WOWZA, I'm stoked y'all like Caldera so much! She is actually a bit of a work in progress, being an NPC from my Commander's backstory reworked into an rp character, but I've been having a lot of fun developing her. ā”ā”
For those curious, I've whipped up a little infodump under the cut! I'm super excited to share more as she evolves too.
SO. Caldera was leader of my Commander (Gethen Tailsnap/Daybreak)'s original warband! Rather than being wiped out by Barradin's ghosts, however, Gethen's warband died out on the Dragonbrand, specifically in an incident where Caldera became Branded and turned on her bandmates. Where she gets a little lorebreaky in her arc is that, rather than dying after the events of LWS4, she was freed from Kralkatorrik's control but left with her altered body. I'm kinda looking at it as a sort of an alternate version of events, rather than what happened to her canonically in the timeline (I'll probably get around to chewing on the broader implications of free Branded at some point too š³).
Anyway - originally Caldera was Caldera Snapsteel, leader of a gnc-oriented warband based in Ash Legion (With Caldera herself being trans, as is Gethen! They had nonbinary bandmates as well). Their job was originally to do scouting on the front lines against the Flame Legion, but when her mate at the time Zalgo Snapspine lured the warband into a trap that badly wounded both her and Geth and killed two, Snap warband was reassigned to help the Sentinels instead.
After Caldera was Branded and massacred the rest of her warband, Gethen fled and was recognized as the only living member of the warband. He rejoined with his old mentor Dinky and began rebuilding the warband per personal story. Fast forward to Geth confronting his own revenge in season 4, and back in Ascalon Caldera "wakes up" with severely damaged memory, but aware of the fact she was used against her own warband. She joins up with some other free Branded to focus together on healing and moving forward, and they eventually form the Path warband. Caldera changes her name to Caldera Pathscorcher and...that's about it, for now, save for some gruesome details. The rest of her adventure remains to be seen, so stay tuned if you'd like!
This art's a little out of character for her, given, yknow, trauma, but I thought it'd be nice to show off a happy Cal anyway. ā” She's very much a self-help oriented character for me with an arc geared toward hope, healing, and redemption, and on that note is kind of connected to my current rp main, Caesar Inkspill! I'll share more about them in another post. ;)
