Abby Ayers

Abby had enjoyed the idyllic life of an isolated upbringing, those of her kind caring little for the political machinations of the more numerous races occupying much of the known world and their incessant need to fight each other for inane reasons. Instead, they had carved themselves an existence in an area mostly untouched by these foreigners, noting its lack of strategic importance, deficiency of natural resources or enough farmable terrain to warrant investment, and profound challenges to reach it. It was centrally located within the Imperium’s borders, however, and it was not impossible to find for lone travelers or small caravans, which inevitably entailed visits by officials looking to collect their dues on property taxation.

Given their lack of extensive resources or rare materials to trade and limited land to work with, much if not all of their generated products were used internally to maintain their way of life. When this was explained, on multiple occasions to these collectors, they simply did not care and threatened to level their town if they did not meet the Imperium’s demands. This did not endear them to much of the populace, who had to then turn to other professions to make ends meet, and after some years of economic turmoil, a new stable status quo was formed within their community, and everything went back to normal with a little bit more animosity than before. Abby, having witnessed all this at a young age, had vowed to find a way to make enough money that her village could return to the way things used to be.

To such ends, she became an Apothecary by trade, treating ailments both common and severe by mixing her knowledge of plants with a dash of light magic to create remedies. More accurately, it was a front for her ulterior profession: that of a trafficker. While she certainly was a proficient healer, her place of business in the small town of Arioledo limited her customer base significantly. Its location in a narrow clearing surrounded by an oppressively thick and subsequently mostly unmapped forest, with only one road in and one road out, was only frequented by travelers attempting to avoid the Imperium’s highways for… various reasons. It was for these… reasons that they never stayed long, were always in a hurry, and were not of the friendliest variety. None of these monikers lent themselves well to a healer’s chosen vocation, but they typically did require other services rendered. Services like leaving nondescript packages in concealed places for someone else to pick up at a later date. Services that worked against the Imperium’s stability and interests.

Abby had a mostly unused clinic with a mostly empty storage underneath. For more volatile packages, she also possessed the only map of the surrounding area, having ventured within the forest daily for, ostensibly, collection of roots, berries, and leaves for her potions. She had found hiding places there that would be impossible to locate without a map while being shielded from inclement weather conditions thanks to the thick canopy overhead.

She did not ask any more about the packages other than how dangerous they were and when someone would be coming by to pick them up. The money was good, but not good enough to store, say, explosive contents in her own basement. All of her profits were laundered through her clinic and written off as healing calls, which were conveniently lacking in a paper trail for the Imperium’s auditors. So long as she paid her taxes on most of her dealings, the tax collectors received enough money to leave her, and her town, alone, even if they were suspicious of her remarkably busy clinic compared to her isolated locale. They received their cut, and everyone looked the other way.

Despite her frequent dealings with shady customers, Abby was well protected. One did not kill the carrier pigeon after all when it would someday be needed again. Her town, and her forest, were neutral grounds, even if the packages came from opposing sides. They knew well enough that they would lose this convenient in-between if they brought their conflict here. That did not stop them from staring daggers at each other in the local tavern. These interactions kept Abby appraised of the situations evolving outside of her secluded world, and she could plan her drop-offs and storage sites with greater accuracy. She was neutral ground, but that was no reason to store the packages of two opposing forces in the same place. That was simply asking for trouble.

There was some merit to the statement that racism was prevalent among her kind. They would all vehemently deny this accusation, of course. They were not racist. They were merely opposed to the inclusion of other races in their culture. Totally different. And to be fair, they had reasonably good excuses for such an attitude. Nestled between two warring factions, their town, while being strategically unimportant, did contain a population. And population meant taxation. Typically, by both sides. The thing about small towns is that they do not produce a terribly large amount of wealth, and so they become locked in an eternal struggle to meet twice the demand with half the supply. For that reason, they despised outsiders and ensured that they knew they were not welcome whenever they passed through.

The inevitable anomaly that exists within all radicalized societies found its way in through that of a little girl by the name of Abby. Too young to understand politics, taxation, or war, she desired only to help others. Many of the travelers that came through her town looked bedraggled, exhausted, and occasionally injured, yet none of her own people came out to help them. Even her parents had told her to stay away. But that was not going to stop Abby, not when she was fostering a Light class of magic deep within her small body. The best way to train was to use it to heal, to reenergize, to offer boons. So, from a young age, Abby defied the system and sought to heal the travelers, frequently meeting them beyond the town’s borders and within the thick adjacent forest that rose from all sides, despite her fear of them. As it were, she was not allowed in there either.

These excursions became her life. Friends could not be trusted to keep her secret. Her family did not know. To the town she was simply another girl, perhaps more of the quiet reserved type that kept to herself, but completed all her assigned chores, schoolwork, and then disappeared for hours on end to play. It was nothing unusual for one of her age. Instead, she became adept at herbalism to compliment her healing, began to fall in love with wild blueberries, and kept herself lean and fit with as much running and stealth was required to make the trips back and forth to town.

It could be said that she was not a selfless healer, and they would be correct. By healing she was growing stronger, and by listening to the travelers talk of the world outside of her home, she was growing more mature. Her childhood was quickly left behind as she discovered the real reason her town struggled. Why these travelers came the way they did. What was going on beyond the great forest surrounding her. Who these factions were. And, despite her rebellious nature, she did love her parents, and she did love her people. It did not take long to put two and two together and realize that she could turn a profit for her town with her healing, rather than handing it out for free on the side of the road.

There was great opposition to the idea, both from her parents and the community, believing that if they helped these people, they would just keep coming back. She argued that they would come back regardless, and her healing was unlikely to generate much income anyway since most of them refused her service, wary of ulterior motives or coercion to harm by the opposing side. Her stance to help others ostracized her from her own society, to an extent. She did not care. She opened the clinic anyway, at the edge of town along the road, and went to work.
It was as she expected. She made enough money to cover the monetary contributions of her family to the town’s coffer, something that finally broke a year long cold shoulder and rekindled their relationship. The feeling was mutual, and not simply about the coin. She conceded that she, in truth, did feel dirty helping those who did nothing but take from them, but reasoned that by charging them for healing, she was taking the money right back. It was a unique cyclical system that persisted for a couple of years until she found another way to take even more coin off of the weary travelers and charge them for it too.

Thus began her present career as a smuggler. Trafficker? Storage Depot? Whatever moniker she wished to use was irrelevant. They would pay her to hold a package, their time spent in her office assumed to be medically related, and she would hold the package until their designated person came to retrieve it. The system was flawless, her position neutral to both sides, and she turned such a tidy profit that the entire town was able to make their payments without nearly as much burden. She, for her part, sat back with a devilish grin on her face when no one was looking. The collectors that came were merely recovering their own coin, and all she had to do was hide boxes. When they came to collect, she had to make herself scarce, or risk openly laughing to their faces.

As her little empire grew, so did her confidence. She knew how invaluable she was, and how her ground staying neutral was beneficial to both sides. These realizations only emboldened her, causing her to take a lofty stand during negotiations. They could complain, and they could squirm, but she was in charge of the discussion. She was occasionally threatened, but a lone traveler deep within a town full of her own people, who were always looking for any reason to get into a brawl with outsiders, thought better of it shortly after.

Abby, for her part, became a little arrogant, although she tempered it well with a healthy dose of sarcasm. She always kept a smile on her face and remained one of the more jovial personalities to be around. Given her business ventures, she was a smooth talker, and could talk anyone into buying her a drink, if she drank anyway. Inebriation was bad for business, and so she wrote off alcohol long ago. Unfortunately, she never got over her fear of the forest. Of the dark. Of losing control of a situation and being unable to rectify it with her own talents and strengths. She was a lone cat, queen of her domain, and her current business alleviated such concerns entirely.