Character Avatar: Darya Goncharova
Character Name (used in Terre d'Ange/Less formal settings): Maridah Nuwwar
Character Name (birth/formal): Maridah bint Umar ibn Nuwwar
Age: 28
Rank/Title: Foreign Citizen
Race: 1/2 Drujani, 1/2 Hellas
Country/Province: L'Agnace
Townhome Request: Willow District: Tanglewood: The home of Maridah Nuwwar
Business Request: Temple District: "The Last Hope. A small hospice where one can seek alternative care for illness of the body or the mind, when more traditional methods do not work. Maridah Nuwwar is the sole healer though she also has two assistants. The property also features a small enclosed garden with a scented communal bath at it's center. The interior houses the usual beds and things one would find at a hospice, but also a small alter with a gold bowl which always has a fire burning in it. There are also some artifacts and decorations in homage to the Ahura Mazda. For some, The Last Hope houses additional secrets.
Player: Desdemona
Appearance: Maridah was blessed with beauty and can stand out even among the sea of angels that is Terre d'Ange. Her beauty is somewhat of a dark one, her hair is black and her eyes a color of their own. They border on the edge of brown and gray, at times taking on a earthy hazel tone. They give her a surreal look even though there is nothing mythical behind them. She not especially tall, standing around 5'9". Her other notable feature are the twin piercings that she has on her lower lip.
Personality: Maridah has two sides. The side that most see is compassionate, though stern when needed. Maridah attempts to heal those who have more than a simple cold and requires their obedience to ensure the best results. Though there are casualties in her line of work, she knows that the best results will bring the most customers. She also has a darker side that she shows to those she deems worthy. Those who seek the Aura Mainyu in one form or another. She has dreams of being a highly respected priestess and will fulfill the roles of both light and dark, depending on what that person seeks. A duality she signifies with her twin lip piercings, though she doesn't reveal this to her customers.
History: Maridah bint Umar ibn Nuwwar has a deep family history that traces back to the Hellas and Kebbel-Im-Akkad. Her great grandparents were high Hellas nobles in Kebbel-Im-Akkad, nobles on the border of the country and Drujan. They had three children, a elder son and two daughters. Though their son would have been their most likely choice for inheritance neither he or his youngest sister survived to adulthood. Only the middle child, Nuwwar, survived and she kept a shaky hold on their lands, the position more traditionally held by a male.
Tales of the Mahrkajir were plenty on the border of that country and reached Maridah's grandmother Nuwwar Farisa bint Bishr. She sent gifts to the Mahrkajir hoping that he would bring her power and a stronger hold on her estates. His power never reached her and in time she ended up getting married and having a child. The Mahrkajir's power grew and in a fit of religious zeal Nuwwar liquidated all that she could claim as her holdings and moved with her child to Drujan, purchasing land there and making appeals to the Mahrkijir and his priests for blessings. She held strong to his tenants and ruled her small estate with a harsh hand. Only three years after her move the Mahrkijir was defeated and Nuwwar left without her religion. She was not allowed to return to her old home in Kebbel-Im-Akkad and was forced to embrace the religion of Ahura Mazda if she wanted to maintain her lands. She married a Drujian Lord to add to her lands, but never had another child.
Nuwwar's son, Umar ibn Hamdun, was raised under the shinning light of the Ahura Mazda and didn't know of his mother's historic love of the Mahrkajir. Umar grew and married a Drujan noble woman, a marriage arranged by the two families. He and his wife Sajah bint Zayd had two children, both girls. Maridah was the eldest and when she was four they had another girl they named Maysun. Both girls grew well, but when Maysun was 9 she was in an accident that caused a broken arm, one which festered and eventually killed her. Maridah and Maysun had been close sisters and best friends. Her death was hard on Maridah. The combination of that event and secret lessons from her grandmother about the Ahura Mainyu destroyed any faith Maridah may have had in the Ahura Mazda.
Mariah grew in a world of opposing ideologies. A world of love and peace taught by her parents and a world of darkness and power taught by her grandmother. Nuwwar had favored Maridah since the day she was born. A fiesty child, she had unusual brown-gray eyes that Nuwwar took as a sign of future greatness. Her eyes seemed to be of cold earth and Nuwwar felt that the power of the Aura Mainyu would come from deep within.
Maridah's parents taught her to care for nature and to always act kind. Nuwwar filled the girl's head up with tales of the Mahrkajir and his Bone Priests. Even though he had been defeated, Nuwwar still believed that the true power had laid within the darker end of the religion. She couldn't act on it and keep her status so she sought to fulfill those deeds through her granddaughter. Nuwwar was clever and taught the girl how to work behind her parents back. She taught her to put on a good face in front of others while committing dark deeds that she could never be caught at. Maridah never fully bought into her grandmother's stories, but she enjoyed the games that her grandmother set her up for and grew learning how to live two lives.
This ability came in very handy when Maridah's parents sought to marry her to a Ahura Mazda priest who also had lands and a small nobility. Maridah was only 14 at the time, but they wanted to make sure their only child was well set and that their lands would be in the proper hands. Her wedding wasn't set until after her first blood would show, which everyone expect to happen at any moment. They thought this would raise them in the eyes of God and that the priest would be a good husband for their daughter. Nuwwar wanted something else for the granddaughter that she had grown to love more than her own son. She did her best to prime the young teen in the ways of Aura Mainyu and convinced Maridah that she was better off helping her new husband to his death instead of meeting him in marriage. Nuwwar taught the girl how to poison the man by sneaking him a potent and deadly mixture of hashish and opium mixed into a tea. Maridah visited the man when she should not have and he accepted her gift of heavily honeyed tea. He knew he should have sent her away, but she was coy and he was weak. He drank his gift and no one suspected that a mysterious visitor had caused the priests death.
Maridah had been fascinated by this entire process. She watched the priest as he flirted with her and tasted her drink. She also watched his eyes as they dilated and his breaths as they grew shallow. Even more fascinating for Maridah was the fact she never even suspected. She felt as if she had maximized her power of a double life. She had killed a man and gotten away with it. She wondered how far she could go.
Soon after Maridah started to offer the tea to the farmers and other lower class laborers in her area. She choose her suspects carefully. Some she gave a weaker version, causing the unplanned side effect of addiction and need. She also experimented with her formula, using a mixture of those two drugs and later adding a third, a mushroom that grew in the area.
When Maridah first started her drug laced experiments, she did cause the death of a couple of peasants. But, when she discovered that addiction brought the people back to her, desperately seeking her aid, she did her best to keep her subjects alive. Though she was careful, eventually her parents figured out something was amiss. Maridah was spending more and more time away from home. At first they had assumed a love, she was the right age for it after all. However, one of Maridah's addicts, in the desperate throws of detox, approached Maridah's parents hoping to find the girl. They approached her and forbade her to leave the house as they decided what punishments they should give their, then 16 years old, daughter. Maridah didn't wait for her parents to decide, she laced their wine and both perished in the night.
The death of Umar ibn Hamdun and Sajah bint Zayd caused much suspicion, but sweet 16 Maridah was able to pin blame on her grandmother. Poisons and vials were found in the rooms of Nuwwar and no one would listen when she pointed towards her granddaughter. Nuwwar was executed for the death of her son and daughter-in-law, leaving the 16 year old alone. There was talk of finding someone to marry Maridah and take care of her lands. She quickly put a rest to any such thing happening. She liquidated all that she could and left, setting out on her own to discover the world. She brought with her the ingredients to cultivate and continue her tea growing elsewhere. She also brought with her three of her addicted acolytes, three men who were burly enough to dissuade most bandits, though by the time she hit her first stop of Kebbel-Im-Akkad only one remained alive.
For the next 12 years Maridah was a drifter, though one who managed to live fairly luxurious between selling her tea and other curative remedies that she learned over the years. Her tea she sold for those who had difficulties of the mind or the soul. She sold opium for pain and later learned of the distant Ch'in art of acupuncture, which she also started to perform. She learned herbalism and even dabbled in fortune telling and speaking to the dead. Though she discovered that herbs and stronger drugs with a mix of acupuncture was enough to keep her customers steady. Once she had drained her customer base dry of their monies or if they became dangerous she moved on, stealing away in the middle of the night with whatever hired goons she had with her at the time. She traveled along the southern coast of the land, slowly working her way Westward and towards the fabled land of Terre d'Ange.
Of Terre d'Ange she had heard much, especially from her grandmother. She had learned that a d'Angeline woman, man, and a child had managed to kill the Mahrkajir and ruin his budding power. Maridah didn't believe in gods or spirits among the other religions and peoples she encountered. In almost every case she had learned a way to mimic any apparent show of magic or the supernatural. She felt that if anyone truly had god like powers it would be the d'Angelines, the ones who had foiled the Mahrkajir. If it turns out they did not, well she would still learn from them.
She took her time and it took her 10 years to finally reach the fabled country. She spent two years roaming around Eisande and hearing tales of the City of Eula, it's temples, and The Night Court. She moved her way North and finally, after 12 years, reached the City. Eisande showed the wealth of the people, but Maridah wanted to see it's heart and find out whether or not there was anything to discover in it.
She was able to find and buy a decent building in the Temple district to set up shop. She set up a small Hospice at the for front and she built a sanctuary to the few foreigners in the city who worshiped Ahura Mazda. She is also ready to seek out those who truly need her, those who need her tea and her Priestess like spiritual guidance. The hospice being a golden light in which to lure in her sort of customers. Those who she feels won't be good followers she dutifully heals and sends home, knowing they will put out a good word to attract more to her arts.
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