Jump to content

DRAGONMOUNT

A WHEEL OF TIME COMMUNITY

Approved WT Novice Bio: Ariain Altalin - CL CC'd


Cass

Recommended Posts

@Taymist ?

 

DM Handle: Risyn_Mael

 

Character Name: Ariain Altalin

Returning Character: No

Total PSW Character Count: 1

RP Section: Tar Valon

RP Group: White Tower

Character Rank: Novice

Traditional or Salidar Novice: Traditional

Age: 17

Gender: Female

Place of Birth/Raising: Amadicia

 

Physical Description: Naturally small, and nearly waiflike from years of malnourishment following her flight from Amadicia. Blonde hair so pale as to be nearly white, tied back roughly in a ponytail. Light brown eyes. Thin eyelashes and eyebrows. Pale skin. Startling angular features that some call lovely, and others do not. Her mother is Amadician born, but her father was an outlander.

 

Strengths/Weaknesses: 

Gives the impression of quiet deference, at first, but this gives way to fire and determination once she has the measure of a situation.

 

Physically weak and not especially quick, Ariain attempts to compensate for this by honing her awareness of the world around her to a fine edge. If she can’t outrun you or outfight you—and she probably can’t—she will do her best to put herself either in a position where she won’t have to, or where she’ll have every advantage if she must.

 

Ariain possesses a surprising romantic streak that manifests itself unexpectedly. She doesn’t necessarily seek romantic companionship for herself. Indeed, everything about her life has taught her how unlikely she is to find such a thing. But she is prone to fits of whimsy and even matchmaking which seem at odds with her general demeanor. If pressed, she explains that the world is a hard and joyless enough place without people being unnecessarily isolated from each other. Her parents had a loving, happy, marriage and this shapes her view of such matters.

 

Hungry for knowledge, Ariain devours books at a prodigious rate. Although she has a fondness for tales of romance and adventure, this cannot compete with her passion for history and the more practical philosophical disciplines. Above all, she is drawn to those few treatises of anti-monarchical and anti-oligarchic thought.

 

She also enjoys games of chance, although more as a study of outcomes and behavior than as pure entertainment.

 

History:

Amadician by birth, Ariain was taught to fear Aes Sedai and learned to fear the Whitecloaks. Fear was, in short, the currency of her youth.

Her mother, Aliale, worked in the sheriff’s manor house mending the uniforms and clothes of the local garrison. Her father, Galen, was a shopkeeper. Though he did not speak his mind often he was, in his soul, a quiet revolutionary in search of a revolution.

 

Galen died in a riot during the hard winter of her 8thyear. Though a mob of poor farmers and laborers smashed his store to get at the food they suspected him of hoarding, they did not kill him. A stray crossbow bolt did that, as royal forces attempted to quell the disturbance.

 

Her uncle, an adjutant in the king’s army, stepped in as surrogate father to her and surrogate husband to her mother. He was a hard man, with little love in him. These were the hardest years of Ariain’s life.

 

Her grandfather, though ailing, still served as an officer with the Children of the Light. A pretty girl, from a loyal family, she was to be wed “as early as possible” to a young man in her grandfather’s company. He was from a loyal family, too, but one with money. Evon had ten years on her, a gentle smile, and cold hatred for everything he did not understand—which was much. As the date of their union drew near, Ariain fell into despondency.

 

At 14, she left home as a stowaway on a boat bound downriver. Those early days of her ‘second life’, as she began to think of it, receded into a blur of hungry suns and cold moons.

Weeks passed, and she journeyed north and gradually west, until she came to the coast. The ocean overawed her. She spent hours in silent regard of it, dreaming of what might lay across its breadth.

 

She scrounged what coin she could and learned to avoid the dangers of traveling the world alone.

Her travels brought her, finally, north to a coastal village in the north of Tarabon where she found employ in a small family inn, a mile outside of town along the rocky shore.

 

---***---

 

The cold wind picked at Ariain’s sleeves, and she pulled the shawl closer around her shoulders. The pale wool was stained a muddy brown from three years on the road but no less warm for it and, honestly, no less attractive if you didn’t look too closely.

 

As was her custom, in this place, she had come outside to read when the day’s work was done. Her evenings were mostly her own, given the slow pace of travel this time of year, but she would need to help check in any guests arriving this evening.

 

She shivered anew, as the ocean lashed the rocks below her.

 

The sun dropped steadily toward the horizon. She would go inside when it disappeared completely. No sense in being out alone after dark, especially not with the rumors of a new band of highwaymen down from Almoth Plain. Above and beyond all that, the fading light also made it inconvenient to read the tiny print in the volume in her lap.

 

Five minutes more she waited and, with twilight’s glow fading, walked back up the slope to the Cat’s Wallow Inn.

 

Inside the inn, she did find new guests, much to her surprise. Master Talsen had seen to them himself, though, and he now stood idly behind the bar.

 

Two men, clearly fighting men, loitered against the far wall. One filed his nails with a knife. The other held a mug of ale. Pipe smoke curled toward the thatched roof. Though they wore their dark hair differently—one long, and the other trimmed close to his scalp—and one bore an ugly scar across his jaw, they were twins, she realized with a start.

 

But Master Talsen wasn’t watching them. Not at all. His eyes were fixed on the woman in the booth beyond, the one with the bay window looking out over the ocean. The one directly above where she’d been standing moments before.

 

The woman wore fine clothes but not ostentatiously fine, and she had the handsome, confident, face of one used to instant obedience. So, a noble lady, but travelling incognito, perhaps? Even as Ariain took this in, she ducked behind the bar.

 

She curtsied in greeting to Master Talsen, but he waved his towel at her dismissively.

“Enough of that,” he said. “Ye’ve got work to do, if ye can call it that.”

 

“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t expect anyone new tonight, but I should’ve been back earlier.”

 

“Nonsense. Your evenings are your own, until I tell you they’re not. But we’ve a guest from the Tower.”

 

The hard sound of the capital letter shocked Ariain.

 

“The—Tower.”

 

“Stops here now and then on her way to and from wherever it is she goes. Likes to speak with any strays we’ve taken in. Says it keeps her ‘connected’ to the world.”

 

“Strays,” Ariain said.

 

“Aye. Like ye. I told her ye’d be over when ye returned. So, go speak with her, if you would. She don’t bite. Not here, at least.”

 

The walk across the room was the slowest and most painful of Ariain’s life. She’d seen enough since leaving home to question Amadician teachings on Aes Sedai but that was different from meeting one in the flesh.

 

The walk across the room was the slowest and most painful of Ariain’s life…but it ended far too soon. The woman was before her, looking up with eyes as deep as the ocean.

 

“Lady, uh, Sedai. I’ve been sent to… see to your needs.”

 

The woman quirked an eyebrow at Ariain with a wry smile. “Is that so?”

 

“Yes, Lady—”

 

“‘Aes Sedai’ will do well enough. And, yes, I do think you will make acceptable company.”

 

“Thank you. Aes Sedai.”

 

The woman was neither young nor old. ‘Permanent’ was the only word that Ariain could find. It seemed appropriate.

 

“Sit, girl. Don’t make me crane my neck at you, short as you are.”

 

“No, Aes Sedai. I mean, yes, Aes Sedai.”

 

Ariain sat, eyes downturned, as if confronting a dangerous animal of unknown temperament. She felt the woman’s eyes crawling over her.

 

“You have the look of Amadicia on you, child,” the woman said after a moment.

 

“Amadicia? Surely not,” Ariain glanced up and laughed reflexively, but on seeing the practiced lie crash against the woman’s stony face, she continued. “But if I were, it would be no concern but my own.”

 

“Indeed. Your past matters little enough. Your future, though, remains an open question.”

 

Ariain held her tongue. She had nothing wise to say and knew not the stakes of saying something foolish. The woman continued:

 

“I come to this inn perhaps twice a year, as my travels dictate, north and south. I take this same table and look out upon the sea. It is a sight that fills me with gladness. When I have seen my fill, I go to the bookshelf that Master Talsen keeps for guests and I take down the same volume to read as I eat my supper.”

 

Ariain flinched, but only on the inside. She hoped.

 

“Do you know which volume, girl?”

 

A moment passed before Ariain replied.

“Yes, Aes Sedai, I believe so.”

 

“Tell me.”

 

Principles of Social Capital and Inequity, by Yosef Walden.”

 

“And how do you know?”

 

“Because it’s the only book not on the shelf, and if your routine is as you state—which it must be—there should be a book on your table, and there is not. Therefore, the book you seek was not where you expected to find it.”

 

“Well reasoned. Not perfectly, but well enough.”

 

“Thank you, Aes Sedai,” Ariain said, with a tingle of excitement that she could not explain. Praise from an Aes Sedai—even lukewarm praise—was the last thing she wanted.

 

“You know for a fact the book was not on the shelf?”

 

By way of answer, Ariain pulled the book from inside her shawl and sets it on the table.

 

“Heavy words for so light a girl.”

 

“I am not so light as my appearance, Aes Sedai.” She was shocked by the edge of firmness in her own voice.

 

The woman quirked an eyebrow again. “Nor so timid.”

 

“No, Aes Sedai. Nor that, if you’ll forgive me.”

 

“Timidity is not a virtue,” the woman said.

 

“As you say, Aes Sedai.”

 

A moment passed in silence. The woman spoke again:

 

“What does your mind most desire?”

 

A long moment passed this time before Ariain spoke. The balance between wisdom and foolishness had never seemed so thin.

 “A full belly, a warm bed, and a book to read.”

 

The Sister’s eyes did not move from her—Ariain wasn’t sure when she’d begun meeting the woman’s eyes—and she did not smile.

 

“I want the Children of the Light to,”—she quieted her rising voice and started again— “I want to see revolution in Amadicia.”

 

“Dangerous, child. Tell me your name.”

Ariain did.

 

“You do not ask me mine?”

 

“You are Aes Sedai. That is enough.”

 

Now she did smile. “Dangerous, Child.”

 

The hard sound of a capital letter again shocked Ariain, though this time she could not say why.

 

“Do you have any other questions for me, Aes Sedai?”

 

“No. No more questions,” the woman said, and added even as Ariain began to rise, “Just…a test.”

 

---

 

The early days of what Ariain would come to think of as her 'third life' passed in a blur of bewildering suns and moons, of tests and texts and endless questions. They spent hours every day in the saddle, and hours every night in inns or around campfires, accompanied all the while by the two fighting men Ariain had first seen at the Cat’s Wallow. She did not learn the woman’s name until the Mistress of Novices spoke it on their arrival in reached Tar Valon.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...