DAHLIA
Name: Dahlia
Age: Secret
Gender: Female
Height: 6’ 4”
Weight: 169 lbs.
Species: Fox-based Fera
Occupation: Martial Artist, Treasure Hunter, Thief
Likes/Loves: The Emerald Talons, treasure hunting, jewels and precious stones, money, making mischief, parties, any chance to outsmart and/or defeat Rosalyn
Dislikes/Hates: Rosalyn, losing, goody-goodies, losing any treasure, admitting when she was wrong, being conned or betrayed, hot dogs
Favorite Food: Fruit in general (especially apples and blueberries) and hasenpfeffer
Favorite Drink: Whiskey, fruit punch-flavored pop
Hobbies: Practicing her Kung-Fu, participating in underground tournaments, scuba diving, traveling, yoga


Background

Born to a poor family, Dahlia’s home life wasn’t exactly stable, to say the least, with her parents barely able to stand each other and their dysfunction affecting her. Finally having enough, she ran away from home at age 8 and fell in with a guild of thieves and rogues known as the Emerald Talons. Having nowhere else to go, Dahlia begged to join, but when the Talons rejected her at first, she sought to prove herself by stealing a Gilded Dragon Egg. She succeeded, and as she had hoped, the Emerald Talons officially made her a junior member of their group. From her time with them, she learned several treasure hunting and thievery skills. She also learned martial arts from them and proved to be a prodigy, entering and winning several underground tournaments by the time she was 18. One day, while she and the Emerald Talons started raiding an old town, Dahlia spotted a nearby cave. On a whim, she decided to try her hand at treasure hunting and found it to her liking, resulting in her developing an addiction to the treasures that she had found and wanting to make a full-time career out of treasure hunting.

At about age 21, Dahlia went on a hunt for the Eye of Gaia. This particular hunt led to her meeting Rosalyn, another adventurer who was also after the eye. They soon came to blows, and Rosalyn proved virtually evenly matched with Dahlia. It was an extremely close bout in which Dahlia just barely managed to come out on top… unfortunately for her, the treasure turned out to be a trigger for a trap. The two opponents then worked together to escape, after which they took a shine to each other and decided to spend some time working together as adventuring partners. At first, they made a formidable team whose shared interest in martial arts and adventuring allowed them to get along well, but things started to get dicey between them as their differences came to light—for instance, while Rosalyn still treasured the historical value of whatever places and treasure she saw and wanted to preserve them as much as she could, Dahlia cared very little for such things outside of profit and was willing to blast through anything to get what she wanted. Their partnership got shakier as Dahlia crossed more and more lines that Rosalyn wasn’t comfortable with.

Eventually, Dahlia’s selfishness crossed a line when, during an expedition for the Purple Dragon statue, she drugged Rosalyn and stole her equipment in the hopes of claiming the treasure for herself. When Rosalyn came to and saw what Dahlia had done, she was furious and confronted Dahlia, hoping to stop her former partner from making off with the Purple Dragon. The ensuing fight was far more intense than the first one, the two women fighting and beating each other senseless until they were both bruised and bloodied all over. In the end, however, Rosalyn was the last one standing, knocking Dahlia out and leaving with the Purple Dragon. When Dahlia came to, she was outraged by this turn of events, vowing to get back at Rosalyn one day.

Fighting Style & Abilities

Dahlia is extremely swift, agile, and an expert martial artist: she is comparable to the likes of Rosalyn and Iris, and while she may not have the same amount of raw power and endurance, she makes up for it through sheer swiftness and agility. Her fighting style is an amalgamation of several Northern Chinese Martial Arts, Chuojiao and Baguzhang in particular, and focuses on dissolving around attacks, redirecting the attack while closing the distance, or using her foe’s own power against them. Neither a pure grappler nor a pure striker, she uses a wide variety of techniques, including swift and acrobatic kicks, jumps, open-palm strikes, joint-locks, throws, spiral movements, and evasive maneuvers. In addition to hand-to-hand combat, Dahlia is also proficient with weapons, leaning most towards the hook sword and the staff.

Dahlia can also use her ki for various purposes. Aside from basic principles such as enhancing her physicality, sensing other people's life energy, and touching intangible targets, she can walk on walls and ceilings by channeling ki through the soles of her feet and even use ki to teleport from one place to another in the blink of an eye, though she's limited to short distances and mostly uses it for evasion. Most notably, she can mold her ki into extra limbs to fight with and, with enough focus, create entire clones of herself to fight for or alongside her. She can comfortably manifest up to three clones, though each clone divides her own ki reserves, and while she can create more, it is extremely taxing. Additionally, each clone is an extension of her own consciousness, so she feels and senses whatever they do.

Aside from her martial prowess, her fox-fera physiology grants her enhanced senses, such as far greater hearing than a human and increased sensitivity to magnetic fields (like a compass). She's also an expert treasure hunter and thief and is a master of swindling people while also being perceptive enough to see through other people's attempts to outfox her.


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Dahlia ©  ArrowDSparrow