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Prelude 2: Tepet Eva Stormcloud

Earliest Memories

Although she has fleeting memories of hot days upon her parents’ merchant vessel, her first concrete memory was playing by the pond with her elder brother. He was much older than her and, as usual, he was teasing her; telling her that she would never exalt, that she would never be chosen by the dragons, she was far too meek, she would never make a hero. Eva smiled at his taunts, enraging him further. She knew he didn't really mean it. It was silly of him really. Her brother turned, enraged and tripped on the root of a pondside fern. Before Eva had even reached the pondside, she knew something was wrong. He lay still in the water, face down, blood trickling from behind his ear and spreading into a red film on the surface.

When the house slaves found her, Eva had been holding her brother above water for hours. Her child's arms ached from the weight but she had done it. She had kept his head out of the water. Over the following weeks as he recovered she bonded with her brother like never before, and received the praise of her house in silent humility. In later years, some ventured that perhaps her experiences among the rushes that day were responsible for her eventual exaltation as a water caste.

Life on the waves

As her parents could afford it, Eva received the attentions of several gifted tutors during the time she should have attended school, allowing her to instead travel the seas with her parents, riding the waves on their flagship, surrounded by their merchant squadron of bluewater merchantmen. She first took the rudder before she had ever taken up a quill to learn writing. She had climbed to the crows nest to read the weather before she had read a word of the Immaculate Texts. And always her kindness and gentle nature endeared others to her.

At the age of fifteen she was given a ship to command, although with an experienced captain on board as advisor. And it was on this first independent voyage that the Great Storm struck. Afterwards, and for many years, sailors would tell tales of the Great Storm. Those that survived that is, for hundreds of ships were sunk on that night between the Realm and the Chiascuro coast. It struck suddenly and without warning. Within moments many of the crew had been swept from the decks as the great waves struck down on her ship. Shortly after, her advisor was knocked unconscious as a spar was ripped loose from the rigging and fell upon him. But Tepet Eva remained calm. She lashed herself to the wheel, and with her natural calm, inspired the crew to work the ship. And wherever her gaze fell, the calm abated. Where she ordered men to go, the waves and rain did not fall so heavily. The whole night long she piloted her ship towards the East, running before the storm. Lashed to the wheel, a corona of mist and steam played about her body, fending off the wind and waves. Avoiding the worst of the waves with determined skill, uncanny precision and the power of her anima, she saved her crew and her ship that night, and earned herself their undying loyalty.

When the old captain drank her a toast at port he called her Eva Stormcloud, for the waves and winds she commanded outmatched the Great Storm. She still wears the name as a badge of pride.

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