Valora Vhassar

Valora il'Endia Vhassar is a celebrated designer and dressmaker for House of Vhassar of some renown. Her most recent claim to fame is the commission of a gown for the Westerosi queen, Visaera Targaryen, for her coronation in 407 AC.

Appearance and Character
A shock of pale hair in golden blonde is the young woman’s crown, reminiscent of the lineage of a lion rather than an elephant. Loose curls falling where they might over shoulders when left free from the usual restraints-come-adornments of satin ribbons or tortoise-shell combs frame a countenance that boasts delicate features from which mismatched eyes - the left awash in murky shades of grey and green, while the same hazel of the right is interrupted by a brilliant swathe of indigo - watch the world and on the rare occasion cannot help but wonder where it is she truly belongs.

And so it begins...
Valora's story started in the waters just off of Pentos - and might have also ended there, had the ship bound for Volantis not hauled the drowning girl of two-and-ten up out of the water. With hair of burnished gold and a budding figure, the child would have fetched plenty of coin in a pillow house, but the masters of the sphinx upon the ship's sails did not employ their slaves in such a fashion.

The House of Vhassar
While the great House of Vhassar in Volantis owns piers and storehouses, brokers cargoes, changes money and insures shipowners against the hazards of the sea, they are best known for their sale and manufacturing of textiles.

To that end, the sphinx is recognized as the preeminent expert on design in the known world, and the commission of their fashions is a luxury afforded the noble and affluent. While more meager dress shops scarcely attempt to mimic their exact designs, the fashions worn by the nobility no doubt have an effect upon the styles chosen by those a little less fortunate.

Memories Lost
Slavers tend not to care about the history of their laborers, most especially when they fish them out of the sea, half-dead and unable to explain what had happened to lead them to such a predicament in the first place. Questions in the workhouse instead consisted of "What are you called?", "Do you have a name?" in a language that was not her first, but one her tongue could speak - no doubt thanks to some tutor during the forgotten years of the girl's youth.

Endia, they dubbed her when she could not provide them with any other name. Girl from the West, they decided, based on the color of her hair, which boasted a richness that the most expensive of dyes failed to provide.

A Needle and Some Thread
Endia, who for all intents and purposes seemed to know very little, never once faltered in the workhouse once she had her hands on a bolts of samite and Lyseni lace, and held between her fingers a needle threaded with a length of silken string. Muscles remembered the task though a Septa's teachings had long been forgotten. Day in and day out, her stitches proved secure. Over the course of the intervening months, her embroidery talents were masterfully demonstrated. Ultimately, under the watchful eye and careful tutelage of an aging slave, her ability to drape fabrics and craft patterns was unparalleled.

Whether it was a mother's need to nurture or a merchant woman's sense of the future of the business, the Vhassar Triarch never once questioned his wife's decision to pluck the girl from the room shared with a dozen others - at least not in public. Mannerisms displayed in the noble's household soon proved that the slave quarters had been no place for the petite Westerosi.

More and more time was spent with Kinvara Vhassar, who, while free-born, had attracted the eye of her husband during one of his father's tours of their shops - she, too, had once been a dressmaker by trade.

407 AC
Valora travels to King's Landing in Westeros to personally deliver the coronation gown of Queen Visaera Targaryen.

Family
Tree.

Household
NPC's.