<div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Captain Qasval</div><div class="spoiler_body">Name: Captain Qasval. What’s her given name? Why does she prefer her family name? What the hell is she a captain of? These questions will be met with no further explanation than a hearty laugh, a slap on the back, and a pleasant reminder that you’re wasting time asking silly questions when there are epic adventures to be had.<br/><br/>Race: Human, likely from one of the Spice Islander peoples.<br/><br/>Age: 30.<br/><br/>Appearance: A tall, sturdy woman, more handsome than anything else, Qasval has brown skin and a lion’s mane of black curls that shroud her broad shoulders like a cloak. She has a face like carved sandstone, with thin lips that seem fixed in a daring grin and slender brown eyes that light up with a touch of mischief whenever she’s about to do something very bold and very stupid. An experienced traveler, she favors light, mobile fare, enough to protect her from the elements (and, very importantly, look cool doing it); she’s rarely to be seen without a clearly old and well-worn duster that she picked up at some point in her travels, and she wears a simple steel longsword at her side.<br/><br/>Personality: Qasval is defined by two things: her absolute confidence in herself, and her absolute confidence in the world and the people around her. The world is a fundamentally good place; evil is an abnormality that must be rooted out by heroes so that fundamental goodness can be restored. She appears to be entirely unacquainted with the concept of quitting and she takes every hardship as a challenge that, she’s certain, she and her friends will inevitably rise to and overcome. She’s also impulsive, never thinks before she acts, and will frequently do stupid and counterproductive things for no other reason than because she believes it will look cool and impress any pretty ladies who happen to be watching.<br/><br/>All in all, a particularly uncharitable observer might be forgiven for finding Qasval a little grating, certainly for thinking she’s a bit of an idiot (she is), but there’s something oddly compelling about the sheer, artless sincerity of her desire to do good. She’s unfailingly warm and friendly to everybody she comes across, and despite her flair for dramatics and general bone-headedness, she loves nothing more than to connect with others for who they are and who she is– a longing accentuated by the reality that Qasval’s naive worldview and uncomplicated relationship with life can only be born from a complete lack of those connections.<br/><br/>Class: A straight-up, classic fighter.<br/><br/>Skills: Qasval is not a particularly talented combatant– better at insinuating combat prowess, thanks to her powerful build and borderline delusional self-confidence, than at fighting itself, although she's remarkably tough and can take some serious damage without throwing in the towel. She can handle, say, your average bandit, even go toe-to-toe with a Rose Army grunt, but her odds are long against anything much more than that, and she certainly doesn’t have the chops to take on multiple adversaries herself. She also has less than zero aptitude with a bow, wouldn’t know a spell scroll from her own rear end, and quickly loses interest once talk of tactics grows any more sophisticated than ‘get in there and kick some ass’.<br/><br/>No, what makes Qasval extraordinary isn’t her skill with a sword or her head for strategy: it’s the strange, magnetic pull she seems to exert on the world around her. Qasval was simply born to bring people together. Her decisiveness, her integrity, her willingness to stop at nothing to do right and keep others safe, her simple and genuine love for the people she’s decided are her friends, all produce a kind of magnetism that Qasval herself appears to be blithely unaware of. And her absolute belief in herself and others seems infectious, inspiring others to believe that maybe, just maybe, they’re capable of the incredible things Qasval thinks they are. She also has a curious ability to connect the events, people, and apparent coincidences around her and see in them a kind of logic that seems bizarre and fanciful to others-- but which, sometimes, proves oddly accurate. In other words, she has a knack for stumbling across the plot, and then doggedly following it wherever it goes.<br/><br/>Aside from that, she’s a decent singer– though more for her enthusiasm and experience than any natural beauty in her voice– a fine cook, and a hell of a fisherwoman.<br/><br/>Background: For all her zest and love of people, the enigmatic Captain Qasval isn’t one for tell-alls. Who she is, where she’s from, what her story is, these questions have neither meaning nor relevance as far as Qasval’s concerned. Her penchant for singing, ability to gut and cook a fish about a hundred different ways, and telltale accent when speaking Common– a slow, languid drawl– all suggest she's a native of the Spice Isles, a small archipelago off the southwest coast of the continent, renowned as much for its sea shanties as for its eponymous spices. Some fifteen years ago, the Isles became the latest victim of the sprawling Rose Empire’s insatiable appetite for conquest, and though the campaign and subsequent occupation has been a brutal affair for the Empire, viciously resisted by the Islanders, it has been doubly so for the Isles. In the decade and a half since, thousands of refugees have fled the Isles for the mainland, some of them veterans of the war seeking to avoid Pantazian persecution. It’s possible the woman now known as Qasval was among them. She certainly isn't telling.<br/><br/>Language(s): Aside from Common, Qasval speaks Zawla’ Yazani, the lingua franca of the Spice Isles, but her native language is Thassawi, the dialect of her native island of Thassaw. Among the many Islander tongues and dialects, Thassawi is perhaps the most unlike Zawla' Yazani, and contains both features and vocabulary alien to the other languages of the Isles. She also has a solid command of Pantazian.</div></div>