Rana of Wickenden

Rana is a sellsword of common birth born in the village of Wickenden. Currently, she travels alongside a mercenary woman, hailing from Lys.

Appearance
Rana is slight and seemingly demure, standing at no greater a height than five feet. Years of hard labor have thickened her arms and toned her core, though she is still very much lithe and agile. Rana is somewhat plain, if not possessing some beauty muted by a head full of dark brunette tangles, often worn in an uncontrolled braid.

History
Rana was the first of four children that would hear the stories her mother would tell of how, exactly, it came to be that she married their father, all the while knitting or fixing the stitching of their modest cloth breeches. Her childhood was a song of anvil upon iron, echoing within the little shack they called their home from her father's armory shop, just outside. It was a sound that was as much a lullaby as her mother's singing voice, and beyond it, the voices of her brothers, bickering over this and that. Though a nuisance paired with the endless wailing of her little sister then, Rana would come to miss it.

Their home was full to the brim, with each of her siblings and an uncle, and his children. They and their cousins worked the farmlands the small cottage was built upon from dawn till dusk, and being the eldest of her brood, Rana was first to learn her father's trade. Often, she would join him at the markets, selling their goods as a means to bring home the gold: be it armor, weapon or produce. Rana was always especially proud of the items she made and were sold, and would sometimes be allowed to pocket a piece of the profit for herself - depending, mostly, on the health of the crops.

With so many mouths to feed, Rana was often found learning the ways of pot and pan and spice, alongside her mother. It was reluctantly that she learned to lead the cows and chickens her family had raised to their slaughter, having grown a fondness for them after many years. In a small space filled with the laughter of children, she became careful of her feet - and helped in their up-bringing, too. However, when time prevailed, Rana could be found roaming the village with her friends, schmoozing the baker for bread and playing at swords with sticks and fallen tree branches. Life was simple, and all the more profound for it; exploring new distances and talking to strangers had never done her harm. By the time she was thirteen, she had a budding relationship with the boy just across the way, whose father her father had spoken to and agreed to see them wed. Jarak had ever been a reliable friend and trustworthy companion, and briefly, Rana dreamed of a farm all her own, full of children and joy.

Another moon and the dream might have come to the sweet beginnings of fruition. Rana was milking the cows, when she heard the horns blare. A stampede of hooves and rapid footfalls filled the air. If there was one sound Rana knew well, it was the blade, unsheathing; it was the sound of severed flesh. Screams filled her ears after, and the stool she sat on went tumbling from beneath her where she stood. She called for her father, for her brothers and clumsily-walking two year old sister, and for her mother as she ran across the fields without a care for the plants that died beneath her feet. The village went quickly up in flames; the Mountain Clans burned and pillaged what little there was to loot, and destroyed all else. Her father was slain where he worked, her siblings returned to the earth with arrows that held them there. It was her mother that told her to run, sobbing whilst their daggers tugged and ripped at her skirts. So she did - and she darted around the corpse of her father, willing herself not to look but failing to avert her eyes. She took from the rack a sword and a shield, and ran like her mother told her to, with the others.

Behind them, there were few survivors. Those that dared to live were those that were with her, now. A lacking crew, the lot of them. Women and children, some infants and others younger than her; fewer men than any, though Rana was fortunate to count Jarak among them. For the next few weeks, they would migrate in search of safety, straying far from the roads and clinging to the cover the dense forests provided. As the days stretched on, their numbers dwindled - be it from sickness and wounds, or from hunger. Though already small, Rana had become thin and wiry, surviving on what small meats Jarak could take down with his bow. The night was when their traveling party would further deteriorate, when corrupt guardsmen would steal from them all they had and end the protesting cries of their babes with sword and hand. After some moons, it was just the two of them: she, and Jarak. Starving and weak, those days were a haze of sight and smell and thirst.

They were easy targets for bandits. Stolen from them were their weapons and very nearly, their lives. Rana was wounded in the attack, but not so seriously as Jarak. He sustained an injury that left him bleeding from the chest, and despite her patching and care throughout the night, a sweating fever took him and turned him pale. She held him in her arms when the Lyseni mercenary found them, and took them under her wing. It was shortly after when Jarak succumbed to his wounds, and died in her arms.

Since, Rana has learned much and more from the sellsword woman, having traveled beside her for many years now and offers her own services.

Family

 * Grenn the Smith (362-401)
 * m. Tansy (364-401)
 * Rana b. 388
 * Young Grenn (391-401)
 * Stephos (395-401)
 * Brin (399-401)