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1. Well, most of the current recruits don't have any real physical talents at all. I think maybe Shane, Abel and Einar could be counted on in a fight, perhaps Faustus and Alberto?? When you consider there's definitely fifteen recruits, that's a really small percentage. What I mean is, we already have a ton of people who are good at talking to people and making them see things their way. What makes Shoshan stand apart from any other character who values brains over brawn? While it's true no one has her specific skill set, what would make her straight away so different an Elite would recruit her?

(I find it hard to locate people's 'pertinent skills' in the journal, so I couldn't find specific examples. stressed )

2. That might fly. I don't know. The sources I've read indicate that family life truly was important to the Egyptians. Because they found it hard to get their people to a childbearing age, their society really revolved around birth, marriage, and death (which was pretty common in that time). Girls often got marriage around 12 or 13... According to what you've written, she would have been taken into the court of Cleopatra even before that. Did she gain Cleopatra's ear so early? (I am operating on the assumption that she was 18-20 when she was banished.) It seems like your timeline is very rushed, thinking about it, but life was short back then so that might explain it.

3. The same circumstances don't apply, because the situations aren't at all similar. Cleopatra was born in a family where she would definitely one day take up the position of Pharaoh. She was expected to share her power with a male, which she did for much of her life (first her father, then her younger brothers, then Caesar, then Marc Antony and for a time her son, Caesarion). Nothing I've read- and I point you to the website I linked before, as well as the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt- indicates that Cleopatra defied anything. She was, beyond her willingness to learn the Egyptian language, quite a conventional Ptolemaic ruler.

(Actually, female co-rulers were quite common before Cleopatra. Her sister, her mother, and her aunt were all co-rulers as well. I'm sure the tradition continues beyond that.)

I realize that your backstory allows for the fact that female advisers were undocumented, but... it's just very hard to believe, having read what I've read about ancient Egypt.

To be added into Shoshan's profile...

Relationships:

Old Woman Dyer Master (need name)
Orestes (husband)
Galan (son)
Ismene (daughter)

Orestes' Ex-wife
Orestes' other daughters (2)

Storyline (what happened after her exile):

- Travels to Macedonia under the guise of a young male thief, pawning off some of her gold to get a ride on a merchant ship with her dog
- Moves around Macedonia learning the language and integrating herself as a female. This takes a year.
- She is apprenticed under an old woman dyer for three years.
- The dyer dies and leaves her the business, however within a year and a half Shoshan cannot keep it afloat anymore and is being consumed by debts.
- Orestes, a pretty well-off merchant in Macedonia pays off her debt and takes Sho as a servant into his household.
- For half a year she serves under Orestes' wife, taking care of her and her daughters.
- Six months later, when she has been working for Orestes for a year, she finds out that Cleopatra has died. In these six months, Orestes' wife has also died. Orestes takes Shoshan on as his wife, taking advantage of her depression.
- Shoshan becomes pregnant and has a son named Galan.
- Two years later, she has a daughter named Ismene.
- Two years after that the time break happens and she is tragically separated from her family.

... enter LOTUS. 8D

Notes: She heads to Macedonia because Cleopatra was from Macedonia and she wants to find some secret way of still helping her Pharaoh despite and especially because of her dismissal. She loved her queen so much that she cannot understand a life without her. By the time of the time break, she should be approximately 26. Meaning she had her son Galan at the age of 22. Meaning she was adviser to Cleopatra at about 16-17. During all her years in Macedonia (the six up till Cleo's death), Shoshan never stopped trying to find a way to assist Cleopatra. Listening in to all the rumors and gossip and trying to find an opening for a female diplomat. A position she never finds. After Cleopatra's death, she loses herself in the life of being a Macedonian housewife to a well-off merchant, and mother to his children. A task she does not loathe. In fact, she is content with it and loves her family quite a bit. Anubis is still with them. During the time break, Anubis is the only one that stays with her.

Skills she will obtain in these long years:

- Knife skills and self-defense (the journey TO Macedonia was long in itself, she had to protect herself somehow, especially disguised as a male.)
- Disguise, but only to make herself look like a young male
- Language
- Macedonian culture
- Cunning, from having to pawn off so much gold stealthily and tricking some people
- Dying fabrics, from her apprenticeship
- Housework
- A skewed sense of business, having to run the dye place for a few years
- How to be a mother

And don't forget her other skills!
Though the skills I just added seem silly, I'll be sorting through them to make them useful... but maybe some good can come from what I am adding.