Wings of Fury 2

Name: Terzi
Species: Tsavari
Song: Second, born attuned.
Age: 29
Origin: Salin, Renkafisler Arcology – Long fallen.
Home: Her home is a tall pack, carried on their back or on a pack animal if they're traveling with a caravan. They live upon the open roads and on the generosity and graciousness of strangers.
Currently, Terzi is staying in the Le Delanesse, a tavern, inn, and bordello. The girls seem nice but she's only staying for the cheap rate.
Appearance: Imagine if you threw a bunch of scrap circus cloth onto a thorn bush. This, in effect, is Terzi. She is slender, tall, at 6'8”, and has, if one were to see her lightly clothed, sunset hued scales. Her head sports two rear frills with yellow, red, and purple 'false eye' patterns. Most of this is generally covered in head to toe clothing, however. Terzi wears a motley collection of robes, scarves, and trinkets. Her head is usually covered with a cloth hood, the only aspect of her face generally visible are her bright, piercing eyes. The lower two are wine red, the upper one is a brilliant purple. At her belt always are two colorful pieces of tightly sewn cloth, curled up into coils.

Personality: Like a warm summer wind, Terzi is generally laid back and kind. She does, however, also avoid forming too many permanent connections. While she seems friendly and approachable, more time spent with her will highlight how little she gives away about herself. While Terzi isn't the type to commit her life to helping others, she does help those she encounters, and cares deeply for intelligent life.
Still, the emotional distance she keeps from others and her habit of continually moving onwards can make her seem cold.

Biography:

Show Content

Spoiler
When Terzi was a child no older than 8 when her home Arcology, Renkafisler, suffered a catastrophic breakdown of its protective systems. It is, to this day, unknown what happened, and Terzi, never having had the luxury of pursuing much other than her own survival and goals, has never looked into it. All she can barely remember is faded memories of being a child in the Arcology's lauded Market District, marveling at the rainbow of multicolored banners and motley selection of vendors hawking their wares. Her mother had taken her out, and was buying... Something. She can't remember what. Suddenly, she felt the wind shift. Someone shouted something, she couldn't hear, and a panic swept over the crowd. Her mother scooped her up and started to flee for an exit when... She started laughing. Everyone in the square started laughing. Terzi remembers a tickling sensation as unbidden feelings flooded into her mind. Suddenly, she was laughing, too. She kept laughing even when her mother dropped her to the ground, and continued as she watched her mother double over the side of a market stall. Then, suddenly, the weeping came. Then, the fear. Paranoia. Anger. With every change Terzi watched the adults react more and more energetically to the change. Suddenly, she felt pain and her mind stretch as waves of conflicting emotions came in tandem. As emotions flooded her young mind, Terzi struggled to stand, and, step by step, started to stumble out of the market square, screaming, laughing, weeping, determined to find her father so that he could help them both. The last thing she remembers seeing of her mother is her weeping, reaching out to her, before shifting to rage, her face contorting with anger as she screamed something Terzi is thankful she doesn't remember.
The time between that and the Zrucan relief crews finding her in the Arcology's outer ring was indeterminable to her. All she knows is that when she was pulled out of the Second Song emotion storm, things felt incredibly, incredibly still. She fell into a ball and didn't speak for days. When she did come to, she found herself scarred by the experience. Her nervous system, overwhelmed with the sensation her brain sent throughout her body, had partially burnt out, and most of her body felt covered by an aching stillness. With no family or no future, she asked to join a group of Tsavari Fleshsingers, Sisters of the Soothing Strings. They adopted her into their order, and she studied the healing aspects of the Second Song up into her later teens.
It was at this time she learned that using the Second Song to heal the widespread nerve damage she had suffered would be extremely costly and almost unfeasible. The only way she could ever hope to have it healed would be to learn it herself, which could take decades. While she could treat her condition and keep it manageable, a cure within her young adulthood years would be out of reach. Feeling like her youth was stolen from her, Terzi suffered an emotional break and left the Sisterhood, roaming the Arcology in a self-destructive journey and binge to find something that could grant her a full sense of feeling again.
She was dying in a dry gutter, just out of sight of anyone who'd care enough to help, when Anisifa found her.
Anisifa was no one important. She was a seamstress, yes, but she wasn't even the best one in the city. But her skills were in demand, and that gave her the funds and the means to be willing to take on a broken stranger she found in an alleyway. She nursed Terzi back to health, and when a confused Terzi asked why, Anisifa just remarked that she was an old woman with a hobby of mending frayed and damaged things. When Terzi was healthy enough to leave, she realized that the old woman was going to ask for no payment for all she had done. Not comfortable with this, Terzi asked if she could stay and help Anisifa with her business, in whatever way she could. When Anisifa learned that Terzi was no stranger to a needle, she agreed- but only when Terzi convinced her that room, board, and food was good enough payment.
Terzi lived with Anisifa for about five years, learning the skills and trade of a seamstress, but also devoting herself back to studying the Second Song. She grew obsessed with how cloth could be repaired and mended with the right skills and materials, and desired that healing the body could be so simple. But then she realized, what if it could? What if the very organic, failing bodies we inhabit could be turned to mendable, pliable cloth? And wasn't cloth, on some level, organic? Could not the Second Song be turned to animate it as well?
And so, eventually, Terzi bid a fond farewell to the seamstress. The answers to her Second Song study would only lay on the road, in ancient ruins and near-forgotten folk songs. She'd either find it there, or she'd find it herself.
Chunadie has a long history of fashion and clothworking, and, combined with her study of old Chunard myths, Terzi believes a lead might be hiding in the hills of the country. But a violent dragon has set up shop in some of those hills, so a dragon-hunting expedition might be the opportunity she needs...

Important Skills:
SECOND SONG FLESHSINGING- Terzi studied enough with the Sisters of the Soothing String for basic healing. She can heal bruises, minor sprains and cracks in bone (with time), and minor illnesses. She can perform the most well known technique of the Sisterhood, which is playing music that calls to the Second Song that soothes the pain of those near her. She usually makes some coin this way in sickrooms and battlefield hospitals.

SECOND SONG CLOTHSINGING- This isn't an established school of the Second Song, it's one Terzi is trying to research and establish. So far, her only breakthrough is weaving silk from spider webs. This requires intense amounts of time and generally only produces enough silk for small crafts. And this isn't satisfactory to Terzi, as she wants to find some way to apply the song to all textiles and cloths. She's convinced that there must be some magical constant between human crafts and creations, deeper beneath the material level of the work's compisition.

MUSIC – Terzi channels the second song through music. Generally, she does so through either singing or playing her instrument of choice, the Kanun, one of her few relics of her time spent learning under the Sisterhood. The Kanun is a stringed instrument meant to be played while sitting. She also performs for coin, as well, and music is one of her many talents which makes her travels possible.

ACROBATICS – Terzi spent a few of her first years traveling in the company of a circus troupe. While there, she studied with their acrobats, where she learned how to leap, tumble, and wield a pair of weighted cloth whips. This is another of her sources of income, as well as a means of survival in moments of danger.

SHORT STAVE COMBAT – Terzi's other weapon of choice is a four foot shortstaff (well, short for her). She's trained extensively with it, always taking a chance to spar with any combat practicioners she travels with.

TAILORING – Both a skill and a hobby, Terzi is enthusiastic about sewing and clothwork. She usually sells self-made goods for coin, and she always has a project in her pack to work on after making camp.

SCHOLARLY STUDIES – Terzi knows several Salin dialects, Chunard, and MOSTLY speaks Hull. She's also worked at being able to read Old Chunard, and she knows bits and pieces of old languages from everywhere she's traveled.


Important People:

Show Content

Spoiler
MOTHER AND FATHER: Neza and Demir – Terzi knows almost nothing about her parents. As far as she remembers and can tell, they were poor and barely got by. She remembers that her mother was a great singer (Second Song practitioner, maybe?) and that her father was a laborer who worked long hours. When she got older, she managed to get a member of the rescue expedition that had been sent into Renkafisler to confirm a description of her mother as one of the bodies they'd found in the market district. The older Tsavari refused to give any other details, though, and insisted Terzi was better off not knowing them.

ABBESS BOCET: Before she was the abbess of the Sisterhood of Soothing Strings, Sister Lavinia-Doina Bocet was Mother of the Young Choir, meaning, essentially, she was the member of the order who directly looked after and educated the young orphans that the Sisterhood took in. While they got along wonderfully when Terzi was little, the relationship strained once Terzi hit frustation with the limits of her Second Song ability in her teens. This was, coincidentally, about the time the prior Abbess died, and Sister Lavinia was chosen to take her place. Her relationship with Terzi did not improve, and within a couple years Terzi left the Sisterhood. They haven't spoken since, and while Terzi does feel a little bad about taking the Kanun she was gifted with her, Lavinia certainly didn't take any efforts to track her down while she was still living in Zrucan afterwards. She is, of course, a Second Song practicioner. She's a fleshsinger, and plays the Cimbalom, an instrument that some would say is way too jaunty an instrument for a stern old nun. Abbess Bocet would, however, remind them that she started playing it as a young woman, and the orphans she looked after loved it.

ANISITA – Terzi speculates that part of why the seamstress took her in was due to their shared lost home of Renkafisler. Unlike Terzi, Anisita emigrated from there well before its fall. However, as Terzi found out while living with her, Anisita had family in Renkafisler when it fell, family who were never found or located. But the Seamstress would only talk of these things on cold nights after a few too many strong drinks. She taught Terzi everything she knew about clothwork, and Terzi hopes someday to repay her with some fine foreign fabrics.

PCIUNE VECH-MOLI – Pciune is a scholar specializing in translating documents from Alma for patrons throughout Zucran. They agreed to help tutor Terzi in Alma languages in return for her helping heal a minor, persistent health condition. As Terzi's studies of the history of Alma's nations proceeded, she zeroed in on Chunadie, while also deciding that she needed to know Hull, as well. Her studies with Pciune didn't leave her fluent in either, but they gave her enough knowledge to start with. She ended up being more of a nuisance to Pciune than anything else, but Pciune is a notorious pushover, so no conflict ever came of it. When she left Zucran, they breathed a sigh of relief.

CRANNOG 'CRANN' FRASER – A scholar of Hull who Terzi convinced to play host to her while she stayed in Hull and continued her study of its language and culture. With access to the royal archives, he helped Terzi understand two things: one, nothing related to lost Second Song knowledge would be found on the island, and two, an archives usefulness for tracking down myths and legends might correlate to how old it is. Since Oakenhull was relatively new, the only lost knowledge she could find were sailor's legends of lost, frightening, but wholly uninteresting (to Terzi) islands.
Crann also claimed to be a healer of the mind, but from what Terzi could tell, this was mostly an excuse to talk to people about their pasts and gather gossip.

MARCELINE OF ST. VERVAIN – Circus mistress of SAINT VERVAIN'S MENDACIOUS MENAGERIE, a traveling troupe of entertainers that Terzi traveled with through Chunadie for several years. Marceline agreed to let her tag along in return for mending the costumes, tents, and props of the performers. Marceline is a fellow Second Song user, but one who uses the element of light. She uses this for flashy displays which go along well with her gregarious nature and loud boasts. Curiously, plays the song by tapping on the ground with her cane, which is topped with a silver cap in the shape of a moth.

THE QUARTERMASTER – A performer in the circus claiming to be an experienced mercenary, the Quartermaster is a weathered old man in peak physique. He's a Fourth Song user, which he uses by playing a one-handed brass horn, and he also claims to be a master of 'every martial style to exist.' While Terzi doesn't believe that is true, she could never beat him in a sparring match. He trained her on the use of the short-staff and also helped assist her in perfecting her use of the weighted cloth whip. His shows are usually displays of flashy swordplay and combat feats. Oddly, he never seemed to ask much for his lessons. Terzi just assumed that he loves to tell people how to fight correctly.

SALLE THE SKYFISH – Another performer in the circus, Salle is an acrobat, and a very skilled one at that. When not performing on the high wire, she dazzles the crowd with leaps, handsprings, somersaults, and other various shows of dexterity. She trained Terzi in tumbling and gymnastics, as well as proper stretching, something which Terzi has found helpful for her chronic numbness. Salle also likes to perform with a pair of weighted cloth whips, which she uses to grab props and strike targets. Though she doesn't do it for performances, she also knows how to use them to grapple people, and taught Terzi as much when the Tsavari showed interest. In return, Terzi helped her put together the flashiest costumes she could.

SIRENE THE TRAVELING BARMAID – Sirene served as a barmaid in the circus's bar tent that would be set up at each show. Strikingly beautiful and with a wit sharp as a tack, she had her share of suitors within both the circus and its clientele, but Sirene only seemed to have eyes for Terzi. This was unfortunate for her, as Terzi had many more pressing things on her mind other than romance. She eventually made her desires rather explicit, and Terzi, having not really entertained such ideas before, decided to go with it. They dated for about half of her travels with the circus. A few months before Terzi left, she broke things off with Sirene, claiming that she wasn't really in the place for a relationship in her life right now. This was partially true, but Terzi also just hadn't ever been as involved in the idea as Sirene had. Their last argument was the last time Sirene spoke to her, remaining cold to Terzi until she left the circus.
Terzi felt a bit of regret over Sirene taking it so badly, but didn't show it. Clothsinging was going to be enough of a pursuit as is without a relationship to worry over.

ITEMS AND POSSESSIONS: Terzi only owns what she can carry, so this list shouldn't be too long.

Show Content

Spoiler
ONE PAIR OF WEIGHTED CLOTH WHIPS: made from tent canvas, heavily stitched, with two lengths of leather at each end hiding a few metal weights, Terzi's whips are made for striking lightly armored targets and grappling combatants. She's also practiced at using them for climbing, as well.

A PALMWOOD SHORT-STAFF WITH BRONZE CAP – Terzi's staff, a gift from Circus Mistress Marceline, is a four foot length of treated palmwood with a bronze cap and ferrule. The cap sports engravings of silk moths.

EXTRA ROBES, SCARVES, AND LIGHT PIECES OF CLOTHING – Terzi doesn't carry a full wardrobe but she does have various pieces of light clothing so that she has options for different occasions. The odd standout is a fine purple silk dress, wrapped very carefully, that Terzi has worn twice. Once at the insistence of Anisita, who claimed she 'needed a model', and second for a special night out with Sirena.

SEWING KIT, SUPPLIES PLUS LEATHERWORKING KIT, SUPPLIES – Terzi owns a personal set of tailoring tools for work on the road.

VARIOUS BITS OF SCRAP CLOTH, THE OCCASIONAL SEWING PROJECT – Again, Terzi tries to keep things reasonable, since when she's not traveling with a group, she's the one backpacking her stuff around.

TRAVELING RATIONS, CANTEEN

A STEEL DAGGER – She's not good with it, though the Quartermaster showed her the basics of holding and thrusting it. The mostly carries it as a tool.

LOCKPICKS – Like sewing, lockpicking requires precision. It also requires instruction and practice, neither of which Terzi has. In fact, she keeps these mixed with her sewing needles. Someday she'll learn.

SEASHELL LOCKET – A small locket in the shape of a seashell. A gift from Sirene to mark an occasion. Terzi keeps it less out of sentiment and more because it was a gift, and she values gifts. Doesn't wear it.

PERSONALIZED KANUN – Terzi's kanun is almost a work of art. It is an instrument which, in for most people, would take up their entire lap. But in Terzi's wide frame it looks much more manageable, being just over three feet long. It is made of well treated and polished rosewood, with ebony pegs and bronze mandals. It has sound holes in the shape of the wings of a butterfly or moth, and is decorated with images of purple hyacinths.
It is a deeply personal gift, representing culture and flora she remembers in fleeting glimpses of her childhood. This instrument is probably one of Terzi's most valued possessions.

TARNISHED SILVER ARMLET – a braided, silver armlet that has seen much wear. It belonged to her mother, and was one of the few possessions that crews who explored the ruins of Renkafisler brought back to her. It was one of the few important enough to keep.

MAP OF CHUNADIE, BOOK OF CHUNADIE MYTHS – Resources for locating old Chunadie ruins and places of myth. Unfortunately, her first (theoretical) location has a murderous dragon sat on it.

A PERSONAL JOURNAL ON SECOND SONG STUDIES – A book within which Terzi has been recording both her knowledge and studies of Fleshsinging (one section) and her studies and theories for Clothsinging (another section, very empty.) She also records short descriptions of her travels and various trivia, lore, and folksongs that catch her interest (a third section).