Anka Klenterin

[Lightascetic]

Name: Anka Klenterin 

Age: 19

Gender: Female

Nation/Allegiance: Thria, no allegiance (nomadic)

Appearance/Description: Anka is slightly tall and sleight, but appears young in both face and chest. Her skin is a delicate and pale white, unscarred and almost ethereal under the right light. Her hair is long and dark hazel, with bangs framing her forehead and falling down to her lower back and the front of her chest. She normally leaves it free-flowing, but will knot the back if it becomes impractical. Anka’s wide eyes are a light blue: the kind that can appear to be looking right into the depths of you.

Her trademark dress is a deep crimson, full in length so her legs are covered and the hems drag along the floor. The arms are tight along her shoulders and upper arm, but flow out and sway along her wrists. Her bodice is loose, but the dress cuts just below her collarbones, also sloping on her upper back in an arch. The tops are hemmed with frayed white lace. Her feet are only seen when she’s dancing or sitting, but she’s normally barefoot.

Anka is a quiet soul, and can contently exist without the interaction of others: sometimes loneliness is comforting to her. As such, she’s normally withdrawn and tentative when people talk to her for the first time. When she comes to trust someone she becomes a little chattier, though she always remains cautious and slightly jittery. She’s not a fan of violence, but understands the right to defend herself and keep others from harm. She enjoys dancing and recitals of literacy, has an odd affinity for animals and prefers the calm of nature to the bustle of civilization.

Anka is prone to odd, prophetic visions or ‘fits’, during which she is very loose, airy and sometimes inappropriate, usually seeming insane. All sense of caution evaporates during these times, and she won’t be afraid to touch strangers or move around in an erratic manner. She has a small window of warning before they appear, but only a few seconds. 
 
Bio/Backstory: Born to a simple-minded mother and father in the countryside of Thria, Anka Klenterin’s childhood was mainly spent in the hamlet she was born in. Her father was a tanner and her mother a seamstress who dabbled in herbology and the making of poultices and charms. While unbeknownst to most, Anka’s mother had some magical talent which she imbued into her medicines and trinkets. It was folk magic that had been passed down through her family and not considered as a school of magic. Due to the lack of understanding or the workings of most medicines, most patrons just believed that the medicine was brewed well and her charms brought lucky benefits that weren’t really considered mystical, like bestowing better memory and banishing nightmares.

Through their disciplines, the Klenterins lived a modest and fairly comfortable life, having enough money to pay their taxes, maintain their cosy home and keep their bellies full. Anka’s childhood was full of assisting her parents, meaning she had an appreciation for leather goods and gathering herbs. While she could brew and prepare some very basic medicine, it seemed that Anka hadn’t inherited her mother’s magical prowess. For a more practical skill, her father taught her the basics of horseback riding so that she could operate a cart in order to ferry good to the local villages: something that she was entrusted with at the age of 16. Whilst using a crop to steer the horses, Anka became somewhat adept at sending away wild animals that would sometimes attempt to make a meal of the horses. As such, she’s a decent handler of a whip.
Although the emergence of The Church of the Preservation of Sanctity wasn’t too direct a threat to their family, Anka’s mother became more covert about her magical practices, despite her lack of combat magic that was most feared by the clergymen. While her parents and Anka weren’t convinced by the teachings of the church, they begrudgingly accepted the sermons and preaching to allow for the continuation of a quiet life.

One day when Anka was delivering wares to a local village, she felt a worrying sensation building in her head. The horse she was riding sensed arcane activity and went wild, throwing her off to the ground and creating a spectacle in the village square. When people went to assist her, she stood up with a wild look in her eyes. People were unnerved by the probing effect her gaze had on them, and were even more frightened when she began reciting weird babble, most of which ended in facts or secrets about the villagers.

Worried that she had been possessed by a malign spirit or some Dark magic, they took her immediately to the Preservation church. Fortunately for Anka, one of the more kind and open-minded bishops saw to her. For several moments, she peered into him and muttered of his hidden attraction to men -something he had made sure was carefully guarded and never spoken of-, leading to him confirming her gift of prophecy and foresight, despite how convoluted it emerged (she referred to his homosexuality as ‘preferring the strength of a stallion over the grace of a mare, then giggling and slapping his behind).

Once the reverie had broken, the bishop noticed a complete return of Anka’s faculties, as he’d spoken to her on a few occasions on her visits to the village. As a practitioner of Light magic, he noticed no evil forces having a hold over her, instead decreeing her bizarre insights were a malformed emergence of her magical power.

After returning home, Anka told her family and they instantly became worried. Of course, word soon spread of Anka’s episode and suspicion around their family increased. She soon discovered that she couldn’t either predict or prevent her spurts of prophecy, leading to an increasing belief that she was possessed by a spirit. Her mother knew otherwise and managed to convince most of the hamlet of their family’s history in folk magic. Due to her assistance in the ails of their neighbors with her charms and medicine, most of the hamlet accepted Anka, despite how embarrassing her revelations were.

Eventually however, the wrath of the Church of the Preservation of Sanctity had had enough of her strange and supernatural activity. They attempted to take her into church in order for Anka to be ‘purified’: a method which many knew nobody walked away from in the same mindset. While her father stalled with the help of the more loyal villagers, Anka’s mother helped her saddle up her favorite horse with some provisions and to escape the hamlet. As she fled, Anka saw the church’s guards seizing her mother, causing an altercation between then and her father. When she hesitated her mother screamed for her to flee, so she turned and forced the horse into a gallop, never looking back.

What little her mother had packed for her didn’t last more than a week as Anka traveled along the Lycian countryside, eventually forcing her to sell her beloved horse. She had been taught to dance by her mother, and secretly discovered that some form of magic emerged from her when she danced. Honing this in secret, she soon began dancing for a living, quickly fleeing when she had a prophetic episode. She’s been chased from many a village, branded a heretic and has had to evade capture by fanatics from the church. Her visions have caused Anka to become very solitary and untrustworthy of strangers, especially those who seek to use her ability for personal gain as she has no control over what she sees or when.

Currently, Anka just wanders from village to village, etching out a living and trying to find a place where she can settle down in peace.