Kaya
Torch Secretary
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Written Backstory
In central Romanorum is a small halfling commune, providing a small portion of crops and trade goods to the Empire in taxes. Each of the families are well known in the commune for their major trade; be it farming, construction, or textile production and the like. One family is best known not only for their trade in for producing works of art, but also for the messy and disheveled home they keep, the Fairywish family. The fairywish family home has random additions jutting out from all sides, using different materials, making a large but terribly chaotic looking building. Multiple generations of the Fairywish family live here, each family member devoting themselves to whatever strange mood or divine inspiration stikes them towards their next work of art; that is every family member except Kaya. Kaya Fairywish is a girl that likes things neat, clean, and organized. From a young age in the Fairywish household she would sweep, sort, and keep her personal area of the house as segregated from the others a possible, just to keep the mess that is her home from spilling in a little while longer. Never showing interest in the arts of her family, she was urged to visit the other families in town with the thought that she might marry into one of them with a profession she cared for more. The Fairywish family motto is “free spirit” and were more than happy to let Kaya off to do as she liked. The home she ended up visiting the most was old lady Carol, a retired widow with no children of her own, who's adventurer husband succumbed to the curse inflicted upon him during his last adventure. There she was taught the basics of cooking, cleaning, and basic homemaking. While Kaya was around 7, a halfling noble from Iulus visited as he did every year. This noble was originally from the halfling commune, and even after leaving town as a merchant and becoming a noble after securing a great contract for the Empire, he still visited the town he grew up in and supported his family. The noble visited this time looking for anyone that wished to leave town, as his new mansion in Iulus was finioshed and he needed maids and butlers to keep it clean. Kaya's eyes sparkled at the idea, but the noble considered her to young to come on her own, even with the Fairywish motto on “free spirit”. Old lady Carol came to Kaya's rescue and was willing to train Kaya as an apprentice maid, to which the noble agreed. One other girl joined the party, a young adult named Tia, who was looking to move to the big city and meet her future marriage partner. Kaya spent the next several years in the noble's mansion not only cooking and cleaning, but started helping the noble with paperwork, filing, and organization. She loved the days she would prune, trim, and weed the garden especially making the rose bushes look pretty. Latly, as a maid to a noble house, she was taught the manners and languages necessary to operate in high society. Due to her young age and love of all of the subjects, she learned an immense amount and took to it all easily. As with most halflings, Kaya was gifted with the ability to commune with some small animals, in her case birds, and enjoyed some mornings listening and chatting with them, even occasionally asking them to do small favours for her, like deliver letters back home. Tragedy struck during her teenage years however, as agents of the shadow attacked the nobleman's mansion one night. The nobleman was known to sponsor and support The Torches, and it seemed he drew the ire of those Shadow-aligned. A few days had passed after Tia had gotten married and moved out of the mansion and into her partner's home, leaving things out of place, and open to attack as it would seem. In a flash, any of The Shadow's agents were upon the mansion, killing and destroying all they could find. It was unfortunate that the noble himself was killed during the raid. Kaya was hiding in her room, desperately hoping to not be found, Old lady Carol came into the room to comfort Kaya and convince her to hide some place, but alas a would-be assassin bursts into the room. Old lady Carol stood between the Shadow's man and Kaya, brandishing a kitchen knife and demanded he leave them alone. Scoffing at the old lady the assassin charged, only to be surprised that the old lady had apparently been taught some self defense by her late adventurer husband. The deadly duel ended in a draw as old lady Carol slew the assassin, but the cuts she received from his blade would soon take her life. Torch agents responded to the shadow's invasion and defeated the remaining agents in the mansion, but were to late to save anyone but Kaya. With the halfling noble dead and nowhere else to go, The Torches offer to take Kaya in or to send her back to her family. Kaya asks to join The Torches so she might be able to protect others like Old Lady Carol so bravely protected her. Being halfling Kaya is short, and even more so she is quite baby-faced, so it was common for others to take her for a young child rather than a young adult. Even if she got known to be a halfling, the surname Fairywish sounds so flighty and silly that few would take her seriously. To combat this and change herself, Kaya wears glasses and ties her hair into a tight bun, making even her short self look a little more mature; and she keeps her surname as secret as possible introducing herself as just “Kaya”. Over the next years, Kaya is trained as a torch agent, practicing to stand front and center to defend others. The Torches train their agents in many aspects of combat including leadership, martial might, subterfuge, and even magic. Unfortunately for Kaya, even though some of her family had some magical ability, it seemed she lacked any talent for the art. To compensate, Kaya was sent to hone her spirit with some Monks. She learned skills to enhance her body's endurance and speed, even sending Ki to her eyes to gain temporary darkvision. Kaya also practiced with bandages, salves, and other first aid to stop her allies from bleeding out (like Old lady Carol did) if the enemies happen to get by her. Not even Kaya's skills as a maid went underutilized as she was able to help clean and organize the base, with a small amount off gardening to liven up the place. When it came time to fill out documents and paperwork, Kaya truly shined, making all of her reports easy to read and use. The Torches started calling her “The Torch Secretary” due to her serious attitude, smart looking dress, and her work; being commonly stationed at the base filing paperwork and organizing meetings for the higher-ups. Some of the torch leadership started to worry about Kaya's future, while she was an excellent secretary, she was a young and unmarried woman and The Torches didn't want to waste her potential behind the main base's desk. It was decided she would act as torchlord to the Harad Torch Base, a base that had constantly under performed and was a general mess. Hopefully under her strict watch she could straighten the place up and maybe meet a Torch or local to tie her down and help make her happy. Most of their plan worked, in a few short years the Harad base was brought up not just to working condition, but became a central Torch hub for the entire region. Kaya's office was almost totally ulilitarian, with sconces and candles to provide light, bookshelves on useful and relevant topics, and mountains of paperwork that she somehow clears daily. The only item of decoration is a small bonsai tree that sits upon her desk, immaculately trimmed. However she had no luck on the romance front as she spent a long time weeding out corrupt Torches and merchants from the base, as well as becoming a bit feared by her co-workers in ther Torches as the strict Secretary, not the best conditions for finding a partner. In addition, Kaya had a preference for tall strong men, swarthy fighters like humans and orcs, most of whom wouldn't look twice at the shortstack Kaya. Kaya's work had recently been in helping decipher the shadowspeak language, studying both the written form from any intercepted documents, and the spoken from from captured fetchlings and magical recordings. With her training in most, if not all, spoken languages across Arda, she was expected to make great strides. She was making okay progress, but it felt once she solved one part of the code, another filled back in. Zelt was in Magnos when he made the discovery of using a loop to magnify and isolate pieces of text, as well as stealing a voicebox to mimic shadowspeak. Kaya was glad the matter was resolved, but embarrassed that she wasn't the one to solve it. Now The Torches have a new assignment for Kaya, instead of cleaning up an existing Torch Base, assisting in the construction of a brand new base in Morgrad. The Torches have been looking for a foothold to both Nothern Rian as well as Khazad-Mor and recently sent new Torchlord Gra-Gore on expedition to set up the outpost. However, while they believe Gra-Gore to desire to so what is right and help fight the Shadow, as well as his past accomplishments making him deserving of Torchlord status, the high ranking officials are not blind to Gra-Gore's eccentricities. They deemed that sending the great Secretary of the Torches as his second-in-command would help hold the place together, as well as giving her another shot at meeting someone who would be good for her. Preparing to leave, Kaya requested a fighter to join her trek, as traveling alone is dangerous, and to become an extra strength for the new base. Her many years of working and politicking gave her many connections to make the request through and surprisingly her one-off request from the Shadow Assassins was approved, sending Fajr, the Cursed Archer, to assist her for as long as he is willing. Now, Kaya a Fajr are flying into Morgrad to meet with Gra-Gore and open the next chapter.See Also
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