Taavet

TTaavet is sharp-tongued, and not afraid to speak her mind. She has an excellent memory, too. She can remember anything and everything, including the information she collects, and when necessary she has the tools for some good old fashioned blackmail. Unlike Bennet, she doesn’t gossip frequently, only sharing the information she knows is true. Even if she’s tarnishing the reputation of someone else. Sometimes she even takes a particular pleasure in that, especially if she hates the person.

She does not like death. She wouldn’t hesitate to seriously wound someone who threatened her life, and threats of killing come easily from her, but it would be hard for her to actually end another’s life.

Taavet is prickly, easily angered but able to control it if she’s on business for Banlet City. If she’s not, prepare to be screeched at by a tiny fox the size of a cat. She holds grudges and nurses them tenderly, never really abandoning them unless she’s sure that the one she holds a grudge against has changed, or that she’s misjudged them somehow. Which is almost never.

She’s proud and entitled too, always considering her ways and the ways (and technology) of Banlet City above everyone else’s. Banlet’s warm fires, metal weapons, splendid (in her opinion) location and metal soup pot are things that she’ll lord over others (in her head when she can’t say it out loud).

She can gather plants and hunt small animals, but large prey is out of the question. Though she’s prone to criticizing everyone else’s cooking, she can’t cook either, no matter how hard she tries. When she’s out on her own in the wilds she just eats things raw. Lighting a fire is too much work most of the time.

She is prone to ordering others around and critiquing them frequently.

Taavet was born to a clan of foxes who made their home on the Cliffs, pinnacles of slippery rock wet from the ocean’s spray. Located on the eastern side of a small island, the Cliffs were perfect for keeping invaders out. (The foxes, excellent climbers, could climb up to the misty forests to get food and back down to the caves where they made their home).

It was an isolated life, intentionally so. The few groups of island foxes who called the islands home killed any canines who dared swim the channel to the Island and try to hunt, gather berries, or live there. They drowned them, bashed them against rocks, or set pit traps where the canines were either impaled by sharpened sticks or starved to death. Taavet’s clan specialized in luring them to the Cliffs and pushing them off, though they also stabbed with wooden spears the intruders who didn’t take the bait. The intruders died, every single one of them, but there were casualties among the island foxes too.

It was all to prevent disease- most of the foxes were vulnerable to the mainland diseases, and an outbreak of the Madness years earlier had caused the foxes to shut themselves on their island and hunker down for as long as they possibly could.

Taavet grew up isolated, knowing full well what the cost of that was. She wanted to leave, a little, but she wanted to stay too. She wanted to grow up and become a protector of the Island with the rest of her family, maybe meet the other clans that inhabited it. With her clan-mates and friends she practiced stabbing things and defending herself with a simple wooden stick, and when she was six months old, she received a wood-and-bone spear to practice with- not a high-quality one, but one that worked nonetheless. Although she had a sharp tongue and was merciless in her practice fights, most of her clan has high hopes for her- and so did she.

One evening she was sparring on the beach with a few of her cousins, dark clouds gathering above them. They were perched on an enormous log of driftwood, and didn’t notice the tide coming in until one of them was thrown off into the water and couldn’t touch bottom. He was able to swim to shore through the roughening waves, and the others followed. Taavet was the last on the log, and she was about to leave when a wave broke behind her and dragged her into the water. She was able to break the surface, but another wave pulled her under and swept her out to sea, and the only thing she could do was hold onto her spear and try to keep her head above the water. It was hard. But the piece of driftwood had been swept out with her, and at some point she was able to clamber onto it and try not to make it tip over.

She washed up on the mainland later that night, dug a small hole in the sand under a rock, and tried not to get eaten. Or sick. She was on the mainland now, a place of disease and death. She was certain that she was going to die at some point, but she decided that she was going to prolong her death as long as she could.

So Taavet traveled. Where? She didn’t know. She couldn’t go back, or she’d put her whole family at risk. She avoided most canines, prayed to the gods, and tried not to die. She saw a legendary lynx- a sign of luck. She didn’t die. She was lucky enough to not get sick with anything serious. Against her better judgement, she did talk with a few canines. She didn’t catch any diseases from them, luckily enough. She heard about a place far, far, to the north where canines were sparse. She needed a goal other than not getting sick and dying, so she went.

She traveled. A lot. Lots happened. She learned things. Wow. Weehoo. She met someone who looked like her, just much bigger and with a way longer tail.

And not long after, she came in contact and started traveling with a skinny orange wolf who was not, in fact, diseased. The story of their meeting is for another time. They headed together into the great unknown to the north, where great beasts were said to roam and ancient structures said to stand. The perfect adventure!

They didn’t see any other canines for a long time. Somehow they were lucky enough to find easy food for Taavet to spear, and shelter enough. Until they got to the lakes. Winter was in the air, and as soon as they reached the place where Banlet now stands there was a drop in temperature. They dug into the side of the hill a little and built a primitive covering of sticks and grass to insulate the shelter, but it hardly worked. Winter hit, and it was a bad one. The snowstorms prevented them from going outside of the tent, and half the time the wind prevented them from lighting fires.

They were at the brink of death when the first canine they’d seen in months showed up, a medic sheepdog who helped them heal (in exchange for a share of their shelter and food). The sheepdog stayed until spring, when they went off into the mountains in search of a fabled pack that worshiped the stars (Bennet and Taavet thought it was pure bunk). Later they received news that the medic had died in an avalanche in the mountains.

Taavet and Bennet have lived in Banlet City ever since. At some point they named it and began calling it a city, and at some point they made up the Council of the Lakes (the only members being themselves), the Banlet Coalition, and the Constables of Banlet (the only members also being themselves). A family of clothes making collies stopped by. Loners came and went. Taavet got seriously sick once. She lived. Bennet and Taavet raided Bugler Ruins for a cooking pot and scrap metal, and heard the ghostly yowls of what might have been ghosts, and graceful silhouettes that melted away once they’d been spotted. Taavet got sick a few more times. She didn’t die. They built reinforced shelters with the help of passing loners. Taavet left Banlet for the summer to collect information on the area, and while she was gone Bennet created a metal-tipped spear for her. Taavet learned the lay of the land, how to survive on her own, the animal trails and rivers, the mountain ranges and forests, the safe places and dangerous ones. She came back to the city. Loners stopped by, wintered at Banlet. Taavet left for the summer again.

Years passed- nearly five, and that’s where everything started. Ye story of TGE.