Post by Teller on Sept 20, 2016 13:49:07 GMT -4
(Alina Kiziyarova)
Name: Historic: Commodore Seowyn Miratav
Present: Seowyn
Age: Thirty-Three at the time of her transformation, some two hundred years ago
Race: Gargoyle, once human
Occupation: Was once the leading captain of a shipping company; now she gives advice and ‘helps out’.
Magic: Once had control over natural bodies of water.
Physical Description: Seowyn is on the smaller side at five feet, three inches, and has the delicate build most nobles are so satisfied by. Her narrow hands were naturally unsuited to hauling ropes, but having begun the practice at a young age they became suited to it in time. She has a finely boned face and ashy blond hair that falls to the middle of her back. What most people notice first about her are the swirling, ribbed, pale indigo tattoos that cover a great deal of her skin in threadlike lines, from her hands to her jawline and around parts of her hairline.
The second thing they notice is the chalky appearance to her skin when they see her at night, and the fact that she turns to immobile gray stone during the day. Due to her age as a gargoyle, Seowyn’s gray wings nearly touch the floor when she walks, are twice as wide as she is tall when spread, and she has two pairs of horns curling from either side of her head, around her ears. She has a tail now growing from the base of her spine which just touches the ground, but beneath her gown most people wouldn’t know of its existence. Her yellow-orange eyes and slitted pupils, however, they do notice.
Personality: Seowyn has been described by her first mate as ‘a blue whale wrapped in a vanilla éclair.’ Her appearance, especially when she bothers to accent it, is that of a woman suited only to attending dinner parties with her husband. However she’s been known to break into the homes of her friends to fix things or to enact an enforced behavior adjustment. She allowed her crew to argue with her, but nearly always won the discussions, however she’s courteous about both losses and wins, acting on them as soon as is appropriate. Seowyn is typically quiet, but has no difficulty asserting her will, however the instance which causes her to shout—other than to pass an order on a windy ship—is exceptionally rare. Even today, after two hundred years since she was last human, her personality has remained much the same. She’s slightly more comfortable voicing her thoughts than she was before, worrying less now about being judged as she no longer has her occupation to maintain.
History: Seowyn was born to a mid-tier noble family in the eastern provincial mountains. When her family discovered her talent for manipulating water they worked to cultivate it, bringing similarly talented people to their manor, and her skills appropriately progressed. By eighteen she could divert the flow of a river while masons built a dam, then release it harmlessly once it was finished, though holding onto the water for that long left her exhausted for a week afterward.
However when Seowyn was nineteen, she had a child out of wedlock, and her family disowned her. They sent the child to a convent and Seowyn, believing the child better off where she was, went to the nearest coast and began learning how to sail. Between her educated mind, ability to quickly learn, and her ability to manipulate water, she was soon one of the youngest captains, then youngest commodores, that the local shipping company had ever seen. And she soon became known as one of the most reliable. Ships Commodore Seowyn sailed upon were so rarely damaged by storms, and so consistently reached their ports with all of their cargo intact, and lives as well, that merchants paid a premium to ship their goods with her personally, though she spent time on each of her ships and never sailed more than twice in a row with one, and young men clamored to enlist to her company, knowing they were safer when she was on board.
And for several years, she was happy. Her hands hardened and she fought to earn the respect of men unaccustomed to being ordered about by women.
Her happiness vanished nearly at once when one of her ships, which she was currently guiding, was caught by a hurricane. Half of the cargo and a third of the crew were lost, and they drifted into the nearest port with only one of its masts and almost no undamaged sails. The streak of her good fortune and reputation was lost, and people screamed for retribution, feeling misled, betrayed.
One man in particular, having lost both of his sons, was more capable than most in expressing his violent despair. He cursed Seowyn to never touch pure water again, to never even come close to it, and she lost her business and everything she’d ever valued. Because of it, she lost her heart.
For the next three years she struggled to survive without the magic that had become every bit a part of her as her skin. Her flesh began to stiffen as her health dimmed, and over the course of the final six months Seowyn became a gargoyle, neither quite living nor quite dead, no longer cursed, but still unable to use her magic, as gargoyles are created by being too heavily imbued with magic, and cannot use whatever they might have once had.
Since then Seowyn has wandered and traveled, offering assistance wherever she can, often guarding travelers—women in particular—who are stuck in unsafe areas after dark or without adequate protection. She’s been able to invest the money she hoarded in her lifetime then barely touched after being cursed, and has a fine but moderately sized home in the northeast mountains, many rooms of which she rents out for nobles’ parties or balls or simply nobility seeking better rest and hospitality than they’d receive at an inn, and she has a decent income from that, as it’s kept fully staffed year-round.
