Name: Safiyyah Qarim
Age: 31
Gender: Female
Appearance: Safiyyah is a small, black-haired, pleasant looking woman standing no more than five and a third feet in height. Though she wears good traveling boots and sensible, breathable clothing, she nevertheless takes great pride in her appearance. Her olive skin is kept clean and seems very smooth, so smooth that she might seem ten years younger if not for the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth betraying her. She smells of rich perfumes: not a stifling, overgenerous application of the stuff, but a very appropriate, sparsely-applied scent of flowers and pomegranates. Given her garb, her petite build, her cleanliness, and her tendency to smile, she makes a very convincing helpless woman.
Which she is not. Safiyyah's image is a very delicately crafted one. Her skin is so smooth because she applies special oils upon it each week; her loose clothes hide a great many folds and pockets in which vials and alchemical baubles are held; and in her sash is hidden a small dagger for emergencies. Of course, most people don't notice these things. That is the point.
Personality: First and foremost, Safiyyah is an actress. She readily takes on the farce of a demure damsel, shy and reserved. She knows all too well the expectations of a woman in her world, and she does not try to fight those expectations. Rather, Safiyyah lets the world see her as it will, and uses that to her advantage.
In private, the Iirimite woman is quick-witted, sarcastic, and quite frank with her thoughts. She is erudite, too, learned in history, alchemy, and the medicinal arts, not to mention astrology. Her knowledge of the sciences is surpassed only by her love of trickery and thievery, the practice of which is both a favorite pastime and her vocation. She is also incredibly persistent, dauntless in her pursuit of what she believes ought be done. Perhaps she is no stranger to fear, and she knows well when the time has come to run, but she nevertheless commands a healthy courage when she sets her mind on doing something. She'd just rather find the safest way of going about her task rather than put herself in unnecessary danger. Now, if only she could muster a similar degree of humility and restraint...
Since losing her home to the Lemurian horde, Safiyyah has become a very compassionate woman. She knows what it means to lose everything; she knows what it means to have someone you care about yanked from this world. She does what she can to ease suffering. She does, and sometimes she uses her skills of alchemy and burglary to help those that can't help themselves. She thinks it's a stupid thing to do. She still does it.
History: Some people are born the underdog. They have to claw their way to the top, facing ever mounting adversity to overcome the nature of their birth. They must prove themselves to the world for the world to accept them, and failing a single challenge can send them hurdling back into obscurity.
Others are like Safiyyah: born with all the physical, material, and mental boons one could ask for, and are very smug about it.
Safiyyah's mother was a wealthy merchant's daughter from Iiram's territory in the Jade Kingdoms. Her father was an accomplished alchemist of Iiramite, Atlantean, and Kushite descent, a famous figure in his own right. Their marriage was one of both convenience and love, or maybe convenience that led to love. Whatever the case, they bore three children, their eldest being Safiyyah. This family of five lived in a city along the border of the Ivory Kingdoms in relative wealth, luxury, and contentment. This city, Maliqesh, would have been considered small at the height of Iiram's power, but then was one of the few remaining bastions of the empire's once proud culture.
Safiyyah was always blessed with a keen intellect, but also given a healthy dose of mischievousness by the gods. This became clear at a very young age. She played with fire, she loved sneaking into places she didn't belong, and she always happened to have something that didn't belong to her. Needless to say, when she somehow launched a beehive through their neighbors' window at the age of seven, her parents decided that three children was quite enough and opted to drink teas that would keep them from having children again. Ever.
The child seemed to mature out of her bad habits shortly thereafter. In actuality, this was far from the truth: she simply became better at hiding her mischief. When she was older, her natural talents for alchemy were recognized, so Safiyyah was sent to study arithmetic and science. She proved more than capable at these arts and just as capable at getting proud, eager-to-please young men to lavish her with gifts and tell her stories of their families' wealth and status. A rare few of these young men would later find family treasures gone missing, but nobody knew it was Safiyyah's doing.
When she finished her studies, Safiyyah's parents decided it was time to have her wed, and they were negotiating the terms of marriage with some family friends. The young alchemist was in the process of hatching together a plot to put a stop to that nonsense when the Lemurians struck.
Two decades prior, the whole of Iiram had been ravaged by that barbarian horde. Cities were sacked. Villages were torched. Armies crumbled beneath their seemingly endless numbers. Since then, the people of Maliqesh and the refugees that had flocked to that city and its neighbors had been preparing for inevitable. They'd drilled militia, hired mercenary forces, built extra palisades and traps for the invaders... but in the face of the Lemurian force - a splinter force, but large enough that it was more than a threat to the remnants of Iiram - none of this would be enough.
Safiyyah was a fortunate girl. Her parents had the foresight to prepare for such a disaster, and as prominent figures in the city they had privileged access to the resources to secure her escape. Her father and brothers joined the defense of the city while she, her mother, and some body guards fled the city. Although they escaped the Lemurians, they were not able to evade desert bandits. Safiyyah's mother and most of the guards were slain. Only the young woman escaped the massacre.
Since then, Safiyyah has been on the road in a lost sort of way. She goes from village to village, city to city, peddling her wares in the day and stealing valuables at night. She never stays wealthy long; she always finds something else to spend her money on, or some poor vagabond to give her money to. So she continues to wander, and she continues to seek...
Journey: ...the Philosopher's Stone. It's been lost since the Years of Dusk. Its properties are nigh magical, nigh impossible, and the key to... to... something.
Truthfully, Safiyyah does not know what she intends to do with the Philosopher's Stone. She has a great many hopes for it. Could she use its properties to create a truly safe realm by using it in some protective ritual? Could she cure the Scourge, restoring the Beastmen to their human form? Could she unlock the secrets of immortality? Of resurrection?
Whatever powers it may possess, Safiyyah seeks the Philosopher's Stone. The now not-so-young Iiramite woman helps those she meets along the way, and when she's not doing that she's plying her trade as a thief. Sometimes she does both.
Ideals: Compassion, mercy, and forgiveness: call it whatever you will, Safiyyah thinks it's stupid. But that doesn't stop her from being that stupid. She tells herself to focus on helping only herself, but somehow she finds herself going out of her way to help those who are hungry, wounded, or in mortal peril. She can't help it.
Safiyyah also embodies the pursuit of good old fashioned mischief, the excitement of breaking the rules because you can and going places you're not supposed to be in. It's not the material reward of burglary that excites her, really; it's the danger of it, the game of cat and mouse. Gods bless her, but there have been several times when she's sacrificed her hard earned (stolen) earnings to help put proper clothes on some bedraggled child. It's a silly thing to do. She knows that.
Perhaps the most dangerous thing Safiyyah embodies, however, is pure bullheadedness. That healthy drive to get things done can turn into an unhealthy insistence that things will work out the way she wants them to. They have to. Perhaps that's why she's so staunch about not killing other humans; perhaps she simply refuses to be part of that systemic violence despite being very familiar with the cruelty of the world. Either way, once she decides to do something, she'll get it done or die trying.
Holdings: Safiyyah is graced with two good souls to help her on her quest: one hired bodyguard and the world's smartest mule. Her bodyguard is a patient man from the Ivory Kingdoms who's killed a small handful of great beasts. Her mule is an incredibly intelligent white mare.
The alchemist has a wide variety of tricks up her sleeve. Blinding powders, sleeping gas, various non-lethal poisons, smoke bombs, and more are on her person. She can make new alchemical wonders, too, and carries the components necessary to do so. Her sash is also more than it appears, made of a firm but flexible silk that can be used as a rope or to bind prisoners. Besides this, she always stocks up on a small number of trade goods.
Safiyyah also has medical supplies. She is a capable enough physician.
