[hider=Lael Xiloscient]
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[h2][url=https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=2523871]Lael Xiloscient[/url][/h2][/center]
[INDENT][INDENT][INDENT][center][h1][color=green]Who I Am[/color][/h1][/center]
[color=gray][i]Once a fairly bright-eyed child, with a keen sense of right and wrong, intense trauma at a young age followed by years of having been put down from all sides has rendered Lael rather antisocial. Prone to lengthy silences, not least due to their damaged throat, they are not keen to actively seek interaction with their home city. In fact, they shun society as a whole, considering it quite an unfair system in practice; whilst they have a modest reputation as a solid guide between distant locales, they feel in general that they do not need or really want to communicate with the vast majority of people longer than strictly necessary, not least because they struggle to keep their emotions under control when they are pressured. Because of this, the list of people they might reasonably consider friends is slim to none, though those they do befriend- typically those who recognise when they desire their personal space, verbally or physically- are watched over and guarded like a parent protecting their child, with instantaneous wrath brought down upon those who would harm this slender minority.[/i][/color]
[center][h1][color=green]My Story[/color][/h1][/center]
[color=gray][i]Lael was born to the pairing of Amaril and Quelenna, a couple of explorers who had settled down in Ardenfeld long ago, and now dispensed the knowledge of centuries to their younger allies, village sages of a sort. Their child received no less, and within the decade or so provided to them, they had passed on to Lael a lot of the awareness that an elf may need to function in life - from the weapon skills that came as part and parcel of their kinship, to how one might use nature as a veil, and even how to play the pan flute. Lael quickly grew into a confident young man, befriending quite a few of the village's inhabitants in turn... before the bandit attack.

His parents were not, precisely, unequipped to engage in combat. By their own words, spoken outside their home as flames drew toward it, they were happy to sell their lives if it meant Lael escaped without harm. However, it had been far too long since their last true fight - sheer numbers overwhelmed them, leaving both with mortal wounds. Lael was not one to let his parents die so readily, but he was but a child, and was quickly bested and dragged before them, knife to his throat. Quelenna, naturally, begged them to spare him in exchange for their own lives.

'You're already dead, you stupid bitch. What's your life worth compared to his?'

The question was a cruel trick. She offered them everything she could think of with her remaining lifespan, but to no avail, for as they pointed out, they could already take whatever they wanted from both parents. What left Lael alive, ultimately, was his specific captor's execution method: rather than slicing open his jugular veins, he plunged the dagger directly through his throat, bypassing major blood vessels, only to seriously damage his vocal cords. Before he was thrown to the ground and left for dead, he watched his parents be slain much more decisively by decapitation.

Bleeding, traumatised, and scared for his life, Lael barely found refuge with but a small proportion of those who he had befriended before, the bandit's words ringing in his mind. "What's your life worth compared to his?" It was his fault, his fault...

In the end, he lived, albeit near-unconscious from blood loss, but even with what little support healers could provide for such an egregious injury, his throat was scarred and his voice permanently damaged, leaving him unable to say more than a few words at a time without coughing and choking on his breath. Just as pertinently, he in fact refused to speak at all for quite a long time, his loss and those of his fellows heavy on his mind.

Landeil Family Orphanage did him no favours. Those running the orphanage, much less racially diverse than Ardenfeld's population, were not fond of some skinny knife-ear who wouldn't speak when spoken to and weren't shy to tell him so to his face, with a firm slap if need be. At the same time, the orphans who hadn't lost their entire village found him an easy target to pick on - though they learned not to, after several incidents where at least one joint was bent back upon itself to the point of snapping, despite how that further hurt him in the staff's eyes. Even the prospective adopters overlooked him again and again: most humans did not want a son who would outlive them several times over, and the few elvish parents who showed up were put off by his sullen attitude. Worst of all, he grew away from those from the village as a result of all of this, losing his boldness in favour of isolation, though he always considered them friends despite his worsening connections, and vowed as readily as the rest to return to The Lying Wolverine on the tenth anniversary of the village's destruction.

In the end, he was one of the first of the Ardenfeld pack to be removed from the orphanage at 14 years of age, deemed unfit for adoption and lacking in the way of life skills. For a while, he managed to serve as a cleaner at a tavern, but grew ever less enthused with the sorts of people he saw there - far too many mocked him for some reason or another, and too often he saw them at their worst. More and more often, he kept to the wilderness beyond the city proper, learning how to build shelter for himself and hunt for food, and at some point in his sixteenth year, he simply didn't bother coming back to Sarinan. The untamed wilderness was more interesting anyway - and for them, as they chose to abandon their gender along with their civility and simply be, almost more like beast than humanoid, it proved something of a balm, at least in terms of avoiding new stress. The worst they experienced was an incident with an unpleasant berry; afterward, they learned to feed a nearby animal with anything they were not sure was edible, and through this means established how to distinguish between poison and treat handily, even learning to combine the latter in ways that produced herbal remedies. Truly, they felt themself self-sufficient, without need of the outside world.

Until one day, when they were happened upon by an explorer lost deep within one of the forests surrounding Sarinan, who begged for help in returning. The plea was eye-rolling, but they weren't bluntly evil, so they helped guide the man back to civilisation. This, they shortly felt, may have been a mistake - not long after, another person sought them out, requesting guidance to the next city over. Then another, and another... before they really knew it, they'd become an unofficial wandering guide, leading folks to and fro on what almost resembled a more typical work schedule. It was not exactly fun... though, granted, they did find solace in that they need not speak to do this work.

And they learned new skills, too. Surprisingly many people demanded they drive them to their location, and they figured out how to handle wagons, carts, and the like in difficult terrain quite readily. Likewise, many wished for maps to follow so they could take themselves through the routes followed on their own; it took a few rich patrons, but they established how to draw maps soon enough, even if they never found use for such drawings in their own right. Most interesting, however, was a man in a dark cloak, often ferried back and forth betwixt Pallaviel, Sarinan, and other cities... an assassin for hire, they realised after a time. Though it became clear he wished not to hurt his guide even at bowpoint, he did reckon he could teach Lael a few things as an alternate form of payment - after all, they already had an idea of how many natural poisons worked. It was just a matter of formal training with the proper equipment, something readily established with no risk when miles away from any other civilisation. And so they gained a great understanding of how to produce ever more potent toxins, and an unusual sort of friendship with the killer despite their disparate paths in life.

Until the day the man declared he was dying. He'd been double-crossed on his latest contract, and targeted by another killer with a poisoned blade, both keeping a stomach wound from healing and toxifying his blood. He made note that, yes, this was something Lael could not help him with... and yes, it hurt greatly to see them so agitated by their own helplessness. But if they truly wanted to help, then they could do this: find the perpetrator, and kill them for him. As for the assassin... he took a rest on a nearby rock, and encouraged Lael to leave him. He'd had enough with what he'd experienced, anyway. Best to pass quietly here, than publicly in a noose or something.

This became Lael's quest. The first step to accomplishing it: following through on the appointment they'd made all those years ago.[/i][/color]
[center][h1][color=green]Going Forward[/color][/h1][/center]
[color=gray][i]Lael is not entirely sure where they want to go in future. Though physically an adult, they are far from the experience needed to deem themself so by elven standards, and in a way far too traumatised to seek that experience out directly. The civilised world has not been kind to them, and returning to it is an unpleasant, almost fear-inducing thought. Even so, this does not mean they cannot cope with it; indeed, if they wish to fulfil their dying friend's request to avenge them, it is likely to be a necessity. A small part of them wonders if they can reacclimate to an urban environment, or if it is simply infeasible by now.

As for their friends... they tried to keep in touch whilst still in Sarinan, but as one of the earliest "adults" out, returning to communicate with former equals was taken in a poor light. They of course found it entirely infeasible once they took up residence in the wilderness, meaning that they have not especially attempted contact for the better half of a decade. This is not to say they have not seen any of them since - their role as guide has granted them contact with quite a few folks in quite a few places, and those companions who also took residence away from the cities were not infrequently encountered - but they feel they have grown apart from them, even if in their mind's eye they still hold the friend group as precious, and do everything in their power to keep them safe when they can. In truth, they rather suspect they've let down the Ardenfeld pack by effectively abandoning the others, and they wonder if they will actually be welcome at the planned reunion by the time they arrive.[/i][/color]
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