L'saralia Tahano

Error creating thumbnail: File missing  L'saralia Tahano
Error creating thumbnail: File missing
Gender	Female
Race	Miqo'te
Clan	Seeker of the Sun
Citizenship	Gridania

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History

L'saralia Tahano was born under the blazing Thanalan sun eighteen years ago during a time of great prosperity and growth for her tribe. She was born to L'teyerna Rishal; the tribes spirit seer and L'Tahano Nunh; the tribes strongest warrior and breeding male. Shortly before L'saralia was born her mother consulted the elmental spirits and was granted a vision of prophecy regarding her daughter. This vision claimed that the tribe would enter a period of terrible suffering due to illness and starvation and that it was her daughter and the son of the chieftan, L'yohs, that would unite to return the tribe to strength and greatness. This was interpreted to mean that L'yohs and L'saralia were destined to be mated when they came of age and thus the arrangements were made.

It was three months later when things would take an unexpected and tragic turn for the worse. L'teyerna, carrying her daughter, left camp with two hunters and a small group of foragers all intent upon collecting medicinal herbs and edible plants to bring back to the tribe. The expedition was to last three days but was cut short on the first night as the small group was savagely attacked by an Amal'ja raiding party. The ferocity of the attack left none alive but the baby L'saralia who had been dropped during the assault and rolled into a small nest of pit vipers. Believing the baby as good as dead the Amal'ja left her to be as they looted what they could and made their way back to wence they came.

Hours later, the Allistairs; a Midlander Hyur farming family, would come across the scene of the carnage on their way from Ul'Dah heading home towards La Noscea. Amidst the scene of tragedy they heard the mewling cries of the baby L'saralia and were able to rescue her from the pit of vipers. Much to their surprise the babe was in perfect health with not so much as a scratch on her. Realizing that they had no way of returning the child to its family and that she would surely die if left alone; the Allistairs decided to take the baby home with them and would raise it as their own.

The Allistairs already had three children but their hearts were large and they had no problem accepting the baby Miqo'te into their family. They called the child Mikki, but instead of giving her the Allistair surname, Donnel; the patriarch of the family, would call her Viper due to the rather unusual way they found her. He would often say as she grew up that such a name is liable to start many great conversations and to always remember the odd things life can throw your way because they could be the most important in hindsight.

Growing up she found that helping out her sisters and her mother inside the house was more often an exercise in futility than not. She couldn't cook to save a life; often over seasoning, under cooking, or otherwise irreparably destroying any dish she tried to create. She wasn't much of a seamstress either. Sure she could mend a tear here or there but unlike her sisters and mother she couldn't create a dress or a shirt that looked like anything other than a misshapen saddle blanket. When it came to cleaning Mikki was far more interested in keeping up her own looks than those of her surroundings and her room could be compared to the den of a wild animal. Her unerring dedication to making sure that she was as presentable as could possibly be in any situation often made her a target of jests in her family; her mother claiming it was the Miqo'te in her.

Since she seemed to struggle with finding a place to be helpful inside the house she took it upon herself to try to be useful outside of it. It didn't take her long before she realized that outdoors, under the sun, and working with the land that she was able to not only feel comfortable and contribute to her family but she could also flourish and become confident as a person. More than just enjoying her work outdoors with the various crops her family grew, she truly seemed to be quite good at it. Even planting in soil that should otherwise not have been able to support growth she'd manage to get a healthy shoot started and nurture it from there. Her father would often boast to his friends that she could grow tomatoes out of nothing but rock, she would simply say it's only a matter of listening to the needs of the seed and making sure the soil you placed it in was willing to share.

For the most part people thought she was just joking or at least exaggerating when it came to her claims of being able to listen to the wind, rain, and soil and most simply chalked it up to raw talent that she could get everything to work together so flawlessly. The truth of the matter was that she had inherited her birth mothers gift of being able to commune with the elemental spirits and was demonstrating this untrained ability when working with the crops. These skills would surface again as she got older and took to venturing out by herself to forage and gather supplies for the farm. Most people would come home with some berries or a few medicinal herbs, Mikki would come home with baskets filled to the brim with useful plants and foods and even gems in the raw or chunks of ore that her father could sell at market for a decent purse of gil.

As she began to mature she yearned to do more than just simple chores and grow crops. She could often be caught daydreaming about going on dangerous adventures and would make boastful claims that someday she'd be the kind of legendary hero that people would want to write stories and songs about. Her daydreaming would often get in the way of many of her household tasks as she neared her mid-teens, so much so that her parents eventually hired a well respected tutor to educate her in a wide variety of fields in the hopes that it would keep her thirst for adventure in check. Unfortunately giving the girl an advanced education did quite the opposite! Instead it only strengthened her resolve as she realized she had a talent for medicine and alchemy and realized that she could utilize that knowledge as an adventurer.

Still her parents would not relent and refused to let her wander off aimlessly to chase a silly dream of being a hero. It wasn't until very near her eighteenth nameday that things would change. She was working in the stables after having a particularly heated argument with her oldest sister, Marcella, and was simply trying to cool off and catch up on some chores when her brother snuck up behind her and placed a field mouse down the back of her shirt. Reacting much like any seventeen year old girl would in such a situation; she screamed and cursed and chased her brother into the fields when something extraordinary happened. Quite out of nowhere she simply willed up a handful of stones right from the earth itself and flung them through the air at her brothers backside. He wasn't hurt at all, just a little bruised and more so stunned, almost as much as Mikki herself. Had she been raised near Gridania she may have been spotted at a younger age but out in the farmlands of La Noscea nobody suspected that Mikki's talents for the earth and the plants stemmed from an untrained ability to communicate with the elements themselves. It didn't take too much more convincing after this event to get her parents to approve of her going to Gridania so that she could study with the Seedseers and learn the ways of conjury so she could become the adventurer she's always dreamt of being.