Riiva

Name
Riiva Whitewater

Physical Traits
Hawklike features, piercing eyes, harsh facial tattoos edged with carefully cut and healed scars (the only scars she has, by what can be seen - and if she is in armour, what can be seen is generally a lot). Her gear is neat and in good repair, but has been used heavily and not personalised in any way. Those capable of judging elven age put Riiva's around half a millennia.

She speaks excellent and unaccented Common, eloquent Darnassian, and carries her obvious good looks like a weapon, not an invitation. Seen fighting, her she seems to put outrageous amounts of energy into moving with balance and harmony, and consider winning an afterthought. This is easy to see as plain showing off and arrogance - or as warrior philosophy surpassing the mere use of weapons.

Personality
Intelligent, confident, spartan in lifestyle but intensely proud and sometimes even vain: a young adult as Kaldorei reckon maturity, Riiva has yet to shake all the follies of her youth. She has an ingrained respect for her martial superiors, a warrior philosopher's view of combat, implicit pride in her skill, and the wry sense of humor of one who has finally realised they are just as capable as the next person of being an idiot, and this really should be embraced as the next step of growing up. The combination doesn't always come naturally.

She takes care with her appearance, but since beauty requires no effort on her part, she disdains any and all compliments regarding it. She values two things above all: intelligence, and martial ability, which to her are half the same thing.

Race and Class
Night Elf Warrior

Guild
The Cenarion Guardians

Occupation
A novice priestess and Sentinel trainee, freshly a recruit of the Guardians. Reputedly because her ambition for personal glory serves them better than either of the orders she has trained for.

Family
Silnaen Whitewater, her sister. They are close enough in years to be closer than most Night Elf siblings.

Criminal Record
None.

Background
In five centuries, there's been much in Riiva's life that could not be reduced to weapons -- but those are what she has always returned to, and the road that has brought her to where she is today.

As a child she was a restless hunter of imaginary dragons, like as not to drag her younger sister Silnaen along into made-up adventures and very real trouble. Growing up, she knew with absolute certainty she'd become a Sentinel, a hero, a general and famed protector of Ashenvale. Skilled as she was with sword and bow, she'd never dreamed she might be denied entry into the ranks. Too much arrogance, her sword-teacher told her, in no unkind tone. Too much vanity, too much personal pride to perform as a Sentinel should.

The bitterness of rejection stayed with Riiva for well over a century, and in candid moments, she may admit she has never fully given up on the dream. She put her frustration into what she knew, determined to hone her abilities to a point where she could no longer be denied. She learned the use of any weapon she could lay her hands on, and worked on perfecting control of her own movements past efficiency into sheer elegance (something she continues to this day, though for different reasons). It was only when Silnaen completed her druid's training and followed her obligations into Ysera's Emerald Dream that Riiva finally realised the point she'd been missing: there are things larger and more important than any amount of will, skill, or personal ambition. Losing her sister, she found the beginnings of the humility her teachers had tried in vain to instill in her.

The next few centuries were a learning experience. No longer held back by the need to stay close to her sister, Riiva left Ashenvale. She travelled the length and breadth of Kalimdor, read and reread old histories and literature, entertained lovers and material pleasures, dabbled in poetry, metalwork and other crafts (which she continues to this day), even spent a few decades at the Temple of the Moon contemplating priesthood. In the end, none of it took. By her four hundredth birthday, she'd realised why. In all the ambiguities of the world, nothing else lived up to the simplicity of live steel. Hit or miss, fight or flight, live or die – to Riiva, combat is a microcosm of all that is true about existence. In combat, she found balance, and finally peace. For decades, she lost her taste for wonder, pleasure and emotion entirely, preferring to chase philosophy and logic in pure celibacy.

The loss of Nordrassil and true immortality began another change. Shocked into mortality, Riiva found herself certain the Kaldorei could not adapt to their new mortality in time to survive as a species. This led her to go east to mortal lands with the first of her kind, in the hopes of somehow preparing the younger races to take over as custodians of Azeroth when the Kaldorei inevitably succumbed to time. While pursuing this, and studying younger races, she served with several mercenary outfits, including a brief stint as arms sergeant for lord Lazerel of House Lavanandar. This is when she met Darrian, and the business she brought a recently awoken and much changed Silnaen east to help with.

In the course of House duties Riiva was exposed to a troll curse that made her for a while extremely susceptible to haunting by ghosts and vengeful spirits. By the time she hallucinating and half out of touch with reality. Silnaen stayed east and eventually sought out the Teliviel of the Dragonslayers, hoping the adventurers could help her find a way to restore her sister’s slipping grip on reality.

A cure was eventually found, but recovering from the ordeal kept Riiva out of action, in contemplation at the Temple of the Moon, a good while longer. Two years after the fact she seems to have found her balance again. At the recommendation of her erstwhile Sentinel trainer, she has offered her services to the Guardians, in hope of finally seeing combat as part of something worth fighting for.

Current Status
Assisting the Sentinels in defence of Astranaar, pending further orders.

Personal Notes
Riiva was conceived in WoW Classic as a rebel take on elf-porn armour for Night Elf Warriors. The elf-porn armour is pure manipulation on Riiva's part - but exposing the males that think with their dicks is the least of her intentions. It's the people who look past that, and add up her worn weapons and lack of scars that she really notices, and worries about.

In the history of Riiva, there has been exactly one succesful attempt to flirt with her. It involved an hour of philosophical debate and ended with Silnaen in apoplexy over her sister apparently lusting after a human.

Riiva has been called my Mary Sue - not because she's pretty and competent, but because she lets me indulge my philosophical and poetic bents. Yeah well, deal with it. :P

As theme songs go, Riiva's might be Suzanne Vega's "The Queen And The Soldier". Though Riiva has been fairly succesful at becoming the sensible Soldier she wants to be, sometimes she still fails and slips back to the habits of the imperious Queen she was as a child.