Race : Galdor
Birthday : Yaris 75, 2702
Age : 15
FC : Anastasia Raschinkina
Place of Origin: Dorhaven, Anaxas
Current Location : Brunnhold
Occupation : Student
Family :Rayne Scarlett
Sienna was named for her rich dark red brown hair, her artistically inclined mother likening it to the pigment of the same name. The striking waist length waves, along with her pale clear skin however only served to mark her as a foreigner among her peers in Mugroba. She wasn't hassled about it, Anaxi looks weren't that uncommon to see in the allied kingdom, but Sienna always noticed the slight flicker of conjecture her looks caused when she first came across new people.
Already having reached her full growth of 5'5” at fifteen, she's somewhat tall for a galdori woman, with her hair usually bound up in a neat updo, or partly braided to one side. Despite this, Sienna feels like she might blend in a lot better at Brunnhold than in Mugroba. It would be a relief to her since she much prefers the sidelines to the limelight. It isn't that she's a shy wallflower, the unconscious tilt of her head and the look of considering evaluation in her intense blue green eyes would disabuse any observer of that notion fairly quickly. She just finds it more worthwhile to listen than talk, to think than expound, and to work than strut around making a display of herself.
Unusually for a galdori, and doubly so for a female, she's always secretly enjoyed physical pastimes like climbing trees, swimming and riding moas since childhood. To these have been added the more gown-up pastimes of dancing, long walks and an increasing interest in learning one of the many unarmed combat styles. Her body thus is far more physically coordinated and athletic than her slender build would suggest. Being a student, she's usually dressed in the school uniform. Her personal wardrobe favours simpler styles that are however cut and stitched well, and permit as much freedom of movement as possible under the conventions of the times.
Her parents mellowed down substantially once Sienna passed her initiation at Thul'amat. Her scores were impressive, a 7.9, but to her parents just the fact that she wasn't a passive who they'd need to give up was enough. She's on good terms with her parents now, but a certain reserve remains. She's been left almost unconventionally free of the pressure to follow in her parents footsteps, though in time they'd need to figure out something. The suspicion that Rayne may be alive makes her happy and nervous one day, and hating her parent's deception the second. This resentment has diluted to a large extent as she's seen the state of affairs at Brunnhold, and knowing her mother's side of the family she has the vague inkling as to why her parents chose to pretend Rayne died. Yet a lingering betrayal remains, they were adults, the parents, they should have found a way, to perhaps bring Rayne to Mugroba.
To other students and teachers, she comes off as quietly aloof, and many mistake her desire to not call attention to herself for shyness, even cowardice. In class she almost never volunteers an answer, even though she's likely to have it if anyone else is. She's intelligent, and conscientious, in matters pertaining to studies and outside it. She has a strong sense of responsibility, especially as it looks to her own moral sense. But the damper these traits put on her spirits is offset by her openness to experience. Ideas, creativity, unexpected directions of thought, and abstractions are her secret playground.
She tends to smile rather than laugh, her face is good at hiding her thoughts, and to all outward appearances, there isn't anything interesting about her. Often a barely perceptible upturn of the lips will be the only clue that she finds a situation or an overheard conversation amusing, and a flash in her eyes the only warning of her anger. Even her field gives away only the subtlest hints of her feelings. Only to rare close friends or adults that she trusts and respects will she ever show more than a pleasant, vaguely polite expression, but her actions speak a lot louder for those that care to notice the patterns there.
Attitudes as a Galdor
Sienna has essentially grown up in the Mugrobi society, and as such her attitude towards passives and humans are much more in line with their traditions. The Imbali of Mugroba are free and accepted members of the society, with almost no restrictions except for those to do with magic. They do tend to live in a segregated section of the city to minimise destruction from random diableries, but that's considered a fairly reasonable solution to the problem..
Her parents have explained how attitudes and circumstances differ greatly in Anaxas, but this remained largely academic information till she moved to Brunnhold and saw the situation for herself. That is not to say she doesn't see galdori as superior creatures, but it's more of an awareness of the power granted to them as a race, and the responsibilities that brings with it. Thus her attitude carries somewhat of the noblesse oblige attitudes. It took moving to Brunnhold, and having to see the passives up close for her to realise she wasn't quite as idealistic and rational as she had thought, nor her parents old stick in the muds in their attitudes. She's going to need time to figure out how she feels as a person, rather than as a simple product of her upbringing.
With that background she does feel that the treatment of the passives is unjust and cruel. However the simmering tension that most of the galdori are somehow ignoring is making her feel somewhat jumpy. She's heard some bad rumours about the resistance, and it doesn't impress her, just makes her nervous and suspicious. While sympathetic to the stated human cause of racial equality, the more extreme face the resistance has recently started showing means she isn't interested in getting involved herself. To her Mugroba is her home much more than Anaxas ever was, and to her mind the Anaxi would do well to emulate it.
Professional Aspirations
Other students may pursue distinction due to the expectations and pressures put on them from their families, but Sienna has largely avoided that fate till now. Yet, curiosity, especially the intellectual kind, is a special demon all by itself. She's found that almost every subject can be interesting if approached in the right way, except perhaps politics. So when it came time to register for a focus, she found herself going just a bit crazy. She's interested in research and spell writings, and she hopes to be able to delve deep into her chosen areas of focus and hopefully make her own contributions to the body of galdori knowledge.
Sienna is the only acknowledged child of Arianna and Oscar Winebrook.
Family & Lineage
The Winebrooks are an established Anaxi family, from near Dorhaven, whose income has traditionally come from real estate. They own lucrative properties, residential as well as commercial in Vienda, as well as scattered parcels of land across the kingdom. The properties are typically rented out to galdor and even some respected human businesses. Arianna, however comes from a family which has traditionally gravitated towards politics and there have been many ambassadors in the lineage. Perhaps due to this, it is a somewhat mixed heritage, with some Mugrobi and Bastian blood.
Oscar is a fairly decent inventor and engineer, and under his management, the family investments in in the fledgling manufacturing and industrial businesses have grown. Arianna is a glass sculptor of moderate renown, utilising monic conversations to create art.
Personal history
Oscar and Arianna got married within a few years of graduating from the Brunnhold university. Their first daughter, Rayne Scarlett, was born after many long years of waiting, and she was the darling of the family. Sienna was born some four years later, and the two girls grew up fairly close despite, and perhaps because of, their different personalities.
Sienna remembers growing up in Rayne's unintentional shadow, it wasn't so much as the parents neglected Sienna, but that Rayne was the one who just by simple virtue of being the older child, delighted and entranced her parents with each new milestone.
In Sienna's memories, Rayne was like the sun, bright, confident, unafraid. She was the typical elder sister who would make Sienna join in in her games through sheer force of personality, the two would always be climbing trees and exploring the nooks of their estate and home. She was the typical elder sibling in that no one except Rayne herself had the right to mess with Sienna, and Sienna frequently ended up having to take the blame for something Rayne did.
The winter after Rayne turned 10, and Sienna 6, the family travelled to Brunnhold for the initiation test. Sienna couldn't go due to a very badly timed attack of the vixlow fever, and she was left at home under the care of staff. Oscar and Arianna returned a full fifteen days later with a child sized coffin, and the news that Rayne had died. They'd impulsively decided to take Rayne to see Vienda after the testing in Brunnhold. While on a visit to a cathedral there, in her typical fashion, Rayne had decided to climb the narrow, balustrade less stairs of an adjoining bell tower. She'd slipped and fallen and died instantly, there had been too much damage to the skull for any doctor to have saved her.
The funeral was a small, private, closed casket affair, and Sienna remembers almost nothing from the days that followed, except an enveloping numbness pierced with jagged blades of grief, and the emptiness in their parents' eyes. Within a month of the funeral, the Winebrooks decided to leave the memories of Rayne in the home behind, and moved to Thul Ka, the capital of neighbouring Mugroba.
Recent History
In time Sienna was tested and joined the Thul'amat University. A few years later, in the winter break, she ended up overhearing a fight between her parents which seemed to imply that Rayne wasn't dead. She dismissed the implication as wish fulfilment at first, her parents still couldn't tolerate Rayne being mentioned. But the seed had been sown. Over the course of the next years, through innocent seeming questions at home and at school, she realised there was a remote possibility that Rayne may be alive as a passive, likely gated, at Brunnhold.
She wasn't sure whether she wished for such a possibility to be true or not, nor did she dare to confront her parents to find out the truth. Battling with feelings too tangled and complicated to figure out easily, Sienna decided to transfer back to Brunnhold for her 6th year, and see for herself if she could find Rayne. Her parents have no inkling of Sienna's suspicions, and though reluctant to let her transfer initially, they finally agreed. As of 2718, it's been more than nine years since that incident, and Sienna plans to pursue her focus skills at the best university in ten kingdoms, while looking into Rayne's actual fate.
Physical : Average
Social : Poor
Sienna hopes to be able to learn what happened to her sister for sure. This won't be as simple as she thought, it's been nine years, and she only dimly remembers what Rayne looked like as a ten year old. Rayne has abandoned her own name, the passives at Brunnhold are unlikely to be very helpful, and in Brunnhold any investigation needs to stay careful and secret. So as a first step Sienna plans to see if she can befriend one of the passives.
Other than this, she's eager to learn more about static and living, and see what new things life shows her, and perhaps make some genuine friends while at it. In the medium to long term, her professional aspirations involve further research and spell writing in her chosen fields and perhaps developing practical applications from the knowledge thus gleaned.