Auria Crane

Background
Auria was born in Ardenia in the country of the same name. Her mother died giving birth to her and that sent her father into a downward spiral. She was sent to an orphanage when she was around 3 or 4. On her sixth birthday, someone called out to her in the night and she followed. Not even remembering taking a step, she appeared in front of a lake. Upon entering, she was dragged under and couldn’t escape. She began her Alchemist trials and saw It, after this, she showed off her alchemy to the other kids at the orphanage. Eventually, seeing that the caretakers at the orphanage weren’t actually people, but monsters meant to steal away the souls of the children, she and the others lit fire to the orphanage. She wandered the world for a few years and when she was 10, she was found by the Ikarian military on a patrol of the Ikarian-Ardenian border. They took her along with them and she began doing work for everyone.

Birth and Childhood
Auria Crane was born in the city of Ardenia, capital of the Empire of Ardenia and the very center of Ardenian civilization, in the year 330. Her mother, Khara Kam, married Edward Fulbar in the year 326 and the two lived in married bliss until Auria's birth. During childbirth, Khara unfortunately died, leaving Edward to care for Auria by himself.

When Auria was just 3 years old, with tears in his eyes, Edward dropped her off at a local orphanage, the only one anywhere near their home and set off on a journey of his own. She grew up in this orphanage and stayed until she was 7 years old, when she and the other children lit fire to the orphanage and fled, separating along the way.

When she was 10 years old, she met with some Ikarian soldiers on the border, who brought her with them. One such soldier was Grenadier Senwell, though at this point, he was just a Rifleman. Senwell took over caretaking duties for her, mostly due to the fact that the others "didn't want to touch such filth," thus beginning their friendship.

While Senwell acted as a guide, he wasn't a savior for Auria. She constantly acted outside of his guidance and showed little interest in being told what to do. As Auria grew up, she began to see Senwell as an older brother, and Senwell saw Auria as a younger sister.

Alchemy
Auria was just a child when she met with It and became an Alchemist. This was also the last time before she set out on a journey with Senwell, Ross, and Nicosia that she saw her father.

Becoming an Officer
Auria was extremely hesitant to become an officer of the military, though she eventually agreed to when she was talked into it by Senwell. She was, as an Alchemist who provides many services to the Military, promoted to Captain instantly. She is completely unaware of the expectations or regulations that come with being an officer, and she is unknowledgeable with military ranks or hierarchy, at one point asking Grenadier Senwell if he was a higher rank than she was and wondered why Sergeant Nicosia and Lieutenant Ross were saluting to her.

Quotes
“Is… Is that you dad?”

“A pretty gem for a pretty lady!”

“You think I still got a chance at life?”

“And I have a license to kick your ass!”

“Oh man, getting married will be so much fun!”

“And in the end, we’re back where we started off,”

“And meanwhile, life goes on, but I’m scared of living,”

“I’d be worthless as an Alchemist if I just gave up here,”

“Respect and dignity go hand in hand, luckily I have neither,”

'''“What? Human transmutation? Are you trying to get me killed?”'''

“Man, if I wanted to climb the tower of Babilla, I’d just get a ladder,”

“Even if the Gods were real, they wouldn't care about your problems,”

“The law of equivalent exchange dictates that I have to give you this!”

“Thought I could fly, turns out, the ground’s a lot harder than you think,”

“Well, you know, I am very stubborn, so I think I might just pass on that,”

'''“Just putting this flask in some horse dung, wanna touch it? It’s squishy!”'''

“There’s no such thing as a useless ingredient, everything is useful in Alchemy.”

“Witches and magic and all that junk don’t exist, science and alchemy, that’s where reality lies,”

“Humans hate doing the same thing forever, and they very rarely ever do things to completion,”

“If life ever makes you suffer, then I’ll uproot it with my own two hands so that you never suffer again!”

“Once you start to go down this path, you can't ever go back, can't ever hope for a normal life, not ever,”

“It doesn’t matter who you were yesterday, all that matters is the person that you want to become today,”

'''“Pffft! You’re so silly! Let’s make a co-promise, a promise to each other, to always and forever be friends!”'''

“Nah, no countries I know don’t allow women to marry, and if there were, I’d go there and beat them up myself!”

“Yeah… This is home… We burnt it to the ground, just us kids, poured oil all around it and lit it up,  now it’s like this,”

'''“Grenadier, chin up, it won’t be the end of the world, I mean, I’m here, you know? I’ll save everyone if things get rough,”'''

"Humans are born to learn to live, and to learn to live a good life, so no, I can't ever give up on trying to make things right,"

“Hmm, I always wondered if the ‘gods’ that everyone worships are actually just extremely skilled alchemists, god-like alchemists,”

“Things in the world cannot be created nor destroyed, I do not create or destroy, I rearrange, that is the way of an Alchemist,”

“The law of equivalent exchange, well I say equivalent, it's more like, almost or nearly equivalent, it's kinda hard to measure really,”

“We Alchemists prefer to prevent death, treat diseases, all that stuff, but once someone's dead, they're dead, no amount of Alchemy will bring them back,”

'“No no no! I am absolutely positively not'' a witch! I’m an alchemist, don’t you see my hat! It’s curved! Witches have straight points at the end of their hats!”'''

'''“What?? Magic? No no, magic doesn’t exist, that’s all alchemy, what you’re doing there, you’re creating something by destroying something else! That’s what alchemy is!”'''

“I think, that if you widen your field of view, really try hard, you can make friends with anyone, doesn’t matter where they’re from, or what they believe, if you try, you’ll succeed,”

'''“Pffft, I could barely do anything with Pride, I’m not ready to face down homunculi on my own, but I mean, I want to take a bigger role, you know? That’s why I fought him to begin with,”'''

'''“Grenadier, I don’t think you realize, this isn’t something that you or anyone else can do alone, so let me take a crack at it, alright? And if that doesn’t work, I’ll come running right back to you guys, same as before,”'''

'''“The goal of every new Alchemist is to learn the secrets of the world… And the goal of every tenured Alchemist is to live in ignorance of those secrets, as for me? I'd rather be showered in pretty ladies for the rest of my life,”'''

'''“Sometimes I wonder if the sky is even real… Can I believe in something I'll never have? I can rearrange just about anything into whatever I want… And it isn’t like I’m suffering, but even with all that, the sky really is the limit… I’ll never have it,”'''

“Nothing should really matter except what kind of person you are, not your ethnicity, or your religion, I've spent my whole life being judged because I didn't believe in the Ikarian gods, and I was a foreigner, and I remember asking myself, 'Why am I so different?'”

“Once upon a time, there was an Alchemist who believed he could cheat death, he tried as many rituals and sacrifices as he could, but nothing bore fruit, us Alchemists try our hardest to fight death, a never-ending struggle, but nobody, not even the greatest of Alchemists ever find a way, we get close, but we never quite get there,”

'''“Ah, the reason? Well... It’s because… It was never an orphanage at all, it was… A research laboratory, they never wanted to keep any of the kids for too long… We were all used for their sick… Twisted. Evil. Sinister experiments… And all our friends that suddenly ‘transferred’ orphanages… Or were ‘adopted,’ it all made sense, neither of those were true, they died, they all died and nothing we could do could bring them back! And no gods came to help us!”'''

“I saw my own people crumble and fall into the same dark pit that the Ikarians have, there’s no helping two sides that refuse to help themselves, I’m all for equality, but I don’t ever want to be mean to someone just because they were mean to me, sure it fits with equivalent exchange, but equivalent exchange is bullshit when you’re not applying it to Alchemy, these are social constructs, and they’re all garbage anyway, I’d rather die than let society tell me what I can or can’t do,”

'''“The storybooks always tell of valiant heroes who slew dragons and saved the people by the millions, for my part, I prefer being one of those villagers that are saved. Everyone always loved the heroes, the main protagonist of every story! For my part… It’s not that I’d prefer being a villager saved, more like that’s what I know I’ll own up to be. And thus, in the end, everyone lived happily ever after. For my part… Is that even a feasible reality? As a villager, there’s not much for me to do,”'''

'''“Oh, resurrecting a human, huh? Let me enlighten you a bit here, a human body consists of forty-three kilograms of Oxygen, sixteen kilograms of Carbon, seven kilograms of Hydrogen, one-point-eight kilograms of Nitrogen, one-kilogram of Calcium, seven hundred eighty grams of Phosphorus, one hundred forty grams of Potassium, one hundred forty grams of Sulfur, one-hundred grams of Sodium, ninety-five grams of Chlorine, nineteen grams of Magnesium, and some other trace elements, those are the components of a human body, the blueprints, the building blocks, and I doubt that anyone, ‘god’ or not, would be able to bring back a human, at least not like that, but eh, what do I know, I’m just a Godless Alchemist,”'''