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Phaedra Kossai
Phaedra Kossai
"One should be enough." · Duelist, Combat Instructor, and Former Arena Champion
Basic Information
Full Name
Phaedra Kossai
Nickname
The Fifth Exchange
Race (Grade)
Human (D)
Class
Warblade / Swordsage
Height
5'10"
Birthday
Thawbloom 4, 1271
Age
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Birthsign
Bloodline Ability
Unknown
This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.
Physical Description
Phaedra Kossai, seeming to do almost nothing, which is exactly when you should worry
Appearance
Phaedra is a tall, powerfully built woman with sun-warmed olive skin, strong dark brows, and the lean, heavy musculature of someone who has trained every single day of her adult life. Her dark hair is swept up into a high topknot bound with a gold band and a jade leaf, with long waves falling down her back beneath it, and she usually wears a faint, knowing half-smile. Bold dark tattoos sweep in scrolling bands across her shoulders and arms and run down both sides of her torso. She dresses for movement and for effect: a dusky violet halter crossed at the chest, a heavy gold collar set with jade, dark leather bracers, a violet wrap skirt hung with dark leather tassets, and a gold-and-jade belt plate. Two swords ride at her hips, one on each side, with dark-wrapped grips and ringed pommels. She knows exactly how intimidating she looks.
Unique Characteristics
Every major marking on Phaedra's body represents a combat principle, not a victory: balance, distance, commitment, patience, momentum, and recovery. The large patterns across her torso and shoulders are essentially a written martial philosophy, translated into symbols. The most important of them says, "Never repeat a mistake you understood." Phaedra distinguishes carefully between failure and stupidity. Failure is acceptable. Repeating a failure without learning from it is not. She is also the kind of fighter who makes experienced warriors uncomfortable, because she seems to be doing almost nothing right up until the instant a fight starts. Then she becomes very fast.
Personality & Temperament
Positive Traits
- Controlled, precise, and impossible to rattle mid-fight
- Endlessly patient with honest beginners
- Studies every loss until she knows exactly why
- Funny and good company, once she's comfortable
- Walked away from fame rather than risk a student
Challenging Traits
- Viciously competitive at anything involving skill
- No mercy for veterans who won't fix sloppy habits
- Knows exactly how intimidating she looks, and uses it
- Hates being drunk, and hates losing even more
- Remembers every defeat in precise, unforgiving detail
Best of three? Why? [To see who's better.] [She smiles.] One should be enough.
[Told that the other side's champion has never lost a duel, she draws one sword from her hip, then the other.] Good. [Good?] I'd hate to travel all this way for something easy.
Failure is acceptable. Repeating a failure you already understood is not.
Likes
- An opponent who is almost as good as she is
- Darts, cards, and knife-throwing, played to win
- Good food and good wine, stopping well short of drunk
- A beginner's first clean parry
- Banter across a table with people who can keep up
Dislikes
- Promoters, spectacle, and fights staged for blood
- Anyone who laughs when a student fails
- Repeating a mistake she already understood
- Best of three, when one should be enough
- Being drunk, which is not the same as drinking
Background & History
Named for the Tide
Phaedra was born in 1271 in the Harborquarter of Aurenthal, the Lionelle city on the northern coast whose martial academies draw students from across the continent. Her mother was a Vangran sailor who had settled there and named her daughter after Vangra's tide goddess, for luck. Phaedra grew up a human among lion-folk who begin training almost as soon as they can walk, in a city where dueling was enormously popular. Not death matches: formal combat. On the Training Grounds, disputes were settled under the Council's strict Challenge Right. Down in the Harborquarter, a commercial circuit ran alongside it, where fighting schools competed against one another, wealthy trade houses sponsored champions, tournaments drew crowds, and successful duelists became minor celebrities.
Three Times in Under a Minute
Phaedra entered her first public competition at seventeen. She lost, badly. Her opponent knocked her down three times in under a minute. She still remembers his name, which technique he used, and exactly where her feet were when she lost, because that defeat established the habit that eventually made her exceptional: Phaedra studies every loss until she knows precisely why it happened. She never lost to that man again.
Two Blades, Two Jobs
By her mid-twenties, Phaedra was one of the most successful duelists on the circuit, with a reputation for fighting strangely. Most fighters who carry two blades use the second to overwhelm an opponent with speed and volume. Phaedra doesn't. Her second sword is not there to attack twice as often; she assigns each weapon a completely different job. Her right-hand blade creates openings, and her left-hand blade punishes them. One binds, one cuts. One controls, one finishes. Watching her fight feels less like watching someone swing two swords and more like watching someone conduct an argument in which her opponent keeps choosing the wrong answer.
The Promoter's Office
Eventually Phaedra became too successful. The circuit's sponsors began arranging matches around spectacle: unfair matchups, deliberately dangerous opponents, and fighters encouraged to injure one another permanently because the crowds liked blood. She tolerated it for a while. Then, in 1303, one of her own students was pressured to keep fighting after suffering a serious injury, and he nearly died. Phaedra walked into the promoter's office afterward. She did not threaten him. She simply informed him that she would never fight for his organization again. The promoter laughed. Within the month, most of the best fighters in the city had quit his circuit with her, and she had not asked a single one of them to. That was when Phaedra discovered something she had not realized before: people respected her far more than they respected her trophies.
Something Worth the Trip
For the next three years Phaedra traveled, teaching wherever she stopped and taking the occasional contract. She became the person people sent for when someone said, "Their champion has never lost a duel." She would draw one sword, then the other, and say, "Good," because she would hate to travel all that way for something easy. Among the fighters who faced her, a saying took hold: if you haven't beaten Phaedra by the fifth exchange, you probably aren't going to.
No Tickets, No Crowds
Phaedra settled in Silmarithil in the autumn of 1306, and when people ask why, she tells them it is the first place she has ever lived where nobody has tried to sell a ticket to watch her fight. It is a small, quiet town under the trees, fast becoming a hub for serious expeditions, full of scouts, rangers, and wardens who need to know how to fight properly and have no interest at all in making a show of it. She teaches in the mornings in the Lanternwalkers' training yard, where the Grippli acrobats have turned out to be terrible, delightful students who never stand still. She has had to admit that this is technically correct.
Goals & Aspirations
A School Without Spectators
Phaedra means to build a proper school in Silmarithil, one with no audience, no tickets, and no sponsors. It will have exactly one classroom rule: nobody laughs when another student fails. The first person who does gets paired with Phaedra. The policy has so far proven remarkably effective. Someone who has never held a sword gets careful, patient instruction. Someone who has been fighting for fifteen years and refuses to correct a sloppy habit gets considerably less mercy.
The Sixth Exchange
Phaedra has heard that Haven has lately become home to a surprising number of very dangerous people. She has not introduced herself to any of them yet. She is looking forward to it. Somewhere, she hopes, is someone who can still surprise her by the sixth exchange.
A Mistake Understood
The student who nearly died in 1303 recovered, though he still walks with a limp, and he writes to her every season. Phaedra has never forgiven herself for not pulling him out of that circuit sooner. She has, however, understood exactly why she didn't. By her own rules, that means she will never do it again.
Current Status & Relationships
Residence
Role
Combat Instructor
ATTENTION!
Phaedra Kossai is a D-grade human warblade and swordsage, and one of the most technically dangerous fighters in Haven. She does not have overwhelming raw power, and against a gigantic monster relying on sheer strength she is merely very good. Her specialty is fighting people who are almost as dangerous as she is, and she becomes more frightening, not less, the better her opponent is, because a complicated fighter gives her more to read: stance, breathing, foot placement, which eye tracks movement, how they answer a feint, which way they prefer to dodge. There is a saying among people who have fought her: if you haven't beaten her by the fifth exchange, you probably aren't going to. After that she is no longer reacting to you. She is waiting for things she already knows you are about to do. She is patient with beginners, merciless with sloppy veterans, and viciously competitive at anything that involves skill. Do not suggest best of three.