“Love will find you by the first Oathday
in the 4th month. I know this by the
positioning of the seventh star of the
Eternal Rose’s lovers in the house of the
Hunter. And the Harrow cards. See here?
The Unicorn is aligned in the present
alongside the Dance and the Marriage
card, indicating the same thing. As
for your dream...well, it doesn’t take
a diviner to interpret something that
lucid. I wish my dreams were as simple.
And as entertaining.”
—a fortune told by Eilinica Ziorec
by a campfire under the open sky.
Background: Eilinica Ziorec (EYE-lin-UH-cuh zhor-REK) left the
squalor of the Shingles for the open road as soon as she learned
to take care of herself. A native-born of the Wild Frontier Region,
she traveled with the caravans of her people for several years,
winding north into the Frigid Viking Homeland and as far east as
her ancestral home of the Immortal Principality. Along the way,
she also joined the faith of the Goddess of Dreams as a healer and
protector, making the road much safer for her friends and allies. In
this capacity, she also became something of a fortuneteller, helping
her fellow travelers interpret their dreams and performing the
occasional Harrow reading.
Before leaving home, Eilinica’s grandmother gave her a distinctive
scarf known as a kapenia—a badge of honor usually denoting a
child’s coming of age. Eilinica’s scarf bears elaborate embroidery
denoting her family’s entire genealogy. She counts it among her
most prized possessions and has used it to guide her travels over
the years, retracing her roots by visiting each deceased relative’s
grave in order to honor them. Since her people travel wide and
often, these journeys have taken up much of her young adulthood,
but she cherishes every moment, enjoying the friends she makes
and the sites she’s seen.
One such trip enabled her to meet the Professor. While wintering
in Raven, they struck up a fast friendship, regaling one another
with tales of their adventures. The Professor often asked Eilinica
to deliver missives to his friends or procure samples of various
wildflowers or other reagents he wished to examine for his studies.
Eilinica never accepted payment for these services, enjoying the
thrill of the road and the sharing of new stories with the Professor
more than anything else.
Physical Description: Eilinica dresses in the festive colors of all
her people, favoring orange, green, and violet to denote her life as
a wandering priest of the Goddess of Dreams. She also wears her
kapenia, draping it around her neck to ward off the cold or store
various small items in the concealed pockets of its lining. Eilinica’s
hair is dark and curly and her face bears the somewhat ruddy
complexion of her people. She stands 5-feet, 7-inches tall and
weighs about 140 pounds. An artistic tattoo of a dazzling butterfly
swarm runs from her shoulder down her right arm and all the way
to the back of her wrist.
Personality: Eilinica relishes her freedom, never really at peace
unless undertaking another journey somewhere interesting or
important. She’s exceptionally friendly and outgoing, but has
a sixth sense for reading others when they’re inclined to make
trouble, giving them a wide berth unless backed into a corner.
She takes omens and fortunetelling very seriously, believing her
goddess makes her will known through patterns in the stars, the
interpretation of dreams, or the reading of her Harrow cards. She
scoffs at anyone who calls these things superstitious.
Roleplaying Ideas
• Eilinica keeps an elaborate star chart on a huge piece
of parchment, which she consults every night while
stargazing. When traveling, she folds it into a tight bundle
and stores it in one of the many pockets of her kapenia.
• Those traveling with Eilinica always become her adopted
family. She cares and looks after them as efficiently (and
sometimes annoyingly) as a mother hen, a habit she picked
up from watching after the many children among the
colorful caravans of her people.
• Eilinica suffers from recurring nightmares related to an
ancestor on her father’s side of the family, always imagining
him as a wolf or similar beast stalking her in the wilds of
the Immortal Principality. These dreams become more
prominent the closer she comes to a location marked in her
family genealogy as the resting place of the same ancestor
from her dreams.
• One of the reasons Eilinica left home at such an early age was
because her father had already made plans to marry her off
to a thug to curry his gang’s favor and protection. She has
no desire to settle down yet, and especially not to an active
criminal in the slums of the largest city of her homeland.
