Ava the Undaunted - SDXL

Ava the Undaunted is a Splinterlands character.

Splinterlands is an NFT Trading Card Game based in the world of Praetoria.

Lore:

Ava Vicario was in her fifties, her children grown and her husband gone, when she traveled to Praetoria, seeking adventure and a new start to her life. She settled in the hamlet of Hogsfeet, which was nothing like the sprawling capital she came from, but it was close to nature and had a tight-knit community, and she loved it.

She learned skills she had never needed in the big city: how to forage, how to farm, and how to make do with only what nature provided. Praetoria was a wild and mostly unsettled land, so she also learned to defend herself. She had a natural talent for the crossbow and quickly became known as the best markswoman in town.

Life was relatively peaceful until the blight spread across the land. The people of Hogsfeet caught word of it from Saber City traders. People there were dying or going mad.

Soon, the hamlet went into lockdown. Ava prayed to Nestal, the Goddess of Vengeance, Pestilence, and Disease, asking that she and her neighbors be spared from the blight. And it seemed that her prayers were answered, for the pestilence never spread to Hogsfeet.

Then the Chaos Legion came.

The larger cities fell first. Ava saw dragons and other beasts and monsters on the horizon, and great plumes of smoke rose in the distance, as if the world were burning. After Saber City fell, the people of Hogsfeet knew it was only a matter of time before the Chaos Legion came for them.

The villagers spent many months fortifying the hamlet's defenses. Ava and others manned observation posts along the routes leading to Saber City to ensure Hogsfeet would have ample warning when the attack came.

When it did, barely over a hundred legionnaires marched on the hamlet. It wasn't a large contingent, but Hogsfeet wasn't large.

As the legionnaires crossed the bridge over the Scythe River, the villagers blew the bridge. A third of the legionnaires were left on the far side, a third fell into the river below, and a third made it across.

The villagers burst from the woodline and attacked. Arrows flew and found their mark. Ava fired bolt after bolt from her crossbow as her friends and neighbors charged, wielding swords, axes, pitchforks, and countless other makeshift weapons.

The legionnaires who had made it across the river were slaughtered. Those trapped on the opposite side could do nothing but watch their comrades fall.

The villagers of Hogsfeet celebrated long into the night. Victory was theirs, but they also knew it would be short lived. The Chaos Legion would return and demand penance for the slaughter of their own. Blood for blood.

When next the legionnaires marched on Hogsfeet, they found the hamlet deserted. The villagers had disappeared into the surrounding forests, rebels striking quickly and brutally against their enemy before slipping away again like smoke.

In the battles that followed, Ava earned the moniker “the Undaunted” for her courage, determination, and calm in battle. She was an expert sniper and modified her crossbow to fire two bolts without having to reload. She could place a bolt through her enemy's eye at two hundred paces, and she used her knowledge of the terrain to strike at the Chaos Legion again and again.

The commander of the troops responsible for Saber City's occupation was a bluehair minotaur known simply as the Rage. He placed a bounty on the rebels of Hogsfeet: ten thousand gold coins, a mansion in Saber City, and a choice of two of the most beautiful slaves to whoever revealed the location of the rebel camp.

Soon thereafter, the Rage led an assault against the rebels. Their camp was overrun. Over half of them were killed. The rest fled into the forest.

A week later, Ava stole into Saber City. She shot a bolt through the Rage's bedroom window, killing him while he slept. The traitor who had revealed the location of the rebel camp was the former sheriff of Hogsfeet. She found him in his mansion, in bed with his slaves. She killed him too, but she took her time with it.

But the rebels were scattered, and with the death of the Rage, more legionnaires came to reinforce the city and the surrounding area. It seemed Ava had little chance of making a difference, let alone surviving.

But that all changed when the Riftwatchers arrived.

A full moon hung high in the black sky. Ava crouched in a field of switch grass. She peered through the blades. A caravan of Chaos Legionnaires made their way down the dirt road, drawing closer, closer still, until they were directly in front of her.

Ava stood and fired two shots from her crossbow. In a span of seconds, she reloaded and fired two more. Four shots, and four legionnaires fell, dead. She dropped into a crouch and rushed away in the opposite direction.

Shouts of alarm and the clank of armor filled the night as the legionnaires chased after her.

“The shots came from this way!”

She slid down a steep ridge and rolled to a stop at the bottom in a cascade of dirt.

The clank of armor drew closer. A face peered down at her from atop the ridge.

She fired a bolt directly into his eye, and the legionnaire toppled forward and plummeted toward her. But she was already running again. Her heart pounded in her chest.

“That you, Undaunted?” someone shouted. “We'll see just how undaunted you are when we catch you!”

Ava grinned. You'll see, indeed, she thought, and reloaded her crossbow.