Post by Brandwyn on Aug 5, 2011 15:13:41 GMT -5
Age: 36 (in the year 657)
Gender: Female
Profession: Ranger - Silver Leaf
Appearance:
Gender: Female
Profession: Ranger - Silver Leaf
Appearance:
(OOC: Heather “Lightfoot” Oasterhoff is pronounced ‘owe-stir-hawf’)Personality:
Heather is rather short, at five foot three inches tall and has reddish blond hair that she keeps trimmed to just below her shoulder blades and often wears it in a ponytail or two Gallican braids one on each side of her head and tied up with knotwork beads and a leather thong. Sometimes she curls the braids into tiny buns right behind her ears, but most of the time she just has it in a ponytail at the base of her head in the back. She has blue eyes with long lashes, high cheek bones but a rather oval face and high forehead. She keeps her bangs long so it is nearly in her eyes most of the time. She is rather thin, but not skinny weighing around 135 to 140 pounds and very athletic and limber. She steps so softly she can sneak up on people easily and that earned her the nickname of “Lightfoot” in the Ranger Corps. She also gets that from her ability to climb trees like a monkey and mountains like a goat.
She likes to wear earthy browns and greens but the style of clothing varies. She is comfortable in her brother’s farm clothes, but she likes to dress up like a girl every so often. When on duty she is most often seen in loose brown pants with ankle high soft suede leather boots that have a thick sole with a pointed toe and large cuff just above the ankle. They are dark brown. Her undershirt is often green, but occasionally she has a dark blue one on. Al her undershirts are of lightweight linen and have long sleeves, though loose they are not exceptionally large and poufy. The outer tunic she wears depends on the weather. In the summer they are sleeveless jerkins, usually made from leather thicker than suede, but thinner than saddle or armor leather so they move and bend easily. She prefers them to be very dark brown or deep dark green. In the winter she has two very heavy long-sleeved leather jerkins padded with black wool on the inside for warmth. One is very dark brown and the other hunter green. The jerkin buckles up the front with dulled copper buckles and leather straps. It is loose enough so that she can move easily and to provide an air cushion for warmth and the leather is soft and supple rather than stiff so she can bend and move however she needs to. She normally doesn’t wear a hat, except when she pulls her ranger cloak hood up to ward off the rain, cold or conceal her face. When she needs to hide or blend into the terrain, she has a neck band she knitted from black and gray wool that she can pull up over her nose and mouth. When it is too warm for that, she has been known to paint her face in mottled patches with green and black face paint (medieval make-up). She got the idea from having seen the plains people paint their faces when they were warring on each other.
She carries her long bow, a quiver of arrows on her back and keeps two extra on her horse and her saxe and throwing knife. She also has a spear with a square pike point rather than the traditional leaf shaped point. The spear has special holster behind her saddle on the right side that allows her to grab it and push the peace-tie knot off the holster with her thumb which then opens the holster up freeing it in one swift motion so she can draw it and throw in a matter of a couple of seconds if she needs to. She also uses the spear as a walking stick, it having a metal band on the opposite end, especially when she goes hiking in terrain too rough for her horse.
Her other gear consists of the usual camping gear and standard ranger gear along with a brown belt sporting two pouches and her pouch of money she keeps inside her tunic tucked in her bosom nice and safe. She has a bedroll, saddle bags, and a center saddle bag that rides on top of the bedroll behind the saddle. This houses her clothes, personal items and a few books. This center saddle bag is large and made of oiled and waxed leather and is designed to shed rain so the contents stay dry in all but the most horrendous weather. She has a hand-made solid silver mirror and hair comb that were given to her by her mother and have been in her family for generations and she considers them to be her most valuable possessions.
Heather is polite and friendly on the surface and generally gets along well with most people, but she doesn’t let people get to know her real well or open up to the majority of people. She has a wide circle of acquaintances but very few really close friends. She is a determined and tough individual who is generally fearless and adventurous. She will try most anything once, unless she feels it is truly stupid or suicidal or someone is trying to get her to do something just to win a bet. She has a hard time fully trusting people, especially other women. She is far more likely to make friends with men than she is with women.History:
She doesn’t like being used by other people and when she gets angry she gets very quiet and reserved. It takes a lot to get her truly angry, however, but when she does get pushed past her limit, she explodes and generally most everyone around her ends up taking damage. She also tends to distrust the nobility and rich people in general and is secretly very envious of their wealth and status, though she doesn’t even admit that to herself.
Most of the time, however, she is fairly friendly and for those in her close circle, she will talk their ears off. She is very intelligent and fairly observant and prefers to sit back and gather information than be in the limelight. She tends to examine problems from every angle and play devil’s advocate before reaching a decision on important issues.
She is often sought out for her leadership abilities and her wisdom by her peers and even some of the nobility she interacts with as a ranger. People tend to look to her for guidance during a crisis and when in crisis mode she can quickly assess the situation and make snap decisions that benefit the majority of the people involved.
She is shy about her appearance and thinks that she is rather homely and average in appearance. She even has some self-esteem issues in some areas but is rather arrogant when it comes to her intellect. She tries to be a good person, but occasionally finds herself torn when she has to do something bad for the greater good. She does not believe the ends justify the means, but finds she is often placed in that dilemma as a ranger, so she struggles with it daily.
She fears dark, damp holes full of creepy crawling critters but she doesn’t mind exploring caves. It really depends on the cave though. She loves to climb trees and rock formations and she loves to swim and ride horses.
Heather was born on a farm in the southern edge of Heatherwood Downs Fief along the eastern shores of Araluen. Her father had a warped sense of humor and thought that naming her Heather from Heatherwood was hilarious. Her mother was forced to go along with it and hoped it would make her daughter stronger.Additional Information:
Most of the holdings in the area were either horse farms or cow farms but her holding was mostly agricultural. Her family did not own the land they farmed. They were tenants for the local Lord who actually owned the land. He was a good man, however, and did not interfere in his tenants or even his serfs’ lives or livelihood as long as they faithfully tithed two-thirds of their crop to him. Half of what he brought in each harvest from all the tenants and serfs went to pay the Baron who he was sworn to. They raised vegetables, apples, cherries and other fruits and berries and had a few milk cows, pigs and chickens for their own use to provide milk, eggs and beef. They traded for other goods like wool, leather and metal. They also grew flax plants and her mother and sister spun it into fine linen. Heather learned to die the linen in many bright colors and it was one of the main crops that supported her family. They were poor country folk, but never lacked food or a place to sleep under a roof, so overall they were not that bad off.
She grew up in a large family that was about as normal as any farm family can be. She has three older brothers, one older sister and two younger sisters and one younger brother. She used to have four older brothers, but one of them died when she was 11 in an accident. Stuck smack dab in the middle of the brood she never received a great deal of attention and learned to sit back in the shadows and go unnoticed most of the time. She liked it that way, for she was far more able to get away with forbidden activities than some of her siblings. This of course solicited a lot of resentment among some of them and they tormented her mercilessly as a child and even into adulthood. All of this teasing, tormenting and often physical fighting toughened her up and she learned to shrug off a lot of discomforts and to bottle up her feelings inside. She encased herself in a protective shell which very few people have been able to penetrate and which became very prominent on the days immediately following her brother’s death. She learned to take care of herself and not depend on anyone to get her out of situations that her siblings got her into. Her mother was very loving, but did her best not to show favorites among any of the children. She had certain activities she shared with each child that they came to appreciate as adults. For Heather it was horseback riding for out of all the kids, she was the only one that shared her Mother’s love for horses. She never remembered learning how to ride for her mother had her on a horse before she could even walk by herself. It was the same with swimming. For all she knew she was born being able to do both. Her father taught her farming and harvesting and her two older brothers taught her to hunt. She is not particularly good at hunting though and hates to kill animals, although she knows how to live off the land if she has to.
When she was 15 she attended the fief’s Choosing Day Fair with her family. They had gone to sell their vegetables and fruit and were taking turns minding the booth. She happened to wander up near the court area where the Choosing was taking place and unknowingly positioned herself at the end of the line of candidates so she could watch the proceedings.
The Battlemaster came up and looked over the candidates and asked for those that wanted to become knights to step forward. A good portion of the group near her did so and he went through and selected several from the bunch, asking some of them questions. The same procedure followed for the couriers, but a far smaller group volunteered for that job.
Next the local ranger came forward and he didn’t say a word. He walked up the line and then back down the line, ending up only five feet from where Heather was watching with interest, not quite sure what the ranger actually did in the fief, but knowing that a great many people either feared him or respected him, or both. She looked down at her toe, digging a hole in the dirt and sighed wistfully, wondering what that kind of life would be like but knew that she would grow up as a farmer like everyone else in her family.
When she looked up again she jumped back, startled that the ranger was standing in front of her. “I choose you. Come with me.” Heather just stared at him with her mouth open and then tried to explain that she wasn’t among those who wanted to be picked for an apprenticeship. He refused to take no for an answer and so she ended up becoming his apprentice and after five years, a full ranger. Later he said he had seen her climbing trees and shooting her brothers with acorns from a sling and had been impressed by her climbing skills and her accuracy with the sling.
She was now stationed back in her home fief of Heatherwood Downs and liked the fact that she saw her family regularly again, but still had the ranger cabin and lived apart from them. They now noticed her and even looked at her with a bit of fear or apprehension at times. Heather did nothing to ease their tension around her and rather enjoyed the attention she now received. Her brothers no longer picked on her in a mean way, although they did tease her about her profession and her clothing. Her sisters teased her about not having a husband and her being an old maid but Heather didn’t mind that. She really didn’t want to have children and certainly didn’t want to be tied to a farmstead like her parents were.
Although she loved her job, she had been through many tough times and adventures that had nearly broken or killed her and from each incident she grew tougher and stronger and more withdrawn emotionally. She thickened up that shell a bit more with each passing year and now wore it like a badge of honor. Among the Ranger Corps she was generally well-liked, but she wasn’t particularly close to many of the rangers. She liked to be alone, as so many of them did. Still, she often found that she was restless, bored or possibly even depressed and found herself asking if this was all there was to be of her life. When she asked herself what more did she want, however, she didn’t have an answer.
She knows how to use the spear on horseback and how to use it as a quarterstaff in close combat on foot, having learned a few tricks from her ranger mentor and a battleschool friend. She also has a sling tucked into one of her saddlebags and occasionally uses it when she remembers she has it or is out of arrows.
She has a piebald appaloosa horse that has one green eye and one blue eye, the blue being on the white side of the horse’s face and the green being on the red roan colored side. The horse’s nose is dark brown and the rest of her coat is a hodgepodge of colors ranging between brown to roan to tan and interrupted with large white patches. Inside the white patch on her rump is a whole spattering of small brown spots and even smaller roan spots. She looks like a white horse that someone splashed brown and red paint all over.
The horse is partly from ranger stock and partly from the plain’s ponies but it was ranger trained. The mare’s name is Shasta. She is a smart horse and has a good temperament but is a little too fearless and curious for her own good. Of the two of them, Shasta has more sense to know when to avoid trouble than Heather does, but both of them tend to rush headlong into disaster without fear.