Post by Ze Flying Wraithetti Monstress on Nov 15, 2009 21:39:32 GMT -5
Name:
Honovi
Age:
Sixty-two years
Race:
Half-elf
Appearance:
Honovi carries that difficult balance between muscle and agility. At an average height, standing at 5’6”, and lean, her upper body is strong, with a very thin layer of muscle since she has such a skinny frame. Her face is weathered and dark, her features high and wild, with very pronounced cheekbones and an oval-shaped face. Honovi has dark brown eyes, and even darker hair, which is thick and hangs in long, ropy dark locks. Honovi occasionally braids several strands together, but usually keeps her hair loose and tangled. Honovi has several tattoos done in black ink by herself; unique diagrams showing her faith to her Goddess and also random pictures of animals, mostly deer. They swarm all over her body. Living in the forest, Honovi doesn’t often get a chance to get real clothing, so she wears animal skins. However, Honovi seems to have a gift for sewing, and so she can braid different hairs together and sew the skins in various shapes and sizes. Most of her clothing for warmer weather is low-cut and tight, usually made out of short-haired hides such as deer and the occasional cougar. Her winter clothing is thick, heavily braided, usually made with wolf skin and wool, whenever she can get her hands on it. Honovi has several pairs of shoes, tanned leather moccasins for summer and thickly furred boots for winter. Honovi loves jewellery, and constantly hoards it, and has built up quite a collection in her house. She is always wearing at least some of it, in necklaces, painstakingly pierced earrings, and ankle bracelets, although she doesn’t often wear rings or arm bracelets since she is usually wearing gloves and leather straps along her arms to protect her from the drawstring of her bow. Honovi carries a large longbow, made of yew, and she makes arrows with jewelled arrowheads for magic use. All of her arrows are marked with wolf blood to mark them as hers, and the shafts are made strictly with eagle or hawk feathers.
Personality:
Honovi has taken to the rules of the wild. She is often quiet and sweet-tempered, capable of staying cool under most pressures, or, at the very least, appearing to do so. Living alone has made her a little jumpy, and she is suspicious of new faces, but always friendly. As a friend, she is incredibly supportive, always keeping up a tough exterior and urging others to do the same, but often requires encouragement of her own to keep up her optimism. Honovi loves the feeling of freedom, and craves it- so much, in fact, that she has more than a few times run stark naked through the forest just to get an adrenaline rush from it. Honovi is very caring of animals and the forest, and in fact has discarded the usual elven beliefs of the world’s creation, and believes solely in primal forest spirits, dryads and nymphs, and animal spirits. She often leaves unused parts of slain animals as offerings to them, and claims she can hear them speaking all the time. Honovi is always interested in helping out anything in her immediate vision, but has a lot of trouble seeing the big picture. She will turn her back on world problems and pretend they don’t exist merely for her own reassurance, which is why she has opted to remain neutral, not giving help to either side merely because she ignores the both of them. When Honovi is bothered about them, or urged to join either side, she often loses her temper, and when she does she is wild, snappy, and unpredictable. Honovi only drinks when she’s angry, and alcohol only makes her even more furious. However, Honovi despises becoming angry and often cries it away, becoming depressed within seconds. However, a quick dip in a pond (or running around naked) makes her spirits rise once more, since it is very difficult to keep Honovi down.
History:
Honovi’s birth was the result of a union between a male elf named Tammuz and a human woman called Vita. Vita Brigixt was an attractive, dark-skinned human who ran an inn on the road between Narda and Dras-Leona. One rainy night, Tammuz, disguised as a human, bolted into the inn, begging for shelter for the night. Vita was completely taken by him, since although he was disguised as a human and therefore somewhat less beautiful, he was still very attractive. He had no human money on him, but Vita let him stay the night for the price of sleeping in her bed. Tammuz grudgingly agreed, and left immediately the next morning.
Vita didn’t make the alarming discovery that Tammuz was an elf until nine months later, when her daughter came out with pointy ears. A horrified Vita, knowing that Honovi could never stay in the Empire, quickly donned a cloak, grabbed her horse from the inn stables, and rode out into the wilderness with her baby. Clearly, elves still existed, and Vita’s best guess was that they were in the unexplored wilderness of Du Weldenvarden. She rode all the way there, but at the edge of it was sharply repelled by an invisible barrier. She got off her horse, got down on her knees, clasped her hands, and begged the elves to take her daughter. She cried and screamed to apparently no one for a full hour before the elves guarding that side of the forest, Nuada and Adonis, finally approached her. Though they were more than unhappy to accept a hybrid into Du Weldenvarden, they saw the need to protect an elf from Galbatorix, even if she was only half. Baby Honovi was taken into Du Weldenvarden, and a hugely relieved but sorrowful Vita returned to her inn, where she worked until she died peacefully at the age of seventy-five forty years later. She never saw Honovi again.
Nuada and Adonis had to take Honovi to Ellesméra to explain their case to Queen Islanzadí, who accepted the girl-child and handed her to an elven nobleman called Lord Maris, whose mate Lithia had died some years earlier. He had one son, a little boy called Kasan, who had developmental problems. Maris did as his queen ordered, but had huge prejudices against Honovi. She was nursed and weaned by the only female elf with an infant in Ellesméra, Linnea. Even though Honovi grew very slowly compared to a human, her mortal side made her grow twice as fast as the average elf. Soon, she was helping raise her older brother Kasan, and going to tutoring.
Maris was starting to suffer for accepting Honovi. At council meetings, he was mocked, and no female was interested in becoming his new mate. He decided that Honovi had to go away. One day, when she was twenty-six, still a small child by her aging pattern, Maris took her out into the deepest, darkest part of Du Weldenvarden and used magic to produce colourful lights that fascinated Honovi into following them around. As soon as she had disappeared, Maris turned around and headed back to Ellesméra, judging that her human part wouldn’t let her survive long. And Honovi stayed lost for days. However, during those days, while starving, she learned what plants were good to eat and what made her sick, until she ran into a female elf who was concerned enough to take her back to Maris in Ellesméra. Maris feigned relief, but realized he would have to get rid of Honovi in a way that didn’t leave the entire city wondering and didn’t cast him as a suspect. He wouldn’t be able to somehow get Honovi out of Du Weldenvarden by himself, and murder was out of the question, so he focussed on the next best thing- exile. And by doing it, he would be killing two birds with one stone.
Maris was almost, if not as, embarrassed by his son Kasan as he was by Honovi. His differences, as well as the fact that no woman was interested in a male with a chronically ill son, made him want to get rid of him just as strongly. So, when Honovi was in her early thirties, Maris slipped a copious amount of alcohol into her food. Once she was somewhat drunk, he urged her to drink more, and the feeling was so good that Honovi continued to drink, and drink, and drink. While she did this, Maris snuck upstairs to his son’s bedroom and brutally murdered him. Then he took Honovi, who had passed out, upstairs as well, and covered her body in Kasan’s blood and shoved some under her fingernails. Then he went to wash himself off, and, as soon as he was completely clean, bolted out into the streets of Ellesméra and screamed murder.
Honovi woke up the next morning covered with her foster brother’s blood and imprisoned in a tree grown for the very purpose of jailing her. Queen Islanzadí and her council were discussing what to do with her. Honovi didn’t understand what she had done, having no memory of the past night, and when she was told, began to grieve. The council decided that Honovi had a full day to get out of Du Weldenvarden. If she didn’t, soldiers would be sent to kill her. And with that, she was released.
Honovi spent the entire next day running for her life. She didn’t reach the border on time, and soldiers were dispatched to see her killed. Honovi, giving up, sat down underneath a tree. The tree, feeling her innocence and her terror, quickly snatched her by its roots and pulled a screaming Honovi underground. It kept her safely there for several days as the soldiers hunted the woods, feeding her its own fruit. Once they were gone, the tree released her, and Honovi escaped Du Weldenvarden.
Unfortunately, the elves contracted a group of nearby slavers to keep an eye out for a dark-skinned elf, and they were waiting for Honovi when she burst out of the barrier. She was immediately captured, but upon closer inspection, they saw that she was only half elf. This was unsatisfactory to the slavers’ leader- they’d been promised an actual elf, not just half, and few people would want to purchase a half-breed. So, she was let loose like an animal. Honovi ran, and didn’t stop running until Du Weldenvarden disappeared behind her and the mountains of the Spine rose up to meet her.
And for the next thirty years, Honovi simply learned the ways of the wild. She wanted nothing to do with humans or elves anymore, so she built herself a small cabin out of living trees in the deepness of the Spine, and has quietly lived there since.
Other:
Honovi is half human and half elf, the very reason she wasn't sold into slavery. Half-elves are believed to be unstable, since humans and elves are such different creatures. Honovi doesn't seem to have inherited either race's strengths- her agility is only due to years of living in the wild, and she can only live for half as long, maybe even less, as the average elf. She does have a little magical potential, but only enough to communicate with animals and plants. As for her personality, Honovi is often calm and expressionless as most elves are, but a tragedy can make her go wild, and when faced with danger she reacts more like an animal than any human. Therefore, she has renounced ties to either race, and considers herself a species of her own, more tied to nature than she is to sentient beings.