Alida: Curiosity Incarnate

Alida lives her life from moment to moment, rarely considering the results of her actions, and never considering the results of her words. If something seems like a good idea, Alida will attempt it come hell or high water. Her stories of her exploits are many, varied, and are often entirely true - she's nothing if not brutally honest about her own mistakes and failures, and talks about them as readily as she talks about her successes. To her, it's all good story-fodder, and if someone learns from what she's done, who's she to complain?

While her impulsiveness can make her unreliable on the battlefield, Alida tends to calm down when others are depending upon her, whether that be just her partner, or the rest of the Devyrs. She believes that people shouldn't drag the unwilling into dangerous situations, and becomes absolutely reliable when ordered to defend innocents. Alida doesn't resent the use that her commanders often put her to - she enjoys the complicated task of defense, and uses the opportunity to stretch her creativity in dealing with the many and varied threats inherent in the task.

Alida, like several other Devyrs, has been a whorling her entire life. She doesn't entirely understand the problem that Flikk and Vikktor are having with the new body - after all, isn't being a dragon (or anthrodragon) more convenient than being a plain, old fashioned human?

In her dragon form, Alida stands 6'8" tall at the shoulder, and 16'3" from nose to tailtip. Her pink hide is splashed with red across the top, like someone threw paint down her spine, and her paws (and hind legs) look like they've been dipped in yellow paint. Her belly is covered in heavy scales that blend into the rest of her hide. Alida is capable of walking on two legs like a raptor or on all fours, and she normally alternates between the two modes of walking based on which is more convenient at the time. She has no wings - large, curved spines grow out of the place where wingnodes would usually be, two spines on each side. Her mane is as pink as her hide, her large, mobile ears are almost as fluffy as her mane, and she has one slightly curved horn growing from her forehead like a unicorn.

In her humanoid form, Alida is 5'8" tall. Her skin retains the pink hue of her dragon form, though her other markings, that of red down her spine and yellow on her paws, don't translate over quite as vividly - the red becomes a streak down her spine all the way to the tip of her tail, and the yellow also retreats some, becoming swirls of color across her hands and down her legs. Her pink mane becomes a shock of short, fluffy pink hair, her ears, even in this form, retaining their mobility and fluffiness. Her tail, in this form, becomes a brutal weapon - long, flexible, and heavy. Alida retains her belly-scales and spines even in this form, though the spines are shorter, and grow out of the top of her shoulders pointing away from her neck, like some natural spiked pauldron.

More concerned with protection and flexibility than with modesty, Alida adds shoulder armor around her spines, heavy bracers about her wrists, and a collection of articulated plates down her back, leaving her front bare. Of course, she doesn't have much to 'show off', seeing as her chest and abdomen are covered with scales (but boy does it amuse her when Flikk forgets how she usually dresses and blushes at the sight of her). Alida wears pants with bits of leather sewn into them for protection and, like the rest of the whorling crew, she leaves her feet bare. For weapons in this form, Alida turns to a bow and arrows, backed up with a short sword for close-combat situations.

Alida's been around the block a few dozen times. Restless and curious about the world, feeling at a loss as to what she should do with her life, she's tried a few dozen things and mastered half a dozen more. There's very little that she hasn't at least dabbled in - she's a master chef, a forester, an amateur historian, an archer, a writer, a very amateur artist, a merchant, a thief, and many other things.

She met the Devyrs when they were hired to clean out a small group of bandits in a forest she was playing Forester in. Hired to guide them through the forest, Alida found herself fascinated by the odd-ball crew, and joined them after their job was complete, figuring that she'd never been part of a mercenary company before.