Karen Garnet
Karen is a highly talented cipher who has just completed her year-long initiation journey across the land of Tekiel. The information she brings back to her guildmaster could be the beginnings of a war that could rip Tekiel apart...

Character Bio
The great paradox of being a cipher is this: to grow in power, one must distance oneself from one's own humanity. Emotion, passion, love and ambition... these are the antithesis of the quevari. As a cipher learns to stifle his human inefficiencies he taps into ever greater amounts of psionic energy.

Karen finds herself at a crossroads in her life. With more than twenty years of training behind her, Karen is starting to realize that in order to advance along the path she has chosen, she must let go of the things she cares most about. Whether or not Karen will be able to make that final leap has yet to be seen, but one thing is certain: there are those who are waiting in the shadows for her ultimate decision.

Personal History
917 (Age <1) - Under orders from King Deran of Tekiel, Karen is kidnapped from her family estate in North Orin and brought to the guild for training. Her guildmasters are Kenya Vidal and Celino Delmarque, hand-picked by the king himself.

920 (Age 3) - Karen suffers a debilitating illness. Though she recovers, she has almost completely lost sight in both eyes. Instead of cutting their losses and returning Karen to her family, her guildmasters decide to focus her training on a school of psionics that can correct the blindness: autobioregulation (ABR).

925 (Age 8) - Karen's ABR training, headed up by Kenya herself, reaches the point where she is able to restore her vision. This remarkable triumph is celebrated by the guild and gives Karen a personal motive to continue her training.

930 (Age 13) - Karen masters ABR, the youngest cipher on record to do so, although she displays reluctance to use the ability to its full potential. This, Karen feels, would divorce her completely from her emotions, and she isn't sure she's ready for that. Kenya tries to push her through the weakness, but Celino maintains a level head and explains the importance of a natural childhood.

931 (Age 14) - Karen suffers the trauma of a bitter teenage romance, and is completely devastated. Desperate for a shoulder to cry on, Karen is shunned by her roommate Erin (who advises her to quit caring about such base things as emotion) and thus turns to Nero, a boy in the guild who has never developed a single psionic talent. Karen and Nero quickly become best friends, and by the end of the year they are sharing a room. Kenya disapproves of the arrangement, but Celino thinks it for the best.

933 (Age 16) - Kenya leaves the guild under mysterious circumstances. Erin, the student Kenya was always hardest on, is suspected of being involved, but says nothing about it. Celino is now burdened with running the entire guild himself. He enlists Karen and Erin as subordinate trainers until a replacement guildmaster can be found (one never is).

934 (Age 17) - King Deran dies. His son, Albrecht, ascends the throne and quickly puts an end to the war with Gen-Ri by signing over much of Tekiel's trade and military power. The world slides into an uneasy peace. Celino receives an order to cease training immediately and return all the students to their families. Five students decide to remain, however, including Karen. Celino obtains special permission to train these five students, and the guild is officially opened to the public.

936 (Age 19) - King Albrecht tries to cut funding to the guild, but Celino beseeches him to visit in person before making a final decision. Karen and Erin's exemplary success is reason enough to continue operation, Celino argues. During his visit Albrecht informs Karen that she is the sole heiress to the largest family fortune in Tekiel; her parents are exceedingly wealthy. The promise of riches does not sway Karen from her training, however. Her steadfast decision to see her path to the end is credited with Albrecht's final decision to allow the guild to remain open. In the meantime a steady flow of new students is entering the guild.

937 (Age 20) - Celino retires from training students altogether; this task now falls to Karen and Erin. Karen evaluates the progress of a 14-year-old student named Timothy and, surprised at his level of skill, decides to take him under her wing as a personal mentor.

940 (Age 23) - Erin reaches the limit of what she believes she can learn from the guild by training and teaching others, and receives permission to embark on a journey across Tekiel. During this one-year period, Karen becomes extremely busy with guild duties, causing her to be somewhat neglectful of her friend Nero.

941 (Age 24) - Erin completes her journey and resumes her duties at the guild. Almost immediately after she returns, Karen requests permission to begin her own initiation. Thus granted, she sets out across Tekiel. During this time Karen meets her parents Quentin and Tatiana and for nearly a month is caught up in the whirl of aristocratic society.

942 (present day) - Saying her farewells, Karen continues on and eventually arrives in Capitol City, where King Albrecht has requested her diagnosis of his daughter Naomi's mysterious sudden illness. Karen concludes that the illness is psionic in nature and begins to make preparations to stay in the capitol, but is set upon by a tatheril. Karen battles the tatheril but falls to his far superior psionic skill. Curiously, he allows her to live, and upon recovery Karen makes her way back to the guild to relay this information to her guildmaster.

Combat Ability

Stats: low high low average high average

Karen is physically flimsy and not very strong. Years of honing her mental capacities have left her physique fairly weak.

Physical attacks, however, are not the forte of the cipher. Karen's massive level and wide variety attacks allows her to utilize her psionic talents almost endlessly. In terms of raw damage potential, few warriors are as fearsome as Karen is. In addition to sheer damage, each psionic attack lowers the target's resistance to that particular element. This means repeated blasts from the same attack will deal more and more damage.

Karen utilizes whips as her primary weaponry, so when she does decide to press a physical attack each of her successful blows has a chance to paralyze her opponent. Because of her skill with ABR, traditional Medkits will not serve to restore Karen's ; instead, she uses Aeros Pills to replenish her defensive capacity. To restore , Karen uses Pheurus Pills to refill her psionic energy reserves.

Karen's command skill is Analyze, which allows her to view important vital information about her enemies. A good cipher knows that there is no weapon more effective than knowledge of one's own opponent, so Karen is sure to find great use in this crucial ability as her adventure goes onward.

Skill Acquisition: Psionics
As an accomplished cipher, Karen possesses a wide variety of psionic skills. Many of these skills manifest as elemental attacks. Karen gains more of these psionic attacks as she gains experience.

At L2 Karen will get her first attack: Psion Shiver. Every even-numbered level thereafter she will be prompted to learn a new attack in one of the four main elements: fire, ice, electricity or earth. Once Karen has obtained the first attack in any given element, she will be able to branch out from there. Knowing Psion Shiver, for example, allows her to learn Psion Winter (an ice attack that hits all available targets) or Psion Frostbite (which inflicts paralysis in addition to ice damage) at L4. Or, she can switch to a new element entirely.

It is up to the player to decide whether Karen will focus her training in one element and gain higher-level attacks sooner, or learn weaker attacks of many different elements in order to have a wider range of use.

There are rumors of non-elemental sources of energy that ciphers may draw upon, but the secrets of these high-end attacks are currently beyond Karen's reach.