Character Introduction

Character Background

Welcome to my little blog, I'm your host and lead character for this blog site - Zaida Thorngage.  Yes, if you've seen someone on fanfiction.net with this name - it's still me. ~_^ This site isn't for my fanfiction stuff (although I may post about it from time to time, if I finish a new piece...) - this blog is otherwise dedicated to my Hogwarts Live character by the same name.

Zaida is not some super over-powered character - she's got power to be sure, but as Stan Lee put it: "With great power, comes great responsibility."  I'd like to think that one can't wield such power without some kind of drawback, some sort of punishment.  More on that in a second.  She is over 900 yars old... she doesn't care to count the years, because what would that prove?  Besides, a lady never tells. ~_^  She is a deva - a lesser one, actually.  She has the power with none of the responsibilities. XD

Her natural form looks quite a lot like Viconia from Baldur's Gate II - She has pale blue skin, true white hair, and her eyes are gold. She has wings that protrude from her back and give her the ability to fly.

The usual form (glamour) she uses is a mash up of Neera (from the new Extended Edition of Baldur's Gate) with Lidda's (of D&D 3.5 fame) tight leather outfit.  Her hair and eyes are brown, with a light creamy colored skin.

Zaida's abilities as a deva do give her unlimited power, but as I mentioned, the power comes at a cost.  The lesser magics she uses to achieve her super-human speed and agility don't tax her energy, nor does basic magic.  However, the creation of highly magical, highly powerful items does... so does any sustained spell - such as slowing time or performing a resurrection or healing a massive amount of damage.  This taxes her in the form of years off of her life.  She ages when she uses those powers, and it also is a heavy drain on her energy - usually she just sleeps it off (wherever she collapses...), but recently her friend SilverRose found an... interesting... way to recharge Z's batteries.  She isn't completely immortal, given her status as a lesser version of a deva - but she will live for quite a while... if she doesn't use her abilities to the fullest...

Her past is something she doesn't like to talk about too often, and for good reason - she's got a lot of "red in her ledger" so to speak... as not only a former thief, but the former head of one of the largeset syndicates in the western world, she's seen and done quite a bit that she isn't proud of.  How'd she get into that life, then?  Well, she lost her "family" at a pretty early age and had resorted to petty thieving... and was terrible at it.  She tried to steal from a man she thought didn't stand out from the crowd... little did she know she was attempting to steal from a top thief.  She was caught as she pulled on the loaf of bread a bit too hard from the man's pack.  The man figured since she was able to do that much, she could learn more with time.  He didn't know just how right he was... she excelled at the art of thievery, did extremely well with poisons, and wasn't too bad with disguise.  The man had been grooming her to one day take over his guild of thieves, but when the time came - Zaida wasn't ready.  A rival syndicate caught the man while he was ill with a severe case of influenza - he was used as bait to draw out Zaida where her mentor was slain in front of her.  Seeing the body of her mentor, her only father figure, laying dead was enough to activate Zaida's dormant abilities - it was then she shifted for the first time.  She slowed time and used her weapons to slaughter the rival thieves - shifting back to her usual appearance once she had been drained of energy.  She passed out and didn't wake up for days.  When she came to, her mentor had been buried, and the others were waiting for her to take her rightful place as the new head.

Over the next few centuries, she raised, trained, and buried countless generations of thieves until finally she had her fill.  She did something no one had ever done: walked away.  It was only through death that one left the guild - and Zaida was able to buy some time, in the beginning.  "It was a sabbatical," she had lied to them - she wanted to learn more about her abilities and expand them - so she glamoured into the appearance of a 12 year old girl to begin her training at Hogwarts.  From the moment the sorting hat was placed on her head, her act had begun.  What are you?  You are old - almost as old as I... it had whispered to her.  Just nevermind that and sort me already.  Hmm.... The first thing I see is your unwavering loyalty, but underneath that is a dar-- If you want to survive to sort the next generation of students, you'll stop right there and sort me on that...  "HUFFLEPUFF!" The Sorting Hat put her in the house that prided itself on its loyalty... and its crop of students who seemed quite mediocre.  She intentionally held back in most of her classes, as she didn't want to stand out.  However, in potions - her ability to brew even the most difficult of potions caught the eye of the school's potions master, Severus Snape. He offered to take her under his wing for a private study, giving her the opportunity to learn more than she ever dared dream of in the realm of potion making.

It was at Hogwarts that she met and befriended the ones who would have the biggest impact on her life, and the ones who would inspire her to turn over a new leaf:  Salazar was first, followed by Jem Calanon... then Salazar's younger brother, Arius... and their mother SilverRose.  Zaida went on to have a brief courtship with Arius, only to be targeted by her fellow guildmates when they realized her intention to not return.

At first, she tried to keep them at bay, but more and more, they suspected that Arius had put her under some sort of spell to control her - making her not want to reassume her post, which she had no intention of doing.  She broke off her budding relationship with Arius, insisting to be only friends - until the thieves started to target him... Zaida tried to push him away, tried to say and do anything she could to force him to leave.  She succeeded and he left on a personal journey.  Now, cut off from Arius, Zaida is alone once more, but still has the threat of the thieves at her back... so she began to run... and has been running ever since.