This is where my character will end up being once I finished editing her story; look forward to writing with yinz.

EDITED:

Name: [b]Elisa Myres-Blackwater[/b]

Age: 20

[hider=Appearance] As she grew up, her mother and grandmother promised Elisa she would develop a woman’s body: her breasts filling, her hips widening, the angles of her body softening. To her household’s dismay—she remained mostly androgynous. She endeavored to enhance whatever feminine qualities she had as to please her husband, her family, and herself. Her lashes are thick so she would carefully paint a delicate line of color (to match whatever outfit she’s wearing) above her brown eyes to make them larger. Although it is more stylish for a woman to wear her hair up, Elisa instructed her maids to fluff and arrange the brown, curling tresses around her thin face. As tall as most men, she wore only slippers and chose the loose clothing of the Eastern traders with their distracting bright colors. Her husband thought she was bragging about his trading connections and lavished her with more of their bizarre clothing (she treasured turban but dared not to wear it because of how masculine it made her look). Elisa knows her breasts are as large as they are because of her pregnancies, but the clothing provided a distraction from the lack of curves. The wide sleeve cuffs accentuated delicate wrists and fingers and the V of her dresses promoted her graceful collarbone and neck—the only other parts of her she believed to be pleasing. (Now, in a slave dress with cloth shoes and an iron band chafing her neck, she wished she worn that turban.) [/hider]
Family Name: House Myers of Magaslat

Homeland: Gorgon

Family Sigil: On a tapered banner of gold, the black willow’s roots curl around the body of a baby boy.

[hider=Family Line]
Rarly Myers (grandfather, deceased) and Hostas Illwake (grandmother)
	[indent]Hubert Myers (father) and Grendle Endsroad (mother)
		-[b]Elisa Myers[/b] and Gillian Blackwater (husband, deceased)
			--Fennick Blackwater (eldest son)
			--Unborn Child
		-Marcus Myers (younger brother)
	Helena Myers (aunt, deceased) and Rory Scribner (uncle)
		-Lisa, Jory, Danielson, and Patrick Scribner (cousins)[/indent]
In-Laws: passed on to be with Meros, to her knowledge[/hider]

[hider=Bio]Elisa’s father, Lord Hubert, owns the few plots of land that successfully produces roots and grains. However, this very land melts into the terrifying swamplands every Gorgonite child has nightscares over and the old women whisper their superstitious tales about. Wealthier than most lesser Lords, Sir Myers defended his lands well from the beasties crawling through those lands and paid rangers or highwaymen enough to keep their quarreling to a minimum along the boarders of his estate. Even through the War of the Blight and then the upheaval of house Blackwater, the Myers ‘ lands remained relatively functional.

During the latter years of transition of House Briar to political power, a marriage proposition came from a down-and-out friend of Lord Myers: Fennink Blackwater. Now this man’s blood is diluted and he believed himself to have no claim over the Gorgonite throne (his mother married into the Blackwaters you see), but he owned a fleet of ships with connections to Kain and the East and thus had the equal wealth to that of the Meyers. Lord Hubert figured the nobles and people and soldiers alike had enough of war and death, so arranging the marriage of his newborn daughter to the eldest son seemed secure and beneficial for both families. 

In the years between Elisa grew up with the terrific swampfolk tales of her grandmother in one ear and the constant guidance of her mother in the other. She was not displeased with her life, not truly. She could listen to Nana’s stories as she embroidered (nothing like her mother, but skills like that come with time), as she ate, as she slept. The stories twirled on her tongue and in her mind. It would help pass the long hours her mother and maids would spend polishing her nails and hair and dress so she would look as feminine as possible when presented to visitors. She was, after all, the eldest daughter and for ten years, the one to inherit all of her father’s lands—and by her means her husband. But once her brother, Marcus, was born she felt no grudge to the squalling, red baby. The only regret she had was that two years later she would be married and Marcus would never know that it was his sister, not Nana, that whispered to him stories of the swampfolk as he drifted off to sleep. 

Gillian, her first husband, visited Magaslat (her family’s main estate) as a child during the worst of the fall storms when only desperate men took their ships out to sea. She grew up knowing him and marriage was natural once she had her first bleeding around fourteen. Like any daughter going off, she had private tears, and the consummation was…difficult, but she learned the ways of a merchant’s wife from her mother-in-law and, despite being six years her elder, her husband was kind enough. Gillian’s younger sisters kept her entertained mostly, though. They exchanged stories of swampfolk and silkies and highwaymen and pirates. 

She became pregnant the same spring whispers of traitor began to circulate through the Blackwater’s estate. She was sixteen. These whispers were worse nightscares than the swampfolk or the sirens combined. Soon Gillian complained of her restlessness and pacing. He began sleeping in a separate room for the first time in their marriage; however, Elisa knew it to be for other reasons. When the wet nurse fed her son—Her Son—for the first time, she knew it to be true, for swaddled and sleeping in the crib of Blackwater’s heir was Gillian’s bastard son. So, Fennick and Dustin grew up as milk brothers. Heidie, the wet nurse, chalked up Elisa’s acceptance of Dustin because she was ignorant of the bastard’s father. But really, it had everything to do with this: Dustin was only a little bit fairer than Fennick, but anyone could easily mistake the two. Dustin was Elisa’s insurance that Fennick would live into adulthood. 

Despite cunning precautions, Heidie and Dustin both passed away during a sickness that swept through Gorgon when Elisa was eighteen. A year later, Gillian died during a trade deal gone South. Men said it was some Kainite pirates, but no one believed that. Weeks after becoming a widow, Lord Myers swept into the Blackwater household, declared them traitors and left with his daughter, his grandson, and her dowry. She heard later the whole entire estate was destroyed and everyone killed—all Gillian’s pretty little sisters with white flowers in their hair and silkies in their dreams.

Her father never made her privy to his plans, but once she admitted to be with child again, she expected her father to command her to be rid of the child so she could remarry faster. To her surprise, he smiled. It was within that smile, eyes dark and glinting like the seas before a storm, his plans were revealed to her. (If so few Blackwaters existed, and if they were attempting to reclaim the throne, any man who assisted in such a rise to power…) Elisa began tasting all of Fennick’s food and garnered the favor of a knight to protect her son, but it mattered not for her father implemented other plans of protection: ferreted out of the country through the very swamplands she sung about to Fennick and Marcus, her growing younger brother, before they fell asleep. It took only a bit of dreamwine and she awoke with her son on skiff with the green, damp light of the swamp around her. A sole ranger guided them for the better of a fortnight before he was bitten by a viper and died, turning brown like the sagging reeds along the banks of the bayou.

After a failed attempt to toe through the swamp on her own, Elisa carefully parceled out her supplies and prepared to live in the boughs of a black willow tree with her son. Foolish fantasies and too many stories made her think these things possible. After two weeks, they had no more food and she was sure the fetid water of the swamp would kill them before starvation. So she sang to Fennick as he slept with his ear pressed against her bulging stomach and brushed her dirty fingers through his oily, curling hair. The knife shook in her hands and her tears tasted like the sea, but she fell asleep in the wet twilight of the swamp before she could complete her desperate mission. It was then they were found, tricked, and sold as slaves along the Ferros border. She is grateful she hasn’t given birth yet because she knows as soon as she does, the babe will be gone. Fennick is too much of a burden to buy for the few buyers they’ve met don’t have women to raise a boy until he is of use. And she is still young and fertile. Maybe Euros and Meros do exist?[/hider]