Occupation: Recently promoted healer, multi-talented artist, and fugitive.
Birthplace: A tribal city-state in the mild montane forests of a continental volcanic arc
Personality: Arrogant, antisocial, aggressive, but intensely loyal and protective of those few she connects with. She just doesn't show it well. Has problems with impulse and compulsion control, and everything must be a certain way. Loves learning, arts and crafts of all kinds, physical exertion, anything to keep her hands and minds occupied. Is quiet until something must be said and she is certain she'll be free of error.
Strengths: When her head is clear, as it was before the accident and is once again in her mid-twenties, she is an extremely analytical, creative, manipulative strategist. Enjoying many elective subjects at city-state-funded school as a child and teen, ranging from combat to field surgery to cooking, she has a vast reservoir of miscellaneous knowledge to draw from. She also has some degree of clairvoyance, pyrokinesis, and occasional telepathy, but little control over them at first. Though easy to toss around like a rag doll, growing up in the montane forest has made her agile and conditioned by necessity, and her pain tolerance, especially for flesh wounds like cuts, burns, and bruises, is almost a source of pleasure.
Weaknesses: Self-control. Was always more than willing to take necessary risks after considering every detail, and has frequently given into anger since youth. Her impulsiveness can render her analytical nature useless to dangerous. After accidentally burning to death her childhood friend at the age of fourteen and fleeing the tribe, she fell into a deep depression, began drinking heavily, and became paranoid. As her life fell apart around her, she took on many new compulsions in an attempt to clean it up. Saving the world gave her a purpose, and her biggest weakness by her mid-twenties is once again arrogance and underestimating others. The higher your pedestal, the harder you fall. She also is quite small, not very physically strong, and drinking damaged her agility as well.
History: Born to a soldier father and merchant mother in a small town outside the capital of the city-state, she lived with them and her older brother, having a relatively normal life for her tribe. The schools were free but involuntary, the council offering plushy state jobs for those that pass the assessments, and children from four to thirteen could attend. Adulthood began at thirteen, at which point they are expected, but once again not required to, apply their skills to the state.
Aetna did just that, joining the tribe's large army along with her childhood friend. Cadets were put through an extra two years of training and then sent west to push back the desert elves. During a grappling exercise when she was fourteen, Aetna accidentally lit her friend on fire, leaving her with 3rd degree burns over 75%of her top half and killing her on the spot. Such lapses in control are only acceptable from children
Rather than face trial or the wrath of the parents, who didn't like her anyway, Aetna fled across the desert and overseas. Falling into drunkenness and depression, she wandered through new woods and into a village nestled among ancient mountains, also new to her. The local healer took her in as an apprentice, a job for which her schoolday knowledge would suffice, and she made several good friends. But her real purpose would not come for a few more years.
