[Steel Shadow]

Name: Soan Spirare

Age: 21

Weapon(s):
Sword: A well made, sharp blade that Soan is not very good at using, to be honest. The weight and balance throws him off, lowering his swordsmanship skills significantly. This sword serves only as a distraction from his real weapons, and to make him look cool. If he draws it in a fight, it's a fight he's not taking seriously/going all out in.

The Wind Blade: Soahn's real weapon of choice, a high quality air-blade he summons with a flick of the wrist. Normally a symbol of high rank in the Mithholme mage guild, no one is quite sure how he got his hands on one. Some say he saved the life of a guild master somehow. Some say he stole it. A few people say he won it off Master Shara in a drunken bet. These people tend to end up hospitalised by a mysterious assailant, coincidentally while Master Shara is in the area.
The wind blade is in essence, a sword made of harnessed wind magic, able to slice through materials with razor sharp precision. It appears as a glowing sword, white in colour. Weight and balance aren't an issue for it, hence his difficulty using an actual sword. It also functions as a focus for his type of magic, his spells are stronger if he's holding it. Suffice to say, if he summons this sword in a fight, he's going all out.

Reflect Bracers: A family heirloom, wrist bindings made with the shell of a reflector beast. They have the power to forcefully reverse flows of magic on contact, but have to actually touch the spell in order to do so, requiring no small degree of dexterity and speed on Soans part to do so. They only provide minor protection against big area spells however. Potentially enough to survive an absolute devastation type spell if he goes all out to the point of passing out afterwards (To date he has done this once). Naturally this defence doesn't lend itself well to attacking an opponent at the same time.


Race: Human. How dull.

Battlefield Specialization:
More of a Melee specialist than anything else, Soan tends to use his magic to stir up a dust storm then rely on his ability to read the winds to tell him what his opponent is doing. If the fight has proven itself to be a big deal he needs to take seriously he'll summon the Wind Blade, otherwise he'll either go unarmed or with his sword. Despite being a primarily melee fighter, his constitution isn't far off the human average, and if he takes too many hits he'll go down hard. It's also hard for him defend himself and attack at the same time if anything interrupts his speed, or manages to keep up with him. A magic user that manages too keep up some distance between him and them will cause him significant trouble.
He *can* Start using big spells with lots of collateral damage, but will only do so in an unpopulated area, or if the situation reaches 'world in peril' level on the dire scale. Without these he tends to suck at range.

Abilities:
Speed: Soan is faster than he looks. When boosted by air magic this grows to nearly ridiculous levels. He still has a normal humans reflexes and almost the same senses (see below) but his body movements are much faster. (Approx 10 x a normal persons)

Flight: He's an air mage, even the lowest ranked among their kind can at least hover. Soan can cover twice as much ground by flying as he can by foot. Pretty damn useful in combat.

Melee combat: Soan is *good* with the Wind Blade. In combat he's incredibly agile and uses minor air magic to obscure the battlefield as best the situation allows. More than once enemy's have dismissed the goofy air mage only to find themselves lost in a fog and cut to shreds before they know what's happening.

Reading the wind: Normally a latent ability, Soan can read the air around him like a sixth sense. In his normal state this allows him to be aware of any moving object within a range of 30 meters, though without focusing it's mostly akin to white noise. Anything heading towards him at high speeds will get his attention though. Though dormant, it does allow him some form of sight when his vision is obscured.
When the Wind Blade is in his hands however, it acts as a focuser for the magic, allowing its range to extend over an entire battlefield and become much more accurate, allowing him to hear the words of people speaking a good distance away.

Air magic: His spell library is limited. While Soan has a few decent spells at a low level (the one that allows him to move so quickly, for instance) most of his spells are big type 'summon a tornado' stuff. While rarely used, his spells do pack a punch.


Appearance: Blonde, almost white short hair, dark brown eyes, average height. He tends to wear the light, breezy robes of the air branch of the Mages guild, and is always seen with his sword at his side. Generally he's seen smiling happily and acting like his age is still in single digits.

Personality: Most people consider Soan as “That idiot from the mages guild”. He appears immature and rather idiotic too almost everyone. This is how he likes it. Underneath all that the man is cool and calculating, rarely actually letting his true personality show. In general he just finds things easier this was. Plus acting like an idiot is pretty fun...


Backstory:

Soan was the son of a well known mage family, and ended up in the guild early on. Despite his natural talent for air magic he never picked up a love of studying and pretty much flunked every exam for promotion he got. It was only thanks to his families influence that he even remained a member. The high expectations took their toll on the young boy, and he quickly realised that the only way they'd ever leave him alone was if he acted like a complete idiot until they went away. The habit stuck.

In an exasperated attempt to get the boy to learn, his father took Soan into the family library and attempted to teach him some of the most powerful spells in their possession. His father was a scary, scary man, and like all kids his age Soan had a natural love of things going boom. So he learned, and quickly.
However, it turned out that high powered spells generally don't help in low level magic exams, and Soan was happy enough where he was not to press this too hard. Over the years he picked up a few minor spells (It was almost impossible not too), but mostly he worked on his swordsman skills (“Hey, swords are cool, man!”).

In later years Master Elemy Shara, a mage Soan had trained with in his younger days, decided to try to beat some skill into his head with personal training. This was going pretty damn poorly when the village they were staying in was attacked by a local tribe of hill giants. Shara was first to go to the towns defence, but she was soon overwhelmed when Soan arrived on the scene. He quickly beat the giants back using the spells his father had taught him, before a stunned Master Shara put an end to the threat.

Intrigued by the power Soan actually possessed, Shara began travelling with him to areas around the country with dangerous monster problems, testing him. Somewhere along the journey Soan ended up with her Wind Blade, though neither one will say how (Soan actually tends to panic when asked). The two became somewhat famous before guild buisness called Shara back to the capital, though rarely was it mentioned that Soan was the one with the most power.

And So Soan returned to his home guild hall in some obscure village out in the countryside, happy to get a break from all the monster slaying.

(Wow, that took much, much longer than I thought it would.)