It was winter in the year 1330, and King Edward III’s son, Edward, future Black Prince, was six months of age. It was during that unusually cold season that Madyn ap Rhodri, merchant and freeman of Wales, and his wife Elizabeth, proud Scotswoman, welcomed their first born and named her Merean. Their home in Cummaes was not uncommon. A cozy three roomed home with thatched rooftops and half-timber design. A stable connected to the side and land of fields for sheep and farming. Her father was required to give two days a week of his working to tend the fields of the baron, but the rest of the time was his. Merean and her mother worked often alongside her father. On market days in the square, Madyn would take his daughter with him to sell their wares: trinkets made by her father’s hands, wool carded by her mother, sheaves of grain, and herbs from their garden.

In the eighth year of her life, Merean stood by her father at their little stall in the market place and heard the news like fire to her ears. War had begun with France. War that unknowingly would last over one hundred years fought in sporadic battles. It was not until she was sixteen that the war touched her home. Madyn was called upon his lord to join the other Welsh archers accompanying Edward, Prince of Wales. The battle of Crecy was won, but Merean’s father never returned.

So, at sixteen, Merean took over the duties of her father. The people of the market square did not look as favorably upon her as they had her father. Needing to maintain their income, Merean began to travel through the realm and to other lands with goods to sell and trade. Within the second year of her travels, as she headed home again to her mother and Cummaes, she witnessed the ravages of The Plague for the first time. The stories she had heard did not do it justice. It was with saddened eyes she looked upon her mother, racked with pain, and knew her mother would not last another night.

Alone in the world, no kinsman to call upon, she was granted the use of her family’s lands as her father gifted to her. The baron did not deny her, but Merean decided to move on and returned the lands to the crown. Packing what belongings she had in the cart, she moved away from what she had known. Some years later, at the age of six and twenty, she settled within the Barony of Elfsea, the Kingdom of Ansteorra. She keeps to herself, giving what skills and time she can to silently assist others around her.