Chessyn
Background
For as long as I can remember I have lived in the trees. I was born in the city of Kajeth, the second largest and southern most city of the Haltan Republic. It is one of our few cities that are built partially on the ground, most foreigners prefer to trade here instead of risking travelling deeper into the Republic. Both my parents made it their business to get profitable trades from these foreigners and selling the goods in Chanta, our capital. It is so that I travelled more than your average Haltan, whom most likely never saw anything beyond their neighbouring village. My parents even took me as far west as Greyfalls when they had to negotiate a trade contract, but much to their regret I never really had a head for business. Any attempt at explaining the details of successfully negotiating contracts ended up with my head lying on the table and me fast asleep. After trying over a hundred times, they gave up and left me to my own devices on our trips. I usually spent the time wandering about the cities and villages we visited and getting off the marked paths to see what lay beyond them. This often included sneaking past the guards because they didn’t really like people getting into certain places, more than once I was dragged back to my parents by my ears.
When I was 14 my parents gladly granted me my request to take the Test of Survival, they packed my bag with a blanket, ironwood knife, flint and steel and a full waterskin and sent me off with some last parental advice, quite convinced that I would be back in 2 weeks as an adult. Part of this test is returning with an animal that you killed yourself or finding a rare plant. Not only had I succeeded at killing several animals for food and finding a rare plant, I also managed to befriend a wild tree-pard. I was praised for my skill and my parent finally found a use for me, they immediately contacted the local guard to enlist me. Not surprisingly I was the youngest recruit but I never let that get to me whenever the older recruits tried to use me as a scapegoat I made sure it came back to bite them in the butt.
The Kajeth guard was one of the few units who actually trained in the use of bows, because the forest was less dense here, and thanks to the large amounts of ‘Young Monkey’ tea I consumed as a child, my feet had become fully prehensile which allowed me to use a bow even from the most difficult vantages.
In the next few years I went, or so my superiors grudgingly admitted, from the most insubordinate recruit to the best scout this unit had ever seen. I spent my patrols scouting far away from the marked paths, often even descending to the forest floor to investigate something that caught my eye and even travelling out of the forest into the open plains to the west. I was often far away from the city for days with as my only company my close friend Jer’n, the wild tree-pard that had come back to Kajeth with me after my Test of Survival.
Appearance
Chessyn is a beautiful young woman in her late teens, early twenties. Her long shiny dark green hair together with her reddish brown skin clearly makes her out as someone born in the Kingdom of Halta. She ties her hair back using a simple leather and wooden clasp adorned with three bright colored feathers. Standing at about 5’ 5” she’s reasonably short for her people. Her lean, muscular body is capable of amazing contortions and she can often be found hanging in the trees using only her feet to keep her balance. Her beautiful face is adorned with red tattoos in the shape of a triangle under each eye and a red line on each cheek.
She dresses in a sturdy top and split skirt. Over this she wears a short cuirass, made of dark green leather trimmed with golden lining and embossed with a golden cat’s head, for protection and a forest green hooded cloak to guard her from the elements.
The only jewellery she wears is a set of earrings with colourful feathers and a band across her left bicep adorned with more feathers.
The only weapon she carries with her is a heavy ornate short bow and her quiver with about 30 arrows.
