Kathrin Ziegler

==Overview==
Kathrin Ziegler was an Elten mage specialising in teleportation. She worked as a senior researcher at the NIC and as an artificer for Baron Ernst Brenner. She was fiercely loyal to Elterlein, with Novania's acquisition by the empire settling her doubts on the conflict between the two nations. Kathrin was highly politically-motivated, with most of her power having stemmed from her relationship with Silas von Castell reigning as viceroy. The ascent of Margarette as queen was a deeply disruptive factor for Ziegler and one that she would have rather not occurred. Dire incidents took her further out of political movements, with Archer's resignation stealing away her last strenuous link to power.
Perhaps her most noteworthy action was the one that would eventually spell out her doom - single-handedly bringing a relapse of all magic within Aevonhold. While she survived the ordeal, she was later executed for her actions and the event.
=== Appearance ===
Though she stands as tall as she may, Kathrin does not pass five feet and six inches and is slightly built. Despite her military training, her physique is somewhat lacking. Her hair is thick and black, swept back and tied loosely in a small ponytail. Her nose is long and thin, her lips bowed, her face smooth and pale, with a dimple on her delicately constructed chin. Her eyes are green and glassy, her lashes long and curled up. She is neither especially attractive nor unattractive. Her outfits usually incorporate the colour blue to some extent, Kathrin opting primarily for airier clothes in Southern Deurlyth and thicker padded garments while in the North. This is for obvious reasons.
Kathrin's right arm now ends in a stump just above the elbow. Until she acquires the intrusive replacement, she is temporarily wearing a wooden prosthetic with manually adjustable joints on the elbow and fingers, all carved of yew.
==Background==
Kathrin was born to no extraordinary parents, though the two were as patriotic as the next. Her father, Alrick, was a magister, operating within the Imperial Magisterium. Her mother, Evalyn, was a veteran knight-captain of the Third Border War, who had been disabled in the conflict and relied heavily upon intrusive automail. The two were able to raise her quite comfortably according to their means, though they were not rich by any stretch of the imagination. Naturally, due to Alrick being at work during the day and Evalyn being confined almost entirely to the home, she grew up idolising her mother’s past and (though she wouldn’t admit it) found the woman to be preferable company to her father.
As a girl, Kathrin would often report dreaming of a small, floating island in a horizon-wide emptiness, only stars filling the void around her. While this concerned her mother, Alrick knew this to mean that she was likely gifted, and reserved a place for her at Osmann’s Arcane College And Military Academy on the Isles of Archangel. This, he claimed, was a gift for her ninth birthday. With placement secure and a quiet home life, Kathrin grew up somewhat unaware of real difficulty or strife - her experience of war was exclusively second-hand, from the mouth of her mother. These stories would come almost every night, however, and her head was filled with the ideals of Elten militant supremacy along with the wonders to be had within a conflict, and the feeling of victory when it was attained. She was raised as an idealist and a nationalist and maintained these traits throughout her early life.
At fourteen, Evalyn surprised the girl by gifting her a grimoire. Ostensibly, it was a scrap of parchment with something pretty drawn on. However, she told her daughter that it was the key to many secrets and that it would open a number of doors in her future. And so, of course, she studied it. Long hours and sleepless nights were poured into memorising the intricacies of its patterns, weaves, and symbols. First through tracing, and eventually through rote memory, she was able to copy out decent replications of the sigil: first in chalks, then paints and inks, seeing it almost as if it were a game. Alrick was delighted and encouraged her to keep at it. It was her mother that Kathrin was trying to impress, however. Her favour was what motivated the girl to keep to the task when the process got tedious.
By the time of her admission into Osmann’s at sixteen, she had managed to internalise the sigil entirely, but only barely had a grasp on its meaning. The school experience was a shock to her - she had never spent so much as a few nights away from home before, and yet now she was in a whole other region. To the small girl, the Isles of Archangel felt as though they were a whole world away from her home in Arminia. Much to the chagrin of those sharing her ward, she spent many nights crying inconsolably. This did not help make a good first impression on her fellow students, and she made few friends in her first year.
However, a friend did present itself in the form of Valerie Helmine. She was a year older, though had joined at the same time. Valerie had a sister the same age as Kathrin. She introduced herself as Val and bestowed the nickname of ‘Kat’ during their first conversation.
“You’re quiet and cute, like a cat. Not quite as furry, though. And not so quiet at night…”
The two cultivated a familial relationship and Val acted to console Kathrin during the nights of her first year, though it was no great substitute for Evalyn’s war stories. Nonetheless, the girls bonded and shared their tales. Val was impressed that Kathrin had managed to memorise a sigil already, though not so much after the confession that she had no idea what it did. As Kathrin discovered, Val had been known to be gifted long enough for her admission to go through, but she had received no grimoires to study, and hadn’t been granted entrance as soon as Kathrin - Neither of her parents were practicing mages in their own right, and they had struggled to put together the tuition fee. They had sent her to the college so as to give her the opportunity it presented, with their best wishes and hope in their hearts. The older girl seemed more than a touch cynical, but Kathrin was glad for the company regardless.
Upon first meeting her tutor, a near-ancient Granthelian named Ashton, she presented him with the grimoire she had been given. He studied it carefully, tracing a finger over each curve and every line. For what had felt like hours, it seemed as though he had simply fallen asleep. He proved her suspicions wrong, however, upon declaring that it was the sigil for an ethereal arrow. Ashton explained that, as she already knew the sigil, improvements in literacy would consist simply of explaining what each component actually correlated to and transferring that skill to translating other sigils so as to discover their functions.
While this prospect didn’t quite excite her, she found that she at least had a knack for the task. She attended frequent one-to-one lessons with Ashton and upheld her friendship with Val during what little free time she had. She also started joining in with the conversation in her ward - speaking with the other girls at the academy, and comparing classes. She found she had little in common with the vast majority, bar parents that had served in the Third Border War and a gifted heritage.
Ashton would put up a dartboard at one end of the classroom before each lesson, though it wasn’t until quite some time into the term that either of them actually made use of it. While she liked the man, his knowledge of astral magics paled in comparison to his ability with elemental. For quite some time, she was clueless as to why such a man would be teaching her the fundamental elements that would form the base of her arcane understanding. She never voiced a complaint, however, and he at least seemed fond of his student. She began to think of him as being somewhat like a grandfather, though she had never known one of her own. He seemed to be quite gentle and calm. Caring.
By her eighteenth birthday, she’d settled into a small clique and was quite comfortable in her use of Astral Arrow. The girls had set up a target in their ward’s common room and would host competitions to get closest to the centre mark. However, most of the girls hadn’t learnt the spell and had to make use of darts. Kathrin would usually beat those playing with physical projectiles, though she was near-perpetually trumped by Val’s aim. This did very little to sway her against trying, however. Kathrin was nothing if not determined.
Reaching adulthood was no cause for complacency, of course. It was at this point that her classes took a far greater military focus, dealing with the combat applications of the spells she would learn. Ashton pushed for a far greater efficiency in her learning and had her memorise a sigil of some considerable complexity. He refused to tell her what it would do and had her translate it manually. When she finally managed to do so, he seemed pleased. After two weeks, and every week thereafter, he had her copy out what she was able to. When she was able to do this, Ashton had her write out essays on each component and how it might go wrong if she failed to cast correctly, and how to avoid such events. Even if unpleasant, the method seemed to work - after just three seasons, she was able to produce the sigil for short-distance rift-jumping from memory, and after a further two seasons, to cast the spell itself without greatly varying results. Unfortunately, it gave her little time to hold up a social life.
The relations she had tried to cultivate slowly soured, though Val stayed by her side. The pressure to do well for Ashton took its toll as well. She developed mild insomnia and fell into poor health. She found herself skipping meal times, and secluding herself away with just her own company and Val’s, locked in perpetual study. Physically, she waned, though she had always been waifish.
Once she had managed to competently and reliably cast Blink, Ashton warned her that she had surpassed the point wherein he was able to give practical demonstrations. Kathrin pushed against this notion, not understanding, and argued that he had “no right” to abandon her. The old man had finally conceded that he did not wish to leave her either, but that his knowledge of astral magic was exceptionally limited. He confided that he hadn’t been the College’s first choice for her tutor, but that they had made note of her apparent emotional frailty and decided that a softer approach was necessary. Ashton stepped down and was replaced.
Said replacement was no match for the warmth of his predecessor. Lindeberg, or Herr Schüler as he would have her call him, was a cold man. He was tall, and thin as a rod - his cheeks were hollow, and his eyes were grim. He would only converse in Elten. Kathrin took an instant disliking but had no choice but to swallow her opinions lest she lose her place within the academy.
However, he proved to be more than suitable for a teaching role, much to her surprise. Tempering scolding criticism with praise, his compliments seem to be infinitely more valuable and Kathrin found him to be strangely motivational. Under his tutelage, she learnt to build upon her ability to open rifts between the physical realm and astral plane. She was able to quickly gather that it was an extension of the previous sigil, though her internalisation of the whole thing was no faster than it had been with Blink. More essays and more rote memorisation. With the guidance of a careful and steady hand, she was eventually able to open two rifts, swallowing both herself and another and having the two of them swap places - though not before proving herself more than capable of accidentally consuming furniture into the Astral Plane. A classroom is no place for a chaise lounge anyway.
When she was able to perform this to a fitting standard, as per the examination of Herr Schüler, she was deemed ready for assessment. The college had a visit from Knight-Commander Kühn the following season, and he performed an inspection of the students, tasked with deciding which were qualified to continue within the college and which were fit to put in their years of service. Kathrin was one of the few deemed bright enough to be kept on, along with Val and a small handful of the other students that the Knight-Commander had checked. Kathrin had initially resented the choice, wishing to be put to good use as soon as was humanly possible - recalling half-forgotten tales from her mother and her youth, thinking to earn glory in war. However, she eventually allowed that making the best use of her potential to aid the Empire was a greater cause than blindly rushing to action and getting herself killed.
And so, she was given her final spell to learn. Kühn had allocated her training and preparation for emergency evacuations and treatments, and so she would see her rift-jumping to the ultimate conclusion of its capacity. Schüler guided her personal study, adopting a more fatherly tone in his actions. It wasn’t, he said, something to be taken lightly. She was forbidden from trying anything practical without the man’s permission, and doing anything outside of their classes would have resulted in a swift expulsion. However, through perseverance, a strong willpower, and a determination to see it through, Kathrin managed to perfect the spell over the course of two years. Starting with scribing the sigil on parchment in parts, she gradually built up to construct the entire circle of teleportation in one of the college’s courtyards. Upon proof of its functionality, she was deemed ready for active service and would prepare to serve her Empire.
Over this period, what few friends remained to her had faded. All but Valerie Helmine. One fateful night, Kathrin’s bags packed and ready for departure, the woman paid her a visit. At first, it had been quite similar to those nights they had shared upon Kathrin’s initial arrival, though Val seemed to have an odd interpretation of sisterhood. The first time she leant in for a kiss, Kathrin hadn’t resisted. Val’s smile faded as Kathrin made to push away afterwards, however. She had insisted, edging closer. Kathrin fumbled for the bedside, grappling for essence, and what followed was almost instinctive. Before she knew it, Val was laid back on the sheet, a red stain slowly pooling beneath her, a slowly-fading ethereal arrow through her chest. Her eyes were wide in shock, her lips ever so slightly agape. She only managed a croak before her spirit fled. Not long after, Kathrin fled also.
Her first thoughts were of her parents. A deep concern crept upon her - would they be held responsible? Would they face punishment in her stead? She hadn’t seen them for years, though. They had written, of course, but letters weren’t a substitute for the bonds she’d made at the college. Those bonds were now weak too, however. Kathrin’s friends had wasted no time in abandoning her, and Val wasn’t about to get up anytime soon. Ashton was nice, but he wouldn’t help her. Schüler barely qualified as nice, though she had warmed to him. The realisation that none of them would likely help her came as a shock, though she wasn’t truly surprised.
Kathrin decided that her only option was to flee. She took what she had packed and disappeared into the night, though not before stealing enough money for a long voyage. She paid for a comfortable cabin and elected for Novania - far enough away and out of Elten law’s long reach. It wasn’t perfect, but it was something.
Upon arriving in the new lands, she soon heard of the Watch. To hear people say it, this was a stronger alternative to the NRA, with a fresh fort and better pay. She went to sign up, speaking with their Warden and impressing with minor cantrips. She started to develop a small routine. She would take a cup, change its colour, create a small illusory ball to drop into it, teleport it a foot into the air, and then send it across the room with an astral arrow. This amused her peers well enough and showcased her ability on a small scale. For a time, she was happy. For a time, she worked decently, though there was little work to be done.
She got into minor spats with leadership, though. Events got out of hand when she started working more for the NIC and the viceroy than she did for the Watch and she eventually dropped out completely after being demoted to the lowest rank. She instead reported to Archer Wrenne, the NIC's director, and joined at the level of senior researcher. The first truly humbling moment in Kathrin's life came while with the NIC, the loss of her arm. When testing an astral barrier spell against non-physical projectiles, her volt gauntlet fried in the rain, resulting in major electrical burns to the hand and forearm that had been wearing it. The arm had to be taken off above the elbow, resulting in a lot of time hence spent in Hearth's clinic. The event affected her both mentally and physically, impacting her severely.
In an investigation of an Aeddom gate that had opened in Hearth's sewers, Kathrin inadvertently opened up an astral rift from a botched tattoo-scribing. This was her first 'death', turning to ash slowly from the toes up. She lost consciousness as the ash reached her midsection, awakening in the astral planes. After somewhat of a one-sided conversation with an astral being, she was returned to the sewers and found out that she had caused a second planar crisis. Kathrin was duly escorted back to the palace and detained.
The next time she saw the world outside of that cell would be on the day of her execution, having only been told that she was to be put to death a few hours beforehand. Speaking with Silas, she lamented that she would not live to be a great teacher and was unable to put her knowledge down for those that wished to learn from her. Furthermore, she was given the chance to pass on what few worldly possessions she had to those she felt most fitting and have messages sent on their way.
== Known Associates ==
=== Friends ===
-Friedrich Mauser (kinda)
-Elian Deidrich (maybe)
okay that's about it dudes
==== Not-A-Friend-But-Better-Than-An-Acquaintance ====
-Airro Ta'lon
==== Acquaintances ====
-Vilhelmiina Essi Lahti
-Thula Bhatak-Mieli
-Tobias Tedrick von Teufel
-Holly Atter
-Ernst Brenner
-Surian Bronislav
-Bairre Bertach
-Dakaria Onuson
-Thane'Amaelia
-Bertrand Garvin
-Patricia Impiraco
-Jules Q. Grant
-Stanford T. Whitehallow
-Isibéal Nora Brennan
-Mariyah Hakim
-Keelan Bertach
-Aminor Garax
-Drel'Vika
-Ghal'Vir
-Silas von Castell
-Margarette von Castell
-Most of the folks at NIC
-Definitely probably more, maybe.
=== Enemies ===
-The Watch, probably. In general or in theory.
== Personality ==
Kathrin was well noted for her venomous nature and a tendency to hide what she meant and her intentions behind a cold courtesy. However, her experiences had humbled her to some degree and she was a lot more subdued than she has been known to be toward the end of her life.
=== Likes ===
* Kathrin liked showing off mental superiority.
* Kathrin was walking a fine line on the verge of alcoholism.
* She was quite fond of the trappings of power.
* The term "Wiaceiciti"
* Kathrin preferred cold cups of tea to hot ones.
* Biscuits. English biscuits, not American ones.
* Kathrin had a preference for the pure arcane, astral magic.
=== Dislikes ===
* Inefficiency - woe to those that wasted her time.
* Storms / Rain - after the "volt gauntlet" event.
* Socialising - Kathrin liked to stay distant from the populace.
* People who socialise - They are disgusting.
* Spiders - Particularly the Westmoor variety.
* Thunder / Voltaic - after the "volt gauntlet" event.
* The Watch - after her struggles within the militia.
=== Quirks ===
* She made a habit of pouring wine with her mage-hand spell, even before the loss of her right arm.
* Incredibly smart but, as per the usual trope, lacked common sense and judgement in some cases.
* Kathrin was a fidgeter, often manually adjusting the fingers on her prosthetic hand.
* She was mildly sadistic, embodying the principle of schadenfreude perhaps a bit too well.
==Other==
=== Theme Music ===
Lure of the Temptress, Track 11
=== Face Claim ===
Nil.
=== Item Claims ===
Nil.
=== OOC Notes ===
As per usual, not all of the above is wide-spread knowledge OOC. In fact, the majority is not. I won't get super annoyed at you metagaming cos I'm a sap, but I'm sure the staff won't like it. So, uh... don't do that.
Kathrin Ziegler was played on Erinaco in-game.
Category:Elterlein
Category:Ancient Biographies