PLAYED BY: Marisa Considine
CHARACTER NAME: Mirtharaellorin (or Mirth, as the humans have called for her short)
GENDER: Woman
PRONOUN(S): She/Her
CLASS: Mage
AGE: 83
RACE: Syndar
OCCUPATION: Former Thief, Former Karindren Lighthouse Keeper, Current Adventurer
KNOWN SKILLS: Lighthouse Keeping Skills, Thieving Skills
BIRTHPLACE: The Kingdom of Karindren
APPEARANCE: A very fish-like Syndar, she has sharp teeth and scale patterned skin.
HAIR: Brown
EYES: Brown
RELATIONSHIPS: None outside of other player characters, though other Karindren may know of her.
Bio:
Of all the known justice systems in the world, it is said that the Syndar justice system moved the most slowly. Terribly slowly. Abysmally slowly. So slowly the slowness is literally legendary to this day. And of all of the Syndar nations, no justice system moved quite so slowly as that of The Kingdom of Karindren. As the most traditional of all the Synar nations it contained the greatest number of sticklers for procedure, troglodytes, and stick-in-the-mud assholes in all of Faedrun. In other words, The Kingdom of Karindren’s justice system was particularly full of dawdlers and sluggards who would much rather sit around debating each other than giving you a straight answer. But to Mirtharaellorin (or Mirth for short), it was home.
Mirth grew up on the streets of Karindren’s capital. She never knew her parents, and frankly, never wanted to. As a so-called “feral” Syndar she was at the bottom of the Syndar racial tiers. That coupled with the strict two child policy in the Kingdom of Karindren meant that her parents probably just abandoned her so they could get a better looking baby. It’s something Mirth made peace with at a young age. There’s no point in worrying about people who don’t care about you. With luck they had a better baby and at least they didn’t drown her or something. Things could have been much worse.
But we were talking about the justice system. Mirth had many run-ins with the justice system during her life. It’s something that tends to happen when you’re hungry. It started when she was a child. Around the human equivalent of 8 or so years. She was captured after stealing some fish from a local fisherman. It was a year before they finally let her go. Ultimately, it was decided that she was too young to be considered a moral agent and as a mere moral patient she should be allowed her freedom. This would be her shortest run in with the law.
Stealing jewelry at the equivalent of 12 years of age was a three year trial for a total sentence of a month of community service. It was ultimately argued that it would be inappropriate to apply Retributive Justice to someone so young but that some amount of Restorative Justice was necessary for the sake of the parties harmed by Mirth’s theft.
At the equivalent of 16 she was on trial for trespassing and faking credentials for four months and then ended up on trial for the next few years for failure to appear in court. She was, at the time, tired of appearing in court. But the trial for, now, all three of her crimes too until she entered adulthood. At which point her trial was thankfully ended by the argument that as an adult she should not be considered liable for crimes she committed as a child.
A trial for jaywalking, which should have taken a relatively quick two months of deliberation, ended up taking two YEARS instead as Mirth’s past transgressions were debated. Repeat offenders are sentenced to Reclamation after all. To what extent should it matter the severity of the crimes? She was freed in the end, but this was getting ridiculous.
Being a known repeat offender, especially a FERAL repeat offender makes it difficult for one to get a job. So once she was back out on the streets Mirth had no choice but to return to her life of crime. It was just a way of life. You steal to eat, you steal to barter, you steal to sell. This is how Mirth found herself breaking into a lighthouse one night. The lighthouse was positioned on the edge of town overlooking a rocky shore. The turning light of the tower felt like an accusing stare, each pass of its beam a silent reminder that she did not belong there.
She picked the lock and made her way inside. She was quick and quiet, looking through the various objects there for valuables. It was clear someone lived there, this was someone’s home. She just hoped that they were too busy working to notice her. She was digging through a cabinet when he came up behind her. She only became aware of him through the sensation of someone tapping on her shoulder. She spun around.
“Excuse me?” The voice belonged to an old Syndar. Very old. His face was a spider’s web of lines and wrinkles. He was Serous. She pulled out a knife.
“Just go upstairs old man. Just go upstairs and leave me be and no one has to get hurt.” Her hands trembled. She knew that if she were to be arrested for this the Reclaments would Hollow her. On the other hand, she had never taken a life.
The old man looked at her trembling hands and looked back at her. There was a long silence before he spoke. All he said was, “Would you like a job?”
That is how Mirth ended up working at the lighthouse and how, though she did not know it yet, how she would end up surviving the calamity that would see all of Karindren destroyed.
She had turned her life around, she hadn’t been arrested in years, and she had a good relationship with Tordiyannarasin, the Serous Syndar who had taken her in. For Mirth things had gotten better. She had food in her belly, a place to sleep, she even started picking up a few hobbies. But for Faedrun, things had gotten worse over the years. There was talk now of the undead, of penitents. Yet, things seemed relatively safe in Karindren. They were on an island, separate from the mainland. Surely they would be safe here.
It took time, but eventually war did come to the Karindren. Eventually hundreds of ships would make their way to the harbor to be part of the escape fleet, a fleet that Mirth was not allowed to be on. It turns out no one wants a known, potentially violent criminal, on their ship, especially one that has not been Hollowed. She could have snuck aboard, she could have clambered onto one of the ships. In the chaos of Karindren’s last stand she could have made it easily to the harbor. But they didn’t want her there, and someone had to keep the lighthouse lit. Otherwise, how would Tordiyannarasin safely make it to the ships to escape? She bid him a tearful farewell, and went to stand at her post to help the ships safely avoid the rocky bluff the lighthouse stood on.
A few hours later she was looking over the horizon at an enormous wall of water quickly closing in towards her lighthouse. She ran towards the backside, looking at the path up to the lighthouse for any sign of Tordiyannarasin, any chance of him making it to the ships. She saw him moments before the water overtook him. The force of the water hitting the lighthouse almost knocked her into the sea. She clung to its railing as the water destroyed everything she had ever known. When the waters abated all she could see around her was ruins, destruction, and water. Nothing was left. She had no idea what had happened.
She managed to escape the lighthouse by turning some cabinets into a small boat. By some luck she was able to find out that there were ships leaving from New Aldoria, and by some luck she managed to find her way onto one of them. But wherever she went there was no sign of her people. Instead there were a new strange sort of people known as humans. She would soon discover that they age and die quickly. They live short lives. But they are a lively, kind, and welcoming people. She greatly enjoyed their presence, strange though they were. She mourned them often. Not only in the moments when they died, but also in the moments when they changed. It is difficult to watch your friends age around you when you feel so very stuck in place. There were days when she wished she could shorten her life to be more like them.
So eventually she pulled away from them too. Why get hurt? She returned to her life of crime, general banditry, and thievery. It was easier in a way then having to get a job in a human city, watch all your co-workers get old and move on, and watch their children, who you once cared for, uncomfortably become your peers. Humans are lovely but they change too much.
This is how things continued for some time until the day she stole from one particular group.
They were a group of traveling merchants, or so she had been told. Rich and prosperous. Easy marks. She’d just sneak in, steal their money, run, and then have food to eat for the rest of the week. She broke into one of their caravans one night. They WERE rich. She was pocketing bags of silver. She opened one box to find… sausages? Just a box of sausages?
She felt a tap on her shoulder. She spun around. There were SEVERAL people in the room with her. She pulled out her knife, her hands shaking. “Just turn around, please, no one has to get hurt. Just turn around and let me go.”
And the one in the front, a man dressed in rich purple hues said, “Uhh, do you want a job?”