Petra: A young and rather na�ve Half-Giant woman, just 18, probably in training as a Gladiator most of her young life. Born into slavery, child of Gladiator parents, but not raised by them. A bit on the short side for Half-Giants, perhaps 10 1/2 to 11 feet, and unusually beautiful, or would be if she wasn't quite so intimidating because of her size. Long, straight, black hair, gold-bronze skin, fit and muscular, with large, gentle, dark eyes and sweet features. In private, she is rather shy, confiding, and eager for friendship and attention. Once loyal to anyone, it would take a great deal for her to assume that she was being taken advantage of. She is not especially bright, and tends not to overanalyze the words or deeds of others. She's also quite optimistic under most conditions, rather softhearted, and will go to great lengths to cheer up a friend.

She doesn't like being a Gladiator, but doesn't know she can do anything else with her life. She's not angry or resentful of her slave status, regarding it as simply being how things are. She is generally obedient, but isn't good at remembering minor rules or changes in rules, and is far more likely to debate an order that she thinks will hurt someone else than one that inconveniences her. She would probably be glad to be bought as a bodyguard or servant, but doesn't think her current owner would sell her gladly. She's the only Half-Giant in his stable, and one of his most popular Gladiators. He recently lost one of his other special attractions when a slave caravan carrying Bug, the Thri-Keen hatchling he'd trained, vanished in the desert. Bug had only just began fighting in the arena, and his owner had substantial hopes for him.

Announcements for her fights sometimes refer to her as Petra, The Golden Giant, in reference to her unusually rich skin tone. She fights in black leather battle harness, meant to act both as armor and to display her appearance to advantage. Probably mostly broad strips and belts of leather, like a slit skirt to knee length, and a more complete breastplate, with bare arms. To take advantage of her size and strength, she's been trained predominantly with crushing or bludgeoning weapons, like hammers or the mailed cestus, which is probably the most valuable weapon she uses, being set with metal studs. Her other weapons are an ax with an obsidian blade and a bone haft, and a staff made of sections of bone cut into flat lengths, fitted together staggered to meet her height without weakening any one point unduly, and bound with shrunken sinews to hold the sections together. When not fighting, she prefers much less exotic garments, usually a plain, sleeveless gown made of a single long rectangle of cloth, like a Greek chlamdys, pinned at the shoulders, or sometimes just one, and belted with cord. Her favorite is a deep sky blue. She usually wears sandals of tan leather, heavier shoes for fights.

Str: 19 Dex: 10 Con: 17
Cha: 15 Int: 12 Wis: 15
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Semira Haifa: Semira is a very serious little woman, young but appearing very mature for her age, in her early-to-mid twenties. She is human, small-framed, and has surprisingly fair skin for an inhabitant of Darksun. Her hair is dark brown, shot with premature gray, and cut boyishly short for ease of care. She is thin, but strong, and rather wiry despite a delicate appearance. As a wizard, she wields rare and potent forces. As a Preserver, she does so in a forbidden manner, and has lived much of her life in secret. When it became apparent that she had a talent for wizardry, her parents concealed her, to prevent her being caught up in the web of power and politicking created by the Defilers. Her parents were poor and unable to hide her indefinitely, so as soon as she was old enough (12-13), she was slipped into the care and training of the local underground, and began to learn Preserver magic. Because of her small size, nimble body, and quiet composure, she sometimes works as a spy or a guide for the underground. Many of her fellows would be surprised to know that she knows magic, having assumed, from her quiet manner and unobtrusive bearing, that she's a junior underling.

Semira does not care to have her appearance generally known anywhere, and usually dresses to hide most of her potentially identifying features. Hooded robes, or mantles and scarves usually serve as dress. She's good at modifying existing clothing to blend in with a different population of people, and prefers versatile, nondescript clothing in drab colors. Frequently, she uses a cheap, temporary dye to hide the distinctive silver-white streaks in her hair. Because of her small, slender body and short hair, she is often mistaken for a mid-adolescent. This confusion has been to her advantage before now. In the handful of neighborhoods where anything is known about her, she's generally believed to be a petty thief, perhaps an agent for the thief's guild. She is considering being visibly involved in one or two minor thefts to confirm her reputation and further hide her real secrets. Her only real weapon skill is a knack for stavework. Her staff used to be the legbone of some large animal.

Over the course of her upbringing, she has learned patience, compassion, and a strong loyalty to the goals of her organization: to bring prosperity back to Darksun, along with the overthrow of the Defilers. Not only prospective Preservers are sought, but psionics as well, to add versatility and power to the ranks of their hidden troops. Unfortunately, the group is so small and so poor that very little can actually be done beyond the gathering of information and occasional misdirection of other forces. It serves essentially as an early-warning system for Preservers that it knows.

Recently, a strange crawling shadow-thing has begun stalking the handful of renegade Preserver students through the streets of the city, killing one and hounding others practically into the arms of the Templars. Managing to track it back, Semira found a strange tower in the desert beyond the city walls. She plans another foray with a few good friends. Str: 14 Dex: 19 Con: 16
Cha: 15 Int: 20 Wis: 17
Alignment: Lawful Good

Kylerah: As a half-elf, Kylerah finds it easy to travel, but hard to find anywhere to stay. Humans don't generally trust her, and full-blooded elves despise her human manners and appearance. To deal with this distrust, she's adopted a mode of life as light and inconsequential as a soap-bubble, drifting from one city-state to another, rarely owning more than the clothes on her back and the flute and drum she plays. She finds this lonely living increasingly unsatisfactory, but doesn't know of any other way to deal with it.

Her elven blood gave her a long, lean, tall body, slim-fingered hands, and white-blond hair to go with vivid blue eyes and darkly tanned skin. She's beautiful, confident, and charismatic, and is generally willing to make the most of it. She deliberately cultivates an exotic look, by playing up her coloration and her elven ears, and by mixing elements of the styles from every city she's been to. It makes it easier to draw an audience. She likes to listen to people from a distance, since they won't usually include her. Between cities, she will walk, swiftly and lightly, over the dunes from dusk until dawn, composing new songs to the beat of the drum she carries. Once in a city, she stays until something happens to move her on again, perhaps being hassled once too often by the guard or by a suspicious merchant, perhaps seeing her audiences dwindle away, perhaps hearing news of some new happenings elsewhere. Her biggest regret is not being able to be everywhere at once, and she compensates by always being on the move.

Having hooked up with Bug, the escaped Thri-Keen gladiator, is a new thing for her, and she's not totally sure what to make of it. At first, she figured that she'd try to find him a job and then move on, and he'd fend for himself, however well or poorly. On the other hand, she's starting to like him, and he's so obviously ignorant and in need of help. She feels somewhat responsible for him, which sometimes bothers her. She doesn't like being responsible for anything but herself, if she can help it. It beats being lonely, though. Plus, Bug's a good deterrent. Her usual strategy for dealing with trouble is to outrun it, but that's failed her once or twice. He could be good insurance in a pinch, and goodness knows he needs financial and social help. Her only weapons are an obsidian knife and a small horn bow. She uses the bow rarely, usually for hunting, since arrows are so hard to replace in the desert.

Str: 15 Dex: 17 Con: 14
Cha: 18 Int: 14 Wis: 13
Alignment: Neutral Good

Tzerah: Tzerah is a street urchin with a secret. She could pass for any other ragged city brat, in her tattered, faded clothing and dirty face, but she's hiding a secret of great worth, to her at least. She's a human psionic, powerful at a remarkably young age, and keeping her powers to herself, except for the occasional 'lucky accident'. She never knew her father, and doesn't much care to. Her mother, an impoverished if once-lovely prostitute, had little time and less care for her. Tzerah grew up under the occasional care of the other street children, some of who looked out for her from time to time, and the attentions of the underground, who saw her potential early on. Her mother was weakly psionic, and her father, whom Tzerah doesn't know, was one of the most potent psionisists in the city-state. Tzerah isn't sure who's looking out for her, but she's beginning to suspect something's up.

Tzerah is actually quite pretty, looking much like her mother might have before the hard life she led beat her down, but goes to pains to obscure it. After all, it didn't do her mother much good now, did it? She generally keeps her gamin features smeared with dust or soot, and hides an increasingly shapely body under loose-fitting outsized tunics, generally snatched off clotheslines when the last one is worn beyond repair. Her uncut hair is a rich, glossy dark red, like her mother's original claim to fame, but she hides it with soot and oil, leaving it a dull, lank brownish color. She specializes in being underestimated, and does a great deal of pickpocket work to keep herself fed. She's received a few invitations from the underground, who she doesn't know as such, to join them for training, but has so far only agreed to let them hire her to run messages in secret. She doesn't trust most other people, and is basically amoral, although possessed of a sense of fair play.

One of her childhood companions showed her how to make a simple sling from a scrap of leather, and she has, with practice, gotten quite good at slinging pebbles. It's a skill she uses sometimes to distract guards, letting them hear a pebble rattle down the roof slates as if someone were climbing, while she ducks in past them. As a measure of insurance lest things go wrong, she carries a flaked obsidian knife wrapped to a bone haft inside one worn and oversized boot.

Str: 12 Dex: 14 Con: 16
Cha: 15 Int: 15 Wis: 13
Alignment: True Neutral