Talia Constanze Velienor

[talia]

Talia Constanze Velienor.



'Cause you know I don't do sadness, not even a little bit.
Just don't need it in my life. Don't want any part of it. I don't do sadness.
Hey, I've done my time looking back on it all. Man, it blows my mind.
I don't do sadness, so been there.
Don't do sadness, just don't care.

OOC
alias: Leia
experience: about five years
how did you find us: advertisement hopping
other characters: none as of yet
rules password: the lantern.



THE BASICS
name: Talia Constanze Velienor
nicknames: just Talia, thank you.
age: seventeen years old
birthdate: she isn't sure
race&species: Calormen slave
rank: peasant
occupation: servant/storyteller



THE PHYSICAL
body type: Slender and graceful, until very recently Talia was frequently clothed in loose, too-large clothing that made her appear scrawny and malnourished. Still quite thin and lacking womanly curves, Talia has willowy limbs and a delicate bone structure.
hair: Talia has quite straight, black hair. Falling below her shoulders, the shiny tresses frame her narrow face when allowed to fly free, but when she's working, more often than not Talia's hair is tied out of her face in a simple updo, or practical plait.
eyes: Somewhere between round and almond-shaped, Talia's eyes are a warm brown color. Frequently downcast or avoiding contact with other eyes, the windows to Talia's soul are lovely, but reveal her shyness more than she'd like them to.
height: five feet, two inches
weight: somewhere between ninety-five and one hundred pounds
facial features: Actually quite lovely to those who take the time to look, Talia has pretty facial features and graceful bone structure. She has high, pronounced cheekbones, and a rather small nose. Probably the most distinguishable feature of hers is her dark, smooth skin color.
clothing: Because she has been dressed plainly most of her life, Talia secretly enjoys looking through pretty dresses and garments and trying them on, just to see what its like wearing them. On a daily basis though, she dresses simply and practically, usually in a plain tunic or dress, belted at the waist, and a pair of flat shoes.
racial features: The only telling sign of her race is her dark skin and features, typical of those native to Calormen.
anything else: In contrast to her otherwise smooth appearence, Talia has rough hands and feet from years of work, as well as various scars on her hands. She also has a long scar down her back reaching from her shoulderblade around to her hipbone.
playby: Freida Pinto



THE MENTAL
likes:

• telling stories--people usually like what they're good at
  
• horses and riding horses--she finds them beautiful and elegant
  
• Narnia--perhaps she idealizes it just a bit
  
• talking animals--never having experienced talking animals until recently, she is completely fascinated with talking creatures
  
• pretty dresses/jewelry/things--perhaps she's a bit superficial, but she never had pretty things of her own...
  
• boys--though she's too shy to say so to any boy's face, of course
  
• children--she's always been good with children
  
• Narnian weapons--swords are much prettier than scimitars
  
• archery--she learned how to shoot, and really that's the only self-defense thing she has going for her
  
• the ocean--its just beautiful
  
• good food--she always had plain food
  
• makeup--again, perhaps a bit superficial, but...

dislikes:

• being beaten--not the most pleasant thing in the world
  
• being in someone else's control--now that she's experienced freedom, she much prefers it
  
• killing--senseless killing, really, it gives her nightmares
  
• small enclosed spaces--she hates being closed in dark, small spaces, it makes her extremely nervous
  
• being the center of attention--just because she's a storyteller doesn't mean she has to enjoy being stared at
  
• being yelled at--or having voices raised at her, it frightens her
  
• not eating--food is good
  
• dumb dogs--talking dogs are alright, because they can talk, but she's afraid of dogs
  
• being blamed for things she didn't do--frequently a target of such injustice, she hates when she is blamed for things that aren't her fault
  
• lying--though she does it frequently

strengths:

• telling stories--its in her blood
  
• horseback riding--while she used to be only mediocre, riding across the dessert from Calormen to Narnia made her quite a decent rider
  
• styling--having lived among nobility and being expected to assist in the ladies' preparation for events, she's good at styling clothing/hair/etc
  
• tolerance--she's really quite easy-going and tolerant of people, even when she really shouldn't be
  
• seeing some good in everyone--yes, even her former master had his good qualities

weaknesses:

• illiterate--she never learned to read. She can tell stories like nobody's business, but she can't even read or write her own name
  
• swimming--she can't swim, either, there was never any reason for her to be taught
  
• doesn't stand up for herself--she doesn't stick up for herself at all
  
• skittish--she's pretty easily frightened and is quite jumpy
  
• shy--she doesn't tend to be the most talkative of people, and usually conversation has to be started by someone else
  
• lack of self-defense skills--she can use a bow and arrow, but that's it

goals:

• to learn to read
  
• be able to support herself
  
• marry and have a family of her own

fears:

• being found out as a runaway and being sent back to her master
  
• small enclosed spaces
  
• dogs, nontalking ones, that is
  
• drowning, well, she can't swim, so...

general personality: Quite docile from years of being taught that shutting up and doing as she was told was the best option, Talia is a bit shy and quite tentative. She is quite a good listener, from all her experience of being there for her master's children (especially the girls when they'd come crying about boy troubles and whatnot), and Talia is quite a sensitive girl, she won't turn someone away who asks for her help. Though she doesn't talk an extraordinary amount when she isn't telling stories, she does have a comforting voice and her soft-spoken nature gives her a soothing aura.

Mature and intelligent, Talia tends to seem older than she is, though her intelligence is only common-sense smarts, or other things she heard or learned from various others in her masters' homes. Illiterate, she is completely ignorant when it comes to facts found in books, despite her talent at telling stories. Gentle and kind, Talia often hides behind her downcast eyes, but if she's convinced to open up, she actually is quite observant and clever.



THE HISTORICAL
parents: just their names, optional.
siblings: a good way to bring more people into your plots. optional.
history: The daughter of peasants in Calormen, it was pretty easy to guess that the little girl didn't have a fairy-tale life. She was four years old when her father sold her mother and herself into slavery to pay his debts to the Tarkaan. Of course, slave life for a four-year-old girl wasn't the most tasking of lives, as she was mainly responsible for helping her mistress with the young children. Spending the next five years of her life watching over children, Talia learned then the art of storytelling that was so important in the culture of the Calormenes.

Five years later, when Talia was nine years old, her mother and one of the other slave women made plans to run away with their children. The group was caught and Talia's mother was killed, as well as the son of the other slave. Traumatized, Talia was considered more trouble than she was worth, even though the girl had actually had nothing to do with planning the attempted escape. She was sold to a different wealthy family who was much harder on their slaves than her previous owners.

Her pretty face made Talia a choice slave to be storyteller for the family's children, as she was used to, but thrust into a new environment with no one she knew around, the child was nervous and stammered through her tales. That, quite obviously, was not satisfactory by any measures, and receiving the first beating of her life, Talia very quickly discovered that slave life was quite different depending on which master you had. It was under this master that she also was required to do more than just watch toddlers and tell stories. Expected to learn to cook, clean, and take care of horses, Talia learned to take care of herself, and became better at spinning tales even when she wanted to be anywhere except the center of attention.

Unfortunately for quiet Talia though, her first impression on her master had not been a good one, when she had been nervous and unprepared to tell stories so shortly after having been sold, and he took a violent dislike of the girl. Not that he was particularly kind to any of his slaves, but he made it quite clear to the little peasant girl that he would take anything she did more seriously than most of his other slaves.

Having already experienced what could happen when a slave attempts to run away, however, Talia wasn't about to make a run for it. Keeping her mouth shut unless she was being asked to do something, she remained there for a few years, listening to merchants tales at the markets about Narnia. Perhaps idealizing the country too much, Talia could only imagine how wonderful Narnia must be, especially when she encountered a few talking beasts journeying with a human from Narnia. Enchanted by conversing with animals, Talia decided that since life couldn't get much worse than it already was, if she couldn't live in Narnia, she didn't want to live at all.

Sixteen years old at this point, she coerced as much information about the way to Narnia from the animals that she possibly could. A year later, when she was sent to the marketplace, Talia took the horse she had with her, and the supplies she'd just got from the market and made a run for it. Nearly caught again by a guard from her master's house, his scimitar caught her on the back, leaving a long wound, but managing to let her get away.

Making her way to the Oasis in the desert, Talia begged a merchant from Narnia to let her travel back to Narnia with him, claiming that she had an uncle who worked at Cair Paravel and she was on her way to be a storyteller there--her injury had been purely accidental, of course--and it would be so wonderful if she could just travel with him for she was afraid she'd get lost. Whether or not he believed her she wasn't sure, but he agreed to let her join his caravan, and she made it successfully to Narnia.

Of course, her plan pretty much ended at her arrival in Narnia, and once she was there, the girl realized just how alone she was: she knew no one, she had no money, nothing she could use to make a living for herself in Narnia. And in addition, her obvious Calormen heritage made her stand out like a sore thumb in the sea of fair-skinned Narnians. Perhaps because he'd taken a liking to the quiet girl, or perhaps because he had been impressed by her storytelling, the merchant gave her the parting advice of going to Cair Paravel and telling a story to the kings and queens to see if she could stay there.



THE ROLEPLAYING
canon or original character: original
why do you want to play this character: well I noticed that there weren't any Calormenes yet, and I've always been quite font of The Horse and his Boy, so I thought I'd make a Calormene girl.
take this quiz: www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
what was your character's score?: 15
roleplay sample: with a different character, (but still a shy one) from a different site...

If there was one place in Hogwarts that Claire hated, it was the Hospital Wing. Yes, she hated the hospital even more than the timid brunette disliked the odd corners of the dungeons. The simple explanation was of course that the school nurse wasn't one to continue to believe that every year for about a month after returning to school, the petite witch just happened to befall a series of misfortunes that led her to need a variety of healing charms. Claire knew that her lame excuses weren't believed, but she knew that if she had to explain to her friends rather than the nurse, things would be much worse. They definitely wouldn't buy that usually-graceful Claire was "really quite accident prone at times," and she wasn't about to explain anything to anyone. So, dragging her feet in distaste for the overly sterile white room, Claire had managed to throw her friends off her trail with a few excuses of needing to go to the library, having forgotten a book back at the dormitory, then realizing that she hadn't needed it at all.

She paused at the large door to the hospital wing, peeking inside to see if it was crowded or not. As far as she could tell from the door it was empty, except for one boy on a bed whose back was towards her, so she couldn't tell who it was. Deciding that it was empty enough, especially after the amount of work it had taken to ditch James, Sirius and Lily, she entered quietly and stood nervously to wait for the nurse to see her and come over. The thin pursed lips of the nurse made Claire even more certain that she wanted to get out of there as fast as humanly possible, and the rather curt, "What happened to you this time, Miss Maturin?" almost made her forget her excuse for this visit's injuries. She was always careful to try and spread things out, so she'd taken care of the stubborn gash on her forearm a day or so after school started (she had "had a misfortune practice duel go wrong" in the common room with an unnamed other student), the hand-shaped bruise on her collar bone healed the following week, after it had lost a considerable amount of shape (she'd somehow managed to "open the car door" on herself on the way to the train station), and now she needed to get rid of a rather dark purple welt on her left upper-arm taken care of before Lily had too many opportunities to happen to see it while changing in the dormitories.

"I...fell down the stairs." Claire replied quickly and softly, pulling her sleeve up to show the nurse, who gave her a disapproving look at the size of the bruise. "When, a month ago and you just now decided to come see me? Sit down, Maturin, that's going to take a bit. What'd you do, fall down three flights and land on a statue?" Muttering to herself, the nurse handed Claire a little vial of potion and said something about needing something stronger and to have a seat to wait for her. Sit down and wait? She wasn't sure how long the excuse of looking for a book in the library would last. She didn't have time to sit and wait...She didn't even really need it to be healed entirely, she just needed it to look normal, she didn't care how it felt. A bit frustrated, Claire sat down cautiously on the bed next to the boy whose back was still facing her. Maybe he was asleep? Lucky him, if he was... Well, either way, she'd just stay quiet so he wouldn't be disturbed.

Looking at the little vial she'd been given, Claire studied it to see if it would at least be helpful enough to tell her what potion it was, so she could try and brew it illegally for herself or something. The mild healing charms in the text books weren't working too well for her, and she was frustrated to no end that the only spell she actually really needed to work wouldn't work. Pouring a bit of the potion onto her fingertips, she moved her hand to her arm, and hissed sharply in unexpected pain as the potion stung the discolored skin. She bit her lip quickly to silence herself, glancing up quickly to see if she'd disturbed the other occupant of the hospital wing.

[Susan Pevensie]

ACCEPTED