Tehva

Introduction

• Basic Information

  • Name: Tehva
  • Gender: Female
  • Played by: somethingruther
  • Name Pronounced: TAY-vah
  • Race: Human
  • Class: Hunter
  • Alignment: Chaotic Good
  • Age: 20
  • Height: 5'3
  • Hair: Long brown, usually messy
  • Eyes: Grey

• Appearance

  Simply looking at Tehva's body reveals little to her personality. She looks delicate with a small, thin frame. Her hips are quite wide, but her stomach and chest are quite thin and small, giving her a lovely pear-shape. Her arms and legs have only a small amount of muscle on them, but definitely appear athletic and dexterous. Her skin is on the pale side, and her hair is brown and straight, like most other locals. All of these are not unexpected in humans. Her most notable feature is her face. It has an angled shape, yet retains soft features, and her eyes are an unusually light grey. Anyone truly looking can tell she is a foreigner. This is true most anywhere she goes.
  
  She also dresses oddly for the area. She wears nothing but furs, but fashioned in an odd way. Whatever culture she came from had an obsession with red furs, as from foxes, and many-layered skirts. As a hunter, she naturally carries several supplies with her. She isn't fond of using bow and arrow, as she feels it distances her too much from her prey. She carries a shortsword and several knives, along with small net traps, stones, and salts for preserving meat.
  
  She is young and full of energy, but doesn't seem to know how to use it yet. She keeps to the forests, and will tell you very quickly how much she despises high elves. She grew up in nature and tries to throw herself into trouble in order to protect both plant and animal alike from any threat; human, elf, orc, it doesn't matter to her. If they are taking an unfair amount from mother nature, she feels it her duty to take it back. Trouble is, she's just one small, innocent looking girl looking to see vigilante justice fall upon offenders across the entire world. This is, needless to say, an impossible task. But she is able to live off the wilds, never taking more than she needs, and fulfills her creed every chance she can.

• Biography

  Tehva comes from a long line of outcasts who have lived in the forests for centuries. As legend would have it, the first of her kind lived in harmony with nature like all other humans. Then, some humans became greedy, and took too much from the land. The earth grew dry and lost its color. Some of the clansmen resisted, demanding the greed stop at once. 'Mother nature gives us a cave for a roof over our heads, gives us pelts with our food to craft shelter, gives us living trees to hide us from the rain. Why would we kill many trees just for a roof for one man?' They would cry. Needless to say, their leader wasn't persuaded.
  
  The clan split, thus creating the group of outcasts named the Elon. They lived away from society as it built houses, wasted meats, and disregarded everything mother nature had taught them about living in harmony. The Elon tried to protect the forests as best they could, but the wayward humans had a love of chopping the Elon's most sacred tree: the Magen tree.
  
  The Elon tribe had to save these trees; they grew exceptionally slowly, and it took many seeds to be planted before even one had the luck of sprouting. If the final trees were chopped down, they would surely become extinct. They taught their children as best they could how to plant and nurture the Magen tree saplings, for the elders were going to make a stand.
  When the number of Magen trees matched the number of able-bodied men and women, the children were told to run, leave, plant trees where-ever they went, once every year just after pines appeared. The children fled.
  The adults tied themselves to the remaining trees. If these men were going to cut down the last trees, they would have to kill their fellow man to do so.
  When the tree-cutters came to take the last of the Magen wood, they demanded the Elon surrender their fight. The trees were just raw material. When the Elon refused, they cut off their heads with the trees.
  The children lived on, fleeing from forest to forest, planting Magen trees wherever they went. The spirits of their ancestors protected these trees from their place in heaven.
  
  ...at least, that's how the story goes.
  
  While Tehva quickly bought into the more historical sounding parts of this legend, the spiritual parts were lost on her. She certainly saw the practical good of what they did, but didn't think it was heaven-ordained; nor did she think mother nature was actually a goddess to be worshiped. Growing up, she was taught how to live off the land with ease. It was all she knew. She was well indoctrinated on the importance of taking care of nature and never getting too greedy. They performed the ritual of legend every year, planting Magen seeds and watching them grow until they could survive on their own. She even joined her clan on their frenzied raids on lumber mills, mines, poachers...even the occasional city. After bothering any of these groups, they could return to their grove of Magen trees deep in the forest. No search party ever found them, and the group was marked as being wild savages to be avoided. Everyone left them alone...until the High Elves came.
  
  When Tehva was just thirteen years old, their hiding place was discovered. There was a high elven city that was expanding its borders. They cut down many trees and destroyed much land to do so. The Elon refused to stand for it. They gathered many, including Tehva, to burn down as many houses as possible in the elven city. The high elf prince took notice, and ordered the guards to chase them off; but also assigned one scout to follow them and see where they hid. High elves were known to hold grudges.
  The Elon burned down many buildings and many innocent lives perished. The guard did chase them off eventually, and they ran into the forest. The scout followed, remaining in the shadows.
  
  The scout observed their rituals and mentality from afar, watching them for several days. He saw how they worshiped the dark-wooded Magen tree, and how they planned to attack any society that didn't hold their savage ideals. But worst of all, was he heard the entire legend of the Elon people.
  The scout returned to his prince, telling all he knew of the beastly humans living in the wilds. He told the story of near genocide that the people held so dear. The prince got a sadistic pleasure from this tale, and ordered the destruction of all Magen trees and Elon people alike; with a special requirement: to tie each man, woman, /and/ child to a tree as it was cut down.
  
  The same night the prince made this decree, Tehva's mother had a vision. She dreamt of seeing her friends, her husband, and herself all perish in the same way as the legend. But her daughter was missing. She then saw where her daughter was: she was much older, a fully grown woman, climbing a Magen tree and watching the sun set over an ocean: though there was no sea anywhere near where they currently lived.
  That day, she recited the legend to her daughter, and reminded her of all the customs of their people. When Tehva asked what was wrong, her mother explained her vision and asked Tehva to leave she gave the girl the one last Magen seed that remained from the season before. Her mother asked her finally to leave, hide, travel far away, and when planting day came, to return home to plant the last seed.
  The girl wasn't one for silly dreams, but she loved her mother. She took the seed, assuming this was some sort of test of maturity. She left, lived alone, and managed to handle herself very well.
  
  Several weeks passed and the day of planting came. Tehva returned home, only to see the destruction that was left. The trees were all cut with decapitated bodies tied to them. The heads of her family, of her clan, all lay rotting on the ground. Even the children were not spared.
  Tehva wept. She was but a girl, and everything she ever knew was gone.
  She buried each body one by one, matching head to torso and giving each a prayer. She buried her father and mother last.
  Lastly, she planted the seed her mother had given her above her grave. Witnessing the corpses of everyone she loved was hard enough, but staying with them long enough to make sure the seed matured was even harder.
  
  When she finally saw the tree begin to sprout, she felt safe packing what she had and leaving. It was that day that she discovered who actually killed her family.
  Several elves came to the clearing with tools and lumber; the wood was dark, just as her native tree was. Her blood boiled with rage.
  These elves were innocent. They had no idea what carnage had been wrought over this ground. But it did not matter to Tehva.
  She hid behind a stump and readied a knife. She slit an elf's throat, drawing the attention of the others. Sadly, they were unarmed and unskilled, and she made short work of them. She left their bodies untouched.
  
  She immediately ran to the elven city, but once outside its walls, she hid carefully. She had a target. She was going to take out the prince.
  Like stalking prey in silence, Tehva crept through the city, climbing the castle walls to avoid detection. She tried many windows until she was certain she'd found the prince. She climbed in and murdered him in his sleep. She murdered the guards outside his room. She murdered the cooks, murdered the minstrels. She murdered the women, murdered the children. No one was left in the castle that she could find. She had the power and frenzy of her ancestors behind her.
  She set fire to the castle on any wooden surface she could find. The fire spread, and she demolished any elf that tried to put it out. The entire castle was in flames, and it spread to manors, to houses, to farms.
  
  By the time she was done, everything was in ashes.
  Every elf she saw perished.
  She was certain many more ran away.
  
  An eye for an eye.
  
  ~*~
  
  The thirteen-year-old traveled west. It was towards the sunset, as her mother envisioned. There must be a Magen tree there. She was destined to climb it.
  She felt like she had the strength of her ancestors where-ever she went, and it was her god-ordained mission to destroy every person that wasn't an Elon like herself.
  When she saw other people, human or elf, she attacked them, but quickly learned how unskilled she truly was at harming other trained fighters. Her ability to sack a city must have been the only revenge her ancestors were watching her for. Perhaps they were even cursing her for attacking people that didn't have anything to do with their deaths or harm to nature.
  She resolved to only facing direct threats to nature that she could sabotage. Even then, as the years went on, she became less sure of herself. There was no one else to support her, to encourage her to continue her mission. It became difficult to pack up camp and walk every day. She was starting to wonder if there ever would be a sea at all, or if land simply stretched forever this way.
  
  She even tried living among society. She cleaned herself up as best she could and sold furs and herbs to those who needed it, but were unable to harvest it for themselves. With the money, she bought several things society would cherish; a roof over her head, a bed, even a small comb and mirror. But this too was difficult and unwelcoming. She never truly gained a friend, for no one truly thought like she did. She had gained an appreciation and understanding for why people would want to live the way they did...but she couldn't get rid of the nagging feeling of guilt for desiring such things, too.
  
  She headed west again, avoiding paths out of nostalgia for walking through the untamed forest. When she came upon a town, she would stay there for a few weeks at most, then move on. She never truly felt like she could settle, like she could belong anywhere.
  
  And this was now her life. To find the last tree of her people, and seek to understand what her place was in this world, why she alone was the survivor of the Elon.