Tania Dango

[Acacea]

The Short Version. (OOC)

Tania's Backstory

5/20/07 - Converses with Jharl and Jennara, and meets Ketil, Drogo, Ferrit, and Canius in passing. Jennara helps her in the sewers, where she almost dies repeatedly, and Jharl gave her a few healing supplies for the trip. All the strangers that bother to speak to her seem overly nice to her, and it makes her jumpy. Made level 2 and learned to deflect those missile weapons instead of being thumped with crossbow bolts. Lost in city several times, homesick. (And I would kill for weapon finesse.) Has not bound her soul, will refuse if they are explained to her (no respawn). Makes me jumpy, too.

5/22/07 - Goes back to sewer with a new attack plan and slings everything to death, triumphs in epic battle with ooze all the way back to the streets. Makes level 3, weapon finesse (yay), encounters Maple, Ron, Alleina, Oma, Seth, and Dareth at mixed points. Both relieved and unhappy to find out Maple is from the tribes; a comfort and a bad reminder and embarrassment. Realizes Ron is a treehugger, uncomfortable. Dareth gave her a headache with all his talk of gold and liches. Offended Seth by talking to Maple in halfling instead of Common so everyone could understand. Agreed to aid Maple in looking for her brothers in the woods for some food, leave at first light.

5/23/07- Fights with a log waiting for late-sleeper to wake up in meeting place. Accompanies Maple to the Gloom Woods as agreed to help look for information on her missing family members. Maple deals with dark elf and Shadowfang, to her disgust, helping out Riam in hopes of finding out more; doesn't get much. Impressed by Maple's blessings from Prunilla, however, both on friends and against enemies. Level 4, but refuses to use the Shadowfang's 'gift.'

Pig Quests

Caravan bandits

Coastal caves, sewers with Naldin

[Acacea]

Mar, 1418

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[INDENT]Tania carefully reached up and draped Rim's clothing over a rock behind the little tree-shack to dry, sun or no. It had taken awhile to wash all the sewage from it, and she was a little ashamed that the elder's clothes had gotten so filthy by fighting rodents. Though, they had nearly killed her... just more proof that the cities of tall folk were disasters. People took proper care of waste and vermin at home; here they just dumped it into a hole and waited for it to sift into the ocean, while strange fish creatures swam up into it and caused it to pile up. And as always, the rats thrived.

The ocean... the ships and the ashy clouds had blocked the far horizon, but Tania still managed to grin at herself, wondering how she had thought it was a big lake at first. Of course it was the ocean. She knew that. When she had gotten close, she had seen for herself how far it stretched on... she had thought the protected oasis of home had been big. Everyone knew it was. That's why they took care of it so. She had tasted the water from the wharf though, and nearly retched. What good was all that water if you couldn't drink from it?

Tania stretched her arms down to her toes, but the robe Jennara had made for her, while comfortable, was unfamiliar to her movements. She looked at the wet clothes and then at the robe and sighed before just pulling it over her head and folding it neatly so as not to get it dirty. It was a chilly night, but just like the heat, the cold was nothing compared to home, even with nothing to protect her from it. Tired as she was, she still ran through small stretches and exercises so as not to go to sleep tense from a long day.

After the minor ones were done, she sat bare on the grass behind the rock, where no one would see or disturb her. She didn't close her eyes, or chant any funny sounds, or bend her head in prayer; she simply watched, and listened.

The world was still awake around her. She heard the hungry cry of a night bird she didn't recognize, a few rustles from less hostile rodents than she had found in this "sewer." The breeze was cold, and the faint traces of hunger were gnawing at her own belly, but Tania was saving her rations. She had seen the glint of scales under the water when she was washing, but was not ready today to figure out what to do with a fish if she caught it...or if she even wanted to try and eat one yet, so soon after seeing their likeness in the sewers. There was a small ghost ache where one had greeted her with crossbow bolts. The impact had knocked her to the slick floor, losing blood rapidly; it had been Jennara's curatives that had closed her wounds instead of letting them close her eyes.

Jennara puzzled her, in a way. At first, Tania had been relieved to encounter someone 'normal' in the City of Gold - though as she had told Jennara, the streets were not really paved with precious metals after all - and the fact that Jennara fought in a similar style was encouraging...but the Rofireinite was nothing of the sort. She was not a clan member, or even of the tribes, but at least she was a halfling...On the other hand, how strange that she was such a fervent follower of the Golden Wyrm. And her eyes... a blessing from the Lord Protector, she had said.

Yet much of what she said was simply practical, and Tania had seen how effortlessly Jennara had dispatched the things that had nearly killed her on more than one occasion. Sometimes it had seemed a blur, and when she had fallen and everything was seen behind a foggy veil of blood, it had seemed that in one instant, she was surrounded by vermin and looming fish creatures, and the other, climbing to her feet with nothing but corpses around her.

And she moved so fast. She wondered how Jennara would do against Rim. She had a long way to go.

Tania wasn't sure what she thought of their Foundation, yet. All of those donations, to be given out... where did they all come from? Was there really that much food belonging to others, that they could afford to simply give it all away? Where did they get it? Why couldn't the common people do the same? Maybe there was some truth to the rumors about private adventurer hoards after all, but at least Jennara's group didn't simply sit on it. All the same, what her clan had, her clan had earned, and they neither took nor gave handouts.

She frowned at that thought, remembering how the man named Jharl had given her a small bag of gold and bandages to help her. He hadn't seem to want anything in return, had he thought she needed charity? She wasn't sure what to make of it. She grinned a bit, remembering how she had briefly wondered if he was an elf when he had spoken to her in their tongue. Much bigger than she'd expected, she had thought, and ears less pointy.

Not an elf though, she had seen a few of those later - one a druid, who had given her a slice of pie that she'd insisted be returned with a small pouch of gold from her limited stores, and the other seeming quite vacant and meditative, about as she had expected them all to be. Jharl had seemed kind enough though, and Jennara had assured Tania that he was, but she didn't understand how different everyone seemed here. It seemed like there were only two kinds: those who would give and refuse anything in return, and those who wanted only to take. Didn't anyone still trade properly in Mistone? It seemed like the two groups needed to teach each other; there was no such thing as 'free,' after all.

Tania had been sure to make a list of the items she had been given, so that she could repay them when she was able, except the lucky feather Jharl had given her, and Jennara's guiding and life-saving, none of which were measurable. She could have died in that hole of filth, and no one would ever have known.

She stood to practice the quick, immediate motions from a standstill that she thought would be needed if she came against crossbow bolts in the future and wondered, would she still be carried to the Necropolis and celebrated, like the rest of the tribes would when they passed? Did she want to be? She wasn't sure, but she missed the desert and its sounds and smells. She missed the sand under her feet, the familiarity of the land around her. This grass was nice, if sickening, and the flowers as well, if wilting, but it was not where she'd come from. There was so much history and life stretching back to the Cataclysm in the Spirit Dunes and the mountains... this was meaningless to her, like squiggles on a map. She could feel that there was life, but it was not that of her home.

Tania worked herself until there was no more room for brooding, and pulled the robe back over her head in exhaustion, her muscles aching, but with a good ache. The day had been hard. She would start again at the next.

[/INDENT]

[Acacea]

Apreal, 1418

[INDENT]She leaned back against the rocks shielding her from the sight of any passing through the crossroads, warmed slightly by a tiny fire in a hollow where she'd removed a section of earth all in a piece. This day had been even longer than her first, she thought, even though she had spent less of it in the city proper, wandering lost. Instead, after a few days spent in preparation and careful purchasing of supplies with her small purse of borrowed gold, she had headed back to the 'sewer' she would have died in without Jennara's aid.

She'd seen how quick the other halfling had been, but until Tania had been overwhelmed, she'd dispatched threats with a single snap of her wrist, using a common sling. Tania wished she had brought her own, and wondered if leaving straight from the tribal grounds instead of returning home for some of her things was truly wise... but then, that was impossible, so it didn't matter.

She'd spent several days wandering the banks of the nearby stream, giving the strange people who gathered near the tree house a wide berth. She would pick up rocks, discard some in favor of another, until she had the small bag Jharl had given her filled with water-smoothed stones that would fit well into the pocket of a sling. Then it had been time to return to the city walls...

It was both too big and too small at once, like she had said to Ron earlier. Too many people... and everything built by humans was five times bigger than it needed to be, just so that every structure would tower over the heads of even the tallest tall people. Yet at times it felt tiny, a prison built by its own people, so that they may never be free. When ships arrived carrying passengers from distant lands, as they often did, she had climbed somewhere out of sight just to be out of the press of people, and to observe.

Tania's body settled into the familiar routine of winding down exercises, while weak flames tried to reach the meat cooking over it. She'd haggled with a halfling merchant over a sling, and declined the bullets she had been offered free of charge to go with it. Tania had already inspected them and found them all to be rolled from unwanted metals, copper it looked like. A waste, she thought. She had a pouch full of stones, already.

Technically, she didn't have to go back to the sewers - she had fulfilled her agreement, after all - but she remained chagrined at how poorly she had fared even with Jennara's aid. So she had gone. She'd stalked silently through the filth, watching the rats skitter fearlessly through it, how the strong would bully the weak even to death, but all would turn to overwhelm something that might prove edible. Now and then a river stone would be flung from her whirling sling, striking each from a distance before they were aware of her presence. Better.

She'd been foolish to try and fight them all as she normally would, Tania thought placidly as she dodged her own shadow blow and tucked neatly into a somersault. It had been like a giant trying to fight a halfling with his hands. She was up here, they were down there. It had gone well with the new tactics until she had encountered another slurping pool of slime that had separated itself from the other sewage.

Tania's face barely registered her remembered disgust and annoyance at it as she fought with nothing in the grass. She'd thrown a stone at it, but what would that do? It had quivered a bit and absorbed it and then slid right over it. She'd continued slinging them right up until it got to her... where it touched her, it burned, even through the padding over her skin. It was different than the rats, she was hardly bleeding at all...yet she had barely staggered away with her life intact at all, and it had mindlessly slurched its way out of the sewers and after her into the street as she poured healing liquids over the acid burns all over her skin, even parts where it looked like the flesh was melting away.

It had lost much of its form after all the stones she had thrown, though, and a few more solid hits had scattered it and left it oozing back through the cobbles. The only other thing that had seemed so threatening had been another fish-creature she'd encountered. Tania wrinkled her nose at the unhappy memory of her retreat from it, but no matter how hard she had stared and squinted from the shadows, she had been unable to make out what sort of weapon it carried.

Its arms had been raised, and she'd spied a glint of metal... but was it a crossbow, or a spear that he had been holding over his shoulder? It made all the difference in her chances of survival, and she'd been frustrated at her inability to distinguish it...and her own unwillingness to sneak too close to find out. From a distance she'd still have a chance of escape, even if it was using ranged weapons... too close and the bolts would fire into her back as she ran, if it spotted her. If it had a crossbow. She'd never know now, but then, she still lived, too.

If nothing else, she felt more confident in her judgment and abilities after training in the sewer, as odd as it sounded in her ears. It was disgusting, and it wasn't like rats and slime and fish were the enemies she was most likely to encounter in her future... but she felt she had made up for the last time, and on her own, as well. Things would be different in a different place, but she would adapt, or she would die.

When she'd finally emerged from below, she'd made to head back outside the gates and clean herself up, but had encountered another halfling chatting with a human beside the same elf Tania had seen staring spacily into the sky the other day.

She closed one eye and then nodded to herself as a sling bullet hit a dead tree with a solid thunk. Maple was the other halfling's name, and dressed in robes of green and gold. She would be waiting for Tania at the first lightening of the sky, to go to the Gloom Woods to search for Maple's brothers. There might be Shadowfangs lurking behind the twisted trees. Tania wasn't sure what she would do if she encountered any. She still wasn't sure how she felt about Maple either, for that matter. It was comforting to have someone familiar with your ways and people, yet she couldn't deny the pit in her stomach when Maple had revealed that she was of the tribes, nor her own discomfort when she'd been questioned about her reasons for leaving the sands, what her training was. There was no malice in the questions, Tania was sure - the Cloverseed girl was a priestess of Lady Comfort, after all. But it was not for her to know.

She had odd friends, as well. No...not friends, Tania corrected herself. Maple had said she'd only just met the human, Ron, a short while before Tania herself arrived. How strange then, that they were chattering pleasantly until she got there. He'd come through the Spirit Dunes and was asking about a strange flower he'd found, and Tania had felt as though she'd been punched in the stomach when he showed the Firstbloom to the elf. There had been so few of them, in the last decade or two. It was far from home, like her.

Much of the later conversation had been lost on her, the speech in Common going too fast. There had been some talk with a different human about the cave in the mountains, she recognized that one, though she hadn't seen it herself. It was a bad place though, and she'd said so. He'd walked off after she had asked Maple a question in halfling, though, offended at the talk he couldn't understand. Funny. She felt much the same way. At some point, after another human had confused her with his rambling of how many undead had kept him from a chest in a cave, or all the valuables that must be in it, her head had started to hurt.

When he'd asked the others if they knew anywhere he could find treasure without mortal danger, Tania had gestured at the city and welcomed him to the City of Gold. She had thought it was funny, though only Ron and Maple laughed.

The priestess helped in trying to coax life from the fields outside the city, it seemed. Tania wasn't sure how she could stand being around everyone so often, but Maple had told her that you either got used to them or went back home. That had hit hard, Tania thought to herself. She did want to go back home. Home didn't want her, though. Maple had joked that she'd been too busy watching the cooking pot when combat lessons were given, after seeing Tania's aim with the sling, and she had cringed when the Lucky Clover had expressed her thanks to Prunilla that there were people like Tania to stand in front of them so that everyone could enjoy the cooking pot. That's what she was supposed to do, but that road was closed, now.

Tania sighed a little, tearing off a small piece of precious bread from the loaf the priestess had given her, making herself eat it slowly with only a bite of the somewhat-roasted fish she had caught. The catching had been easy enough, even with her hands...it had just needed much patience, and the concentration had given her a reprieve from the world around her. Her hand had eventually darted into the water and simply grabbed one, and she'd used the presence of a nearby rock to make a quick kill by swinging the fish at it.

The preparation had been a different story...the thing had had more scales in its 'armor' than she had expected, and she'd had to find a sharp rock to scrape them off and then clean it out. It had been messy.

She washed her hands with water from her canteen and wrapped the uneaten portions of her meal for another day. It wasn't like she'd never left the settlement, cloistered and pampered. She could snatch a snake from the sands before it had a chance to bite. She'd eaten scorpion, snake, cactus fruit, spiders, sand rabbits. But here, she was like a babe in the wilderness at times.

She would learn, Tania told herself as she covered her body with the robe Jennara had made her and curled around the enclosed fire. She would learn, or she would die.[/INDENT]

[Acacea]

Apreal, 1418

[INDENT]Tania sat crosslegged in front of a log near the stream, a flowing black cloak spread out in front of her for inspection. She wasn't sure what it was made from, though that wasn't surprising, but judging by the amount seemingly available, it had to be from a creature within the Gloom Woods. Strange. She had heard that none of its exotic beasts would survive outside the twisted tree borders, nor anything made from their bodies. On the other hand, she had heard rumors of Shadowfangs clothed from materials found nowhere else in the world, so perhaps they had found some manner of treating it and had kept it a clan secret. That wouldn't be surprising, either.

What was surprising was that no matter how she poked, prodded, or ran fingers along the seams of the cloak, it yielded no sign of hidden nastiness meant to bite unsuspectedly. No secret barbs, no poisons...truly nothing more than met the eye, except the mystery of its making, which was only a curiosity. Beware of Shadowfangs bearing gifts, her father had always told her, though the crazy one at the camp had not exactly offered any, merely cut off her grudging request for information with a demand of killing to be done, and no matter how she pressed, would not share his reason for seemingly wanting to exterminate the entire species of strange bull-men rather than simply leaving the woods.

Well, she had agreed to defend Maple, not do favors for those who had broken faith with the tribes. A former slither too, it looked like - though that observation made her wonder why he wasn't with the others; she'd heard those in a Pair had begged return to the desert, that their links wouldn't be separated.

Maple had already paid a dark elf for information, though, who seemed to be the better option than the other, judging by even the Lucky Clover's reluctance to speak with the halfling. Eventually Maple had bitten her lip and agreed to his 'offer,' in hopes that he would in turn give information regarding the Shadowfang raid that had taken Maple's brothers some years back.

It had been too late to back out, Tania thought ruefully to herself. She couldn't leave the priestess alone in the woods after pledging her aid. Her eyes had widened as Maple prepared for battle, though - Tania had never truly been in one at home, not a real one anyway, and had never had the benefits of Couple's blessings to aid her. She'd braced her arms together, unsure of what to expect as Maple called on Prunilla, and then warmth had filled her like hot soup in a freeze, giving her strength and quickening her mind. Tania wiggled her fingers in front of her face thoughtfully, imagining again the barky exterior they had been given, like tiny twigs on the tree branch of her arm.

Together they had made short work of the only one they had found, and the many things that had surrounded it. Though she respected Maple's prayers, the priestess had seemed hasty in following retreating enemies - there had been no need to fight the entire group at once; Tania had seen a walking skeleton ward itself from sight, so it and a few others must have seen them coming. They might have been foolish enough to come without the rest. But fight them they had, and Maple's wounds had been closed with a bite of food and prayer. Tania had shrugged when looking at it, head intact. She carried no metal blades fit for decapitation (or any at all, for that matter), and did not care for the practice, anyway. The redheaded halfling had had to make a hack job of it, and carried it back to the camp in a bloody sack; Tania had waited outside.

Tania shook her head in disgust at the memory of the camp. Bah. Dark elves and Shadowfangs, what had she been doing lingering at a mercenary camp in the Gloom Woods? She paused as she considered that - for Maple, whom she had agreed to defend a time. Nothing is free; Maple had shared from her small stores of food in exchange - did that make Tania a sword for hire? The corner of her mouth twitched a bit in the beginnings of a grin before it faded. Fists for hire, perhaps. No. She was making a path.

All the same, she trusted not at all the few words the shadowed halfling had given Maple in exchange for proof that another of his enemies lay dead. Either to go to local authorities of the place that had been raided, or seek out where their mistress had 'ruled' once - Branderback, Prantz. Tania was quite sure that she would follow Maple not a step if she sought out the knives in the dark, but she thought the place odd in any case. Their 'mistress' had ruled just about everywhere, or so she thought. She had had plenty of action on Mistone, and the tribes bore the scars to show it. To give one place to her actions seemed foolish, and just another reason that they were likely being misled.

Most of all, Tania thought, she had not liked his eyes. Hate, she would have expected... nastiness, murder, deception, not unsurprising. His words were heavy with contempt, but she had looked into them and seen...nothing. It was as though he did not live.

She quelled a shiver with a thought, forcing her body to stillness as she folded the cloak away and slid it into her pack. She would return it to Maple when she saw her next. Tania had no desire to wear something given by a Shadowfang - particularly one already dead, breathing or no.[/INDENT]

[Acacea]

Jular, 1434

[INDENT]Sixteen years. Almost two decades since she has shielded her eyes from the glare on the sand... sixteen years since she last drank from the protected waters of Circle Mountain, since her childhood idol had given her the clothes of an elder and sent her off the mountain to leave her dreams behind. Sixteen years avoiding a calling, and the garb that had been an honor has just about fallen to rags.

Thrice exiled she was, now. Once, for being called to the Dune Walkers, though no fault of her own. Twice, for abandoning the tribes and leaving her initiation and traditions behind her. And thrice, for not defending her clan home - or worse, the tribal grounds - when the dark cousins attacked.

Unable to be still with her thoughts, Tania shadowboxes with her darkened twin against the rock, the forest greenery worn under her feet with the familiar routine. The third was the worst, she thought. For all other things she could tell herself that they were necessary or not in her control. To not aid her people, that was unforgivable. True, she had not known... but had she not left, she would have been there. Years had gone by since she had heard the news, and still it stung deeply, a wound that would not ever heal. Sandcallers had defended the settlement, when the Spirit Claws were lured into the marshes to help with the raids into Flatbottom territories. Though the fighting there was reputed to be real enough, the rest of the strikers from the Gloom Woods had driven through Circle Mountain while their defenses were away...

Only to be confronted with the Pairs. Knives flashed into the backs of all those that tread close to speakers that blinded, confused, and choked the raiders with magic traced in sand and blood. Paleskinned Shadowfang Pairs fought their own brethren and died for it, which was the worst of it. By what little she could hear from the gossip of the Vaeran cousins in the market, Shar's get among the Sandcallers bore the brunt of the mindless ferocity, the only ones to have casualties. Garod's calling as Second had served someone well, after all. Clan Dango protected the Ire, so they were told, but it was magic that turned the rest away. The only raiders to make it close to the tribal grounds were those that went the long route, and they were halted by another sandcaller, who by all accounts simply told an army to go home and was obeyed! What an embarrassing day for Dangos, to have both your own home defended and your own sworn mission completed by the sect forbidden in your settlement. Who was more true, indeed! She herself had run away from her own opportunity to protect.

And though the sun now filters cheerfully through the leaves, having been returned with moons and stars for long years now, still she could not go back. After leaving to make your own way, how could you return at a crawl? She will not show her face until she can walk in on her own two feet with something to offer.

Tania shakes her head to herself as she saws at her too-long hair with a stone knife. Having brushed death several times to things a child should have been able to avoid, she at times despairs of ever proving to herself that she made the right decision. The small camp hidden behind the shack at the crossroads had served her well, and the trees knew her when she came to lay her head down. But though the night whispers were familiar companions to her now, they did not tell her she was home. As kind or cruel as the life around her could be, it was not what she was born to... and she did not want to die without the sand once more telling her that this, this was home.
[/INDENT]

[Acacea]

Apreal, 1483

[INDENT]She had been so long alone that the wish for someone at her side was an alien thing, something foreign that she tried to expel from her thoughts even as she considered the route she would take through this small hold. So many years a shadow in the trees, getting by. Her own little camp and its vantage point above the crossroads had served her well; she had names for all of the different birdsongs, and like she'd once used words for sand troubled by a boot on a slope or for cracks in dry earth and a lined face, in her solitude she had come to make words for the way a human splashed upstream or the sound of shod or unshod hooves across a cobbled bridge. She was no one, not even a stranger any longer, with all the colors of the desert faded from her gear like a dream to leave her no longer surprised at her reflection in colors of muds and barks and grasses.

She'd watch travelers sometimes, or now and again a small company would start a fire near the treehouse and pause for a time. There were all manner of strange people walking this great green land. Sometimes they saw or heard her, and she would leave for as long as necessary. There was no longer ever any trouble getting by alone...

There had been others, now and then. Tania took some small pride in that she was rarely useless. Even in the company of travelers whose abilities far outstripped hers, she had been the one to spot ambushes on more than one occasion, once even leaving subtle signs of passage to show a detour. Once or twice she had even been a valued tracker, simply because she'd had patience. Waiting motionless for what seemed an eternity when trying to catch her supper had helped with that, when she'd been desperate. There'd even been the occasional companion who was really not so terrible. It was not long ago at all that she'd watched from the shadow of a merchant's stall a grievously injured woman being tended, and though she was loathe to part with any of her meager supplies, she'd heard the human say cloth or bandages were needed.

Tania had hesitated where once, long ago, she would not. It was a time of danger, a time to loan what was needed. It was just that everyone was always taking from her with seemingly no intention to ever return it, so even as she'd held her kit out she had stated what should have been obvious. "One in sand..."

To her surprise, the trade had been honored. Wagon hawks had banded together but were put down, and after the blood and the bodies, she'd been given ten curative vials of comparable strength. "...Ten with clan." She was sorely in need of them, of course, but more than that, something had eased in her at the simple gesture, startling a thankful smile and later almost moving her to tears when she looked them over. She had been so tired of trying to explain herself.

Someone who could both dispatch threats to the road and value a trade would not be so bad to have as company, if one couldn't be with one's own... There had been the priestess, too, who could carry on many conversations at once and translate them all for Tania at the same time. She'd even met a dwarf, recently, after nearly drowning in a cave when the tide had come in, and had found him to be an ideal companion - skilled, but without the need to fill silence with empty prying. It was clear it wasn't the first time he'd foraged for edibles in even a sewer, either, and that was something Tania could relate to.

It had been good to fight alongside someone again, she forced herself to admit, surveying the dip in the land where anything might be hiding in a shadow. She wanted... She couldn't say what she wanted. Something solid. Someone to stand a watch for her. It ached in a way she'd thought driven into hiding, and it would not do. There was no one that so much as knew her whole name, and even the short they tried to give away unasked. She could do this by herself. Had to. She tightened the guard on her forearm and moved out.

*****

After 65 years of self-imposed exile, an easy-to-miss halfling without even a whole name finally returns home.

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