Post by wren on Oct 18, 2009 17:22:39 GMT -6
Name: Wren (born Mahana Ismail)
Age: 23
Gender: Female
Race: Human
Hails From: Idubia Desert
Weapons: Wren carries an ordinary longsword sheathed at her hip for personal protection. On one of her many trips through Temarra she also purchased a Ring of Healing, which she wears on the ring finger of her right hand.
Abilities: Wren's singing voice isn't that bad, though she wishes she had a broader vocal range like some other famous bards. She has much more pride in her skill with her instrument of choice, a two-stringed fiddle made of snakeskin, which produces a high and nasally sound that she complements by speaking in rhythm.
Occupation: Bard
Appearance:
A young woman of about 5'4 with a slight build and a sunny smile. Her skin is deeply tanned from her childhood in Idubia, her dark hair falling past her shoulders in coarse, feathery strands. Sometimes when the weather grows hot she pulls her hair back in a ponytail and ties it off with a piece of cord, but her preferred style is to let it down loose. Her right eye is dark brown, though one can only really tell the color in bright sunlight, otherwise it simply looks black. Her left eye is covered by a leather eyepatch.
Wren's usual garb is an amber-colored shirt and a dark green vest embroidered with tiny black vines. Her pants are dark brown, long and loose, tied about her waist with a length of braided horsehair. Her boots are old and worn, but still serviceable. Wren keeps her fiddle wrapped in cloth and slung across her back when not performing.
Personality:
An adventurous sort, Wren is attracted to promises of glory and good times like a moth to a flame. Nothing pleases her more than the satisfaction of ending another journey, a job well done, another story to tuck into her mind and alter as she sees fit when performing for the townsfolk. Second only to her love of adventure is Wren's pride as a bard. Music and tales are her bread and butter, and she genuinely cares that her audience gets their coins' worth. In her free time she can be heard plucking away at her fiddle or muttering to herself, practicing with focused dedication so that she won't let her next audience down.
As a performer, Wren is used to putting up a variety of fronts around others, sometimes for work, sometimes in jest, and other times simply because she feels like it. That being said, she values her inner thoughts immensely and does not readily share them, even among those she calls her closest friends. She fears being read too easily, for once the facade is revealed, the rest of the performance can only fall apart. To open herself up to others, to lay out all her vulnerabilities and let them judge her as they see fit, is an idea that scares her witless. No, she'd much rather keep to herself if only to preserve the integrity of the performance.
Wren's speech carries a slight Idubian accent that tends to thicken when she's under stress.
History:
Mahana was born into the Ismail family, one among several families that comprised their nomadic community of goat herders. The Idubia Desert was harsh and unforgiving, but her people knew it was only so to toughen them up, forge them into a close-knit group of such resilience even the fiercest of sandstorms couldn't tear them apart. Under the watchful tutelage of her parents and older brothers, she learned how to take the most unbearable circumstances their home could throw at them without complaint. She learned how to survive.
When Mahana was seven, a terrible sandstorm kicked up without warning, as they were apt to do, so she and her brothers herded their goats into a cave until the storm passed. Adventurous even back then, Mahana wandered away to explore the cave's depths and ended up tumbling down a hole, smashing her left eye in the process. Bleeding and scared, she called for her brothers, but they didn't come. Mahana cried for hours until her voice gave out, and then she cried some more.
Finally, an unfamiliar voice answered her. A bard had taken up the cave as his temporary home during his travels and heard the poor little nomad girl crying for rescue. He helped her out of the hole, bandaged her eye, and sang her a lullaby to calm her down. The man's incredible kindness and warm voice soothed Mahana to sleep. Later when she awoke she was surrounded by her relieved family, her brothers still bearing the marks of the beating they'd received from their mother for managing to lose their little sister.
She never saw him again nor learned his name, but from that day on Mahana was inspired to become a bard. One of the nomads in their group taught her how to play the two-stringed fiddle, while another coached her in singing. Once her younger sister grew old enough to take over Mahana's herding duties, she bid her relatives goodbye and traveled to Secstial, her first time in a real city. She was fifteen.
While she honed her bardic talents, Mahana found company in a mercenary group desperate enough to accept a youngster like her and learned how to wield a sword. Her time with them was precious and all-too brief: an encounter with a marsh troll ended disastrously and the survivors disbanded. Mahana would later compose a ballad in her fallen comrades' honor.
Her mercenary friends nicknamed her Wren for her songs, and soon she introduced herself as Wren to everyone rather than use her birth name, paranoid that some would reject her if they knew she was a dusty 'barbarian' from the desert. Others she met were far kinder than she expected, offering to heal her eye, but she always declined. Her blinded eye was what had led to her becoming a bard in the first place, an undeniable part of her identity. And besides, a favorite performance trick of hers was to encourage the audience to guess how she'd lost her eye, a gold piece to the story she liked best.
These days Wren lives much the same as she has for the past eight years, wandering from place to place, offering to share her songs and stories. She constantly keeps her remaining eye out for the next great adventure...
Age: 23
Gender: Female
Race: Human
Hails From: Idubia Desert
Weapons: Wren carries an ordinary longsword sheathed at her hip for personal protection. On one of her many trips through Temarra she also purchased a Ring of Healing, which she wears on the ring finger of her right hand.
Abilities: Wren's singing voice isn't that bad, though she wishes she had a broader vocal range like some other famous bards. She has much more pride in her skill with her instrument of choice, a two-stringed fiddle made of snakeskin, which produces a high and nasally sound that she complements by speaking in rhythm.
Occupation: Bard
Appearance:
A young woman of about 5'4 with a slight build and a sunny smile. Her skin is deeply tanned from her childhood in Idubia, her dark hair falling past her shoulders in coarse, feathery strands. Sometimes when the weather grows hot she pulls her hair back in a ponytail and ties it off with a piece of cord, but her preferred style is to let it down loose. Her right eye is dark brown, though one can only really tell the color in bright sunlight, otherwise it simply looks black. Her left eye is covered by a leather eyepatch.
Wren's usual garb is an amber-colored shirt and a dark green vest embroidered with tiny black vines. Her pants are dark brown, long and loose, tied about her waist with a length of braided horsehair. Her boots are old and worn, but still serviceable. Wren keeps her fiddle wrapped in cloth and slung across her back when not performing.
Personality:
An adventurous sort, Wren is attracted to promises of glory and good times like a moth to a flame. Nothing pleases her more than the satisfaction of ending another journey, a job well done, another story to tuck into her mind and alter as she sees fit when performing for the townsfolk. Second only to her love of adventure is Wren's pride as a bard. Music and tales are her bread and butter, and she genuinely cares that her audience gets their coins' worth. In her free time she can be heard plucking away at her fiddle or muttering to herself, practicing with focused dedication so that she won't let her next audience down.
As a performer, Wren is used to putting up a variety of fronts around others, sometimes for work, sometimes in jest, and other times simply because she feels like it. That being said, she values her inner thoughts immensely and does not readily share them, even among those she calls her closest friends. She fears being read too easily, for once the facade is revealed, the rest of the performance can only fall apart. To open herself up to others, to lay out all her vulnerabilities and let them judge her as they see fit, is an idea that scares her witless. No, she'd much rather keep to herself if only to preserve the integrity of the performance.
Wren's speech carries a slight Idubian accent that tends to thicken when she's under stress.
History:
Mahana was born into the Ismail family, one among several families that comprised their nomadic community of goat herders. The Idubia Desert was harsh and unforgiving, but her people knew it was only so to toughen them up, forge them into a close-knit group of such resilience even the fiercest of sandstorms couldn't tear them apart. Under the watchful tutelage of her parents and older brothers, she learned how to take the most unbearable circumstances their home could throw at them without complaint. She learned how to survive.
When Mahana was seven, a terrible sandstorm kicked up without warning, as they were apt to do, so she and her brothers herded their goats into a cave until the storm passed. Adventurous even back then, Mahana wandered away to explore the cave's depths and ended up tumbling down a hole, smashing her left eye in the process. Bleeding and scared, she called for her brothers, but they didn't come. Mahana cried for hours until her voice gave out, and then she cried some more.
Finally, an unfamiliar voice answered her. A bard had taken up the cave as his temporary home during his travels and heard the poor little nomad girl crying for rescue. He helped her out of the hole, bandaged her eye, and sang her a lullaby to calm her down. The man's incredible kindness and warm voice soothed Mahana to sleep. Later when she awoke she was surrounded by her relieved family, her brothers still bearing the marks of the beating they'd received from their mother for managing to lose their little sister.
She never saw him again nor learned his name, but from that day on Mahana was inspired to become a bard. One of the nomads in their group taught her how to play the two-stringed fiddle, while another coached her in singing. Once her younger sister grew old enough to take over Mahana's herding duties, she bid her relatives goodbye and traveled to Secstial, her first time in a real city. She was fifteen.
While she honed her bardic talents, Mahana found company in a mercenary group desperate enough to accept a youngster like her and learned how to wield a sword. Her time with them was precious and all-too brief: an encounter with a marsh troll ended disastrously and the survivors disbanded. Mahana would later compose a ballad in her fallen comrades' honor.
Her mercenary friends nicknamed her Wren for her songs, and soon she introduced herself as Wren to everyone rather than use her birth name, paranoid that some would reject her if they knew she was a dusty 'barbarian' from the desert. Others she met were far kinder than she expected, offering to heal her eye, but she always declined. Her blinded eye was what had led to her becoming a bard in the first place, an undeniable part of her identity. And besides, a favorite performance trick of hers was to encourage the audience to guess how she'd lost her eye, a gold piece to the story she liked best.
These days Wren lives much the same as she has for the past eight years, wandering from place to place, offering to share her songs and stories. She constantly keeps her remaining eye out for the next great adventure...