Anja of the Inner Iron's page

About Anja of the Inner Iron

Appearance

Height: 5’7”, Weight: 130 lbs, Age: 19, Hair: Brown, short, curly, and often matted, Skin Color: Between pale and tan, with multiple bruises and scars.
Clothing: Minimal leather harness to show off scars, leather and hide bracers and boots.
Distinctive Marks: Back tattooed with the script of the third poem of the Gorumskagat.
Portrait: Here!

Background

Gorum had seen fit to bless her, and the wolf’s bite looked to be healing; there was only a small disk of red around the punctures, and her leg’s flesh felt less hard than it did the night before. Anja shut her eyes against the bright light in the clearing she’d set her small camp in the night before. It was approaching noon, and she’d need to move again soon to find food, but instead, she took a few moments to trace the scars she’d earned in the pit.

She’d loved the pit. The burning of fingernails scratching at her back. The ringing in her ears from a fist bouncing off her skull. The mud slipping between her toes and fingers and covering her body in slick wetness as she struggled for purchase. And the silence that descended whenever she passed out from too much, or when she was the last pupil standing. From the time her tribe had left her with the Gorumite during her fifth winter, the pit had been a mother to her. She’d been born from its womb a hundred times, each time forged hotter, tempered more, and sharpened to a better edge than the time before.

If the pit was her mother, than the Gorumite was her father and the Cult of Inner Iron her brothers and sisters. They’d ate together, each day after the pit, while the Gorumite extolled the forge of battle, the hammer of pain, and the sharp edge of their wills to fight. He’d been a harsh father. Never satisfied with a son or daughter’s victory in the pit. Always demanding more. Turning his children against each other, then bringing them back together only to tear them apart again. She hated the Gorumite for his anger and his stubbornness, but loved him for how strong he’d made her. How tough.

When the Gorumite lost his battle with sickness, most of the pupils and disciples he’d forged took it as a rebuke of his creed. They scattered to the winds, and before long, the last of the Inner Iron had left. Anja set forth to the south and east, wandering with the last of the Gorumite’s possessions the others hadn’t taken. There, she’d found the forest she was now trying to escape, and the wolf who’d given her her most recent set of soon-to-be scars.

She picked herself up. Her leg flared in the pain of protest, but she stood on it, not favoring it. She savored the pain as she packed up her bedroll and ate the last of her salted venison. It was going to be a fight to make it out of the woods, but she’d been fighting since she could remember. Anja slung her pack over her back and started walking toward the rising sun, aiming slightly left of it, toward the north.

Personality

Anja is quietly confident. Instead of bragging about her fights in the pit, she simply wears her battle harness, exposing her scars for all to see. Instead of trying to intimidate with threats, she carries herself with a self-assured look. She feels she has a lot to be confident about. None of the people she’s met so far have proven themselves as many times over as she has, outside of her fellow disciples in the Cult of Inner Iron. She knows that she doesn’t know much about the world beyond the Cult’s old hideout on the border of Brevoy and Numeria, but she doesn’t care. Knowing things is someone else’s job.