Character name: Ayesh
Journal name: Oneahn_Ayesh
Appearance/age: Ayesh looks like a woman a bit past her prime in fit shape. She is short, very much so, and her height and her ability to fight earned her the nickname Goblin when she was much younger. Her arms, legs, and stomach are all tattooed; reeds and grasses on her legs, sunbursts on her arms, the moon and stars around her navel. Her hair is short, dark with silver shot through it.
Games in (current) Anubis
Games in (previous) 10-Forward
Character personality/history/TL;DNR:
For Anubis: I will update this when it becomes less of a spoiler, mwa ha ha ha.
Canon:
Ayesh grew up in Oneah, the court of the thousand thousands, the Cities of the Sun. Specifically, she grew up in Xa-On, where the Roof of Lights once stood. When her home was overrun with Goblins, and her just barely an adult, she stood with her master and her people and held her ground against the Goblin tide. She watched friend after friend fall, and when her Master sent her to fetch the banner of their school to show these grey skinned rotters who it was that slay them, her Mastery failed her and she hid in an air vent.
Desperation let her get in further than she should have been able to and she was stuck there, hearing her people die. She almost joined them, not with honor in combat, not helping someone she loved survive that much longer, but of dehydration and starvation. She listened as the goblins raided and looted, destroying what they didn't take, so that days later when she "shrank as leather does" and was able to escape, there was little to find.
She gathered what treasures she could, and fled. She convinced herself that the only way to excuse that she yet lived was to teach the ways of Oneah, to inspire someone somewhere to rebuild Oneah anew, so that while the individuals might beyond her saving, Oneah might yet live. She got her chance, when she gave up hope, but even that was not to be.
It was in Bathtown, nearest to the end of human civilization, that Ayesh met the elders who showed her that stories change with the telling, even true histories, that as a story Oneah might survive, where it cannot endure as reality. Crushed by this, and bereft of hope, Ayesh left. She bought wine....
"Wine is the bane if reason."
"Reason is one of the seven virtues"
And she went to the goblin caves to break necks until there were no more necks to break, to kill until the goblin horde overtook her, to die fighting goblins as she was meant to do...
But for the first time in all he travels, the goblins failed to spill from their foul dens to attack a lone traveler. She stood at the precipice and taunted them. She showed her bag of treasures, she challenged them. As she invited them out to die, they invited her in for the same, but not one green-grey toe slid from the shadows.
Perplexed, Ayesh made camp right before the caves, sensing something in the woods that had them spooked, but had no idea what it might be....
She soon learned, when she was kidnapped by a troop of minotaurs. She feigned ignorance of their tongue to understand what was said, and though they had heard her taunt the goblins in Goblin, they bought it. Sadly, other than the names and genders of her more talkative captors she learned nothing much that could help her escape before she was pulled into the labyrinthine warren of halls and rooms that made up their home, deep within the Miritiaan mountains.
She did learn enough to use what she knew from her time in the Hurloon to formally claim the sanctuary of the hearth of the home where she was to be kept, much to the horror of the matriarch of the clan.
Ayesh had a somewhat tenuous position in the Rock And Water clan, then. The one who brought her had rights of courting, and was treating her rather like flowers, or some other lure to catch the interest of a scientifically minded woman of another clan that he wanted to court. The clan matriarch saw her as vermin because she was flakklach, unclean, and refused her anything but the right to be unbound and sit on the bare stones of the hearth, eating what she is given.
Finally the female became aware of her, and through her... Sacraya. Sacraya, a minotaur whose name was always spoken with deep emotion turned out to be a bespectacled scientist who wanted Ayesh's help, though there was much between them before Ayesh got over an early betrayal to finally agree to her insane plan...
They had a group of goblins that they were trying to rehabilitate, to unmake all that is goblin in the goblins, to make them better neighbors by lifting them up as a race. Oneah could live...as a Goblin city...
Ayesh finally agreed, but not easily. Politics in the mountain grew more tense, and she and the goblins were a focal point for a building rebellion against Staahn, the neighboring mountain, whose minotaurs held dominance over those of Miiriitaan. When the skirmishes began, the goblins stood with the Mirittiain mountains, and Ayesh lost the smallest finger on each hand.
And then Sacraya was killed and everything went downhill, fast. She was the only who knew hoe to make the tincture that kept the goblins calm enough to take the lessons. Only one could do without it, at that point. Tilk. They tried to recreate it, and failed over and over again. The goblins took to biting. The minoutaurs threatened to kill them all. So the goblins struck first. They had just found the right mixture, but the goblins attacked before it had time to work.
Ayesh and Tilk were allowed to leave, as there were few goblins left, and he was the only one who could be peaceful undrugged. The drugs did hit to affect one of the others... just in time for her to be executed for her attack on the minotaurs who were trying to help her. They made her rational, and then killed her.
They were rushed off, and Ayesh was not able to get her pack, so they tried to slip back in, and were captured by Staahn. They were shoved into a cage in the great Assembly, watching as Miritiian was killed, watching as the rebellion was crushed, as every house was found guilty of crimes ans punished. They were left to rot.
One of the minotaurs who was in on a deeper conspiracy helped get them out , and when they went to get their stuff, the minotaur who kidnapped her in the first place, in the name of his dead beloved, smuggled them out, knowing he could never return home. His younger brother, Tana, was the only non-goblin student of Ayesh's and he wanted to go with, but he was told he had to stay behind... because he had the formula for calming the goblins... and the teachings of Oneah.
Out under the sky, Ayesh and Tilk were attacked by goblins, untouched by the teachings of Oneah and the herbal mixture. They fought as allies, but when Ayesh was poisoned by a dagger to her calf, she became delusional, and kept speaking Oneahn and Voda about the goblin wars, about throttling grey skinned rotters. She didn't see her student and friend, she saw a goblin.
Despite this, Tilk brought her back to Bathtown, left her for the healers to find. They reunited briefly, but Tilk knew that traveling together, a human and a goblin, was going to get them both killed. They went their separate ways.
Ayesh thought over all she had learned, and reconnected with Captain Raal, who she knew had fancied her. Sometime in the future, they became travling bards, collecting stories, then sharing their own, the secrets of Oneah and of her time in the mountains repackaged into frameworks that the people could accept, keeping the lessons at their core...
Powers:
For her world, she has no powers save those of learning and discipline. To translate her to any other world, what she can do should be noted, as it is significant compared to earth human standard, though to her mind she is human, through and through.
Age - Given the ages listed in the book, and the motion of time, she should be AT LEAST in her 60s by the time of the epilogue, because she was 40 and had grey in her dark hair when she first came to Bathtown at the start of the tale. There is no indication that she appears any older by the epilogue, however, and she does not seem to be affected by age at any point in the story, she always seems to be an adult in her prime. To that end I generally consider her breed of humans far longer lived, especially since Raal is a dignified older man, but they seem much the same, and peers in most ways, which implies a long plateau in age which is common for long live races in fantasy.
Mental, emotional, and physical discipline - mastery of the self is one of the core concepts of Oneahn culture. Ayesh has trained her mind, body, and emotions to the point where she can seem preternaturally gifted in some regards. She can stand motionless in a pose that causes tremors in the muscles of others. She can stand with her eyes closed while an axe descends for her neck, in full mindfulness. With the rooted walk, she can walk anywhere and not fall. She is a superb fighter who refuses to us weapons, but can learn how to work around the weapons that others wield. she studies the biology of any race she encounters to learn how best to disarm and even kill them, and she picks up languages quickly.
The box of unsmoking flame/the Oneahn teaching flute.
She isn't magic, she has no magic of her own, but some of her items seem to be magical. She never specifics if they are magic or tech. They just are. The box of unsmoking flame creates a fire when opened that gives no heat and no smoke. With the right words she can shift the color and intensity of the flame. The teaching flute takes its charge from the flame, and absorbs color and light when touched to it. The flute has a ring that changes the scale it plays on, and as a teaching flute, one can hold it, and think the tune they wish to play, and their fingers will move, they will breath properly, and if they practice with it enough, they will build muscle memory.
