Lady Maria

Information
History
Relationships

 Species
 Human
 Status
 Alive
 Bisexual

**Maria** is the current Lady Protector of the northern Kray tribes land, situated in the most northern region of the kingdom. As the Lady Protector, she is obliged to make sure that the region stays a tributary to the royal family.

## Appearance

Even though Maria appears rather delicate, she is as hardy as anyone living in the wild lands. She has a lean, slightly muscular build. The countless days spent trekking in the wild built her leg muscles up and gave Maria a decent chunk of endurance. She has rather long hair, the color of a dull peach. While out in the wilderness, she usually has her hair tied up. Maria's left arm is always hidden from sight, either by her long one sided cloak, or with an armored arm guard. Her right eye and a good part of her face is hidden by an eye patch, rumors say that part of her face has been horribly disfigured by a fire.

## Background

Maria is the second daughter of a royal branch family. Her father was a beloved figure for many of the northerners, a hero who stopped a rampaging tribe of wildlings with ruthless intelligence and incomparable martial prowess. His rise in power and popularity was more than stellar, a promising future for him and his kids. Sadly, Maria never got to see said future. First a tragic fire that killed her grandfather and his family, then accusations of her father being a traitor to the royal family came to light. The final nail in his coffin was the testimony of Maria's eldest uncle. Conspiration against the royal authority, planned rebellion and murder of his grandfather, he was sentenced to death and her uncle received half his estate for fulfilling his duty to Kunlun. For Maria it was clear that her father got framed and her hate for her uncle grew. The animosity culminated in an incident, where the young Maria challenged him to a duel and tried to kill him when he declined. Due to him being a notable high ranking noble in Kunlun, Maria and her mother got sent to be the wards of the wildlands of Kray, her younger brother, and the last member of her family got adopted by her uncle, becoming a noble of the Xin family and thus earning a position at Kunlun's court.

At that point in time, Kray was one of the most hostile regions in the North and those who were "sent" to Kray often died within a year. Maria's mother died in the first 7 months of their exile, yet the girl managed to survive. Some say that she had sold her body and soul to the wildlings, others insinuate that a fallen Celestial granted her ungodly powers. Whatever the case, Maria managed to survive and more. Little by little, sometimes with ruthless cruelty, sometimes true calculated intrigues, the young woman managed to bring the warring tribes of Kray under her rule and even brought some prosperity to the barren lands.

## Abilities

### Rift

Maria is afflicted with a Malediction of Semiramis, the ancient Celestial of worldly space and space manipulation. Like her Celestial, this malediction allows her to manipulate the fabric of space, thus creating a rift in the reality itself. Usually used to traverse great distances in space in a short period of time.

There are a few limitations and rules to this magic:

* Maria needs to be have been at the end destination of the rift, or have someone explain her the location in utmost detail.
* Regular rifts are only shortening the distance, giving the rift walkers a path through Semiramis' realm. That means, this magic is not an instant teleportation.
* Semiramis' realm is inhabited by horrific creatures that prey upon those wandering in. Those creatures, or perhaps the realm itself seem to be able to invoke distorted memories of those inside, trying to lure them away from the single safe path. The creatures are mainly active when Semiramis is asleep, or not present in the realm.
* Long distance rifts consume a lot of energy if not properly "charted" before. A process similar to a naval navigator charting courses through the ocean currents.

Generally there are three types of rifts Maria can open.

* Regular long-distance rift: The travel time depends on how good Maria can chart the course using magical deposits. The more magical energy from outside sources can be used, the less travel time and less arduous the rift opening is for Maria.
* Charted short-distance rift: With enough magical deposits using when charting, the short-distance rifts become almost instantaneous.
* Burst rifts: Having spent a lot of time researching how her powers could be used during combat, Maria came up with opening very short ranged rifts. With those she is able to almost instantly close the distance to her enemies, or send an ally through a rift to do the same. She can also use the same magic to propel larger objects (which need to be moved through the portal still). During the hunt for The Puppeteer she had used those burst rifts to propel a small ship, thus shortening travel time to Imroth.

There is a hard limitation to how many times she can use such burst rifts as those are still quite taxing even though the range isn't that big.

#### Semiramis' Eye

Her right eye is the manifestation of Semiramis' eye, giving her the ability to chart the spacial rifts. Usually she keeps it suppressed, since it serves as a beacon the the creatures existing inside the rift realm. In exchange it also helps by making her magic easier to use, thought Maria did not explore all the possibilities the eye offers, because of the danger it poses.

#### Spatial Collapse

A devastating ability that causes a gravitational collapse and subsequently an explosion. In order to be used the presence of an already dense materia is needed as a catalyst (around 15.1), e.g. human bodies (avg 1.1) are not dense enough for this spell to work. Spatial collapse rapidly reduces the space inside of an object to a critical point, while infusing vast amounts of magic into the core of the object. Once the density of the magic inside reaches critical instability the core ignites, resulting in a sudden release of the created kinetic energy. This spell has devastating effects, but is incredibly difficult to control. If not careful Maria can easily end up compressing parts of her soul into the core.

### Combat

She favors fighting with a sabre and is alright with it, yet her real strength lies surprisingly in unarmed combat. While rather small, Maria has an almost inhuman power. Additionally, she has spent countless hours learning the traditional wrestling of Kray. Once she gets her hands on an opponent, he will have to tap out more likely than not.

## Extra

★ Maria's alignment is **Lawful Evil**

★ She makes really nice pancakes.