Background
Cylonea has been a typical Merfolk in many aspects, for most of her life. But this of course means that she has lived an experience unique to her and her only among the Merfolk, as per the famous individualism of the blue-skinned people.
She abandoned the depths of Halimar when she was just a child, and it was already a conscious choice, taken after a long period of pondering by Cylonea, with the consent of both her parents.
Already well versed in the arcane arts, and in particular in the brewing of concoctions able to cure wounds, and trained in the use of the staff as a weapon enhanced by arcane energies, she headed towards the Oran-Reef forest. It had fascinated her since its floating reefs were just a blurred and surreal painting in the sky, which she loved to gaze from the bottom of the shallowest waters of her home.
She survived to the wild of the shifting forest thanks to her curative magic and defensive combat skills, but she began to understand that her abilities were too limited and that her natural talents had always been broader than what she could understand when she was immersed in the arcane traditions of her family. She started to attune to the fluctuating primal energies of the Oran-Reef, and her already keen roil-sense became deeper and wider. She was becoming an elementalist shaman, able to summon to her side a piece of Zendikar itself, animated by the very Roil, and infused with an eldritch consciousness of some kind, although fully at her service.
With such a reliable companion, her dangerous and lonely voyage became safer and also more interesting, thanks to the new perspective that bloomed inside her mind after these discoveries. She began to understand why her parents and community always had so much faith in her , and why they always remembered about the extraordinary circumstances of her birth, that was said to have been accompanied by changes in the Roil. Before, she doubted those claims and regarded them as fairy tales, told to her just to make her feel special and loved. Now she started to think that after all, those strange happenings might have really been some kind of signs. A premonition of what would become an incredible link between her soul and the Roil. And maybe the reason why she was still alive after her incredibly precocious adventures.
Moons came and went by, and the sylphlike merfolk child was also becoming a young and tall woman in the meantime. But she payed way more attention to the changes outside of her than to those going on inside. So much so that she didn’t quite understand what was going on when a young Tajuru elf started to follow her in her travels, protecting her with unasked arrows and spear, to the point that after some time she felt smothered by his behavior and she eventually expressed her anger to him, only to be left bewildered and blushful by the following explanation of his motives…
They never crossed roads again after that embarrassing moment, much to her relief, so she continued her lone adventure, never actually feeling lonely thanks to her elemental companion and the strange, comforting sense of commune with the wild nature all around her, which she sensed more and more.
Her arcane powers advanced with time too, but they differed from the traditional ones, seemingly changing from land to land as she travelled, another sign of her strong bond with Zendikar. Spells that she had always perceived as flashy and sparkling effects when they were casted in her community, displayed as more… “Organic” when coming out of her mind and hands.
Quite suddenly, one stormy afternoon she felt a deep turmoil in the land, and she began to interrogate the elements, looking for answers. But she ended up feeling nothing more than a hazy sense of “awakening of the world”, so for the first time in her long voyage, she decided to head towards civilization and in particular the Lighthouse of Sea Gate, the largest center of knowledge and studies in Tazeem and perhaps in all Zendikar. There, she hoped to find the answers she needed to know about the land. Or perhaps about herself.
Appearance
Cylonea possess the typical merfolk figure, slender to the point of looking thin. But even if she hasn’t got any visible muscles (she’s not athletic at all), compared to other merfolk women she has quite an imposing frame all in all, especially because of her considerable height of 5’ 10’’ (177-178 cm).
Her fins and hair are crimson red, but with variable gradients ranging from a nearly orange hue to a slightly purpleish red. The appearance and variation of the gradients on her fins is dictated by her mood and/or ambiental conditions. Her hair color is more or less fixed, changing only with humidity and sun exposure.
Her hair is long and wild and she dresses in a practical and unobtrusive way, with leather armor placed only on vital spots. She prefers to keep her enemies at a distance, so she doesn’t gear up for close combat often, even if sometimes she even enjoys it.
What’s more striking about the appearance of Cylonea is her nearly palpable aura of keen perception of her surroundings. She seems to anticipate many events and when she’s hit in combat, she often seems to be able to minimize damage in some way. So she’s more resilient than she may look like.
Contributing to her protection is her elemental companion. It is a being infused with the Roil, so its appearance is incredibly variable, but a constant element is the constant rotating movement of the various chunks of stone, dirt, vegetation or anything that composes the entity. All the components are always orbiting around a center which is usually marked by the display of some kind of eyes, often made by the glowing patterns of hedron chips. The terrain under the elemental companion shifts constantly, so that’s why it is able to stop a creature in its tracks: it literally changes the terrain around it. Cylonea is currently trying to devise a way to take advantage of this in another way, by making the terrain easier for her and her allies when needed.
Personality
The most striking thing about Cylonea’s personality is that it can be described in opposite ways, since depending on the onlooker she may appear as nearly devoid of a definite personality, or incredibly rich of features. This is because she’s strongly influenced by the environment around her, and this can be interpreted as being very moody or utterly dull.
Going a bit deeper inside Cylonea’s mind and emotional sphere, her “world-symbiotic cocoon” can be pierced and the true Cylonea starts to come out. And the most important things about her at this level are two: her very young age and subsequently naive way of processing emotions, and her inextinguishable flame of passion and curiosity.
This contrasts a bit with her deep and cultured mind and primal spirituality. She truly seems to include inside her all the elements: the ardent energy of fire, the depth and fluidness of water, the protective nature of earth, and the variability and lightness of air.
