NAME. Verity Thailar
AGE & BIRTH DATE. 26 & November 13, 2997 AC
GENDER & PRONOUNS. Female she/hers
NATIONALITY. Iskaran
SPECIES. Human
FACTION. Nightingale
OCCUPATION. Refugee
FACE CLAIM. Cailee Spaeny
( tw: illness/disease, disfigurement/loss of limb function )
“Our name used to be one of great noble blood and our house a sprawling estate settled amongst fertile, rolling hills.” The bedtime stories told in Verity’s youth always began this way; the constant retelling of her family’s once great namesake appeared to hold a lingering thrall, even generations after the familial wealth had dwindled to near-empty coffers. Verity assumed it must have been more fun for her mother to tell stories of times when resources were not so lean and every material need did not feel so hopelessly out of reach, even if those times had ended long before either of their living memory.
The tale of the Thailar family’s misfortune was thus: for generations, the Thailar family had been situated in the heart of the Midlands. Wealthy beyond measure, the family amassed great finery and stores of gold across the decades by means of ownership of hundreds of heads of cattle and breeding finely pedigreed horses. Few from the household dirtied their hands when there were many rough, calloused hands in the community willing to do a gold coin’s worth of work for a meager silver shekel. The family enjoyed profits so large in sum and status so elevated that they were blinded entirely to the insurmountable level of need suffered by the hands that worked their lands and kept their home. This was a family who bred daughters who brought hefty dowries to the table when they married jarls and sons who had their picks of upcoming noblewomen.
Then, their fortune changed. Some members of the estate accused witches, others of the cosmic balance of justice, and others still refused to speak on the topic at all. First, the rains stopped and the ponds and reservoirs dried up. Then, the grass died, and many heads of cattle starved. Plagues of insects moved from the grasslands to the crops, then they plagued the cattle, sick cattle had fewer offspring, and over the following generations the once-great noble Thailar family was relegated to enough cattle to carry the family through the winter, a small curation of fine gowns and jewels, and a degraded manor–until Raglar Thailar stepped into his role as the head of the estate.
Clever and hardworking, Raglar Thailar managed to stretch and grow the year or so’s worth of pauper’s rations into an account that would support his family and the following generation or two in a comfortable lifestyle. He cast away the hubris of his ancestors, sold all of the finery (with the exception of a ruby necklace from the chest of riches that his wife had worn for their wedding), and what profit he made from those transactions that were not used to restore the family home was invested wisely. Raglar Thailar was the grandfather of Verity and her five older brothers and lived only long enough to see Verity brought into the world situated to have a future that would not be lavish but would be able to provide for her.
Verity’s mother spoke frequently about how her father was allowed the peace of dying with the belief that his wish for his family had been achieved. It seemed all promise for the family died with him, and though Verity’s mother was a kind woman, she struggled not to internalize the fact that she was the root cause of the family’s ultimate financial ruin based on her mother’s comments. From the first few months of life, Verity seemed to refuse to thrive. Small and underweight, her family doubted she would survive to childhood at times, but were delighted when she met the milestone of her first birthday and, aside from being more prone to chills and fever than her older siblings, grew into a relatively normal childhood until she reached early adolescence.
A successful marriage match was seen as the highest hope the family could attach their hope to for a future in which Verity was provided for. Her mother, tasked with assuring this match, set her sights no higher than procuring an arrangement with a man who could see to it that her bowl was filled every night, there was a roof over her head, and that Verity wed a partner of convenience with which they could at least share an understood civility toward one another. Even this would be difficult under the most ideal circumstances.
Then, in the winter of Verity’s twelfth year, there was a time when the family worried they would not have to concern themselves with a suitable marital partner for her at all. Lacking the funds for a well-trained physician, the family was informed of an initial diagnosis of breakbone fever based on the way her right arm began rigid in where it bent at the elbow and her right shoulder immovable from its position pinning the arm against the front of her body, her white-knuckled fist balled tightly against her heart. For the first several days of a ferocious fever, they did little more than monitor her limbs and spoon-feed her tinctures and serums to ease her pain. When no other limb or bone snapped or curled for the first two days but her fever persisted, they realized they had misread the symptoms. In a desperate effort to see their only daughter returned to health, the family resurfaced that special ruby necklace, the centerpiece–and perhaps the only item with any real value–of her modest dowry. They sold one ruby, then another, then another, until all that was left was the thin chain of gold and filigree. Each precious stone was used as payment to an untrained physician’s assistant, snake oil salesman, or crook who lacked the conscience to admit they didn’t know what ailed the young girl and take advantage of a desperate family.
Finally, inexplicably, the fever broke after months of teetering on the precipice of life and death. Free advice from a passing physical seemed to make all the difference, but by now Verity’s body was significantly weakened and her distorted limb did not relax back to its usual state, nor did it regain mobility. The remaining gold from the ruby necklace was melted down into a small tile and used as payment to a local bonesetter who, through the repetitive breaking and retraining of the bones in her arm tried to restore the proper shape and use of the limb. A few years into this painful process, Verity begged her family and the bonesetter alike to leave the arm as it was, crooked and unusable. Nothing seemed to improve it, and the pain was a worse price than simply carrying it along with her in a sling close to her chest.
As one might imagine, her disfigured arm and general sickliness designated her an undesirable match both economically and in terms of her constitution, and she promised to contribute to a household. No man would wish to grow a family with a girl so prone to illness and shaped wrong. The last of the familial wealth was spent in vain, and with few resources and many mouths to feed as her old brothers were in the throes of hungry days and growing pains as they grew into adult bodies it seemed Verity had little to offer the family but her appeal to the emotions of the local villagers. Under the premise of obligation, Verity sent aside her sense of pride and humanity for a stretch of years to beg at crossroads and street corners. Thin and pale but with highly colored cheeks, she painted the picture of a wretched degenerate. In the years since Raglar Thailar had become the figurehead of the family, the reputation of the family had improved, and Verity was known as a well-tempered and meek girl. Donations and goodwill didn’t pour in in droves, but the family was able to make ends meet, but just barely.
Though she wouldn’t utter a word of complaint, this was not a life a young woman dreamed of. Barely into her teen years, she realized the peak of her life might have been the few years she barely remembered during which she wasn’t sick. That might have contributed to her willingness to open her mind to the strange woman who had smiled at her like she wasn’t a specimen to be pitied, but a girl who was complete despite her struggle and the malady of her form. How long had it been since she had brought home scraps of silver and copper that amounted to a single gold coin? Verity took it to a shop and purchased cured meat and bread, a small thumb’s worth piece of cheese, and a great sugared pastry. She gorged herself on it behind the shop where she was sure no one would see her and returned home with the few copper coins the shopkeep had given her as change. It was a mild transgression, but it was the first time she had chosen to be selfish. It was also the day she learned the currency of secrets.
Years passed, and Verity dreamed of the cloaked woman often, and the dreams led to long periods of considering the woman in her waking hours. Quiet obsession swelled for some time until a few years had passed and the young woman abandoned the idea of seeing her again. But even so, she looked for that kind smile and glimmering coin in the subtext of conversations, between the lines of agreements and pacts, and in reading the emotions behind the eyes of others that often revealed clues behind the motivations of others. Then, as she rounded off her teenage years, the woman returned, this time with much more than a single gold coin in her outstretched palm.
Verity knew if she remained she would amount to little more than a burden on her parents. No man would take her, and the financial anchor she would be upon her parents’ deaths proved ruinous on her brothers’ chances to find equal or even slightly better matches. It was better to leave–anything was better than wasting away on the streets of Frostvang while the disease of her misfortune slowly poisoned the future of her family as well. She would follow Boethiah, and hope to learn more about the world through what was said and unsaid, and what seeds were planted through mindfully crafted narratives. She would have been an easy child to cast away, but as she learned of the potential of her influences as a Nightingale she did what she could to repay her family in kind; to unburden them of sustaining her, and to use the information to gently nudge the marriages of her brothers into directions both fortuitous and happy.
Seven years she cut her teeth as a Nightingale. Often, her efforts wrought rewarding outcomes. Often, especially as she learned how to wordsmith her influence and information in the first handful of years, the outcomes were inconsequential and neutral. More than once, the wheels she had turned with her words proved to bring about disastrous effects. Still, she persisted in studying the way of those who had seemed to master that which Boethiah symbolized, and she found her footing in wandering the southern half of the Isakaran kingdom providing sage and reliable information about what routes were safe, which innkeepers possessed the virtue of discretion, and the movements of witchers in the area. What threat could a round-faced maiden with a contorted arm possibly pose? It was rare one looked upon her with suspicion.
Verity allowed herself a second occasion to make a choice that was wholly selfish in nature–there were many towns and boroughs between herself and Nornwatch Tower, but she leveraged her rumors and communication and directed her travel directly toward Frostvang and the surrounding villages where she had learned her brothers had settled into happy marriages in the seven years since she had left home. To those who she trusted, she mapped out the surest courses to flee the kingdom, to those she was unsure of slightly less direct routes, and to those who she viewed as untrustworthy, she charted a course for oblivion. Her efforts were small and measured in nature, but with the world crumbling around them all that was needed was a nudge in the right or wrong direction and the patience to let the dominos fall as they may.
Against the many odds, she found herself at Nornwatch Tower with a throng of other refugees. She lived through the chaos of The Last Night, but just barely. The trek through the mountains was arduous, and no matter how many conversations she eavesdropped on and how many conversations she tried to stoke the embers of, she could discover nothing to help bring down the final barrier between the refugees and the Queenslands. But ultimately, time proved tool enough and she entered the Queendom with the other refugees to forge an uncertain path forward.
+ Hopeful, Earnest, Kind
– Indecisive, Impressionable, Circumspect
played by paypay. mt. she/her.
