24-11-2013, 07:25 PM
(This post was last modified: 27-11-2013, 08:40 PM by SentaiPink.)
Name: Ah’marrin ‘Bandit’ Horrek’Lawa
Age: 21
Gender: Female
Birthday: 21st
Race: Mesalian
![[Image: mdbl.jpg]](http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/7933/mdbl.jpg)
Theme:
Personality:
Bandit can be rather outgoing. At this point she has nothing left to lose and even less to hide. She doesn't expect anything from others but disdain for both who and what she is. Frankly she's bitter enough at the world to be just fine with this treatment. If in a good mood she comes off almost as carefree, but really it’s an utter lack of responsibility. With nothing to hide and a flimsy grasp of the language she often finds herself getting right to the point of matters and moving on quickly. She can be a rather cheerful person, but hasn't been such in a very long time.
There isn’t any shortage of flaws that the difficulties in Bandit’s life have left. Namely she hates children, resent only being a small motivator in that. She lacks sympathy towards people that wrong her and has absolutely no qualms with robbing others to get what she wants from society. Just like when she was younger she still has more pride in her own skills then what’s healthy or even warranted, but now lacks any reason to keep it bottled up; Thanks to her time as a slave, she despises being chained or otherwise detained against her will. Bandit is also very judgmental of those that live in everyday Mesalian society. But particularly of people of high social standing, and those that wear suits of metal armor, as her guards often did.
Skills:
Survivalist - Competent
She’s more than capable of surviving without assistance off the land, this includes finding and making shelter, some forms of herbalism as far as finding safe-to-eat berries and plants.
Leather working - Novice
Most Ko`ban know how to treat a skin into a rough hide or leather. Her ability to use it after is very limited. And she isn't capable of making leather in a quality or quantity for trade.
Chiseling - Novice
Making very simple stone, obsidian and bone spear and arrowheads. Aside from her personal weapons and the tools to make them she has little to no experience making otherwise.
Horse Training - Novice
Just before coming of age Ah'marrin started to learn how to tend and train horses. She used this skill extensively when she was enslaved. Mostly in the care and tending of the animals, such as putting on horse shoes, feeding, brushing and some basic medical care such as flea and lice treatments. She has only broken one horse but had to train others and colts while enslaved.
Horse riding - Apprentice
She enjoys the company of horses and often treats them better then she will people. She’s only broken a hand full of horses but remains a competent rider.
Hunting - Competent
For her way of life and survival, she had to learn to track, stalk, trap, kill and butcher her pray.
Spearwomen - Apprentice
Part of her survivalist upbringing, she prefers the spear when hunting dangerous prey or people. She enjoys the range of the spear, and can fight with it like a pike or as a projectile as needed. She can fight with her spear from horseback and has a better chance of success with it then her bow.
Knowlage
Ko’Ban Language - Advanced
Native to the plains tribes, her primary language is that of the Ko’ban. This means that her common is very rough and often peppered with Ko’ban words or grammatical habits.
Common Language - Novice
She knows enough common to understand most everything told to her, but not generally convey her response or complex ideas. She can not read or write.
Backstory
Born into the Ko’ban tribe of Lawa, in what is now the Ban’Horrek clan. Her family traveled the plains hunting the wild cattle, and following their trail across the grasslands. Her father was an accomplished hunter and her mother would often spend her time treating the hides and making her father weapons. Ah’marrin was the youngest of three children her father had to two wives. She had two older brothers Heelro and Wa’rin, both of which were a few years older but made time for their little sister when possible.
During her younger years her father, who normally only hunted cattle and game, was largely absent. Every able bodied man and woman (who wasn’t raising kids) were helping repel the invading forces at the borders of their territory. What little time he did spend away from the raiding bands, he mostly spent hunting. He was however every bit a loving father to his children, even if somewhat absent. With him largely gone his wives had to pick up any slack in gathering food for their family while he was gone. The needs of the tribe demanded that when Ah’Marrin was young her time was spent learning to make tools and weapons with her mother, and her nights were spent play-hunting with her brothers. She was an energetic child which seemed incapable of letting things get to her or keep her down. Her energy translated well into chores and work, by as young as 8 she was showing an aptitude for hunting. Her father, when he could, along with her brothers, taught her how to hunt with a spear to bring down game, and her mother taught her how to make use of the pelts, meat and bones.
So far as the tribe children go, she was by far the best hunter for her age, even more so than her brothers. Her playful gloating over them was constant, and started to bleed into her interactions with just about everyone in the tribe. Even to the point of becoming disrespectful to her parents. This was not winning her any friends and as she reached the age to accompany the adults on hunts, at just over 10 seasons, they would not take her. Skilled as she maybe, her arrogant pride was distasteful to almost everyone she met. Ah’marrin resented this, and out of spite for their shunning she started going off on her own, and hunting as large a game she could. One day, the hunters had only brought back with them rabbits and a small boar when she had returned with a larger goat. She flaunted her kill in their faces, the chief of their tribe saw this, and was furious.
He reprimanded Ah’marrin and beat her for her disrespect. Something her father would of done if he’d been around to do so. She returned to her family's tent in tears, her brothers comforted her in spite of how she’d been acting towards them and everyone else. She managed to keep her pride in check from then on. She still thought herself better than the others, but she resisted pointing it out. As time went on and her behavior improved, her brothers managed to convince their father and the other hunters to allow her to accompany them on the hunts.
As she reached 13 she was a full fledged hunter, and she didn’t need to boast because she was earning respect all on her own. Both of her brothers had passed their rites of passage and had horses of their own. She enjoyed going for rides with them across the plains during the cool evenings or dewy mornings. One such morning she was out with her brothers, and they’d stopped at a small stream to let the horses drink. They had wandered into the territory of another tribe and had no idea they were trespassing. Not until arrows and darts started to rain on them. This sort of infighting between tribes or even clans wasn’t uncommon for her people. Especially since the civil war and the tribes had all broken away from the clan. Violence between tribes was… common.
The teens scattered, but it wasn’t until her and Wa’rin had taken cover did they realize Heelro wasn’t with them. They hid behind a rock jutting from the tall grass, both scrambled for their bows and desperately looked for Heelro while trying to avoid getting shot themselves. It was clear he’d been hit. Distraught as she was, Ah’marrin and Wa’rin were unwilling to die. She took careful aim and waited against the rock they used as cover. When she caught sight of one of their attackers moving in the tall grass she threw her spear with all her might. She could remember the noise it made hitting solid meat before she ducked back into her cover as darts and arrows were slung at her.
Before that day she’d never even fired at another person, all she thought about were her brothers and saving her own skin. Though later she’d come to appreciate the weight of her actions. Ah’Marrin and Wa’rin ultimately had to escape with their lives, managing to ride away from their attackers on the back of Heelro’s horse. Ah’Marrin had been hit with a poisoned dart, though she passed out on the ride back to their tribe, her brother got her to the healer before the toxin caused any serious harm. When she woke back in the Lawa tribe she was alone in her tent. She sought out both her brother’s, but found only a distraught Wa’rin. Heelro never made it back, so they set out searching for him with some of the warriors. But they never found his body to see him burned to put his soul put to rest. The blood soaked into the dirt assured any doubt he and at least one of their attackers had died that day. Both Ah’marrin and Wa’rin struggled with the death of their brother and the loss of his soul to wander the lands as the undead. ((This is a cultural thing, not actual lore))
From then on she found focusing on hunting difficult. Easy kills slipped away from her as she became a bit more distant, her mind prone to wandering and her attention almost consistently elsewhere. Her easy going attitude had withered and she’d reverted to being rebellious and rude again. Needless to say she dealt with her brothers death poorly, and she wasn’t the only one. Wa’rin was doing no better, the two shut other people out entirely and when not feigning interest in their other obligations they spent most of their time together.
Eventually the hunters stopped taking Ah’marrin and Wa’rin on hunts, and neither seemed to mind. As a dim light in all of this, Ah’marrin wasn’t far from her own rite of passage, which meant it was time for her to learn how to ride and break horses with the Maho’Jakaree, the horse master. She found she liked working with the animals, and riding an unbroken and angry horse that gave it’s all in a deadly bucking dance to get her off it’s back turned out to be exhilarating for her. It brought a much needed distraction and some liveliness into her life. Once again she applied herself, and she found this to be a dangerous but fun outlet for her. She slowly but surely started to find the bright side in things again and looked forward to her rite into adulthood at 15.
The rite required she set out on her own after one of the horse herds, capture one and eventually break it so she could ride it back to her people. She was allowed assistance of one person and she chose her brother to accompany her. Both her and Wa’rin were capable hunters so in spite of failing miserably (and nearly getting trampled once) the first three times, capturing one of the stallions from the herd was not the hard part. Getting on the beast and getting it to cooperate was.
Her rite took a long time, as they often do. The horse they’d captured was stubborn and proud and more than powerful enough to buck off Ah’marrin every time she mounted him. The thick grasslands and her brother managed to keep her from getting hurt too badly, But after three long weeks she managed to break the horse. Training would take even longer but for now she could at least ride back to the tribe with her very own horse. She named the stallion Natha’chi, and she was endlessly proud of her accomplishment.
It wasn’t long after this a great meet was called. The clan had been in disarray for almost a year now, the civil war’s had left them unstable and the prior attempt to unify the tribes under one clan had ended disastrously. So, a number of local tribes were getting together. She didn’t care about the politics, it was the first great meet in years and she was excited to go. There were many people there, and while the chiefs met and debated rejoining into one clan she met others her age from other tribes.
She met a man by the name of Ko’um. Ko'um was a warrior from another tribe. A position that is usually very respected among her people. Wa’rin was also training at that point to be a warrior but hadn’t yet been accepted into the raiding party. Ko’um was charming and handsome, but Wa’rin hated him from the start. The two would argue almost to the point of exchanging blows every time they met, but that stopped Ah’marrin from falling for Ko'um none.
Ko'um came from a small tribe, for him, the best way to better it’s numbers and it’s chances of thriving in the savage bandit lands was to have a family. That meant wives and children to him. He was bent on achieving both, something that Wa’rin knew, and tried to warn his sister. But the headstrong teen would hear nothing of it. So enamored was she that she agreed to marry Ko'um after only a few months of knowing him. Wa’rin was livid and stopped talking to his sister after she’d run off and married Ko'um.
Unsurprisingly, Ko'um’s treatment of her after the wedding was not what she expected. He abused her during the nights, and went back to the kind and gentle man he was before during the day. Claiming his passion was so great for her he couldn’t control himself. A flimsy excuse for his abuse that Ah’marrin foolishly accepted. For a time anyway; When Ah’marrin never became pregnant, his abuse became more and more evident. Until finally, she could stand no more and started to hit back. He left that afternoon and didn’t return the next day. By then though, everyone in the tribe knew; Ah’marrin could not bare children. Ah’marrin was weak… This would make her an obvious target. The weakest members of the tribe, after all, were most likely to be enslaved or killed.
All of 17 and abandoned by her husband she mounted Natha’chi and returned to her tribe and her brother. Wa’rin was a warrior now, and still angry with his sister. When she told him what happened, full of tears and regret, he forgave her stubbornness and embraced her just as he had done years ago when they were but children. By this point, her parents were gone. Her father died in one of the last raids against the invaders, her mother died to illness and while Heelro’s mother was still alive, she’d not been the same woman since her son and husbands death. So this left Wa’rin and Ah’marrin on their own.
For over a year, she returned to her life with her tribe, her weakness known, but by then the clans had stabilized. It was a little safer in the tribes, and the infighting was at an all-time low and the fighting at the borders of their clan had come to an end. It was only outsiders to the Bandit Lands that had reason to fear. Things had settled for her, she’d abandoned any hope of love beside that of her brother. As she’d come to terms with this, Ko’um suddenly returned. He asked her to go for a ride with him, he said he just wanted to resolve some of the things left unsaid between them. Ah’Marrin wouldn’t go with him. She told him to leave and never come back. She was through being his victim.
He unfortunately wasn’t done with her. While she was out looking for game not a week later. crouched in the shrubs, drawing her bow to take aim at a hare she felt a series of sudden sharp pain along her back as a trio of darts met just under her shoulder blade. She hit the ground, everything hazy and blurry, her hare hopping away as she watched Ko’um approach her. Everything went dark and when she woke up she was miles from home, in a strange cart made of wood, drawn by a horse. She wasn’t in the plains anymore, and her hands were bound. She yelled at the drive, some man in steel and leather, an outsider. But he didn’t understand anything she said.
Ah’marrin hadn’t learned the language of the foreigners, which made her capture, and evident sale into slavery that much harder. She was only 18 and now she was some foreigners property. Needless to say this was a difficult and painful part of her life, her not speaking the language wasn’t at all to her advantage. She had to learn, and quickly. The punishments for her misunderstandings were harsh. Most of the Mesalian kingdoms don’t endorse slavery, but a few wealthy nobles had decided acquiring slaves from the bandit lands and claiming they were convicts working off their crimes, seemed to sate most scrutiny. They were after all, only bandits.
Ah’Marrin spent two years forced to tend and train horses. Much like the animals she worked with she remained a prisoner, slave and servant. She’d grown full of anger and hate, but she was well guarded, as she should be. She’d attempted to escape half a dozen times, each time she tried she’d gotten a hair closer and managed to make keeping her more costly to her slaver. Even once having nearly killed a guard. It was clear she’d be killed if she failed again, so she had to accept she couldn’t honorably win her freedom through fighting, as tradition warranted. But she couldn’t find the point in that now; Why fight when she would just get captured again, and have to repeat this until she was killed? Tradition was damned, she recognized she couldn’t return home this time.
A little over 20 seasons old she had finally an opportunity to escape. Some visiting nobles to the ranch she worked on had the guard shifts cut in half so they could better protect the visitors. This was just enough of an opening that she could slip away from her work and stalk into the nobles house. It wasn’t hard for her to throw every torch, candle and lantern onto the floors until everything was in flames. She only took one thing from the foreign noble. An ornate steel dagger. In the chaos that followed she ran for the ranch, opening every pen and stable, letting all of the animals out and climbing onto the back of one of the horses she’d trained and riding into the darkness as swiftly as it could carry her.
She wondered for a little while before she’d got enough of an idea where she’d ended up to track her way back to the bandit lands. She couldn’t go home, there would be no future for her here in the bandit lands. But there was something burning in her to do. She had to return a favor long overdue… it was time for her to return the favor her husband had bestowed.
Now, when tribes travel constantly as a way of life, it isn’t easy to find a particular one. But it was easy to track the tribes and all the signs pointed to one thing. A great meet was underway. She rode into the massive camp of the whole clan gathered for one festival. Hundreds of thousands of her people camping together, a constant din of noise from the drum circles and the wedding celebrations made the bare-backed rider nothing more than a background fixture. Not worth notice. It took her hours to find the tribe, and to find Ko’um’s tent. It was large, brightly colored, selling her and probably others had made him wealthy, and powerful enough to be named chief of his tribe. It was a tent for a family. She had suspected he had moved on, his burning desire for children and family made it unsurprising.
Slinking around to remain hidden from pray, or people, was remarkably similar. She slipped up behind his tent and cut a hole into the material. She slipped inside and helped herself to his collection of darts. She set a simple trap, the barbs facing up in the pillows of his tent. It wouldn’t take much of the poison to put him and his wives to sleep… and she used every barb he had.
She then left, and laid in wait for him and his new family. As the moon reached it’s highest point in the sky the festivities died down. She watched from the shadows, nothing more than another figure among hundreds of strangers. She watched him, his two wives, infant son and a two-year old girl toddle into his tent with him. She approached, hearing a few short yelps of pain. One of his wives managed to make it to the tent flap, collapsing just outside it before the barbs in her shoulder and back had her sound asleep.
Ah’marrin stepped over the woman, and dragged her inside. Then picked up his spear and regarded the now crying children. It was something like killing rabbits to her. Soft, harmless creatures, no threat to her at all. But unlike the hare it broke some of the oldest laws of her people to run Ko’um’s spear through them. But at this point she was nothing to her own people, all because of him. It was time he understood his actions. It was time he was the weak one. She left the spear buried in the chest of his eldest as she stepped out of the tent and knelt in front of his fire. It had been dying, out of necessity she fed it enough to get the flame cracking again. She held the outsiders knife in the fire until it grew red hot.
She stared at the blade as she was largely ignored among the people sleepily heading to bed. Only when she felt the hot tears running down her cheeks as she re-entered the tent with the burning hot knife did she even realize she’d been crying this whole time. Once the heinous deed was done, Ah’marrin escaped out the back of the tent and slipped back into the thinning crowds of people. She returned to her stolen horse and rode away from the great meet, she returned across the Ban'Horrek lands. With everyone preoccupied with the meet, the lands were vacant and her escape from her own people, effortless.
The bodies were found the next morning. One of Ko'um's raiders witnessed the aftermath of her revenge. Ko’um’s children were dead, and Ko’um was alive but mutilated, certain never to have more children.
She hunted and camped as she traveled, making herself new weapons as she went. She had to avoid most cities and towns as the neighboring kingdom had no patience for her kind. She had to stalk across the borders of kingdoms at night. Constantly moving and avoiding people. She had to cross two kingdoms over weeks of travel before she wasn't immediately chased or hunted from the road.
Finally she reached the great sea of tears, as her people called it. Or the ocean, to the rest of the word. The disdain for her and her way of life was enough for her to consider an alternative mentioned to her while enslaved. The forbidden lands.
She had to mug a few people to get the gold needed to barter her way across. When she told the captain her name, the gruff captain butchered it and ultimately just called her ‘Bandit’. Ah’marrin didn’t take issue with it and adopted the name as they made the crossing. She was left in a small port town and set out to explore the untouched wilderness.
Months of travel lead her to a curious stone beacon… and then another, until finally she found a strange village under a raven shaped cliff. Perhaps it was time to greet the locals.
Items:
Stone chisel, obsidian dagger and spear, leather clothing, bone armor.
Age: 21
Gender: Female
Birthday: 21st
Race: Mesalian
![[Image: mdbl.jpg]](http://imageshack.us/a/img197/1433/r62y.jpg)
Theme:
Personality:
Bandit can be rather outgoing. At this point she has nothing left to lose and even less to hide. She doesn't expect anything from others but disdain for both who and what she is. Frankly she's bitter enough at the world to be just fine with this treatment. If in a good mood she comes off almost as carefree, but really it’s an utter lack of responsibility. With nothing to hide and a flimsy grasp of the language she often finds herself getting right to the point of matters and moving on quickly. She can be a rather cheerful person, but hasn't been such in a very long time.
There isn’t any shortage of flaws that the difficulties in Bandit’s life have left. Namely she hates children, resent only being a small motivator in that. She lacks sympathy towards people that wrong her and has absolutely no qualms with robbing others to get what she wants from society. Just like when she was younger she still has more pride in her own skills then what’s healthy or even warranted, but now lacks any reason to keep it bottled up; Thanks to her time as a slave, she despises being chained or otherwise detained against her will. Bandit is also very judgmental of those that live in everyday Mesalian society. But particularly of people of high social standing, and those that wear suits of metal armor, as her guards often did.
Skills:
Survivalist - Competent
She’s more than capable of surviving without assistance off the land, this includes finding and making shelter, some forms of herbalism as far as finding safe-to-eat berries and plants.
Leather working - Novice
Most Ko`ban know how to treat a skin into a rough hide or leather. Her ability to use it after is very limited. And she isn't capable of making leather in a quality or quantity for trade.
Chiseling - Novice
Making very simple stone, obsidian and bone spear and arrowheads. Aside from her personal weapons and the tools to make them she has little to no experience making otherwise.
Horse Training - Novice
Just before coming of age Ah'marrin started to learn how to tend and train horses. She used this skill extensively when she was enslaved. Mostly in the care and tending of the animals, such as putting on horse shoes, feeding, brushing and some basic medical care such as flea and lice treatments. She has only broken one horse but had to train others and colts while enslaved.
Horse riding - Apprentice
She enjoys the company of horses and often treats them better then she will people. She’s only broken a hand full of horses but remains a competent rider.
Hunting - Competent
For her way of life and survival, she had to learn to track, stalk, trap, kill and butcher her pray.
Spearwomen - Apprentice
Part of her survivalist upbringing, she prefers the spear when hunting dangerous prey or people. She enjoys the range of the spear, and can fight with it like a pike or as a projectile as needed. She can fight with her spear from horseback and has a better chance of success with it then her bow.
Knowlage
Ko’Ban Language - Advanced
Native to the plains tribes, her primary language is that of the Ko’ban. This means that her common is very rough and often peppered with Ko’ban words or grammatical habits.
Common Language - Novice
She knows enough common to understand most everything told to her, but not generally convey her response or complex ideas. She can not read or write.
Backstory
Born into the Ko’ban tribe of Lawa, in what is now the Ban’Horrek clan. Her family traveled the plains hunting the wild cattle, and following their trail across the grasslands. Her father was an accomplished hunter and her mother would often spend her time treating the hides and making her father weapons. Ah’marrin was the youngest of three children her father had to two wives. She had two older brothers Heelro and Wa’rin, both of which were a few years older but made time for their little sister when possible.
During her younger years her father, who normally only hunted cattle and game, was largely absent. Every able bodied man and woman (who wasn’t raising kids) were helping repel the invading forces at the borders of their territory. What little time he did spend away from the raiding bands, he mostly spent hunting. He was however every bit a loving father to his children, even if somewhat absent. With him largely gone his wives had to pick up any slack in gathering food for their family while he was gone. The needs of the tribe demanded that when Ah’Marrin was young her time was spent learning to make tools and weapons with her mother, and her nights were spent play-hunting with her brothers. She was an energetic child which seemed incapable of letting things get to her or keep her down. Her energy translated well into chores and work, by as young as 8 she was showing an aptitude for hunting. Her father, when he could, along with her brothers, taught her how to hunt with a spear to bring down game, and her mother taught her how to make use of the pelts, meat and bones.
So far as the tribe children go, she was by far the best hunter for her age, even more so than her brothers. Her playful gloating over them was constant, and started to bleed into her interactions with just about everyone in the tribe. Even to the point of becoming disrespectful to her parents. This was not winning her any friends and as she reached the age to accompany the adults on hunts, at just over 10 seasons, they would not take her. Skilled as she maybe, her arrogant pride was distasteful to almost everyone she met. Ah’marrin resented this, and out of spite for their shunning she started going off on her own, and hunting as large a game she could. One day, the hunters had only brought back with them rabbits and a small boar when she had returned with a larger goat. She flaunted her kill in their faces, the chief of their tribe saw this, and was furious.
He reprimanded Ah’marrin and beat her for her disrespect. Something her father would of done if he’d been around to do so. She returned to her family's tent in tears, her brothers comforted her in spite of how she’d been acting towards them and everyone else. She managed to keep her pride in check from then on. She still thought herself better than the others, but she resisted pointing it out. As time went on and her behavior improved, her brothers managed to convince their father and the other hunters to allow her to accompany them on the hunts.
As she reached 13 she was a full fledged hunter, and she didn’t need to boast because she was earning respect all on her own. Both of her brothers had passed their rites of passage and had horses of their own. She enjoyed going for rides with them across the plains during the cool evenings or dewy mornings. One such morning she was out with her brothers, and they’d stopped at a small stream to let the horses drink. They had wandered into the territory of another tribe and had no idea they were trespassing. Not until arrows and darts started to rain on them. This sort of infighting between tribes or even clans wasn’t uncommon for her people. Especially since the civil war and the tribes had all broken away from the clan. Violence between tribes was… common.
The teens scattered, but it wasn’t until her and Wa’rin had taken cover did they realize Heelro wasn’t with them. They hid behind a rock jutting from the tall grass, both scrambled for their bows and desperately looked for Heelro while trying to avoid getting shot themselves. It was clear he’d been hit. Distraught as she was, Ah’marrin and Wa’rin were unwilling to die. She took careful aim and waited against the rock they used as cover. When she caught sight of one of their attackers moving in the tall grass she threw her spear with all her might. She could remember the noise it made hitting solid meat before she ducked back into her cover as darts and arrows were slung at her.
Before that day she’d never even fired at another person, all she thought about were her brothers and saving her own skin. Though later she’d come to appreciate the weight of her actions. Ah’Marrin and Wa’rin ultimately had to escape with their lives, managing to ride away from their attackers on the back of Heelro’s horse. Ah’Marrin had been hit with a poisoned dart, though she passed out on the ride back to their tribe, her brother got her to the healer before the toxin caused any serious harm. When she woke back in the Lawa tribe she was alone in her tent. She sought out both her brother’s, but found only a distraught Wa’rin. Heelro never made it back, so they set out searching for him with some of the warriors. But they never found his body to see him burned to put his soul put to rest. The blood soaked into the dirt assured any doubt he and at least one of their attackers had died that day. Both Ah’marrin and Wa’rin struggled with the death of their brother and the loss of his soul to wander the lands as the undead. ((This is a cultural thing, not actual lore))
From then on she found focusing on hunting difficult. Easy kills slipped away from her as she became a bit more distant, her mind prone to wandering and her attention almost consistently elsewhere. Her easy going attitude had withered and she’d reverted to being rebellious and rude again. Needless to say she dealt with her brothers death poorly, and she wasn’t the only one. Wa’rin was doing no better, the two shut other people out entirely and when not feigning interest in their other obligations they spent most of their time together.
Eventually the hunters stopped taking Ah’marrin and Wa’rin on hunts, and neither seemed to mind. As a dim light in all of this, Ah’marrin wasn’t far from her own rite of passage, which meant it was time for her to learn how to ride and break horses with the Maho’Jakaree, the horse master. She found she liked working with the animals, and riding an unbroken and angry horse that gave it’s all in a deadly bucking dance to get her off it’s back turned out to be exhilarating for her. It brought a much needed distraction and some liveliness into her life. Once again she applied herself, and she found this to be a dangerous but fun outlet for her. She slowly but surely started to find the bright side in things again and looked forward to her rite into adulthood at 15.
The rite required she set out on her own after one of the horse herds, capture one and eventually break it so she could ride it back to her people. She was allowed assistance of one person and she chose her brother to accompany her. Both her and Wa’rin were capable hunters so in spite of failing miserably (and nearly getting trampled once) the first three times, capturing one of the stallions from the herd was not the hard part. Getting on the beast and getting it to cooperate was.
Her rite took a long time, as they often do. The horse they’d captured was stubborn and proud and more than powerful enough to buck off Ah’marrin every time she mounted him. The thick grasslands and her brother managed to keep her from getting hurt too badly, But after three long weeks she managed to break the horse. Training would take even longer but for now she could at least ride back to the tribe with her very own horse. She named the stallion Natha’chi, and she was endlessly proud of her accomplishment.
It wasn’t long after this a great meet was called. The clan had been in disarray for almost a year now, the civil war’s had left them unstable and the prior attempt to unify the tribes under one clan had ended disastrously. So, a number of local tribes were getting together. She didn’t care about the politics, it was the first great meet in years and she was excited to go. There were many people there, and while the chiefs met and debated rejoining into one clan she met others her age from other tribes.
She met a man by the name of Ko’um. Ko'um was a warrior from another tribe. A position that is usually very respected among her people. Wa’rin was also training at that point to be a warrior but hadn’t yet been accepted into the raiding party. Ko’um was charming and handsome, but Wa’rin hated him from the start. The two would argue almost to the point of exchanging blows every time they met, but that stopped Ah’marrin from falling for Ko'um none.
Ko'um came from a small tribe, for him, the best way to better it’s numbers and it’s chances of thriving in the savage bandit lands was to have a family. That meant wives and children to him. He was bent on achieving both, something that Wa’rin knew, and tried to warn his sister. But the headstrong teen would hear nothing of it. So enamored was she that she agreed to marry Ko'um after only a few months of knowing him. Wa’rin was livid and stopped talking to his sister after she’d run off and married Ko'um.
Unsurprisingly, Ko'um’s treatment of her after the wedding was not what she expected. He abused her during the nights, and went back to the kind and gentle man he was before during the day. Claiming his passion was so great for her he couldn’t control himself. A flimsy excuse for his abuse that Ah’marrin foolishly accepted. For a time anyway; When Ah’marrin never became pregnant, his abuse became more and more evident. Until finally, she could stand no more and started to hit back. He left that afternoon and didn’t return the next day. By then though, everyone in the tribe knew; Ah’marrin could not bare children. Ah’marrin was weak… This would make her an obvious target. The weakest members of the tribe, after all, were most likely to be enslaved or killed.
All of 17 and abandoned by her husband she mounted Natha’chi and returned to her tribe and her brother. Wa’rin was a warrior now, and still angry with his sister. When she told him what happened, full of tears and regret, he forgave her stubbornness and embraced her just as he had done years ago when they were but children. By this point, her parents were gone. Her father died in one of the last raids against the invaders, her mother died to illness and while Heelro’s mother was still alive, she’d not been the same woman since her son and husbands death. So this left Wa’rin and Ah’marrin on their own.
For over a year, she returned to her life with her tribe, her weakness known, but by then the clans had stabilized. It was a little safer in the tribes, and the infighting was at an all-time low and the fighting at the borders of their clan had come to an end. It was only outsiders to the Bandit Lands that had reason to fear. Things had settled for her, she’d abandoned any hope of love beside that of her brother. As she’d come to terms with this, Ko’um suddenly returned. He asked her to go for a ride with him, he said he just wanted to resolve some of the things left unsaid between them. Ah’Marrin wouldn’t go with him. She told him to leave and never come back. She was through being his victim.
He unfortunately wasn’t done with her. While she was out looking for game not a week later. crouched in the shrubs, drawing her bow to take aim at a hare she felt a series of sudden sharp pain along her back as a trio of darts met just under her shoulder blade. She hit the ground, everything hazy and blurry, her hare hopping away as she watched Ko’um approach her. Everything went dark and when she woke up she was miles from home, in a strange cart made of wood, drawn by a horse. She wasn’t in the plains anymore, and her hands were bound. She yelled at the drive, some man in steel and leather, an outsider. But he didn’t understand anything she said.
Ah’marrin hadn’t learned the language of the foreigners, which made her capture, and evident sale into slavery that much harder. She was only 18 and now she was some foreigners property. Needless to say this was a difficult and painful part of her life, her not speaking the language wasn’t at all to her advantage. She had to learn, and quickly. The punishments for her misunderstandings were harsh. Most of the Mesalian kingdoms don’t endorse slavery, but a few wealthy nobles had decided acquiring slaves from the bandit lands and claiming they were convicts working off their crimes, seemed to sate most scrutiny. They were after all, only bandits.
Ah’Marrin spent two years forced to tend and train horses. Much like the animals she worked with she remained a prisoner, slave and servant. She’d grown full of anger and hate, but she was well guarded, as she should be. She’d attempted to escape half a dozen times, each time she tried she’d gotten a hair closer and managed to make keeping her more costly to her slaver. Even once having nearly killed a guard. It was clear she’d be killed if she failed again, so she had to accept she couldn’t honorably win her freedom through fighting, as tradition warranted. But she couldn’t find the point in that now; Why fight when she would just get captured again, and have to repeat this until she was killed? Tradition was damned, she recognized she couldn’t return home this time.
A little over 20 seasons old she had finally an opportunity to escape. Some visiting nobles to the ranch she worked on had the guard shifts cut in half so they could better protect the visitors. This was just enough of an opening that she could slip away from her work and stalk into the nobles house. It wasn’t hard for her to throw every torch, candle and lantern onto the floors until everything was in flames. She only took one thing from the foreign noble. An ornate steel dagger. In the chaos that followed she ran for the ranch, opening every pen and stable, letting all of the animals out and climbing onto the back of one of the horses she’d trained and riding into the darkness as swiftly as it could carry her.
She wondered for a little while before she’d got enough of an idea where she’d ended up to track her way back to the bandit lands. She couldn’t go home, there would be no future for her here in the bandit lands. But there was something burning in her to do. She had to return a favor long overdue… it was time for her to return the favor her husband had bestowed.
Now, when tribes travel constantly as a way of life, it isn’t easy to find a particular one. But it was easy to track the tribes and all the signs pointed to one thing. A great meet was underway. She rode into the massive camp of the whole clan gathered for one festival. Hundreds of thousands of her people camping together, a constant din of noise from the drum circles and the wedding celebrations made the bare-backed rider nothing more than a background fixture. Not worth notice. It took her hours to find the tribe, and to find Ko’um’s tent. It was large, brightly colored, selling her and probably others had made him wealthy, and powerful enough to be named chief of his tribe. It was a tent for a family. She had suspected he had moved on, his burning desire for children and family made it unsurprising.
Slinking around to remain hidden from pray, or people, was remarkably similar. She slipped up behind his tent and cut a hole into the material. She slipped inside and helped herself to his collection of darts. She set a simple trap, the barbs facing up in the pillows of his tent. It wouldn’t take much of the poison to put him and his wives to sleep… and she used every barb he had.
She then left, and laid in wait for him and his new family. As the moon reached it’s highest point in the sky the festivities died down. She watched from the shadows, nothing more than another figure among hundreds of strangers. She watched him, his two wives, infant son and a two-year old girl toddle into his tent with him. She approached, hearing a few short yelps of pain. One of his wives managed to make it to the tent flap, collapsing just outside it before the barbs in her shoulder and back had her sound asleep.
Ah’marrin stepped over the woman, and dragged her inside. Then picked up his spear and regarded the now crying children. It was something like killing rabbits to her. Soft, harmless creatures, no threat to her at all. But unlike the hare it broke some of the oldest laws of her people to run Ko’um’s spear through them. But at this point she was nothing to her own people, all because of him. It was time he understood his actions. It was time he was the weak one. She left the spear buried in the chest of his eldest as she stepped out of the tent and knelt in front of his fire. It had been dying, out of necessity she fed it enough to get the flame cracking again. She held the outsiders knife in the fire until it grew red hot.
She stared at the blade as she was largely ignored among the people sleepily heading to bed. Only when she felt the hot tears running down her cheeks as she re-entered the tent with the burning hot knife did she even realize she’d been crying this whole time. Once the heinous deed was done, Ah’marrin escaped out the back of the tent and slipped back into the thinning crowds of people. She returned to her stolen horse and rode away from the great meet, she returned across the Ban'Horrek lands. With everyone preoccupied with the meet, the lands were vacant and her escape from her own people, effortless.
The bodies were found the next morning. One of Ko'um's raiders witnessed the aftermath of her revenge. Ko’um’s children were dead, and Ko’um was alive but mutilated, certain never to have more children.
She hunted and camped as she traveled, making herself new weapons as she went. She had to avoid most cities and towns as the neighboring kingdom had no patience for her kind. She had to stalk across the borders of kingdoms at night. Constantly moving and avoiding people. She had to cross two kingdoms over weeks of travel before she wasn't immediately chased or hunted from the road.
Finally she reached the great sea of tears, as her people called it. Or the ocean, to the rest of the word. The disdain for her and her way of life was enough for her to consider an alternative mentioned to her while enslaved. The forbidden lands.
She had to mug a few people to get the gold needed to barter her way across. When she told the captain her name, the gruff captain butchered it and ultimately just called her ‘Bandit’. Ah’marrin didn’t take issue with it and adopted the name as they made the crossing. She was left in a small port town and set out to explore the untouched wilderness.
Months of travel lead her to a curious stone beacon… and then another, until finally she found a strange village under a raven shaped cliff. Perhaps it was time to greet the locals.
Items:
Stone chisel, obsidian dagger and spear, leather clothing, bone armor.
