Post by Elloria on Dec 24, 2010 2:25:15 GMT -5
Name:
Samar (meaning the darkness of the night)
Age:
16
Race:
Human
Occupation:
Slave
Allegiance:
Only herself now that her tribe is mostly dead and scattered to the four winds
Physical Description:
Though hailing from a tribe of naturally swarthy people, Samar’s skin is markedly darker. It is that rare black that seems almost purplish in hue, though she spent surprisingly little time out in the sun. It is soft and supple, nor is there a single blemish to be found anywhere. Once you get past her exceptionally dark skin, you’re generally struck by all of her other features. She is tall, standing at an impressive 6’1. Neither is she exceedingly thin for that height. She is muscular, yet her slender figure is soft lines and curves. She has an hourglass shape - the kind that many human women envy - with a heavy ‘top’ and healthy ‘bottom’. Resting above beautiful high cheekbones, her eyes are large and wide, reminiscent of a doe’s with their size and warm brown color. Her hair once reached mid-calf in length and was extremely well-kept. It was always in braids, making it easier to take care of, and pulled up to create fantastic and gravity-defying styles. Since her capture, however, it has been cut much shorter and is kept only shoulder-length. However, it also falls in flattering waves around her face instead of being pulled straight by its own weight.
Her clothing isn’t very glamorous, however, and it never has been. When she still lived with her tribe, she wore simple beaded doe-skin dresses. The light tan color was always a sharp contrast against her ebony flesh. Now that she’s floating around in the slave market, she wears shabby, filthy rags that barely cover anything. She does, however, have a necklace of exceptional beauty that she carries with her everywhere. She rarely wears it, preferring to keep it in a small pouch tucked away in her rags. It is a slender gold chain, studded all around with smaller rubies and emeralds. From the center of the chain hangs a large amethyst, carved to resemble a wolf howling. This necklace has been handed down from mother to daughter since before the tribe traveled to the Hadarac desert. She has ferociously held onto it, refusing to relinquish this last bit of her heritage to anyone for anything.
Personality:
Samar is quiet, reserved, and generally submissive. She approaches life with a calm and poise almost approaching indifference. Her life has always been one focused more on her internal world than the harsher external one. As a child, she preferred the calm and introspective activities of her tribe - weaving, tanning hides, beadwork, plant gathering, etc. When her mother forbade her from actively pursuing these, she pursued what she was ordered to. But she was never fully involved or interested in it. She was, however, one of the most devout worshipers of the Mother Wolf and the lesser gods. She participated during every festival, gave offerings during every sacrifice and even now prays daily to them.
Although she can appear indifferent, she cares in her own way. She is faithful and subservient to those she cares for. She will usually go out of her way to avoid hurting others, often to her own detriment. When with the slavers, it usually lost her food and clothing, though she was always in the good graces of the slavers. However, when something she deeply cares for is in danger she’s willing to fight and defend it. However, with her tribe out of her life now there is very little that has captured her heart like that. Aside from her mother’s necklace, she has yet to find a single thing or person she would be willing to fight for. And right now, she doesn’t expect to ever find such a thing. Still, she is resilient. She has endured much, but she knows that the Mother Wolf will give her strength.
History:
Life on the eastern edge of the Hadarac isn’t easy. Far from the protection of anything, including the riders, many would say it’s impossible to eke out a living there. There’s very few animals, fewer plants, and practically no water to speak of. Throw in frequent battles with the Urgals and other tribes over land, food, and that most precious water, it becomes something of a miracle that anyone could survive there. But the Gia tribe manages quite well. For uncounted generations, since the Mother Wolf first led them to the vast desert, the Gia have wandered near its borders. By the grace of Her, they have survived and for that they faithfully worship Her above all other gods.
It was into this harsh life that Samar was born. She was the only child of the current mkail (tribal leader). Hinewai was a proud woman who demanded perfection from her tribe. It had been demanded of her, after all. She expected the same of any man who would be her mate and of any child she might bear. And when Samar was born in the dead of night one summer, Hinewai was certain that she had the perfect child. Within hours, the child’s skin had darkened to its current hue and Hinewai knew just what she would name the girl. It was only appropriate that a child black as midnight, born in the night, should have a name that spoke of that darkness. From then on, the girl was called Samar.
And from then on, she was nothing but trouble for her mother. She was quiet as a baby, rarely crying or fussing. As she grew, her attitude didn’t vary greatly. And that was what troubled her mother. Samar had no desire to learn to fight or hunt or any of the other physically intense activities required for their tribes survival. She was far more content sitting with the weavers and medicine women, learning more peaceful crafts. The first time Hinewai caught Samar sitting with the weavers instead of at her spear lessons, she lost all patience with the girl. Samar was 6 at the time. After soundly thrashing the girl, Hinewai forbade Samar from doing such mundane tasks. As the only child of the mkail, it was Samar’s duty to learn all the skills necessary to lead the tribe when Hinewai died. For the next nine years, Samar’s nights were filled with the crafts of violence and survival. She learned how to shoot an arrow at a healthy buck as it fled with the herd, how to only use a spear and long sword when fighting an Urgal in a ‘fair’ fight, how to determine where a potential watering hole was and how likely it was that they would need to fight for it. Her eyes became accustomed to the darkness of the night, for her people were generally nocturnal - the nights of the desert are always cooler than the sweltering days. With her dark skin, she was sometimes indistinguishable from the black night, even to the night-vision eyes of her people. She learned stealth scouting, guerilla warfare, how to fool an enemy into thinking you’re one of the dead and countless other skills - most of which she has long since forgotten. But at the end of the night, when the sun would just begin to peek over the horizon Samar would leave her mother’s tent and spend a few hours with the diurnal gatherers and weavers. Around the time of her twelfth birthday, she began entering into battle with the more experienced warriors. She wasn’t the only child in the tribe sent into the field at that age, of course. It was a rite of passage. She slew her first Urgal with the help of the other warriors that day and lived to tell the tale. Perhaps half of the children who went out that day could say the same. From then on, she would be sent out with the fighters or the scouts to hone the skills she had already been practicing in relative safety.
This was how she spent her life until that terrifying day a year ago - the day her entire life shattered in front of her. That was the day the slavers found them. It was around noon, when even the day-walkers had retreated to the tents to escape the sun. She was curled up between her parents when they were all jerked awake by the sounds of frantic screams and weapons clashing. Her parents scrambled from the doe-skin rug they all slept upon, snatching up spears and swords. Samar did not immediately follow. Terrified by the sounds of her people being coldly slaughtered and captured, she initially cowered on the skin - frozen by fear. But as the sounds approached, she quickly fled the tent as well - leaving behind everything she had ever held dear. At first, she felt horror at seeing strange beings on equally strange creatures riding through her small tribe, killing many while sparing others. She had never seen a human with pale flesh before, nor had she ever encountered a horse. This, too, froze her in place. But soon, she took off through the tents, weaving in and out as she used her stealth skills to avoid the strange beings. She eventually reached the edge of the encampment with a good deal of luck and little trouble. Somewhat calmer by that point, she cast her eyes around for group of collapsed bodies to hide under. Her eyes soon lit upon a pair that seemed acceptable and so she crawled over to them. She didn’t recognize them when she reached them, their faces and bodies were so terribly maimed and shattered. She crawled beneath them, shifting the bodies so that she was completely covered and settled back. The stench of blood and the beginnings of decay was strong; for once, she was glad that she had been taken into battle. She never would have been able to tolerate it otherwise. For hours, she remained under those bodies and listened for the tell-tale silence that would signal the end of this terrifying ordeal.
And it did come eventually. She probably lay for another hour, making absolutely certain that nothing was stirring before she moved. And then she shoved the bodies off of her and crawled away, gulping in the fresh air - well, relatively fresh, anyway. When she felt cleansed once more, she turned to look back at the bodies that had saved her life. Her eyes widened as she saw a disturbingly familiar glimmer of purple hanging from the neck of one. She crawled back and rolled it over - and discovered her mother’s necklace dangling from an unrecognizable mess. She turned to the other body and hesitantly lifted its left shoulder. On the back was a raised series of scars in the shape of the Mother Wolf contained within radiating lines of scars. She scrambled back, horror and sorrow rapidly welling up in her heart. Her parents had shielded her from harm. But they had died to do it. It was a very sobering moment for the young girl. Without thinking, she took the necklace from her mother - taking great care to not break the fragile chain - and fled from the decimated encampment.
That was a mistake, actually. The first few days, she was fine. She had ripped some fabric and made the small pouch for her mother’s necklace. She tied it up with a bit of string also plucked from her dress and she has held onto for the past two years. She scavenged from bushes in the scrubland surrounding the Hadarac and tried to forget how her tribe had been destroyed. Sometimes, she asked the great Mother Wolf why such a tragedy had been allowed. Sometimes she thanked the Mother Wolf she was still alive. Many were the times she cursed the Mother Wolf for taking everything from her. Mostly, though, she felt numb. It was as she was wandering through the scrubland, uncaring and inattentive, that she was found by slavers. It was a different group from the one that had destroyed her life, but it worked for the same company. She didn’t struggle, though when she saw them coming she stuffed the pouch with the necklace between her developing breasts, already fairly ample for her age. She was brought back to the main camp and tossed in with the other captives. She found many of the captured survivors of her tribe there, as well as people from tribes she’d often fought against for the survival of her own.
Samar was lucky, as were those who had been captured. Not because they were alive when their tribes had been slaughtered almost wholesale, but because of who had captured them. Their slavers were the Avitus group from the city of Aroughs. Avitus was known for its relatively decent treatment of its captives. It was upon being sold that a slave often started having troubles. It was in the hands of this company that Samar began her long journey to Teirm. Skirting the edge of the vast desert, the slavers herded the group southwest to the city of Aroughs. It was relatively uneventful, though the group grew larger along the way as more, smaller parties joined together to herd them all southward. Even so, in the chaos of it all, many died and were simply cast aside - no tending to the sick, no burials, no offerings to the Mother Wolf for the safe passage of the departed souls. It wore down upon the Gia tribe and upon Samar. Yet she never wavered. When her heart wished to break, she stood beside her kin and held them up. When she wished for an end to it all, she comforted a young child who had lost everyone in the attack. When she felt as though she could endure no more, she prayed to the Mother Wolf for guidance. In many ways, she led her tribe far better than Hinewai could have dreamed.
In Aroughs, those who survived the trip were cleaned up, treated for whatever lingering illnesses remained, and given a month to rest and recover some strength. By then, they had lost nearly half their numbers. Tribes that had once been the bitterest of enemies had learned something of cooperation. Within a month, however, they were once more at each other’s throats. It was then that Avitus sent them north to Teirm. Some had been sold while in Aroughs, though most were saved for the trip north. And again, some were sold along the way, always for a hefty fee. When they reached Teirm, a group that had once numbered near a thousand had dwindled to perhaps three hundred and fifty. And so Samar finds herself in Teirm. She’s not as strong as she once was nor does she remember much of those skills she learned. A year is a remarkably long time when one is nearly drowning in misery. But still, she prays that the Mother Wolf will deliver her.
Roleplaying Sample:
See Josk Danta.
