Maris Veloren

Maris Veloren will tell you she's the best fist-fighter on either side of the Hedra range, and the deeply annoying thing — to the long list of people who have tried to shut her up about it — is that she is probably right. She fights with her hands. Not blades, not glyphs, not a borrowed school of anything; hands, footwork, and a chin that the imperial line spent the better part of an afternoon at Hedra Pass failing to put on the ground. She held a gap in that line alone for forty-one minutes, talking the entire time, and the soldiers who finally relieved her reported that the worst part was not the casualties — it was that she would not stop narrating her own performance.

The immaturity is real and so is the substance underneath it. She celebrates too early, she names her own punches mid-swing, she has been fined by three different paymasters for 'conduct unbecoming' that was, in each case, her being correct loudly. But the crews who have actually stood next to her in a hard spot do not care, because the other thing Maris does — under all the noise — is hold. She does not break. She does not run. When the person beside her goes down she is already standing over them, fists up, mouth running, and she has never once in her career left that spot before the people behind her were clear. She is, for all the swagger, the single most dependable body a frightened squad can have in front of it.

She came up rough and she has not pretended otherwise, and the polish other fighters spent on technique she spent on simply being impossible to discourage. Veterans twice her experience have learned to put her at the front and let her talk; it draws the enemy's attention, it steadies their own line, and it means that whatever is coming has to come through Maris first. So far, mostly, it hasn't.