Maidie Jæsper || 24 || Dwarf || OPEN
Maidie had lived as a Stratumless for her whole life, born into a family cast out of the Deep and disgraced. She was the reason her family were where they were, since it was her whom her mother conceived out of wedlock with her father, a peasant far below her standing. Thus, the family was left to barely scrape by with no chance at redemption. Her father went to work in the mines that were too dangerous to let important Dwarves into, usually making enough to give his family a meal every day. Her mother and her begged on a doorstep, sticking together to avoid being assaulted or abducted by gangs. She heard rumors about what they did to women and men who looked nice enough, and she wanted no part in it at all. Begging was difficult, but being soft and sweet and a child helped. However, during her fourteenth year, her father died of a rotten lung from breathing in the earth’s poison too much. Her mother, terrified she’d be forced to watch her daughter starve, was forced to go to the gangs for the food they guaranteed.
Maidie would have followed, but then word came of a hole in the stone that lead to an upper world that had no Stratum: with no Stratum, she could not be Stratumless. She stole a pair of thick boots and a week’s worth of food on her way out of town, following the strange smell of fresh air to Kyilon. It had left her with a horribly upset stomach, stealing all that, but she needed it, and she would pay back the merchant someday. Somehow. Living in the city was rough, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the Deep. She made her way to the outer rings and prepared herself to beg for a living, but just as soon as she’d planted herself outside a bakery, the cook came out and scolded her for loitering. He was a fat fairy who came up to her shoulders, and he’d told her that she would work for him or she would find another doorway to beg on. Thrilled, she’d accepted. She works all day serving customers and sleeps at nights in the barn outside their bakery, and nobody seems to care about the tattoos on her hands and face.
Full Bio || Home || About || Characters