information

[narangerel]

About:

The World and all things in it were created by the gods, who eventually fell into slumber, never again to awaken. 800 years ago, beings descended from the stars, called Deva arrive and things look good but eventually are terrible as a group of the most powerful deva, the Endless, start bending and warping the world to suit them best without heed of the consequences. Motivated by the series of cataclysms caused by the Endless’ carelessness., two sorcerers take the heart of a great Deva, Polaris, and shatter it into the Witchmarks, thirteen glyphs that grant powers similar to the Devas to the people who bear them, to be passed on from person to person at the user’s death. A war ensues, with the other Endless riled into revenge by Lidan, one of the oldest of the Deva. The deva are left greatly diminished, and the Witches driven into hiding but not destroyed completely.

Lidan, through manipulations both normal and magical in nature, begins to take larger and larger portions of global power, eventually taking total control of the city the Deva are said to have originated from, and pressing all the remaining grand stars into his service. Over the next 500 years his rule extends over much of the northern continent, either directly or out of fear for his increasingly capricious whims and unparalleled cruelty. The other deva either fall under his command or disappear into hiding. Only one Endless stands in open defiance to him, and with the Witches constantly reappearing to act in direct resistance to the spread of Lidan’s influence, forces an uneasy standstill that has allowed some mortal nations to grow and flourish. Under this uneasy and often disturbed peace, the northern continued has grown unevenly in technology levels, with the cities and larger nations running something on par to early 1920s or even 1910s, with magic replacing much of the innovations of steam and coal. Transport and shipping are done mostly via airships, a technology brought to the fore in the last century, and currently advancing fast due to education in sorcery being made more available to the middle and lower classes in several nations.

In this sort of world, Sarnai was an orphaned foundling discovered by a rural farming and ranching community in the far north of the continent, largely apart from the centuries of struggle. Adopted by Amira Narangerel as a surrogate grandchild, Sarnai was the only birdkin in the hamlet, and as such had her wings clipped at an early age to prevent any accidents. Sarnai’s life was relatively peaceful, but that came to a half when, at 15, she was killed in a hunting accident--and then revived by receiving the Sun witchmark, a mark that granted her great healing powers, as well as holy and light-focused magic. Covering up the incident, Sarnai tried to return to her shepherding existence and succeeded, if more restless and dissatisfied.

Five years later, Ram, an errant skypirate with terrible luck, crashes into their backyard. Days later, Amira is kidnapped by a Deva, under orders by Lidan, who is hoping to rouse heroes into fighting him to assauge his boredom. In the aftermath, she makes a deal with Ram--help find his scattered crew and airship, and he’ll help her retrieve her grandmother. Unfortunately, this ends up landing Sarnai in the crossfire of the current rebellion and the ongoing, underlying war between Lidan and the Witches, which Ram is deeply tied to, in fact bearing a witchmark of his Own. Sarnai has become the unwitting lynch pin to several different plans to destroy Lidan and end the stalemate for good, much to her displeasure, most noticeably by the former bearer of the Sun mark, one of the two sorcerers who created the witchmarks, whose plan continues to have repercussions for all thirteen witches, even five years after her death. While Sarnai and Ram do manage to recover the crew of the Ophion, their attempts to rescue Amira end in Amira’s death at Lidan’s hands, and Sarnai has been forced to think long and hard on the true nature of being a hero.

As a person, Sarnai is an interesting blend of pragmatic and the hot-tempered idealism that so often is the hallmark of a hero. Sarnai deeply and truly believes that peace and true justice is a perfectly possible ideal, and that most, if not all people have good in them--but has no personal drive to go out into the world and defeat evil at it’s root. Left to her own devices, Sarnai is mostly content to practice a more personal and practical form of her ideals--be kind and polite to people, and punch bullies in the face. Her life until Ram’s arrival had been in the sort of quiet, small town that lead her to believe that this approach could be reasonably applicable to most of life’s problems, and to naively assume that most of life’s problems were that cut-and-dry. Her more recent experiences have introduced her to a more harsh reality of complex societal problems, and she is still struggling to find her own answer to how to deal with these complexities, not to mention the brutal series of tragedies that her journey with the skypirate have been fraught with. Nevertheless, at her very core Sarnai believes deeply in the concept of small heroism--in kindness and generosity to those who need it being equally important as glorious deeds for the forces of Good. She also persists in a belief that anyone is capable of good, and is currently in the process of integrating this line of thought with a more diverse definition of what ‘doing good’ actually entails.

At heart, Sarnai is a simple person; she responds incredibly positively to being shown simple courtesies and kindness to herself or people around her, and incredibly negatively to unwarranted rudeness or aggression, nevermind outright cruelty. She tends to react impulsively, even now, and although she tries her best to restrain her temper after the long list of terrible situations it’s created, she usually fails. Sarnai is not a subtle person, having been raised to convey her thoughts directly, in as few words as possible, and in fact finds it rude to speak her feelings in anything but bluntly. Compounding this, Sarnai has been deaf since birth, and while she can communicate by speaking, tends to try and keep conversations from getting overly verbose, as she finds it more difficult to communicate the more intense a conversation becomes. This habit persists even when she is wearing hearing aids, leaving her the sort of person liable to end a conversation as soon as she feels all information has been expressed, and not understand why this might be thought inconsiderate. If engaged in sign language, she is somewhat more expressive, but still prefers not to share more than necessary, except when with very close friends or people she considers family.

As she’s lived much of her life in small towns, Sarnai is slow to warm up to strangers, and skittish in large crowds, as she’s still unused to the press of so many people in any given area. She is especially uncomfortable with large amounts of people paying attention to her, specifically, something that has been occuring with more and more frequency during her travels, much to her displeasure. Sarnai Narangerel wants a quiet life. If left to her own devices, Sarnai prefers to spend company with close friends and and those she considers family. ‘Family’ is of the utmost importance to her, and Sarnai is both intensely protective of those she files under that label, and often easily influenced by those same people. Sarnai’s trust is nearly absolute--she will not harbor doubts for any reason in the people she trusts, and she won’t be pleased by attempts to dissuade her from this, either. Conversely, if this trust is clearly and demonstrably broken, Sarnai will not forgive that offense, and will likely carry the grudge to her grave.

At her current canon point, Sarnai has recently lost her grandmother, her sword, and nearly Ram, having been betrayed by a former comrade who had worked for Lidan. She is still deeply grieving and processing both her deep sense of betrayal and loss, as well as trying to work through her increasingly complicated relationship with Ram. She has made the decision to formally join the Rose Rebellion, the largest organized faction working against Lidan. Still largely wounded, she walked out a door to get some rest...and ended up in Arden Grove.

Oops.

Inventory: (characters arrive with the items they had on or near their person. please list what your character is bringing in on arrival. be reasonable!)
Sarnai has on her, at this time: A pair of earrings that serve as magical hearing aids! They do not transmit sound unless she activates the glyphs that allow them to do so, and instead transmit spoken word to her telepathically.
She is wearing: A loose tunic and sash, hastily altered for her wings, along with capri-length cotton slacks and sandals. She has some extensive bandaging, particularly up her left arm and on both ankles, and also a heavy copper necklace, inlaid with a pearl and obsidian design on the center.

She is also carrying, at the time of arrival, a shepherd’s crook, which she had been using as a cane.

Feature Type: Bird of Prey - Osprey. Sarnai already has animal features, specifically large, flight-capable wings. Upon entry to Merriwyne she will gain some additional feathers along her hairline, going back into her hair, and hardened, semi-elongated fingernails similar to talons.