Appearance
Anwen appears as a young woman in her mid-twenties, with smooth, pale skin and long, dark, red-brown hair that trails messily for a good way down her back in a twisted, tangled mess. It culminates in an overflowing mass of curls that sits in the small of her back. She has a very long, narrow face, with large, closely set eyes that are a bright, warm green filled with childlike enthusiasm and excitement. They are positioned underneath extremely thin (to the point of being called barren occasionally) eyebrows, and above a slightly large nose and small, narrow lips colored pale pink. While very slim, she still has an overall feminine body shape. In particular, it must be noted that she has very thin, fine-boned shoulders, giving her a somewhat fallacious appearance of fragility. This is kept consistent with similarly delicate hands, narrow and very long-fingered. In fact, Anwen is very practiced in bouncing back and can take in stride injuries that are far worse than one would think.
Her legs are a bit disproportionately long, in that particular area when people notice that something is just slightly off about her proportions but can’t completely pinpoint it until it’s mentioned. Her arms and the bridge of her nose are covered in freckles which, when coupled with the chaotic joy in her eyes and the tangled mess that is her hair, gives her the impression of being younger than she actually is.
Anwen never wears makeup. She finds the concept completely alien and confusing, looking at it with mixed amusement and disgust. The fact that people would cover their faces with chemicals simply doesn’t make any sense to her in the slightest.
Full Name
Anwen Oakbough
Nicknames/Alias/AKA
Oak, Leafy, Ann
Age
1,275 years old
Gender
Female
DOB
Sometime in early spring, 741 A.D.
Occupation
Waitress at The Tipsy Dragon
Race
Nymph
Hair Color
Deep auburn
Eye Color
Bright green
Height and Build
Anwen is 5’5” and very slim.
Other Appearance
A great deal of the time, Anwen doesn’t actually wear clothes. At all. While this is somewhat more agreeable in light of the fact that she lives out in the woods, it grows awkward when someone decides to take a walk through the woods and crosses her path. When she does wear clothing, it’s always very light. Heavy clothing feels hot and oppressive to her, and her skin is easily irritated. Generally, she wears some shade of green, as well as clothes that are flexible and easy to move around in. Most often, she wears some variation on a tank top and shorts.
History/Bio
Anwen has been very alone for a very long time.
At 741, the world she was born into was one of war and chaos. It was bathed in bloodshed for many years, and she and her nebulously defined family (that is to say, the loose nymph clan-esque structure that she lived with) spent a great deal of time deep,
deep inside of the oak forests in what is now Wales.
It’s true, nymphs are naive and airheaded, and Anwen is no exception. What they are not, however, is stupid. As long as they could, Anwen’s pseudofamily stayed far away from all humans, spending much of their time learning about the world outside through the use of pixies. They couldn’t hide forever, though, and eventually, a hunting party happened upon one of their temporary settlements. Upon their hips, they carried cold iron blades. In their quivers, they carried cold iron arrows. Upon their bodies, they carried cold iron armor. The nymphs scattered. Suspicious, savage men, they had been hunting for a gathering of evil spirits. Though in that age, the nymphs were strong fighters, they couldn’t near the men for the branding blades of cold iron. On that bloody day, everybody in that family died.
Everybody but Anwen.
Always a bit of a wildcard, Anwen had been far out in the forests, searching for strange rocks and twisted bits of branches, set on collecting them back in her small backpack. As she neared the settlement, she stopped short. Everything was perfectly quiet. Distressingly so. As she edged ever closer to the clearing, she began to feel a strange twisting in her stomach. An innate feeling of nausea and disgust. She had never felt iron sickness before, and bursting into her home and finding everybody she loved impaled on cold iron-tipped arrows didn’t help. She ran, taking nothing, hiding herself deep within the Welsh woods and not emerging.
For a long time, Anwen despised humans. And rightly so. During that time, many nymphs died, hunted down as more evil spirits and changelings. Centuries later, though, they began to change. Few even remembered the existence of the “evil beings of the forest” anymore, and those that did told of them only as children’s stories. For the first time in many years, Anwen felt safe enough to step out of her forests. She became a wanderer, not staying long enough in any one place for people to realize that strange things happened to plants around her, and through her wanderings, she began to learn of human culture. While she doesn’t like them, she recognizes their progress and no longer feels vengeful. For now, she is content simply to exist near them. Her bubbly, one-track-mind exterior hides a mind that, while awful at multitasking and simplistic—almost childlike—in emotions, contains centuries of memories and incalculable sadness.
Family/Relationships
Ceridwen Leafstep, mother (deceased)
Brant Oakbough, father (deceased)
Aeronwen Oakbough, sister (deceased)
Cloud, a red squirrel that she spends a great deal of time having conversations with
Extra/Other
Due to the centuries spent wandering in Wales, she's fluent in Welsh. Any languages other than that and English tend to make her head hurt. She very often travels back to Wales since, as a nymph, she's very attached to the forests where she was originally born.