MelWong/StormseaSilence
Contents
Stormsea Silence, the Devoted Mother
By MelWong
Character Background
Backstory
Stormsea Silence was born in the Coral Republic, daughter of a gambling wastrel of a fisherman and his wife, who was of learned people. Her father did not deserve her father, she thought many a time through her bitter childhood of blows and privations. Despite her family's poverty, however, she had a fairly safe childhood if only because her mother would constantly shield her from her father's excesses. She learned to read and write, to sew and cook, and to sing - all the skills a good wife would have, and being a good wife was all she aspired to be, really.
That never happened. In her 14th year she came back from the afternoon's clam-digging to find her mother had died, "of a sudden illness", her father had said, but unkinder voices among the neighbors whispered that he had accidentally killed her during one of his fits of rage. Without her mother's influence her life became much more unpleasant - first her father drank her dowry away, and she had only his death to hope for. Still, even with the drink he was a strong, healthy man, and she despaired of ever being free of his influence.
The situation worsened when he started making leering advances at her, accosting her as she went to and fro the daily chores. Only the price her virginity would fetch at a local brothel kept him from forcing himself on her. In the end, he sold her to a wealthy man as a concubine for three obols when she was seventeen. That was all she was worth in his eyes.
Her husband was a man in his 40s, a former privateer well-blessed by the Sea Lord, who had been absolutely smitten by her cold, sad beauty. He was not in love with her - rather, he was in lust with her - but he was kind and caring to her in a way nobody else had been in her entire life, and while she did not love or desire him she did welcome his solicitude. He enjoyed her company and the songs she sang for him, and he started spending more time with her alone than he did with his other wives.They did not take it well. Firstly, they were jealous of this silent, strange girl brought home as a concubine. Faced with her insecurity, they smelled blood, and started bullying the downtrodden Silence, who did not dare to speak up. When Silence conceived a child in the third year of her marriage - something her husband's other wives had been unable to do for their wombs were are barren as their hearts - his first wife felt that she had had enough.
Paying a herbalist handsomely, she procured certain herbs certain to cause a miscarriage, and slipped the vile brew into Silence's tea. The abortifacient made her sick unto death, but her child had taken root and would not be dislodged. When that did not work, the wicked, angry woman bought a blanket used by someone who had been recently ill with the flower-sickness, and hid it in Silence's bedding, paying the chambermaid to keep silent. The flower-sickness was named for the rash it caused, a flowery series of blotches on the skin that was merely unpleasant and not especially fatal except in a pregnant woman. Any woman who fell ill with it would bear a child terribly disfigured or crippled. She cackled with inner joy as Silence broke out in the trademark blotchy rash two weeks later. The disease ran its painful course, and when Silence went into labor some months later she gave birth to a girl-child who she named Tern. It was a relief to Silence that her daughter was seemingly normal in every respect, - that is, until someone dropped a crock full of heated goats' milk in the nursery, and did not wake the child. Further testing with gongs proved that the infant was deaf, and the news broke her heart, for disabled girl-children were useless even to the shore patrols, and given over to the Fair Folk on a particular stretch of sandy shingle.
She refused to let the infant leave her side, carrying the baby to her bed and turning increasingly pained and worried as time drew on. Her husband, in the span of her difficult pregnancy, had found another concubine to while his time away with and no longer came to her chamber, and "any day now" her older sisters, the elder wives, would take Tern and give her over to the Fair Ones. Her worst fear came true when she woke one morning from a disturbed sleep to find her precious baby gone, replaced by a pillow wrapped in swaddling clothes. A storm grew thick in the air, the dawn-light greenish and distorted. Throwing some clothing on hurriedly, Silence sprinted barefoot into the surf holding little more than a humble wood axe, dull as hearthfire, a worn wooden handle bound to an iron blade with thongs.
There holding her precious baby was one of the Fair Folk in a kilt of fishes' mail, smiling with a mouth full of shark teeth. She would not have fought it were her child's life not at stake. In a sudden burst of light that she thought was lightning, she lifted her axe against the creature even as the storm battered her into the sand. The wind tore her hair from its hasty bindings and the rain soaked her long skirts, desperate mother fighting something beyond her comprehension with little more than a wood axe and the urge to protect her baby. When her axe gave, the shaft breaking under a gossamer-glass blade, a cry burst out from within her, and a sword, hot, heavy, and hers sang within her grip even as she smelt her own flesh burning from its touch.
It did not take long to kill the faery. Gathering tiny Tern from the corpse even as she let the daiklave drop, she sank to her knees in the face of the oncoming tide and wept, for killing gave her no joy, and she feared the kind of demon she had become.
Silence has been exiled from her husband's household and now plies a trade as a chambermaid at a dockside teahouse as there is nowhere else that will have a woman cast off by her husband. There are other livings available to one of the Chosen, but the thought of killing makes her sick and if forced to fight she will only defend herself and Tern, and no more.
At the teahouse she pours drinks, sings, keeps the rooms clean, and warms the beds if the customers wish to have her. Heavy on her wrist is the shackle that binds her to the daiklave that is at once her salvation and damnation, and she works there only to save enough for passage out of the West.
There must be a cure for Tern's deafness somewhere, and she will go to the ends of Creation to find it.
Description
Silence is a slim slip of a woman, almost girlish in form except for the slight crinkles of worry at the corners of her eyes and mouth. She is still very beautiful, with her lovely bronze complexion, golden eyes and straight violet hair, and yet to her, her beauty is yet another thing for sale like her conversational skill and her singing voice. She rarely smiles, and when she does the smile does not touch her distant, faraway eyes. The only time someone will see a genuine smile from her is when Tern does something amusing or clever, and she will smile and hold the little child very closely - her daughter is, really, all that she treasures in this world.
She dresses without ceremony in rough ankle-length dresses of dull, muted homespuns, with sleeveless smocks or overdresses over to keep her dry, and sturdy boots. Her hair is braided away from her face with a modicum of care. Only at the teahouse does she pay attention to how she looks, and that's only because it's part of the job.
There is a heavy, beautiful bangle on her right wrist that looks oddly like a shackle. When she is out and about she sometimes wears a sealer's coat of sealskin, a heavy man's coat cut down to her height, and Tern rests on her back in a cloth sling.
She is somewhat unsteady and ethereal in bearing, in part because of the heavy fog of sorrow that rests upon her shoulders, and also because of the First Age memories flooding her head. She never asked to be the next incarnation of an army-slaying monster, yet that is what she is. She clings to her destiny as a mother to orient herself.
Game Stats
Name: Stormsea Silence
Caste: Dawn
Nature: Martyr
Anima: Her anima is the sickening green-tinged ruddy violet of the sunrise just before a typhoon rises. When she goes fully iconic, her anima banner displays a weeping woman in widow's weeds, a broken sword in hand.
Concept: Devoted Mother
Attributes:
Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3
Charisma 4, Manipulation 3, Appearance 4
Perception 2, Intelligence 2, Wits 2
Abilities:
Awareness 3, Craft (Housework) 1, Dodge 1, Endurance 1, Larceny 2, Linguistics 1 (Seatongue native, Low Realm), Lore 1, Medicine 1, Melee 5, Performance 3, Presence 3, Sail 1, Socialize 2, Stealth 1, Survival 2, Thrown 3
Backgrounds: Artifact 4 (Tsunami Blade), Contacts 2 (A Tya physician, and a worn-out teahouse owner), Resources 2
Virtues:
Compassion 3, Conviction 3, Temperance 2, Valor 1
Virtue Flaw: Heart of Tears (Compassion)
Willpower: 6
Health: -0,-1,-1,-2,-2,-4,Incap
Essence: 3
Essence pool: 15 Personal, 36 Peripheral
Charms:
- Awareness
- Sensory Acuity Prana
- Melee
- Golden Essence Block
- Dipping Swallow Defense
- Bulwark Stance
- Fivefold Bulwark Stance
- Performance
- Masterful Performance Exercise
- Presence
- Harmonious Presence Meditation
- Socialize
- Mastery of Small Manners
- Thrown
- Triple-Distance Attack Technique
- Cascade of Cutting Terror
Combos:
Equipment: Plain sturdy clothing, a sealskin buff jacket, an erhu (a bowed string instrument), well-mended finery, the Tsunami Blade
Combat:
Base initiative: 5
Soak: 7B/4L/3A (Buff Jacket)
Dodge: 4
Attacks:
The Tsunami Blade: Speed 9, Accuracy 13, Damage 9L, Defense 13
Silence's Expanded Backgrounds
Artifact ••••
The Tsunami Blade has its own page.
Contacts ••
One of her contacts is a Tya physician who provides medicines to women working the pleasure-quarters of the docksides. Her other contact is the owner of the teahouse herself, a former harlot who treats her "girls" like surrogate daughters.
Resources ••
Silence makes a paltry living at the teahouse - the best food and clothing go to Tern, and the bulk of the income goes towards finding a cure for the little girl's deafness. What's left is saved for passage out of the West as she believes a cure could be found elsewhere, especially in the land of the grandfather trees where elixirs of life grow on branches.
