Name: Sophia Lethemont
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Race: Beastkin (Fox)
Height: 5'9"

Appearance: Sophia hails from a beastkin clan that leans more toward the human than animal side. Her bestial markings consist of large, furred white ears on top of her head, a similarly oversized white tail, and bestial yellow eyes, all evocative of an arctic fox. Those aspects aside, she has long white hair, pale skin, a curvaceous, statuesque build, and a confident way of carrying herself. Both her hair and her fur are glossy, soft, and obviously well cared for.

Sophia tends to dress to show off, and often wears low-cut, short dresses and various accessories such as jewelry and colorful cloth accessories. She also has a heavy white longcoat that she wears when she feels the need to be especially imposing, and usually has a plain traveling pack at her side. She's well aware of her own full figure and attractive features, and though it made her insecure in her adolescence, now that she's older and more self-confident she takes pride in her appearance.

As a matter of demeanor, Sophia sometimes gives off the same aura as an actual fox: cute and visually appealing, but with the warning of danger if approached. Her almost omnipresent smile is at once mischievous and mysterious, like she's in on a joke that no one else has caught up with yet. Though she carries no weapons or armor, and has no stereotypical indicators of witchcraft (like a pointed hat or carried broom), she tends to project self-confidence regardless of circumstance.

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Personality: Sophia's personality can be unpredictable, especially because she enjoys keeping people off balance and doesn't generally like to be well-understood. What most people tend to notice first is that she's proud and self-assured, almost to the point of seeming vain and self-absorbed. So long as her pride isn't pricked, however, she goes about life as though everyone else is the same way - polite and respectful to those she doesn't know, often flattering or mischievous or aloof as the mood strikes, but rarely directly insulting or threatening without cause.

In truth, Sophia is nicer than she lets on. She doesn't like being a subject of supplication, because she has a soft spot for people in need. It's easier if people view her as distant and dangerous and thus only ask for her help if they're truly desperate. Conversely, however, she takes her honor seriously. She doesn't try to provoke others, but those that insult or harm her anyways should be prepared for consequences all out of what a normal person would consider proportionate to the offense.

Strengths:
Witch of Ice and Snow
By most measures, Sophia's most defining feature is that she's a snow witch. She can summon and shape snow and ice, surround herself with summoned cold, or concentrate that cold into magical attacks. Her talents tend not to be dramatic, especially when she's using them on the fly; she can't, for example, just freeze people solid in a fight, or create avalanches out of thin air and crush people. But being able to make damaging flares of magical cold, as well as impair visibility and mobility with patches of ice and freezing fog, still makes her a dangerous combatant.

Sophia's abilities extend to - or perhaps extend from - harmony with snowy lands on an elemental level. The dark and frozen barrens of Frell's coldest patches are a natural, sustaining home for her, and her usual revealing clothing is a way of showing off how untouched by the cold she is. They energize her magic as well, giving her access to more powerful abilities if she expends the time and effort on rituals to set them up. At present she has two "contingent" spells stored from her last visit, both activated at will: one to turn herself into an actual fox for a short time, and another to briefly put her into a state of suspended animation. Both spells will vanish after one use, and both are intended for dire emergencies, for reasons spelled out further below.

Snowfield Within
Sophia's exposure to, and even melding with, the elemental force of ice has left her mind altered. If most people's minds are analogous to houses, cluttered with memories, hers is more like a plane of impenetrable ice. For the most part this has little effect on her day-to-day life, as she still has the same capacity for both reason and feelings that she used to. But she presents a terrible danger to people that meddle in others' minds. To attempt to meddle in or even peer into her thoughts is like a burglar breaking through a house door and falling into an arctic lake: a shock followed by swift, severe pain.

With her belief in disproportionate retribution, Sophia tends not to warn people that reading her mind could result in having their brains frozen into agonized unconsciousness. She figures it serves them right.

Reluctant Celebrant's Upbringing
Sophia has two gifts from her childhood, though they're essentially opposed to each other. One is what she gained by avoiding parties and revelry: a gift for reading and study, an appreciation of quiet and solitude, and sharp hearing for noticing people before she was noticed herself. The other, however, is what she got from having to blend in: skill at singing and dancing, and knowledge of things like fashion, flirtation, and Caballus's doctrines (what little there is of it). While she was actually living through her youth, Sophia liked the former and hated the latter. Now that she approaches life on her own terms, though, she's found she likes musical expression, and sometimes integrates dance into her more ritualistic magic.

Neutral Aspects:
Pride
Sophia is attractive and wields a fair amount of arcane power. On the other hand, she's a beast-kin subject to a fair amount of racism, and her style of magic is unusual and sometimes frightening. One might expect those factors to balance out somewhat in how she views herself, and expects others to view her, but, well, they don't. Sophia gives off every indication that people can either give her the respect she deserves or get lost.

She's actually fairly egalitarian about it - she doesn't make declarations along the lines of "Out of the way, peasants, witch coming through!" But to her, everyone from king and priest on down is a witch's equal at best. If someone (like, say, a king or a priest) can't handle that, Sophia will probably just give them a wide berth.  And while it's hard to get her to do anything by force of authority, she's fairly susceptible to being buttered up.

Weaknesses:
The Old Ways
Sophia has picked up an archaic code of conduct to go along with her archaic style of magic. It's somewhat complicated and even inconsistent at times, but it can be roughly summarized thus: to be a witch is to stand for the honor of all witches. Gifts and favors must be repaid. Insults cannot be allowed to stand, and injuries must be not just answered, but overwhelmingly returned as a lesson to everyone else. Oaths are binding. The rules of hospitality must be followed. And so on, with the general idea of witches being a powerful and dangerous force that are not to be trifled with, but also with the specific effect of Sophia not having the same freedom of action that most people do. Her major escape clause is that witches are allowed to claim a long time period for cunning and subtle plans, as the code recognizes that witches aren't omnipotent. Otherwise Sophia would have a good deal of trouble with the law.

Thanatophobia
Sophia spent most of her childhood close to death's door, and she never adjusted to it. Being reminded of her mortality only served to make her all the more terrified of it. As an adult, her fear has only gotten worse instead of better. She knows that on some metaphysical level she owes Caballus her life, and by her own code, she expects him to collect on that when she passes to the other side. Despite the unshakeable confidence she projects, Sophia devotes a disproportionate amount of time and effort to preserving her own life. Even the large-scale spells she takes her time on tend to be devoted to preparing for worst-case scenarios, rather than otherwise helping her or advancing her goals.

Elemental Weakness
As one might expect, Sophia's alignment with cold and ice puts her in opposition to heat and fire. This is not to say that she's powerless in the face of them: warm air in sunlight can be cooled around her, and small fires can be snuffed out by snow. But heat enervates her, and fire harms her, far more than a normal person. Places like deserts and blacksmith's shops are downright unsafe for Sophia, and she's careful to avoid them.

Notable Equipment:
On Witchcraft: Aside from her clothes and mundane traveling gear, the only things Sophia consistently carries with her are a set of three ancient books. She's already read each of them dozens of times and carefully coaxed out their secrets, so she carries them now just for relaxing reading when she gets a chance. The books have the look of old objects poorly cared for over time, with damaged covers and faded writing. The content is strange and hard to read, almost randomly jumbling together history, admonitions, incantations, and expressions of camaraderie among practitioners of a dying art. Still, despite their quality as reading material, they were enough for Sophia to start her walk down an arcane path.

Likes: Cold weather, cold food (especially desserts), her family, Frell, arctic animals, compliments, being respected and/or feared, traveling, soft things (animals, clothes, etc.)
Dislikes: Heat, being pressured or intimidated into things, dealing with the law, people trying to scare or prank her, being imprisoned or otherwise held up
Habits: Toying with or flicking her tail depending on her mood. Finding ways to keep cool. Finding intervals to relax and read, preferably by herself. Brushing her hair and fur.

History:
Sophia Lethemont (usually Sophie in her youth) is a beastkin from a fox clan that makes its home in Frell, and the daughter of a pair of clerics of Caballus. She was sickly from birth, and one night as a child on the brink of death, her parents prayed as hard as they could for the magic to heal her, and they received it. This was considered a blessed event by her clan, and they considered Sophia to be marked for the horse god's favor.

Sophie appreciated having her life saved, but she didn't appreciate the attention or expectations that went with it. The weight of her illness and her brush with death left her an unusually serious and studious child, perhaps even a touch morbid, and she was annoyed by the constant celebration of letting go and living life. She learned how to seem carefree and wild just to get along, but she didn't care for it. When she grew into a pretty teenager, two more weights on her got to be too much: her parent's expectation that she would start training for the priesthood herself, and her community - especially the male part of it - expecting her to start "living it up" in more serious ways.

What followed next was an intersection of Sophie's nature, normal teenage rebellion, and the clan elder's collection of curios. Sophie disliked her family's airy approach to weighty subjects - love and romance, dignity, and other such codes of personal conduct - but could find no meaningful counter to them save for some ancient books in the elder's library. There, she read about old paths of witchcraft, focused on pride and honor as much as magic itself. Both appealed to Sophie, and she studied hard in secret, knowing the books would be taken away if anyone suspected more than academic interest from the bookish girl.

When she was ready, she fled her family and hometown for a more remote part of Frell, far from the volcano's warmth that sustained most life there. She brought the books with her, and little else, but she was fully prepared. She went into the ice and darkness and solitude with the intent not to be conquered by it, but to learn from it, be molded by it. And for years, that was all she did.

When Sophia emerged, she was different. A mage, to be sure, but also completely self-possessed, strong and proud enough to shrug off others' expectations of her. She returned to her community for a short time, but she fit in even less now than before, and rubbed most of her kin the wrong way outside of her own family. (To their credit, for all their wildness and unrealistic expectations for their daughter, they'd always loved her, and still did.) So Sophia opted to travel for a time, and broaden her horizons beyond Frell.