@ihinka If I may offer a suggestion to number 4? Perhaps, like Orm, the Free Isles have become her home, and as a widely renowned doctor, she was asked to join the crew. Knowing that her home was in danger, she agreed to put her life at risk to attempt to save it.
1. They would still be officially at war, but it isn't a very active war, since Mar is a lot more focused on the Free Isle and they're mostly ignoring the Isle, which is happy to be ignored. though, Mar is still a threat they try and stay prepared for at all times.
2. I would say they're a sort of western - european type country along with most of arrylia and mar, and that chorn, endeny & kopan are more asia-based. Yeah, in Arrylia it would mostly be the four fluids ideas of medicine, leeches, and just starting more experimentation with herbs and such. Chorn would be the most medicinally advanced of any country. Acupuncture, herbalism, more knowledge about stages of illness and diagnoses. the best of the best would learn the stuff here, yeah, but Endeny copies from them a lot, so it woudl be a close second.
3. If they were taken as slaves, it would likely have been from a Chartan raid, where you would get that type of environment. The samurai type people are from Endeny, where the issue is slavery is also legal. If they were to attack the ship, they would keep the slaves themselves. Possibly, she could escape and set herself adrift, only to be picked up by Endenic missionaries/monks? That would be my suggestion, but it could be merchants, or perhaps if an Endenic ship attacked them, she could have convinced them she was hired and not a slave, or perhaps the captain may be racist and feel pity for her because she was from Arrylia, not Charta, and a girl. I would suggest that maybe she made her way, was rescued by people from, or was dropped off at, the East Island monasteries where she could get the sort of training you want.
4. I think Cold has a good idea for that. Perhaps she is defending her home, if she set up shop in Chariot and wants to keep her life there. Perhaps she has a family living there now? Or even just friends she cares for and a lifestyle. She may know Avoir personally and agree to help him defend the Free Isle. He may have asked her to go along with the crew as a healer to help them in their missions, which while sometimes will include combat will often have the option of diplomatic choices. (and sometimes you might not be fighting humans anyway). I was thinking that when they land in Arrylia, she could be there to meet them. She could be Amia's contact through Avoir who wasn't in the Free Isles at the time of recruitment, but had agreed to help since she was already in Arrylia for whatever reason (on business, or perhaps: the destination isn't far from the Reflection Isles - she could have visited her mother or something.). Then she could proceed to join the party for the mission and choose to continue on the next ones.
Ok, since we're having some technical issues at the office let’s get this thing on :)
So... keeping in mind your suggestions and thanks for the quick response by the way... Here I go...
Edit upon completion: Sweet mother, I'm sorry, it turned out longer thant I expected, especially her history >.< Also... @LadyTabris I'm comfortable with your suggestion that she joins the crew from Arrylia where she was visiting with her mother and trying to convince her of the merits of eastern medicine. She would be agreeble to join since Mar represents danger to the Reflection Isle as well. Also... even though she's worked on ships a couple of years and is at ease on one, she is not a sailor per se and is the most comfortable with a lookout role aside from her healer position
Name: Kossara MacConagh /Mac to friends, Sara to family and close friends, some people have taken to calling her Doc/
Age: 36
Sex: Female
Nationality: The Reflection Isle
Class: Healer/shinobi-ninja style of combat
Physical Description:
For clothing reference... with slight changes. No quiver and arrows. Black metal gauntlets. Black metal shin guards. Comfortable boots. Optional cloak.
Kossara stands at the almost impressive 5'5, which is considered tall for the women of Reflection Isle. Not slight by any means, she is of medium build, very athletic and fit since she's been in and out of combat training from a very young age. Her hair is the darkest shade of honey blond and a little bit of unusual colour for a native of the Reflection Isle, with the deepest midnight blue eyes. Her facial features are somewhat aristocratic, but not delicate at all. With high cheekbones and slightly square chin she is quite handsome. An almost gentle scar is bisecting her chin, almost reaching bellow the lip. Her eyes carry a sadness that seems to pull back when she's caring for her patients and helping people. Then they take on a light that is almost enchanting with its healing warmth. Her back is riddled with whip scars with tendrils reaching the front of her shoulders and chest. She also has a prominent long and thick scar bisecting her stomach from bellow her waistline up to her sternum.
Fighting Style: Originally trained in the Reflection Isle's royal fighting style with a short sword, horseback riding, archery. Later on she adopts and masters the shinobi style of combat, using ninjato instead of katana, a tanto knife and kunai daggers as well as unarmed fighting styles. Also very proficient in stealth techniques.
Personality/Mental: Kossara was a boisterous happy child. Her homeland having resisted the conquering efforts of the Mar Empire was relatively safe and she was spared the hardships of war. Although being the daughter of the personal physician to the Lady of Reflection Isle, she did witness her fair share of gruesome battle injuries. Her childhood was spent learning the medicine arts from her mother and roughhousing with the Lady's children. She grew up into a caring and care giving young woman, determined to set wrongs right, cure illnesses, help people. Her later years and a very traumatic experience changed her but didn't manage to rid her of her innate goodness and desire to heal. On the contrary, it made her even more driven. Still she became more settled, lest boisterous, sometimes even withdrawn, pensive and prone to long hours of meditation and reflection. She is never the less ready to drop everything else and rush to offer help or support. She is not against combat and fighting, although she does prefer to disable her opponents without doing too much harm if at all possible.
History: Kossara was born to mother Elia Ronnon and father Drak MacConagh. Her mother was the personal physician to the Lady of Reflection Isle and her father was the head of the royal guard. Sara loved her parents dearly. They were gentle and loving and also loved each other very much. At a very young age Kossara expressed interest in learning her mother's trade and began apprenticing as a healer. While her father instructed her in the arts of combat together with the young Lady and Lord.
Her close to idyllic childhood was shattered one day when her father and mother went out with the royal family on official business. During the trip an attempt was made on the life of the royal family and her father had given his life to protect his charges and assure that they made it all safe back home.
Her mother was desolate after the loss of her mate, but her unendless love for her child inspired her to be strong and continue on. Although she became more concerned with her daughter's safety and insisted she train even harder in combat to be able to protect herself should the need ever arise. And while severely damaged, their little family recovered with the help and support of the Lady and her children, with whom Sara was as close as brother and sister.
Kossara grew into a little less boisterous young woman and around that time her mother began to notice a shift in her daughter's affection towards the young Lady of the Isle. True, the girls were always close, but Elia had started noticing the lingering looks full of longing and not a small amount of lust her daughter was directing at the young Lady. Not particularly worried that her daughter was lusting after another girl, her mother was more worried of the official difficulties this might pose for the royal family. A tryst with the daughter of the royal physician might not be too frowned upon, but it still might throw a shadow over the royal name and her daughter would most definitely get hurt in the process.
So trying for an out of sight out of mind solution her mother decided to send her daughter as an apprentice of one of the most prominent royal healers serving on one of the Isle's merchant ships. Not simply to put some distance between Kossara and the object of her affection/lust, but also to garner more experience in practicing emergency and field medicine.
Kossara didn't object. She was eager to learn new ways to treat wounds and care for patients in the field, without the security of a fully equipped royal hospital. She did pout a little that she wouldn't be able to spend more time with her love interest.
Elia didn't know she would regret her decision to send her daughter away even under the guise of the very reasonable excuse to accumulate more experience as a physician.
At nineteen years of age the young apprentice healer set sail with one of the Isle's merchant ships and began an exciting new adventure. She loved working on the ship, relished the constraints of field medicine and how it spurred her to discover and learn new methods of healing and treating patients. Her teacher who sailed far and wide had picked up a very diverse knowledge in medicine, including some methods her mother never used. He dared not teach her those as per her mother's instructions. For as loving and open-minded as she was with her child and her preferences, she could be quite rigid when it came to medicine and the correct way to practice it. Still Kossara was smart and very observant and managed to learn this and that. Some herbal remedies. Often times she would witness Rom, her healer teacher, treat patients in a very strange way by sticking needles in them.
Life on the ship was fun and rewarding even devoid of the luxuries she'd had on the Isle. Whenever the ship would return ashore, she would spend time with her mother. Study with her, tell her of all the new things she was learning, taking care not to mention any of the more unorthodox methods. Spending time with her childhood friends, the young Lady and Lord. And though with time she did grow out of love, or rather lust, with the young Lady of the Isle, like her mother had hoped, she never really grew out of love with the ladies. And one eventful night, at twenty-two, when their ship was docked at port in Vernon, she had a rather fateful encounter with a very, very... very willing young bar wench to whom she didn't quite manage to lose her virginity, but did manage to walk happily away with very enjoyable new experiences.
Three years later it all went to hell. On the way back from Viny their ship was attacked by slavers who killed whoever resisted and kept alive everyone who would be of any value as a slave. The slavers were particularly happy to get two royally trained healers for the price of one. Rom was quickly sold off and Kossara never saw him again. Her, however the slavers decided to keep for themselves aboard the ship. Day in and day out she was forced to tend to the slavers whenever they were heart during raids, cure illnesses unrelated to combat. The art, the gift of healing was slowly but surely perverted and darkened by the monsters she was forced to care for. Although she was carefully watched whenever she would treat a crew-mate, she yearned to sink her tools in the soft exposed and vulnerable spots and finish him or her off, rather than patch them up. And later she would wretch and heave, repulsed by her vicious thoughts and desires.
But the worst was yet to come. At one point one of the slavers decided her knowledge of anatomy would serve them well as a torture tool for the slaves in an effort to persuade them to be more cooperative.
Kossara would refuse each and every time. She would not have her gift darken even further by those slaver bastards. She would rather die first. But she was too valuable to dispatch so the slavers chose to punish her every time she wouldn't cooperate. They would whip her. Beat her. Torture her. They dared not sexually abuse her out of fear it would damage her too much to function. After each punishment she was left to tend to her own healing with little to no materials and supplies.
One night after a particularly vicious beating and whipping she lay half dead on the floor of the sick bay mustering her strength to rise and tend to her wounds. She needed to clean herself and dress the wounds before infection could set in. At first she thought the violent shaking of the ship was due to her weakened state, but she quickly realized the tossing was due to a vicious storm.
Suddenly there was a loud roar, the ship heaved, there was a thunderous crack and she was floating in the bosom of Semelle, Goddess of Thoughts and Freedom.
She woke up disoriented. She was in a bed, in a small room. It was light outside. She ached all over, she was shivering violently even though she was covered generously with blankets. She tried to sit up when a quiet gentle accented voice dissuaded her. "Please, do not move. You are very weak and very ill. Keep your strength, you will need it to heal." The voice lulled her back to sleep and she soon drifted off.
She was bedridden for nearly a month. With the fever coming and going trying relentlessly to finish her off. She was barely conscious during this time. Later, when she was able to stay awake and aware for more than a minute she learned that a traveling shinobi healer had rescued her and brought her to her village deep within the countryside of Endeny. There she stayed, lived and trained with Samira, the healer who had rescued her in the eastern art of healing with herbs, acupuncture, acupressure, meditation and connection to the inner self and spirit. She also trained in the shinobi traditional style of combat.
She yearned to go back to her mother. Assure her she was alive. But she felt disconnected. Almost unworthy of being Elia's daughter. She felt tainted and dirtied by what she had done while under the boot of the slavers. It took the love and devotion of Samira and nearly seven years for Kossara to feel worthy of herself. She was content with her life in the village. She and Samira loved each other and traveled together as migrant healers offering medical care in the more remote locations in Endeny for three more years. Life was good and Kossara began to entertain the thought of returning to her mother. Even after nearly ten years she knew her mother would be overjoyed to know she is alive. She and Samira were all set to leave, when Samira got violently ill and try as she might Kossara was unable to save her.
Desolate Sara set out for the Reflection Isle to seek out her mother of whom she had no news. If she had mourned her death, or if she still hoped beyond hope that her girl was still alive somewhere.
When she arrived at Reflection Isle she experienced a brief sense of coming home, which quickly faded. Although she loved Reflection Isle dearly, it wasn't her home anymore. Samira was. But Samira was gone. All she had now was her mother. The mother she'd left thinking her only daughter was dead. She'd acquired about Elia as soon as she'd made port. She knew her mother was, thankfully, still alive and still serving as the head physician to the Lady of the Isle. Although people told her she was never the same after her daughter was lost at sea when her ship was attacked by slavers on the way back to the Isle.
Mother and daughter reunion wasn't easy. However slowly, but surely the two started to make their way into each other's hearts again.
Inventory: Ninjato Tanto Six Kunai Acupuncture needles set Small healer's bag Water skin Purse with coin Cloak
@LordofthePies, @BurningCold and @CaptainCaptcha haven't posted since I did - if you guys want to throw a short post up before I move us onto land, now's your chance. I know not a whole lot's going on, I just wanted people to have a chance to post while we're on the ship. If you don't have a chance, that's fine, this section isn't important but I'll need you guys to post after we land or else, right
I posted, we've landed in Arrylia. You guys can post whenever, now, we're just preparing to set off on the journey. You guys can group up, or go to shops or whatever you want in the little town, but the plan is to leave the city on foot in my next post so keep that in mind @Sabotage@Sputnik@SuperNova9000@POOHEAD189@ihinka
and I haven't heard much from @LordofthePies@CaptainCaptcha and @BurningCold if you guys want to let me know where you're at or just if you're still working on something or going to start now i've posted, that's fine, I just want to hear back
@LadyTabris Just posted. Hope it's acceptable. If something needs changing just tell me and I'll edit :) Sorry if it's a bit wordy. It sorta got away from me
OK... I mean, I know life comes first and all that... But, respectfully, between the 9 of us you'd think we can manage at least two posts per week... Or at least tell the group we won't be able to post...
Same, apologies as well, It's been a busy week for me. I'm working on something now, though I'll probably have it done by tomorrow. Right after I get a proper night's sleep. :<
I've recently re-entered the mindset I need to crank out posts, but I'll refrain from working on one until I can get a better sense of who's still in, and who's out. Personally, I still have my money on this RP.