★ Character Information ★
Character Name: Mel Medarda
Character Age: 32
Character Species: Human
Current Health: Healthy
Outfit: White gown with black chest panel and gold (magical armor) accents.
Character Canon: League of Legends - Arcane
Link to History: Wiki. Error note: she is an outcast from her Noxian relations, not her Piltovian family members.
Canon Point: Arcane Season 1 Episode 9 The Monster You Created | November 20th, 2021
Canon Iteration: Original canon
★ Folkmore Roles & Attributes ★
Skills: 
Arts: Fashion, Magical Armor, Painting, Paints
Business: Acumen, Economics, Investment/Investors
Manipulation: Influence, Long Game, Patience, Persuasion, Seduction, Suggestion
Statecraft: Diplomacy, Government Design, Negotiation, Poker Face, Politics
War: Fighting, Intelligence gathering, Strategy, Strategy Games, Tactics
Affinity for Solar Magic ➟ Armor. Imbued Weapons. Light Creation. Solar Barriers. Sunfire Summoning. Currently proficient with armor, everything else limited due to inexperience.
Enhanced Physical Powers ➟ Agility, Durability, Speed, & Strength. Currently limited due to inexperience.
Resistance ➟ Immunity ➟ Aging, Hostile Magic, Pain, Sickness. Currently limited due to inexperience.
Role: Legend
Role Qualities/Attributes: Stylized gold osprey wings, collapsible. Solari shaped halo, concealable. Color-changing eyes. Enhanced durability, strength, bravery, and pain tolerance. Sixth sense for others in danger (not self). Reduced emotional control.
Role Reasoning: Although from an aggressive land that typically solves problems via violence, Mel prefers diplomacy and alternate means—so much so that she was exiled for it. In Piltover, she uses all her skills to advance a new future, a better future to protect the whole city from those that would prey on it. She even sacrifices power, profits, and personal connections for peace when voting for an independent Zaun. She takes the long view to solve problems without violence, physical intimidation, and those hallmarks. Mel will sacrifice the individual, even those she cares about, for the sake of the community as a whole.
Her status as a Legend first grants recognition for all that she has done and her values, despite her scheming politics and manipulation. It further encourages her to embrace this role and these ideals. However, at the same time, as many challenges in Folkmore invoke violence, those very ideals are challenged. Mel will seek to meet them, both with her abilities as a Legend and as an Aspect Host.
★ Personality ★
Option 2. Choose FOUR-FIVE of the following questions to answer and expand upon. You may choose a fifth question if you feel it is integral to your character's personality. Each answer has a 100-300 word requirement.
What was the most traumatic experience your character endured? How did this change them?As a young adult, Mel's mother exiled her from Noxus and their family. She told Mel, "Perhaps your sentimentality will be more at home with those soft-spined idealists over seas." Given Ambessa had told Mel from a young age that she could have a throne if she could prove herself worthy and tried to deaden everything soft in Mel—especially that sentimentality—for years ever since, this exile has hurt more than anything else in Mel's life. When her mother arrives in Piltover, it's the first time Mel has seen anyone in her family since; those words and that hurt rise to the surface, no matter how she's girded her heart.
The soft-spined idealists of Piltover have no idea anyone would call Mel sentimental. She's warm and friendly, extroverted and social, yes—the way any politician is. No one mistakes that for placing feelings ahead of profits and power. Her ability to give you what you want or need, sometimes without you even thinking about it, simply makes her, well, a great business partner and Councilor. Mel hasn't let anyone close. Elnora, who chose exile with her as her personal secretary, is the closest she has to a friend. She's isolated, traumatized, and compartmentalized—focused on Piltover and finding a new way, a revolutionary way, a peaceful way. Mel has her art for herself. That's enough. It has to be.
What is a headcanon (or two) you feel strongly about and that you prefer playing your character with? How is this supported in canon and why do you think it benefits the character's story? I headcanon that her father is a Solnari scribe who subscribes to the peaceful side of the religion. Over her childhood, Mel spent time with him at Mount Targon, studying Solari texts, meditating, and listening to his views on the world. These periods were usually brief. The visits were for Ambessa's convenience, not Mel's or her father's. As such, her education was spotty and incomplete. It's enough to give her dreams of another way, something more than the violent approach taught in Solnari school (that sounds like Noxian philosophies in their own ways) but not an answer.
Her father agreed. Without telling the others in his sect, they ascended to the top of the mountain, the hardest physical and spiritual endeavor of Mel's life. At times, it felt impossible—as though her body burned from the cold, as though her soul threatened to crumble inside her. More disturbingly, her father who lived and breathed this religion far more than she did, had a harder time. Mel wound up carrying him to the top in her arms, though she was still a child. At the top, she set her father down and wondered what to expect. A golden column of searing light illuminated her. It might incinerate a Noxian warlord or most Solnari priests. Mel had a dream that extended beyond Mount Targon. She would never die on this mountain. She didn't.
Metal accents fused over her body and glowed golden like sunlight. Mel understood she was the Aspect Host of the Sun and like it or not this was armor.
Ambessa made a fuss about Solnari tattoos. Mel let her. What's done's done. She looked ahead.
This headcanon explains how Mel became the Aspect Host of the Sun in a way that makes sense to Mel's story.
What does your character feel like they struggle with still? Where could they improve? This could be physically, mentally, emotionally, or otherwise. People, centuries of interconnections, the environment, magic, technology… everything creates a web impossible for anyone—even Mel—to fully monitor and predict, much less control. Mel must always work with limited knowledge, perform flawed risk calculations, and take the best courses of actions available to her. Mel thirsts for more information, but even what information to gather is a decision that has to be made. It's an iterative process that could lead her further and further in the wrong direction. Sometimes that fact can bring her nearly to a panic. That's the big picture problem.
Day to day, interaction to interaction, Mel feels the need to be in control—to know enough, to manipulate everyone with the lightest touch necessary, to guide everything the way it needs—to ensure that everything turns out. Otherwise anything could happen. Just look at what happens when she isn't in control. Mel knows that this drive is unreasonable and impossible. However, as someone who has worked nearly alone for practically her entire adult life, she knows no other way. She's slowly been trying to train Jayce how to lead in the hopes that they can lead Piltover together, with complementary strengths, but they ran out of time.
Is your character capable of forgiveness or will they hold a grudge until they die? Would anything ever make them change their mind? All data that is valid data is necessary for calculations to determine how best to save move the world ahead, Mel will never forget. Whether or not she forgives someone or holds a grudge does not always impact her actions. If acting as though she has the grudge she has will lead to a disastrous outcome, Mel will act like the most forgiving generous person. Meanwhile, even if she has forgiven them, if their contrition and wanting to win her over/back will get them where they need, she will let them earn her forgiveness.
Naturally, this falls apart sometimes, such as with her mother with whom she cannot help but be emotionally honest. To her credit, her mother would see through her either way, so it makes no difference to pretend to be anything else (or so she can calm herself by saying).
Overall, once Mel can understand why a person did something, she has a harder time holding a grudge. It will only be held if the consequences on a large scale are particularly dire (cough Jinx cough) that this is not enough. That doesn't make forgiveness impossible, only more difficult and more complicated.
★ Player Information ★
Player Name: Sil
Pronouns: they/them
Are you over 18?: yes
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