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Won a few years ago, one run by Cyradia. Wood elf outlander bard, sphere fertility if I remember right. Prizes were some of the thief poisoning skills and a few outlander edges. All in all pretty fun, but I play too many mopey characters:
Fiene was born in the wilderness to a small tribe of wood elves. From a very young age, she was quite precocious, curious, and something of a rebel. She wanted to try anything new, and, as she lived and breathed nature, she found herself wanting to know the secrets of the earth. Particularly, the workings of plants fascinated her. With a bit of experiment and a smattering of knowledge gleaned from other, older wood elf women, Fiene became an herbalist. She learned herbal remedies, poisons, medications, and even a few more recreational things that can be mixed up in the wilds. As she grew and matured, she used her gift mostly to help other women. She became a midwife, travelling to use her remedies and gifts to help women through their birthing process.
One day, her village brought a man before her that they had found wandering in the forest near Galadon. His wife was having their first baby, and the birthing was not going well. He was desperate for some assistance, and had heard of Fiene’s reputation. Though quite young, she was exceptionally talented. She agreed to help him, and he immediately set off with her to Galadon.
Now, Fiene had never been to any of the large cities before. She was excited to go to this birthing, looking forward to seeing what Galadon would be like. She had heard stories told, each one more fantastic than the last.
Fiene helped the mother birth a baby boy, and with her remedies both survived intact and healthy. Fiene stepped outside their small house, washing the blood and birthing fluids from her arms, and she saw a young captain of the town’s guard patrolling the street. He was half-elven, young and proud and quite attractive. Fiene herself was a rare beauty among wood elves, and she gave the man a shy smile as he came past. He took one look at the trim wood elf, with her long, russet hair and wide eyes and asked her if she would like to go with him for a cup of Galadon’s finest cinnamon flavored coffee. Also a new experience to Fiene, she agreed.
The two talked for hours at the back of the small shop, hidden away from most of the city. They had an instant connection, and Fiene, who had never given herself over to idyllic romance before, found herself captivated by the young Tribunal. He was passionate about his job and a rather ambitious man. He confessed to her his desires and ambitions to become Provost one day. Fiene herself knew extremely little about the law or the Tribunal, but she thought that sounded like a wonderful idea. The Captain asked if he could meet her again, and so they began to date, in a manner. Quiet little rendezvous in the backs of inns and shops, or she would meet him at his small apartment in Galadon for their trysts. Fiene very quickly fell hard for him, as deep and true and pure as only first love can be.
One day, the Captain was escorting her out of the City during the light hours of dawn. As they walked down the city streets, they both saw a homeless man run into the baker’s shop and steal a small loaf of bread. The Captain immediately attacked the thief, pinning him down and arresting him for his crime. He apologized to Fiene, but insisted that they take the man to the Tribunal’s office for justice. Fiene was mystified. The man was hungry and he didn’t have anything to pay for the food with or any skills to trade for it. But he was still hungry, and men should not be denied food. She attempted to convince the Captain to let him go as they walked. The Captain, however, would not be dissuaded. She followed, curious to see what would happen to the man. She could hear the man’s stomach rumble, and as they reached the Tribunal office, Fiene took some of her own food from her pack and gave it to the man. In sight of all of those in the Tribunal office, she was immediately marked as a criminal for aiding another criminal. All men in the Tribunal office, they handled her roughly: just another wood elf insurgent they had to deal with.
Fiene turned to her Captain in shock, pleading that he explain the misunderstanding, but the Captain was, at heart, not a nice man, and his ambition quite overcame his affection for the young wood elf. Truth be told, he had only been acting like he loved her in order to sleep with her. He pretended he did not know her, saying that she had followed them and had, indeed, obstructed justice with her actions. Fiene was shocked into a heartbroken silence at this and her beloved Captain turned on his heel and walked out the door.
The men in the office laughed at her dirty, rough spun dress and leathers. They dumped out and confiscated her sewn doeskin pack of cures and food. Bored on duty, they began pulling at her hair, her clothes, each one laughing and trying to think of a proper ‘punishment’ for her. They passed her, terrified, from one to the next, each one taking the opportunity to grab, fondle and abuse her. She screamed for help but those who heard pretended they hadn’t, and she was left helpless. They beat her and each raped her, and mocked her kindness for a worthless homeless man, asking her if she liked her punishment for it.
They dumped her bloody form outside the city, telling her to only come back if he wanted another good time. Bruised, shocked, heartbroken and bleeding, she crawled as far from the city as she possibly could. She wanted to die , but the thought of revenge burned within her. However, she was merely an herbalist and a midwife. She brought life into the world, she grew flowers and seed. She had thought herself powerful in her knowledge and abilities, but she had been shown only too brutally how pitiful she truly was in the face of an enemy.
After crawling to the nearest river, Fiene washed herself, and found new clothing to wear. She attempted to go back to her old life, travelling, trading for cures and midwiving, but life no longer held her interest and love. Shortly after, she found out that she was pregnant. The Captain’s child or one of the men who had raped her, she did not know. After that she spent many hours contemplating the darker side of herbology – the droughts of hemlock extract, vials of powdered arsenic, venomous saps and putrid molds. She thought long and hard about the various herbal remedies she knew of to rid a woman from an unwanted child. In her broken misery, she also contemplated all the ways she knew to end a life with the toxins of nature. She mixed up the proper draught to rid herself of the child and stopped before putting it to her lips, staring into its misty green depths. “Revenge…†she thought. Killing this child was no revenge. Killing those who had done this to her…that was revenge. She began mixing more and more toxins, using every trick she knew to make them odorless and tasteless.
She took her stash of toxin and crept into the Galadon coffee shop late one night, dressed in black and shadow. She poisoned all of the coffee they had, and all their cinnamon, knowing it was her Captain’s favorite drink, a place he stopped several times a day. Reason suggested to her that the other officers within the Tribunal would also frequent it.
The Captain and his officers did, indeed, stop at the coffee shop. They did drink the poisoned coffee and they did die. So did everyone else who stopped at the shop that day. Fiene never found out, for she had long left the city, returning to her tribe where she planned to have her baby.
Vengeance satisfied, Fiene was still broken by what had happened to her. She knew in her state of mind that she was entirely unfit to become a mother, and asked that her tribe take her baby. They agreed, and promised to raise her daughter as she had been raised, a wood elf, even though her blood was tainted. After the birth, Fiene slipped away from the tribe, unable to even look upon the child without thinking of the horrid memories she had. She returned to immerse herself in her experiments, slowly convincing herself that she would find a cure for her state of mind in nature, in plants and flowers, toxins and cures. She mixed and experimented, and in her reckless nature, she experimented on herself. She mixed mind impacting herbs with each other, trying them each time, and each time when she returned to herself the old pain remained. It faded, though, as her conscious grew weaker and weaker under the affects of her drugs. Finally, one day, she decided in her crazed mind that she had finished it. An elixir that would rid her of bad memories, fix her broken soul, allow her to love again. Something that would allow her to hold her baby and not see the faces of them who had raped her. She drank it, and promptly passed out of quite a large overdose. Upon waking up, Fiene’s mind had truly been affected by the hallucinogens she had taken. It seemed to her that the very flowers and trees themselves where speaking to her. They comforted her and advised her that she had been selected to be their champion. Their crusader, a voice for something that had none. In her euphoric state, she was convinced. After all, it was a mission that took her away from the pain. It was a mission that even allowed her to prevent others from being hurt the way she had been. To her, it was redemption. Besides, obviously the Goddess Amaranthe was speaking to her through these flowers. And so she packed up her remedies and knowledges, and left, seeking to be a voice for the flowers.
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