Old Character Histories

Ysania Morlaine

Ysania Morlaine was born the daughter of a high class Allanaki whore and an unknown father. Whether it was due to the constant influence of spice or alcohol, over the years of her early childhood she was told her father was anything ranging from a templar to a successful merchant.

At the age of sixteen, just coming into her beauty, she overheard her mother planning to sell her to Borsail for spending sid and ran away, earning her living for a couple of years as a singer, dancer, and selective whore working out of the Gaj and Gladiator tavern. It was during this period that she met the Kadians that were to change her life forever, Captain Jak and Eldor. From her first encounter with Eldor, paid for by Captain Jak as a gift, she began to grow ever more fascinated with this taciturn, almost dour man. Arranging a ride to Luir's with the Kadians, she overslept and ended up in Tuluk instead.

In Tuluk, she tried to continue her previous line of work but with much less success and ended up taking a position with Kadius as a crafter. From there her slow but steady rise up to full merchant was almost inevitable. Her relationship with Eldor continued until they were considered an old married couple. Never truly married, as is the way of commoners, they instead simply pledged themselves to each other. They were truly opposites in nature and as the years went by; their fights became legendary among Kadian employees, though in public they always took care to present a united front.

As she rose in power and wealth, Ysania's skill with many of the intricate luxuries that comprised her stock in trade began to draw the attention of the rich and powerful. Eldor was a true northern loyalist and with the birth of their children, five in all, she grew to be as fiercely loyal to Eldor's dreams for their future as he was. They both made contacts in the Rebellion and for years assisted with the delivery of free food and arrows to the rebel's cause. The Hand of Utep, an infamous Rebellion leader at the time and the couple became friends, of a sort, and information was passed between the three.

It was on a regular supply run between Nak and Tuluk that Ysania and Eldor were approached by Lady Templar Elaira Fale of the Red. Her proposal was simple and tempting. If Eldor and Ysania assisted the Allanaki templarate in finally breaking the Rebellion, she would ensure that they rose to become nobility. Not simply by marriage into a noble house but through the formation of the first new noble house in many King's Ages. If they failed to agree, their loyalty to Allanak would be suspect and they would be considered traitors and probably have much shorter lives.

Returning to the north after accepting the situation, Ysania and Eldor contacted the Hand of Utep. Ysania wished to go into hiding; taking her children and throwing away her life's work so far to join the Rebellion in full but the Hand of Utep had another suggestion. The Rebellion would use this to their advantage. Ysania and Eldor were given the locations of two rebel camps to betray to the southern templarate. Having proven themselves, they continued to feed the Allanaki templarate small pieces of information that would enable them to become a new power in the south. If the nobility that had been promised them was achieved, the north would have a spy in the Allanaki senate itself.

Several very hard years went by, with Ysania continuing her trade as a merchant and many in the north beginning to hate her as the full details of her agreement with the Rebellion could never become common knowledge. The Blackmoon raiders, long silent supporters of the north, began to harass Ysania and Eldor. From planting a spy in their midst to kidnapping Eldor and demanding fifty thousand sid in ransom (the Hand of Utep had to step in at this point, arranging the ransom and safe return of Eldor), to Eldor's death at the hands of the Blackmoon raiders on the grasslands east of Tuluk, it was a violent time filled with paranoia and suspicion.

Upon Eldor's death, Ysania's guilt at the blood of the Rebellion members who had died to get them into the position of being able to become powerful spies began to obsess her. Eldor's dream had become hers; a free north where her children would live in safety drove her until she finally achieved the impossible. She threw everything she had into completing their dreams, politicking and meeting frequently with Lord Ihsahn Kasix of the Blue and Lord Sathis Valika of the Red. Elaira Fale's death in the original attacks on the rebel camps had thrown doubt onto the viability of their plan but with sheer determination and an obscene amount of obsidian, Ysania pressed on. Allying herself with Iakovitzes Tor, she exchanged her affections as his paramour for his assistance in her bid for nobility.

Having risen from the child of a prostitute, Ysania Morlaine and her family became a new southern noble house, House Morlaine. Following the senate vote, which came down to a solid tie that was broken by a drunken Fale senator tossing a set of dice, Ysania returned to the north to begin building her estate . Upon her return she found that all of her contacts in the Rebellion had died or vanished and the newer rebels seemed to have no knowledge of the arrangement. Bitterly disappointed, she still attempted to assist the Rebellion, providing them with information on Allanak's plans and keeping from her Allanaki contacts details that might have enabled them to crush the Rebellion.

At this point, Lord Sathis of the Red demanded one of Ysania's children as proof of her loyalty. Her youngest daughter was picked up by Lord Sathis and his men, and during that encounter, her youngest son was taken also. Shipped south, her daughter became a loyal templar to the Highlord, unaware of her mother's traitorous plans and too young for her mother's free spirit to have had much effect on her personality. Her youngest son was kept as a hostage in the military camp in Tuluk, a bargaining tool to ensure Ysania's compliance. In spite of this, she managed to get one final message through to what she believed was a Rebellion spy. However, to her ruin, the man was a templarate spy planted in the Rebellion.

Another raid took place on the Rebellion camps, however this time, ill informed and with Ysania's leaking information to the rebels, the attack was a failure. This marked the first time since the domination of Tuluk by southern forces that the north had risen valiant and a turning point in the fight for liberation. Unfortunately, Ysania was not to see this. Arrested for high treason, she was kept in a prison cell for several weeks before being locked in her estate for a year awaiting transfer south for trial. Her last child, the daughter of her military captain, Amurac D'Zac, was born in secret during this period and mere days after the birth of her sixth child; Ysania Morlaine was shipped to Allanak for trial. This last child, Arkala, was left in the care of a long standing friend in Freil's Rest and would spend several years there, reared by strangers, her identity completely hidden.

Standing before the templarate, Ysania tried valiantly to defend herself and place suspicion for the failure in battle onto Lord Sathis of the Red. The attempt proved a failure and she was convicted of high treason and her life, the lives of her children and all of her possessions were given into the care of House Borsail. Her children would be re-educated and the house would continue, but forever be a puppet of the top House in the city. Her estates in the north were quickly stripped of most valuables, her people there either falling in with Borsail's plans or disappearing into the woodwork to join the Rebellion in its ongoing fight against the Southern oppressors.

A prisoner to Borsail, Ysania was kept under close watch except for when she withdrew into the quiet of the bedroom she had been assigned in the Borsail estate. Her children were taken from her, and her youngest son was murdered by Lord Sathis as retribution for her attempts to discredit him during the trial. Completely demoralized and severely depressed, Ysania contemplated suicide heavily and would have ended her life were it not for the solid companionship of Tila, her aide and long time friend. Tila and Ysania were never left without a guard and became pariah in the city, Ysania rarely visited any of the taverns she had once held so much power in.

Abandoned by everyone, hated violently by both the north and the south, Ysania became a shadow of her former self. She spent her days wandering the bazaar in Nak, cloaked and veiled and under guard, or contemplating the easiest way to kill herself. It was on one of these trips that her fortune was read by an elvish fortune teller who told her she was the bleeding tregil in the gortok's den. If she did not escape, she would perish, along with. everything she had worked for. Driven near mad by the loss of her entire life's work and left with only her friend Tila and adopted son Torel, she began to make plans for an escape. Gathering gith skulls and bones, and other supplies under her continued lonely treks through the market, she sat for hours, filing the teeth down and making plans.

Finally, under cover of darkness, they set their plan into motion. During a change in the rotation of her guards, she and her small crew dyed their hair, slipped into slave collars and escaped from the bedroom, leaving a small fire burning on the bed, and hid in the slave quarters until the fire was raging. In the ensuing confusion, they managed to get let out of the gates to fetch more water and immediately made their way to the stables, dropping the slave collars in an alley en route and riding to Red Storm.

Ysania and her son and friend then disguised themselves as Old Tam, her daughter, and her daughter's husband. They were employed by the Dirt Runners as a small spice and salt gathering crew and hid there for a couple of years until a guild spy, Inaom, found them. On the run again, they hid out in Cenyr for a year, slowly working their way back towards the north. When the battle that freed the northlands came, Ysania and her small family were hiding in the elvish outpost. Only Ysania's fluent ability in elvish and her long standing trade with their people kept the elves from slaughtering them all in the confusion and chaos of war.

Shortly after the north won its freedom, Ysania returned home, a broken, bitter woman who was trusted by no one and misunderstood by all. Continuing her disguise as Old Tam, she worked for the Dirt Runners out of Tuluk until a failed attempt by an Allanaki execution squad, led by Lady Dora Tor of the Blue, resulted in her identity becoming public knowledge. Publicly strip-searched in the middle of the Sanctuary and most of her hidden treasures taken from her, she realized the sad truth of her life. Everything she had ever worked for was gone. The north was free, but her children, the impetus that drove her to spend forty years trying to support the Rebellion, were all prisoners of the Allanaki nobility and would never be free northerners. All who had been privy to the secret agreement were long since dead and the new leaders of the northlands had no place for the most wanted woman in the world. She disappeared again, taking only Tila and her last hidden daughter with her, an
d though rumors abound as to where she traveled, she has not surfaced since.

Footnote: Years after Ysania's disappearance, the north acknowledged the role she had played by naming one of the streets of the city in her honor.