Dolores Durant

Dolores Durant is a female Human engineer. At sixty-four years of age, she has a long, storied life: as the daughter of farmers, she used her knack for invention to create devices to help ward away centaurs. These devices were simple, at first, given her provincial education and resources -- but she was always figuring out something clever to do with them. An Asuran Static scholar, Trell, happened upon her farmstead while travelling to a research site. Upon seeing both her potential and her curiosity about his own work, he agreed to take her on as an assistant.

With Trell's tutlage and resources, Dolores flourished. As his gangly assistant, she roamed over more of the world than she could have possibly dreamed. They went to Ascalon, where she learned that the Charr were not as one-sided as her mother had taught her; they went to Divinity's Reach, the city she had always heard of but never seen, with the Six watching over their people in stony guise. She met the Sylvari, an amazing race born from a sentient tree, and the gigantic Norn who spoke of the Six as spirits. And, of course: Rata Sum. The College of Statics provided enough traditional sense to ground her as she learned -- their notions of enduring, reliable technology echoed her parents' conservative advice.

Dolores gave thirty years of her life to the Statics, and while she was always an outsider to the Asurans, she did manage to prove herself to some of Trell's associates. When Trell fell to the one thing he had always prepared for -- a lab accident -- those peers invited Dolores to stay, but the death of her mentor and compatriot shook her. Instead of trying to continue proving herself to the Asuran community, she decided to return to Kryta, and her people.

Deciding against settling back into farm life, Dolores instead decided to make a life in Divinity's Reach. She continued making gadgets for daily convenience: a turret to water the garden, a personal golem alarm to wake up late sleepers, a well-packed medical kit which could be used by any layman in emergencies. She distributed these to the commoners around her, and asked little for them; only enough to cover the supplies and pay her supper. She became well-liked in her community, and the sense of belonging and usefulness made it a fond time in her life. She was the lucky sort of person, after all, who found happiness both in new experiences and in settling down.

And yet, as she grew into her fifties, Dolores felt a sense of unease as she listened to news from outside the city -- Destiny's Edge had fallen, and Kralkatorrik rose to tear into the land. Her patron goddess, Kormir, showed the importance of stepping up to assume responsibility; and Dolores, too, felt the need to use her skills to help restore order and peace, even though she could not hope to match even the shadows of such heroics.

(Mundane salvation might not make ballads, after all, but it still helped people.)

When she reached out to her contacts in the College again, they were amused that it did not even take Dolores a decade to leave retirement... and, eventually, they even stopped poking fun at her long enough to extend their assistance. Travelling, after all, took resources.

She's been out there since, though she still retires to her home in Destiny's Edge when it gets to be too much. Her wisdom and wit have served to support many of the people in Tyria -- and surprised a few young adventurers who didn't expect someone like her, to boot. As an old woman, Dolores has seen a lot of what the world has to offer, and her experience serves her well. The inventions don't hurt, either.