[hider=Harald]
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[b]Name:[/b] Harald, “The Flea Bottom Miracle”

[b]Age:[/b] 17

[b]Affiliation:[/b] The High Septon, The Faith of the Seven 

[b]Appearance:[/b] Harald’s common birth is apparent at a glance. Straw yellow hair, a ruddy-red nose, thin build, and gaunt features, there is no force in Westeros that could take away the years put on his life from his childhood in Flea Bottom. He has sad brown eyes which seem to stare out for miles. His body is littered a number small scars, gained both from his place of birth and the High Septon’s discipline.

[b]Profession:[/b] Healer, Septon

[b]Equipment:[/b] Long knife, tunic, breeches, boots, book of hymns, and healer’s kit.

[b]Skills:[/b] Septons claim that Harald has been blessed by the Mother and can heal those at the Stranger’s door with a touch. The truth of those claims remains murky, but it is clear that regardless of the source of his skills, Harald is one of the most talented healers in Westeros.  Tutored his whole life by septons and septas in the ways of healing and faith, Harald has knowledge in the various herbs used to counteract illness and the other available arts to ensure a patients physical and spiritual well-being. Anointed by the High Septon himself, Harald is a priest of the Faith of the Seven. As such, he is able to perform holy services, marriages, and forgive sins in accordance with the Faith. He has intimate knowledge of the Faith, its history, and its practices in the modern era.
 
[b]Biography:[/b] Harald wasn’t expected to anything great with his life. Being born in Flea Bottom as he was, it’s considered a great success if you don’t wind up in the Red Keep’s dungeons or dead in an alleyway at a young age. Growing up in an environment such as this, children like Harald learn to keep their head downs at do their work with the quiet efficiency expected of smallfolk. Even before adolescence, Harald was working to help keep food in his mother and his bellies. He would take any number of odd jobs to help support his family, and when his mother came home drunk and covered in bruises, Harald learned how to handle that as well. No who one was in Flea Bottom, one learned to grow up quick like Harald did. Blood, shit, and death were an everyday reality in those slums, and even at the age of six Harald thanked the Seven that he hadn’t ended up like so many other children in Flea Bottom. He was hungry, sure, and his mother had taken ill, but he was alive. That simple fact kept the child going through the rougher times to come. 

His mother had gotten sicker, and Harald didn’t know what to do. She was sick on the inside, and that was something that the boy had never had to take care of before. Bruises and cuts he could handle, but the type of rot that was within her required something that even the rich couldn’t always afford. A miracle. Harrald knew it wasn’t likely he would receive one of those, he felt that all those miracles had been used up by the Dragon Queen and her husband, but he still prayed for one regardless. He found time to pray every day, even sneaking into the fancier septs in order to make sure the Seven really heard his request. Harald hadn’t though he was asking for much. He didn’t want gold or food or sweets, he just wanted to make sure his mother got better.

She wasn’t getting better though. Whatever sickness this was, it was eating her from the inside out. Harald had gotten what little money together he and his mother had saved up to get a healer, but there still wasn’t enough money for his services. She didn’t have much time, Harald wasn’t naïve enough to believe otherwise. Still, he knew that the Seven had to help him. He had prayed every day for months, helped clean the sept when he could, and still his mother wasn’t getting better. He didn’t need her forever, just a few more hours. Just long enough to say goodbye. Using the last of his money, Harald gave everything he had to the sept, knowing that the starving nights ahead would be worth it if he got to say goodbye to his mother.

When he returned home, she had gotten worse. Blood came up with her coughing, and Harald felt numb. He didn’t understand why his prayers weren’t working. He had done everything he saw other people do when they prayed, he had even donated all the money he had. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. He refused to. So he bowed his head and clasped his hands, feeling tears slip free from his shut eyes, and prayed again to the thus-far deaf gods. He’d live the rest of his life in pain and unhappiness if it meant one miracle, he promised the Mother that. Just one miracle, and he’d sacrifice everything he had to the Seven if that’s what it took. He shook and screamed and begged and sobbed in the alley with his dying mother, still pleading with the gods to just give him enough to say goodbye.

And to his surprise, the Seven seemed to have finally listened. The tinkling of laughter mixed in with scattered gasps. He looked up and saw the smiling face of his mother, whole again for only a few moments. He had gotten his wish, he had gotten a chance to say goodbye. They talked for a moment, just a boy, his mother, and a growing crowd of shocked onlookers. Once they finished, Harald hugged his mother and she kissed him goodbye, finally falling into the Stranger’s embrace. Viewers claimed that Harald had revived his own mother just to have a final goodbye with her, but no matter what really happened that day, a legend was born in those slums.

News of the “Flea Bottom Miracle” spread quickly, and it was not long before Septons were searching the slums high and low for the boy. In such religiously turbulent times, anything that reaffirmed the smallfolks’ faith in the Seven was worth more than gold. Harald was eventually found by the Septon search-party, and after more proof of his ability, it was determined by the Most Devout that he would be raised in the Red Keep and the Sept of Baelor. Harald would learn the healing arts and be trained in the Faith of the Seven by the High Septon to better serve the Seven Who Are One.

For eleven years, Harald was tested rigorously in secret regarding his knowledge of the Seven and of the body. His existence was only known to the Most Devout, kept secret even from the court while he lived at the Red Keep. He was allowed no other interest but those supplied to him by his tutors, and much of a normal childhood, even for a boy of Flea Bottom, was denied to him. His faith had to be absolute and unquestioning if he was to represent an aspect of the Seven’s power in the mortal realm, and as such he was sheltered from the corruptions of the outside world. His only social outlet the questions of aged men, Harald became a recluse, finding shelter in his books and his prayers. A healer without patients and a trained septon without a flock, Harald’s life was lonely, but safe.

Now, at the age of seventeen and during a time of religious upheaval, the Most Devout have decided it is time for Harald to re-reveal himself to the smallfolk. Accompanied by a small squadron of knights and septons, Harald has been sent to the Riverlands to reestablish a religious foothold for the Faith. 

[b]Notes:[/b][/hider]