Claudia Goodfellow

Klaudija Lebedeva, better known as Claudia Goodfellow, is an Elezen-Hrothgar adventurer, engineer, and political vanguardist who is best known for holding the title of Warrior of Light. Born in Bozja, the eponymous Incident that decimated her homeland still defines the path she takes through life today. Following the Incident, she fled the provinces and her role as a magitek researcher to Radz-at-han, where she received an experimental form of alchemical gender-affirming care that left her a woman reborn. Soon after, she left for Eorzea, which would become her new home.

She became one of the core members of the precursor organizations to the Scions, wandering all over Eorzea in search of new sights and experiences. She trained relentlessly to meet all challenges, only for the Calamity to waylay her as much as losing Bozja did. So while her passion lies in adventuring, her self-stated mission, shaped by both her experiences in her Garlean-occupied past and her early travails in Eorzea, is this: to never find herself powerless in the face of injustice, inequity, oppression, or disaster ever again.

Affiliations

Claudia holds the position of Storm Captain in the Foreign Levy of the Maelstrom, preferring the Limsan grand company for multiple reasons. Some of these reasons are personal, such as the fact that Limsa is both where she first set foot in Eorzea and where she found her new beginning after the Calamity, something she fondly regards.
However, her choice also boils down to her politics. She regards Limsa and the Maelstrom as, while not perfect, the preferable option when compared to the xenophobic theocracy she sees in Gridania or, worse, the plundering plutocracy of Ul'dah.

She is also known for her close association with the Garlond Ironworks, being an old friend and colleague of Cid Garlond, having met him in old Bozja while under the tutelage of his father Midas. She has done much to aid the Ironworks' mission, including masterminding public works projects that apply Ironworks-developed technology.

On the First reflection, she is known to the Night's Blessed by the nom de guerre Gunnhildr, having spent time there to support them and build relations between them and other inhabitants of the Rak'tika Greatwood.

Personality

In her public-facing 'mode', Claudia is a performer, jokester, and dramatist at heart, though her delivery tends to be a bit more subtle and understated. Keeping an air of whimsy and caprice about her, she tries to approach most things in life with a spring in her step and a can-do attitude, though she leans less on the saccharine side and more on the forthright and dependable side.

If there is one thing that Claudia takes great pride in, though, it is being mischievous and provocative. She finds a great amount of joy in galling those she finds irritating, and generally being a thorn in their side. A bit of this can also be reserved for her own friends and loved ones, although it's never malicious in that case.

Where she finds herself getting carried away is always around those she finds herself attracted to - she applies her whimsical demeanor with a featherlight touch of cloying charm to draw potential lovers in. Whether or not this works can vary, and she's been known to try a little too hard sometimes. Claudia's predilections tend towards the libertine, and she will admit that she flirts with hedonism.

Underneath, there is a lot of emotion that Claudia chooses not to uncork for just anyone. Claudia has gone through much, and will continue to go through much on her present course - a fact she has fully accepted. Some of this can be seen when she decides to be more theatric, such as when commanding an audience's attention as a storyteller, an exercise she sees as cathartic. But most of it is saved for rare outpourings when she feels truly safe and comfortable.

A surefire way to spur Claudia into action is to present her with an unrighted wrong. While careful not to be self-important like a certain one of her younger comrades, she still takes to any problem that she thinks she can solve with a staggering amount of zeal, like a certain other one of her younger comrades. Moreover, her deliberate focus is not to come in as an all-fixing tool, but to try and cultivate strength and knowledge in those she comes across to identify and solve their problems for themselves.

In the most extreme of cases, to have provoked Claudia's wrath is to have set a great, bestial machine in motion. The ruthlessness she bares when the chips are down is both her greatest asset and her greatest curse, forged into her by every ordeal she went through, from the destruction of her home, to her flight from Garlean territory, to her transformation and the side effects she deals with, to her seeming powerlessness in the face of the Seventh Umbral Calamity.

It is this both her determination and her wrath that most clearly fuel her political outlook. In her eyes, if a problem affecting real people can be solved, it should, and if it can and should, why wait? She cannot bear to see anyone suffering like she once did.

If there is one thing that can always be said about Claudia, it is that while she tends towards the subtle in polite company, she is never milquetoast, mild, or unassuming, and she never does anything half-heartedly.

Appearance

Skills/Abilities

Claudia is known for her almost preternatural versatility, being adept in a variety of martial and creative disciplines. However, she is known to prefer a few:

• the art of the Gunbreaker from her homeland,
• the tried-and-true discipline of the Dragoon,
• the long tradition of the Ninja,
• the emerging skillset of the Machinist (in which she notably incorporates the magitek engineering skills she learned in her youth),
• the recovered practices of the Scholar,
• and the whimsical craft of the Pictomancer.

Nearly every guild in Eorzea knows her proficiency from her days spent roaming and training before the Calamity. From their perspective, she took to every martial discipline she could get a hold of like a fish to water, balancing them out with tradeskills as if she were attempting to hammer a honed, cultivated edge into her soul. In more recent days, she's mellowed out significantly, feeling much more confident in her own power, but she's always willing to try something new, and isn't content to sit on her laurels.

Claudia was born in Bozja Citadel to a Bozjan-native Hrothgar father and a Dalmascan-born Elezen mother. In her early life, she suffered from a rare condition that inhibited the development her of muscles and even some of her nerves. Nevertheless, she didn't let this stop her from trying to follow in her parents' footsteps to serve the Garlean occupiers.

Eventually, in her teenage years, she found herself in the role of