Luisa Noctillon

Artisan Luisa Noctillon

Kyris had a sour expression on her face as she dropped the latest Etoilean Monitor on the cafe table. "Another fawning piece about Luisa."
"I'm telling you, it's not a big deal." Alistair glanced at the Monitor's article. "It's not an affront to you or the rangers or anything, she just wants people to experience the 'real world' the way she did."
"Rangers have been telling people to experience the real world outside of cities for years. Just because she was stuck somewhere a little wet doesn't give her some super-authority." The ranger shook her head. "I'm not criticizing Luisa herself, she's nice. I just wish the Journals wouldn't focus on her so, is all."
The wizard tapped a finger on the Monitor's newsprint. "Master Numio ended up naming her to the top of the list of 'up and coming' artists in the Capital in the pages of Sauvage. She's going to get attention. Just relax about it, would you?"
"I just wish the Rangers got more credit for the work we do, rather than a dilettante artist." Kyris glanced down. "But maybe looking for attention's a bad idea to begin with."

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

After her return from Raefel Island, another artist of the Western Collective drew a portrait of Luisa in profile; it is a striking picture of a young athletic woman, skin burnt from overexposure to sun and muscles visible under clothing, a far cry from the Academy student painter. Luisa is in top physical shape and maintains a fitness routine that is strikingly unusual for the ordinarily sedentary life of an artisan.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Luisa Noctillon is a muralist of the Western Collective, a group of artists of the Etoile Capital City, named as such for their affinity towards the 'wilds' of the western part of the Saibh continent. Born to a seamstress, her talent at watercolor was noted by Lord Hull of Grand Harvest, who came across her painting a canvas along the walls of the Grand Canal at the age of fifteen and subsequently sponsored her study at The Academy of Etoile.
While reasonably gifted in portraiture and drafting, both in-demand skills of Academy trained Artisans, Noctillon discovered her affinity for grand landscapes at the Academy. While the landscape trend in the 720s is towards romanticist views of natural beauty (such as the mural depicting the Grand Reef of the Stagonids, Noctillon instead moved towards the company of the Western Collective, a group of counter-cultural artists that instead favored scenes of great strife and nature's fury, and whose works were in great demand by a select group of patrons of the Capital City, Lord Hull among them.
in the Third Season of 723, the Western Collective received a mural commission request from Lord Hull, who wished to sponsor a trip to Raefel Island after reading a scholarly review of The Sunless Season of 708; he had become enamored of the idea of an artistic depiction of a great tempest and wished to depict it on a wall of his new estate. Noctillon was chosen to make the trip to Port Raefel and stay for the rainy season, in order to capture 'the vital essence' of a storm in art, and she departed on a trader's carrack plying the Great Circular Trade Route en route to the southwest.
Her arrival to Port Raefel was a shock to the young artist; the Capital City is the center of Etoilean Progress, a clacking and bustling hive of Powered technologies. Port Raefel was merely a series of caverns deep within a mountain range, the Spine of Raefel Island. The locals, a mix of fortune-seekers and hardened survivalists, regarded Noctillon with thinly disguised disdain. Lord Hull's Florin allowed her to rent most of a cavern and bring all the supplies she would need to survive the rainy season, without depleting the local cache of food or sundries, but the denizens of Port Raefel take a pride in gathering their own food and living independently off the land; relying on another's patronage felt unseemly.
This attitude resulted in an act of petty sabotage; while Luisa was out sketching the storms, her supplies and sketchbooks were stolen from her rented home. Port Raefel is a self-regulating community, with no formal guards system as such; she had no recourse from the theft of her supplies and no Florin to buy additional goods. Instead, Noctillon engaged in what was essentially a crash course in survivalism, quickly learning the art of bow-hunting from a sympathetic local hunter and the finer points of distilling clean water from the local alchemist. She was a natural hunter-gatherer, and soon earned the trust of the locals of Port Rafael, who soon identified the culprit responsible for the theft of her supplies.
Upon the conclusion of the rainy season, Noctillon left Raefel in the Second Season of 724 after informing the local District Commander of the crime. Upon her return to the Capital, her fellow artists noted her newfound wiry frame and physical fitness with good humor. The mural she presented to Lord Hull not long after her return was a reconstruction of her experiences as a survivalist on Raefel, with depictions of bowhunting great boars and aurochs, catching fish by hand from a raft in the middle of the lagoon during rough seas, and harvesting rainwater from the driving storms. Lord Hull was greatly pleased by this mural and granted Noctillon a retainer as his personal artist-in-residence. 
Artisan Noctillon has been a passionate promoter of the 'survival' arts since her return, and her prints of living in community with the wild have struck a chord with the denizens of the Capital City; her prints and art shows are regularly sold out.

Education

Luisa Noctillon is a graduate of The Academy of Etoile's school for painters and sculptors, and by all accounts was an excellent student.

Employment

Noctillon is an artist-in-residence for Lord Hull of Grand Harvest; she also is associated with the Western Collective, an independent society of artists of the Capital City.

Morality & Philosophy

After her experience on Raefel Island, Noctillon has been an adamant supporter of what she terms 'wilderness training', an experience roughly analogous to her forced lessons in survival living in the caves of Port Raefel and gathering her own food and water. A journal invited her to write a short opinion piece on this topic, which resulted in a conversation with the Etoilean Rangers about either commissioning Luisa as a ranger or incorporating survivalist training into Principality of Etoile officer's curriculum, but these discussions are ongoing as of 725.

Year of Birth

698 M 27 Years old

Sex

Female

Eyes

Grey

Hair

Black

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Light brown

Height

5'5"

Weight

110 lb