for I much desire to speak with him

[tsubame]

Barashi bint al-Rashid was my character for the 7th Sea game my roommate ran, also during my senior year. 7th Sea is a really fun game in which you buckle swash around an alternate Europe packed with magic and adventure. Of course the most fun way to do it is to be a pirate, and so pirates we were, on a swift blockade runner with a few built-in surprises for anyone who didn't like the fact that we weren't paying our taxes. We sailed the six seas, and the seventh sea as well by the end, we made a lot of money and we made a lot of enemies and we killed a whole bunch of them, too.

Ah, there's a lovely rhythm to that.

Barashi also had a deeply twisted backstory, and is an example case of how I often buy things for my characters at character creation solely because of my character's backstory, never intending to actually use them. In Barashi's case I bought her horse magic and stunning beauty, never intending to make use of either.

In any case, backstory:

Barashi came from the country in 7th Sea that is cobbled together of the Middle East, Egypt, and Mongolia. A stunningly diverse place with several very distinct peoples. Barashi was from the Mongolian nomad-based race; they have the most awesome horses of anyone anywhere, and they're blessed or cursed with the constant urge to travel. She was perhaps overly gifted: she was stunningly beautiful, and she had a healthy dose of the horse magic of her people (the ability to comunicate with and share strength/speed/etc with one's horse). She also had a One True Love. Together, they traveled all over the country, from the plains to the mountains, where they learned a certain lovely and deadly method of knife fighting, to the cities, and finally to the desert.

They were briefly separated in the desert, and her boyfriend had a traumatic experience that also involved him losing the horse to which he had his bond. He was deeply changed by it, and he became fanatically loyal to a certain master of mysteries dwelling in a shifting labyrinth beneath the desert sand. To prove his loyalty, he turned over Barashi to his new organization without hesitating at all. The horse with which she had her bond was killed as a blood sacrifice; she was sold into slavery. Not that she allowed this without protest; she fought with him, and the fight left her with a long scar down one side of her face.

The miseries that she experienced as a slave are various and do not need to be detailed; she herself refuses to speak of them. What she brought out of that time was an utter disregard for her own health and safety, and an intense desire for vengeance on the one who betrayed her.

She was eventually sold to a ship's captain, and while on board she poisoned the water supply. Essentially that meant poisoning herself, as well, but she didn't care at all. She knew she wouldn't die because she hadn't had her vengeance. And she did not die; a ship passing by stopped to investigate the seemingly abandoned vessel, and found all aboard dead save for the ship's cat, and Barashi (though she was fairly close).

From that ship she took with her the ship's cat, and a silver mask inscribed with flowers that she would wear forever afterwards. Not having any particular direction save for the one that would lead her to what she wanted, she followed her rescuer-turned-friend and joined a pirate crew as the pilot.

And that was where the game began.