Name: Deidre. The closest to a last name she has would be 'daughter of Aoife'.
Age: 23
Appearance: Deidre is the very image of a lonely maiden; she is slender in frame, standing at average height, with a pale complexion befitting her long solitude. Her long, blonde hair is well-groomed, reaching down to her waist; a consequence of her own meticulous grooming thereof despite her relative isolation. The knights who saved her gave her new clothes; a purple dress, the hem reaching to her feet, made of good fabric and trimmed with gold, wth the shoulders exposed revealing parts of her slender frame. The one thing Deidre kept of her old clothes is a translucent sash, a magical focus for the unique form of magic practiced by her family, made of tough fabric and useful for deflecting blades or parrying the odd club. The only obvious sign of magical ability would be her dewy purple eyes, a trait of her family marking her as a sorceress, long known in the area as a sign of possessing the gift of magic.
Backstory:
The Marwick Fens have long been associated with magical power. Many leylines intersect underneath these marshes, causing it to be a well of immense magical power; in olden times, the Calonnau gathered in the Fens, feeding upon the magical power witin the swamp. Even the near destruction of Galwalas could not shake the Fens, as it was one of the few places in the whole kingdom that remained unshaken. The leylines too remained untouched, and so it remained a well of power. Of course, the Calonnau that had once dwelled there had gone; many had perished and those that survived went into hibernation, regaining power. The fertile soil around the Fens also brought with it a prosperous village of farmers; even accounting for the soil and the farmers, of course, their harvests were bountiful. The farmers attributed this to the Calonnau granting their blessing and praised the Fens.
Of course, unbeknownst to the villagers of Marwick, a family of sorceresses had lived in the Fens, escaping persecution from the Christians of their homeland, who had demanded they be burned as witches. Hiding in the Fens, the sorceress Branwen, with her daughter Aoife and her husband Naoise rebuilt their lives in the wilderness, with the great sorceress teaching her ways to her daughter. Unlike other enchanters, Branwen had little use for runes; though she knew how to use them, she had learned many things about the ways of magic. Instead, she used magical dances; Branwen had determined that certain dances would allow her to channel magic through herself akin to a runes, allowing her to approximate its effects akin to a ritual. Through this, Branwen had helped the village of Marwick, dancing on the leylines themselves to bless the harvests, year after year. It was this secret art that the sorceress passed to her daughter, before dying eventually from a combination of old age and stress.
Naoise and Aoife in time had a daughter of their own, one they named Deidre. One night, while hunting for food for his family, Naoise disappeared and never returned, leaving the grieving Aoife to raise her daughter alone. Aoife was not a bad mother, and so she treated Deidre well, educating her as well as she could in what she had learned, in particular in the magical dances of her mother. Deidre matured into a sweet young woman, helping her mother with the old dances to help out the villagers out of the goodness of their hearts. Before Deidre was fully grown, however, Aoife herself died, leaving Deidre all alone. She was content to remain there, only ever having heard of the world beyond through stories; even more content to help the villagers despite them never having heard of her.
However, sometime after Aoife's passing, the villagers had heard stories of a mysterious woman, beautiful as anything, living alone in the swamps. How such a thing could possibly be true boggled the mind, until their minds drifted to the one possible explanation there was; the woman had to have been a witch, a servant of the Otherworld, sent here to curse the village with plagues and hellfire. The villagers wasted no time in assembling a mob, invading the Fens and taking Deidre out of her home in the night, whipped into a frenzy. Against Deidre's pleas that she was just trying to help, Deidre was sentenced as a heretical witch, to be killed by burning at the stake.
Just in time, however, several knights had ridden along, and they managed to witness the villagers tying Deidre to the stake to burn her alive. Wasting no time in seeing a beautiful maiden in danger, the knights untied Deidre and whisked her from the stake, defending her from the mob. It was through the careful intervention of the knights, claiming to have come from the Order of the White Branch, that Deidre was able to clarify the situation; the villagers, in shock at the sin they had nearly committed, begged her for forgiveness. In the process, however, the knights realised that Deidre possessed a form of lost magic- dating from the time of the Tuatha De Danann, when the fairies would dance in the moonlight and use the power of the land- and asked Deidre if she could accompany them to the Order, to put her magic to use to repair the land itself.
The young lady could not say no.
Class: Enchanter
Primary Attribute: Enchantment
Secondary Attribute: Cunning
Ternary Attribute: Physical
Other: Rune of Healing
Dice (6/6)
Physical Dice: 1
Enchantment Dice: 3
Cunning Dice: 2
Weapon: Her sash. See description.
Armour: Her dress. See description.
Other:
- Book of Three: An ancient-looking tome, with sections on potionmaking among other things. It was once owned by Branwen and passed down through Aoife, with translations into the common tongue for the part on potionmaking. There are magical runes contained within one section, but the script explaining them is indecipherable to Deidre.
- Aoife's Grace: A small ring, belonging to her mother, hanging from a chain around her neck.
- Ingredient Pouch: For every enterprising potionmaker.
- Old Bag: An old bag full of knick-knacks and foodstuffs Deidre herself made.
Ability: Dances of the Ancients: Deidre can perform magical dances passed down through eons. Deidre may substitute preparations for a Ritual with a Dance instead. The longer she dances, the stronger the resulting effect; short dances allow for immediate but weak effects, longer dances for stronger results. Deidre's dance also amplifies the power of a Ritual to which she contributes to.
