| "I was wrong to assume that you were a mare who wished to push herself and calculate her strengths. If you wish to lower the difficulty of this exercise, I shall do so. However, someday, you will be grown, and the likes of Pilate and Bellesmith may depend on you, and I doubt the world will allow itself to be any easier." |
| - Urohringr, "That is Why You Fail" |
Roarke, known in Searonese circles as "Roarke Most Rare", is a "metal mare" and former bounty hunter from the land of Searo. Making her first appearance during Eljunbyro in the chapter ‘Enter Roarke’, she was first shown as an enemy of Rainbow Dash, out for the extensive bounty placed on her head by the agents of Ledomare. Outside of her suit of mechanical armor, she is a brown earth pony mare with protruding mechanical plugs on her body and a braided mane dyed red from the blood of her felled opponents. She wears mechanical eye-lenses on her face, but they are in fact a removable cover for her natural clear blue eyes. Interestingly, in Austraeoh, Rainbow Dash left Gold Petals exclusively because her eyes- also blue- did not match Applejack's emerald eyes. Clearly, by the events of Urohringr, Rainbow Dash has learned to let her old friends go to some degree.
Presented as cold-blooded, tactically-minded, ruthless and distant (as well as untrustworthy) early in the series, Roarke has since made attempts during Urohringr to warm up to her shipmates aboard the Noble Jury. As a hold over from her upbringing, she tends to view stallions as inferior, referring to them as "breeders" up until recently. She is slow to trust strangers, and is constantly on the lookout for signs of betrayal, and leans towards a "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. She has taken to training Kera in the use of her abilities. Back in Searo, she was also close to Imre, whom she had taken in after the latter escaped from her father, Shell.
She spends much of her time maintaining and testing her weapons, as well as the Lounge craft she obtained which came to be called Whizzball. By the end of Urohringr and throughout Yaerfaerda, she is Rainbow Dash's primary romantic interest.
After the Noble Jury helps to defeat the Goblin Cartel in Val Roa, Roarke makes the hard decision to stay behind and take over leadership of the goblins, replacing Haman so that she can guide them away from their self-destructive path and show them harmony. However, she has an ulterior motive in protecting the rest of the Noble Jury in Rainbow Dash's absence.
She is called "most rare" because she is one mare who was inducted into the Great Hall at Searo's Hold without passing a traditional rite of passage. Rather than killing her mother, which was the expectation of Searonese society, she lived as an outcast, hunting bounties independently to the scorn of her compatriots, until she was able to attract the attention of Lady Pestiferous.