Tefh Jinjahl

Tefh Jinjahl
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Gender	Female
Race	Miqo'te
Clan	Keeper of the Moon
Citizenship	Unaffiliated
Age	22
Name Day	15th Sun of the Second Umbral Moon
Occupation	Tanner
Height	5 fulms, 3 ilms
Weight	100 ponze

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Character

General

This young Keeper makes her home in the wilds of Thanalan. Small, hidden camps with only the bare essentials are scattered through the area, providing the hunter with a place to rest no matter where she is when she finally catches something to skin and prepare. Though the lack of security costs her equipment and supplies from time to time, the suggestion of acquiring more stable and secure housing earns nothing but silence from her.

Appearance

Tefh is blatantly not a person who lives reasonably, nor comfortably. More often than not she's coated in a thin layer of dust or dirt from her time spent outdoors. Her hair, her skin, her clothes especially are seldom clean. This isn't for lack of bathing; the Miqo'te cleans herself frequently, keeping away odors that could tip off her quarry to her presence. Her face is one of the few places not protected by cloth that manages to stay reasonably clean.

Aside from the black skin and dark gray hair, the most distinctive thing about her (and often how people first recognize her) is her face paint. The left half of her face is painted white, and when asked she makes no secret of its purpose. It's in honor of the cycle of the moon she was born under, a half moon. The bindi on her forehead is another matter, one that she typically cannot or will not explain in the rare event someone asks her about it.

Despite her occupation, Tefh is entirely lacking in scars. Not even a small line on her hands from accidents with her tools. That isn't to say her skin is pampered; she still sports the calloused palms of a crafter, the knuckles of a fighter, and the soles of someone who's often barefoot. Thankfully her origins from the Shroud hasn't left her skin sensitive to the harsh desert sun, blessed as she's been with her complexion.

Like some Keepers of the Moon, Tefh sports some more canine features than feline ones; a shorter, fluffier tail, distinct canines (though somewhat blunt from heavy use) and a set of short talons for nails. Short, but sturdy enough to make for a reasonable weapon.

Behavior

Some have called Tefh a dog, or a feral beast. Others look at her and treat her like she's someone's misplaced pet. These assessments haven't gone unearned. From her mannerisms to her habits, through and through she exhibits abnormally strong ties to dog-like behavior. Tail wagging, barking, growling, sniffing anything she's unfamiliar with (sometimes including people), biting hands that have gone places they shouldn't...the list goes on. How someone of her age has managed to pick up all these habits isn't clear, and learning of the 'why' will take some doing.

Tefh has never been good with words. Though eager to speak to people and always wanting to listen and socialize, she lacks many things one needs to communicate ideas successfully. A decent vocabulary, for one. Her biggest hangup in explaining anything is her uncertainty about what words describe her ideas in the way she pictures them. So lacking is she in this regard that when speaking to someone prone to using many words she does not understand, her first reaction is to be hostile or generally broody.

Proper expression of emotions is another hurdle standing between Tefh and healthy interactions. Any time she smiles, it's fake, an attempt on her part to show expressions as others do. She tends not to glare when upset, nor scrunch up her nose when disgusted. All of her emotions are shown by her tail and ears. Should one learn what to look for, they'll find Tefh is a very easy book to read. Those who don't know what to be aware of may feel as if they're speaking to a wall.

History

Born in the Shroud, Tefh has no recollection of where exactly she lived. She remembers her childhood well enough, perhaps too well, but she was simply too young to have need or interest in knowing her home's location on a map. Tefh was the eldest of four siblings, all girls, being raised by their mother alone. Her mother was a poacher, hunting with regard only to the hunger of her children and not the feelings of the elements of nature. To avoid dealing with the authorities, or worse, Tefh's mother built their home deep in the forest. The structure was little more than a shack for sleeping in.

When she was eight years of age, Tefh's family was attacked in their own home by thugs working with a cartel dealing in mostly illegal affairs. Her mother fought to save her daughters, and though the children escaped the shack, Tefh saw her mother fall. The thugs weren't far behind, pursuing the children through the woods. Little as they all were, they had no hopes of staying ahead. Ever one to try and emulate her mother, Tefh took a stand to delay them. Her sisters were never captured thanks to the ruckus from Tefh, but Tefh was restrained and taken away.

Originally the cartel planned to do with her what most might expect a group of criminals to do with a small child. Tefh proved to be uncooperative, and after biting off the nose of the first man to try and claim her, no one else wanted to pay to have a go. Initially Tefh was to be killed since the cartel wasn't making money off of her, but one of her captors devised a 'better' use for the child.

Act like an animal, be treated like one. Her earlier display of a fighting spirit landed her in a kennel alongside animals raised for nothing but murder. Kept in a cage and seldom spoken to, Tefh was handled in every way like the dogs and underwent the same training. Submitting to suffering worsened her treatment, and so it was that Tefh began to associate any contact with imminent pain and the desperate need to react violently to it.

Having only ever been pitted in fights with animals, she learned from and fought like the animals. Dogs made up the bulk of her opponents, seeing as she was relative in size to them and already had some outward wolfish features of her own (a trait that made for fun advertising lines in the realm of illegal gambling; 'Wolf Girl vs Wolf'). The fights and 'encouragement' to continue fighting weren't the only instances of physical abuse in this phase of Tefh's life. Her main 'caretaker' took note of the lack of scarring on Tefh's body and took it upon himself to test the limits of what she could handle without being marked.

The emotional abuse speaks for itself. Neglected, unloved, given nothing to do and no one to really speak with took a toll on her mental development and hardened her feral impulses, burying the normal playfulness and curiosities of a child her age. What's more, her caretaker used verbal exchanges to gauge how far she had fallen into a feral mindset. In one specific case, he learned of the fate of Tefh's sisters. They'd made it to a small village and had become a common sight, begging strangers for food. To have the children who'd earned the sympathy of the locals go missing would tip off the authorities that people were being abducted, but they couldn't risk letting the children live least they ever identify any of the thugs who murdered their mother and stole their eldest sibling. To keep the cartel safe, the three little girls met an early end to one of the fighting dogs, so as to make it look as if the wildlife got to them. In relaying the tale to Tefh, her caretaker convinced Tefh they had starved and no one helped them, leading Tefh to blame herself for their deaths.

At age twelve there was a major confrontation amongst the patrons where one of Tefh's fights was taking place. Among the chaos, Tefh had a chance to escape, and went for it. She left the Shroud behind and fled south, to Thanalan, where she has since remained. Her exposure to people had been minimal over the years, keeping to herself mostly and hunting for her own food. Most of those working with the cartel (that Tefh saw) were Duskwights and Highlanders, leaving her with a powerful hate for those clans. Most notably she harbored hate for men in general, and even now is slower to trust men than women. The people she wound up interacting with in Thanalan were Lalafell by and large, giving her a strong tendency to adore and trust the little folk more than others.

She managed to earn an apprenticeship with a tanner, going on to do the work on her own when she felt confident enough in her abilities. Even a decade later, she continues to tan and sell hides, as well as any leftover meat and other animal parts anyone has use for. What she spends that money on is anyone's guess, it's certainly not clothing or rent.

In more recent history she's been overcoming her hate for other races and no longer attacks people without any provocation.

Psychological State

Through lack of personal contact, Tefh is in many ways like a child. At twenty-two she has the social skills of an eleven-year-old and the reasoning of an even younger child. Selfishness is first in her nature by necessity; even seemingly selfless or kind gestures stem from her own wants. Sharing something or offering kind words is done with a conscious hope that the target will return the good will. She is not kind for kindness' sake, but nor are her efforts false. There is good in her, and along with the bad has come the sense of wonder and curiosity befitting a child, as well as a desire to be playful. Worries about potential backlash from expressing her more innocent sides is all that keeps her from running around trying to play tag with everyone.

Despite the way she was raised by the cartel, Tefh has never enjoyed violence the way some fighters and adventurers do. Even when hunting, killing her prey is considered a chore and nothing to be excited over. Her continued display of violent acts is all stemmed from habits rooted in fear. What she doesn't understand, she fears, and when afraid she becomes aggressive. The scope of what Tefh doesn't understand is alarmingly broad, from math and large words to social and emotional issues.

Though there never seems to be a shortage of insults to be sent her way, Tefh is -still- an exceptionally sensitive individual. A small show of disapproval from someone else causes her to feel extremely anxious, and that anxiousness often turns into fear, leading to a vicious cycle of handling social strain with 'fight or flight' responses. She's been favoring the 'flight' response more and more as she realizes how little chance she stands against any of the many trained combatants and casters of the realm that she stumbles across.

The sensitivity, while cause for most of her current issues, is a sign of her growing sense of empathy and a key part of learning to speak to others. This coupled with her habit of stalking those she's curious about (something picked up from all of that hunting) has proven to be an effective way of introducing her to aspects of socializing that she'd normally not be aware of. Spying on personal moments or even simple, friendly banter has taught her more about how people behave than any attempts of her own to engage others.

Learning fast, Tefh still has a long way to go before she can interact with others without massively sabotaging her own efforts in achieving happiness. Through the influences of the community, a great deal of progress has been made, but a low sense of self worth keeps her from making her own opinions with any solid standing. For better or for worse, those she is closest to will play the biggest role in shaping her ideas on that which she has yet to comprehend.

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