Born deep within the region of Yamalundi, Midha chafed at even the youngest age against the restrictive limitations of life under the Department of Distribution. As a child, much of the blame for this was placed on her bloodline - after all, the air is unrestrained, fickle and unpredictable, unable to be grasped or held by mortal hands nor the things they construct, unlike even the rushing waters which could be dammed and tunneled and stored in bottles and flasks and bags. Or perhaps it was a subconscious rage against being born in a society so deep underground, so far from the element that infused her blood, and that discord and discomfort urged her to strife. Perhaps it had nothing to do with her heritage at all, but that simply she was born with a free spirit that could not and would not thrive silently in her expected place in the order of Society.
Her rebelliousness persisted through her youth and teenage years, to the point where her parents enlisted the aid of teachers, instructors, officers, and doctors all in attempt to secure some manner of behavioral conditioning before she reached adulthood. Midha was tested, put through countless special classes, subjected to medical and magical influences, and at the last subjected to punishment - from simple restrictive therapy to eventually accelerating physical harm - all without seemingly any positive effect in her behavior. She continued, no matter what was done, to continue to rage and rebel against the expectations and demands of her as she neared the time she was to Take Her Place.
As she neared adulthood, though, a climactic event changed her life forever. Queen Yama's thirty-nine handmaidens, once bound together in perfect symphony, suddenly tore loose of their empress and rebelled. And in their wake, in the preachings of the so-called Mad Prophetesses, Midha found what she had sought through all those years thought to be simple childhood rebellion: Freedom. And to her, now suddenly everything made perfect sense. After all, these thirty-nine women, for all these years, had served ceaselessly at Queen Yama's side, her ever-present echoes, her own personal choir. Yet the moment they were loosed from her, they did not continue to sing her praises, but rather quite the opposite - began to speak against her immediately, preaching the reverse of everything Yamalund had ever taught its people.
To Midha, this could mean nothing more than that Queen Yama had bound these women under her control unwillingly, controlling them like puppets, mere extensions of herself rather than equals with a united purpose. And really, were any of Yamalund's people any different? Were they not but pieces of the puzzle, cogs within the machine, components of the body? Her people were naught but tools, designed and assigned to complete a task without thought or question, simply to act under the command of the mind - of Queen Yama, the only one in the whole mountains truly free to act of her own accord.
But now, a new option had been revealed, and in the words of the mad Midha at last found sanity. She fled her home, departing unseen and without word to her family, and followed others drawn by the words of the Prophetesses to a newly-claimed land, a place where one's fate rested in no hands but their own: Desecrate. There, unaided by an overshadowing Mother Government, she struggled and toiled to carve out a life for herself, for the first time on her own. The years were harsh, the work was hard, but every effort was her own and every success the result of nothing but her own two hands and the endless capability of her mind. She even taught herself magic, buying with coin earned from her own labor an old used spellbook from a traveling merchant and studying the yellowed text for nights on end until at last she mastered the basics of the arcane.
Midha has lived here for six years, ever since the initial schism between the land of her birth and her new home. She has watched the conflict accelerate, as the doctrines of Freedom in Danger versus Safety in Slavery stood opposed and war loomed on every horizon. Yet fate does not have it in store for her to join that great battle - a new calling, an irresistible impulse, draws her away from the depths of the Girdle and for the first time into the sunlight and open air of lands beyond the endless tunnels below. She knows not where the call will take her, or if the journey will be long or dangerous... but for Midha, that's exactly how she wants it.
