepted her now, and let her prove herself to the Guild, or she would make them accept her eventually. Really, it would be much easier on them if they got it over with now so they could move on to the actual training and apprenticeship.
When the leader asked her how she planned to stay with them, considering she was still under the age for being on her own without her parents’ approval, she merely told them she’d already thought of that and would handle her parents if the time came. Because Sarona had taken more than enough time to gather evidence against her parents that could cause them not only legal trouble, but the undoing of their social status and prestige. If they wanted to avoid the kind of scandal she would bring down on them, it would be better if they let her go.
Not that her parents ever did come for her. In the one time since she joined the Inkmetal Forge that she had taken the chance to call home—mainly to check on her older sister, who she actually got along with—her mother had overheard them. She all but told Sarona that she was dead to them and the only children she acknowledged were the ones worthy of their family name. Sarona hung up and never called back again. It was only weeks after this that she received the invitation to attended Daybreak Academy, and even though she originally hadn’t be interested, her Master Guard, the man she apprenticed under, insisted that if she were to stay, she had to continue her schooling before she could truly continue her Runic studies. And he would expect nothing less than excellence from her, because only hard work would prove her worthy of the next stage in her lessons. So Sari took his advice and accepted the enrollment to the school, believing that with a school as vast and varied there had to be more she could learn that would surprise him. Impress him.
And she’s learned a great deal indeed. In the two years she’s been studying at the Academy Sarona has already jumped a grade due to her loading herself with extra courses and even taking weekend seminars if and when they are available. She may not always be the most well-behaved student and she may even get into trouble at times for back-talking or contradicting her teachers, but she thrives on the depth of the knowledge and learning at the school. At Daybreak, she’s not the only prodigy, but she is doing everything she can to prove she’d the best at what she does. She’s already become fluent in Japanese in just the two years of studying there, as with the high percentage of Japanese students (and faculty), she wanted to be sure she could communicate with them effectively.
During holidays, if she doesn’t remain on campus, she returns to Michigan or to wherever her Master Guard is currently stationed for work in the States to continue apprenticing under him and helping with whatever his current mission is.
Then, Sarona's Guild leader JD died unexpectedly. Because he was technically her legal guardian, she had to return to the States and make sure things were taken care of. She spent some of that time training again with her Master Guard, but most of it was smoothing out the legal concerns that might have required her to return to her parents' custody. Her parents of course did not seem exactly pleased with this (her mother still acted as if she didn't exist when they had to travel to Michigan for two of the hearings), but they also put on the facade of "doting" parents for the sake of the public.
The Courts of course don't move as quickly as some would like and the Inkmetal Forge Guild is on the "down low" for most of its funds and activities, so it was a slow process to set her up with a new legal guardian (this time her Master Guard himself). Eventually things were settled and she was allowed to return to school. She kept up with her studies as best she could, as the school had given her permission to stay longer without needing to dis-enroll for the quarter. At the time, she hadn't expected it to take nearly two months for things to be settled, but it did. Then she just wanted to get back into the swing of things and not think about how close she came to being forced back to the family that didn't even want her.
Only a few months later, she was kidnapped by the Galra and forced to make and upgrade weapons for them. Some of her RAs and other classmates were also held hostage. She didn’t want anything to happen to them, and she was punished for refusing, so she went along with it. But she put fail-safes into the weapons so she knew how to disable them or to cause them to malfunction. They were rescued and fight their way free, then they took down the Galra, but Sarona was left with a feeling of tension and wanting to make sure that never happened to her again.
So she trained and she studied and she gave herself a new tattoo left on her arm that provided her a level of invulnerability. Because being tortured sucked. Missions kept happening at school, heralds got fought, and life went on. Only then she called to check in on the Inkmetal Forge Guild and how everyone was doing and found out that they’d been spread thin since JD died because so many natural disasters and emergencies kept happening between the US and Canada. They were going to help but there was only so much they could do.
Sarona couldn’t leave her guild to do this without her and got permission to come back temporarily to assist. She was flying from France straight out to California where landslides had been causing major problems for some of the smaller mountain villages up north. Only to run into her brother outside of town in one of the little cheap gas station she knows he would never be caught dead in. Why would he be in the region? Were the Runesmiths claiming they were “helping” to raise their status?
Turns out, nope. Her brother was working with another guild, that he called the InGravers, that maybe had a vested stake in these not-so-natural landslides because they were searching for something in the mountains. Which Sarona only found out because she didn’t trust him and spied on him after putting a temporary tracking rune on him after instigating a confrontation. She relayed all of this to Gina, the current guild leader and they set up a plan to stop the InGravers. Except someone in the InGravers found her tracking rune and was expecting someone to do something.
Sarona gets caught and tortured…or attempted torture, since her invulnerability rune kicked in. Only problem is that it has an hour-time limit before it starts overwhelming the other tattoos on her body and making them inert. She had to shut it down before her health rune shut off and she ended up having an asthma attack or cardiac arrest right there. Which was fine because she had been planning to use herself as bait the whole time, only the problem was she never expected it to happen as soon as it did. She hoped the plan she and Gina and her Master Guard (Ro) had come up with would still work with a moved up timeline.
The plan worked, they stopped the InGravers, but they found the black obsidian-like stone that they had been looking for. She fought with her brother to get the stone and when she got it away from him it shocked her bare hand, going up her hand and over her arm like an electrical burn. Bad enough to leave scars that disrupted her metal-bending tattoo on that arm. She couldn’t warp her staff anymore. Her brother used that moment to open up a rune gate—the one Runework he was generally good at doing--and she jumped in front of him, refusing to let him escape. Turned out, no, the plan all along was to send her through it, right into the Outlands. But not before telling her how their mother had been showing him the best place to leave the “Trash you never want to deal with again.”
His mistake was not realizing that she’d taken the stone with her. So here she was trapped in the Outlands, her dominant hand and arm injured, no food besides some protein bars and a bottle of water, and her Rune-pack. She quickly used her other hand to break her staff in two and used part of the staff to create a carrying case for the stone she’d taken from her brother. Unfortunately, that didn’t change the fact that the gate disappeared and for some reason she couldn’t open a new one.
Being trapped in the Outlands in a region where the landscape keeps changing on her like a rubik’s cube wasn’t easy, but she did what she had to do. She fixed what she could of her metal-bending tattoo, adding some strengthening runes to block out the nerve damage. Being mostly ambidextrous did work in her favor, but her right hand was going to need some physical therapy to get back to where it had been. She kept moving, traveling until she could find a new location that a gate could be opened.
She also gave herself two more Tattoos while she was out there. One was a permanent anti-Blight purification rune that she put on her chest on the opposite side of her health rune—not easy when you’re using your less dominant hand, but she did it as meticulously as possible. The other was an alchemy rune on the palm of her hand that could be used to manipulate the properties of Outlands flora to make them edible for her. Not that there was much to find in the first week or so she’d been out there, but she needed to eat what she could. She wasn’t going to die in the Outlands, forget that.
Surviving alone for six weeks alone in Outlands was not a fun time, but she did it. She figured out the pattern in how the area seemed to be "shifting" around her and used it to follow the pattern to find a crossroads. And once she crossed the boundaries into this new area, it was as if she was in a completely different region altogether. She didn't know where she was, but it wasn't whatever the hell she'd been dealing with before, so that was a step up. Turns out within a day of getting out she runs into a group on a mission. They weren't looking for her, but they did help her with getting out.
She immediately went back to her Guild and told them about the stone, which she had of course been studying as much as she could while she was in the Outlands. So far what she'd found out was that it had almost like anti-Candle properties and reacted badly to magic. She wondered if it was originally from somewhere in the Outlands, but couldn't tell for sure without more research. They told her that she should take it back to Daybreak with her and get away while they figure out if anyone was looking for it. She was more interested in getting back at her brother, but Ro and Gina convinced her it was better to get the stone out of the States and to a secure location where it could be studied. Back to school she goes.
Personality:
Arrogant, opinionated, demanding, entitled, intelligent, giving, motivated, all of these things describe Sarona. She grew up in a culture of expectation and elitism, being constantly told she was better than everyone else below her station, while also simultaneously being treated as inferior by her family. As a child this made her work even harder to prove herself, constantly striving for some form of validation and approval from the people who it seemed she never did enough to appease. Eventually her drive for knowledge and learning became more for its own sake than for the sake of others but she will always deep inside her have that unconscious belief that she is lacking in some way, defective somehow, no matter the confidence and bravado she displays for others. Sarona’s intelligence and thirst for knowledge has always been her greatest strength as it pushes her to want to understand the world and to think critically about why things are the way they are. At the same time, that very same intelligence breeds arrogance as she sees herself as more informed and thus more suited to make decisions than those she thinks don’t know what they are doing.
She is someone who recognizes that she has had many privileges and opportunities that other people didn’t have. That for all her successes, she also had unspoken benefits that gave her the leg up that others do not have access to. So she is grateful for this and sees it as her duty to take advantage of these privileges and skills to help those who don’t have what she has. What good is a Rune Guard that doesn’t “guard” as in to protect and shield others? What use is everything she’s gained if she can’t apply it in a way that betters society as a whole? It was through watching the Inkmetal Forge and connecting to their mission that she finally understood how she could put her knowledge and skills to use. Yes, she may be just as interested in fighting against the monsters of the Outlands who sometimes break through and seek to hurt people, but millions more people are affected by natural disasters and wrecked economies from poor infrastructure than by the Blighted. The Inkmetal Forge cares about all of it and that is a mission that she will devote her life to.
But the drawback of her drive and entitled nature is that is also leaves her blind to the opinions of others that may be just as important or valuable. She thinks she’s the smartest and thus she must has the answers to the problems. And if she doesn’t have the answer, then it must be someone even smarter or more experienced than her who can figure it out, not someone she sees as ignorant or too inexperienced. It’s one of her worst blind spots. She recognizes that the wealthy, elitist culture she was raised in was wrong, but can often be blind to how she herself still subconsciously falls into the very mental reasoning she was raised thinking. She cares and wants to do right by people, so obviously she isn’t as blinded and corrupted as those people, right?
Not that she automatically thinks someone less knowledgeable than her is less than or worthless. To Sarona, the belief that hard work and effort can bring about any success with the right opportunities is important. The Inkmetal Forge makes people earn their place among them. They don’t think that brains alone are enough. They don’t think strength or skills alone are enough. Someone who is effortlessly good at everything isn’t someone who will recognize the value in the hard work they do or the support they give to those who need help, in their minds. People who have never had to struggle or experience the struggling of others in an empathic way cannot be trusted to wield the kind of power a Rune Guard can create. It’s one of the reasons she chose to keep wearing glasses instead of using an Inscription to fix her vision, as it would be like saying she couldn’t handle being a Rune Guard without fixing her eyes, despite it being a flaw that had not hindered her to that point. It’s more out of spite than anything.
So Sarona does value hard work. It’s why she became a tutor at the Academy. Anyone who needs help but wants to learn she will never give up on. She will push them, and demand of them, wanting to make sure they succeed and can do better, even if her methods can be harsh and unorthodox at times, but she won’t give up on them as long as she believes they aren’t giving up. People who are lazy and unmotivated are useless in her eyes except as a lesson of how not to live your life. They remind her far too much of her brother, who coasted to success despite lack of skills or care to work hard enough to gain them, while constantly belittling her interests and aspirations.
Abilities:
Sarona is a prodigy in Runic Inscriptions and Golem-making, and has a hobby of making small golems that do basic tasks, such as picking up laundry, or watering planets. She has seven (7) runic tattoos on her body, the first (1st) being a long one on her right arm that she designed herself that allows her to manipulate and bend metals with her bare hands. The second (2nd) is on her left breast that improves her health, not exponentially, but it boosts her immune system to prevent her from falling ill as often as she did as a child and it means if she does get sick her body works through the illness much faster. A cold may last only a few hours versus a few days. The third (3rd) tattoo is on her left leg, which she boost her speed in temporary bursts. She can move so quickly it’s almost as if she’s teleporting from one location to another, but this is not something she can maintain so it only works in thirty second increments and she can only use it five times before she has to rest. The fourth (4th) tattoo is on the back of her right shoulder and is actually a link to the basic armors used by the Inkmetal Forge. It allows her to activate the armors while not being inside of them and direct their actions remotely. These armors are very simple and only can perform certain tasks and skills each.
Fifth (5th) tattoo is on her left upper arm and it’s an invulnerability tattoo. This provides her an inability to be harmed through most means or to feel pain for up to an hour depending on the severity of the damage the rune is absorbing. After that hour though it begins to shut down the other runes on her body and redirect all the power in them to itself to continue working if she doesn’t turn it off. Letting it fully recharge on its own takes 12 hours. Sixth (6th) tattoo above her right breast is an anti-Blight purification rune. She’s protected from the effects of Blight in most circumstances, but due to the incompleteness of the rune higher severe exposure or attacks from blight creatures might still have an effect on her. Seventh (7th) tattoo is on the palm of her right hand that allows for alchemic mutations of Outland flora/Blight-affected organic materials. While the primary purpose was to use it to make edible plants she could eat, it can also be combined with her anti-blight rune to heal organic matter from blight effects. This takes a lot out of her though, so it would be used rarely.
She also is good at making temporary Inscriptions. Temporary tattoos that have an even more finite time span for their usage, but can create a greater burst of power and energy. These tattoos are made with a special ink and put on a specially treated paper that can then be transferred to a person’s body. These tattoos are generalized and can be more mass-produced than the unique specialized tattoos that the Inkmetal Forge members put on their own bodies. She has three years of martial arts training under her belt, too.
Miscellaneous:
DOB: September 19th
Age: 15
School Year: : 10th Grade
Affiliation: Rune Guard, The Inkmetal Forge
Basics: Prodigy of a Rune Guild with the philosophy it is the duty of those with power to help those without, and to wear the proof of that proudly. She's a bit arrogant and thinks she's more benevolent than she really is. Loyal and protective of the weak, but also very little patience for people who enjoy mediocrity (in her opinion). Her family has been affiliated with a specific guild for generations and it's all but demanded of the children to be good enough to join it (as the guild is extremely selective) and if not at least help to support and fund it. But she aligned herself with The Inkmetal Forge instead. This Guild is known for tattooing the Inscriptions onto their own bodies for the sake of enhancements and quick access to specific abilities, including the ability to summon weapons and tools or power large machinery/armors. She came to the Academy to get more indepth studies outside of her Runework and is expected to finish top honors to achieve a specialized Inscription from the Head of the Guild to allow her to gain her own personalized Armor that she call upon at will.
Setting Information: Sarona was created specially as an OC for the Daybreak Academy setting (
daybreakacademy), an OC and AU RP game on Dreamwidth. Premise | Powers | Secret Societies | FAQAppearance: Sari is tall for her age of at almost 5’11” and she’s still growing. She’s got a curvy athletic build to go along with that height. She has olive green eyes and dark blue hair that almost looks black that she keeps meticulously maintained in a thick wavy curl. Sometimes she pulls it up but usually she leaves it out, just pinned back away from her face. She has dark brown skin with warm undertone to it. Sarona walks and sits with straight posture. She walks tall with purpose and carries herself like she always knows where she’s going. She has seven tattoos, three of which are more visible, the long one on her right arm (with a long scar running through it), the one on her breastbone near her heart, and the one on the palm of her hand. Four other ones are on various parts of her body.
Backstory:
Sarona grew up in a prominent upper class family who was well-affiliated with the Runesmith Guild, one of the more affluent Guilds that has several branches spread in multiple locations. If you are part of a Guild or in the know about them, you’ve probably heard of the Runesmiths for their money and exclusivity. For being so “large” the Guild doesn’t admit many new members each year per branch (3-4 only), but they have been around for so many years that they’ve had time to build up their base. Once a Runesmith, it’s unlikely that the person will defect to a different Guild. There is too much status and prestige linked to being a member.
Sarona is the youngest of three with an older sister and brother. The Gayles are well-known within Runic circles for their support of the Runesmiths and fundraising for them, having had at least one person every generation accepted into the Guild, but often more. But her parents didn’t just expect one of their children to be good enough to be recruited by the Guild, they expected it of all of them, or so they said. Sari has always had a natural affinity for Rune works and Inscriptions. By the time she was five she had already learned how to inscribe stones to glow so that she had extra light in her bedroom (allowing her to stay up late reading or studying) and was building small Golems that she would Inscribe specific action Runes onto that would have them perform little jobs around the house to assist the housekeeper, and her son, who was Sarona’s best friend.
She was raised to believe that her family was truly among the Elites of the craft. That their connection to the Runesmith and prominent Inscriptionists made them better because they earned their place among the guild’s ranks. It was expected of them, but it wasn’t just given to them, she thought. Of course this seemed contradictory to a young girl who had to wear thick glasses because of her eyes and got sick easily. Her older brother picked on her a lot because of it, mocking her looks and poor health daily.
But what Sarona lacked in physical prowess she more than made up for in creativity, ingenuity and intelligence. So while she grew up seeing herself as lesser than her brother and sister in some ways, she had an ingrained belief that she was better than most other people in most ways and better than them at the Runework they were expected to excel in. The housekeeper, Ms. Halli, always supported her and even gifted Sarona her favorite book, The Scarlet Sentinel (the Scarlet Pimpernel for Rune Guards, basically).
This all came to a head when her brother got into the Runesmith Guild when she was 10. Her brother who positively sucked at Runic Inscription work. Her brother who had been jealous of her skills to the point of finding various ways of bullying her for years, but somehow managed to get into what she’d always been told was the most exclusive and demanding of Guilds? No, something wasn’t right there. And so she did her research. She casually asked questions of guild members she had some acquaintance with, and even some of the children. And when in doubt? She would speak to the servants. She knew the people who knew everything would be the people the Elites often ignored.
And what she learned changed everything for her. Sure, the Runesmiths were exclusive in their recruitment and had a vast amount of wealth behind them, but rather than using that wealth to promote greater advancements that would help all people, they horded the wealth while demanding more and kept all the benefits for themselves. And if you happened to have the right amount of money, you could gain the status of the name even if you wouldn’t be nearly worthy of the alleged difficulty of their entrance tests.
It was all a sham. Her parents gave them money and so her brother got to join the ranks as if he had earned it. As if he actually had the skills and motivation to be of any worth as an Inscriptionist.
And so it came when she was encouraged to join at 12 years old—a full five years younger than her brother had been—she hesitated. Because what was the value of putting so much effort into joining the guild now? Would her parents still expect her to excel enough to pass the tests and get in on her own merit? Would they simply pay off the Examiner to get her in without any of the fuss? Would she be able to push the guild into helping people, really helping people? Not just those with money and status, but the people like Ms. Halli and her son who didn’t have the luck of that privilege?’
Then the storm struck. A storm that may as well have been the Blight itself. The wealthy suburbs on the hill where Sarona and her family lived were marginally effected, but the poorer rural area where many of the house staff and employees lived was devastated. Trees ripped out from their roots, roofs torn from homes, cars destroyed, flooding from the river, there was so much destruction. Did the Runesmith Guild step up to help the people? Of course not.
But the Inkmetal Forge did. And Sarona would sneak out to watch them as they worked, seeing them use their armors to move debris or using special tools to help rebuild the homes, some even repairing the cars. And on each Runic she saw, there were these beautiful, flowing tattoos on their bodies. Inscriptions. It was awe-inspiring to her. And sometimes they would stop and talk to her, and she would ask them questions. So Many Questions. She wanted to know everything about them. She learned that they were a small guild that often traveled hundreds to thousands of miles across the country to help out during natural disasters and other major incidents to help rebuild the areas, either at a major discount if they were called, or completely free of charge.
It doesn’t take long for Sari to make her decision after seeing the Inkmetal Forge in action. She all but begs them to recruit her, and when they initially reject hered, the leader of the guild not believing she’s serious (she was only 12 after all), she refused to give up. She stalked them around town, providing them golems and tools with her own Inscriptions, and helped out where she could. This led her to falling ill and she would have collapsed had one of the Inkmetal Runeworkers not caught her and taken her to their makeshift hospital on site. They looked after her, but since she had never actually told them much about herself, they didn’t know her family name to call her parents. So for days they nursed her, even worrying that they would need to call the nearest hospital that hadn’t been affected by the storm, and somehow her family never even came to look for her.
It was Ms. Halli who revealed who she was, having come to their camp to provide a hot meal as a thanks to the Guild members. They asked her about the young girl that had been stalking about their camp and insisting on helping them and Ms. Halli knew immediately who it was, as she had noticed Sarona missing from her family’s estate days ago. They contacted her parents because they were actually responsible adults, only for her parents to collect her by way of telling Ms. Halli to bring her home with her.
When Sarona was better, she found out that the Runesmith Guild had heard about her efforts to assist the Inkmetal Forge and the Runework she had done helping them, only pressing her even more to join the guild. Her parents for once actually seemed proud of her. They praised her philanthropism and her creativity—of course turning it to make it seem as if they were fully aware of her actions and even encouraged it—but Sari was done with all of this. She rejected the offer right to their faces and said she’d already accepted an offer from the Inkmetal Forge (which, in reality, there had been no offer, but Sari knew what she wanted and wasn’t going to settle for something less than that).
And in the fight that followed between her and her parents—most of which Sari couldn’t even remember because so many harsh words were said and done—Sarona had come to one conclusion. Her parents were too flawed for her to obey. They were biased and corrupted by their own desires for wealth and status and there was nothing they could say she would believe anymore. And she said it right to her mother’s face. So her mother told her that she would either abide by their wishes, or she would be shipped off to a reform school overseas until she came to her senses. She wouldn’t be living in their house acting the way she was. No child of hers would be running off with some traveling Guild that covered their bodies in runes like Old World savages.
So Sarona snuck out once again—as her parents couldn’t keep her locked in when she could just Inscribe her own exit wherever she wanted—and struck out for the warehouse the Inkmetal Forge Guild had been renting while doing their reconstruction work. She banged on the door until someone let her in and demanded once again that they accept her as a new recruit. She told them she would follow them all the way back to Michigan if she had to. They either accepted her now, and let her prove herself to the Guild, or she would make them accept her eventually. Really, it would be much easier on them if they got it over with now so they could move on to the actual training and apprenticeship.
When the leader asked her how she planned to stay with them, considering she was still under the age for being on her own without her parents’ approval, she merely told them she’d already thought of that and would handle her parents if the time came. Because Sarona had taken more than enough time to gather evidence against her parents that could cause them not only legal trouble, but the undoing of their social status and prestige. If they wanted to avoid the kind of scandal she would bring down on them, it would be better if they let her go.
Not that her parents ever did come for her. In the one time since she joined the Inkmetal Forge that she had taken the chance to call home—mainly to check on her older sister, who she actually got along with—her mother had overheard them. She all but told Sarona that she was dead to them and the only children she acknowledged were the ones worthy of their family name. Sarona hung up and never called back again. It was only weeks after this that she received the invitation to attended Daybreak Academy, and even though she originally hadn’t be interested, her Master Guard, the man she apprenticed under, insisted that if she were to stay, she had to continue her schooling before she could truly continue her Runic studies. And he would expect nothing less than excellence from her, because only hard work would prove her worthy of the next stage in her lessons. So Sari took his advice and accepted the enrollment to the school, believing that with a school as vast and varied there had to be more she could learn that would surprise him. Impress him.
And she’s learned a great deal indeed. In the two years she’s been studying at the Academy Sarona has already jumped a grade due to her loading herself with extra courses and even taking weekend seminars if and when they are available. She may not always be the most well-behaved student and she may even get into trouble at times for back-talking or contradicting her teachers, but she thrives on the depth of the knowledge and learning at the school. At Daybreak, she’s not the only prodigy, but she is doing everything she can to prove she’d the best at what she does. She’s already become fluent in Japanese in just the two years of studying there, as with the high percentage of Japanese students (and faculty), she wanted to be sure she could communicate with them effectively.
During holidays, if she doesn’t remain on campus, she returns to Michigan or to wherever her Master Guard is currently stationed for work in the States to continue apprenticing under him and helping with whatever his current mission is.
Then, Sarona's Guild leader JD died unexpectedly. Because he was technically her legal guardian, she had to return to the States and make sure things were taken care of. She spent some of that time training again with her Master Guard, but most of it was smoothing out the legal concerns that might have required her to return to her parents' custody. Her parents of course did not seem exactly pleased with this (her mother still acted as if she didn't exist when they had to travel to Michigan for two of the hearings), but they also put on the facade of "doting" parents for the sake of the public.
The Courts of course don't move as quickly as some would like and the Inkmetal Forge Guild is on the "down low" for most of its funds and activities, so it was a slow process to set her up with a new legal guardian (this time her Master Guard himself). Eventually things were settled and she was allowed to return to school. She kept up with her studies as best she could, as the school had given her permission to stay longer without needing to dis-enroll for the quarter. At the time, she hadn't expected it to take nearly two months for things to be settled, but it did. Then she just wanted to get back into the swing of things and not think about how close she came to being forced back to the family that didn't even want her.
Only a few months later, she was kidnapped by the Galra and forced to make and upgrade weapons for them. Some of her RAs and other classmates were also held hostage. She didn’t want anything to happen to them, and she was punished for refusing, so she went along with it. But she put fail-safes into the weapons so she knew how to disable them or to cause them to malfunction. They were rescued and fight their way free, then they took down the Galra, but Sarona was left with a feeling of tension and wanting to make sure that never happened to her again.
So she trained and she studied and she gave herself a new tattoo left on her arm that provided her a level of invulnerability. Because being tortured sucked. Missions kept happening at school, heralds got fought, and life went on. Only then she called to check in on the Inkmetal Forge Guild and how everyone was doing and found out that they’d been spread thin since JD died because so many natural disasters and emergencies kept happening between the US and Canada. They were going to help but there was only so much they could do.
Sarona couldn’t leave her guild to do this without her and got permission to come back temporarily to assist. She was flying from France straight out to California where landslides had been causing major problems for some of the smaller mountain villages up north. Only to run into her brother outside of town in one of the little cheap gas station she knows he would never be caught dead in. Why would he be in the region? Were the Runesmiths claiming they were “helping” to raise their status?
Turns out, nope. Her brother was working with another guild, that he called the InGravers, that maybe had a vested stake in these not-so-natural landslides because they were searching for something in the mountains. Which Sarona only found out because she didn’t trust him and spied on him after putting a temporary tracking rune on him after instigating a confrontation. She relayed all of this to Gina, the current guild leader and they set up a plan to stop the InGravers. Except someone in the InGravers found her tracking rune and was expecting someone to do something.
Sarona gets caught and tortured…or attempted torture, since her invulnerability rune kicked in. Only problem is that it has an hour-time limit before it starts overwhelming the other tattoos on her body and making them inert. She had to shut it down before her health rune shut off and she ended up having an asthma attack or cardiac arrest right there. Which was fine because she had been planning to use herself as bait the whole time, only the problem was she never expected it to happen as soon as it did. She hoped the plan she and Gina and her Master Guard (Ro) had come up with would still work with a moved up timeline.
The plan worked, they stopped the InGravers, but they found the black obsidian-like stone that they had been looking for. She fought with her brother to get the stone and when she got it away from him it shocked her bare hand, going up her hand and over her arm like an electrical burn. Bad enough to leave scars that disrupted her metal-bending tattoo on that arm. She couldn’t warp her staff anymore. Her brother used that moment to open up a rune gate—the one Runework he was generally good at doing--and she jumped in front of him, refusing to let him escape. Turned out, no, the plan all along was to send her through it, right into the Outlands. But not before telling her how their mother had been showing him the best place to leave the “Trash you never want to deal with again.”
His mistake was not realizing that she’d taken the stone with her. So here she was trapped in the Outlands, her dominant hand and arm injured, no food besides some protein bars and a bottle of water, and her Rune-pack. She quickly used her other hand to break her staff in two and used part of the staff to create a carrying case for the stone she’d taken from her brother. Unfortunately, that didn’t change the fact that the gate disappeared and for some reason she couldn’t open a new one.
Being trapped in the Outlands in a region where the landscape keeps changing on her like a rubik’s cube wasn’t easy, but she did what she had to do. She fixed what she could of her metal-bending tattoo, adding some strengthening runes to block out the nerve damage. Being mostly ambidextrous did work in her favor, but her right hand was going to need some physical therapy to get back to where it had been. She kept moving, traveling until she could find a new location that a gate could be opened.
She also gave herself two more Tattoos while she was out there. One was a permanent anti-Blight purification rune that she put on her chest on the opposite side of her health rune—not easy when you’re using your less dominant hand, but she did it as meticulously as possible. The other was an alchemy rune on the palm of her hand that could be used to manipulate the properties of Outlands flora to make them edible for her. Not that there was much to find in the first week or so she’d been out there, but she needed to eat what she could. She wasn’t going to die in the Outlands, forget that.
Surviving alone for six weeks alone in Outlands was not a fun time, but she did it. She figured out the pattern in how the area seemed to be "shifting" around her and used it to follow the pattern to find a crossroads. And once she crossed the boundaries into this new area, it was as if she was in a completely different region altogether. She didn't know where she was, but it wasn't whatever the hell she'd been dealing with before, so that was a step up. Turns out within a day of getting out she runs into a group on a mission. They weren't looking for her, but they did help her with getting out.
She immediately went back to her Guild and told them about the stone, which she had of course been studying as much as she could while she was in the Outlands. So far what she'd found out was that it had almost like anti-Candle properties and reacted badly to magic. She wondered if it was originally from somewhere in the Outlands, but couldn't tell for sure without more research. They told her that she should take it back to Daybreak with her and get away while they figure out if anyone was looking for it. She was more interested in getting back at her brother, but Ro and Gina convinced her it was better to get the stone out of the States and to a secure location where it could be studied. Back to school she goes.
Personality:
Arrogant, opinionated, demanding, entitled, intelligent, giving, motivated, all of these things describe Sarona. She grew up in a culture of expectation and elitism, being constantly told she was better than everyone else below her station, while also simultaneously being treated as inferior by her family. As a child this made her work even harder to prove herself, constantly striving for some form of validation and approval from the people who it seemed she never did enough to appease. Eventually her drive for knowledge and learning became more for its own sake than for the sake of others but she will always deep inside her have that unconscious belief that she is lacking in some way, defective somehow, no matter the confidence and bravado she displays for others. Sarona’s intelligence and thirst for knowledge has always been her greatest strength as it pushes her to want to understand the world and to think critically about why things are the way they are. At the same time, that very same intelligence breeds arrogance as she sees herself as more informed and thus more suited to make decisions than those she thinks don’t know what they are doing.
She is someone who recognizes that she has had many privileges and opportunities that other people didn’t have. That for all her successes, she also had unspoken benefits that gave her the leg up that others do not have access to. So she is grateful for this and sees it as her duty to take advantage of these privileges and skills to help those who don’t have what she has. What good is a Rune Guard that doesn’t “guard” as in to protect and shield others? What use is everything she’s gained if she can’t apply it in a way that betters society as a whole? It was through watching the Inkmetal Forge and connecting to their mission that she finally understood how she could put her knowledge and skills to use. Yes, she may be just as interested in fighting against the monsters of the Outlands who sometimes break through and seek to hurt people, but millions more people are affected by natural disasters and wrecked economies from poor infrastructure than by the Blighted. The Inkmetal Forge cares about all of it and that is a mission that she will devote her life to.
But the drawback of her drive and entitled nature is that is also leaves her blind to the opinions of others that may be just as important or valuable. She thinks she’s the smartest and thus she must has the answers to the problems. And if she doesn’t have the answer, then it must be someone even smarter or more experienced than her who can figure it out, not someone she sees as ignorant or too inexperienced. It’s one of her worst blind spots. She recognizes that the wealthy, elitist culture she was raised in was wrong, but can often be blind to how she herself still subconsciously falls into the very mental reasoning she was raised thinking. She cares and wants to do right by people, so obviously she isn’t as blinded and corrupted as those people, right?
Not that she automatically thinks someone less knowledgeable than her is less than or worthless. To Sarona, the belief that hard work and effort can bring about any success with the right opportunities is important. The Inkmetal Forge makes people earn their place among them. They don’t think that brains alone are enough. They don’t think strength or skills alone are enough. Someone who is effortlessly good at everything isn’t someone who will recognize the value in the hard work they do or the support they give to those who need help, in their minds. People who have never had to struggle or experience the struggling of others in an empathic way cannot be trusted to wield the kind of power a Rune Guard can create. It’s one of the reasons she chose to keep wearing glasses instead of using an Inscription to fix her vision, as it would be like saying she couldn’t handle being a Rune Guard without fixing her eyes, despite it being a flaw that had not hindered her to that point. It’s more out of spite than anything.
So Sarona does value hard work. It’s why she became a tutor at the Academy. Anyone who needs help but wants to learn she will never give up on. She will push them, and demand of them, wanting to make sure they succeed and can do better, even if her methods can be harsh and unorthodox at times, but she won’t give up on them as long as she believes they aren’t giving up. People who are lazy and unmotivated are useless in her eyes except as a lesson of how not to live your life. They remind her far too much of her brother, who coasted to success despite lack of skills or care to work hard enough to gain them, while constantly belittling her interests and aspirations.
Abilities:
Sarona is a prodigy in Runic Inscriptions and Golem-making, and has a hobby of making small golems that do basic tasks, such as picking up laundry, or watering planets. She has seven (7) runic tattoos on her body, the first (1st) being a long one on her right arm that she designed herself that allows her to manipulate and bend metals with her bare hands. The second (2nd) is on her left breast that improves her health, not exponentially, but it boosts her immune system to prevent her from falling ill as often as she did as a child and it means if she does get sick her body works through the illness much faster. A cold may last only a few hours versus a few days. The third (3rd) tattoo is on her left leg, which she boost her speed in temporary bursts. She can move so quickly it’s almost as if she’s teleporting from one location to another, but this is not something she can maintain so it only works in thirty second increments and she can only use it five times before she has to rest. The fourth (4th) tattoo is on the back of her right shoulder and is actually a link to the basic armors used by the Inkmetal Forge. It allows her to activate the armors while not being inside of them and direct their actions remotely. These armors are very simple and only can perform certain tasks and skills each.
Fifth (5th) tattoo is on her left upper arm and it’s an invulnerability tattoo. This provides her an inability to be harmed through most means or to feel pain for up to an hour depending on the severity of the damage the rune is absorbing. After that hour though it begins to shut down the other runes on her body and redirect all the power in them to itself to continue working if she doesn’t turn it off. Letting it fully recharge on its own takes 12 hours. Sixth (6th) tattoo above her right breast is an anti-Blight purification rune. She’s protected from the effects of Blight in most circumstances, but due to the incompleteness of the rune higher severe exposure or attacks from blight creatures might still have an effect on her. Seventh (7th) tattoo is on the palm of her right hand that allows for alchemic mutations of Outland flora/Blight-affected organic materials. While the primary purpose was to use it to make edible plants she could eat, it can also be combined with her anti-blight rune to heal organic matter from blight effects. This takes a lot out of her though, so it would be used rarely.
She also is good at making temporary Inscriptions. Temporary tattoos that have an even more finite time span for their usage, but can create a greater burst of power and energy. These tattoos are made with a special ink and put on a specially treated paper that can then be transferred to a person’s body. These tattoos are generalized and can be more mass-produced than the unique specialized tattoos that the Inkmetal Forge members put on their own bodies. She has three years of martial arts training under her belt, too.
Miscellaneous:
- Sarona loves bold and/or bright colors and often wears bright solid colored clothing. As a child, her poor eyesight made it hard to differentiate shades with darker colors, so she often wore bright/bold colors so she had a good idea of what she was wearing.
- Sarona speaks English, French and has become fluent in Japanese in the two years she’s been at Daybreak Academy. Currently becoming conversational in Spanish and German.
- Sarona is basically blind without her glasses. She knows a temporary Rune that can help her see better for a while if she doesn’t have them, but refuses to get permanent surgery or Inscriptions to fix it.
- Sarona is a skilled armor pilot, but she does better with making the Inscriptions that power the armors. She’s very physical as a pilot, more a close combat and brawler type.
- Sarona’s one physical vanity is her hair. She takes a lot of time and uses specific products to make sure it is soft, shiny and silky. Her hair is naturally thick and curly so she blow dries it and keeps a wavy curl to it to avoid how easily tangled it can get. She has been recently wearing it more natural.
- Her hair isn’t naturally blue. It turned blue after she created a special ink to use for one of her tattoos.
- Sarona does martial arts and running as her daily exercise.
- Her glasses are Inscription reinforced to prevent them from breaking easily.
- Sarona’s voice is like a slightly deeper version of Amandla Steinberg’s and she speaks clearly, but quickly.
- When Sari is angry, she stops using contractions and enunciates each word very clearly.