Born in the village of Badrin in the Khalakope Mountains, Tiarna is the youngest in her family and of her parent's six children, she is the only daughter. Having grown up in a well off middle class family, she has had a comfortable, sheltered and loving life, wanting for nothing. And is the first to cheerfully admit that she's been horribly spoiled.

 Her mother is the village's healer, and her father, a trader in fine furs, skins, herbs and spices. As for her older brothers, two work with their father in trapping, skinning and trading skins and furs, another is learning to be a healer/herbalist and the last two are young warriors who hire themselves out to trade trains as protection. As a result, Tiarna gets to see her brothers more often than many of the other out of town students. As the Aonair traders are often down from the mountains trading to Pallahade. And of course at the academy, making sure that the school gets first pick of their wares, and the best prices ever since Tiarna was accepted there.

An average student in the study classes, she excels more at the more physically demanding classes. Extremely athletic, she's highly skilled with a bow, and is showering great promise with the sword. And as the daughter of a trader and a healer, she has quite a bit of knowledge on herbs and spices, and hunting an skinning. As well as on mountaineering and other skills from her prior life.

The first person in her family to move farther from Badrin than the next village over in four generations, her parents were upset when their only daughter choose to live so far away. But in the end were unable to refuse her heart's desire though they secretly hope she won't bond and will return to them. Even further to her family's distress, since Tiarna has left, several of her nieces and nephews have been showing a desire to follow in her footsteps and leave the mountains to see what else is out there.

While Tiarna has a wanderer's spirit and desire to see new faces and places, she has very little concept of the horrible things that can happen to people. Or done to people. Still innocent about many things, bad things are something that happens to other people far, far away. And while she knows that bad things happen, and can even happen to her, she's not about to hide away in fear of things that MIGHT happen.

At 5'11" and 128 lbs, Tiarna, or Tia to friends, is a tall, slender youth. She has thick waist length strawberry blond hair and sparkling blue eyes. Easy going and energetic, she hates sitting still for long and is a bubbly, bright and friendly girl, most at home in the woods. But confident enough to feel comfortable in just about any place and has made a large group of friends at the academy and in Pallahade. She can almost always be seen with a wide smile on her face and at least one of her pets perched on her shoulder and a flute in hand.

As of yet she hasn't had any serious relationships. She was raised on romantic stories of how her parents met and wooed each other and she has dreams of being swept off her feet by some great romance. Her best friend at the academy is Jerlain, and the two have roomed together for years.

Firedance came to the Academy as a colt, hungry and tired after wandering Uen for months.  As a foal, his mother had belonged to a renegade band of young wildborns who resisted the old ways, but she had strayed one day in search of water, slipped on a stone, and died instantly.  Firedance, too young to mindspeak, eventually found his way down to a Roug branch office where he was taken in by a kindly lieutenant and escorted to the Academy for training.  Respected but aloof, as most wildborns are, Firedance is also a little bit snobbish about his heritage, solitary, very proud, quiet, and austere.  He has an intense dislike for pretentiousness in people and 'corns, but ironically, is completely unaware of his own pretension. Firedance sees himself as outside of society and therefore qualified to judge it, and is very bitter about his past and bitter towards the wildborns who cast his dam out.  To him, the best way to exist is to exist without any connections to any affiliation but the Light, and he trains hard not for the Roug but because he feels it's his duty as a unicorn to do so.

He's highly athletic and treats the other unicorns with either detached friendliness if he likes them or disdain if he doesn't.  While many of the younger unicorns look up to him, he has few true friends (though he spends a lot of time with Piper and Shade, when he's around)...not because of any insecurities, but because he has problems relating to anyone but himself.  His heart is cold, but his purpose is true, and he would eradicate all evil from the earth if he could. Firedance does not expect to Bond, but it would probably heal him more than he has ever imagined anything could.  His talent is exerting "healing fire", which works much like crystal healing only via a pure, blue Light-powered flame.  He does not know that he is Wildfire's half brother, and some tension exists between them because both are so proud.  Each secretly resents the other looking just like him, and senses his own faults (narrow-mindedness, pretension, arrogance) in the other.  A penetrating and dangerous fighter.

Stats: 16.2h, Male, black w/ flame colored mane & tail, 4 years old, wildborn in 107 ADT. First listed 4/16/01.