Okay, let's try this again. Hopefully the #$%^& computer will let me post it this time ...
Name: Thérèse de Refuge-Nouveau, but just "Therese" will be used after this introduction, diacriticals being something of a pain in the ass; also called "The Flame" or "La Flamme"
Age: About 30; she herself doesn't know her exact age
Occupation: Knight of the Sisterhood, a semi-monastic order of female soldier-mages who have the single-minded mission of rescuing women who have got into trouble in Goriel; more on that below.
Appearance: Thérèse is unusually tall for a woman, at nearly six feet, and of slender build, although not exceptionally so. She has long, brilliant red hair, the source of her nicknames, that contains a single silver streak and is normally worn down around her shoulders, although when she is trying to pass as a man (which is comparatively easy for her because of her height, not to mention long practice), it is tucked up under a wide-brimmed men's hat that she carries everywhere. She has a heart-shaped face and gray eyes, the combination of which makes her age hard to guess; the face looks younger, and the eyes older, than she actually is. She usually wears light leather armor that is intended more to make her look a bit bulkier rather than to turn a blade. Clothes appropriate for a manual worker are worn over this when she is in Goriel, more frequently men's clothes than women's. She carries a short sword (with which she is skilled, although hardly an expert), openly when looking male, and carefully concealed when looking female. In general the character
Bernadette from the "Flipside" webcomic represents her appearance quite well.
History: Her origins are a bit of a mystery even to Thérèse herself, because of the intense indoctrination she got when she joined the Sisterhood, which was so rigorous that she basically forgot her own childhood. She was born in a small Northern Confederacy town, but before she was ten years old, was given over to the Sisterhood for training, and has spent the rest of her life in their mountainous citadel-city. She proved a fast learner, and at an early age, started joining her new sisters on their rescue missions into Goriel, a place that she and her companions hate with every fiber of their being. She was on one such mission when first introduced, albeit a somewhat atypical one: usually, she serves as a scout within Goriel itself, identifying women who need help and reporting back to the Sisterhood, rather than doing the rescuing (and escorting to a place of refuge) herself. However, the Sisterhood knows that playing the scout role all the time is both emotionally taxing (it's a very dangerous job) and in some regards unsatisfying, so the scouts get occasional breaks to serve as rescuers, as she was doing.
Character: Outside the Sisterhood's sanctuary (where she is considerably more outgoing, but she prefers not to spend time there), Thérèse is quiet, calm, and soft-spoken, to the point of seeming aloof. However, this is largely a defensive mechanism that she has learned to help her blend into Goriel, and her actual personality is considerably more animated. Like essentially all members of the Sisterhood, she is utterly dedicated to her work, and like most of them, prefers being out in the field, away from the citadel, doing the rescues rather than planning them and helping the rescued women start a new life. (This doesn't keep her from occasionally tieing one on when she does go back to the citadel for a while, as a means of stress relief.)
She is bisexual and generally monogamous, but at the moment, is not in a relationship. Her religion, like that of the rest of the Sisterhood, is very unusual in human space and centers around worship of a group of goddesses they call the "Five Great Mothers." The practice of a religion like this, in terrain not too far from the troll homelands, might get one wondering, but in fact, the Sisterhood has nothing whatever to do with the trolls, and Thérèse doesn't have a drop of troll blood in her. (Her height and unusual hair color might suggest a little bit of half-elven blood, but she has none of that either, to her knowledge.)
She is a potent spellcaster, but can only use magic related to her profession: basic (if powerful) offense and defense, standard detection magic with no frills, and a bit of healing. In addition to proficiency with her short sword, she's reasonably good with firearms, but since a woman caught in Goriel with a gun would be put to death almost instantly, she doesn't carry one on missions. Her unarmed combat skills are very limited. In general, Thérèse much prefers to avoid a fight, but her combat magic is powerful enough that she will prevail most of the time if forced into one.