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notes/Backstories/Eron.md

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+He grew up in the quaint village of Ravenal, located next to a river, where farming is the primary means of survival. In the village, almost everyone is blessed by either Earth or Water, and as these are the most useful elements for farming, other blessings are looked down upon. As his Wind blessing is mostly useless, he feels isolated, keeping mostly to himself, with only his little sister Dena as a close bond. Her Water blessing has minor healing properties, so she is well liked, but acts brash to people who look down on her brother. Their mother died when giving birth to Dena, and their father is busy working.
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+One day, Ravenal is raided by a small group of bandits, which kill a few unprepared and unarmed villagers, before being stopped by a wandering knight who happens to be in the village. Eron manages to take down two bandits after finding a sword on the ground, using his Wind blessing to evade attacks and knock them off balance. He is however unable to save his sister or father. The wandering knight saw his combat prowess, and asks him to be his disciple. With no family left and not being wanted in the village anyways, he joins the knight, who introduces himself as Gefalt. They wander for two years, where Gefalt, who has a Fire blessing, teaches him about using Blessings in combat.
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+One day they see a recruitment poster for a mercenary group, and Gefalt tells Eron to sign up and go his own way, as this will be a valuable experience.

notes/Backstories/Forney.md

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+Former warmaster guarding Sara in her childhood. Died defending the house from an invasion by a rival noble house.

notes/Backstories/Gefalt.md

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+Wandering knight teaching Eron

notes/Backstories/Kaeros.md

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+Born as the son of a merchant, Kaeros got basic education in reading and writing. he travelled with his parent from one small village to another, trading basic goods between them and taking some as pay for their own survival. Sometimes they visited towns cities to buy rarer goods and sell them to the villages. Rarely during these visits, they would meet up with strange people and his father would sell them bundles of which he had no recollection of them buying, but he didn't think too much about it.
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+During one visit to the village of [[Mora]], he met a girls his age called [[Mira]], and they played together while he stayed. She was blessed by Fire, allowing her to create small bursts of flame from her hands, while he hadn't been able to manifest his blessing yet. While playing, she accidentally burnt his arm, causing him to lash out at her and leaving. Before he departed, he wanted to apologise to her, but she was nowhere to be found.
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+They departed the village and went back to the city, where they were again about to meet the strange people, when during a rest he heard a knocking noise from the storage room of the carriage. As his parents were not around, he investigated himself and found a hidden compartment, in which he found another one of those bundles they sold to the strange people, which was moving. When he unwrapped the bundle, he found Mira completely bound up, starving and dehydrated. That's when he realised that they had been selling people in those bundles, and Mira was about to be sold.
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+Enraged by this revelation, he takes as much food and water as he can carry and wants to run away with Mira, but she is too weak to walk. While desperately thinking of a way to keep Mira safe from his parents, he notices that the loafs of bread he was holding were wet with a distinct purple-greenish colour in the places he touched with his hands. When letting go of the loafs, his hands continued to drip slowly with a fluid of the same colour. Instinctively he knew that it was poison.
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+So he hid away Mira in nearby bushes with some food and water, while he prepared food for his parents, waiting for their return. He poisons their portions and eats with them as if nothing happened. When in the night they wake up gasping for air, he ignores their pleads for help and waits for them to be dead. He retrieves Mira from the bushes and they stay in that rest spot until Mira is feeling better, after which they depart on foot with as many rations as they can carry to the city. There, they see a recruitment poster for a mercenary group, which they decide to join, as living on the streets would also be dangerous, especially with the human traffickers around.
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+They are welcomed surprisingly warmly, taken in for training, during which it turns out that Mira is quite talented with the sword, and her gift of Fire is fairly powerful with large reserves or Essence at her disposal. Kaeros meanwhile is not as talented with the sword, but can use a bow, with his blessing being useful for coating the arrows in poison. He also learns to control his blessing, allowing him to selectively secrete the poison only from his fingertips.

notes/Backstories/Luno.md

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+Luno was born in a small town which burned down before she could remember anything. A mercenary group found her in the ruins and took her in. They raised her like a shared daughter, doting on her and trying to keep her away from the gruesome reality of combat. But reality was still undeniable, and wound could not always be hidden away, missing limbs were obvious, and death was a constant companion.
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+When they thought she was old enough, they let her help bandage the wounded, thinking it might scare her away from fighting. She however took the injuries to heart, giving her very best to tend to every wound. She learned a lot about medicine and treating wounds, but also how the body works, where the most vulnerable points are.
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+While she was hoping for a Water blessing to help more with healing, she instead got a Wind blessing, which at first she found rather useless. But when the group started teaching her self defence with a dagger, she found out how to use the blessing to swiftly close in on weak points and accurately hit them with the dagger.
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+After she was old enough to decide for herself and they couldn't stop her anymore, they decided to let her join a fresh batch of recruits. They wouldn't send those on any dangerous missions, and her medical expertise would be quite invaluable for them. But when the group decided to do something stupid or dangerous, they made sure to tell her to prioritise her own survival, and leave them behind.

notes/Backstories/Mira.md

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+In the small mountain village of Pavoras, herding goats is the primary way in which the village survives. Meat and milk from the goats is sold to merchants which trade them other necessities like clothes. That village is protected on one side by a steep mountain face, with wide open plains providing far advance notice for any possible threats. In this environment, Mira was taught to herd at a young age by her father, who she would accompany on the plains. With much time on her hands, she started experimenting with her blessing early. When she first was able to produce flames from her hands, he told her he was proud of her, but his look had a mix of sadness and disappointment in it.
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+As she continued to train and hone her blessing, she was able to not only create bursts of fire, but also provide a steady warmth, which she could infuse items with while she was holding them. However, she only found limited uses for her blessing in the village, as it was exceptionally peaceful, being naturally fortified, so combat was practically non-existent. Aside from making the process of lighting a bonfire a bit easier and warming her herding staff, she was unable to apply her blessing anywhere, especially since fire was feared by most for being dangerous.
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+Some of the merchants also brought their children with them, and one of them was [[Kaeros]]. He had already visited when he was barely able to walk and with her being 2 years older, she showed him the village with excitement, and they had a lot of fun until he had to leave with his family. Several years later, they returned and Mira was eager to show off her blessing to Kaeros. He was jealous of her already figuring out her blessing, while he still couldn't use his. When she then accidentally burnt him, he got angry and ran away.
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+In the last years the village had fallen into disrepair. With the grass growing slower due to the weather, the goats didn't grow as fast and produced less milk, which made them unable to afford many things. Her mother died due to illness recently, and her father was unable to process this, barely leaving the house anymore. When she returned home that day, instead of the distant look he usually had, his gaze spoke of sadness and pain, being on the verge of tears.
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+In the middle of the night, she was violently woken up by ropes being bound around her. When she tried to struggle out of the binding, a wet cloth was pressed to her mouth, which quickly made her fall unconscious. The next time she woke up, everything was dark, her mouth was completely covered and she was completely bound up, feeling weak from hunger and thirst. She desperately struggled to do anything, but all she could do was knock on the walls of her confinement with her feet.
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+She was freed by Kaeros, who gave her food and water, and hid her in the bushes. He poisoned his parents, waited for her to get her strength back, and then fled with her to the city. There they got taken in by a mercenary group, who trained them. It turns out that Miras blessing is incredibly useful in combat, and since she spent so much time training it, it was exceptionally strong for her age.

notes/Backstories/Sara.md

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+Born in a noble house, she had access to basic education, learning to read and write early on, as well as getting fundamental training with the blade by the personal guard, Forney. While she wasn't particularly talented at wielding the sword, she loved discussing tactics and strategy. Forney, being a former war master, gladly told her about his previous exploits before retiring to become a guard for her family.
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+During this time, her blessing would start to manifest as her sometimes seeing brief glimpses of incoming sword strikes during training, letting her dodge them uncannily. At first, Forney didn't believe her, but when her swordplay didn't significantly improve, while she sometimes was able to dodge attacks perfectly, a terrible feeling crept up. Of course, Forney had heard of the legends of the ancient deities, but as they all died aeons ago, there was no way for them to bless someone.
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+When their estate was attacked by a rival house, Forney defended her, and she managed to fully activate her blessing for the first time, creating a checkpoint during the fight, but no matter how many times she rewound, she was always too slow and too weak and Forney died protecting her.
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+Unable to process the trauma, she locked herself up, continuously trying to use her blessing to go back and save Forney, but was unable to do so. She found out that her blessing only allowed her to create a checkpoint at the current moment, to which she could return to for the next few seconds. She realised that she could use this to extract information by testing and rewinding, but also that she could not let any anyone figure out her ability, as they would immediately grow suspicious of her actions, questioning how many times she has replayed the scenario already.
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+During this time, her family mounted a swift counterattack on the rival house that attacked them, which ended in disaster, practically wiping out both families. When she got the news, her world shattered, being once again unable to save anyone. It was only a matter of time before some other house came to claim everything, as they were now unable to defend themselves, so she decided to leave everything behind and join a mercenary group to survive.