Image Credits: plaque/helm/paper Arkane; figure City of Heroes

Name: Elite Guard Captain Jacinta Sandoval

Gender/Preference: Female, she/her; bi leaning-female

Age/DOB: 27 in 1855; 19th day, Month of Songs

Faction: Serkonos - Karnaca Grand Guard

Family: parents both alive and well, cousin (father's side) a member of the Grand Guard before her

Height/Build: 5'8" / looks much taller than she actually is due to being quite slender and lean; but she is also durable and quick on her feet, more agile than many even in the Elite guard

Hair: black, heavy and a bit wavy, kept short because ew, under that helmet all day who wants to see sweaty messy locks?

Eyes: reddish brown, however only one still works as her right eye was scored and scarred in a knife fight with a Howler several years before now

Appearance: brown skin with plenty of small and some large scars including the one on her face, which extends into her scalp and down her right cheek; she would still be a bit of a severe looking woman with a sharp nose and thick dark lips; she sports her fine trousers and uniform with pride, and keeps herself looking clean and sharp at all times; has a commanding, loud voice when needed, but is easily able to whisper or laugh with friends after hours

"Jacinta Sandoval is a rare specimen, well liked and good hearted, she has earned the respect of Guard and Beggar alike."

Skills and Occupation: as a member of the Karnaca Grand Guard, Jacinta earned the right to wear that Elite helmet even if her cousin got her into the Guard when she was 17. She knows how to operate safety equipment and security systems such as the Wall of Light and alarms, navigation around Karnaca (and to a lesser extent Cullero and Bastillian), investigation and conversational skills, and paperwork for those arrests made and fights had. She has experience from the ground up, starting as a lowly port guard, but quickly gained influence - she won the fight with that Howler even as she lost her eye, and didn't resort to killing the boy even though she can't really forgive him. While she was definitely able to be tapped for it, she refused to put her name into the potential Palace guard pool, knowing that the cushy palace job came with having to tolerate Duke Luca Abele. She does know how to disable and command Jindosh's rare leftover Clockwork soldiers, but they are few and far between now. Armed with both a pistol and a sword, she prefers her wits and quick hands to high powered weapons.

Primary Residence: Serkonos / Karnaca, has a small apartment in Lower Cyria, which tells of her family's existing wealth; she has paid for it for the last five years, but they did rent it first for her to keep her in the area safest (in their eyes). She may opt to purchase the apartment or move when she retires, she's fond of the views of the bay, from other parts of the city even if those areas aren't as clean and neat on the streets below

New Residence: After the events below, Jacinta adds a secret hideaway to her property list - on the Leyenda Steppes where Xeyqen has shaped the great trees into a lush and beautiful home for himself as well as providing a well-deserved retirement home for Jacinta. They host dragon and rider parties there!

Notable Possessions: She knows that with the way the city's finances go, and with even Veteran guards not receiving pension, she's been squirreling away coin for years. She has at least a decade of service to go before she could even be considered 'veteran' however, but at this time her saving is fairly generous and she will be well off when she does retire.

Personality: No nonsense on her watch: none of that smoking cigars or drinking whiskey; but don't let that hard exterior fool you. She wants what's best for Karnaca and the World, and does not shoot first in a fight. She does seem a little on the cold side, but being a Guard means often watching your peers and friends die in pointless fights or dangerous conditions.

Likes and Dislikes: she is not nervous but she does fidget a little, and enjoys having something to keep her hands and body busy. Thus she will walk the patrol routes with her men rather than sit in an office and tell them what to do. Never one to rest on her laurels, she likes competing in challenging but nonlethal games of skill. She'd heard of the skill that the legendary Corvo Attano had when he gained access to the Grand Guard, and though she'll likely never need to cross swords with him, she admires him even now that he is the Duke after Luca was deposed. She has to keep her head moving, after losing that eye, and makes sure that she can hear out of her right ear to make up for the loss - even so, she feels that she's vulnerable on that side. Thankfully most of her squad makes sure to put themselves on that side so she can take care of their left.

Fears or Interruptions: she has absolutely no desire to ever enter a building filled with bloodflies. She did do a little of that cleanup work early in her career and won't willingly send any of her men into a bloodfly infestation either.

History: She was extremely glad not to have been chosen for duties when Delilah and the Duke performed their coup on Dunwall, because she firmly believes that the son of Theodanis Abele was a greedy buffoon with more power than good sense. She kept her mouth shut and stayed on the dock patrols. It got worse before it got better, but she kept her head, and continued to gain in rank not because of attrition but because she genuinely strives toward equality and safety. Jacinta is one of the few Grand Guard that the dock workers and homeless folk in the alleys behind the docks can trust, even offering them a few coins when she can, just to make sure they don't turn up dead or have to be put down from infection or because they were robbing the shops nearby.

**

She stood as though dumbstruck, which was out of character at best. But the reason for this look, frozen-in-place with her mouth very slightly opened, eyebrows crooked upwards in surprise and confusion, was because she was physically paused in time by the magic spell woven around her.

"She will be difficult to convince of this," the dragon spoke, low and evenly. "But I believe it is for the best. The portal you opened was more than appealing to me, but ... what about her? Will she understand why we were brought together?"

That dragon breathed slowly so as not to disturb too much of the surrounding leaf litter and dry grass. He was not alone with this human woman, out in the hilly Leyenda Steppes. Two men stood carefully nearby as well, and another pair of dragons. Both of those were quite a bit smaller than the autumn-colored red and gold Myrsilk, though either of them appeared to be just as confident and brave as the woman that stood opposite.

Jacinta breathed, very slowly, while the dragons and their companions spoke. She could hear them faintly, as though through deep water, but even if she had been able to listen more clearly she would never have been able to comprehend the specifics. She was first surprised by the appearance of these two human... looking... men, about to demand to know what they were doing on this terraced path up in the hills - and had stopped mid-sentence of her own accord when the trio of dragons became visible beyond them.

Keenan had taken that moment of course to just stick her in a gentle time loop. Neither he nor Leviathan had anticipated that she'd actually have made it up this far into the hills in the short time since she'd awakened from that dream they'd sent to her. They had actually intended to be farther away, and thus had only been walking around themselves on this wider glade bordered by the massive trees common to this Isle. But she'd come right up the dirt path, having left the comfort of the city of Karnaca far below barely after stuffing a bread roll and some cheese into her mouth and getting her boots on.

"She walked the whole way," Levi commented about those very boots, "they don't use horses here any more," he sighed. Keenan caught the briefest image from his friend's mind, massive steeds the likes of which would cause some Zekirans to throw money at them. Levi clarified, "not in the city anyway, and they're not good in these hills. Gristol and Morley are flatter, most places don't have light rail," he gazed with those infinitely black eyes (he kept them black whenever he was putting effort into his appearance) down at the sprawling city below. Either way, there was no tram or skyway to this part of the Isle. Karnaca was not near, she had to have been hiking for hours non stop.

The sun was setting, its gold light reflecting across the great Karnaca Bay, half the mountain they were on already cast in darkness while the west-facing portions of Shindaerey Peak were alight as though a candle flame burned within.

"Silver and gold," Levi muttered, with a smirk. The silver mines were mostly to the east, and the great Shindaerey Peak still towered in its glory into the darkening skies. Normally there was a pall of dust, silver dust, over the eastern city, but it had rained recently and now all that was visible of it were the flecks that caught that evening light. "Morgan's childhood home was down that way," he nodded, past Jacinta and downward by at least half the distance between them and the city.

Keenan nodded, they were just making small talk now, as the dragon geared up to speaking directly to this woman, the elite guard. "It will be risky, yes," Keenan said to that dragon, an unspoken thought having passed through Den's mind to his own. The littlest of the three dragons was also the least fancy looking, but still blended in with the growing shadows behind those tall, pillar-like trees. They were colorful, losing many of their leaves to what passed for Autumn and into Winter here. The Month of Winds was upon the World, and very shortly would be shifting into the Month of Darkness.

Levi didn't speak much of that Month.

"Let her loose, please," the large red-gold dragon breathed, "I will speak to her now."

Levi and Keenan both stepped back a little, closer to their respective dragons, and Keenan gave the tiniest wiggle to his fingers as he passed the woman. Before he'd even fully finished, Jacinta's voice hissed out a little bit.

"Wh...what are you," she said, eye moving from dragon to dragon, then to the men - where she froze again, this time in what could only be called religious fear. "You - you're him," Jacinta fell to her knees, an action that the dragon peered with a cocked head at. "I saw this in the dream, why? What did I do? I've been..."

"This is not punishment," Leviathan spoke, having very carefully - and considerately - toned down the spooky echo as he did. "This is an... opportunity."

To her credit, she glanced at Keenan and back at Levi, "you have strange clothing," but then a little bit of fear struck her again. Finally she closed her one uninjured eye and drew in a long breath, calming herself. If these people, and their great beasts, had meant her harm, they would have eaten her an hour ago. On that path where hardly any people walked unless they were heading overland north. But who did that? Both men - and all three dragons - were privy to her mental process, but only one of the dragons was bold enough to listen in.

"I am Xeyqen," the great dragon quietly said as the woman came back to her feet unsteadily, "I was given a dream as well, the same dream as you," he noticed her stiffen and twitched her head his way, "the path to another world opened, and I flew through it. As he says, an opportunity. For both of us."

Jacinta chewed on her lip, not looking at any of them now. It had grown darker, and would definitely be a chill night indeed. The stars were clearly visible with the lack of full canopy, though only directly overhead; she sought the familiar Moth King, a set of stars glimmering in the form of the long and tall winged creature of myth.

And then she looked at this bright dragon that blended in flawlessly with the fallen leaves of gold and red, and wondered if it was a myth at all.

"Another world, gods and monsters, dreams and visions... why me?" Most of that Jacinta clearly spoke only to herself.

"Would not the captain of the guard be better served with a powerful force to aid her?" The dragon quietly replied, appearing to be waiting for the woman to either falter or break through.

"Well I ... did get my own squad," she chuckled with a sigh, reluctantly looking back up at the dragon. "I don't know what you are, though. Nor you," she looked at the pair of men, not distinguishing them from each other, "and ... that dream was quite insistent. But you... you're huge," she took a step, then another, toward the dragon who had spoken. It could easily be said that the markings on his face were larger than the woman. "I don't think our carriage house can shelter you."

That did get a laugh out of the dragon as well as Keenan and Levi, breaking the tension in this odd glade just enough.

"I am quite a bit bigger than these ... little ones," Xeyqen said with a tiny bit of pride, as he very carefully began to rise to his full standing height. He just kept going, and going. Jacinta got a bit dizzy from watching, and then a bit scared again as the true sense of scale of this dragon became apparent. She could see a long, ropy tail behind the bulk of him, ended with golden spikes that would have been wide enough to fully block most of Karnaca's bigger streets.

But with the initial shock over now, Jacinta Sandoval looked beyond the massive red gold dragon, spotting the two much darker black one and the gorgeous vibrant violet and gold (...also black) dragons beyond. She leaned in, and Xeyqen moved his massive muzzle nearer her head. "They are kind of small, aren't they?"

Both of those black dragons gave snorting huffs, while their companions consoled each in their own way.

**

"I was never much for magic, I'd always seen the bad things that people do with it," Jacinta said, when the dragon had contacted her to come see his new place. Their new place, really. She wasn't going to need to pay for housing if this had worked right. "But I can see now that it's all in what you do with it, not the magic itself, that's evil."

Xeyqen gave that little snort that he usually would when the subject of magic came up, but needed no further urging. "Come see," he said when she had cleared the edge of the path. That first path was still a day-long hike, certainly. This wasn't that same way up the hillside. Because of some other pieces of magic that this Myrsilk dragon had learned in his youth, it could be shortened considerably with his fog creation. Of course he couldn't land in the city, but near it? Upper Cyria and the Royal Conservatory were far more easily reached by Jacinta on foot, and then -- and then up a few zig-zagging foot paths, to this lower clearing. The Leyenda Steppes were still towering above, and now that the Month of Darkness was upon them, many of the trees still visible from this angle were in their 'leaf curled' hibernation for the chill months to come.

It was after her last shift of the Third Week of Darkness, she had the next two weeks off. The city could keep itself free of crime just a little while. Maybe her second in command would finally figure out that he was good enough to get his own squad. But for now, Jacinta carefully climbed to her draconic partner's head, seating herself over his horns, still a bit uneasy because her legs couldn't even come close to straddling one of those horns let alone his whole neck. He left a roiling dance of fog below, when he took to the air.

They'd practiced flying together, over the blustery Shindaerey Peak, and to Jacinta's amazement the dragon could master the stiff Sirhocco winds in the corridor itself that led from the gigantic split peak down to the bay miles below. That wind powered the city, and would power others if only the Empress would begin fully importing their windmills. Xeyqen dodged those windmill blades even at his massive size - she'd commented that maybe he could just stand on his hind legs and help fix them, even if they were twenty stories higher than the rooftops below...

For the moment, the dragon merely flew up into the Steppes, where the peak flattened into more of a cliff to the north, the most difficult passage on this Isle, if anyone tried moving straight north anyway. There were no carved paths here, no signs that humans had bothered trying to climb or build here, it was too isolated. The towering tree trunks were even larger here, broader though not taller than those down below. One could not say they grew closer to the ground, oh-no, they were still big enough to...

To house a dragon. Fairly it was a dozen of these massive trees that his magic and the creatures or spirits it could summon had built up, not merely 'one'. A semi-circle of them, with the arc vanishing into the cliff side behind them by a good bit. Between them all, branches had formed and joined, a lattice of currently-bare thick branches and more slender ones coming off them. The huge trunks grew without a branch until they stood over twenty feet anyway - and thus, even the youngest of these trees had to have been positively ancient. Because Xeyqen easily walked under their archway with his head high.

Though it was still not fully winter, the Months of High Cold and Ice were yet to come, the last vestiges of autumn still lingered here. Serkonos was slightly farther south than the rest of the Isles, after all, their 'winter' could be said to be less harsh by a long bit than it was even in Gristol let alone up in frigid Tyvia. Why else would rich aristocrats spend their cold months down here basking in the low sun and calling it blissful?

Up here, the trees were gold and brown, their branches creating a thick weave overhead. A towering dome, one which even from any angle would easily be mistaken for yet another part of the forest or the cliffside itself. Numerous branches had been coaxed by those summoned spirits - Jacinta tried watching this but it was true that her fear of the supernatural was still present, she was unnerved enough to just let them do their work. Not unnerved enough to avoid going into that work's results now! A broad stair curved upward from the entrance arch, suitable for...

For her small legs. There were several lofts and landings where wood grew bare of twigs and leaves or even bark in places. Locations suited to put furniture, with wide gaps between the horizontal branches to serve as windows to the great floor below. Roots woven together, into a mass of slightly knotty 'carpet', it would grow lush with moss soon enough: soft for the dragon to sleep upon.

So eventually Jacinta would focus her salary upon buying new furnishings - having them moved up into one apartment was fine, and then... moving them out of it, under the cover of night and fog brought with Xeyqen's magic. Up into this magnificent place, above the city, where the winds began. In the Month of Timber it truly became a sight - particularly from overhead. No one looked up into this part of the hills, nor could most see the cliff from the city below anyway, so Xeyqen flew with his friend over their lush green carpet of canopy hundreds of feet above the forest floor, carried by the Sirhocco over the split Peak, it was a kind of magic that Jacinta was thrilled to have in her life.