Natalia

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Information

Player: JVNemesis

Character Full Name: Natalia Arterian

Character In-Game Name: Natalia

Nickname(s): Talie, Talia.

Association(s): Gilneas, the Alliance

Race: Worgen

Class: Hunter

Age: 28

Sex: Female

Hair: Black

Eyes: Blue

Weight: 183 lbs.

Height: 5'8"

Usual Garments/Armor: Light, form-fitting leather armor reinforced in vital areas with light mail. Her gauntlets are fitted to the forearms with thin metal plates to deflect light blows. She wears a thick, double-stacked belt with a variety of pouches and holsters for her gear. There is a small hand crossbow equivalent attached to the plating on her right arm, which doesn’t need two hands to fire, like her larger weapon.

Personality

Natalia is quiet and well-mannered; she was brought up as a nobleman’s daughter, and she learned all of the necessary skills to be a lady over the course of her life. She is intelligent and quick-witted, but she knows when to hold back on the quips that so easily come to mind. She was always soft and kind-hearted, and performed the duties of her station without external complaint or protest. Now that she is on her own, however, Natalia is in a bit of flux. While she still tries to maintain the standards of respect and such that she was taught, she finds many of the individuals outside of the wall to be extremely frustrating to deal with, and they strain her patience.

The new races, as well, are a source of much confusion and distrust for Natalia. Whereas before she had seen only humans, the worgen, a few gnomes and elves, and then later the Forsaken, the sudden influx of the various races of the Horde and Alliance have left her unsure how to react. She treats them all with wary respect, though, until they provide a reason for her to act otherwise. She is also extremely suspicious of her own brethren that spend more time in worgen form than their human one. Those that practice dark magic, as well, have earned her ire nearly as much as worgen that still are (or act) savage. Those are the ones she devotes her time to tracking down; the ones that sully the name of those Gilneans that have risen above the tragedy their nation suffered and continued on with their proud lineage. She has the power and the will to do something about it now, and Natalia is determined to never hesitate again the way she did before. Those that threaten innocents for no other reason than their own lack of control are her targets, for that in itself is her greatest fear; to lapse back into the feral savagery she embraced before she received the worgen cure.

History

Natalia was born to a small noble family on the far outskirts of Gilneas City shortly before the Second War. The Arterian estate was by no means the largest of the Gilnean nobles, but they had a respectable amount of serfs and grounds. Her father, Roland Arterian, kept their family living comfortably through his wealth, though their assets were significantly damaged during to the rebel attacks during the Northgate rebellion. The family's source of income began to slow and dry up, particularly after the incredible amounts of money Roland spent to assist in rebuilding Gilneas after the Rebellion's damage. Eventually, as the money began to dwindle later into Natalia's life, the family's lavish lifestyle began to tighten. Grounds were cut back, servants were let go, and guards were reduced. Roland had treated all of the individuals under his authority well, and many chose to stay and live on the grounds even as positions within the estate itself were reduced. While Natalia was still accustomed to comfortable and secure living and they weren't even close to poverty, it was by no means the opulence they once lived by. Her father, ever a realistic man, had begun to cut down on their living costs well before money became an issue, and thus vastly extended his diminishing fortune. Roland, left paranoid for his family's safety after a close brush during the Rebellion, insisted they all learn rudimentary self-defense, much to his wife's exasperation.

Natalia grew up a well-mannered and quiet girl, one of four siblings. As her family's estates were outside of the city proper, she had little interaction with others outside of her family as a child in the wake of the Rebellion. She had an early interest in horse riding, spending a good chunk of time in the estate's stables or out riding (once her father had deemed her competent enough to leave the grounds, though even then she was never alone. Her constant companion was one of her father's hired guards, a man whom had been Roland's trusted companion for years before Natalia's birth. He was the one who had taught the Arterians the self-defense Roland insisted on, and always went out riding with Natalia. He picked up on Natalia's polite discontent with the hobbies her mother had been teaching her (knitting, hair braiding, color and style choices for clothing), he suggested archery to be coupled with the riding. It was a neat loophole, as Roland had forbidden him from teaching the (female) Arterians to use any sort of sword or gun. He called it unnecessary, though no one had the gall to point out the self-defense training he had mandated.

Thus, Natalia was given a crossbow, and her guard began to teach her to use it. She grew to be a good shot, though she never had the drive for hunting. Her father had taken her many times over the years, but she did not have the stomach to kill for pleasure. She did the tracking, but Roland was the one who finished the creature. She also developed a fascination with her father's collection of strange gnomish inventions; a gnome tinker had decided to stay (or had simply been caught, Natalia was never sure which) behind in Gilneas when the Wall was erected, and her father had invited him to stay on their estates. He shared Natalia's interest with “how stuff worked,” and had commissioned a number of strange(ly useful) devices over the years. Natalia and Roland spent many hours experimenting with the devices, fortunately without any major accidents.

Natalia, being a pretty young girl from a noble family, had a few suitors early on in her life. A political marriage, while not something she would have enjoyed in the slightest, was the best thing for her family, and her father had arranged one. She did not enjoy being a showpiece at all, but she acquiesced to her father's wishes, and was secretly relieved when the groom backed out of the arrangement as her family's money continued to dwindle.

Roland was one of the nobles who participated in the hunts for the worgen in the years following the Northgate rebellion, though his reasons were more practical that sporting. He simply didn't want huge wolfmen running amok in his country, not with his family there. As the worgen curse spread and things grew more dire, Roland essentially barricaded the Arterians into their estate. Only he and a few of the remaining servants were allowed to leave. Eventually, as the worgen attacked Gilneas in full force, a pack of the beasts came to the Arterian estate. All of the serfs still living outside the manor itself were either killed or converted. When the worgen tried to break into the barricaded manor, it was only a matter of time. Roland tried to hold a door closed against one of the monsters, as it slowly overpowered the Arterian patriarch and pushed the door open, and Natalia, armed with her crossbow...could only watch, frozen in terror at the ravening beast. She couldn't squeeze the trigger, and the worgen broke through. The Arterians were all either killed or turned into worgen, just as their serfs had been.

For months, Natalia ran wild with the other worgen. Her memories of her time savage are hazy, but the horror all came back to her when she was eventually captured (in much the same way as her father used to hunt worgen years before) and given the Gilnean cure. The turn her existence had taken horrified her, to the point where she was nearly killed herself to escape being a beast for the rest of her life. Had the night elves not arrived with their own cure, she may well have done so.

Once fully in control of herself again (and swearing to never return to her bestial form), Natalia returned to her family's estate. It was completely abandoned; not even the worgen remained, and the Forsaken were still focused on the city proper. She stayed there for a long while, before collecting what equipment she could and departing. The wealth remaining to her family name was all hers now, as well as all of her father’s equipment, gnomish and otherwise, and she would make good use of it.

Her previous existence was gone. The only thing she could think of doing was using the skills she had that were still relevant: hunting down those worgen who hadn't received the cure yet, and seeing it done. Those that continued to threaten others, willfully or not, would be dealt with. Natalia's previous aversion to finishing a hunt in a permanent fashion had faded significantly.

Skills and Abilities

Natalia has an extensive and bizarre set of tools and gadgets that assist her in her mission. While she has no magic of her own, all of the hunter abilities can be emulated via the engineering technology she has. A set of thermal/imprint detection goggles make up for tracking. All of the magical shot abilities are specially crafted bolts designed with poison/minor explosives/all the other abilities. A gnomish cloaking device is used for Camouflage. Her crossbow is an impressive piece of technology, with a variable-zoom scope, auto-cycling bolts and multiple ammunition chambers, so Natalia doesn’t need to manually remove and insert a new bolt each time she wants to use a different type. These, coupled with her own agility and skill in maintaining distance from an opponent, make her a formidable opponent.