Madam Chourien

An old Tsarinate myth, Madam Chourien is said to live in the shadowed and snow-smothered forests outside of where much of the population of the lives. She makes her living providing potions and tinctures to lost travelers, while protecting her land and home with rather cruel tricks as the legends go.

Her story starts somewhere within the creation of the Tsarinate, amidst the conflict of the War of the Wyrms as so many myths of this ilk start, as people are fleeing in every which direction. Chourien had set out with her family, leaving a destroyed home behind, and wound up in the Brumel as had so many others. It was cold and bare, and none thought they'd survive for long, least of all the family Chourien. They had exhausted what meager food supplies they'd had just getting there but now had nothing. The Brui had yet to come to the aid of the refugees, still unsure of the reason for their invasion of the area.

The Chourien family would have to find aid elsewhere for now and did so in a minor noble, a lady, who took a liking to the peasants. More specifically, she took a liking to the young Chourien. The noble, taught in social graces, didn't leap for the young woman, instead attempting to buy her affections with gifts of jewelry and lessons as befitting a noble. Most importantly, she leveraged the aid given to the young Chourien's family to ingratiate herself. It was a slow process, which frustrated the noble as she was not used to being denied in her affections, and certainly not by someone of so low of birth. They always were entranced by the glossy sheen of gold and cooked meats.

The young lady Chourien, however, was only motivated by the health of her family. Her parents and siblings. She likely would have simply accepted the nobles advances had she known about them before the noble grew so frustrated that she decided to change her strategy. Now she would pry her gifts away, to try and remind the young Chourien of what was at stake. First were the lessons and gifts that had been given to Chourien herself. The removal of who did not motivate her, for she did not care. Next came her family's source of food, and then their shelter, which drove her to action. She had not come to expect the noble's gifts, and as such did not beg or cry. She simply moved on, looking for any way to warm and feed her family.

This enraged the noble, who felt she had been slighted and robbed. It would not do to simply let the Chourien family just walk away, now they needed be punished. The young Chourien at least, but the noble now knew the best way to hurt her was to hurt her family. In short order, the family lost what jobs it had scraped out and found themselves turned out of their tent into the snow. The father of the family fell ill, and the mother had to care for him, meaning she could not work to provide for the rest of the children. They were still hale and hearty, if underfed, so they set out to provide. While her siblings found jobs as laborers trying to scrape out a field in the ice or builders trying to set up some sort of perminent lodging, the lessons that the youngest Chourien had recieved came into play.

Age

Unknown exactly, but several thousand years old

Sex

Female

Eyes

Purple (supposedly)

Hair

Blonde (supposedly)

Those that fall under hard times are often advised to wander into the forests of the Tsarinate in the hopes of finding the Madams hut and her taking pitty upon them to help.

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While most of her legends paint her as a trickster as opposed to powerful, she's also regardedly as incredly magically potent and it's not uncommon to find the remains of large scale magical duels in he middle of the Silberwald, though who or what these scars in the forest are attributed to vary widely between observers.

She had learned to do magic while under the nobles toutelage, or at least the outline of how to do magic, and she put those ideas to immediate use. She made charms and protectives for the less fortunates of the encampments they found themselves in, earning both money and their own protection as people began to see her as a valuable member of the community. with each charm she carved, binding her magic to it, her power grew and her understanding expanded. Soon it was her name, not simply the 'Chourien Girl' that people sought out for magic spells, but it was a development that only drove the noble to greater heights of anger. Now she truly was attempting to harm the Chourien family.
The youngest Chourien had done a great deal of maturing in her time as a shamman of sorts, and now she knew that she was the one endangering her family with her presence. She had no shortage of power or support within the camp, but she did not seek conflict. She simply wanted her family to be safe, and to fight the noble who pursued her would simply put them in greater danger. So she spent on last night with her family, told them of what she intended and gave them each powerful charms, and left for the forest the next morning.
Of course, she was no fool, she knew that her family was still in danger as long as the noble still pursued her. The noble would try to draw her out by any means, and so she put her plan into motion. The forest was full of arcane ingredients so deep in, untouched by man. She gathered them together, planting a garden so rich that none could match it on her half of the world, and set a cauldron to a boil. First, she crafted the animals of the forest into guardians. Crows to report to her, wolves to protect her. Other things that were her products alone, and all who have seen them have not returned to tell others of their visage or power. Once she was done, her crows spoke of the nobles soldiers entering the forest.
Perfect. Now retribution could be enacted.
With her soldiers dissappearing in the forest, the noble grew uneasy. Erratic and concerned. Chourien's next spell would lean on that. She wove a nightmare from the steam and smoke of her cauldron, a nightmare that would plague the noble until the end of her days, and yet it offered amnesty. A freedom from the nightmare if she would simply come into the forest by herself. If she came with guards, the nightmare would root itself so deeply that not even Chourien would be able to retrieve it.
No on knows what the noble saw in those nightmares, or if they do they dare not speak of it, but the noble did not last a night before she saddled her own horse and rode into the forest, tears streaming down her face as she went. It's said that her tears were so warm that they thawed the fields as she rode, providing the refugees with their first harvest.
Then she vanished into the woods, never to be seen again. More than a few differing versions exist of what happened to that noble. Perhaps Chourien killed her for the heartache she had caused. Others say she never could stop riding. A curse designed to forever hold her in Chourien's sway. The fate of the noble in the story is often the telling moral of whoever is recounting the tale, and is one ofthe largest departures between storytellers. Is Chourien a vengeful sort of witch, who simply was bidding her time until the wrongs commited against her can be righted, or is she a helpful soul who will firgive all transgressions if the proper respect is shown?
The tales of Madam Chouriens exploits are expansive and wide ranging after her battle with the noble, painting her in every which manner and providing all sorts of lessons to children. Parents across the Tsarinate like to make reference to her with regularity.