Legends of Belariath

Eiliane

Eiliane was raised by a woman who may or may not have been her mother, preferring to believe she was a foundling the whore took in, rather than the daughter of one such as 'raised' her. She took to the streets when barely in her teens, an event would occur that would lead her to a life on the streets, stealing to survive. One evening, she was attacked by one of the men who frequented the whore and, while fighting off the scum before he could alleviate her of her innocence, the whore blamed Eiliane and threw her out with little to call her own. Eiliane began to call herself "Street Rat" and took to hanging about the places where scraps could be procured to ease her aching stomach. Even doing this, the pickings were lean and she turned to lifting the pouches of those whom she could. This existence proved more fruitful than merely waiting for something edible to appear and she existed for a time like this. One day, though, she chose the wrong mark to try to pickpocket, A Dwarven Smith known as Defthand in his native tongue. He aspied her crude dagger as it slit the string that tied his pouch to his belt and grabbed her wrist, not letting her go no matter how she struggled. He would his at the waif, her body scrawny and about as tall as he was, telling her if she wanted to make it through another day with the hand intact, she would come along with him. Eiliane would relent, though she expected the man to try to rape her as soon as he had her alone and was surprised to find it wasn't so.

Defthand took her under his wing and taught her to smith, making her his assistant. She soon worked herself to exhaustion to please the gruff man, rewarded with a place to stay and several hearty meals. She began to grow and get stronger under his care and tutelage, finally seeing the future as more than simply one grubby foot in front of the other. She studied under him for several years, slowly growing toward womanhood. Then came the night, fast asleep within the back room, that the sound of shattering glass brought her suddenly awake. Hurrying to the forge room, she found the man she had come to love as the Father she never had, choking upon his own blood. She tried to staunch the flow of vitae but his carotid had been slit and he quickly bled out. Hurrying to find a town guard, covered in the crimson heart's blood, the man took her for an ingrate who had murdered the man stupid enough to trust her under his roof. Implicated in his murder, the Street Rat was disbelieved and quickly sent to prison. It wasn't long until she was thrown in with the rest of the town's rabble, the jail only so large after all, and sent to the fighting pits to fight. Everyone assumed the woman would soon succumb to the conditions in the pits, but she survived despite the atrocities visited upon her. Living on thoughts of vengeance, her body soon became a road map of scars, only healed enough to continue fightings and often not even then.

Then, one evening, she overheard whispers of a planned riot and made her own plot. Ready once the riot began, she managed to escape and attach herself to a caravan, using the skills she had procured to act as guard and eventually hiring herself out as a Mercenary. Now calling herself Eili, she grew deeply tanned in the brutal conditions, her form continuing to be forged in the fires of adversity. She kept the black tattoo upon her left arm always covered, her attitude keeping all at arm's length or farther. Her anger grew, taking up the habit of drinking along the way, and tiring of always being on the run. Eventually she made her way to Nanthalion, enough coin saved in her pockets to try for a new life. One not spent always looking over her shoulders. Now she would struggle to blend into the populace and work towards creating a new life there, to be more than she was born to be, more than fate had chosen for her, to pave her own future.

Marked with a dark runic tattoo on her left forearm by the Arena, she hid her arms for months until she gathered the mehrial to get it covered with a mithril tattoo. Gravik limbed the sword over the black murderous whorls, making it silver with black for the handle and red to depict blood dripping off the blade's tip. Placed in the pommel is the maker's mark of her dead Mentor, that she might always remember him. She had not forgotten her oath to him, to find who had taken Defthand from her, but for the time being, she had to focus on herself and not the past that had molded her.

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