NPC CS - The Twins Helainna and Prisca Kellianth

The last two NPC teammates on Marcus' team. I decided to put them together since they share many similarities and they have always been together.

One more note on the wyverns: It's likely that some of their details are going to morph from drawing to drawing, as I'm still working out a look that I'm satisfied with. I think I'm liking this configuration for the wings, but we'll see. If wyvern details change dramatically enough, I will update these sheets, but I'm not going to go back and edit every single pic with the wyverns in them.

Name: Prisca & Helaina Kellianth
Race: Human
Age: 24 (Identical twins, born at same time)
Height: 5’3” ft. & 5’4” ft.
Occupation: Support Casters. Otherwise, they work as researchers and research assistants at the Magic Academy in the capitol of Ziaray. Helaina occasionally will provide private tutoring in minor magic for younger potentials not yet old enough to go to the Academy.

Weapon: Neither of them is trained in the use of weapons, but they both carry a dagger on them for emergencies. Their only real “weapon” is their magic. See below.

Abilities: Prisca and Helaina are both trained and extremely skilled in the use of Abjuration (barriers, negating magical or physical abilities, harm trespassers, and banishment), Transmutation (physical alteration, buffing, and debuffing), Divination (Acquiring information such as scrying on someone or a specific location, or contacting another person), Enchantment (Includes charm spells, and allows them to attach a desired spell effect to an item or a person for significantly longer periods of time) and Illusion (False images, sounds, sensations, etc.) spells. They possess no offense-oriented spells and are no good at Evocation (BOOM! EXPLOSIONS! NO SUBTLY!) or Conjuration (Summoning, teleporting, creation, healing).

Personality: The two twins share many similarities, mainly because they spent so much of their lives constantly together, but once they got into the Academy, that was when their personalities began to see divergence, even if some of them were only minor. Both of them are relatively kind individuals but their time spent among other nobles has caused them to have a very pessimistic attitude about other people’s personalities, and have gained an appreciation for sarcasm and snarking whenever an object of their derision does something they don’t like or they get some kind of comeuppance or doing something that looks nice, but with a very poor attitude. Helaina has a tendency of doing it less often, particularly once the war started and some of the people she snarked at went off to fight in the war and died. Prisca didn’t have as much sympathy for those people, and will claim they only got what they deserved. When it comes to social situations, they both tend to be fairly quiet, since they spent more time alone or with their brother and not much time socializing. This has only begun to change since joining the squad with Marcus and the others, but even then, the change is only evident when they are with a small group and with people they know.

Neither of the twins is overly aggressive unless provoked first and even then, they rarely initiate direct action, often instead choosing to react and adapt, using their wits to turn any aggression directed towards them on its head. Romance and courtship have been things that both of them fiercely avoided, at least while at the Academy, when they were under constant pressure from their classmates, but once they graduated, that started to change. Prisca was more than willing to explore her curiosity, Helaina was much more hesitant and had a poor vision of any attempts, but their differing attitudes had made little difference due to both of their crippling social skills. They have no idea what to do beyond what they did to survive in the Academy, and as a result, they tend to end up driving away any potential. Now that they’re in the army, that interest has faded a lot, as they’re more interested in survival and in the war’s progress. Jericho and later, Terris, didn’t help. Helaina especially has given up any ideas since her incident with the Arean demon, and instead has been focusing more on the war and her study of the arcane.

The two are able to operate pretty well under pressure, but once actual fear enters the equation, Helaina starts to freeze up. Particularly when facing off against Arean demons, as those encounters cause her to think about the incident. Helaina also has a sometimes crippling complex about the scar on her torso and will have a meltdown if anyone other than her sister sees it.

History: The two twins were born in the capitol Ziaray as the two oldest of three to Jayklin, a minor noble living in the upper-section of the Capitol and his wife Caralina. Theirs is a line with angelic blood far, far back into their lineage. As a result, they are almost completely human, with no differing physical features, or outstanding abilities. But one thing that did stick around, was a natural aptitude for magic. What kind tended to be different for each family member, but every member of the family since has been an extremely capable mage. Still, when they were born, their parents worried that the twins being born at the same time might interfere with their abilities, as their family had never had twins before. Their fears were allayed, however, when they were inspected and both found to have even stronger magical potential than any other mage in their family since the mixing.

As such, the two were treated with a great deal of care by their parents, even after their third sibling was born a few years later. They were allowed to play with other children their age, but only under very careful watch by their caretakers and that tended to kill the atmosphere for the other kids, so they would often refuse to play with them. As a result, the twins spent more time with each other and their younger brother Georlan. They made the best of their parents’ over-bearing protection and grew extremely close over the years.

Once they reached a high enough age, the twins began receiving tutoring where they learned their family’s history and lineage, the names of their family’s most important members, and were tested to find out what types of magic they could use. Their parents were somewhat disappointed to find out they had a limited range of elemental attunement, but were pleased to learn they had strong potential for several other schools of magic. They weren’t given as much leisure time during this, so they learned how to make the most of their time together when they weren’t busy studying or listening to their instructor.

Finally, once they reached the age of eleven, they were taken to begin proper study of magic, and were placed with other potentials from other noble families and important figures in the Caelian society. They missed their little brother immensely, but were able to cope, supporting each other and encouraging one another over the years. They did have their rough spots, however. They learned very quickly that not all of their classmates were friendly or interested in being nice and some still seemed all too willing to use their magic for increasingly cruel or petty acts against each other. There was a constant fluctuating competition among the students, particularly in their class, where it tended to get extremely vicious and mean-spirited.

The worst of it was when the twins became the targets of another noble house that had a long-standing hostility towards theirs because of their family’s mixed lineage. For more than a month, they were assaulted by increasingly ridiculous pranks ranging from something as simple as trapping their bedroom door to fly open and hit them in the face, to much more cruel and humiliating ones such as the time their desks were enchanted to disintegrate all but their undergarments on contact. Worse yet, the twins had no real way of fighting back for quite some time, as their assailants were using the magical abilities that came naturally to their pure, angelic blood, rather than the spells they were being taught in class. The twins considered contacting their family and alerting them of the problem, but Prisca quickly dashed that thought from her mind and made sure Helaina did as well.

They remembered how their parents reacted when they perceived a threat to their precious twins, and they did not want to see how they would react here. Despite the hardships their pranksters put them through, they had more freedom here at the Academy than they ever did back home, when they were under the constant, watchful eye of their parents. So they instead decided to tough through the humiliation and slowly learned their pranksters’ habits and patterns, and eventually they became able to predict and call out their antics before they could enact them. As they mastered the range of schools they were taught, they even began working out ways to turn their pranks back on them.

Their stubbornness and careful preparations finally culminated towards the end of one of their school terms, when their class was sent to hear a speech from the Academy Dean. They had used a Scrying spell to learn that they were planning on hitting the two girls with charm spells and have them start spewing garbage and slanderous babble, in addition to setting fire to some of the Dean’s non-essentials and making him think it was them. So, they took a pair of tiaras and enchanted them with a combination of protection and reflection spells, so that when it finally was time and they were lined up, the pranksters’ carefully hidden spells immediately backfired on them. They began insulting the Dean and set his robes on fire. The fires were snuffed immediately by on-hand faculty, and the two were expelled from the Academy unceremoniously on the spot.

Their parents eventually came and addressed the issue, trying to fixate the blame on the Twins, but the Dean wasn’t going to have any of it. The chaotic mess that was their entire class was well-known in the Academy, and the twins were the most well-behaved of the lot. He refused to believe their claims and his decision stood: the two pranksters were expelled and any future potentials from that family would be carefully screened and barred from entering if deemed unfit.

Of course, everyone in their class knew that Prisca and Helaina had been responsible for their comeuppance and as a result, most of the flak they’d been receiving over the years came to an end. Occasionally, a brave soul would try to cause trouble for them, but they were well-learned by then in picking out the trouble-makers and giving them what they deserved, and Prisca especially enjoyed making sure they knew just how stupid she thought they were for trying. Helaina was much less confrontational and tended to use simpler negation barriers to prevent trouble.

Then five years ago, the Seals shattered and Caelius and Ares returned to Zion. Living in the capitol and nearing the end of their Academy life, the twins were among the many to witness the shining light of Helia as she descended from her temple and went to face Deamond and Ivalina. For the first few years of the war’s renewal, the twins spent the remainder of their time in the Academy dreading their eventual graduation. They knew that their parents would expect them to return home, and not take part in the war… but as they watched the war’s progress with the other students through scrying, they felt more and more that they couldn’t just sit back and let the war go on without doing… something!

So once their graduation was on the horizon, the two began laying out a plan of escape. Their family made use of privately owned tamed, flying mounts to move about in the upper parts of the city. They had a mix of different ones: some gryphons, a few hippogryphs, their father was the sole one in their household to have a dragon… and then their guards and some of their servants used wyverns for their mounts. The wyverns were chosen specifically because of their heightened fortitude compared to the others and the twins knew that if they were going to head into the war, it would be an ideal choice for them, compared to the others. Neither of them were exceptionally skilled flyers, and the wyverns would provide more room for error.

Their parents had promised them their own mounts once they graduated, but though they never specified what kind, the twins knew they would probably default to one of the others. Thus, when they announced their graduation date to their parents, they persistently insisted on having wyverns for their personal mounts. Their parents resisted vehemently at first, but once it became clear that the two girls would not back down on this matter, the stunned father acquiesced and readied a pair of slightly more seemly mounts for them than the ones their guards had. This was the first time he had seen his daughters act with such… force. They were obedient and respectful growing up, but now he realized that their time away in the Academy had changed them a great deal.

He was even more shocked when they disappeared immediately upon graduation. Literally. As in, they walked up onto the stage, received their diplomas, and vanished into thin air off the stage. Alarmed, they searched for the two for some time, but Jayklin began to comprehend what was happening. It finally made sense when they got a letter from the twins several days later stating their intentions and their refusal to sit back while the war waged on. He spent several weeks lamenting the loss of his quiet, obedient children, and resigned himself to the fact that Prisca and Helaina were no longer the same little girls he’d spent much of his time trying to protect. Even now, he’s still bitter about his daughters’ seemingly sudden change in behavior, but he is gradually beginning to accept it. His wife on the other hand… is still very much upset with them, and refuses to speak with them or acknowledge them whenever they return home for their short visits on leave from the military. Because of this tension, the Twins prefer to spend their time back in the capitol at the Academy helping with research.

While in the military, the twins ran into trouble immediately. They had no combat experience, they’d never even dueled with another magic user before, unless they counted their spats with their classmates, and while Prisca was learning to cope with the harshness of the frontlines, Helaina was not so fortunate and tended to grow extremely ill at the sight of blood. They only managed to survive in their battles against Ares’ and Earthra’s forces using their wits and creativity with their magic. Even then, they could never seem to get by without help from other soldiers, and Helaina had a terrifying experience in one battle where she was caught behind the forward-surging enemy Arean army and doggedly pursued by a cruel demon who made it very clear what he intended to do to her if he caught her. Thankfully, she was rescued at the last minute by her sister and a few other soldiers, but that experience still gives her nightmares sometimes and she has a large, unpleasant scar across her torso to remind her of it that can’t be healed, as the demon’s claws prevented healing magic from working on it.

Then they were approached by another soldier. They recognized him as another wyvern-rider from several battles, but otherwise didn’t know his name until he introduced himself as Marcus and invited them to join his squad. Uncertain of what it would entail, they invited him to their tent to explain the details. They thought the idea sounded intriguing, but Helaina had her doubts about such a small force being successful, the thoughts of her own incident heavy on her mind, but Prisca liked it. Still, there was one thing they wanted to know that they considered more important: what kind of person was their potential Captain? They’d witnessed the full spectrum of people at the Academy, and during their short time there in the field, and they’d seen what could happen if the wrong people were in command.

They spent quite a long time grilling him with questions, asking about his upbringing and an exhausting series of hypothetical questions. They were surprised to hear about his childhood, particularly that his parents would allow him anywhere near a wyvern. They were so used to their own parents’ overbearing attitude… They envied him in that respect, but it also made them curious as to how he turned out. And the more they asked him, the more they became convinced that he seemed unsuitable for this kind of command. He was new to authority, they could tell from the way he spoke and addressed him, but he treated them not as noble-born casters like some of their other commanders had. Rather, he talked to them like any other soldier… it was a relief. As such, they eventually agreed to join the squad he was forming. He was new to command, but hopefully, they could help guide him and keep him from getting the kind of attitude they saw others with power get.

The time they spent in training was strange for them. They had started getting used to the larger units, but the time spent between the team’s three melee fighters training in practice-duels, their discussions of formations, and their at-length talks with Marcus concerning their magical abilities and possible utilities was nice. It was much more intimate, and they felt they were getting to know their teammates a lot more than the larger units they were a part of before. They felt they could trust them more.

Then Jericho died. Neither of the twins had been particularly fond of his attitude, though they didn’t hound him like Yulliani had, but they felt his death much like they’d lost a close friend. The heavy atmosphere of sadness that had fallen over the unit didn’t help matters, nor did their new teammate Terris. His arrogance and recklessness, coupled with his contempt for the two of them for being pure magic users and not warriors, made sure that they detested him quite thoroughly. Still, they reigned in their anger, although Helaina was much better at it. Prisca tends to slip with biting or sarcastic remarks whenever Terris opens his big mouth. Once they learned from Yulliani that their Captain was depressed over Jericho’s death, they collaborated to put together a small celebration for their fallen teammate and to console Marcus. Terris’ show of respect did not do much to dent the twins’ distaste for him though. Prisca is determined to make sure no one else on the squad dies like Jericho did, while Helaina is more concerned with making sure their Captain doesn’t give into the weight of his responsibilities.

Likes:
- They both enjoy the taste of sweets, but Prisca tends to go overboard and can make herself sick.
- Marcus and Yulliani.
- Prisca likes spicy food
- Snow. It’s the one thing that helps them bear with winter in certain regions.
- Watching the others spar. They sometimes make bets on who will win training matches. If Terris is in the match, they might deliberately interfere with the match to see him be taken down a peg. Of course, Terris has no idea they do this, but Yulliani has caught onto it. Marcus is aware of it as well, but he only tells them to stop if they seriously need to get in some training.
- Helaina has gained a love for novels and Prisca likes to read books on mythology and the creatures that live in Zion.

Dislikes:
- Terris (The way he mocks them for being pure casters has caused them to return much of the derision with a little more venom and have on several instances in training allowed “accidents” to happen that cause him minor injury)
- Helaina dislikes spicy and sour foods.
- Direct confrontations. They much prefer to deflect aggression rather than face it head-on.
- Harsh weather, whether it’s cold or hot.
- They hate history books for the most part. This is in part due to the intensive studies they were forced to do growing up.

Random Facts:
- Name of their teammates: Marcus D. Haven (Captain, Halberdier), Terris Gailhigh (Lancer, Douchebag Teammate), Yulliani Jiskal (Glaive-wielder, Teammate)
- Name of their mounts: Kiljnagron and Ilgrighnafyor (Kilj and Ilgri for short)
- They’re both naturally black-haired, but they use their magic to change their hair colors on a whim.
- Helaina has an ugly scar across her torso that she keeps covered up. Has a strong complex about it.