Catyana

Basic Information:
Name: Catyana
Age: 21
Gender: Female
Height: 5’4
Weight: 104 lbs
Build: Wiry, Lissome.
Deity: Not established
Hair: Dark, vibrant red.
Skin: Slightly tanned.
Distinguishing features: Her eyes were absurdly green, and her face and visible skin was largely covered in a thin, faintly adorable sprinkling of freckles. Oddly amongst Bards, she rarely sings and instead opts to play one of the many musical instruments she is proficient with, and has very little in the way of formal knowledge, yet her usual speaking tone was consistent with what one might expect from someone of reasonable standing in Sirandian Society.

Personality:
Catyana was bubbly, cheerful, and incredibly upbeat. That said, she also had a penchant for getting a touch too emotional about things she sincerely cares about. She tends to be very selfless and extremely interested in fairness, eager to help and compensate for the fact that she perceived herself as conventionally useless. As a whole, she seems to be extremely well-intentioned and almost entirely harmless, especially given her apparent abhorrence of violence.

History:
“My past?” Catyana repeats blankly, eyelids fluttering open and closed a few times. Her head tilts off to one side, lower lip pushing out as she grips her chin between her thumb and the first joint of her index finger, other hand idly tapping down against her thigh. Her normally jovial expression and demeanor had darkened somewhat as the topic came up, before she shrugs and giggles, taking a sip of whatever she was drinking.

“It’s not really a comfortable topic, but I’ll give you the run-down I give everybody. I grew up in the slums of Zholan. Never got to know my mom… The midwives couldn’t get me to come out right, and no priest in their right mind would set foot in the slums to heal a harlot in death throes. I’ll spare you the gory details of being an impoverished little girl born into a down-on-her-luck family in a slum populated with brutes and the downtrodden, who simply long for control over something. I learned pretty quickly that the most horrible of drunken louts can be tamed with a good song or two, though, and that hiding from the rest was an excellent idea.” She’d pause here to flash a winsome, cheery grin at her audience.

“I think I was about eight or so when my dad got stabbed fatally in a fight at his favorite hole-in-the-wall place. I like to think I can see the good in everyone, and while I got more than my fair share of drunken batterings, there was a good man under there. He just wanted everyone to be his friend, so he’d work back-breaking jobs by day and would burn his silvers on rounds at the bar.” She pauses here to shrug and sip at her drink, idly gyrating her wrist to allow the liquid to breathe, recounting all of this with the practiced ease of someone who’d told this tale before.
“Still, though. Skill with instruments and tales served me well. A singing and dancing little girl with a sad story and barely a roof over her head..” She swoons dramatically, “Well.. Let’s just say that men lined up to fill my jar with coins.. In sleazy pubs and on filthy streets alike, a bit of music goes a long way to keep spirits high, after all.”

“Fast-forward a couple years here, and you have a young, fresh-faced, innocent little songstress docked at the mighty isle of Siranda!” She gives a flourish of her hands and a giggle, “I saved enough coin to secure myself passage and a tiny little apartment in Ludor when I arrived, and then I repeated that routine for a little while longer, just with much richer patrons sipping honeyed wine instead of inhaling grog. The coin flowed nice and easy into the pockets of yours truly.”

“Skip along another couple of uneventful years or so. I eventually landed myself stable employment at an inn, did some odd jobs during the day, rubbed shoulders with high nobility and royal knights and protectors, all that good stuff. It was a lot of fun, in retrospect. Never went unprotected, since the Inn was a favorite of the city’s countless guards and knights, all of whom loved hearing songs of the victories at Imrithil and Annedhel, and so had nothing but adoration for lil’ ol’ me.”

“Then all this nonsense happened, with the plague and the undead and such. It started off for me like any other night of playing: I was headed to the inn to play for amusement and cheers.. Only to find the doors barricaded. The guards of Ludor seized the place. Told me that a bunch of people were acting strange and all of that good stuff. They eventually relented to let me in, figuring that I could keep spirits high and wouldn’t eat much of the food stockpile. They were right, of course.” She adds after a few seconds of considering.

“They actually had a pretty good thing going for a while: the root cellar of the inn was ideal for growing crops, and there were enough of us who knew how to go out and scavenge that we did quite well for ourselves. We had a priest who kept everyone happy and healthy, and a sorcerer who taught me a few incantations. Nothing too terribly major, though. The knights and guards were capable of dealing with the odd straggling zombie or two that got too close, like so many of you are, I imagine!”

“This lasted for.. Goodness knows how long. Everyone did their part and they did it well, and then one of those little jumpy things hopped up on to the roof and fell through into the fireplace. It made quick work of anyone who tried to get up close and fight it..” She frowned here again, pouting for a few long seconds and considering, “It was like watching men try to battle an extremely deadly housecat. By the time they’d lined up a blow, it was long gone, crawling up their mail and tearing them to shreds.”

“Now the noble and honorable thing to do would have been to fight to the bitter end and try to help the last few deal with the jumping monstrosity. But the most I know about weapons is how messy a broken bottle can be. I might've gotten a few lucky shots with a crossbow if I'd had one, but..." Her lips pursed and twitched this way and that, obviously remorseful at what she'd done.

“So I did what I was good at: escaping. I gathered up some supplies like some of the others who had the same mind and we all bolted while the creature made short work of the last of our fighting force.” She’d take a long pull of her drink before sighing, “Anyway.. I ran for what felt like months. In reality, it was probably just a few weeks of enduring those labyrinthine, creepy woods.”

“Then I saw some people running over toward Kalaram. Too fast to be shamblers, too small to be those huge clawed things that can move at that speed. It took me a while to muster up the courage to approach the city limits: large cities and situations like this rarely bode well, after all. I holed up in a barn for a while, kept the door open and watched and listened whenever people walked by. After a while, I figured that the city must be relatively clear for that many people to be willing to hole up there. So I crept up to the city limits, and the rest is history!” She giggles and offers a dazzling smile, punctuating her story with a cheerful sip of whatever she was drinking.