Persona Information: K'tai bin R'al

Young Life -- The Bin R'ali -- Life in Amtgard

Greetings! The paragraphs which follow are a summary of my persona history, both from before and after joining Amtgard. I hope they may be of some use to people trying to develop or deepen their own persona histories. They may also be of interest to RP writers who wish to include me in their stories, though I ask you double-check with me before doing anything terribly significant like, say, killing me. ;)

Characters are not created in a vacuum. I needed to have some sort of story that would explain why the heck I wound up in Amtgard.

• K'tai was not born in any land known to Amtgard, but on another continent, in a major port city called Almar. A mundane equivalent to Almar would be something like Naples, Italy, around the time of the High Renaissance.
• K'tai bin R'al is not my character's birthname. The "bin R'al" at the end of her name means that she is clergy of the Church of the Bin R'ali, and K'tai was the name given her by the Church upon her initiation. Most folks in Almar remember her as Maria Celeste D'Organza. (Yes, this could be taken to mean that my persona has a persona name. Yes, that could be taken to mean I am geeky beyond redemption. Oh well. =)
• K'tai was a complicated birth, and consequently was an only child. This did not please her father, since women in Almar cannot inherit property and his textile-importing business was doing very well for itself. Still, he was very good about never letting his displeasure fester into resentment. He even went so far as to enroll her in the Bin R'ali's secular academy, which was the best and most expensive in Almar. He figured that if his own flesh and blood could not actually own the business after he was gone, she could at least try to prevent her future husband from running it into the ground.
• K'tai studied at the Academy until she was fourteen years old, and learned much more than the basic reading/writing/mathematical skills girls were usually taught. She was not their best student by any measurement, but she retained enough to convince her father that he was making a worthwhile investment.
  
• About two months after her fourteenth birthday, one of K'tai's instructors came to speak privately to her father at the store. To this day K'tai only has a vague idea of what the man might have said, but her father got *very* angry, chased the man into the street, and promptly withdrew K'tai from the academy and began arranging to find a husband for her so she could settle down into her destined life.
  
• K'tai had never actually been unhappy with the idea of getting married, seeing it as inevitable, but the sudden angry fervor on her father's part made her very nervous that he might choose hastily. This fear was heightened when he declared he'd found her match less than two weeks after he started looking. Fortunately for her, social custom dictated that the engagement last at *least* a year; to try and rush things might suggest that K'tai was "used goods" and her father was trying to hide the fact that she was carrying someone else's bastard child.
  
• Middle- and upper-class weddings in the Renaissance were often a great way for families to ostentatiously display their wealth, and K'tai's family was no exception. Her mother took great pains designing an elaborate gown, and her father only grumbled a little when she insisted on silk chiffon for the veil and sleeves. Dutifully he sent his buyers out to find some, and when the shipment arrived, he insisted that the three of them go to the docks themselves to collect it, so they could make sure it was in fact what they wanted and that it was in good condition.
  
• The unspoken reason for her father's decision was that he'd been suspecting his employees of occasionally stealing rolls of fabric between the docks and the store, and wanted to make sure the chiffon made it home intact lest his wife raise holy hell. Unfortunately, it turned out his suspicions were accurate. A small group of bandits - planning to meet D'Organza's underlings - panicked when they saw him instead, and immediately drew steel. K'tai's parents were slaughtered, the horses were stolen, and only a couple bolts of fabric remained. K'tai survived only because she'd crawled onto the floor of the coach for a nap (to keep the sun out of her eyes), held VERY still when the fighting woke her up, and been unrecognizably covered by the heavy blanket that usually served to pad the bench. (OOC: I'm not terribly happy with my choice to use the 'parents dead' plot device, as it seems a bit overused to me now, but I've made roleplay posts since then which mention that fact, so I can't exactly go back now.)
  
• K'tai stayed still for quite some time, then hastily ran/walked the few miles back home and went straight to the constable's office to tell him what had happened. The next day, the town guard rode out and confirmed her story. This lead to all sorts of pondering as to what fate would befall the family business since K'tai had not yet married, and whether her parents' will that she become a ward of the Bin R'ali if orphaned actually pertained to her now since she was of age *to* marry.
  
• After much thinking and arguing and examination, things were finally settled to everyone's satisfaction. K'tai determined that she was not actually interested in marriage, and wished to continue her studies with the Bin R'ali. However, to carry out part of her father's wishes, she declared that her fiance Lorenzo would inherit the family business just as if he had married her. Looking back on things, K'tai is not exactly sure why that made everyone happy, but it did, and that is good enough for her. Lorenzo was fortunately not insulted that K'tai was not interested in him, and has done admirably well as Almar's new textiles merchant. K'tai and Lorenzo are on friendly terms, and K'tai has more than once gotten some very fine fabric at a very good price.

A description of Bin R'ali beliefs may prove useful in explaining a few of K'tai's personality quirks. If you wish to incorporate this religion into your character background, feel free. If you can and wish to present yourself as clergy with the "bin R'al" name, let me know beforehand. I probably won't object, but I want to know these things because eventually someone you know will meet me and ask if we're related somehow.

• The Bin R'ali's belief system is suffused with the idea of Balance, and the Bin R'ali seek to manifest that balance in the world at large, rather than within themselves. This may mean bringing peace and healing to a city ravaged by war, or fomenting dissent and rebellion to unseat an unjust or overly complacent monarchy. Their acknowledgement of and respect for the darker things in life means even the Healers among them are frequently regarded with suspicion by the average townsperson.
  
• In the Bin R'ali creation myth, the world was originally created without sentient life. R'al was a being created for the express purpose of appreciating the Creator's handiwork. So good was it at this task that it repeatedly pestered the Creator to let it live there, despite repeated declarations that its presence would ultimately unbalance the world and ruin everything. Finally the Creator got fed up, tore R'al in twain, and flung the pieces down into the world, where they became the first humans. The Creator then cursed them with the knowledge that everything they would come to loathe or fear about the world was their own fault, and was never seen in the world again.
  
• The Bin R'ali believe humanity to be intrinsically and inherently unbalanced, hence all the things wrong with the world. However, they also believe they can right the world by putting their inherent imbalance to clever use. Clergy with violent tendencies are sent to peaceful locations, and kind-hearted priests often find themselves called to places of strife and cruelty. It is the Bin R'ali's belief and hope that if the world is put back into Balance, the Creator will return to finally forgive and embrace the wayward children.
  
• Non-humans who embrance the Church's tenets are welcomed as lay brothers, but are not allowed to become clergy. This is not out of any sense of superiority, but rather out of the belief that it was humans who have ruined the world, and humans should bear the whole of the burden in making it right again.
  
• Because Bin R'ali believe themselves inherently imbalanced, they have no use for the Monk's way of life. Also, while the Bin R'ali have masters of the Healer's art, they always refer to themselves as Mage-Healers, harbouring no illusions about "divine magic". To them, humanity was abandoned by its God/dess aeons ago, and nonbelievers who claim differently are either able to use their faith as a focus for arcane magics, or are at best receiving their power secondhand through some other R'al-like creation.
  
• There are four official Orders in the church, though some have grown large and diverse enough that unofficial sub-orders are not unheard of. The Order of the Open Heart teaches the martial and magical arts of defense, restoration, and non-lethal combat, while the Order of the Harvest trains believers to claim lives as frost claims the flowers. The Order of the Empty Page concerns itself mostly with the acquisition of new knowledge, while champions of the Lantern are tasked with administering spiritual and secular education. While rivalry and disagreement are hardly a rare thing between the different Orders, their deep-rooted belief in the Balance has kept the church from suffering any real rifts. OOC: You're welcome to come up with something else, as long as you acknowledge that it's a fringe group rather than a long-established tradition, and as long as you can fit it under one of those four.

After seven more years of study with the Bin R'ali, K'tai reached the point where improvement could no longer come from drills or tests, but needed to be made through real-world experience. They found a friendly half-elf Wizard named Martello who was willing to be her mentor in handling arcane energy, and effectively dumped her on his doorstep.

• The Emerald Hills has a tendency to be a very dark place, full of violence and ferocity. In short, it was such a contrast to K'tai's personality that it was the perfect place for her to go.
  
• K'tai has for the most part eschewed the use of weapons, especially since it can hamper her ability to cast magic effectively. She is unparalleled when on the defense behind a thick line of fighters, but much less effective in small skirmishes where it's easier to be flanked.
  
• Despite the fact that her studies were completed years ago, and despite the fact that she has been granted a title of nobility (entitling her to a landed estate of her own), K'tai continues to live in Martello's keep. The two are not lovers; it's more a matter of K'tai having no desire to rebuild her study and sanctuary elsewhere, and Martello having no pressing need for the space her quarters occupy. (OOC: Because I know some people will need it spelled out: K'tai and Martello are married to each other in real life; we've just seen no need to carry that through to our characters. That, and do you *really* want our RP posts to be as suffused with as much disgusting mushy crap as our real-life interactions are? Didn't think so.)
  
• Martello was tasked with being K'tai's guardian as well as her mentor. The oaths they both swore to the Bin R'ali in that regard came with a couple of interesting side effects: K'tai is physically incapable of doing anything that directly contradicts an explicit statement of Martello's will. Additionally, both of them are sufficiently linked to each other that they can psychically discern the other's location at will and occasionally get extreme mental/emotional impressions from them. K'tai finds that part to be enough of a perk that she's never chosen to have the oaths unmade even though her studies are over. And while the first part is somewhat inconvenient, it's fairly simple to circumvent, and the few times it's actually come into play have probably saved dozens of lives, since K'tai has been found to have quite the vicious streak when not in her right mind.
  
• K'tai has very little love for lycanthropes of any sort, as one of her first experiences on the battlefield involved most of her traveling companions being slaughtered by a werewolf, who spared her only because he needed her to heal his wounds. He was true to his word and left her unharmed once she was done, but it was nonetheless a fairly traumatizing experience.
  
• In the time of the Shadow Wars between Midnight Sun and Ironcloud, K'tai came into the possession of an unholy artifact known as the Black Book. Her first mistake was paging through it. Her second mistake was believing that she'd be shielded from the Book's mind-scrambling powers if she did so on the Astral Plane - this in fact heightened the Book's effectiveness. She fought her madness for a year and a half before it finally conquered her; she then kidnapped Midnight Sun's Regent and tried to implicate the Barony of Ironcloud in hopes of restarting the unresolved War and destroying the realm she deemed responsible for her insanity. Once she was found out, she set out on a terrifying and destructive rampage, aided in great part by her prior reputation as a kind and harmless soul. Martello was able to easily keep her in check once he learned of the situation; keeping her in *prison*, and out of the hands of a lynch mob, proved somewhat more difficult for Duke Rayel. Eventually he was able to locate Grand Druid Sir Ewen McFadden, who was able to effect a cure for K'tai's mental disease, though it left her weak and exhausted for several days afterward.
  
• In the time of Czar Forest Evergreen and Regent Shaylen Maidenstone, Larin Moonstar was condemned for what he claimed was an accidental assassination of the Regent. Part of his punishment was the extraction of his soul from his body. Nobody was quite sure where that soul ended up until years later, when Larin himself was King and the Finvarra of the Elven Court bequeathed it to Martello. Horrified, K'tai and Martello began researching ways to restore Larin's soul to him, but one of the most common side effects of such a restoration is loss of any memories the body experienced whilst apart from the soul, and Larin had been without his for over five years. Things were further complicated by Larin's natural suspicion of Martello's half-elven blood, which was itself furthered when a half-demon named Kresha wreaked mayhem in Eryn Lasgalen and nearly killed Larin when he moved to stop her.
  
  It took until nearly the end of Larin's reign, but at last they devised a method that would work quickly, without loss of memory, and without Larin's prior consent (which was not likely forthcoming). Working simultaneously, the Druid Sistar Tolken detoxified Larin's body (Cure Disease), K'tai detoxified Larin's ba-soul (also Cure Disease), Martello found and repaired the remaining shreds of the Silver Strand which had bound them together (Mend), all while Master Bard Rowan Moonstar sang a Legend of all that had transpired in the five years of separation. The final touch was for K'tai to actually put the ba-soul back into the physical space occupied by Larin's body (Resurrect).