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Description
. R e i j a .
"enough light to find your way by"
Mood Board | Astral Tracker | Playlist
Outfits | Flower Cart
The Flower Room
Name:// ReijaNickname:// Granny Jaja
Age:// 63
Gender:// Mare
Breed:// Friesian (maybe a little cross in there somewhere)
Color:// Black, glossy, healthy coat despite her age
Height:// 15.1 hh
Orientation:// Nice mustache...
Herd Affiliation:// Aodh
Rank:// Smuggler | MAXED
Patron God:// Devoted to Kaia
Children:// none...
Spouse:// Chandler - Deceased // Widowed
Drive:// "I will make the world beautiful because it sure doesn't seem to be doing it on its own"
Blessing #1:// Plant Manipulation | MAXED
Blessing #2:// - | -
Talent #1:// Empath| MAXED
Talent #2:// Blessed | MAXED
Personality
Gentle, but sharp. Soft-spoken, but clever. Social, but Emotionally Distant. Ambitious, but Jaded. Inviting, but Illusive. Patient, but Obligated.
Reiija is a unique individual who has the ability to make those around her feel at ease by inviting them to let down their walls and bask in her never-ending personal sunlight. She is genuine in what she says and most find it very hard to dislike her. Those that spend enough time around her glowing warmth may just witness that out of all the light she emits, very little of it illuminates her.
The dark mare carries about her an air of royalty. She demands respect without speaking, without making eye contact. Anyone who works in the Flowerroom part-time understands this. They know better than to take Reija's kindness for granted.
Reija will treat all those she meets with respect. This does not mean she actually respects them, however.
There are very few equines the mare holds in high regard simply because, at her age, fools are easily identified. Reija believes anyone who doesn't question their lives, society or rulers to be foolish. She will still show respect.
Reija enjoys social gatherings the way any introvert does, yet participates in order to gain more access to slaves seeking freedom. She isn't uncomfortable in these places and will gladly socalize as much as needed. Her light humor and gentle laughter put anyone at ease. Reija uses this to her advantage while being completely genuine. She is very similar to the flowers that adorn her mane - a beautiful illusion.
As long as you want to believe it, it will exist.
DEFENDER PERSONALITY (ISFJ, -A/-T)
Defenders are true altruists, meeting kindness with kindness-in-excess and engaging the work and people they believe in with enthusiasm and generosity.
Positives: Supportive | Patient | Observant | Hard-Working | Enthusiastic
Negatives: Represses Feelings | Overloads Herself | Too Altruistic
History
Reija's been around for a whole heck of a long time. Many rumors float about in regards to what brought the old mare's flowershop to Valore.
Here's a brief description of the truth:
Born from farmers in the rural lands of Aodh, a young Reija was raised on religious ties to two particular gods. Ignacio was worshipped just as much as Kaia, and prayers were sent their ways daily at the very least. She grew up on the farm; tending to crops became a way of life and the pretty baroque filly had a natural talent for it. She was patient and gentle enough to teach herself to grow bonsai trees and would sell them to traveling merchants and the occasional hedgewitch, sometimes trading for mysterious seeds from lands far from her quiet little farm home.
Rumors of Reija's past whisper of her background as a vagabond hedgewitch. She will neither solidify nor deny them, simply for the fun of making others question their sources and think twice about rumors.
Things changed for the young farmland mare when she caught the eye of a shining Caviler, going by the name of Chandler. His small troop had been sent on a simple policing mission and traveled the more rural places of Aodh as a way of solving small squabbles and tracking down potential smugglers. Despite an age difference of many years, the two fell into an innocent and romantic love story together. When Chandler returned to the capitol, Reija was invited, begged, to come with him. He promised his life to her, so she set out for a brand new adventure with her soul mate. They married soon after in a simple but beautiful ceremony.
Reija met her deepest low when the two discovered she would never have the capability of carrying foals. For many days, she sat within their small home and sobbed at the loss it brought. She began to question the gods - how, why, would they do this to her? What had she ever done to wrong them?
Chandler grieved with her, but slowly guided her back to her roots - growing. Reija began planting and nurturing flowers, and it wasn't long before their small home became engulfed with beautiful blooms and crawling vines.
Chandler aided her in purchasing a small caravan cart that she would load with flowers and sell among the other merchants. Reija sold flowers while her husband worked to protect the king. More often than not, she would braid flowers into his mane or weave vines through his formal uniform. He wore the plants with pride - their colors remained vivid and bright in all conditions for many days. Reija's gift was undeniable - she knew how to grow the most beautiful and healthy plants.
Her small business blossomed just as her flowers did. It wasn't long before she was attending weddings and royal events to decorate them with her elaborate floral wreaths and arrangements. As she became more and more popular among the royal families and commoners alike, Chandler retired from his many years of service to accompany her and aid in her business.
For many happy years, Reija and Chandler attended weddings, birthdays, engagements, and sometimes even funerals. Prices were always fair and everyone could enjoy the beauty of the flowers. They led happy lives together, traveling too much to having ever considered adoption. On many occasions, Chandler would pull their flowercart down the streets of the dark district and Reija would toss teke-fulls of flowers into the streets. The bright colors could lift anyone's spirits.
Chandler was taken from Reija too soon.
A hereditary cancer spiked up too quickly to be stopped, and he passed on with her beside him. His favorite plants had been glowsionberries, so Reija now grows them in an arch that looks out over the vast sea - Chandler's favorite place to sit quietly. The barogue mare once again questioned the gods' motives.
Business slowed - it was too difficult to travel anymore, so Reija purchased a small shop that would double as her home. A trap door in the back floor opened at the rumored tunnel systems. Reija didn't mind. The flowers followed.
From her small shop, she conducts business and the occasional trip when she's needed. She took up music and will play the uke in the quiet moments of morning and dusk. Rumors say that her music and singing are what makes her plants so much more beautiful than any others.
She named the shop The Flowerroom, and idea given to her by a longtime friend, Mama Em, a sanctum helper.
The draft horse hippocampus had been a fast friend to the friesian mare. The two grew ever closer at Chandler's passing.
The tall mare empathized with salves, and would often converse with Reija about those she found. How they longed for escape. Reija would often think about the tunnels underneath her shop late at night. Were slaves escaping below her home, or was it just the rumble of a distant thunderstorm?
Reija's full trust in the gods was broken the day she witnessed a slave foal being separated from her mother.
Attending a royal party with her flowers as decoration, she had heard a commotion from an alley and peered over the ledge of the wall to witness a forceful weaning. The servile slave dam trembled and rose her voice as a slave handler tried to take her child, clearly afraid of the wip still in his saddlebag. Reija saw the pain and fear on her face as tears rolled form her cheeks. Her child was seized, screaming and crying for her mother between the bit between her young lips.
Having never owned a slave of her own, Reija was very startled and torn by the scene. How was this acceptable? What gods would let a world of such pain exist?
She made note of where the foal was dragged off to - a secluded box stall on the edge of the property.
The servile slave dame was taken to the party as a host, a cavison worn under her jeweled bridle to ensure she kept quiet.
The loss was one she had felt before, Reija noticed.
As the night went on, she carefully sidled up to the mare. A fire burned within the friesian, and she wasn't going to let it become snuffed out by fear. She quietly told the slave her plan for tear-down. When she needed help, the slave was to be her aid. The flower arrangements would cover her if she laid in the cart. From there, they would leave the party together and escape after sneaking her foal out.
By the end of the night, Reija jogged along the cobbles, pulling her cart behind her. Inside it lay the slave mother and her daughter.
Night Watch guards nodded as she passed them - most had known her and Chandler.
The twilight rolled in as the lamplighters lit the city streets up. She brought them back to her small shop and led them to the trap door with a teke-full of glowsionberries to light their way by.
That was the last she ever saw of them, although news of a mare and foal pair of slaves at large circulated through the city of Valore for the next week.
Reija was surprised by the lack of guilt she felt. She had committed an act punishable by death itself and yet felt no remorse.
Nearly two and a half months passed before the tattered letter came in the post.
Written in careful but inexperienced hand, it was addressed to Reija as "The Flowerroom". The note thanked her for a chance at freedom that had led both to a much happier life. They had fled Aodh and were doing perfectly fine.
Ever since then, Reija's Flowerroom has acted as both a stop and a checkpoint for escaping slaves. For those who need aid, the spare room in the back is always available and healing herbs are plenty. Some even don disguises and work int he back of the shop for up to a month to generate a little coin before moving on with their escape.
For more than 25 years, Reija has been conducting on this underground escape route. She keeps up with the floral business as a way to both network and cover-up.
In-Game History
(Earlier) - Reija gets word of a bremian slave, Fumio, under lock and key. While interested, he seems a bit too risky for her to attempt to free directly.
When a fellow smuggler finagles a deal and purchases him, the old mare stops by to help plan a way to get him back home. The two strike up a friendship almost immediately, but Reija is sure to keep her distance. Fumio is Naseera's project, after all.
Chapter V - On a mission below Valore, Reija and her fellow smugglers run into a group of vindicators. Acting as a peacemaker, Reija aids in easing rising tensions and pushing for a combined effort. An alliance buds, but it's fragile due to the different philosophies of the two groups.
When news of the incident at the crucible reaches her, Reija first feels that it is the proper end of those who killed the boy king... but upon discovering that Sola ate some of them, her distrust in Isador grows. She finds this incident one of barbaric nature, no longer an act of justice but a display to put fear in Aodh's enemies as well as its people.
Her prayers to Kaia are answered when Reija is blessed with Plant Manipulation. She exercises her control of the blessing almost constantly in her shop, slowly becoming more and more in-tune with the greatest gift she has ever received.
Chapter VI - Teaming up with vindicators for a much larger-scale mission during Valore's Fireworks Festival wasn't Reija's idea. However, she would have rather participated than let things go wrong without her being there. But things do go wrong, very wrong, when the vindicators omitted part of their plan and it's later discovered that they plan to blow up the labor slave barracks. When a bold but fearful slave mare makes an escape from the group, Reija stays with the original group to help guide everyone into the sewer tunnels below the street. The unplanned incident proves the vindicator's goals are not to help horses, but to accomplish their goal regardless of how it makes those they're "saving" feel. The old mare refuses to help them on any other missions. She'd much rather work with other smugglers instead.
When all of Valore's servile and pit-fighting slaves were rounded up to become labor slaves, Reija feared for her old friend Fumio. The month dragged on for what felt like a lifetime and Reija constantly searched for his face in the crowds, praying that he would survive the harshness of labor. She found him working in a library, thank goodness.
When King Isador announced repurchases, Reija struck a deal with Naseera to snag Fumio as her own. Since then, they've spent their days in the flower shop and the tunnels beneath the city, helping conduct escaping slaves to freedom. Having a "slave" of her own helps the old lady fly even further under the radar, as well.
Chapter VII - Reija doesn't respond to a call from the smugglers to meet in the tunnels. Since the close call from the last mission, she has kept communication with the other smugglers to a minimum, if at all. Pax is really the only one she still speaks to. However, the message she sent his way regarding her absence at the meeting was lost and failed to reach the sewer pegasus.
Reija instead focused on her public appearance, chipping in with her fellow Valorian citizens to rebuild a part of her city that became damaged from the riots. Fumio joined her and the two scouted slaves for potential freeing. One in particular, the seeing eye slave of the flamen Tiresias, caught the attention of Fumi. He and Reija approached her cautiously, learning that her name was Yue and that she had been stolen away from Breim. Though their conversation was brief, Reija hoped the flighty and quiet pegasus mare now carried with her a sense of hope to return home.
With the map of the smuggler tunnels discovered, Reija has decided that the pathways under the city are no longer safe for freeing routes. With Fumi's help, she has purchased a cart big enough for them both to live in if needed, with secret compartments under the floorboards. Only a few full-grown horses would be able to fit lying down at a time, but it's the best bet for freeing horses now. The cart is disguised as a traveling merchant tool, a perfect disguise.
Chapter VII - The old mare decides to meet with the few smugglers that remain in order to reestablish some sort of plan. With the approaching kirin threat, no one is in more danger than Valore's labor slaves. Many that remain were ripped from their servile labor and forced into manual work, their price tags too steep for previous masters to repurchase. Conditions have grown more dreadful than they were before. It is time to find a final solution.
The meeting is held in the belly of The Jungle, a familiar shop run by one of the city's finest and an old friend to smugglers. Reija and Fumio arrive on time (as usual) and descend the stairs to find the room tense. There is talk of staging a worker uprising, arson, and other acts of violence against the people of New Valore. Quite frankly, Reija is having none of it. These are her people and she refuses to endanger them, even in order to free the city's labor slaves. Instead, she offers her own home and shop as bait for a massive distraction. The Flowerroom could go up in flames (with her supplying a steady flow of plant life to maintain the fire) in order to create a veil in which to smuggle the city's slaves to freedom - rented ships pointed for Sirith. As much as the offer pains her to make, she believes in the greater good. She and Fumio would have to leave Aodh as well, but perhaps her longtime companion could finally return home. Reija is willing to make the sacrifice for him.
But before any plans become cemented in place, a new creature makes itself known to the group. It's a strange being, capable of creating and sustaining a pocket dimension. With its help, the smugglers discovered that they now hold a safer base of operations. Reija herself is enamored with the unique being. She sees it as a sign of good luck, perhaps a light at the end of the dark tunnel the smugglers seemed doomed to.
Familiar(s) -
Coming Soon
Notes
Reija WILL:
- Offer to help your slave character escape
- Help your slave character escape
- Give your scoundrel or urchin a safe haven to live/work for a short time
- Act as a grandmotherly figure
- Play music for your character if they ask
- Be the florist at your special event
- Design floral jewelry for your character
- Offer tea to her guests
Reija WON'T:
- Adopt your orphaned character
- Allow escaped slaves to spend more than a month in The Flowerroom
- Work for free
- Abuse your characters
- Give away seeds for her more specialized plants
- Make super-risky moves to help slaves escape
- Sabotage relationships with nobles to help slaves escape
Image size
2300x1294px 2.24 MB
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Comments26
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i lov dis ol lady