"Heavy is the head that wears the crown of innovation."
Olivia Voxiel
From Humble Beginnings I In ages past, an uncommon relationship between a High Elf from the city of Sidhiel named Jahandra, and a beautiful human trader hailing from Iria called Selvet blossomed into something both knew shouldn’t have happened, and yet both cherished those fleeting moments they were able to share. Finally one night under the watch of the night sky and a calm summer breeze; Olivia was conceived. Growing up, she knew little of her father who attempted to take care of them from a distance. Though her mother would never admit it to her, she knew the High Elves wouldn’t take kindly to one of their own mingling with a mere human, and it broke her heart a little more every time they would receive a care package from Jahandra.
Raised almost entirely by her mother, Olivia for the most part lived a fairly normal life up until the moment her mother passed away. Olivia remembers it all too vividly, a scene she can’t erase from her head. It wasn’t illness, or even violence that took her mother from her; it was time. Unlike her father, her mother was simply a human, and aged as such. Olivia came in one morning, it was the thirteenth day of Pluvia, and she had gone to check on her mother like any other day. She found the woman unresponsive; she had passed in her sleep.
Some have certainly had it far worse than she has, and yet it changed her as it would anyone else, losing her mother is still the most difficult thing she’s ever had to deal with in her life, and those scars run deep. Her father didn’t show up at the funeral despite having sent notice to him, a couple of times actually. She didn’t hear from him some time after that either, so taking matters into her own hands she went to find him on her own. The journey took her to streets she had never walked, in a city she had never seen. It didn’t take much asking around, and doing her best to ignore the tones and odd glances people gave her, she pressed on.
Finally, she found him just as night was approaching. The silver lanterns gave dull glow to the streets around them, the night sky was clear, and the air was surprisingly warm. Giving herself a look over, she brushed off her dress and made her way towards the High Elf. ”You’re Jahandra?” She asked as casually as she could. He turned slowly, his eyes started towards the ground and roamed calmly to her face, and that's when everything became still, and he froze for a moment; he knew who she was. Olivia reached out towards him, seeing the look in his eye, but she had mistaken it entirely.
The man took a step back, putting some distance between the two. Casting her eyes down she bit at her lower lip and finally spoke. ”She’s dead, you know, Why didn’t you come?” His gaze was like steel, and she could almost see the gears turning in his head. Slowly he glanced around, but didn’t say anything, so she continued. ”Father, wha-” He reached forward, snapping his fingers before her face, and she recoiled slightly. His tone was dripping with venom when he finally did speak. ”And who are you, Half Elf?” Her eyes went wide as she processed what had just happened; he was pretending to have no idea who she was. For a moment, her eyes looked like glass in the moonlight, but she held back her tears, returning his steely gaze in kind. ”No one..” She said calmly. ”The daughter of a complete bastard.” She turned, though with a final glance had caught the hate filled look he was bearing down on her with.
She didn’t look back either..
Taking The Highroad II At first, Olivia felt angry, betrayed even. She fumed for days, and all these years in the back of her mind she thought she could turn to her father in times like this, all those care packages though, they were just to keep them away from him and the city. He disgusted her in the worst way possible, he was a coward, a lowlife, and many many other bad things came to mind in the weeks that followed. Finally, on a dull, quiet evening sometime in the middle of Autus, she made a decision. She wouldn’t wallow in her own self pity, her hatred for a man not worth her time, no she was going to do something that would make the one person that meant the world to her proud; her mother.
Within their small home in Iria, she began to study. She had all the time in the world after all, it was the only thing she got from her father she cherished. Hours turned to days, to weeks and months and even years. She had become a driven machine with one purpose, being something greater than she was now. She dabbled in various trades, learning the basics of magic, smithing and even more mundane things like weaving and glassblowing. She studied math and arcane theory, text from across the world, and really whatever she could get her hands on. Her once cozy home becoming something akin to a hoarders hell in a matter of years with books and scrolls, magic trinkets and drawings scattered about everywhere.
Yet with as much drive as she had, she still hadn’t found a calling or purpose. This whole notion was beginning to wear on her. She’d lay awake at night thinking about it, and the fact of the matter was she had taken so many trades but never mastered a single one. Entire years spent suddenly seemed wasted, and she found herself at the threshold of giving up finally. Something in the back of her mind though kept driving her forward, she figured it was sheer stubbornness. That all changed one day, when they all seemed to blur together, all it took was another moment to change all that. She saw a posting on the side of a general shop, it was from the cities crowning jewel; The Grand Mage Academy. Easing up close for a better look at it, she placed her finger on the worn parchment, following along as she held a large bag in her other hand.
Olivia came to learn that every ten years, the prodigious Academy held an audition for what amounted to basically a full scholarship to whatever area of the academy the winner wished. Taking a quick glance around, she tore the page from the wall and headed home; she had a lot of work to do and not nearly enough time to do it. In the days that followed she had figured out what she was going to do, and had drawn out the plans for it. After liberating what she needed from an old airship; she truly got to work.
The Vox Method III While not so much an actual method, the Vox Standard or whatever you’d like to call it is basically as follows. If something doesn’t work, you make it work. Seems simple enough, and that’s just what Olivia kept telling herself during her two weeks of work as she built her device. Trial and error, thinking outside the box, everything she could through those long sleepless nights, until finally on field test forty one, it actually worked.
In the following day, she rolled the contraption straight into the overly large and all too expensive auditorium, only covered by a single and rather dirty looking blanket. There were three members of the Academy council, all looking down at her with rather bored expressions, even a bit of contempt in them. The one of the far left, sporting a deep red robe with gold accents cleared his throat, and finally spoke. ”My name is Melakai, and these are my associates Eizenhol, and Folhoyln.” Each man nodded quietly to his name as it was spoken. Olivia looked them over, and swallowed the small nervous lump that had formed in her throat.
The man finally continued after a moment. ”So if you could just bring your paperwork up to us, we can begin.” Oliva darted her eyes around, she didn’t know what they were talking about, and sadly it reflected in her worried gaze. ”You.. do have your paper work? Identification? What you wish to apply for, even documentation of nobility as they often bring?” He raised a brow at her, and yet she couldn’t find the words. She raised a hand to her side, fingers searching for an answer that wasn’t there. ”I, um..” Melakai leaned back in his chair. ”Wonderful, thank you for wasting our time.” He stated, glancing to the other two for a moment before shaking his head.
Oliva was losing them, she didn’t know how this whole process went, but she’d be damned if she was going to walk away now. ”Wait!” She shouted, to which Melakai rolled his head towards her with a bit of contempt. ”I uh, I don’t have that stuff!” He blinked at her a few times to drive a point. ”Yes, we know.” He said, crossing his hands in front of him, grasping them together as he looked down upon her. ”What I do have, is results! People can come up here and talk all day, but that’s all it is, just talk right? How about something real for a change?” Her tone was pleading, and Melakai raised his hand to dismiss her, yet a curious thing happened. The silent man in the middle, the one called Eizenhol, stopped him. With another silent nod toward Olivia, he motioned for her to continue.
She nodded quickly to the small group, and then reached over to pull the blanket off of the device. ” This is!” She paused, glancing to the ground for a moment before shaking her head and carrying on. ”Okay it doesn’t have a name. It’s an Airship Cannon.” She watched their unimpressed reactions and bit at her lip nervously, and then she just threw herself into it. All in she thought to herself. ”Okay so, most Airship Cannons fire a single shot of concentrated arcane energy and that’s it. However, what I’ve done is modify one of the cannons to make it stronger! Rebuilding it from the ground up, and if you’re familiar with Arckols Theory of expanding magic, it falls to a limit that the spell geometry will allow.” Eizenhol finally spoke, nodding to her.
”Yes, his whole theory turned out to be, really nothing, whats your point young lady?”
She glossed over the fact he had called her young despite likely being a good deal older than him, and just pressed on. ”Well..” And so she explained, having combined a few theories of magic together, she had created a device that could amplify spellwork to a point. Having got carried away however, Olivia became the sole cause of what others would refer to as. You remember that day someone blew up most of the Auditorium? In the middle of the day, a single use of the cannon had taken out almost an entire side of the large building. Melakai shouted for the guards, and as they rushed in around her, restraining the Half-Elf she winced at the pain of them just about breaking her arm it felt like. ”Take her away an-” Once again, Eizenhol stopped the man, calmly pacing around the machine. Looking to Olivia, and then back to the machine for a moment. ”Release her..” He finally said, not even seeming to pay any mind to the crumbling building around them.
