PLAYED BY: Brittni Smith
CHARACTER NAME: Cenarae Stormjarl (Ravenscry)
GENDER: Female
CLASS: Cleric
AGE: 21Years
RACE: Human
HAIR: Mid length and Orange
EYES: Hazel
OCCUPATION: Cleric
KNOWN SKILLS: Healing, Hunting, Archery, Some Diplomacy, Divine Magic, Smithing
BIRTHPLACE: Born in a little village near the coast
APPEARANCE: Short and stocky Cenarae is no looker as she is rather ordinary. Her hair is of a bright coppery orange that is either loose or tied up with some kind of cord or ribbon, Warm hazel eyes view the world with caution. Despite Ulven style dress she is unmistakably human with her plain eyes and a lack of fangs. She also wears a raven skull on a cord around her neck.
NOTABLE TRAITS: Human among Ulven, but nothing else.
RELATIONSHIPS: Thrand Stormjarl & Fritha Stormjarl are Packmates and friends
RUMORS: Traitor to her kind (Some Humans)
BIO / BACKGROUND HISTORY:
Her history is fuzzy at best in her early years. She was born in the small fishing village called Ravencry on Faedrun where her parents, raised her in a normal almost carefree fashion for the first 6 years. Before her 6the birthday there was an evacuation order and the village, including her family fled to the ships to escape the undead blight heading their way. When they arrived the remnants of the village went to start over on the coast of Clan Nightriver’s territory. This seemed bright at first, but when they were still in tents as building were yet to be finished, raiders attacked. It was the dead of the night when screams and bright light disturbed her family. She was told to stay put but peeked out to see what was happening, the camp was burning… She turned and ran back into her tent burrowing under blankets as she screamed in fear. This was a bad idea and the fire hopped from tent to tent eventually hers caught on fire. She ran from the heat into the chaos of the camp looking for her parents. What she found scarred her for life as they were very clearly dead, but with a child’s ignorance she tried to wake them. This was another mistake as a raider picked her up by the back of her night dress and threw her into a burning pile of debris. The fire spread to her quickly and she scrambled out and ran to the only water she knew throwing herself to the ocean’s mercy.
She passed out from pain, fright and shock in to freezing water and she drifted down the coast like a corpse. When she woke she found herself tangled in seaweed and debris, she shivered and struggled to shore, once there she wandered aimlessly looking for someone to save her. Gaia must have shown her mercy as she managed to find berries and small foods to sustain her for several days. A week after her village burned she had collapsed on the ground from utter exhaustion and hunger, her whimpering cries hardly audible. A hunting party of Ulven were nearby, though and by the grace of Gaia one male heard her; Bjarke Stormjarl heard something that was not like that of an animal and left his party to find it. He came upon a small form huddled in the dirt weeping. Seeing the burns, tattered clothing and soot streaks on the child he remembered the Colum of smoke in the distance from a week prior. He took off his cloak and bundled Cenarae up holding her close and he and his party returned to their village.
Bjarke Stormjarl took the child home to his mate Rada Stormjarl and since she was a healer she tended to the young human as best they could. A long discussion was had about her fate and they decided to raise her alongside their two sons. They notified their Jarl; once it was clear Cenarae would survive. The next several years seemed to fly and the young human integrated into the family as if they had always been. As she neared her 10th year she began taking an interest in the adoptive parents work, her father a blacksmith for the village and her mother one of the healers, she spent much of her time between the two professions rather than our play fighting with her brothers as the violence they reenacted frightened her. It was on a hunting trip not long after when they were all in for a surprise, Bjarke, Cenarae, and her two brothers Nadir & Einar, had gone out when Einar went bolting off after something. A yell soon followed full of pain and fear, without hesitation Cenarae threw her bow at her other brother and ran after her errant sibling. What she found was bad, he had somehow managed not only to fall but to pierce himself through the gut on a broken tree limb sticking out of the snow. Something seemed the wash over the young human as she pulled her brother free and tore open his tunic. She packed the wound and pressed but he had already lost so much blood, she prayed to mother Gaia and the Great Wolf to heal him, so he may fight for their honor one day. To everyone surprise they responded and Einar’s wound eased to a far more minor one.
After this revelation Cenarae found out news that would have broken some, this was not her birth family, she was not an Ulven who was just taking forever to grow their fangs but that she was in fact human. She was forced to remember and understand her fear of violence and fire, but she took it with stride, “Gaia has blessed me with a pack who loves me and the chance to honor her ways regardless” was her response as she came to understand. She left her home and went to visit a Priestess of Gaia to learn what she could despite not being an Ulven and there for a daughter if Gaia. Here she stayed for some time earning her Sax in the process as she became a true woman of the pack.
As she began her 15th year she assisted where permitted with the negotiations with human colonists to aid her clan. Later when civil war broke out, despite her fears she volunteered to the front lines at assist in helping the wounded. There she met her friends Thrand & Fritha, two more Ulven from Stormjarl she had never before come across. During the following time she formed a bond of friendship but focused majority of her time on her work. Since she is not a fighter she did the most she could to aid where she could be it healing for working as a blacksmith. Now with the war over she works where she can and is needed to help restore the balance. She joined up with her friends once again for the Clan Stormjarl and New Aldorian Campaign staying back with the supplies to assist and wait for the wounded to return and be helped.
Branwen, though, was a scout. Her strengths were keen eyes and sense of smell, and great skill in interpreting birdsong. Although a fierce fighter, her methods were not those of a proud warrior, but those of an alley-scrapper. Where her parents stood tall and fought with sword, and shield, and spear, and bow, Branwen crouched low and favored knife, and fist, and fang, and thrown stone. And as such, she was a disappointment.
Living ever under the shadow of her parents and brothers, she had to journey outside of the village to gain respect, to escape the continual damning by faint praise. She found a place, for a while, guarding trade caravans. First small parties as they passed from her village to the next, then larger troupes as they traversed all through Nightriver territory. From there, she joined a large coalition of merchants who had traveled from one coast to another and over the mountains in between, and required a replacement guard for their return journey.
Branwen guarded that caravan, led by the Watchwolves, through two more trading runs without incident that summer, crossing the mountains twice each time. But the third trip came in autumn, and winter arrived early in the high mountains.
After freeing themselves from the first storm and coming to rest below the treeline, where the snow was still light, Branwen climbed the highest tree near camp to try and spot the trail ahead. From there, she saw a treacherous path ready to collapse, smelled strong winds sweeping up from the still far-away sea, tasted frozen dryness in the air, and heard only the faintest birdsong – the quiet song that went “Fly south, line your nests. Winter is here.”
The group did not want to hear her, when she told them to go to ground, to stay where they were. They all just wanted to go home. The argument lasted until the first flakes began to fall.
Two and twenty Ulven went up into the Great Wolf’s Hackles that fall – sixteen merchants and artisans, six guards and scouts. Five stayed there come spring. The first three perished in an avalanche after the first snowfall, and were left to the wild. The next two, Griogair and Edana, fell during the winter, each during their turn to hunt or gather firewood.
After returning to the lowlands they had longed for months to see, the caravan rested, and healed, and let themselves be rejuvenated by the spring rains washing over Mardrun. Some were content to stay where the ground lays flat for the rest of their days, but the rest found themselves drawn back to the mountains by the time the summer sun rode directly overhead. None moreso than Branwen, who saw most clearly that it was not the snow which had doomed them, but the earth. Snow would always fall in winter, but crumbling footpaths could be widened and shored so they would not collapse, and boulders cleared to where ice cannot break them loose from their resting place.
Their mission clear, the remaining travelers went to their Packs, to gather what assistance they could, be it food, tools, or Ulven hands. Chieftain Blackknife saw no honor in building roads. “The Great Wolf does not hear the names of children playing in the woods,” she said, and denied aid to the mission. “The Blackknife family will not have a coward bricklayer in its midst,” she said, and disowned her daughter.
When the group that would become known in a few years as Pack Coywolf came back together to begin their mission, the other survivors of the original caravan gave Branwen a new name. They called her Stormherald, to honor the day she saved all their lives simply by climbing a tree. Although the Coywolves have never had a formal Chieftain, whenever Branwen Stormherald was near, they would listen most closely to her. She always seemed to know when the weather was about to turn, and when the path was not as stable as it seemed.
For the rest of her life, Branwen pondered the need to destroy Ulven flesh before the journey to meet the Great Wolf can begin. Custom dictates that fire be the preferred means. What is done with the bones after they have been stripped of flesh – be they sealed in jars or buried in hollow hills or kept and burned again at midwinter – varies from Clan to Clan or even Pack to Pack, but to be burned seems to be the wish of all Ulven. It is accepted that being consumed by animals will do the job as well as fire, but she could not help wonder if that didn’t truly send you on your way, but merely dispersed one’s soul through the local fauna. She suspected that was why Edana and Griogair seemed to follow her wherever she went, and wondered if they would one day haunt her children, as well.
When she died, Branwen’s heirs laid her body in a clearing where the ravens gathered and the coyotes prowled, as per her wishes. She wished to test her theory, you see. If she was right, then there were far worse fates in her eyes than following the wild things for all eternity. And if she was wrong, she could only hope that the Great Wolf might have once heard the name of a childish bricklayer.