Crassus Arminia

[Crassus]

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CASE FILE: Amestrian Militant

The best way to repair the disposition of one whom you disagree with is with a hard, sharp object.
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FULL NAME:
→ Crassus Arminia

AGE:
→ Technically 1,130 years old, though her biological age is 19.

SEX:
→ Female

BIRTH PLACE:
→ Teotoburgum, on what is now the border between Amestris and Drachma

RACE:
→ Half Amestrian, half Drachman (though technically she was from before either Amestris or Drachma existed as more than a loose collection of tribes. If asked, she would identify herself as an Ostrogoth)

DEPARTMENT:
→ (Check the Classifieds under your country and choose what position you want. This can be worked out and changed later once you have communicated with that country's leader!)

DATE OF BIRTH:
→ 12th May, 883 A.D.

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HEIGHT:
→ 5' 3"

WEIGHT:
→ 107lbs

PICTURE:
→

Spoiler:

DESCRIPTION:
→ Crassus is not a woman who fits into a contemporary element. She's quite short, for a start, at only 1.6 metres tall, and with her extremely short hair she looks even smaller than that. Most of her body weight seems to be in her thighs, which are thick and muscular, but this does not detract from her otherwise shapely body. Her build is one of survival and combat, compact and tough. She doesn't appear to have seen much of the sun, her skin almost a deathly pale, and with her golden hair she seems that much paler than her peers, to the point that light seems to affect her hue more than it would anyone else. In the presence of blue light, for example, rather than her skin simply dulling it will go almost a shade of light purple, which gives her a curious alien quality to her.

Her clothes may as well be alien; Crassus' rarely not in her battle armour, a leather tunic with animal furs constituting both as her vest and her skirt, and only her boots and gauntlets to accompany. She's never without her flail, a 4 foot monster of a weapon that Crassus jealously guards. She speaks with a gnarled mess of an accent that's almost impossible to understand, as archaic and as ancient as she is.

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PERSONALITY:
→ Adventurer, warrior, assassin and treasure hunter. From the age of nine to the age of nineteen, Crassus Arminia has been all of these things, and it has both defined her personality and been influenced by it.

While not without empathy, Crassus would not deny that her one true loyalty is to herself. She keeps her friends close, but only as long as they are her friends, and when she does not see someone for a long time she simply ceases to think about them. She has a high regard for the wellbeing of others, often defending the weak for the sake of defending the weak, but she’s also incredibly greedy, quick to sniff out an opportunity for personal gain and capitalise on it when she can. She’s a thief, and she is without mercy to her enemies, but she will avoid the harm of innocent bystanders, even to her own detriment, and woe betide anyone who fails to honour the same principle. She has a heart; it’s just that she also has a love of all things shiny and indulgent.

She likes her food, she likes her wine, she likes her gold. Crassus couldn’t deny this if she wanted to, but she rarely denies anything. She says things as she sees them, including her own faults, but she can’t be trusted to be honest. In fact, she can be incredibly sly, often eager to lie and fight dirty, and is just as good at stealth as she is in a fight. Cool, calm and collected, though she can be very quick to overestimate herself. She can see her own faults and knows when she needs to rely on the services of others, and values those who can provide them, but the same cannot be said for those she faces, where she will often wildly and blindly walk into danger. She’s quick-thinking enough to dodge out of danger, but she’s rare to see it coming.

Of course, it’s in Crassus’ nature to walk blindly into danger. She’s an adventurer at heart. She is obsessed with discovery, always going to the boundary of something new, always wanting to see new lands, meet new faces, face new trials. If one thing in the world excites her, it’s being plunged into a situation where she has no idea what’s going on, because then she can explore and try to find a way out. So while most people would think being encased in ice for a thousand years would be a traumatic and terrible fate, for Crassus it is literally everything she’s asked for.


LOVE:
→ Adventure, discovery, gold, roasted chicken, drawing, wine, beer, mead, fighting.

HATE:
→ Ice alchemists, reading, hot days, long dresses, Rouenians.

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HISTORY:
→ “But mum, I wanna hear a story again!”

“Jane, go to bed. Crassus would’ve gone to bed this early.”

“Not in the story with the golden lamp! She didn’t sleep for three days until she had found the treasure!”

The mother groaned very loudly indeed, frustrated almost to the point of insanity. When did she start raising her daughter to be a smart alec?

“You seem to remember the stories well enough without me, why not tell them to yourself when you go to sleep?” The mother said, reaching to turn the light off.

“But you haven’t told me all of them.”

… something made the mother stay her hand, looking back to her child, sitting wide-eyed towards her. The mother felt quite sombre, a strange concept even to her. Sympathy for someone she had never met, and probably never existed.

“That’s because I don’t know all of them.” She said, walking back to her daughter, who finally relaxed under her duvet as her mother sat upon the other end of the bed. “I don’t think anyone does. It’s kind of sad, I think.”

“Why, mum?”

“Well,” the mother explained, still not sure how to explain it to the young audience. “Most heroes have endings; Pericles, Robin Hood, the Seven Samurai... even heroes with sad endings, like Hercules and King Arthur, still have big dramatic ending. They all get married and have children, or go down fighting the great serpent, or… anything. But Crassus… she just disappeared.” The mother reached out and cupped her daughter’s chin in her palm, her thumb gently stroking the cheek. “She was so young. Had so much to give to the world. And yet she never got the chance.”

“But you said she did loads and loads! She was the best warrior ever!” The girl piped up.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that, honey.” The mother explained patiently. “She was very strong and very smart, but that doesn’t make her the best by default. Remember the Rouenian Empire?”

“Yeah! She was on the run from the legionaries, who thought that women shouldn’t fight and wanted to take her flail, but she wouldn’t let them!” The girl got louder, mock punching the air. “She dodged them, she trapped them, she always beat them up and sent the legionaries packing, right?”

“Well, they never stopped coming, did they?” The mother said. “And all of the treasure she had collected? The golden lamp of the Ishval Snake Temple? The Shield of Tribus Roxolani? Or what about when she discovered the lost city of Sarmizgetsua?”

“She discovered it when she was only thirteen!” The girl said. “A warrior and a treasure hunter! She was amazing!” Now the girl was getting indignant, but her mother remained calm.

“Well,” she continued. “If she found so much treasure, why did she still have to keep looking?” The daughter opened her mouth to answer, then realised that she didn’t have one. Her head dipped.

“So, she wasn’t as great a warrior as I thought?” The girl asked. The mother tisked lovingly.

“Well, yes and no.”

“I don’t get it.”

“She could’ve been.” The mother elaborated, making her point clearer. “Maybe she just relished the combat and the thrill of finding new things too much to let it go, or maybe she had grown so used to fighting that she didn’t know how to do anything else; she was only nine when she started, after all. But no, she had a lot to offer to the world. If she had the patience of someone a little older, if she had become wiser with age and experience, maybe she could’ve been the greatest hero who’d ever lived.” The mother then turned her head away from her daughter, masking her sorrow at the plight of the forgotten Amazonian warrior. “But then she just faded, like she had never existed to begin with. Maybe she hadn’t. People forgot her, and then began to forget her stories. At such a young age, too… she was much too young. Only nineteen.“ The tone of her voice carried into the daughter, whose heart sank with those words.

“I thought nineteen was really old.” She whispered. The mother laughed, her daughter’s words cheering her up a little. She kissed her on the forehead.

“Now go to bed.” She said. This time, the little girl obliged, sinking into her pillow. The mother turned the light off, and then closed the door.

Darkness. Sleep. Dreams…


... sleep...

... darkness...

A loud call from afar awoke the lizard. It didn’t sound like it was close, but it was certainly a large beast that made the roar. Whatever it was, it had awoken the lizard now, and its eyes opened blearily to the black interior of her maternity den. Her children were yet to stir, assembled in a pile in the furthest corner from the exit. The lizard decided to leave, having knowledge that the children would require food. She descended through the main chamber, a hole just big enough for her as she crawled towards the only light, seeing the day in the distance, the sunlight bleeding into the dead tree that this lizard’s family called home. It was not a tall tree by most standards, but in the dry, heated landscape that greeted the lizard, it was one of the few things that was distinct and stood tall, black as coal and lurching forward. The ground was an orange most distinct, dry and hard to the touch, though in the far distance some greenery could be seen. It was that most perfect of shades, a bright and vibrant orange to contrast the light blue sky that hung above it. The landscape was exceedingly uneven, craters and tall rocks abound, with great cliffs and holes marring the earth and making it difficult for anything to be seen other than from the highest of perches. Luckily, this tree was on such a perch, and the lizard could clearly see the skeleton of some long dead animal in the distance, and began to scurry towards it, knowing that the insects would still remain around it and be ripe for eating. If there was any meat still on the bones, she could even drag it home, either to feed her children or simply leave it at the foot of the tree and entice more insects into a trap. Onward she scurried to her set destination, her progress as swift as her bony legs would allow. The dry soil threw up a trail of dust behind her with every step, and it did not take long for this trail to be noticed. The lizard could only look up as a dark shadow was cast over her, then swerve out of the way as a flurry of talons and feathers smashed into the ground next to her. She kept moving, her tail narrowly avoiding the beak as the jaws of death snapped together. She didn’t turn to look back, fear entering her heart as the eagle, the symbol of winged death to all lizards, regained its balance and begun its pursuit once more. The dust rose in great clouds as the chaos ensued, the lizard leaping from left to right as the eagle’s sharpened talons swung with it, always getting closer and ready to gore her. The bird swooped and swerved and swung, and the lizard dodged and ducked and dashed. Despite the lizard’s efforts, the two got closer and closer, the distance between them shrinking and shrinking, inch by inch until…

CRACK!

The eagle called in alarm as a wooden pole slammed square between him and his prey, his head turning to the little girl on the other end. Her black hair was pinned behind her hair in a fiercely woven collection of knots, the odd curled spiral of hair jutting out of it and hanging from her mostly short-cut fringe. Her face was upon a round head, with dust, dry mud and sand dirtying the already dark skin, teeth gritted in rage and a fire locked in her hazel eyes. She stood with her legs apart, a clumsy battle stance, as she pointed the pole at the eagle’s eye level. Her body was stocky, short in height but not in bulk, her limbs fat with muscle, tight trousers and a man’s shirt far too big for her covering her. Behind her rest two jugs of water, her bounty for her master, ignored as she glared at the eagle, while on her wrists and her neck were great iron clamps.

“Go home, eagle, enemy of lizards, or your freedom is forfeit.” She said, her breath audible through her speech, giving her the low trembling of shaking earth with her words. The eagle spread his wings and screeched angrily at the girl. “My master is a terrible fiend, master of cold and the king of sorcerers. He has already enslaved me, and he could enslave you just as easily. Go home, eagle, or your freedom is forfeit.” She repeated, reciting what the master had told her to say if anyone approached her. The eagle snarled at this, cawing again in anger but not moving forward. With this, his pride wounded, the eagle turned away from the young girl and took off, flying away to search for another meal.

The lizard only watched this with a curious fear; despite being rescued, in the animal kingdom something that could ward off predators was an even worse predator. She immediately fled, disappearing to find her meal. The girl could only watch; she was tempted to reach out to the lizard, but decided against it, letting her safely be on her way. Placing the pole back onto her shoulders, she guided it through the handles on the water jugs, before standing to her full height. She pulled her excessively large shirt up to stop it catching her legs, before she began to walk back to her home, her iron chains weighing her down. She marched across the savannah, quite experienced of having red hot sand beneath her feet and the sun casting its harsh rays onto her back. This trek was one she made since she could walk and manage the weight, though it was one she despised. Every time she made it, the further away freedom seemed. She knew enough of the landscape to walk through it blindfolded, and she had become very quick-footed. When the master was waking up, she would be back with the day’s water. She knew of all of the rocks and footfalls, where certain animals hid and feasted, the paths of the wind and the dunes and the trees. She hardly ever tired; it was a duty for her, for fear of the terrible, awful consequences. When she was making this march for water, she’d only be thinking about other places to go, whether to home or whatever be beyond the hills. The walk was familiar to her… too familiar.

However, her familiarity did mean that when something was different, her surprise was genuine, such as this particular morning. For this morning, she saw a stranger. In fact, she saw someone who, to her, might as well have been an alien. It was a pale skinned woman. No one from the girl’s village had pale skin. No visitors to the master had pale skin. No one the girl had ever seen had pale skin. She knew they existed, certainly. She had read tales of what were known as the Outlands; counties to the north and the west and apparently everyone there had pale skin, but to see one in the flesh was quite strange to her. It was a creamy pink hue, and her fascination with the woman only grew as she saw more of her. She had short, golden hair that blazed like the sun, and wore the furs of strange animals across her shoulders and her hips, and they lined her hard leather boots and dark red tunic. The girl was immediately wary, and slowly placed the water down, before readying the pole once more. The woman hadn’t noticed her; she sat perched on a rock, a pencil in one hand and a leather-bound book in the other as she wrote frantically.

“Go home, stranger, or your freedom is forfeit.” She said.

The pale-skinned woman did not react. The girl was slightly unnerved, but continued anyway.

“My master is a terrible fiend, master of cold and the king of sorcerers...” She said as she had said to the eagle. The pale woman simply kept writing. The girl came a little closer, her pole bore. “He has already enslaved me, and he could enslave you just as easily! Go home, stranger, or your freedom is…”

“Enslave me, ha!” Finally, a voice, and the girl leapt back. It was a deep booming voice, but one that was rough and unrefined. Despite the savannah’s heat, it felt like the air in front of the man’s lips was frozen. The voice reminded the girl of the rolling white tundra and the fierce wind. She shook as if cold, before the woman spoke again. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day.” The girl blinked. A pale woman so casually defying the master? Not that the girl was ungrateful, but she knew of the punishment that came to girls who disobeyed the master. She dropped her pole a little.

“Who are you?” She asked. “There is no woman like you in all of Ishval.” The woman turned her head. Now the girl could see her face, she dropped her pole. Not by decision or even instinct, but just something telling her to do it. The woman rose from her seated position.
“Your master. Where is his fortress?” She asked, and the girl dutifully pointed her in the direction of her target. A great hill, and visible upon it was a singular black tower, a blot against the blue sky. The woman smiled warmly. “Excellent. Is that your master’s water?” The girl, remaining silent now, looked to the water buckets, before nodding. The woman walked over, picking up the pole the girl had used, before sliding it onto the buckets and picking them both up in one hand. “I’ll take them. Your mother’s waiting for you.”

The girl’s heart stopped.

“M-mother?” She asked desperately. Oh, what a word! A word she had not heard in what must have been years. She could only remember glimpses of a time when the master’s dark eye watched over her, and this pale woman simply came and promised her back. Then she remembered her chains. “I can’t… the master’s chains, they watch me. He knows where I am, always.”

The pale woman turned slowly, then put the buckets down.

“He can see you, but the chains have nothing to do with it.” She explained, before putting her hand behind her back, and then producing a weird tube, one the likes that the girl had never seen before. She then placed it in the girl’s hands. “Place it to your eye, and look to the tower once again.”

The girl did exactly what she was told, and saw that the tower seemed to be much larger than before. “I… I can see so far!” She excitedly yelped, before focusing on one sight. A terrifying figure of darkness and cloaks, and the girl almost recoiled. Her master. But he seemed just as terrified, looking through one of those strange tubes himself. He dropped it in shock, and the girl saw him disappear into the shadows. She pulled the tube away from her eye, and looked to the pale woman. “W-what is…”

“It’s called a telescope, where I come from. It’s my gift to you.” The woman said, the sun seeming so much less harsh with her cold words. “Your mother’s in the south east. She wants to see you again, Ryuqa. Go.” The girl took a step back, wondering whether to or not. This could be a dream. It was inconceivable that the master would not follow and attack her again, but on the same merit it was impossible that he could bother making an illusion at this point of her imprisonment. Sure that the woman was not deceiving her, the girl simply turned tail and ran. The pale woman grinned as she watched the girl disappear into the dust of the savannah, before looking back to the black tower.

It took less than an hour to walk to the tower for Crassus, her flail’s head hungry for its prize; the blood of the ‘king of sorcerers’ as the girl had so fearfully described him. Crassus let out a laugh at this thought. That man was as much a king as she was an Ishvallan. Still, the price on his head was high; the ice alchemist had been running ever since he botched the assassination of the Drachman king, and now that he made a living tricking Ishvallans that he was a demon who would enslave and devour little girls if the villagers did not pay him tribute… well, alchemy was rare here, ice even rarer, but idiots were far and wide. Few were quite on the level of this man, though, who had completely failed to grasp the concept of lying low. Barely had a year gone by before Crassus heard of this ice demon in Ishval, and it was on her journey that she realised that it was this quack. She reached the black tower, and saw the water pouring down from the top window. She growled, before looking to the wooden door. If he thought that making her a little wet would dissuade her from a fight, he had another thing coming. Her foot raised, she slammed her foot forward, cracking through the door with ease, the water coating her completely but failing to stop her.

Darkness all around her. Crassus looked up.

“Come out, Herodotus!” She shouted into the black shroud. The room was not very big, and simply led to two staircases, one to the dungeon below and one to the overlook above. Then Crassus heard the whistling and leapt to the side.

SMASH!

A huge spear of ice slammed down onto the stone floor, the shards splitting across the floor, harmlessly missing their target. However, Crassus decided to scream anyway. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” A great call of pain, short and piercingly loud, and then silence. In this silence, Crassus leapt into the shadows, and footsteps came from the figure descending from the overlook.

“Well, Crassus, you’re not as smart as you thought you were.” A boast, every decibel beaming with a smug victory. A mass of cloaks and darkness, tall and imposing, simply floated down the steps, planning to observe his handiwork. “As for the girl, I suppose I could just find another and…” His sentence stopped when he saw the body. Or lack thereof. He rushed down the steps, looking to the remains of the icicle he had made to crush her. However, he didn’t have long before a cord slammed across his neck. Crassus’ flail. The alchemist simply panicked, but knew that his little water trap would provide the water needed to freeze her. Before she realised it, blue and white crystals crawled up Crassus’ legs, the water on her skin freezing her instantly. She was alive and full of rage, and in a flash she was no more, locked in a cold tomb that would encase her in ice forever.

The alchemist’s story, however, doesn’t continue. The flail was the one thing not frozen, and its binds were locked across his throat, cutting off the air. He scrambled and struggled desperately, but it was all for naught; Crassus would not, could not, yield, and even if she willed it, it would’ve been completely impossible in her frozen state. The ice alchemist died a slow, agonising death, and while Ishval was free of one of its most feared villains no one but the young girl would know who was the saviour, or her fate. No one ever would know...

… or so it seemed. However, the tower did not disappear. Forgotten in the Great Desert, a mere curiosity, but a team of archaeologists discovered the strange scene; a skeleton, neck crushed by the cord of the flail held by the frozen woman. Against the odds, she wasn't dead, being preserved as close to perfectly as one could hope. Unfreezing her without killing her, though, presents a whole mess of problems in of itself...

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TRIVIA:
→ Crassus is a brilliant sketch artist, but despite this, she is actually illiterate, the Ostrogoths never having a form of writing and thus she never learnt to read.
→ Crassus was amongst the first people to see the construction of a castle that would much later be partially knocked down and used as the foundation of Fort Briggs.
→ Crassus speaks very old dialects of Amestrian (lightblue), Ishvallan (pink), Drachman (brown), Cretan (yellow) and Rouenian (blue) (though she spoke all of those languages before words for modern things such as 'television' or 'car' existed, so there are major holes in her vocabulary) and she also speaks Latin (white) and Gothic (darkorange).

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ALIAS:
→ Sponge, or Huey

OTHER CHARACTERS:
→ Dunstan Hue, Rachel Ascot, Doresu Ayako

CREATOR'S COMMENTS:
→ For the character event, so I've written her history with the Level 2 being in dark orange.

CUSTOM RANK:
→ Ostrogoth

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[Crassus]

All done

[Jay Furor]

I don't see no nuthin' wrong here. o3o Checks out fine with me, indeed, indeed! Just remember to have your Department filled in when you've picked one, aye? I HEREBY DEEM THIS APP...

DENIED~

Erm... Wait. No. I DEEM THIS APP...

APPROVED~

8D

[Reila Tsukino]

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