Rowan Gormleigh

Full Name: Rowan Ethyll Magdalena Gormleigh
Age: 15 (15 at creation)
Race: Human
Birthplace: Emyr, An-Yneaith, D'hennex, Earth
Status: Active
Faction: Power Wielder Hero, Tier 3 (10,000 ~ 100,000 PL)
IRL Years of Existence: 0 (Approved August 7th, 2007)

Fighting Style

Rowan is not really even a fighter, at all, though if she really had to, she could probably give a surprise bruise to somebody's face if they cornered her. Rather, Rowan is an extraordinarily imaginative writer with a magical scroll that imposes her scripture upon reality. She tends to tail would-be heroes around, following their adventures and recording them, while getting unintentionally sucked into the emotion of the tale, resulting in embellishment on the hero's behalf, which ends up significantly boosting their odds in combat. Because of how subtle the scroll magic is, those she follows never realize they were helped by an outside source.

Biography

For much of her short life, Rowan Gormleigh studied to follow in the footsteps of her father, Baen Gormleigh, who is the An-Yneaithan Royal Court's Master of Records to King Irai Maoirilian. She has been charged with memorizing as much of An-Yneaith's knowledge as possible, by way of the voluminous Annyrian Royal Archive. Much of her childhood has been spent poring over great tomes of this and that. However, despite her father's wishes and the advice of his peers, Rowan diverted her studies from the tedium of history textbooks, crafting codexes, and other encyclopedic materials to the impressive store of great D'hennexian myths and legends.

Night after night, she read herself into sleepy dreams of amazing warriors and powerful wizards; of technological terrors, and unliving travesties; of creatures she had never dared to imagine, before; of love, courage, and compassion. None of it had much basis in proveable fact, but in Rowan's mind, it was all true, and she secretly wished she could meet all the heroes of her stories and go with them on their adventures. It never occurred to her how useless she'd be -- friendship defeated such petty assessments of people. Soon, she was writing her own stories -- in the first ones, she'd even written herself in, until she matured beyond that stage -- that became the buzz of the nobility, especially amongst the noble children, to whom she handed copies out freely. Youths became enchanted in her literature, and suddenly wanted to read, though reading and writing had been mostly learned for them merely for sake of requirement, previously. Of course, the Archive was not open to most young nobility, and many nobles discouraged their children from sullying their brains with "fantastic nonsense", so Rowan had to secretly slip out scrolls and small books for her closer friends. There were so very many of them inside; why should those old librarians ever miss one or two?

One day, Baen called Rowan to him. Almost certain that she had been caught at her game, she went to her father dragging her feet and hanging her head, fearing that perhaps she'd be locked inside the Archive for a week, or until she could dictate the entirety of some inexorably boring text to her father. However, Baen was not upset with his child, though his features were serious. He did not seem to know about the missing stories. Instead, he presented her with an unusual roll of parchment, which was decorated, perhaps, more than any piece of paper she'd ever seen in her life. The pins were made of varnished maple, and had golden trimming. The sides of the parchment were also inlined with gold trim, the fabric was suprisingly bright, and inside of it, Rowan could swear she saw very faint lettering in some alphabet she'd never studied -- and that was saying something. "The Scroll of the Untold," Baen called it, a family heirloom of subtle, but incredible power. One of them was created for each member when they came of particular age.

Rowan suddenly remembered that it had been her 13th birthday.

For now on, Baen told her, she would need to learn to keep secrets. He said she would come to eventually understand why, as well as the important burden their family carried. He told her to never lose the Scroll, or to let it become damaged. As the future Mistress of Records, Rowan was unwittingly fated to become a literal shaper of history itself.

The next year's regimen kept Rowan unwittingly away from spreading Archive literature to her friends. She was schooled on a daily basis from her father, who taught her the nature of the Scroll; that it was a living thing, like time itself. He taught her how to talk to it through writing, how the more she wrote in it, the more it would adapt to her and make itself at her use. He taught her how the scroll loved a good story as much as she did, and how it would write things as they occurred ... and if she formed a close enough bond to it, how she could help it write events, and thereby actually change how they were to occur.

As each new facet of her precious gift was revealed, she began to add the pieces of evidence together, in her mind. Though her dad refused to tell her just yet what the great burden of her family line was, and how the Scroll was connected to it, she had begun to make assumptions. Blame it on the tales of mystery; Rowan was forced to consider that her father was being made to use the Scroll's powers at the behest of the King. She always believed her father was a good man, incapable of intentionally twisting the world around him to evil ends. However, in her pure and naive state of mind, even a small deception and manipulation was a black lie. If it was her lot to disguise fibs and conceal truths, she would abandon it and all that came with it to find a better solution. There was always a better solution -- this was how happy endings were granted.

And so, one night, after she figured she had learned as much about her Scroll as she needed to, she confided to only her older brother, Ganzys, that she was disgusted with the politics of nobility, and was going to live a greater, more honorable life. She told him she was going to write her own story, now, and that she could not do so honestly without actually taking the trip. The older one, an adult, worried greatly for his beloved sister, but understood why she rebelled; he had done so, as well, forfeited his Scroll entirely and joined the Trolls. Their father would be unmistakably furious, but there would be little he could do to stop her. Between her Scroll and her beaming personality, she could hide anywhere, and still live extraordinary adventures. So, after sneaking Rowan a small suit of used leather armor and a sword (which she didn't think she needed), she bade her farewell, and hoped to see her again soon, alive and unharmed.