Juliana Sundry/Risa Tanner/Athyriaceae Draconiae

Name: Juliana (pronounced joo-lee-AH-na) Marie Sundry
Nickname: Juli
Race: Human Called warrior
Gender: Female
Age: Arguably fifteen; arguably forty; arguably ninety-four; arguably five thousand thirty-three: there is a lot of arguing about how old she is
Appearance: Juliana stands about six feet tall and often gives off the impression of being taller, mostly because she is very thin and has a very forceful personality. Her skin is very pale, especially by contrast with her long, dark brown hair--usually pulled back in a ponytail--and her vividly green eyes. Most of the time, she wears a pale pink or green healer's robe, though she owns other clothes. Whatever she wears, she always carries her crystal dagger (see Weapons) at her belt. She has a number of scars: one just a few months old across her throat, several (usually camouflaged by illusions or hidden by her clothing) around her heart, a nearly undetectable one slanting across the back of her head, a pair of long blue ones running parallel down the inside of her left forearm (before the “Grey” ARP, she had only one; before “Merry Maids of Pwnzor” neither existed) and one curving around her right hip. She refers to that first as "Risa's mark," and that last as "the mark of the Betrayed." Set into her body around the top of her ribs, but usually hidden with illusion magic, is a Dragon Amulet.
Weapons: For healing, she often carries a staff with an enchanted yellow catseye gem at the one end. She also has a steel dagger that she confiscated from her apprentice and turned to her own purposes, though it is rarely used. Her main offensive weapon is a black sword with runes and symbols inlaid in gold; written in script down the blade is its name, "Atonement." Lastly and possibly most importantly is a small white dagger with a blue core and faintly gilded edges, made of pure white crystal or perhaps diamond, which is never used offensively. Its purpose is to symbolize her adulthood and to serve as a last-resort access to extra magical power.
Personality: Most of the time, Juli is outgoing and friendly but rather serious. She is very gentle with small children and the people she heals. Around her closest friends, she shows an almost childish side, with a keen sense of humor and a decided love of fun. She has very little patience for any variety of idiocy, and shows a very hot-tempered side when someone acts foolish or tries to talk down to her. She also has a strong dislike for being wrong, though she can swallow her pride when that happens... usually. Keeping secrets is a skill she has perfected, to the point that only her closest friends can tell when she is keeping something back—and even that is due at least in part to the fact that she keeps very little from those friends, so they notice that she is omitting information they are aware of. Whenever she can be, she is very honest, but she is also chary of telling people she does not trust absolutely about the full extent of her powers. She dislikes showing off, though she will demonstrate her talents if someone questions too annoyingly whether or not one thing or another is possible. She is also modest in the other sense of the word, preferring not to show too much of her skin—and preferring not to see too much of anyone else's.
Bio: I haven't the slightest idea what this means.
Backstory: Juliana Marie Sundry III was born in Battleon on June 26, which utterly astonished her parents because it was the twenty-fifth birthday of her older sister Juliana Marie Sundry II. To her parents' further astonishment, she already had scars on her hip and near her heart. She also had a Dragon Amulet, but it had somehow been disguised by magic, so they were unaware of this. Her parents hated the thought of naming her “Juliana,” since the previous owner of that name had been killed less than a year before, and they would already be reminded enough of the older Juliana by the fact that she looked exactly like her. However, they were informed by the ghost of the elder Juliana that the younger one was meant to carry that name, and so their youngest daughter came to be Juliana Marie Sundry the Third. They couldn't quite bear to call her by her full name, though, so she grew up answering to “Juli.”
From the time she learned to read at the age of three, Juli was attracted to the studies of magic (especially healing magic), war history, and swordplay. As a child, she made several friends with whom she would keep in touch all her life: Winnie and Amara Brave, the mysterious DragonLord Kayleen (Juli liked her, though she had no idea that she herself was also a DragonLord), her nephew (who was, awkwardly, a year older than herself), and quite a few others.
There were several things during this time that she found odd. She often visited her twenty-six-year-older brother, his wife, and their daughter, but when Juli saw her twenty-seven-year-older sister and the son thereof, it was always at the family home. She had heard that dragons lived in her sister's house, and often as a child imagined that that was why they never visited.
When she was about five, Juliana's parents decided that the little girl needed a sibling close to her own age to play with; after all, their three older children (who were, by this time, thirty-two, thirty-one, and thirty-had-she-lived) had provided ample evidence to bear out such a theory. To that end, they took her with them to pick out a new little brother or sister who needed a home. She was immediately drawn to a little boy who was referred to by the men and women who took care of the orphans as “Jordan,” but who ardently insisted that his name was “Spy.” Her parents found the little boy a bit odd, but agreed to take him in.
Spy settled easily into the Sundry family, and within a few months it was as if he had always been there. He joined the group of friends Juli already had, and added a few more to the mix. Time passed happily. Juli taught herself to fight with magic and with swords, and often stayed up late into the night reading about increasingly unusual and complex subjects.
Then, when Juli was seven, her eldest sister came over for dinner yet again. This time, however, she brought a large basket on her arm that confirmed Juli's childhood suspicions: when it opened, a beautiful green dragonet came out and approached Juli. The moment she touched it, Juli screamed and fell over, glowing a very faint blue. When she stood up seconds later, she had the powers of a Called warrior. She knew about the Dragon Amulet that she had always had, and how to reveal it; she could remember everything that had ever happened to her in perfect detail; and she knew the dragonet in front of her: Athyriaceae Draconiae, called Fern, who called her Mama.
After her Call, as that event is known, Juliana could not be a child anymore. From that point on, her mind was fully that of an adult. To reflect this, she began to carry her diamond dagger, as she has done ever since. She kept to her accustomed schedule for a few weeks while she acclimated to this new situation of adult in a child's body, but spent much of this time crying for reasons unfathomable to anyone around her. Then, when she was sufficiently adjusted to do so, Juli broke out of the second-grade mold and passed a university admissions test.
Juliana was, naturally, the only seven-year-old student in the entirety of Swordhaven University. The other students attempted to show off how much more they knew than she did, though their plots almost consistently backfired badly: for instance, when they tried to heckle her in a little-known language, she replied in the same language, “I know precisely what you're saying—and, incidentally, your accent is terrible.” It had been simply chance that they had chosen a language she was fluent in, but several such incidents bought her a reputation as someone who knew whereof she spoke.
Upon graduating from the university, Juli returned to Battleon and quietly set up as a healing mage. She was still in contact with Winnie, Amara, Kayleen, and others, and it was through them that she learned about a clan of eccentrics known as The Regulars. She slowly (very slowly) became a part of their group.
At that time, the Regulars spent quite a bit of time in Yulgar's Inn, and Juli accordingly kept up a room there despite sleeping in her healer's tent most nights. She was fifteen years old and thoroughly entrenched in TR's daily life when she received a message from Spy warning her that one of the many enemies she had inherited from the previous Juliana was about to try assassinating her soon.
His words bore out within a few weeks, when a thirteen-year-old girl snuck into Yulgar's Inn on one of the rare nights Juli spent there. The girl, who called herself Julisbane, made it into Juli's room and found its occupant asleep and unguarded. She quickly did as she had come to do. However, before she even made it to the stairs back down, Julisbane was caught and killed by a group of Regulars—primarily Flaw of Insanity.
Juli and Julisbane met in a place known as the Mists, the place where the dead go. After an initial confrontation, Julisbane calmed down and listened to what Juli had to say. Eventually, the younger girl was convinced that the other's side of the story was accurate, and agreed to a deal the older proposed: turning to the side of good in return for resurrection, Called powers, and training in the use of such powers. Before they returned to the living world, Julisbane was transformed into a blue-eyed Called warrior and took back her childhood name of Risa.
Immediately afterwards, Juliana restored herself and Risa to life. She called Fern and two other dragonets (who really answered to Juli's oldest sister and the husband thereof, but who had wanted to come with Fern) into her room and asked them to protect Risa. Then she left the room to give the Regulars an extremely long and complex explanation of what had happened. In order to make sense—because this was the culmination of five thousand years of events—she told them the entire Saga of Traitor and Betrayed, which explained almost everything about her that the Regulars had been confused about. At the end of it, she introduced her new apprentice to her friends.
Since then, Juli has been training Risa as her apprentice, and has discovered a few new aspects of her own powers as a result. A few months after the Night of the Saga, as it was soon called, she converted and revived her sister's husband, who was Risa's long-dead uncle and the reason that the Sundry and Tanner families had been at odds for the previous twenty years. (Long story.) Because of that, Risa was reunited with her parents, Juli's sister was reunited with her husband, and Juli's nephew met his father for the first time. A short time later, Juli forged her sword Atonement in the Mists, using her own spirit for raw materials.
Despite the events of the past few months, Juli still keeps the details of the Saga and its import from nearly everyone other than those who were present when she told it.
Additional Details: I have actually provided only part of Juli's backstory; the entirety of it, in her own words, is the Saga of Traitor and Betrayed. For that reason, very little is explained about the Called culture. Her various relatives (i.e. parents, siblings, in-laws, niece and nephew) actually DO have names, which I left out for a good reason. Despite that, I revealed a LOT in here, including the circumstances of the telling of the Saga of Traitor and Betrayed, and all sorts of hints concerning it. I also mentioned, one way and another, the creation of each of the three Greater Called warriors—Juli, Risa, and Risa's uncle, also referred to as the immortal Called warriors. They can do a lot that the other Called can't, such as teleporting the way Juli and Risa have been. To follow are the bios of Juli's apprentice and of her non-human adoptive daughter.