#isabel batista: daughter of immigrants from ebonhawke

[ascalonianlightbringer]

It's been a long time since I first fell in love with pre-Searing Ascalon in Guild Wars: Prophecies. But I'm still nostalgic enough that I periodically visit Ebonhawke just to go home to human Ascalon, and I loved this view of it :)

[anghraine]

Speaking of non-canonical headcanons and also GW2, here are some (technically) one-sentence non-canonical headcanon backstories for my human PCs:

Lady Althea Fairchild is a proud Ascalonian aristocrat born in Ebonhawke, then brought to Divinity's Reach and raised there for her and her older sister's safety—but Althea chose to give up her safe and frivolous existence after her sister found purpose among the Seraph only to be lost in battle.

Warmaster Xiulan Azar is a descendant of Canthan and Orrian immigrants who have scraped by in the Salma District for many years; she rarely speaks of her Orrian family history and few know about it, but it has impacted her sense of identity and legacy as powerfully as her Canthan side, and fuels the ferocity of her opposition to Zhaitan.

Agent Kate Sandford is no less Ascalonian in heritage or identity than Althea, but grew up in abject poverty and ended up in a bandit gang before becoming disaffected and joining the Separatists as a thief, scout, and sometime cook, returning home in frustration a few years later in search of a more effective way to help her people.

Lightbringer Gwen is, like Kate, a former bandit with a strong sense of her Ascalonian origins, though her hard-edged good sense prevented her from getting carried away to the same extent, all the more after the disappearance of her estranged Seraph sister led her to extricate herself and turn hero—but she remains tough and resolute, determined to do whatever has to be done.

Magister Isabel Batista is the orphaned daughter of Ebon Vanguard soldiers and was more or less taken in by her friend Petra's family, and happy to use her flair for necromancy to protect their tavern and homes while dreaming of acceptance into the Queensdale Academy—a dream she achieved, and then surpassed by joining the Durmand Priory's fight against her natural enemy, Zhaitan.

[anghraine]

In keeping with my Ascalonian rageblogging: a ranking of my major PCs by how troubled they are over the legacy of the Charr invasions.

1- Althea Fairchild and Gwen Velazquez: a tie for first! Both are from proudly Ascalonian families, if on opposite ends of the Divinity's Reach social hierarchy—Althea comes from Kryta's and Ebonhawke's nobility, Gwen from the streets of Divinity's Reach. But they both loathe the entire Charr culture and everything it stands for with their entire beings. (Think me x 10.) They can keep a lid on the nuclear rage, but they definitely feel it.

2- Xiulan Azar: her mother is a descendant of Orrians who immigrated to Kryta shortly before the Charr invasion, and while her specific forebears weren't killed, the horror of what happened—and is still happening—to the Orrian people weighs on her. She's deeply sympathetic to Ascalonians as well as to the tiny surviving Orrian community, who mostly keep their heritage to themselves.

3- Pax Vowkeeper is a Charr, and once had it all: respected parents, esteem from her warband, a triumphant record, even relative uniqueness as her revenant abilities manifested. But unlike many, she found it increasingly difficult to ignore the price of victory as she became more attuned to the ghosts. Eventually, she gave up everything, changed her name to Pax, joined the Durmand Priory, and tried to discover a way to regain her sense of honor while defending Tyria.

4- Isabel Batista is not as furious as Althea, Gwen, and Xiulan. But in her quiet, scholarly way, she does not like Charr culture or trust individual Charr unless she knows them personally. She does not think the Searing, the initial Charr invasion, the various war crimes, the overall conquest, and the war over 200+ years can be accurately treated as separate events. She's particularly troubled by the destruction of Ascalonian artifacts, and the most open to friendship with Pax when she turns over some of them.

5- Victoria Langmar is the adopted daughter of Althea's aunt, and fairly close to Althea. But Victoria's feelings about her adoption into the aristocracy are complex, and she's uncertain she can even be considered Ascalonian without knowing where her birth parents' families came from (Elona by way of Kryta, it turns out) or what happened to them (killed by the White Mantle). She certainly sides with the Langmar-Fairchilds and her/their people in general, and she has long regarded the Charr as a threat to humanity and her home, but it's complicated, and she does welcome the prospect of peace.

6- Alexandra Díaz is the most "Krytan" of my Ascalonian characters. She's spent all her life in Divinity's Reach, mostly in the Salma District without much contact with the Ascalonian community, and the main influences on her are other local commoners like her friend Petra. She and her sister are conscious of their background and proud of their people's grit and resolve, but they're much more preoccupied with the here and now, and strongly support the treaty with the Charr. It's time to move forwards.

7- Magister Siobhán of the Durmand Priory does intellectually understand the various causes of the human-Charr conflict, as a historian. But she's a young sylvari interested in adventure and seizing the moment, and what's needed in the moment is fighting dragons! All this hostility and tension over something that basically ended before Siobhán even came into the world, and specific episodes of which are almost unfathomably distant in time, seems a pointless distraction. Humans and Charr can gain so much more by working together. Hasn't the Priory shown that?