DD187 - Woad Warrior

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by Katamount

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It may sound like a ridiculous pun, but for Brynja Mirnavaal, it was a daily grind.  Literally.  Brynja's family were purplemakers and woad cultivators, specializing in the valuable purple and blue dyes that were the symbols of royalty on Jura.  From a young age, she helped her family in the process, picking woad in the temperate midlands and gathering the valuable shellfish needed for the royal purple.  Their craft made them wealthy, but they were considered outcasts, forced to set up their workshop and living quarters far outside the protection of any castle gate or town walls.  The processes of dying fabrics purple and blue were quite revolting to most Jurans, if they were aware of the processes at all.  The rotting shellfish stew and woad/urine mixtures would give off such powerful smells that it would cling to their pores.  Brynja would often find herself sweating blue after a particularly hard day, a day that would leave her hands stained for weeks.

Brynja did not complain.  She saw herself eventually taking over the business when her parents grew too frail or ill to continue, eventually marrying a fellow dyer, having children and passing along the technique to them.  But when a feud between local barons broke out, her family had no defense against marauders.  Her parents were executed and their wealth seized; Brynja survived by hiding amongst the piles of discarded shells.  When she emerged, she was a changed woman.  Her future was shattered, all she had was vengeance.  To her astonishment, the marauders left several bolts of purple fabric, evidently unaware of their value.  She sold the bolts in town for enough gold to purchase a set of armour and a weapon, one so fearsome that she would bring her parent's killers to their knees in fear: the double-bladed sword.

She trained hard, focused entirely on extracting her revenge.  But as comes with many vengeance wishes, Brynja needed to be patient.  The marauders were in the employ of the rival baron, and lived within its walls, inaccessible as the war continued. Between her training sessions, there were times of incredible boredom.  She tried spending time at a local tavern, but the crowd made her feel uncomfortable, and she was about to leave before a young courtesan invited her to a gathering that guaranteed great pleasures for the young woman.  Brynja had never known what sex was, let alone engaged in it; the night with the Borsites was the most incredible night of her life, and she knew she had found a new family.  At the end of the night, it was only then that she realized that the woad colour had finally left her flesh.  The last reminders of her old life were gone.

Her time with the Borsites taught her to channel her combat abilities to helping the defenseless.  Much as her own family were killed without defenses, she would save others from the same fate.  When she came upon a refugee camp under assault, she showed great bravery in repulsing an entirely legion of the baron's knights.  A fellow defender happened to be Jessalyn Steele, who was impressed by Brynja's abilities.  They found they had a good rapport, and when Jessalyn propositioned her, she didn't refuse.  Jessalyn was a fantastic lover, and she told Brynja that she was the finest lover she had been with.  The pair would grow more famous as a force of justice in the lawless land.  She had nearly forgotten her quest for vengeance; after saving a group of villagers, she found amongst her slain foes was the leader of the marauders who killed her parents.  Vengeance was hers... yet she found that it did not fulfill her as she once thought it would.  She had a new family, and a new love.  And when Bors discovered her, a new home, where she pursues her dye-making in peace.

Her scars are a testament to her difficult fights.  Vrugar is often jealous of them; her half-orc skin did not keep such scars, even though they had seen almost the same amount of combat.  Frin developed a soap that could keep her clean of the dye's stains and smells, so that she can live with Jessalyn within the castle with the other Elites.  While she is sometimes self-conscious of her facial scars, she is often told that she is one of the most beautiful humans in Ossinia.  Bors certainly seems to think so.

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