WT Bio for Nanna Tarquin - CC'd by Freelanders

[Elgee]

Basic Information

Handle : Grimm

Character Count for this division: Zero

Full names of WT characters you already own and their status (active/retired/dead): n/a

 

Character Information

Salidar Novice

Name (first and last): Nanna Tarquin

Age (Salidar = 20-70): 50

Nationality: Andoran, out of Four Kings.

 

Appearance

Hair: Mostly light brown, flecked with iron gray strands.

Eyes: A sharp green, with still-forming crows feet at the edges.

Skin: Ruddy, from a lifetime of kitchen work. Varicose veins trace their way along her legs.

Height: 6'0

Voice: Deep for a woman. People who hear it tend to consider it a tragedy that such a beautiful, if unusual, speaking voice has been roughened by years of shouting at unruly employees.

Other: Nanna could easily be considered thick. She was never beautiful, but she was comely once. A handful of children gave her the extra weight, and working the kitchens in her family's inn made it easy for her to keep it. The skin around her lips is starting to wrinkle after years of frowning and pursing her lips in disapproval.

 

 

 

Optional

Special Skills: Nanna is well versed in the many tasks associated with running a successful inn. She can cook, clean, mend and wash clothing. Interestingly enough, she has also picked up the art of brewing over the years. Her ale was a favorite on holidays. She is also a terror with her rolling pin.

Knowledge Weakness: Helping run her family's inn is all she knows. She can read well enough to find what she needs in a recipe book, and write well enough to copy what she needs down onto a piece of paper. The same can be said for her mathematical skills. Neither would likely pass muster at the White Tower. She will most likely need remedial schooling.

Physical Weakness: Her weight is something of a problem, and her legs ache almost constantly after nearly a lifetime of standing.

Personality weakness: Nanna is bossy. After years of running her inn with an iron hand, she will find it hard to no longer be in control of her own fate.

 

Personality: Nanna is a strong-willed woman. Raising five children and keeping her drunkard husband in line made it impossible for her to be anything other than strong-willed. She also has a tendency to stick her nose in where it isn't wanted. If she thinks you're doing something wrong, she won't hesitate to tell you so.

 

History:

 

 

 

 

Nanna Tarquin wasn't always the thick-waisted proprietress of the Handsome Hog. She was once as thin as any of the stick-figured girls that mince their way up and down the streets of Four Kings. It wasn't until she met her dullard of a husband that her life started her on that path. Well, that's what she would say if you asked her.

 

 

 

 

In a sense, she would be right. She started the life rough, scraping out a living on the streets of Baerlon with her mother and brothers after her father went off to join the Whitecloaks. It was a hard life, and not a happy one. The things she was made to do as a child for lack of money showed her what was important. Her mother died soon after, leaving her to take care of five boys between the ages of thirteen and ten. She was big for her age, and it came in handy as she grew into a woman. She developed her temper in those years, using brute strength and a loud voice to bully them into behaving themselves as she found work as a barmaid. Eventually they were old enough to start working, and the family started to drift apart as the boys went off to find work on their own.

 

 

 

 

Around that time, Nanna met the man who would become her husband. At that time, he didn't spend nearly every waking moment in the cups. He was Sam Tarquin, the young, prosperous owner of the Handsome Hog, come to see how inns were run in Baerlon. Even then, he had a taste for wine and ale, a taste which Nanna exploited as she went about wooing the older man. She gladly accepted his drunken proposal for marriage after a particularly memorable night. She reminded him after he woke up, of course, reminding him of the bucket next to the bed as well.

 

 

 

 

She moved to Four Kings with her new husband, and set to whipping the staff into shape, as she saw it. She ran off half the serving women within a month after she caught each of them making eyes at her new husband. The girls that replaced them were uglier, but they knew their jobs well enough that Sam could never find a reason to replace them. The kitchen staff was the next to suffer the weight of Nanna's displeasure. The old cook was replaced by Nanna herself, and the lounging, indolent men that “helped” him were removed, bodily in some cases, by the new proprietress. She soon had the kitchen staffed with competent, sensible women who knew their jobs just as well as the new barmaids.

 

 

 

 

As the years wore on and Nanna assumed more control over the inn, Sam began to drink more heavily, they fought often, both having different ideas about what was best, first for the inn, and then later for their children. Sam was forever filling her girls' heads with unreachable dreams of riches and glory. It broke a mother's heart to see each of them learn the harsh truths of reality after their father's long-winded tales of princesses and Aes Sedai queens rising from the ranks of commoners. It was just as bad for her two boys as she watched them grow into dreamers and fools, out carousing with their father until unseemly hours of the night.

 

 

 

 

Then the Aes Sedai came for two of her daughters. The Sister that tested them told her that it was, “a pity that we had not found you sooner, Good Woman.” Apparently, she was too old to be taken for training. Not that she would ever admit to wanting to become an Aes Sedai. Especially after one of her daughters came back two years later, weeping.

 

 

 

 

Eventually, Nanna found herself in an empty house, her children grown and her husband snoring off yet another late night in the common room. Only then did she realize that she had spent her life living for other people. She had never done anything for herself, and everyone she loved was either an ungrateful wretch or away from home. As she sat there, cleaning old dishes and wondering where she had gone wrong in her life, the Aes Sedai returned. Not the same one, mind you, but an Aes Sedai nonetheless.

 

 

 

 

Flanked by a hulking Warder, the woman informed Nanna that the Novice Book was open for all women, and that the Sister who had tested her daughters had remarked about the Innkeeper's wife who could learn to touch the One Power. In her state of mind, it was easy for Nanna to make her choice.

 

 

 

 

She woke Sam long enough to tell him that his fondest wish had come true, that his Inn was his to run however he wanted. She left him, groggy and dumbfounded, in the Common Room of the Handsome Hog and went with the Aes Sedai to learn how to channel. Once on the road, she was too far away to hear his quiet sobs as the love of his life left him behind, just as he was too far away to see her wipe away equally quiet tears as she tried to hide her face from her escorts.

[Mystica]

now thàt's a bio! Consider it CC'd! Beautiful, as per usual, Grimm.

[Elgee]

Thank you, Mysti!

 

Now I can safely SQUEAL WITH DELIGHT!

 

I'm ecstatic that our first Salidar bio is such a great one - it sets the bar high for those to follow *noddity*

[Grimmlocke]

*Makes a leg* My heart doth sing at thy effusive praise, miladies. Mayhap the children of our minds shall meet 'twixt the varied threads of the skein of the Age Lace?

[Elgee]

... Isn't he just adorable?

[Mystica]

if we ever RP together and he continues in that jibberish, im gonna' sit on him... maybe bounce a little too.

[Grimmlocke]

...Barbarous woman.

[Mystica]

lol that's right. I also don't like Shakespear.