About Ember

Ember is the daughter of a traveling salesman. After becoming separated from her family after a highwayman attack, she gathered what few belongings she had with her and set off to make her own way in the world. Being young and not having many skills, she often finds herself working as a house servant, though she one day aspires to being a traveling merchant like her father.

 Backstory

I grew up in the Sorrows. My father was the leader of a roving band of Moors. My birth mother had died during childbirth, but I survived thanks to a woman that I came to know as my mother. She had had a child as well, though it was killed by a pack of wolves. So she took me in as her own, with father’s permission. I had traveled with them for years… all my youth, actually. We wanted to make our clan known as trustworthy traders, and father had worked hard to see that dream through. Of course, life wasn't easy. We had plenty of run-ins with bandits and thieves, which is how I lost my voice. I'd tried to protect father from a man with a knife, only to have that knife put in my throat. I was healed by our clan's doctor, but I would not speak again after that.

The day I became clanless was the last day I saw my father or anyone from my clan. That day, we had come across a small cottage. Father and I went up alone, and when we knocked, we were greeted by an elderly halfling couple. Father talked trade with them, but my eyes fell to a couple Moorish children who appeared to be siblings. They were older than me, but the way that they looked at each other I will never forget. They were cooking together. The younger sister looked up to her brother with a smile that said he meant the world to her, and he returned the same smile in kind, putting a hand on her shoulder. But before I could see any more, we were leaving; business concluded. I had assumed that they were not interested in trading for one reason or another because we set off shortly after.

After traveling for a few hours, father stopped the caravan, telling everyone to be quiet. He looked to me, putting a hand on my shoulder and told me to run back to the cottage. He gave me strict instructions not to look back and not to stop running until I got there, no matter what happened. With that, he shoved me off the carriage and I started running back the way we came. I didn't question it... this was what he always did with me when there were bandits. Sometimes the bandits found me anyways, sometimes I got away. But they always came back for me. A few hours later, night had fallen and I finally saw the cottage in the distance, light in the windows. But as I drew near, I knew something was wrong. The door was open and I could hear flies and smelled blood. Looking inside, I saw the halfling couple on the floor, dead. I lost my stomach at the sight, but when I'd regained composure, I looked around the outside of the house, listening for more bandits. Nobody else was cruel enough to have done such a thing, so I thought. In the end, I found nothing. The Moorish children were gone and only the two bodies remained. I slept outside in the garden that night, covered in burlap in the chicken coop. I stayed there three days, eating off of their farm and drinking from their well. Neither father nor the caravan came to collect me. It took me some time after that to accept that I had become clanless, but I remained confident. I packed what food I could carry in the burlap sack and set off to survive by myself in the Sorrows. I lived there a few years before finding a ship that took me here, in exchange for the little coin I'd taken from the halfling's home.