During my research looking for the type of weaponry used by warriors in 900 AD I stumbled across an image that caught my attention.
While searching for Claymore swords an interesting sculpted figure caught my eye that in part encapsulated what I was looking for in my main character.

http://s6.postimage.org/oyd4um95t/Claymore_Clare_2.jpg

This character turned out to be Clare form the Manga series Claymore, so I decided to take a look at more examples of this character and see if I can draw any more inspiration form the manga series.