Approved WT BIo for Rytali Basim-CC'd by BT

[WhiteWolf]

Handle: Visar Falmaien

 

Character Count for White Tower Division: 1

 

Contact: jscott68(AT)juno(DOT)com

 

 

 

Name: Rytali Basim, “Ryta” (pr. “’Ree-tall-ee ba-‘Seem”)

 

Age: 14 (she thinks she is fifteen, 6 month gap between actual age and estimated age)

 

Nationality: Illianer

 

Appearance: Rytali is a somewhat short girl (appr. 5’2”) with an average figure featuring plenty of curves (appr. 115 lbs).  She has long, dark-brown hair, but it is usually kept tied in a pony-tail underneath a plain wide-brimmed hat or scarf.  Her eyes are hazel colored, which in certain light appears green.  Her face is handsome but to her it is plain and otherwise unremarkable, tan like the rest of her skin.  While Rytali admires jewelry and embroidery, she cannot afford to wear anything better than plain dresses or slippers.  She has a low, rich, melodious voice when speaking normally, but her voice raises significantly higher in pitch and is more nasal when she is laughing or yelling.

 

Personality:  Rytali is used to being a servant, and rarely raises her eyes or her voice when not called for.  She is usually very shy to people she does not know, always self-conscious about herself.  However, in the presence of more comfortable settings and close friends, she can be quite sociable, and likes to be funny and mischievous when she thinks she can get away with it.  She is an excellent listener, but tends to trip over her words if she is nervous.  Rytali possesses fairly sharp eyesight, able to see tiny things in front of her just as well as see things clearly from far away.  Rytali can read and write rather well for one of her age and station.  She has a phobia of bees and wasps.

 

History:  Rytali knows very little of her family, as she was orphaned from too early an age to remember clearly.  She knew only her first name, Rytali, and never learned her biological parents’ name.  She remembers vague images and voices of a motherly figure, but whether that woman died or abandoned her she doesn’t know.  For all intents and purposes her life began in the streets of the Perfumed Quarter of Illian.  She remembers attaching herself to other children early on, seeking groups of stronger and older children for protection.  Since the rules of the street demanded being older, she tried to act older than she was; this has indirectly led to Ryta believing she’s a full six months older than she actually is.  It was a dangerous life as a street rat, begging and sometimes stealing to get by.  While she had some fun times too, she remembers all too well how she had nearly lost her life.  

 

When Ryta was weight, she and three others in her child gang were trying to sneak into a lord’s house.  However, the building was guarded by a most formidable foe.  While climbing the vines, Ryta and her friends disturbed an enormous nest of bees.  The angry insects swarmed out almost as one, and she and the others had run for their lives.  She made it to a canal safely with two others, covered in painful stings, but one of them, her friend Jay, was left behind.  He was allergic to bees, and he died before they got back to him.  From this point on, Ryta has always been terrified of bees and wasps, afraid that she too will be stung to death.  Four days after this traumatic event her life changed in another way.  

 

A man named Bashur Basim and his wife Baila took her in from the streets, promising her that as long as she did what she was told, her needs would be met.  Her new adopted family worked in the Hall of the Council for one of the Nine.  Rytali’s ‘mother’ was one of the maidservants tasked with keeping the place clean, while her father worked as a scribe, dictating some of the lord’s daily meetings and helping illiterate commoners write their petitions.  Ryta took well to her new family, though her mother tended to be stricter, insisting that she learn how to clean the floors and dust the walls and ceilings until they were virtually spotless.  She’d much rather indulge herself in the storybooks her father read to her, where most men and women were noble in spirit and traveled the world without chains binding them.  In her free time, her new father taught her much about reading and writing, and she considered following in his footsteps and becoming a scribe.  However, another hunger gnawed at her growing up.  She wanted that utopian freedom, to be able to go anywhere and do anything she wanted.  But as she grew into a young woman, she began to lose faith in her childish dreams.  She was still just a child, just a servant working menial tasks for those who really had control: The lords and the king and the council of merchants.  While they generally left her alone, too busy fighting themselves for control of Illian to make the common people’s lives too miserable, which she was thankful for, they never helped her get out of her situation either.

 

A teenager now, Ryta itched for new surroundings, the all-too familiar Hall boring, most of its secrets already discovered.  An opportunity came in the form of a strange woman.  She appeared almost out of the blue, assigning herself as one of the lord’s advisors.  She was beautiful, tall and slim, and walked with a grace that Ryta had never seen before, even in Illianer ladies who frequented the Hall.  The servants buzzed at the lady’s arrival, but no one seemed to agree on knowing exactly who she was or what her real business was with the lord.  Some said she was just a foreign noblewoman who happened to be a little too smart for her own good.  Others said she was a sorceress, a witch from Tar Valon who was seducing the lords and taking control of the Council for her own means.  The truth was somewhere in between: she was an Aes Sedai of the Gray Ajah, assigned to the Council of Nine to try to keep Illian at peace within its turbulent factions.

 

But when Rytali finally encountered this Aes Sedai up close, it was an event that would change her life forever.  The woman had looked at her suddenly, as if suddenly realizing that a servant was there, and was an actual person.  Then the questions had come.  The woman spoke gently and quietly, but still there was a certain edge to them that Ryta knew she could not disobey.  The woman wanted to speak with her parents, and so Ryta led her to them, not knowing what this was about.  After meeting with them, the woman with the ageless face turned on Ryta.  She could learn how to channel the Source, the woman explained, and would travel to Tar Valon to study at the Tower.  Her eyes bulging wide at this announcement, Rytali barely believed her.  But her adopted parents apparently did, and did nothing to try to stop the Aes Sedai from getting her way.  While a little thrilled at the possibility of being able to travel the world, Rytali is mostly terrified at the prospect of training with the Aes Sedai.  She knew she would never have an easy life, yet how much harder it seemed that she was leaving the only family she knew, and she would most likely never see her friends in the Hall ever again.

 

While scared half out of her wits, Rytali resolved that she should try to learn this new Power the Aes Sedai said she had.  She would make new friends and family somehow, and maybe some day she would be able to return, and then travel the world as she wished.  But for now, she would obey the Aes Sedai, make the longest journey away from home of her life to this legendary White Tower, and see what the Wheel had willed for her.

[Arath Faringal]

*BT Stamp*

[Visar Falmaien]

Thank you!  ;D