| Background: Otto Lucin has always been a lover of rare things. While
investigating the goods on display from the mines of Rhal, he struck
up conversation with the merchant selling them. The man told him that
if he ever really wanted to make a fortune, the secret was crossing
the Rhal-Nesse border. Being a man consumed with greed, Lucin hired a
guide who could take him into the forest. Scouting out things such as
rubies and sapphires he also kept an open eye for any sign of a
unicorn, with their priceless horns. While exploring the Sacred Wood,
he stumbled upon a sleeping faerie, just a young woman then, with a
plate of fruit next to her. Lucin's secondary business was
pharmaceutical herbs or poisons. Quietly he sprinkled her fruit with
a deep sleep powder, and played the waiting game. An hour or two
\later she stirred in her sleep and reached for a pear from her bowl.
She was stricken unconscious immediately after taking the first bite.
He bound her hands and carried her back to his escort, and soon after
returned to Nod.
Vervaina, Princess of Fae of Nesse, and heir to the throne, awoke
from her slumber dazed and confused over what had happened. Lucin
informed her that she was his bride and they were now on the island
Imbrium of Nod. She wept for days and days but Lucin refused to let
her go. As unwilling bride she carried hostile resentment to her
captor and hated him more and more as the days went by. A few months
passed, and she found herself pregnant with his child. Seeing an opportunity, she warmed up to him during her pregnancy and gained his
trust slowly. Having previously not been allowed out of his sight,
Vervaina discovered he allowed her to take short walks around the
village as long as she never stayed away for more than twenty
minutes. After her daughter's birth, Vervaina tried to formulate a
plan that could let both her daughter and herself escape. Wrapping
the infant Arianna up in a papoose she told Lucin that she needed
air. During her pleading with a sailor to let them board his ship to
Rhal, she caught sight of Lucin in the corner of her eye. Unwilling
to remain prisoner any longer, she made a deal with him, allowing him
to keep the child. Wrapping a chain attached to a wind amulet around
her daughter's wrist, she vowed to find her again someday. After
giving the child up, she was allowed to return to Nesse. |
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| Lucin remarried, this time to a simple fisherman's daughter Sharmila
Balimy. Arianna attended school and service regularly in Errat, but
after finishing her studies and daily prayers she was allowed to
learn alchemy from her father. She learned to harness the powers of
her wind amulet at a young age, and when she graduated primary school
she was given an amulet of holy from her step-mother. Her father had
two more children with his wife, Dewan and Nandita. Arianna
understood that she was different from her half-siblings, but her
father refused to tell her anything about her mother. She obediently
kept her mouth shut and continued attending the mage guilds and
alchemy sessions with her father. When she was thirteen, she met an
elf in town bartering some goods from Nesse. She had before then
never seen anyone who looked remotely like herself. She asked the elf
about his homeland and the people their, the elves and the fae. She
wanted to know more. On her fourteenth birthday, she stole her
father's dagger and an advanced guide to alchemy along with some
ingredients and stowed away on a ship headed to Rhal.
On this ship, she had her first experience using faerie glamour. When
threatened with being discovered by the crew, she willed herself to
not be seen by them. The strength of her wanting led her to disappear
when the eyes of the shipmates were searching for stowaways. She
arrived in Rhal and hitched rides on wagons carrying cargo in order
to reach the border. Arianna had only walked a short distance into
the Sacred Wood, before being spotted by a pair of Cumkalla elves.
Initially hostile to her and her foreign way, they spoke to each
other in Mother Tongue before deciding that they would take her to
Elwain. When arriving there she saw faeries and elves, all looking
far more like her than any of the humans she had known in Errat. She
told her plight to an elf in service at the palace, named Gita
Quaneisha. The elf woman took her to see an oracle of the Lleyke tribe, who pronounced Arianna to be of royal birth after reading
runes that Arianna couldn't understand. Gita brought her to the
palace of the Fae and had her wait for a meeting with the Queen.
Vervaina smiled when she saw her daughter in front of her, wearing
the amulet she had left around her wrist as an infant. Crowned
princess and heir, Arianna has lived in Elwain until recently
learning the history of Nesse, the power of herbs and plants, and the
language of the Elves and Fae. She has upgraded her magic and learned
basic earth and vision magic from Gita and her mother. When Gita
tried to teach her fire magic, Arianna found it hurt her more than
aided her. Over the last year, Arianna has been meeting with
political allies and enemies, staying in apartments provided for
royalty by international diplomats. She has spent time Ertia,
Ceridia, and Rhal. At the moment she lives in a set of apartments in
Gera'shan Moor with her nurse and has been having a sort of affair
with the prince of Rhal, Trell Le Flar. The Rhals with the exception
of perhaps Trell are not overly fond of the inhabitants of Nesse, and
to find that the crown prince is consorting with a faerie would not
be the best news to give them at all. |
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