Salvia Hardheart's page

About Salvia Hardheart

Ten winters ago, eight-year-old Salvia and her twelve-year-old brother, Dalen, were found burrowed into the side of a hill. The children were starving and freezing to death. Fortunately, a kind and generous farmer found them. Dalen quickly adapted to life on the farm, endearing himself to the farmer and his wife. Slavia, however, was tormented by nightmares and unwilling to submit to the household’s rules and routines. She soon became a chronic run-away. Only Dalen could ever find her, usually in the woods, in a make-shift shelter.

The local community of Haldren intervened from time to time, doing their best to keep the girl from harm. But Salvia was not easy. She picked fights with peers and stole food, coins and unattended trinkets. As a result, by the time she had reached her 15th birthday, she had worn out her welcome with five different Heldren families. Dalen took the last name of his adoptive family, but Salvia proudly adopted a back-handed nickname given to her by the townsfolk: Salvia Hardheart.

Through the years, Salvia’s nightmares grew worse. In them, she relives her parents’ and another sibliing’s (a girl’s) deaths again and again, at the hands of a winter witch. Frogs fall from the sky, black tentacles grab her mother, and her father’s face erupts in festering blisters. Then the temperature drops. After both her parents are entombed in ice, the witch turns on the children. Though Salvia runs and runs, she can not escape the evil witch. Rays of freezing air and ice slice through her eyeballs, her nostrils, her mouth. As she begins to freeze from the inside out, the witch's cackle rises to ear-splitting decibels, and Salvia wakes up screaming. For hours afterward, Salvia is convinced that the witch is nearby, ready to attack again without warning.

Dalen, although desperate to help his sister, insists that the events of her nightmares never happened. There never was another sibling named Frayla, two years older than Salvia. In Dalen’s memory, their father –an adventurer—simply left home one day and never came back. Their mother struggled for a while, but eventually could not pay rent, and the family ended up on the streets of Cassomir, penniless. Unfortunately, Their mother simply starved to death, because she gave every morsel of food to her children.

When Dalen turned 20, he married his long-time girlfriend, Lena, the oldest daughter of a local woodcutter. The couple purchased a small farmstead and invited Salvia to live with them. So, for the last few years, Salvia has been living in a house, in relative peace, with her brother and sister-in-law. A year ago, shortly after Lena gave birth to their first child, Salvia landed a job at the local tavern. She's doing well there, and hasn't pissed off any customers yet.

Salvia is saving money, buying things and sticking them in a backpack. She's also been taking swordplay lessons from the son of a blacksmith. Her stated plan is to assemble adventuring gear and leave Haldren to make her way in the world as a security guard for one of the halfling caravans that comes through town from time to time. She tells everyone that she wants to travel, see the world. Secretly, she has no interest in caravans or travel. Her plan is to trek north to hunt down her parents’ murderer before the witch comes back to kill her, or worse…goes after those she loves most: Dalen, Lena and precious little Dalen Jr.