Within the swirling Mist (IC) > Biographies

Duty Above All:

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Silas Rotleaf:
I've been lied to.
Most of what I took for granted was a fiction designed to keep an old couple happy.
Ugh! That explains why I'd get bullied in my childhood. No, they raised me like I was their own child. Then when I reached the Hazlani rite of passage where every Mulan youth receives their first tattoo it was explained to me I was in fact of mongrel birth. The woman I thought of as my mother did not actually give birth to me. It made sense from that point on looking back for why she tended toward being distant.

My true mother was one of the plantation slaves??? My father had a mistress.

I am a Quoa but also half-Vistani.
The Vistani aren't fond of giomorgios, so for the most part aside from learning my biological mother was of the Vatraska clan they've been rather tight lipped. Trying to ask them for more information is largely useless.

I'll try to honor both heritages while at the same time being neither one entirely.

It's difficult to trust others. Everyone is pushing some sort of agenda.
This isn't a question of foreigners vs. locals. Even within your own community there is that dynamic. It's the millstone by which the Lawgiver tests our mettle. How He separates the good grain from the bad. To believe anything else would be to fall prey to the falsehoods of Mytteri, a fate for weak-kneed and simpler-minded people who are inherently unfit.

Silas Rotleaf:
I am told to join either the Wayfarer Kinship or Vanguard Initiative.
They could help me become a better adventurer and healer... I guess?

My people (on both sides) have a fearsome reputation to the point foreigners ask me how I could miss my homeland. I look at them funny. They think that Hazlan has slavery and red wizards makes it a horrible place.

Certainly if you piss off the slavers you would not have a good time of things.  They (a few of the foreigners I was traveling with) also tried some nonsense with a display of perhaps mixed genuine and mock fright in the mist camp that I have a pet worg but Mamat is typically pretty docile. He won't attack you unless he thinks you are trying to attack me. That or if I tell him to. Do not flatter yourselves.

I raised him from a pup. Assuming thorough malevolence on the part of a caster based on the creature he or she takes as a familiar is incredibly backward! Also egotistical. To think every mage is specifically out to get you when you are a stranger to us too??? Preposterous.
I have much more interesting things to study and experiment on than dirt headed Barovian peasantry. Do they all each assume such high importance they feel it warrants worrying about being the target of direct attacks? You are a princess of turnips! And you, the king of the tsuika. I laugh. Oh dear, this isn't helping.

Silas Rotleaf:
I am a Hazlani. I am of my Father's House.
Being a rural aristocrat I was star struck getting to meet real live red wizard apprentices. They offered me, a simple country boy - an apprenticeship! At least in my home country magic isn't so stupidly and backwardly persecuted simply for being.
There are legitimate channels to go about your arcane studies in Ramulai.

I spent some time in Barovia and Har'Akir. To be honest I was most fascinated by the ruins in the latter, though I dare not try to explore them alone. Perhaps the masters I am apprenticing under will see fit to take us there at some point. I told them about how I can read Akiri.

A boy? I'm a thirty year old man. Enough with being star struck.
Didn't father tell me I'd have a wife? One of the Iron Order monks it sounded like was who he had in mind...

Silas Rotleaf:
I do have a wife.  That's right.
We didn't see each other much because she is busy with duties in the hidden monastery.

How is Shanaz doing?

Silas Rotleaf:
Either she got my letter or the mists carried her to Barovia. Very happy to see her again. Mamat was happy to see her too.

Father and stepmother picked well.
It feels so nice knowing Shanaz and I have each other's backs.
I think a few of the Barovian men are jealous.
The look on their faces says how did a not physically rugged domn like him wind up with a devoted and extremely limber doamna like her?!
Hazlani secret! My grin tells them right back.

The plantation is fine Shanaz tells me.  Father and stepmother were doing okay. Hopefully there is a good harvest this season. We grow barley and malt that is then traded to Immol and the nearby regions make it into liquor, mostly.

Shanaz's family are brewers, mine own a farm. It was a very pragmatic match for our parents to make. Like most Mulan this was decided for us when we were children. The thing about arranged marriages is you learn to get along with one another. This odd foreigner idea of free love seems strange. I guess they like being their own matchmakers themselves? A Barovian I sometimes travel with finds it odd the Mulan men wear skirts.  Well, so too do I think that so many older Barovian men like to have mustaches is a little strange.

It's not true that we do not love one another. Rather, you work together to support each other and the family is an economic unit. Our skills and abilities complement one another meaning there was quite a bit of wisdom in our parents arranging such a match. It should be profitable as well to cut out some of the middle traders and directly supply the brewery. Prudent sense for both our families.

Now though we have to contend with a way to make our fortunes here. I've come back from my travels abroad to Har'Akir able to read their hieroglyphics. For now money is tight but my wife is clever and we make each coin we do spend count.  We plan and budget carefully to make the most of what we eke out in this barbarous land.

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