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| - Biography |
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Name: Rownan Abeyta
Age: 21
Nationality: Raised in Far Madding, actual origins unknown.
Height: 5'3"
Weight: 127
Hair color/length: Black
Eye color: Black
A quick overview of personality: suspicious, charismatic, patient, proud
Overall Strength: Weak
Air: Weak
Water: Weak
Earth: Moderate
Fire: Weak
Spirit: Moderate
Talents: None. He has learned some tricks: throwing and disguising his voice, but no talent as listed.
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Rownan Abeyta was abandoned at birth by his biological mother. He survived infancy only because a street waif, a girl of twelve, adopted him. She raised him under a broken bridge, right next to the murky water, the home of rats and sickness. Somehow, she managed to steal enough milk and bread to sustain him, and herself. Unfortunately the girl had no capacity to learn, her mind had been dull since birth. Her only emotion was affection and blind trust. She saw Rowan as a doll or plaything, and she lavished all the affection of her broken mind upon him. He grew, stunted and half starved, barely able to speak, his edcuacation was so lacking. By five he was more clever then his foster mother and began to support them both. Their roles gradually reversed as he took on more and more of the responsibility to care for them both. He became her sunlight and her beating heart was in his hands. As for him, she was the only mother he had ever known and he was determined to care for her. His hands were quick and he learned that gold was more valuable then the bread off a cart or a cup of milk stolen from a buttery. The filthy streets were his entire education. His vocabulary was full of rude words and little else. His mind was filled with anger and the desire to eat. Still, every night he returned to the little bridge he called home. A home he shared with a deranged girl and the rats she had tamed.
Then, a few weeks shy of his twelfth birthday, Rownan made his first mistake. On a hot, bitter day when the very stones beneath his feet seemed like furnaces he tried to steal from the person of importance, a Lady Cumere. She had been examining the work of several artisans who were indebted to her. Rownan snuck up behind her, reaching a hand for her fat purse. A stone caught his foot and he fell into her before he could make a good escape. In less then an instant he was held fast by her escort, who had not even noticed him.
"Let me go!" He shrieked as he fought his captors like the little hellion he was. He cursed them up and down, enough to make even the guards blush with shame. "Do you want us to take him down to the magistrate?" One of the escorts said as he struggled to keep a hold of Rownan's skinny arms. The Lady Cumere stroked the purse she had retrieved from Rownan. Through the dirt and emaciated frame and the rags she could see his gentle features, a pleasing visage. Luckily enough for Rownan, she had taste for young boys and instead of giving him to the authorities, she took him home.
For the next two years he honestly and truly became a pet. Only this time his mistress wasn't devoted and good. She was a coldly calculating, wealthy woman of influence. After Rownan was washed and fed, given a name, given an education in speaking and standing even the basics of self-defense, he was initiated into her particular wishes. At first that did not matter to Rownan. He liked Lord Cumere and his quiet ways and the gardens and the food, though he often missed his mother. Though he longed to see her, the Lady Cumere kept him at her side most of the day. Relenquishing him only for his studies, and not always then. She picked out his clothes and put jewels in his hair, and showed him off to all her friends who were delighted to praise him. As for the rest of it . . . Rownan bore with it. It made the servants whisper and some of the men shake their heads but nothing was ever said, at least directly to him. Besides, it rarely hurt. Rownan had a curious and inquiring mind. He wanted to know. All it took was listening underneath a window as Lady Cumere and her maids laughed about it to finally understand all the implications.
It was a while before he could really decide what to do with the information. What he wanted. One night, he lay on Lady Cumere's enormous bed and stared at the moulded ceiling where shadows were dancing. He was warm and comfortable, but he missed his mother. He decided that he wanted to go home. He raised himself up and looked at the lady who was sitting at her mirror, clad in only a silk dressing gown. She was humming her favorite tune, and arranging her long hair.
"Let me go." He said.
Startl
ed, she turned around to him. "Where would you like to go, my lovely?"
Rownan stared at her with his enormous eyes and repeated himself. "Let me go."
Afraid of his look, she brushed aside his request. "Tush, my boy. You are better off here with me. Don't you like it, lovely?" She stood and came to him. "Too bad you will have to grow up in a few years. I think I will keep you though," she smiled wickedly, "for sentimental reasons. You will like that won't you? No need to ever go back and see that wretched, stupid woman you call your mother. Just think of me as your mother dear. I will keep you always. Come now don't sulk. I will buy you a new earring in the morning."
Rowan knew without a doubt that she meant what she said. Suddenly, he hated her. He felt as though her every touch, no matter how soft, infected him. Every time she looked at him he wanted to empty his stomach. Every word she murmered filled him with rage. He knew that he had to get away. Whatever the price he had to leave forever. But with one call she could have the entire house at her side. So, swallowing his pride and his bile he allowed her to exhaust herself against him. Then, while she slept in beautific repose, he suffocated her with her own silk pillow.
He left the house before anyone noticed. Using the old memories, he found his way back to his little bridge, trying to find his mother. In his heart he had already known that she could not last long without him. Her condition would only have worstened with time. At the rate she had been declining she would not have lasted. She hadn't. She was less then a putrid mass when he saw her, maggots devoured what her pet rats had left behind. He was only two weeks too late. If he had left right after he had found out, he might've been able to save her. In all likely hood she had not understood why he had gone, or even how to look for him. All she would have known was that he, her precious baby, had abandoned her. She would have suffered and starved. Because she was his mother, Rownan buried her corpse in the stiff, rocky earth under the broken bridge. He spoke no words or shed tears, for if they had ever been in him, they were gone now. He left Far Madding that night, even as the alarm was being raised.
At first his direction was entirely aimless. The world belonged to him in a way that anyone who had grown up in a home with a family could ever understand or accept. There was no place where he could not go and be comfortable, there were no conditions to which he could not adapt. Nothing was too hard or too far away. There was no duty, oath or allegiance that bound him to anything to any country or clan. His only allegiance was to his own survival. He used his small body and quick wits to steal from wealthy homes and even well guarded merchant trains. No one noticed him at all, he was so easily forgettable. He was no more then a shadow beside a horse, a tiny raven perched among the wagons. Less then worthless. Nothing about him drew attention. Rownan began to wonder if he were one of the shadowsouled, for the eyes of everyone slid past him without recognition. Not even for a moment did Rownan consider that it was his own withdrawal that made people, unable to see him clearly, or remember him. So Rownan simply gazed at the world, gazed with his hungry black eyes, colorless orbs that had never completely given up the sheen of desperation that only those who have truly starved can know. He did not give a flick for what was going on around him. The uncertainty, or the restless thrust of polotics. Nothing mattered to him except filling his own belly. Still, it was a cold life and one that he did note care for.
He was led to the Tower by the bridges and the water. They reminded him of better and happier times, of his old home that he could never return to. He was very nearly content with his new hovel that he had dug for himself underneath one of the smallest stone bridges in the City. Though he could have afforded more with his ill gotten gains, it was all he wanted. He sold the little pony he had acquired and furnished his hovel with warm blankets and everything else he thought a necessity. It was his intention to let that be his home till the end of his days. Once ensconced in the city, it was probably through sheer chance more then anything else that led him into the Tower itself. While he was working one day, he noticed a contingent of guards marching through the city. Rownan enjoyed physical exertion and him learning how to kill was a bird learning how to fly. He submitted himself to their ranks. Though he was limited by his small stature and wire thin body, he persevered. It was almost by accident, too that he found the Shadow, sometime after his initiation to the Tower. It promised power and wealth, and endless comfort forever. These things mattered little to Rownan and he might not have succumbed at all had not a thought of one Lady Cumere come to him. At that moment all he wanted was hurt people in power, women in particular, as he had been hurt. He despised women, especially the ones that wore silk. This would be the perfect chance to rid the world of them. Other then that, he did not care. About politics, other people or anything. Anything to bring them down. Even his soul.
And it was his soul that they asked for. Rownan understood that there were factions in the Tower, ones that would hunt him down for what he had now become. But he didn't care, he was not afraid of them. He did not make any stupid mistakes, like ripping mice apart. Nor did he show a great interest in murder or bloodletting. It was not easy, but by keeping his head down and his reputation pristine he managed to slip through. Nothing about that was any different then he had done before.
Inside the Tower, it was not all keeping to himself. Rownan was required to adapt. Cold days and sleepless nights he could handle. The endless noise, the never ending questions, the constant voices were like filed in his mind. As per his orders he had to become used to these surroundings. He could not carry out the will of the Shadow without mingling among his inmates, without absorbing their ways. Rownan tried his best, but he was never described as less then quiet, or more then elusive. Rownan woke with the sun, he was never late by so much as a minute to any appointment. Most of his instructors took his often down cast eyes and few words for respect. Some of the others looked at him askance for his silent ways and Rownan was grateful for that most days they left him to his own devices. He would seek for himself a place of solitude. Sometimes here would go to the highest places in the tower and hang out on the gutters and troughs, just listening to the wind or to the voices through the windows. Other times he would find a dark, enclosed nook and hide himself there, allowing his minds eye to carry him back home to the bridges.
He always returned to the world of the Tower reluctantly, but more ready to deal with the noise and the jostling. A few weeks into his training he was confronted with another deviation to his ordered life. Through an odd test that had been administered at random by an Asha'man, it was discovered that Rownan could Channel. "Well, boy," The odd man said his voice like gravel. "Seems there might be a little more to you then meets they eye." He said this dubiously, looking up and down Rownan's tiny frame which was now hardened by muscle. Rownan said nothing.
Without delay, he was swept from his old barracks and into a new, this one housing all the potentials of the Black Tower. There were others in the rooms, but at least it was not one long hall. Breathing a sigh of relief Darien tried to settle into his new life. It was a new set of rules and another set of faces and questions, but he managed. Rownan was a creature of instinct. An instinct born in the streets, cultivated by his life with a Lady, sharpened by his exploits across the Continent, and now harvested here. In this place, there were even sharper eyes, watching for the Shadows. Sometimes, Rownan was
baffled by it. The Shadow belonged to people like himself. If the Light was not strong enough then it should have be destroyed. Why was that so hard for them to understand? Rownan had accepted it long ago.
After his first experiment with the One Power, Rownan thought the upheaval worth it. For the heat and fire of Sadin was new and wondrous to him, it filled him, as nothing else had before. So he threw himself into this new existence, adapting as he had always done quickly and without any external changes. He was given new lessons and new instructors, Rownan absorbed all they had to teach, sucked them to the marrow. He observed closely and rarely needed to be shown things more then once. Sometimes he would go to sleep more weary then when he woke up and more then once he was drilled until the thought of embracing the Source was like torture. Also, he was frustrated at his lack of potential and discernible talents, some of the easiest things for his mentor were impossible for Rownan. Sometimes he wanted to lash out. But then he remembered that he was kept under close observation, and how one slip could trip him. So far, Rownan had nothing but what was inside his head to condemn him. It would be later when his training completed that he would be useful to the Shadow. When he would be forced to end his quiet compliance and act. But that was a long way away, and until then he could enjoy the endless food and the invigorating exercise.
When the time of year came, he observed a small ceremony for his lost mother. He now knew that rats were spies for the Shadow and that his half wit mother had loved them. So perhaps the Shadow had been looking after him even then. The thought gave Rownan a kind of satisfaction, and he committed her spirit to the Light. She, simpleton that she was, did not belong with the Dark. Not like him, not like anyone who was truly wise. Armed with his new power, he would go and find those that had destroyed both their lives. When the Shadow touched the world, it would destroy everyone equally, and not play favorites like the Light. Of that Rownan was certain, and it was for that he prayed.
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