Toul (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bendthekey) wrote2034-03-30 06:30 pm
bendthekey) wrote2034-03-30 06:30 pm
Entry tags:
[OOC] Character Background
Name: Toul (Last Name: Removed upon becoming an Indebted Servant, goes by "Toul Galinheir" if necessary)
Age: 19
Birthdate: Unknown (she remembers it being in the Summer)
Height: 5'4"
Weight: 115lbs
Blood Type: O
Designation: Keymaster (also "Aimless Apprentice")
Defining Physical Characteristics: A birthmark under her right eye that looks like shapes in various sizes in a pattern, a scar around her left wrist that she covers with arm guards and leather wristbands, and ears that designate her as being a Felinus, a human evolved from a cat.
Toul Galinheir:
Keymaster: Toul is a Keymaster, but not the best of one. She only got in four years of training (out of seven) before her Master was killed. A Keymaster has the ability to "unlock the doors of reality" basically. They can unlock doors, safes, barriers, memories, and a lot more. In comparison to Mages in her world, Keymasters are 1:500, given that the years of apprenticeship are short, but the training itself is rigorous. Few make it passed the first two years. They are a lot fewer and very few of THOSE ever reach the level of Supreme Keymaster (most apprentices are not even trained by Supreme Masters, but by 15th Level Masters or above).
She has the potential to do a lot of things, but not nearly the amount of training to do any of it. The fact that she's an Aimless Apprentice with no master makes it worse as she's done some rather stupid things without meaning to. ...Like accidentally awaken a Death Reaper a good 200+ years ahead of schedule. This just about killed her and left her with a weakened heart, so if she ever tries to do a major Unlocking again, she's dead.
Additional Skills: Toul is also a fairly proficient cook, due to having to learn at a young age, great with organization, and also capable of going three days without sleep (although the longer she goes, the more random some of the things she says are). Her training as a Keymaster was rigorous not only of the mind and magical energy, but also of the body. Despite her tendency to avoid conflict, she is skilled in hand-to-hand combat.
Bond with Saxa: Because of Toul accidentally binding Saxa to herself during the Awakening Ritual, they share a special link with each other. Saxa can sense Toul’s feelings when they are heightened, such as being very happy or upset. Toul believes she cannot sense Saxa’s but it is truly that Saxa’s emotions have not yet reached a strong enough level for her to do so. Toul is a living inhibitor of Saxa’s powers, and only she can give Saxa permission to use her full strength. They can feel each other’s presence, but Toul’s poor sense of direction makes it much harder for her, while Saxa can locate her within a matter of minutes. If there is a great distance between them, it is as if static is disrupting the bond, but the signal is still there. There are ways to block the bond, such as through special barriers/seals, but it is like someone who has very long hair suddenly cutting all of it off. A tickling sensation that it was once there and the sensory memory of it, but the real thing is gone.
Personality:
Toul isn't a bad person in any way, but she has a low opinion of herself (due to doing really stupid things as a child that may have killed her mom) and she wants to prove herself as being on the Good Side so much she gets reckless. Many would not see that given her normally cheery disposition, but she is very eager to please others and to prove that she is worth something to them. Which leaves her being manipulated more times than one would think. Or maybe exactly as many times as one might think--hence the awakened Death Reaper. She is a very emotional person and has a tendency to react with her heart when she truly believes she is doing the right thing, but her need to please others and prove herself as a good Keymaster leads to her jumping into situations she does not always know the full extent of.
Toul has a strong urge to please others, having developed after her mother’s death when she was constantly in fear that she would be sold by Madame Valtoria, her first master. She did not want to be sent to a Work House, but she had been a traumatized little girl at the time and Madame Valtoria did not have the patience or the empathy to care about her plight. She had bought her to behave a certain way and act as a companion to her granddaughter and that is what Toul would do. And completely altered her personality in the span of a month because if she did not, Madame Valtoria might think she was useless and then get rid of her. If there is one thing Toul hates more than anything else it is being useless or other people finding her skills wanting, despite the fact that she knows she is not as good a Keymaster as she would be once her training is completely. She is fairly proficient for someone her age with her level of training, but it is not good enough for her, so she often extends her power beyond her skills, which is bad for her weakened heart. This does not matter to Toul herself, as she sees no real purpose for herself if she is not being useful to others.
She hates being sad almost as much as she fears being useless. She learned young that smiling and laughing about her problems and bad situations made her feel less negative about them, so that is what she does. She does not cry, and did not even when she was informed by the local authorities that her Master, Galin, was likely to have died when his house burned down. That wasn’t acceptable to her as they was no proof the person found dead in the house was actually Galin and so she decided he might still be alive. She has a determined sense of optimism and seeks out as many positive outcomes as she can, even there are few. Conflict is something else she strives to avoid and in doing so will try to calm down any tense situation, but should physical aggression become involved she will defend herself only if necessary. She’s more willing to take a beating than to accidentally hurt another person, something that her Master, Galin, was very annoyed by as he forced her to learn self-defensive combat techniques. Toul just can’t bear the thought of accidentally harming someone, although if another person is in danger she’s far more ready to step in even if the altercation did not originally involve her.
As could be expected, her dislike of being sad herself leads to her wanting to make other people happy as much as she can as well. If someone is hurt or upset, she’s more than willing to be there for them and try to put a positive spin on whatever is happening to bring up their spirits. This has led to people thinking that she’s too feather-brained to empathize with people when their feeling down as she’s always smiling, but she also is good as sitting quiet and just giving someone comfort through her presence. She’s also physically affectionate, despite having received little of it while she was with her first Master, but Galin slowly became accustomed to her habit of hugging him each morning or before she left to complete duties outside of the home each day, only swatting her on the leg with his cane if she held on too long.
Toul is a perfectionist, but her low sense of self-esteem leads her to jokingly putting herself down on more than one occasion. If she can laugh at her own flaws then it is perfectly if others do it, too, surely? If it is something she can make a joke about, then it is not something worth being upset over in her opinion. Her demeanor has worked well for her in the years since; although her overt cheeriness and scatterbrained facade often leads people to thinking she is less educated or attentive than she is. She is not stupid by any means, as Galin would not allow someone of his household to be trapped at a such a low level of education and required her to study from his library to learn as much as she could.
Even though she was not always treated kindly as a Debtors Servant, Toul has a strong sense of loyalty to the people she has worked for or with. Her first Mistress, Madame Valtoria, was a cold, demanding woman who usually verbally abused her more often than gave praise, but Toul does not see it that way and is instead grateful for the fact that her Mistress cared enough to keep her well fed and clothed and taught her the most important tool she would need to survive—that a smile and a laugh will ease her heart more than tears ever would. She also forgives slights against her very easily because her mother taught her that if someone seeks to hurt someone else to make themselves feel better than they must be hurting far more than the hurt they cause.
Do not think that Toul’s eagerness to please or sense of duty will keep her from breaking the rules. She has a strong sense of curiosity that at times can get her into trouble because she just can’t help herself. How often she breaks a rule depends on how important she knows it is and whether or not her desire to know or do something outweighs her fear of reprimand and disappointing someone. Her breaking a rule is uncommon thing, but not unheard of, and it is also something that she considers greatly and goes into knowing very well that she can suffer consequences for it. She knew that Galin had ordered her not to observe his Apprentice lessons or to go through his spell scrolls, but Keymastering was such a fascinating and enchanting Art to her that she could not help herself. She believed he would be angry and perhaps punish her with extra chores or a loss of certain privileges, but her need to know more outweighed this and she did it anyway. She was more surprised than not that he did not punish her and instead gave her such a great gift of becoming his Apprentice instead, which is an honor she will strive to live up to for the rest of her life.
Background:
Toul did not start out her life as the chosen Apprentice of her Keymaster, but a young girl who had been gifted to him as payment for a job he had done. She had been orphaned two years before coming to him in an accident where she had been playing on an old wooden bridge over a ravine that she had been warned more than once never to play near. The bridge cracked and caught her foot, frightening her enough that she screamed for her mother to come and get her.
Unfortunately the wood was so weak that it gave way easily under her mother's weight, but Toul's wrist was caught in the rope railing, keeping her held there long enough to watch her mother fall to her death. The woodcutter who lived on the other side of the ravine found her there twenty minutes later crying and cut her free, but she still has the scar around her wrist from the rough rope digging into it and cutting almost to the bone. She wears a leather braided bracelet around her wrist to hide it before she altered her clothing and chose arm-guards instead. After her mother's death she was sold along with all of their property to pay off the debts that her father had left behind when he died shortly after she was born.
She was traumatized by the event and then her subsequence induction into Debtor servitude, but her first "owner" was an elderly woman, Madame Valtoria Espava, looking for a child to be her granddaughter's playmate when she visited for the summer and fall. The woman was not usually kind, but made sure that Toul wanted for nothing material as long as she helped with simple chores around the house and kept the woman's granddaughter, Karia, out of trouble.
She wasn't very good at this at first because Karia liked to tease her and Toul would be brought to tears more than once. She missed her mother and her home and often would cry herself to sleep at night. Because her room was just off the stairs into the kitchen area, she could be heard by anyone walking the first floor of the house at night. Madame Valtoria overheard her one night and slammed her door open roughly, ordering her to stop her incessant crying. She told Toul that she was proving herself useless and if she didn't start doing what she had been bought for, then Valtoria would sell her off at the next auction rather than feed and clothe someone so worthless. "The least you could do is be grateful you're not at a Work House! If you wish to cry, smile instead! If you want to shout, laugh. I've no use for a sobbing child disrupting the peace of my home every day."
Toul was left frightened and hurt, afraid that she would be shipped off to one of the nearby Work Houses and given all the horrible stories she had heard, it was a far worse fate than the one she had. So the next day she tried to smile more and refused to cry over anything Karia did to upset her. Instead, she laughed. And she kept laughing. She found that laughing in the face of what hurt her was a lot less painful than crying. Within the span of a month her entire attitude had changed from the quiet, withdrawn child to one that smiled and laughed and was openly affectionate and cheerful to those around her. Madame Valtoria praised her for this more than once, though a good word from her was still few and far between. This angered Karia even more, but the worst she became to Toul, the more Toul endured it.
And thus is came to the end of the fall and Valtoria decided to keep Toul on as a helper to the kitchen staff rather than get rid of her once Karia returned to her parents. She remained with the household for two years until Valtoria fell ill and was forced to move into her son's household to be properly looked after. With her gone, most of the workers on the estate were let go and the indebted servants either moved to her son, Lord Espava's estate, or sold off once more. Toul was not kept and was instead gifted to her next owner as part of a business deal with Lord Espava.
The Keymaster, Galin Temmore, kept her around as a servant and found her at times flighty and very light-hearted personality to be amusing, but nothing more. She was good at keeping his office and home organized and usually paid attention to his orders well, so he decided not to regift her to another Lord or send her to a Work House. Toul educated herself by sneaking into his library despite it being very poor protocol for a servant to learn how to read and write without permission from their Master. When he found out months later she was sure he would dismiss her to a Work House, but instead he kept her around and ordered her to learn all she could from the library. He began giving her weekly tests and what information she could not answer for, he expected her to learn the next week. Her Master, Galin, was not one who suffered fools or ignorance so even having a servant in his home that was uneducated was not allowed, but he did not devote any time to teaching her himself.
It was five years later that he would dismiss his third Apprentice that he had taken on during her servitude. Toul had watched many of the lessons in secret, knowing that she was breaking one of Galin's primary rules by observing them. On her own she found that she actually could use the most basic of spells, but only used it occasionally so as to not attract his suspicion. Still, there was very little that Galin did not know about within his own household and when he found her performing a locking spell on his chest of scrolls (she had accidentally broken the lock months before and hadn't wanted him to find out) he was furious. Not because she had gone against his rule (which he had not even remembered giving all those years ago, as Galin is more absentminded than Toul herself), but that he'd had a potential Apprentice in his home for years and she was learning the spells wrong due to trying to teach herself. It was an insult to him that not only did she have the magical compatibility to be a Keymaster, but his name would be smeared if anyone saw her slipshod and unrefined way of using the spells and traced it back to him.
From that day on for the next four years she would be his official Apprentice and given the rarity of people outside his home actually seeing her, very few were the wiser that she had originally been his servant. Her required her to intensify her academic studies, pushed her to learn how to better manipulate her Mystic Energy, and even required her to learn self-defense from a local military veteran, ex-Lieutenant Paerio Cannor, but was greatly frustrated by her extreme lack of self-preservation. She was far more willingly to dodge or to take a strike that she can manipulate into being less painful than to strike her opponent and potentially hurt them. He later realized that she actually was learning something from these lessons when she was dragged home one day by the local butcher because she had flipped and older boy and accidentally broken his finger when stepping in to stop him from bullying a child’s dog. She felt terrible about it because she hadn’t meant to actually hurt him, but he had tried to smack the child for defending his pet and she wouldn’t allow it. It didn’t stop him from telling her she had the self-preservation skills of a frog in a boiling pot of water, but he was less aggressive about her training in that regard from then on.
She was nineteen (or at least thought to be so as she could not remember her true birthday, as that it was in the summer months) when a man came to Galin's home and spoke to him in private for several hours. Toul did not know him, but his clothing and the silver ring on his hand was proof her was someone of status, a man high up in the government. She did not know what they spoke of, but Galin became even more distant, distracted, after he had gone.
It was two weeks later than Galin sent her off on an overnight job, helping set special alarms on the new county armory two towns over. It was the first time that he had sent her so far away and she believed it to be a test of her abilities without him there to fix her mistakes. She did the job well and was even given a bonus commission by the Commander in charge of Armory, an old, but well-kept Keymaster staff (one used to help Keymasters channel their magic more efficiently for their spells, until now Toul had never seen one personally as Galin saw no use for them). It had been left in storage for decades, no one caring for the style enough to want to use it. She believed that Galin would be proud of her when she returned only she came home to find their house burned down and Galin missing--possibly dead if the bones she found in the charred remains of the house meant anything.
She did not know what had caused the fire, but Galin was absentminded and often left candles lit in places he shouldn't or would drop his pipe without putting out the tobacco inside, always expecting her to follow after him and take care of it. It could have very well have been an accident and there was no one to explain anything. The only rooms in the house left untouched were the special storage shelter in the basement where Galin kept his records and supplies and the small bedroom attached to the stables that was her own. But as Toul did not know the spell to open the special storage room, it would remain locked to her. At the same time, she did find his charmed chest within the wreckage, which she did know how to open, and it turned out that within the chest was more than enough gold marks for her to rebuild the house and more should she choose to. Galin was old and had no family that could be found, so as his Apprentice she legally became his only heir.
Days later, the man she had seen those weeks ago, Septium returned and asked about the job Galin had been charged with doing for him. She explained to him about Galin's disappearance (refusing to claim him as dead, even despite finding human remains in the burned house), but offered to do the job herself so as to honor the word of her Keymaster. Septium almost rejected her offer, but she was insistent. She could not allow a client of her master to leave dissatisfied if she could do something about it. So he hurried her into collecting whatever items she would need and they were off to a hidden location near the Rift of Argo, the canyon that divided the East Half of Tusseri from the West. Instead of going over one of the stone bridges they traveled down a secret staircase to a large cave within the side of the wall of the rift. Inside Septium laid out a circle and all but demanded that Toul read a special unlocking spell that she had never heard before, a long and complicated one which meant that it was most specific for its use. He told her that Galin understood it and was willing to take the chance, so Toul agreed to try. If she got the spell wrong, she knew the word to cancel it, one of the first things Galin had taught her.
But it went wrong. What she had unlocked was not just a door, but a cage that held a sleeping being inside so powerful that she was incapable of cancelling it once it had begun. All she could do was finish the spell--only she got the last line wrong. Instead of releasing the being into Septium's control she said "bind to me what I hath set free!" Septium raged at her, realizing what she had done even before she had and was ready to kill her, but the Mystic circle she stood in prevented him from coming nearer. She was confused and frightened, but the spell was taking its course. The force of the magic being released left her unconscious and shaken. When she awoke some time later Septium was gone--having used his own magic to teleport himself out of the cave before it could collapse on them all.
Toul found herself lying with her head in the lap of a being like none she had ever seen before, her chest in such pain she thought her heart would burst from it. This was how she met Saxa, the Death Reaper. She almost died from the shock of looking at her, but Saxa placed a hand over her heart and the pain in her chest finally faded away until she could breathe again. Saxa told her that her Mystic Energy was drained and had it not been for their new bond, Toul would be dead. But now that they were bound, Saxa could use her energy to temporarily heal Toul, even though it is not how Saxa's power was intended to be used. Saxa did not understand why she had been awakened when it was not yet time. But to Toul, Death Reapers were a myth and having one right in front of her was too much to deal with at the time. So she chose not to. They needed to find a way out of the cave first, the entrance was blocked by large stones from the cave-in. She didn't have the energy or magic reserves left to unlock a “transport window” (dimensional door allowing for instantaneous travel between locations) to somewhere else.
This turned out to be little more than an obstruction for Saxa, who touched the rocks and disintegrated them right there. This weakened her far more than she expected, which is how they found out that the amount of power she could use was restrained by the new bond she had with Toul. Only Toul could give her permission to use her full power. They escaped the cave and made it back to the cliff and proceeded to travel on foot toward the nearest town. It was only four hours away, but before they reached it they came upon a traveling merchant who was heading in the same direction. Toul tried to ask him for a ride, but his horses were terrified by Saxa and fled, dragging the man and his cart with them.
Toul realized then that they couldn’t travel with Saxa looking so noticeable and in response Saxa shape-shifted into a near identical version of Toul. It startled her at first, but then Toul became enthusiastic and pushed Saxa to keep changing until she found a disguise that she liked and thus she transformed herself into a Sword Maiden with brown hair and green eyes. The only thing she could not remove was the mark over her eye that was a sign of her true self. Toul didn't mind and pointed out her own strange birthmark and said people would think it was a tattoo. Saxa asked her again what her purpose was, but Toul told her that she would have to find one for herself, since Toul wasn't that great at giving out directions, let alone telling someone what they should do with their lives.
The Merchant was the only person they had come across so it took a full day and a half to reach the next city of Darrowtown, which was a small, but bustling market town. Toul was able to use some of the gold marks she had brought with her to get them room and board for the night and slept for several hours, only to awaken and find that Saxa had kept guard the entire time. She worried and told her to rest, but Saxa informed her that she needed only a couple hours of sleep every few days at the most. Her energy was not so drained that she would need to sleep regularly like a normal Gaian. This eased Toul’s concern somewhat.
From there they went to buy some clothes as Toul’s were greatly damaged—torn, bloodied from the cave-in—and Sasha’s only clothes were warrior garb. So they went out into the marketplace for clothes and supplies and it was an hour or so into their shopping that Saxa suddenly moved into Toul’s path deflecting an arrow that came through the shop window from one of the nearby rooftops. It sent the civilians in the shop into a panic and suddenly they were trapped in a chaotic mess of people trying to get out of the way, rushed outdoors where the archer continued to fire at them.
Miscellaneous:
Age: 19
Birthdate: Unknown (she remembers it being in the Summer)
Height: 5'4"
Weight: 115lbs
Blood Type: O
Designation: Keymaster (also "Aimless Apprentice")
Defining Physical Characteristics: A birthmark under her right eye that looks like shapes in various sizes in a pattern, a scar around her left wrist that she covers with arm guards and leather wristbands, and ears that designate her as being a Felinus, a human evolved from a cat.
Toul Galinheir:
Keymaster: Toul is a Keymaster, but not the best of one. She only got in four years of training (out of seven) before her Master was killed. A Keymaster has the ability to "unlock the doors of reality" basically. They can unlock doors, safes, barriers, memories, and a lot more. In comparison to Mages in her world, Keymasters are 1:500, given that the years of apprenticeship are short, but the training itself is rigorous. Few make it passed the first two years. They are a lot fewer and very few of THOSE ever reach the level of Supreme Keymaster (most apprentices are not even trained by Supreme Masters, but by 15th Level Masters or above).
She has the potential to do a lot of things, but not nearly the amount of training to do any of it. The fact that she's an Aimless Apprentice with no master makes it worse as she's done some rather stupid things without meaning to. ...Like accidentally awaken a Death Reaper a good 200+ years ahead of schedule. This just about killed her and left her with a weakened heart, so if she ever tries to do a major Unlocking again, she's dead.
Additional Skills: Toul is also a fairly proficient cook, due to having to learn at a young age, great with organization, and also capable of going three days without sleep (although the longer she goes, the more random some of the things she says are). Her training as a Keymaster was rigorous not only of the mind and magical energy, but also of the body. Despite her tendency to avoid conflict, she is skilled in hand-to-hand combat.
Bond with Saxa: Because of Toul accidentally binding Saxa to herself during the Awakening Ritual, they share a special link with each other. Saxa can sense Toul’s feelings when they are heightened, such as being very happy or upset. Toul believes she cannot sense Saxa’s but it is truly that Saxa’s emotions have not yet reached a strong enough level for her to do so. Toul is a living inhibitor of Saxa’s powers, and only she can give Saxa permission to use her full strength. They can feel each other’s presence, but Toul’s poor sense of direction makes it much harder for her, while Saxa can locate her within a matter of minutes. If there is a great distance between them, it is as if static is disrupting the bond, but the signal is still there. There are ways to block the bond, such as through special barriers/seals, but it is like someone who has very long hair suddenly cutting all of it off. A tickling sensation that it was once there and the sensory memory of it, but the real thing is gone.
Personality:
Toul isn't a bad person in any way, but she has a low opinion of herself (due to doing really stupid things as a child that may have killed her mom) and she wants to prove herself as being on the Good Side so much she gets reckless. Many would not see that given her normally cheery disposition, but she is very eager to please others and to prove that she is worth something to them. Which leaves her being manipulated more times than one would think. Or maybe exactly as many times as one might think--hence the awakened Death Reaper. She is a very emotional person and has a tendency to react with her heart when she truly believes she is doing the right thing, but her need to please others and prove herself as a good Keymaster leads to her jumping into situations she does not always know the full extent of.
Toul has a strong urge to please others, having developed after her mother’s death when she was constantly in fear that she would be sold by Madame Valtoria, her first master. She did not want to be sent to a Work House, but she had been a traumatized little girl at the time and Madame Valtoria did not have the patience or the empathy to care about her plight. She had bought her to behave a certain way and act as a companion to her granddaughter and that is what Toul would do. And completely altered her personality in the span of a month because if she did not, Madame Valtoria might think she was useless and then get rid of her. If there is one thing Toul hates more than anything else it is being useless or other people finding her skills wanting, despite the fact that she knows she is not as good a Keymaster as she would be once her training is completely. She is fairly proficient for someone her age with her level of training, but it is not good enough for her, so she often extends her power beyond her skills, which is bad for her weakened heart. This does not matter to Toul herself, as she sees no real purpose for herself if she is not being useful to others.
She hates being sad almost as much as she fears being useless. She learned young that smiling and laughing about her problems and bad situations made her feel less negative about them, so that is what she does. She does not cry, and did not even when she was informed by the local authorities that her Master, Galin, was likely to have died when his house burned down. That wasn’t acceptable to her as they was no proof the person found dead in the house was actually Galin and so she decided he might still be alive. She has a determined sense of optimism and seeks out as many positive outcomes as she can, even there are few. Conflict is something else she strives to avoid and in doing so will try to calm down any tense situation, but should physical aggression become involved she will defend herself only if necessary. She’s more willing to take a beating than to accidentally hurt another person, something that her Master, Galin, was very annoyed by as he forced her to learn self-defensive combat techniques. Toul just can’t bear the thought of accidentally harming someone, although if another person is in danger she’s far more ready to step in even if the altercation did not originally involve her.
As could be expected, her dislike of being sad herself leads to her wanting to make other people happy as much as she can as well. If someone is hurt or upset, she’s more than willing to be there for them and try to put a positive spin on whatever is happening to bring up their spirits. This has led to people thinking that she’s too feather-brained to empathize with people when their feeling down as she’s always smiling, but she also is good as sitting quiet and just giving someone comfort through her presence. She’s also physically affectionate, despite having received little of it while she was with her first Master, but Galin slowly became accustomed to her habit of hugging him each morning or before she left to complete duties outside of the home each day, only swatting her on the leg with his cane if she held on too long.
Toul is a perfectionist, but her low sense of self-esteem leads her to jokingly putting herself down on more than one occasion. If she can laugh at her own flaws then it is perfectly if others do it, too, surely? If it is something she can make a joke about, then it is not something worth being upset over in her opinion. Her demeanor has worked well for her in the years since; although her overt cheeriness and scatterbrained facade often leads people to thinking she is less educated or attentive than she is. She is not stupid by any means, as Galin would not allow someone of his household to be trapped at a such a low level of education and required her to study from his library to learn as much as she could.
Even though she was not always treated kindly as a Debtors Servant, Toul has a strong sense of loyalty to the people she has worked for or with. Her first Mistress, Madame Valtoria, was a cold, demanding woman who usually verbally abused her more often than gave praise, but Toul does not see it that way and is instead grateful for the fact that her Mistress cared enough to keep her well fed and clothed and taught her the most important tool she would need to survive—that a smile and a laugh will ease her heart more than tears ever would. She also forgives slights against her very easily because her mother taught her that if someone seeks to hurt someone else to make themselves feel better than they must be hurting far more than the hurt they cause.
Do not think that Toul’s eagerness to please or sense of duty will keep her from breaking the rules. She has a strong sense of curiosity that at times can get her into trouble because she just can’t help herself. How often she breaks a rule depends on how important she knows it is and whether or not her desire to know or do something outweighs her fear of reprimand and disappointing someone. Her breaking a rule is uncommon thing, but not unheard of, and it is also something that she considers greatly and goes into knowing very well that she can suffer consequences for it. She knew that Galin had ordered her not to observe his Apprentice lessons or to go through his spell scrolls, but Keymastering was such a fascinating and enchanting Art to her that she could not help herself. She believed he would be angry and perhaps punish her with extra chores or a loss of certain privileges, but her need to know more outweighed this and she did it anyway. She was more surprised than not that he did not punish her and instead gave her such a great gift of becoming his Apprentice instead, which is an honor she will strive to live up to for the rest of her life.
Background:
Toul did not start out her life as the chosen Apprentice of her Keymaster, but a young girl who had been gifted to him as payment for a job he had done. She had been orphaned two years before coming to him in an accident where she had been playing on an old wooden bridge over a ravine that she had been warned more than once never to play near. The bridge cracked and caught her foot, frightening her enough that she screamed for her mother to come and get her.
Unfortunately the wood was so weak that it gave way easily under her mother's weight, but Toul's wrist was caught in the rope railing, keeping her held there long enough to watch her mother fall to her death. The woodcutter who lived on the other side of the ravine found her there twenty minutes later crying and cut her free, but she still has the scar around her wrist from the rough rope digging into it and cutting almost to the bone. She wears a leather braided bracelet around her wrist to hide it before she altered her clothing and chose arm-guards instead. After her mother's death she was sold along with all of their property to pay off the debts that her father had left behind when he died shortly after she was born.
She was traumatized by the event and then her subsequence induction into Debtor servitude, but her first "owner" was an elderly woman, Madame Valtoria Espava, looking for a child to be her granddaughter's playmate when she visited for the summer and fall. The woman was not usually kind, but made sure that Toul wanted for nothing material as long as she helped with simple chores around the house and kept the woman's granddaughter, Karia, out of trouble.
She wasn't very good at this at first because Karia liked to tease her and Toul would be brought to tears more than once. She missed her mother and her home and often would cry herself to sleep at night. Because her room was just off the stairs into the kitchen area, she could be heard by anyone walking the first floor of the house at night. Madame Valtoria overheard her one night and slammed her door open roughly, ordering her to stop her incessant crying. She told Toul that she was proving herself useless and if she didn't start doing what she had been bought for, then Valtoria would sell her off at the next auction rather than feed and clothe someone so worthless. "The least you could do is be grateful you're not at a Work House! If you wish to cry, smile instead! If you want to shout, laugh. I've no use for a sobbing child disrupting the peace of my home every day."
Toul was left frightened and hurt, afraid that she would be shipped off to one of the nearby Work Houses and given all the horrible stories she had heard, it was a far worse fate than the one she had. So the next day she tried to smile more and refused to cry over anything Karia did to upset her. Instead, she laughed. And she kept laughing. She found that laughing in the face of what hurt her was a lot less painful than crying. Within the span of a month her entire attitude had changed from the quiet, withdrawn child to one that smiled and laughed and was openly affectionate and cheerful to those around her. Madame Valtoria praised her for this more than once, though a good word from her was still few and far between. This angered Karia even more, but the worst she became to Toul, the more Toul endured it.
And thus is came to the end of the fall and Valtoria decided to keep Toul on as a helper to the kitchen staff rather than get rid of her once Karia returned to her parents. She remained with the household for two years until Valtoria fell ill and was forced to move into her son's household to be properly looked after. With her gone, most of the workers on the estate were let go and the indebted servants either moved to her son, Lord Espava's estate, or sold off once more. Toul was not kept and was instead gifted to her next owner as part of a business deal with Lord Espava.
The Keymaster, Galin Temmore, kept her around as a servant and found her at times flighty and very light-hearted personality to be amusing, but nothing more. She was good at keeping his office and home organized and usually paid attention to his orders well, so he decided not to regift her to another Lord or send her to a Work House. Toul educated herself by sneaking into his library despite it being very poor protocol for a servant to learn how to read and write without permission from their Master. When he found out months later she was sure he would dismiss her to a Work House, but instead he kept her around and ordered her to learn all she could from the library. He began giving her weekly tests and what information she could not answer for, he expected her to learn the next week. Her Master, Galin, was not one who suffered fools or ignorance so even having a servant in his home that was uneducated was not allowed, but he did not devote any time to teaching her himself.
It was five years later that he would dismiss his third Apprentice that he had taken on during her servitude. Toul had watched many of the lessons in secret, knowing that she was breaking one of Galin's primary rules by observing them. On her own she found that she actually could use the most basic of spells, but only used it occasionally so as to not attract his suspicion. Still, there was very little that Galin did not know about within his own household and when he found her performing a locking spell on his chest of scrolls (she had accidentally broken the lock months before and hadn't wanted him to find out) he was furious. Not because she had gone against his rule (which he had not even remembered giving all those years ago, as Galin is more absentminded than Toul herself), but that he'd had a potential Apprentice in his home for years and she was learning the spells wrong due to trying to teach herself. It was an insult to him that not only did she have the magical compatibility to be a Keymaster, but his name would be smeared if anyone saw her slipshod and unrefined way of using the spells and traced it back to him.
From that day on for the next four years she would be his official Apprentice and given the rarity of people outside his home actually seeing her, very few were the wiser that she had originally been his servant. Her required her to intensify her academic studies, pushed her to learn how to better manipulate her Mystic Energy, and even required her to learn self-defense from a local military veteran, ex-Lieutenant Paerio Cannor, but was greatly frustrated by her extreme lack of self-preservation. She was far more willingly to dodge or to take a strike that she can manipulate into being less painful than to strike her opponent and potentially hurt them. He later realized that she actually was learning something from these lessons when she was dragged home one day by the local butcher because she had flipped and older boy and accidentally broken his finger when stepping in to stop him from bullying a child’s dog. She felt terrible about it because she hadn’t meant to actually hurt him, but he had tried to smack the child for defending his pet and she wouldn’t allow it. It didn’t stop him from telling her she had the self-preservation skills of a frog in a boiling pot of water, but he was less aggressive about her training in that regard from then on.
She was nineteen (or at least thought to be so as she could not remember her true birthday, as that it was in the summer months) when a man came to Galin's home and spoke to him in private for several hours. Toul did not know him, but his clothing and the silver ring on his hand was proof her was someone of status, a man high up in the government. She did not know what they spoke of, but Galin became even more distant, distracted, after he had gone.
It was two weeks later than Galin sent her off on an overnight job, helping set special alarms on the new county armory two towns over. It was the first time that he had sent her so far away and she believed it to be a test of her abilities without him there to fix her mistakes. She did the job well and was even given a bonus commission by the Commander in charge of Armory, an old, but well-kept Keymaster staff (one used to help Keymasters channel their magic more efficiently for their spells, until now Toul had never seen one personally as Galin saw no use for them). It had been left in storage for decades, no one caring for the style enough to want to use it. She believed that Galin would be proud of her when she returned only she came home to find their house burned down and Galin missing--possibly dead if the bones she found in the charred remains of the house meant anything.
She did not know what had caused the fire, but Galin was absentminded and often left candles lit in places he shouldn't or would drop his pipe without putting out the tobacco inside, always expecting her to follow after him and take care of it. It could have very well have been an accident and there was no one to explain anything. The only rooms in the house left untouched were the special storage shelter in the basement where Galin kept his records and supplies and the small bedroom attached to the stables that was her own. But as Toul did not know the spell to open the special storage room, it would remain locked to her. At the same time, she did find his charmed chest within the wreckage, which she did know how to open, and it turned out that within the chest was more than enough gold marks for her to rebuild the house and more should she choose to. Galin was old and had no family that could be found, so as his Apprentice she legally became his only heir.
Days later, the man she had seen those weeks ago, Septium returned and asked about the job Galin had been charged with doing for him. She explained to him about Galin's disappearance (refusing to claim him as dead, even despite finding human remains in the burned house), but offered to do the job herself so as to honor the word of her Keymaster. Septium almost rejected her offer, but she was insistent. She could not allow a client of her master to leave dissatisfied if she could do something about it. So he hurried her into collecting whatever items she would need and they were off to a hidden location near the Rift of Argo, the canyon that divided the East Half of Tusseri from the West. Instead of going over one of the stone bridges they traveled down a secret staircase to a large cave within the side of the wall of the rift. Inside Septium laid out a circle and all but demanded that Toul read a special unlocking spell that she had never heard before, a long and complicated one which meant that it was most specific for its use. He told her that Galin understood it and was willing to take the chance, so Toul agreed to try. If she got the spell wrong, she knew the word to cancel it, one of the first things Galin had taught her.
But it went wrong. What she had unlocked was not just a door, but a cage that held a sleeping being inside so powerful that she was incapable of cancelling it once it had begun. All she could do was finish the spell--only she got the last line wrong. Instead of releasing the being into Septium's control she said "bind to me what I hath set free!" Septium raged at her, realizing what she had done even before she had and was ready to kill her, but the Mystic circle she stood in prevented him from coming nearer. She was confused and frightened, but the spell was taking its course. The force of the magic being released left her unconscious and shaken. When she awoke some time later Septium was gone--having used his own magic to teleport himself out of the cave before it could collapse on them all.
Toul found herself lying with her head in the lap of a being like none she had ever seen before, her chest in such pain she thought her heart would burst from it. This was how she met Saxa, the Death Reaper. She almost died from the shock of looking at her, but Saxa placed a hand over her heart and the pain in her chest finally faded away until she could breathe again. Saxa told her that her Mystic Energy was drained and had it not been for their new bond, Toul would be dead. But now that they were bound, Saxa could use her energy to temporarily heal Toul, even though it is not how Saxa's power was intended to be used. Saxa did not understand why she had been awakened when it was not yet time. But to Toul, Death Reapers were a myth and having one right in front of her was too much to deal with at the time. So she chose not to. They needed to find a way out of the cave first, the entrance was blocked by large stones from the cave-in. She didn't have the energy or magic reserves left to unlock a “transport window” (dimensional door allowing for instantaneous travel between locations) to somewhere else.
This turned out to be little more than an obstruction for Saxa, who touched the rocks and disintegrated them right there. This weakened her far more than she expected, which is how they found out that the amount of power she could use was restrained by the new bond she had with Toul. Only Toul could give her permission to use her full power. They escaped the cave and made it back to the cliff and proceeded to travel on foot toward the nearest town. It was only four hours away, but before they reached it they came upon a traveling merchant who was heading in the same direction. Toul tried to ask him for a ride, but his horses were terrified by Saxa and fled, dragging the man and his cart with them.
Toul realized then that they couldn’t travel with Saxa looking so noticeable and in response Saxa shape-shifted into a near identical version of Toul. It startled her at first, but then Toul became enthusiastic and pushed Saxa to keep changing until she found a disguise that she liked and thus she transformed herself into a Sword Maiden with brown hair and green eyes. The only thing she could not remove was the mark over her eye that was a sign of her true self. Toul didn't mind and pointed out her own strange birthmark and said people would think it was a tattoo. Saxa asked her again what her purpose was, but Toul told her that she would have to find one for herself, since Toul wasn't that great at giving out directions, let alone telling someone what they should do with their lives.
The Merchant was the only person they had come across so it took a full day and a half to reach the next city of Darrowtown, which was a small, but bustling market town. Toul was able to use some of the gold marks she had brought with her to get them room and board for the night and slept for several hours, only to awaken and find that Saxa had kept guard the entire time. She worried and told her to rest, but Saxa informed her that she needed only a couple hours of sleep every few days at the most. Her energy was not so drained that she would need to sleep regularly like a normal Gaian. This eased Toul’s concern somewhat.
From there they went to buy some clothes as Toul’s were greatly damaged—torn, bloodied from the cave-in—and Sasha’s only clothes were warrior garb. So they went out into the marketplace for clothes and supplies and it was an hour or so into their shopping that Saxa suddenly moved into Toul’s path deflecting an arrow that came through the shop window from one of the nearby rooftops. It sent the civilians in the shop into a panic and suddenly they were trapped in a chaotic mess of people trying to get out of the way, rushed outdoors where the archer continued to fire at them.
Miscellaneous:
- Favorite color is sunrise yellow.
- Favorite book as a child was The Journeys of Jinkys the Bard.
- A favorite saying of Galin’s to her was: "Life is just a house full of locked doors and you have all the keys. So don't be stupid and unlock the wrong ones, idiot."
- Another saying he taught her when first introducing her to proper Keymastering was that “a door is always easier to open than it is to shut.” Implying the energy needed to using a “locking” spell is more than one needed to “unlock.”
- Had a pet firekitten as a child, but it ran away after her mother died and she was being prepared to be sold.
Firecat: A feline that matures to be twice the size of your average domestic cat with a more lion-like tail that are very warm to the touch with fur and skin that is immune to flames. They are native to Southwest Paltaysea and its warmer, more tropical climate, but due to merchants and hunts have spread through much of the continent. They are temperamental, but loyal to those who show them respect. A firekitten matures slower than a domestic kitten, but mother firecats are very ferocious and protective. Hunters like to kill them for their furs. - Toul was well-liked in her village and made friends with many of the elderly who she would help with chores when she was done with her training and household duties.
- Hates fish, but likes crabmeat and clams. Her favorite food is barbecued chilicot, which is a kind of pheasant.
- Galin enjoyed speaking in riddles and key-related puns, to the point that Toul does it too at times without realizing it.
- Toul is a morning person, and a light sleeper, but is used to getting at least seven hours of a sleep at night due to the Gaian days being 36 hours long.
- She loves music and revelry, but her musical talents are extremely sub-par, to the point Galin stopped even trying to teach her to play an instrument and forbid her from singing in the house.