Tellenani Valaician - Finished

[Lisenet]

Name: Tellenani (Tellen) Valaician

Age: twenty-three

Race: human

Allegiance: Broddring

Occupation: Travel, Conversation, Listening

Physical Description:

Tellen is of average height for a human woman at five feet, five inches, and with an average build. On occasion she’ll wrap her waist and torso with rags to discourage others from thinking her fit, but only when she feels the specific need to appear pudgy. Her skin used be soft like most noblewomen’s, but preferring movement to a life of stasis, her hands and feet have grown callused, her skin gaining color in the summer’s sun. Her hair is dark—not quite black, but not quite brown or red either—and hangs in kinks to just below her shoulder blades, when she’s taken the effort to comb it at least. When she’s traveling it hangs in an unruly tangle or bundled up beneath a scarf, out of her way and out of sight, therefore out of anyone’s criticism. Between her dark hair and brown eyes she could be anyone’s daughter, anyone’s wife or sister. With the calluses and often absent man to escort her, it is even less likely that she be the daughter of any man so important as the Commanding General of an entire army, no mean title. But as misleading others—or allowing them to mislead themselves—without telling a single lie is one of her favorite (and often harmless) pastimes, ‘letting herself go’ has many advantages, and the disadvantages are easily forgotten.

Tellen wears whatever is most useful or most comfortable to her on any given day. When she travels, almost always a simple, strong, earthy green dress with skirts wide enough to allow her to run properly if she feels the need or desire to do so. Sometimes the dress is blue. She only wears warm colors when she can’t avoid it, such as when she’s at home and her parents still have influence over her actions. Her traveling outfits are worn along the hems but made to last, and contain no additional frippery such as lace or embroidery that might discourage her if they were torn or muddied, as often her clothes are. Her boots are of soft, sturdy leather and show equal use, but she—in a rare show of fiscal determination—commissioned specially so they laced tightly up the back of the calf, not the front. If Tellen could banish one pain from the world, it would be the pain of copper grommets and leather laces cutting into her shins when she barks them on such inconveniently placed items as wells and walls, thus the lacings in the back, where there are no hard body parts to take such stringent abuse.

Most of what Tellen wears is worthy of little description because she only draws attention to herself when she feels like it, and prefers to go unnoticed for the most part, as it allows her to notice more things herself. It helps that she has a face that, while attractive in its own way, is nonremarkable and generic enough to pass by without sticking in a person’s mind. She has perfected the art of looking at others in such a way as they’re not quite certain if she’s pleased, expectant, irritated or simply bored (a rarity), but often enough she uses it just to tease.

Personality:

One of Tellen’s forerunning principles is not to regret her thoughts, actions, opinions, or simply how her life is unwinding. Of the parts she can change, she will if they displease her; of those she cannot, why worry about something over which you have no influence? She does whatever she believes is right at the moment and tries not to berate herself for her actions later if they don’t work as she expects them to. While she’s particularly talented at subtly influencing others or saying one thing and meaning another, Tellen also has the unfortunate habit of being rather obtuse when it comes to noticing things that most people would consider obvious. She notices torn stitches in a man’s boots and can ascertain that he thinks little of her, but won’t notice if the man’s son finds her attractive. Most of her obliviousness, that such as it is, is rooted in her ability to notice the things that are useful to her and ignore the things that are not. She’s not accustomed to carrying unnecessary baggage or gear with her, and her mind is kept just as neatly.

When Tellen sees something that is broken or inefficient, she automatically wants to fix or adjust it. When she has an opinion she isn’t leery of sharing it, but tends to keep them to herself simply because she has no active reasons to lay them on others unless asked for them. She can babble until the crows fly backward, but on the whole, the more words she says at once, the fewer that are of any realistic importance. She’s been known to convince strangers that all ravens are male and all crows are female, or that fish only swim upright when they know people are looking at them, simply for the fun of it. However, having an army commander for her father has taught her how to relay information as succinctly as possible and without bias, if she so chooses.

When it comes to fear or intimidation, Tellen is prideful enough not to want to allow anyone to ever be capable of frightening her—especially when they are doing so intentionally—and stubborn enough to at least resist showing her intimidation until it no longer benefits her to hide it. While she travels extensively with the vague wish of someday convincing enough people that all the races fighting with one another as they are will only lead to the annihilation of all of them, she is, at heart, seeded with the selfish desire not to overexert herself for strangers. If she sees the reason in running into a fight she knows she won’t survive, the only reason she will do so is because somewhere hidden in the selfishness is a belief that she alone may be able to kill the one man standing behind the enemy whose death will bring peace, and her death with his will have brought her decades of remembrance for her noble sacrifice which, rather than being pure and self-sacrificing, is in fact her way of proving that she will not die unremembered, and her death will have had purpose, therefore so has her life. She wants to preserve as much of value in this fractured world as she can before it either folds under or loses more than it can afford to lose if it ever wishes to shine from the light of the sun and stars, not from the reflection of the blades beneath them.

Habits:

Turning small items upside down when she’s being forced to stand in one place or stay in one room for too long a period; fiddling with random objects in her hands or pockets.

Skills:

Verbal subterfuge, well-spoken, speaks the ancient language, trickery, good aim and strength when throwing, acting/mimicry, disguise, plays the cello, hairdressing, learning new tricks.

History:

Tellenani’s mother once told her she was born a nuisance, the day she spent all afternoon learning to juggle and in the process broke every single ceramic dish in the kitchen, though the title of most willful still went to her brother, Ademar. Tellen’s will asserted itself more subtly than did her brother’s. When he began learning the ancient language and Tellen was stuck learning fine embroidery, she began to so excel in her stitchery that her mother let her leave the lesson early, and thus she had the time to sneak into her brother’s lesson and learn as well. She struggled to learn the complex word structures, in part because she could only listen in on half the lesson and couldn’t ask any questions—as she wasn’t even supposed to be there—and in part because she only really wanted to learn the language because Ademar could learn it freely and the lessons had been denied to her. He still is more fluent than she is.

However, with such a strong military backbone in the family, at least the women did not object to her learning to defend herself. Every woman ought to know how they admitted. Men could not always be relied upon to do their chivalric duty, and Tellen could not always be relied upon to stay in safe company. When her daughter wanted to learn everything that her son learned, their mother accused her of wishing to be a man. To this Tellen retorted, “Of course not. Trousers bunch up in odd places and are expected to be troublesome. I can get so much farther by being ignored until I feel the need to be noticed.” Their mother threw up her hands in vexation.

But it wasn’t until Tellen abruptly packed up and left one morning, before anyone but the milkmaids were up and about, headed for the second-nearest town or village that crossed her way. She had made copies of her father’s and grandfather’s maps before leaving, but she knew they would expect her to be in the nearest one when they began looking for her, and it would give her the time she wanted to further distance herself from their reaches. It wasn’t that she disliked her home, far from it. She just believed she could accomplish more good when away from it. And besides, she had already read the entire library, what more was there for her here? She needed the knowledge and experience that her family’s estate could not provide, and probably would not willingly, so she left to find it herself.

Because she hadn’t wanted to take much money with her, and because she wished to learn more of each town she stayed in, she took small jobs along the way, pausing in each. She lived in the home of twin merchant boys whose father was away on business and whose mother had lung disease, caring for them as the mother wished she could, for six months before moving on to the next village, where she spent the next five months with a poorer family of goat- and sheep-herders who had recently lost their son and couldn’t afford to hire the help they needed. She took the place of their lost son and asked for no payment in return for the food and shelter they provided, also taking the opportunity to add tiny details to her maps as she explored the area.

Over the next two years Tellen took temporary jobs as a washerwoman, a lady’s maid, seamstress, milkmaid, blacksmith’s assistant, and nanny again, this time for four young ones whose mother had to work and whose father had run away. She learned how to comport herself for every station by integrating herself among the lower classes and by hovering behind the upper, reveling in her ability to convince so many people at once of her birth in various classes simply by rearranging the attention in her expression and bearing and the clothes she wore. Eventually, she began to wonder, was there anyone she could not convince?

Roleplaying Sample:

Mother,

I apologize for leaving well before you’ve even risen in the morning, but it is my hope that by the end of this letter—assuming you read it to the end instead of throwing it in the fire, which would be your right considering the impropriety of my actions—that you will understand my motives for going. I do not ask you to agree with them, just to see why I believe myself to be in the right for having left.

You see, even though I am safely ensconced within the tall walls and windows here, though my education has been beyond repute, though you have raised me to carry every impeccability of manner that you yourself are known for, the life of a well-bred lady is not the most fitting life for me. I am quite happy to sit inside and stitch, or weave, or chatter with the cooks and maids, but that life would only suit me if there was nothing outside these doors that I believed required my attention. Outside, through the warped glass of my window, the horizon grows grayer every morning. I remember it being blue when I was a child, yellow, indigo, green. Such lovely soft, rain-sweetened colors. But I know it is not the weather’s influence that it appears pitted like rotted stone today, seems to shimmer and disappear some days, some days encroaching like it is about to topple down upon us and some days retreating like a dry tide sucking away from shore. Entire wars are being fought outside our walls, Mother, and while I know you wish my temperament not to be roughened by the knowledge of them, even despite your most valiant efforts I have noticed the change. Father comes home more fatigued every visit. Grandfather’s scars ache him more than they ever did before. You, even, stand at the front windows and look out with your hand upon your throat as though holding back words that you believe will do nothing to stop the crumbling.

However, I will not hold mine back. You, Father, Grandfather—you have all taught me to be strong in character, strong in mind, and strong in conviction. The only wrong in the world is doing that which you do not believe in. I cannot believe in a cushioned life of sugared pastries and whether to use the gold thread or the cream until I believe there is no more assistance I can give to the world outside these doors. I have gained, from all of you, the skills of debate and language and logic and rhetoric and even how to preserve the wholeness of my own skin in a crowd of those who wish to dent it. I was born with the desire to utilize such skills. I leave now, unhappy that I haven’t your blessing or anyone else’s, to do as much as I believe I can to try to return my horizon to the same complacent hues it once boasted. The world is hurting. If I cannot stop it from destroying itself, at the very least I will try to repair what damages I can. Likely I think too much of myself to believe I can accomplish so much, but better for others to think little of me and have me surpass their beliefs than for me to believe little of myself and fall short of even my own expectations.

I promise to visit. I promise not to be killed.
All of my love,
Tellenani

[phrostphyre]

Accepted! Well done, and welcome to the site!