Liriel

Liriel began her life as a peasant girl on a remote farm, where she spent her days spinning and weaving, tending chickens and gardens, and gathering firewood and foodstuffs from the woods nearby. An intelligent and curious child, she pressed travelers for scraps of learning and spent many evenings knitting articles that could be traded to peddlers for precious books. She had an obvious affinity for nature, which was why she, unlike most girl children, was allowed to go to the forest alone at a young age, and an ability to understand the feelings of animals that she assumed everyone shared. Liriel’s homespun but idyllic world came to an end when she was thirteen, when the raiders came to her family’s farm. She never learned whether they were bandits or soldiers. While the house was looted, she hid beneath the corn crib with one of the barn cats, staring out at her father’s corpse, each of them trying to talk the other into running for the woods. They were preparing to run when the raiders fired the barn, and the cat, desperate to save her kittens, turned back and raced into the inferno to die with them. Liriel, turning back to try to stop her, was seen and caught by the raiders. She was dragged into the house and thrown down beside the body of her younger sister, where several of the raiders took turns brutally abusing her. For a brief while, she was discarded while the raiders made sport of her mother, and she had an opportunity to escape. She knew that if she ran, her mother would be tortured to death, and would die alone; she also knew that if she stayed, she had no power to stop what was going to happen. She chose to run, with her mother’s screams ringing in her ears as she fled. After that, Liriel lived alone in the woods for several years. She scavenged a few bits and pieces from the ashes of her home, then went deep into the woods where she could hide from other humans. Living in isolation among animals, her ability to speak to animals and understand them increased. Years passed, and then one day, foraging in the edge of the forest where hunters sometimes came, she heard a coyote pup crying for help. After night had fallen, she crept to him and freed him from the snare that held him. He told her that his mother had already been killed, and he was alone. She took him back to the cave where she lived, named him Rufus, and taught him how to live in the woods, and he became her devoted companion. One of the few humans whom Liriel trusted enough to speak to was a local druid, Morag. She happened upon Liriel having a long conversation with Rufus, recognized that the young woman had the talent to be a druid, and set about persuading her to enter training. Hating the ways of man, Liriel was eager to have the power to help defend nature from man, and she found comfort in the druid’s philosophy, which strives to accept life and death, good and evil, as all being part of nature. She set herself diligently to studying the druidic path. After two years, Morag told Liriel that she had learned all that she could learn from that particular forest. To learn more of nature, she had to experience more than one small part of it. Moreover, if she was to be nature’s protector she needed powerful magic, and Morag, not herself the most gifted in that part of her craft, had taught all the magic that she knew: Liriel must seek more knowledge elsewhere. And lastly, Morag said, Liriel needed to know how to go among her own kind without fear, especially if she was to choose a mate. Morag therefore journeyed with her to the nearest road, gave her a lovingly hand-made rucksack containing a week’s supply of food, and set her feet on the path.

NOTES ON CHARACTER As a druid, Liriel does not use metal weapons or tools, and her possessions are simple and mostly unornamented; she can easily carry everything she needs or wants. Much of her clothing is of homespun fabric that she made herself, and on long journeys she will spin with a drop spindle as she walks if she is not keeping an eye out for useful plants. She likes to keep her hands busy and to be doing something useful whenever possible. Liriel particularly loathes cities, with their crowding, crime, filth, and destruction of nature. In a city, she generally assumes that she may be assaulted, robbed, or taken advantage of at any moment. She is very frugal with her money, never having had much, and assumes that high city prices are meant to rip off the country folk; she keeps some of her coin sewn into a seam of her clothing to hide it from thieves. She is always glad to have an opportunity to sleep in the great outdoors, and is so accustomed to living under relatively primitive conditions that she does not really understand why some of her traveling companions complain about it. Liriel is not at heart a crusader for great causes. Part of the druid way is a sometimes cold-blooded acceptance of that which cannot be changed, especially if it can be seen as part of nature, and an understanding of what is and is not within one’s abilities to accomplish. She is usually cautious and would prefer to think carefully before sticking her neck out. If something is clearly contrary to nature (e.g., the creation of undead), she is more apt to be outraged enough to act rashly. She is also willing to run risks for her friends, since she doesn’t have many friends in this world and values each of them highly. Because of her traumatic experience as a girl, Liriel dislikes and fears violent or domineering men. She will never willingly confront them, much preferring to run away or attack them by stealth. If direct contact is unavoidable and the man or men in question only potential aggressors (e.g., guards or soldiers), she will act docile and submissive, even obsequious if necessary, to avoid angering them. She tends to treat men as a type of large, dangerous animal; demanding one’s rights is not helpful when dealing with a bear, and she takes it for granted that a man will have the same attitude. On the other hand, if she were confronted by a definite enemy such as a bandit, she would act as aggressive as possible to look like more difficult prey, just as a smaller animal would puff himself up in self-defense. One of Liriel’s dreams in life is to have a mate and children (this is, after all, in keeping with nature). However, she finds most men either too dull-witted, too scary, or both. Most of her current traveling companions fall into the scary category, with their tendency to fight with everyone they meet and even beat one another up for sport when they have nobody else handy to beat up. She would like to find a man who is intelligent and of a more gentle nature. Unfortunately, the man she has met so far who best meets these standards is Tim the sorcerer, and he mostly makes her want to smack him (although she has started to notice that he is kind of cute...).