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Name: Ravenna Tate
xxxxAvalon's Guide
Sex: Female
Species: Demihuman
Age:
Appearance: Her rumored faery ancestry isn't immediately obvious at a glance, but you can see it clearly in the way she stands and carries herself; her gray eyes show a constant battlefield readiness, whether that battlefield is in Avalon's forests and moors or on the floors of the King's Court. The auburn shade of her hair comes from her mortal ancestry; the porcelain shade of her skin from the unknown bloodline. Too, she has the height traditional to the faery people, standing at six foot one. Her figure is athletic more than shapely from the hobbies she keeps. She favors clean-cut clothing, trousers especially, though she has been known to wear simply-cut dresses at Court functions. Around her neck she wears a chrysophase stone in a green so bright it appears to glow.

Personality: Ravenna has been raised to be a warrior, the Guide of Avalon, and it shows in all parts of her personality. She is keenly observant, assiduously responsible, obscenely tenacious and terribly level-headed; but the faery blood she is rumored to possess has led to a stubbornly insecure, increasingly jealous, and unyieldingly restless Guide. Despite her relatively young age, she has held her position for seven years with no interruption by any challenger.

Ravenna takes her responsibility as the sword arm of the Good King very seriously. She practices her weaponry and magic studiously, taking few breaks and cutting herself very little slack. She is spectacularly good at holding back her temperamental tongue, which means she is prone to lashing out unpredictably and often. The combination of these factors doesn't allow her many true friends; mostly she socializes with those that she is put in direct contact with through her position. Being very protective of the place she regards as hers, she doesn't take well to anyone getting sassy in her territory; don't even dream of insulting her liege lord in front of her. Though she's not unreasonably violent--she lacks what her parents referred to as a "fiery" nature, instead possessing one of ice--she will not hesitate to issue a challenge to someone who has offended her or given offense to the King. No matter how much stronger than her they are, she will dive in head-first. It is this quality which allowed her to distinguish herself during the Weeks of Gehenna as one of the truly legendary Avalonian Guides.

Despite her good qualities, she is still young, and she has a bit of a jealousy problem. She's very possessive of her friends, and gets incredibly jealous when they have other friends. She doesn't forgive incredibly minor slights, like choosing another friend over her, easily at all. She will tell you flat-out that if you decide to go somewhere without her when you promised you would stay with her, she will not speak to you until you apologize unless you're on official Court business. (She tries not to let her personal feelings spill over into her work as the Guide.) This means that she really doesn't have a lot of friends, in or out of Court. She drives quite a few of them off over imagined slights; the ones she manages to befriend generally aren't very independent in the first place, and are drawn to impassioned people like Ravenna. (Honestly: Most of her friends are shy wallflowers who rarely approach anyone else anyway.) More often, people respect her more than they like her. In fact, most of her coworkers are not particularly fond of her personality, and work with her because they respect what she has done for Avalon and has the potential to do. Ravenna tries not to be bothered by this, but in the manner of insecure adolescents all over, is. The friends she loses only drive her to cling tighter to the people that who do like her.

Ravenna tries to be kind to her friends, but it's just not in her personality. Those she cares about are subject to barbs both verbal and resulting from her actions; she tests people to ensure that they care about her, not just her position or her power. Sometimes, this does slip into her work. For all her efforts, she is still young, and doesn't always understand political necessity versus the necessities of Justice, which may be her fatal flaw.

History:
The Guides of Avalon are usually female. Not always, but a male Guide is so rare as to be mythology. The powers trend feminine; they are coded "mother". They are protectors before they are warriors though they do both on demand, and it is rare of them to be seen off their island in anything but a non-corporeal spirit form. Their lives are unbelievably long, stretching into thousands of years beyond mortal reckoning; they are born skilled with sword, bow, knife, and spear. And their job is simple; to collect the dead and hold them for the God of the Ash-Blacked Face.

Ravenna, the twenty-third Guide and first of her True Name, had her paternity claimed by a Faery princeling, a man whose surname was Valenkos, but all who see her beside the Good King know that for lies. She is at once right hand, princess, heir and prize; for anyone to win her heart would also win their own place beside the throne, should the Good King ever die. This was not always obvious, and it was thought at her birth that the ancient powers had finally died out, that the blessing of the God they followed had faded just as He had. Her mother handed the fae daughter to a fisherman and his charwoman wife, for them to raise and keep and hold.

But it became obvious early that she did have the God's blessings, but veiled behind fae magics. She was good with a knife and didn't hesitate when told to gut a fish or skin a deer. She saw spirits and spoke with them and mediated as if born to it, and her foster parents hid her close. The life of the Guide is lonely and sad, and they did not wish to lose her to the perennial frowns of the champions of Gwyn ap Nudd and Avalon both.

The day came when her birth-mother returned, and Marzena, twenty-second Guide and third of her True Name, demanded that the child she had birthed be returned to her for the training. At nine, Ravenna left home-woven clothing and clam chowder for a castle's fine white bread and silks. There Marzena taught her sword, bow, knife and spear; there she refined her skills; there she learned the worship of the escort of the Grave, bringing him gifts of marigolds and forget-me-nots. She learned Court courtesy, the proper bows and curtseys, and it was in her fourteenth year that they were thrown a curve ball.

The blood of the Guides tended to overwhelm any other talents. It was rare that the powers were strong enough to surface even in any small part, but it could not be denied that Ravenna held not only the powers granted to the maternal line but those from her father. Where she went, Avalon greened; the vines of wine-grapes grew wild behind her, the poppy bloomed violently red, and peace followed her footsteps, too. The apples were sweeter, the water purer, and it became an open secret that the new-made Champion was more than just Guide, she was Princess.

It could not be acknowledged for the laws of Avalon stated that the Guides were never to turn amorous eyes upon the King; not until Marzena passed away, and by then, the fourteen-year-old was nearly one hundred, though any stranger looking upon her face would have said: sixteen.

She served in all the ways a Guide was expected to serve, even those that blood relation ought to have made impossible. She did some things but reluctantly, but they were done, and she was on her way to becoming a not-particularly-distinguished but certainly skilled Guide.

Then the Dark Days came. The Good King, old and weak as he always was, could do little to prevent the sundering that threatened. Ravenna, with the help of a mage of the Earth, with her knowledge of spells, with her Kingly blood, reached into the land and pulled, knotting the lines of power together like a fisherman's net and holding.

When the upheaval ended, Ravenna remained. Avalon remained. She made the jump from skilled but not of particular import to hero.

Since then, she has remained close to home, fearing another upheaval that would require her to hold the island and its spells together through what felt like world-shattering waves.

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