Adelais of Stormroque

[For Adelais (NPC), see: Adelais Breton]

Adelais of Stormroque is a Holy Paladin of the god Ebere, professional cartoon knight, small-town girl, and janitor of accidental dragon-spewings. Her confident and self-assured manner is hampered slightly by the doe-eyed wonder with which she greets the world. With the patience of a patron saint and an almost compulsive need to Help People and Generally Do Good, Adelais is out to make the world a better place one hug and smite at a time.

Appearance
Slightly taller than average, with medium-brown skin and eyes the colour of key-lime pie. Upon closer inspection (unusually for someone with healing abilities) she has several scars visible on her body, the most noticeable being across her left cheek and forehead. She is usually seen wearing silver plate armor engraved with peonies, and either a long blue or cream cape sometimes emblazoned with the symbol of her chosen god. Her long hair is often tied up in sensible braids to keep it out of the way for battles.

Personality
Cheerful, friendly and almost hopelessly naive, Adelais often comes across on par with an over-enthusiastic kindergarten teacher. She takes her paladin oaths very seriously, which means she's a stickler for the rules and sticking to the straight and narrow. She is very protective of people she cares about and has a bad habit of 'mothering' them. Her friendly nature should not be underestimated though, as she can and will go to extreme lengths to put an end to any wrongdoing.

Tektite
Tektite and Adelais met when she was 15 years old, and have been near-inseparable ever since she rescued him from a vicious attack by a woefully misguided young boy. As Tektite recovered from his injury, Adelais sat by his bedside several hours a day and read to him. She started with her favorite adventure story, The Boy in The Tower (a story about a female knight that rescues a prince from a cursed tower), but changed to non-fiction after learning of his studies in alchemy. When Adelais eventually decided to leave the town and travel the world, Tektite followed, and they spent 7 months on the road before reaching Hygard City. She tends to overlook anything slightly dodgy Tektite might do in the same way a mother might claim her child is completely blameless.

Biscuit Crumbs Whittkustaard
Biscuit is Adelais' loyal steed - an enormous tibetan mastiff who is usually the colour of sparkling sunlight. Or, if you ask Adelais, the colour of custard cream biscuits. He is sweet and slightly dopey, but can switch into a dangerous attack dog if commanded to. He's a good boy.

Sister Florence
Adelais' grandmother figure, a woman of few words and a permanent frown. Florence is a former rogue and current skilled blacksmith. She joined the Sisterhood of Ebere to try and redeem herself for reasons she never disclosed. She took a particular shine to Adelais because she admired the girl’s serious attitude towards training, and knew she could work with her natural combat skill. She custom-makes weapons and armour for all ‘graduates’ of the church.

The Sisters of Ebere
The nuns of the church are (more-or-less) maternal figures for the orphans that live there, these are a badass group of older women who do not suffer fools. Strictly speaking, they are not actually nuns, but it became too much hassle to keep correcting people. A couple of standout figures for Adelais include:


 * Sister Madelaine – a chain-smoking, foul-mouthed fighter with no patience for bullshit and a love of complaining.She has a real soft spot for babies (all kinds, including animals).  She thinks Adelais is a pain in the ass, but in an affectionate sort of way!


 * Sister Johanna (Yo-hah-na) – Ebere's chosen head paladin is an unusually tall and imposing woman who takes her role very seriously.  She rides a huge tibetan masiff named Aloria who is the colour of sunset.

The Orphans of Stormroque
Most of the orphans will have seen Adelais as an older sister figure, a boring babysitter, or just not given a fub about her at all. There are however a couple she has known since she was a baby, and as far as she is concerned are her siblings:
 * Lysander Erdos - Lysander and Adelais met when they were around 4 years old, back when he was a tiny, agonizingly shy baby satyr.  Now he is an average-sized, overly-confident satyr who takes great joy in winding up his 'sister' and embarrasing her in front of boys.  He is a very skilled artist.
 * Malachai of Stormroque - Malachai arrived at roughly the same time as Adelais did, and so were raised together.  He was a shy, thoughtful boy with a beautiful singing voice.

Mayor LeBryon Winters II
LeBryon Winters is the current mayor of Stormroque, and Adelais' ex-boyfriend. Initially drawn to his rather...rousing campaign speeches and promises of a better tomorrow, eventually she realised he was just clueless and self-serving. LeBryon has managed to convince himself that Adelais has gone on a glorified holiday, and will be back for him one day - besides, a wife and a bodyguard all in one will really save money.

Morgan
Morgan is the boy that Adelais defended Tektite from, resulting in his banishment from the church. At the time, Adelais was furious and more than happy to see him gone...now, while still not his biggest fan, she does wish she'd had the foresight to see the boy got psychological help.

Handsome Greta
Adelais has a very positive opinion of Greta, and appreciates his kindness towards her and Tektite. He is on his way to being one of the people that she sees through rose-tinted glasses. She is slightly in awe of the fact that gods talk to him, and of his general strength and abilities, and has a little happy-emotion party on the inside when he praises something she does. Due to events at the end of season 2, Greta spent a lot of time with her inside various medical facilities, as well as helping her communicate directly with her god for the first time.

Mr Stevens
Adelais also has a very positive opinion of Mr. Stevens, especially as he saved her life. She has made a promise to return the favour if needed.

Jack Prince
When this small-town church girl saw Jack Prince pop actual angel wings for the first time, she developed an instant schoolgirl-crush. For a few weeks, her judgement was always slightly impaired whenever Jack was involved, and she jumped at the chance to try and help him in an effort to impress him. She has realised now, however, that these feelings are unrequited, and has decided to just let it go. She admires the fact he has set up the Amber Hall, particularly that it helps do-gooders find work.

History
Stormroque Bay was the kind of seaside town that made anybody unfortunate enough to choose it as a getaway spot subsequently need a holiday. Scenic highlights included painfully sharp rock beaches, a constant chill in the air and the kind of drizzly-mist that made it feel as though a large water dragon was perpetually clearing out its nostrils just above your face. The town itself had one of the highest crime rates in the region – a fact that the incompetent boy-mayor LeBryon Winters advertised as an exciting feature to try and incite tourism. It failed.

The one shining beacon in this thoroughly miserable town was the Holy Church of Ebere. Over the past 50 years or so, the Sisters of Ebere had the bright idea to take in orphaned children, hoping to train them as paladins as a way to better themselves and be the heroes (or law enforcers) this town needed. Of course, being Stormroque, this resulted in a large amount of teenage bandits and thieves who were now frighteningly good with weapons and the occasional hard smite. Thankfully though, a solid third of these children grew up to be the good paladins the Sisters had hoped for.

And then there was Adelais.

Found as a baby, Adelais grew up in the church absolutely idolising the Sisters. She developed lofty dreams of becoming a knight in shining armour like the characters in all her favourite bedtime stories, and the murals found in the church. With a genuine and sometimes overwhelming need to help, Adelais was a little much for even the Sisters (it wasn’t until she was an adult that she realised that Sister Madelaine couldn’t have been sleeping every time she went looking for her). Still, her strong sense of justice and overly-accepting nature made her the perfect sensible babysitter/older sister figure the church needed.

Now a young adult, Adelais is ready to travel the world with the intention of both ‘paying forward’ the kindness shown to her at the Church, and paying back the Church via donations earned through odd jobs. Unfortunately, Adelais hasn’t had much experience in the world outside of her terrible, terrible home town, so while she might know how to handle herself in a fight, dealing with the big bad world will be a bit of a multi-culture shock.

Abilities and Powers
Bless

Heroism

Cure Wounds

Command

Branding Smite

Aid

Zone of Truth

Lesser Restoration

Protection from Evil and Good

Sanctuary

Beacon of Hope

Dispel Magic

Misc.

 * Her name means 'The noble sort'.
 * She fakes her accent in order to sound 'the part'.
 * Her longsword is named 'Penance' and her shield is named 'Diplomacy'.
 * A particularly harrowing attack on Stormroque 5 years ago almost shook her faith enough to doubt gods altogether.  This was was also when she killed someone for the first time.
 * Has reasons to believe she might have been born in Frandelle, however is currently secretly afraid to visit in case her parents are...problematic.
 * Has a bad habit of falling very quickly for good-looking authority figures for reasons that would embarrass her to share.