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[b]Name:[/b] Helewis Meridies

[b]Race:[/b] Witch

[b]Race Description:[/b] 
Coming from a long line of female magic users, there are often many kinds of Witches, since they are a maternal race that can mix with and join with most other races. The specifics of Helewis's family legacy is centered around potions, chants and scrying. While Helewis is almost completely human, her mother's side proclaims to have mingled with elves as well as mages, though this is just word of mouth handed down from the family. Helewis's family has three stage of magical ability strength. 

The first is Maiden, when a young Witch is first learning to control her powers. The second is the Mother stage, when a Witch has learn all she can from the family Grimoire (book of family legacy magic) and is ready to set out to find her own way. The third step is Matron or Crone stage, at which the Witch is now a master of her own ability and can even teach her personal skills to the next generation of her line. Helewis is currently finishing her Maiden stage.  

[b]Age:[/b] 23

[b]Gender:[/b] Female

[b]Appearance:[/b] 
Standing at a height of five foot three, Helewis is rather of average height and holds no remarkable beauty but does have extremely long dark brown hair, which reaches her knees. She often contains it in two mock braids, held together by thick leather bands ever inch or so down. She is rather fair with honey colored eyes and more often than not wear pale colored modest clothing. Her skin only bears a single mark, a scar tissue tattoo at the back of her neck. It is a delicate design of a tree whose branches turn into its roots. It was made through tearing and re-healing of the skin over many years by her mother and grandmother. 


[b]Clothing/Armor:[/b] 
Helewis dresses as most respectable women do, in long sloping sleeves with a chemise beneath, and a veil just about her head with a crown-like hat to keep it in place. Since she is a merchant's daughter, she neither too plain nor too extravagant. The colors of her dresses are often faded and pale, their linings sew with hidden coppers or herbs. She only has two belts for decoration, one with fashion in loose length, the other more practically short for hanging pouches and small bottles on. For travel she has a thick cloak, decorated with yellow thread, just like her belts, to show her middle class status. Whatever jewelry she does own is usually been a small enchanted gift from her mother and grandmother. Her arm band, for instance is enchanted to tighten ever so slightly when near highwaymen. Her earrings help to enhance her scrying ability with the whispers of voice to go with the visions. Her broach is just a broach to hold her cloak in place. It was obviously a gift from her father. The pendant under her chemise is a family heirloom, but it's so old its just assumed that all it does is enhance the three family qualities.

[b]Weapons:[/b]
 Helewis is not often in dangerous situations, since she has a rather keen knack to keep herself far from any major trouble, but like any one who is sensible, she keep a few daggers on her. One is plainly shown, hilted on her armband. The other is hidden up her sleeve. More often than not, however, she'll simply use a chant or a curse or a poison to get out of any difficult situation. Plants tend to be everywhere, after all, and often over looked.

[b]Skills/Abilities: [/b]
-[u]Scrying:[/u] From the reflection of a clouded metal to the full moon's face trapped in the black of a water's depth, scrying is very old and very powerful. The most masterful can see into the cloudy deep future. The most amateur can see into the next room. Helewis's family holds three powers close to their blood and scrying is one of them. While she is not yet a great master, Helewis finds it can be quiet useful if you'd like to know when it will storm or if the road ahead holds hiding bandits.

-[u]Chants:[/u] Words have the power to cause great wounds as well as heal great wounds, and this is just in the most mundane of conversations. To add intent and will and a little bit of magic, words become a powerful thing. Chants are more than just spells of stung words, they carry different meaning with the slightest of fluctuation in the way they are either said or sung.

-[u]Potions:[/u] The third major magic her family's legacy holds, potions are the mixing of not only herbs and plants, but of will and intent. The way a potion is mixed can determine the smallest detail of its effects. It is the difference between a great healing drought and a painful slow death. Ingredient and attention to detail are everything when fashioning a potion. The use of a single hair can create a great love potion. A single tear can brew up a vengeful illness. Only someone with knowledge, training and skill can brew up powerful potions. And even then it might take three days to get you what you need in one flask.

-[u]Trapping:[/u] A small hunting trick taught to her by her father was a gate way to great self-defense. If Helewis is good at anything, it is sneakily disarming her enemies. What started out as a way to catch rabbits are perhaps a few child tormentors, grew to a strategic outlook on the world's set up. Back-alleys and dead ends can lead to great escapes. Valley passes and mountain cliffs as well for a more permanent end to someone chasing you. It just about knowing how to look at it in the end.

-[u]Gardening:[/u] Plants and herbs are sensitive things. They are almost as fickle as living animals. The lighting, the fertility of the soil, the position of the sun and moon, these all factor into making the right plant grow. Even with a little magical persuasion, if the soil is wrong the seed won't grow. Her mother and grandmother always stressed the importance of gardening. A Witch's best friend is the earth around her after all. 

-[u]Sewing:[/u] Symbols and patterns hold power over the eye as well as the wearer. Pagan symbols can be sewn into a pattern that can either draw or repel searching eyes. It is quiet useful for when you are traveling by your lonesome womanly self.

-[u]Cooking:[/u] It would be wise not to anger the one who is making you meal, especially if it's a Witch. The use of certain herbs and flowers in Helewis's dishes can both bring out flavor and certain...qualities that their consumers may usually wish to either hide or enhance. A few drops of Poppy's Milk can send you into a deep sleep. A few seeds of Morning's Glory can leave you sleeping forever. Cooking is just like potion making. You better trust your cook. 

[b]Magic:[/b]
 Legacy Witch magic runs in the family but only comes out in female offspring. Men are usually just carries and rarely ever able to harness powers of their Witch Mothers. Herbs, plants and special ingredients can be used to focus the magic for certain purposes, as well as symbols, chanting and learned magic words, usually all learned from the family Grimoire. Scrying is the only truly special ability of Helewis's family, and she can preform it with even the most mundane of reflective surfaces.

[b]Inventory: [/b]
- [u]Outer Wearing:[/u] cap and veil, chemise, garters for stockings, shoes, pale green over dress, long loose belt, short holding belt, thick cloak, brooch for cloak, enchanted arm band with dagger, enhancer earrings.
- [u]Sewn in clothing:[/u] two Gold in each sleeve for emergencies, four Silver in dress collar for emergencies, three Copper under each garter for emergencies, crushed and dried assortment of herbs and flowers in all lining for scent and 'just in case' moments
- [u]Hidden Wear:[/u] dagger up the sleeve, pendant under her chemise

[b]Backstory: [/b]
 Born to a merchant and his wife, Helewis was the third child to the family and the only daughter. Her elder brothers were twins and both as different as the Sun and Moon. Playing the strategic peace-keeper and healing both of them after every quarrel, Helewis is perfectly well versed in when to speak and when to hold in her words. Always the quiet child, she took more pleasure in reading and listening to her grandmother's stories than in romping about with her brothers. 

While most families usually stay in a single home and let the traveling be left to the head of the family, Helewis's family usually followed their father. They've sold and bought from elves and dwarves. They've escaped stormy sea and village ransack. With her mother and grandmother advising their father in the safest paths to take, they've always escaped stormed and civil unrest just in time. Perhaps that is why they traveled together as a family for so long.

But when her brothers out grew their games and transformed into men, there was a quarrel the family could not escape: who would inherit their father's merchant business? The great argument started when Helewis was fifteen and it continued on and on... Guimar, the eldest by two minutes, proclaimed on such a fact that he had the right to family business. Terric argued that two minute made no such difference when is was in fact he who was better with number and money than his brother. Guimar was stronger and more charismatic. Terric more intelligent and more business wise. 

With such family struggle, Helewis was left to her own, with her Grandmother and her secret studies. In truth she believed the greatest outcome would be found only when the two brothers joined their strengths, for both would fail without the other. Just as they shared they same belly, they should share the family merchant business. But Helewis was neither businessman nor their mother, so her opinion held no merit. Instead, for the next six years, the family quarrel continued and Helewis took no side.

She didn't marry either. By her twenty-first birthday her family seemed to grasp the gravity of her maturing and less focus was paid toward the brothers, and more towards her. 

"You're well past the age most girls marry, dear Sister," Guimar would often scoff, "It's time to set aside fanciful books and dreams, and do something practical with you life."

"You are not the prettiest of maid, Sister dear," Terric would sigh, "Youth is you ally and men are not enchanted with haughty poems and numerical figures."

They always talked about it as if it were her actions that had left her single and past twenty. No one had ever told her that she should of been flirting with every aristocrat and great lord once she had turned sixteen. How was she to know that? Their quarreling had certainly given her more than enough knowledge on how to avoid sour moods and heightened tempers. Their accusations were more than a bit offensive.

And for two more year it was like that. In between bouts of bickering, 'why aren't you married' and 'aren't you ashamed of your age' and so on and so forth. It was too much to bare. So finally Helewis consulted her grandmother. Surely there was another place she go. To practice her arts peacefully and not be barraged with questions of her womanhood, for obviously she was never going to get married in her family's town. Might as well move to another. And so her grandmother's scry called forth a road which led to a place called Lochwell. Perhaps there she might meet whatever destiny it was she so desperately needed to greet.