Elka Stone

"A Stone neva sinks! And I don' plan ta any time soon."

― Elka Stone

Elka Stone is a Kul Tiran swashbuckler who has previous ties with several organisations including the Kul Tiran navy and smugglers rings that work both through other organisations and independently. However, after an incident that involved her father several years ago, Elka fled her home and cut most ties to the old places she worked. Elka traveled for several years, mostly running from those she used to know before she was found by Gladnar Brightfist who introduced her into the organisation she works with to this day; The Lamplighters.

Description
When looking at Elka Stone you can immediately recognize her heritage as a woman from Kul Tiras. She is tall, towering over many of the other humans she works with, her strong broad shoulders and muscular physique a dead give away of the great strength she possesses.

Elka has many oddities to her look, the first many notice would be her waist-length, curly ginger hair that is often kept in either a braid or a bun - though it's often bursting at the seams with rebellious curls finding their way in her face. Her hair is easily the best quality about her, it's shine and bounce quite beautiful. Along with her ginger mane, Elka's tanned skin is sun-damaged and freckled, with almost every bit of exposed skin bearing some sort of dot or mark that shows the time she's spent above deck in the sun. Elka's signature smile is often marked by the massive gap she has between her two front teeth, making it a smile that not many people would forget.

Elka is scarred, many gashes and burns covering her body, the largest of these marks would be the massive burn mark that starts from the right side of her chin, trailing all the way down her body, and wrapped around her right leg, stopping just above her knee. These scars are accompanied by beautiful, intricate tattoos that mark Elka's caramel skin. On her left arm is a nautical themed sleeve, the crown jewel of this artwork being a ship on a stormy sea; the ship is titled The Sirens Wail. On the back of Elka's neck in a kraken, with tendrils sprawling across her shoulders and back, curling around themselves and sections of Elka's body.

Personality
Elka is quite well known for her boisterous personality, and her ability to get a bargain on almost any good you could think of buying. She is loud and outgoing, willing to strike up a conversation with nearly anybody, regardless of their looks, background, or personality; and more often than not the pair will somehow get along swimmingly.

Her old nickname "Smooth Talk Stone" doesn't come from nowhere. Elka is quite well known for talking her way out of nearly every bad situation she's been in. Those who know her well, or who have worked with her in the past, swear that she could sell ice to a Tuskarr and make him swear he has never seen a more beautiful creation in his life.

Though despite the mild mischief she wears in her trademark grin, there is something underneath the layers of wit and laughter that this Kul Tiran hides. A subtle streak of kindness that unless you have know her for a while, you would never believe exists. She masks it well through her acts of hard-headed stubbornness and unwillingness to let anybody get any way that is not her own. Though if you look hard enough, you can see this kindness in the small things she does. It's in the way she makes sure no comrade is left behind, how she will always make sure everybody is okay after a fight, and even in the way she tries to get everybody drinks because she knows she will get them at half price.

Early Life
Elka was born at The Stone Estate in Stormsong Valley in the year 601 by the Kings Calendar to Merida and Lucien Stone. The Stone family are well known shipwrights, creating beautiful ships that are mostly used by the Kul Tiran navy, and this family tradition was passed onto Elka from a young age. Little was passed to Elka from her mothers side as her mother died when Elka was six. Other than these details, little is known about Elka's younger years, though rumors state that she was always a quite the charmer, even in her youth.

The Navy
At the age of eighteen Elka was drafted by the Kul Tiran navy, as per her family's tradition. Being the daughter of a shipwright, her main duty was to keep track of the ship itself; the stock it carried, the condition it was in, what it had encountered and how it had faired, etc. She would often stay up after everybody had fallen asleep to make sure that everything was in check. Reports state that she rarely slept while on board the ships, she always had something that she was working on, and she would not stop until her job was done.

It was around this time when Elka had joined her fathers "Side business". For Lucien Stone was not all that he seemed to be, and it was Elka who knew this better than anybody. Lucien and his late wife Merida owned a smugglers ring known as the Bloodstone Smugglers, where they would get illegal and/or dangerous goods to anybody who might need them, regardless of where they were. The Bloodstone ring was infamous for getting large shipments of cargo across and into major cities and ports that other smugglers would often struggle to go near. To this day it is unknown how they manage this, and how they have kept it running all this time.