Lia Tobutori
| Lia Tobutori | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Age | 29 |
| Species | Nu Mou Halfbreed |
| Sex | Female |
| Height | 6'1" |
| Weight | ??? |
| Background | |
| Series | Final Fantasy Tactics A2 |
| Combat Styles | Tobutori Style Roughhousing |
| Hometown | Fluorgis, Jylland |
| Group | Tantalus Theater Troupe |
| Occupation/Job | Guard |
| Force: | Forces of Restoration |
| Quote | |
| "That's far enough. I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave." | |
| Recent Events | |
| Ejecting hobos and malcontents like a pro. | |
Profile
Pressed into service for many years as an unwilling member of Khamja's forces, it took both the opening of the Shadow Passages and Illua's tearing open a path for the Heartless to afford Lia Tobutori a chance to escape the guild's lengthy reach and influence; risking it all on a wild chance, the Half-Nu Mou dived through the worlds in hopes of freedom without a care for where she might end up. Now, having found her way as far as the reaches of Alexandria and back, she is laying low as a guard with the Tantalus Troupe, enjoying both her newfound freedom and the whimsical lives of travelling entertainers.
Appearance / Personality
Lia is a serious and sincere woman in the higher end of her twenties, with blue eyes and a gigantic ponytail in one of the more unusual shades. A demihuman and half Nu Mou, her heritage is mostly given away by her ears, which are large and tend to either droop or stick out to the side of her head; it's fair to say that their movement takes up the lion's share of her facial expressions, as in most other respects she tends to keep herself very controlled and rarely offers more than small frowns or quiet self-assured smiles. As with most nu mou, Lia also has a tail, though she is even more reticent about it than the rest of her features and will always do her best to keep it well hidden under her clothes. Here the similarities with her half-race end - she is otherwise tall and slender, and could easily pass for a full human if you managed to mistake her ears for her hair.
Almost unfailingly polite and pleasant, Lia makes it a dogged habit to smile and offer respect to anyone she meets - even those she may be pursuing, bringing in for bounty, or actively attempting to stab with her sword. This stringent insistence on keeping her temper tends to make her seem rather distant and hard to read, and very definitely makes her stand out amidst the other members of Tartarus and their rough and tumble ways. On the other hand, it serves tremendously at putting opponents off their game - more than once, petty muggers and thieves have been dissuaded from causing any trouble for simple fear of the surely crazy woman still calmly taking at them as they size her up.
Lia has a certain inability to blend into a crowd - after all, she never claimed to be very good at hiding her presence from Khamja. Significantly tall and slender, she's often head and shoulders above the rest of the Troupe, and if that weren't bad enough the samurai traipses through the streets in distinctly unfamiliar styles of clothing, loose tunics and trousers and long jackets over the top, all of which are of obviously high quality fabrics. This appears to be both battle gear and day-to-day wear, as she's rarely seen with her jacket off and almost never in any other style of clothing. The colours are generally muted and neutral, varying towards earthen tones and massively at odds with the Tantulus creeds of bright colours and cheery styles.
In many ways, then, she is very out of place for the group that she now calls family; she is aware of this herself, and quietly grateful that Baku has allowed her to hide within the Troupe's ranks despite this fact. Though she's never outright gone over her history with anyone, most of Tantalus tend to realise on instinct when someone's trying to make up for lost karma - especially when they aren't trying too hard to hide it. The samurai rarely takes more money than she needs any given day, preferring instead that it be diverted towards whichever member of the crew needs it most; on top of that, the demihuman regularly does more than her fair share of work, taking on night watches or patrols of streets nearby to wherever the Troupe has stopped that day. Most consider her an oddity and an eccentric... but one that's useful to have around.
History
Lia does not exactly remember her family. She remembers smiling faces and a vague sense of happy fuzzy memories somewhere back in the recesses of her mind, something about a rickety but warm house in the northern reaches. Most of the actual details are gone, though... and looking back, she cannot even be sure it wasn't just the wishful thinking of a child who didn't know any better. After all, what she most clearly remembers is the furtive exchange of money in a back alley one day, and then her father's hand on her ten-year-old back propelling her towards a Guild Recruiter.
To say that being in Khamja is all that Lia knows is therefore something of a stretch, but at the same time it certainly isn't far off. Bought by the guild and earmarked as their property, there was little a ten-year-old girl could do except give up and go along with whatever the leaders of Khamja had in mind for her. She is well aware that fatalism may have saved her to this day - Illua and her like are not much for shows of disobedience, and many of her 'fellow' recruits tended to befall rather unpleasant fates.
Years passed, and eventually Lia managed to earn a name for herself within Khamja. Not that this was entirely a good thing for her; trained as an infiltrator and swordswoman, she had a reputation for completing objectives quickly and with as little fuss as possible. At the same time, her superiors were starting to take note of the fact that Lia often tended to skim the line towards doing as little as possible to actually harm her targets and advance the Guild's position; in a guild that under Illua's leadership increasingly preferred shock and awe tactics and shows of power, her bargaining and sense of mercy were fast becoming a liability.
The breaking point came when a diplomat, marked for death and reported as killed by Lia, was instead sighted several cities away in an extremely poor attempt to lay low. It didn't take long for Khamja to haul the errant samurai in, and took even less for her to be incarcerated and left to face Illua's whims and punishment. Her sentence was intended to be both long and painful, and would have almost succeeded in those goals were it not for Illua's obsession over summoning the Heartless. As it was, the leader of Khamja left her alone to rot, having bigger fish to fry than an single uppity prisoner; in turn, that negligence allowed Lia to loose her bonds and escape.
She is cagey on the exact details of her flight, even if asked by someone she implicitly trusts, but notes that it involves the first time she's overtly used her skills against her former employer. Whatever may have happened, Lia found herself on the run with nowhere to go, vague memories of a probably long-gone family offering her no support or guidance. Fortunately, Illua's meddling again gave her the answer she needed; with the Heartless came roads to other worlds, and with other worlds came her absolute best chance to escape Khamja's eyes for the foreseeable future. She dove into the shadowy pathways with abandon, not particularly caring where she might end up as long as it were a place she could live out her life in peace.
The last thing she expected in her mad dash was to end up laid out on the deck of an old wooden airship, colourful entertainers pointing weapons at her and a huge man roaring in laughter at the sight of such a bizarre stowaway. This kicked off a rather odd partnership with the Tantalus Troupe; a bewildered but grateful Lia working off her fare turned quietly and without any real fuss into her acting as a guard for the Troupe at their next performance. When they moved on, she followed; she had nowhere else to go, and Baku's gruff exterior was considerably more welcome than simply leaving herself up to whatever face the black tunnels felt she deserved next.
Abilities
Lia specialises in an agile combat style, using a one-handed sword with her scabbard held in the other hand. It isn't quite a traditional drawn-sword style; rather, she mixes an orthodox style with a certain degree of brute force tactics, using the sheath as a weapon in and of itself. Having received significant training and on-the-job experience, she's reasonably skilled and likes to think herself a match for anyone who might wish to cause trouble for the Troupe. Though she can use martial disciplines and some light spells, she prefers not to; in any given situation she'd much rather take a direct, forceful approach.
Like any good self-respecting member of Khamja, ex- or not, she has also been well versed in the arts of stealth and assassination. Light and nimble, she's able to move very quietly or otherwise lose herself in an evening's shadow when she wants to... except that she doesn't want to, not anymore, and the chances of anyone actually seeing her try to be stealthy as opposed to completely upfront are quite minimal.
She has a souvenir of her time in Khamja, stolen in the midst of her escape; the blade she carries is a rich deep jade colour, shot through with wind magic and held in a unique and well-forged scabbard. It's not just simple vanity that makes her carry it; when paired, the two pieces make for a magical sword that draws extremely quickly, sometimes allowing her to strike faster than the eye can follow or generate a wave of force that extends past the end of the blade. Much to her chagrin, she doesn't know its name or history; she never exactly thought to ask, and no-one in Khamja would have cared anyway.
