Captain Valeria, Scourge of the Skies

Captain Valeria is not a romantic legend, but a chilling footnote indexed under the Post-Schism Recovery Index—a demonstrable consequence of our failure to secure volatile assets following the Great Sundering. She serves as the singular, aggressive will commanding the Cobalt Corsairs, a pirate fleet operating entirely outside the rigid chronological authority of the Dwarven Abbey. Valeria’s history is rooted in defiant opportunism: records suggest she was born on the harsh fringes of the Iron-Grip Mountains, a region perpetually destabilized by energy leakage, giving her a deep, cynical perspective on dwarven hierarchical control. Her military background, though unrecorded in official ledgers, hints at a rigorous training lost to the chaos of the Age of Ruin. Her ascent was purely meritocratic, culminating in her command of the flagship, the formidable Aetherium Dawn. This vessel, powered by stolen and crudely modified Aetherium Conduits, symbolizes Valeria's entire ethos: raw, dangerous power repurposed for personal gain and rebellion against the established truth. She specializes in calculated raids against convoys belonging to the Order of the Azure Hand, viewing them as merely another set of self-righteous authoritarians ripe for plunder. Her strategic mind is meticulous, focusing on disrupting resource flow and mapping secret, undocumented aerial routes. A key moment that solidified her reputation occurred during the infamous ‘Raid on the Gilded Spire,’ where she successfully breached a heavily fortified mountain station using a calculated sequence of aerial maneuvers and unexpected sonic weaponry—a technique I shall formally designate as the Sky-Captain's Gambit. Her existence is a constant, kinetic challenge to the recorded order, forcing the Abbey to acknowledge that not all historical threats originate from the silent stone; some rise from the unpredictable chaos of the air.