Ravenna of Gildegra

Lance Corporal Ravenna Felja /ɾavɛnːʌ fɛʎʌ/ was a Halcyian soldier who fought in the God Wars in the 12th Halcyian Sappers, but later settled in Gildegra. I wrote a great story about her which you can find here. She was named after Saint Ravenna of Lyskeiön. 
Spoiler Warning
If you plan on reading the "This Cold, Dead World" story about her, you should really NOT read this page until afterwards. It won't hit so good if you spoil the story!!
----
Last Chance
I mean it! Don't spoil yourself unless you're not going to- or have read- the story. I'm proud of the damn thing :)
== Synopsis & Personality ==
She was born in Halcyon's northern districts a few days before the God Wars began, and grew up there amongst the bright city lights and technology. At 17, she signed up to join the Euluskan League in the early God Wars with the 12th Halcyian Sappers. She underwent three years of training, then was deployed to reinforce the Euluskan lines in the northwest Danderillon around the Tova-Lmina Peninsula. Two years after the Everlasting Night began, she was assigned aboard the ironclad barque Disforza's Hammer to travel to eastern Antikosti and join the front. She showed patriorism for the cause, a distaste for mages, and an indoctrination that the world, now in the grip of eternal winter, was a struggle for the survival of the fittest. 
She also believed that it was them versus nature, and that nature's tyranny was something they could overcome as they had done so for so many years. 
Aboard the Hammer were twelve centuria (12x100 troops). At just after three in the morning on a night in Winter 1644, the barque was ambushed in the 1644 Battle of the Vordan Strait. Rakki aeomancers froze the waterway and several thousand berserkers stormed the beset vessel. The Euluskans used a 1539 Subjugator Rotary Cannon to fend them off, but a Rakki cannon battery scuttled the ship. Ravenna and two contubernia (just over 20 soldiers in total) stormed the enemy cannon battery. Ravenna wounded the Rakki warmage who was then eaten by wolves. However, she herself was knocked out and heavily injured. 
She awoke to see the aftermath. The sight of so many dead bodies, her injuries, and the horror of her actions all contributed to her emotional turn. She rejected the patriotism thrust upon her, and deserted/fled (no one would know she lived, but she still felt bad doing so). Injured, she ate from a rotting elk carcass, which probably also weakened her. A blizzard came down, so she sheltered in a cave, where she was attacked by a määqietla harewolf. It grievously wounded her, but just then, Katiuq (who had heard Ravenna's missed shot) scared off the wolf and saved Ravenna. She nursed her back to health for weeks at her lone cabin, Lone Caribou Stead. Once there, Ravenna spent months growing closer to Katiuq and falling in love, and surviving with her. She decided to leave her old life behind for one of uncertainty, but comfort and togetherness. The uncertainy clearly worried Ravenna, but she was also beginning to value survival over ideology, on her path to moral redemption. She learnt survival skills and how to use nature, not fight it. And in Katiuq she found a lover. 
Her redemption was thematically complete when, many months later, she encountered (likely) the harewolf that had gravely wounded her months ago. Throughout her journey, wolves represented the fierceness of the wilderness, and this was no different. And yet, Ravenna forgave it. It was only acting as its nature dictated. She refused to shoot it, and it even seemed to thank her before leaving. With that, her moral shift was complete, from an indoctrinated soldier of a fasco-technocratic nation who railed against the brutality of nature, to one who understood that to survive was to follow its whims and be fed by the hope, the possibility that things might get better. 
 
Category:People
Category:OCs