Soleiya (so-LAY-uh) originally began her career as a pencil & paper Dungeons and Dragons character, but she's grown far past those humble beginnings....
Soleiya is the first-born daughter of a noble-born Bosmer family living in the Valenwood city of Silvenar. Unfortunately, she is not exactly the pride of her family. She is, in fact, the product of a dalliance between her noble mother and a wandering bard of...questionable race. Soleiya appears to be entirely Bosmeri, but the taint of being her mother's bastard daughter has never truly faded from the memories of others in her family and clan.
Not long after Soleiya's birth, the family managed to betroth her mother to a middling Bosmer lord in Falinesti. Her step-father died before she came of age, but even while he lived his presence was a distant one in Soleiya's. Similarly, her mother seemed to resent the fact that Soleiya presented a constant reminder of her greatest regret. So she grew up primarily alone, and learned to like this solitude. One of her greatest joys as a small child was to take her pint-sized short bow--a hand-me-down from a male cousin--and hone her aim at the practice butts. Once, she was even permitted to accompany the adult rangers on a real hunt! Although she brought home nothing but a single, skinny rabbit, she couldn't have been prouder. Her mother, however, now busy with doting on her second child--a boy, and a legitimate heir--ordered the hare thrown into the midden heap "with the rest of the skin and bones." Soleiya shed no tears, but never again spoke to her mother with anything other than cold courtesy.
As a girl of 10 or 11, she was sent to live with her mother's family in Silvenar to be groomed and "polished" for a life as a courtesan. Her family's hope was for her to overcome her disgraceful parentage and marry well, to promote the family's political position among their people. Soleiya, for her part, would have none of this feminine education, and she found an unlikely advocate in her grandmother, the matriarch of the family. Maman seemed to understand Soleiya's preference for the out of doors and the "unseemly" hunting arts usually only practiced by the boys. She would insist that Soleiya tolerate her tutors and their feminine fripperies as long as she could, but always she would eventually be permitted to join the archers for their target practice, or the conservators for their tours of the forests around the city. Like all Bosmer, she cultivated a high level of respect and reverence for the supremacy of the natural world.
As Soleiya grew older, she dreamed of dressing herself up as a boy and slipping away from Silvenar in the night, stealthily making her way to the northern border, where she could join in the many skirmishes taking place between Valenwood and the ragged Imperials of Cyrodiil. In her daydreams, she would prove her prowess in combat and in subterfuge, gaining lands for her people and eventually toppling the upstart Emperor, clearing the way for a new Bosmeri Empire to span the continent. Such were her dreams, at any rate. As her lessons became more and more tedious, she developed more and more sophisticated ways to elude her tutors, through stealth, guile and sheer stubbornness.
Then one day, a distant relative came to stay with Maman, bringing along her Khajiiti slave by the name of Sakirra....
(to be continued)
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