Updates to Character Concept, Description, Backstory, Deity and Connections
Since the time of the original application, my concept of how I want to play Mery and what she is about has evolved, and accordingly, I'd like to make updates to the above-referenced items, mostly for my own reference.
Character Concept
Nerdy girl face/support character constantly seeking new knowledge, wants to write a book that makes a difference, but is unsure what to write about. A victim of verbal abuse from her stepfather throughout her childhood, she has healed enough to be able work with males in task-oriented situations, and she has learned a lot about how to handle conflict scenarios between people since conflicts were never aired much less resolved while growing up and she totally hated that, but she struggles to form friendships with males at the personal level and isn't at all sure she ever wants to marry one.
Description
Mery has long blonde hair that she generally wears up in a bun to keep it out of her face and piercing green eyes. She prefers clothes that are functional and have many pockets. Given a choice in the matter, she wouldn't be the first one to come and greet you in a room, as she has a somewhat reserved nature, but she has the ability to switch "on" into a more outgoing mode if she feels that is called for. She's not really one for chit-chat in this mode though, and her conversations will be more purposeful than a truly outgoing person's would be. She can be incredibly charming and persuasive when she wants to be, and she can be quite warm once she's had a bit of time to warm up to you. If there is nothing going on that she feels requires her attention socially, she can have a somewhat distracted air, as though her attention is elsewhere, and indeed it is, as in these moments she mentally catalogues anything that strikes her as worth being written down. During downtime, she can often be found madly scribbling in one of multiple notebooks she carries. When she is distracted, she frowns very slightly and the right side of her mouth quirks upward. 'Mishakal's mercy!' is one of her favorite exclamations.
Socially, Mery can seem enigmatic to those who don't know her well, alternating between a confident persuasiveness that can seem hard to stand up to for those on the opposite side of her viewpoint and an insecure stutter in quieter moments that hints at her deepest vulnerability.
Backstory
For as long as she could remember, Mery loved books. She loved the feel and smell of them, and most of all, she loved learning the wondrous things contained in their pages. It helped that her parents were parchment makers in Palanthas who sold parchment to the Great Library. Mery thought that was the most magical place in the world, a place she visited as often as she could.
Her fondest dream was to write at least one book worthy of being included in the Great Library, but what could she write about? Did Krynn need a book about the plants of Ansalon? Did it need a book about a great hero or heroine? Did it need a book about blacksmithing techniques?
When Mery was 15, she met two people who became very important to her. The first was a human boy about 2 years older than she named Angus Whitequill. She met him in the Great Library and found she could talk to him about books and lore and knowledge for hours on end. The second was Ispin Greenshield. Ispin came into her family's shop one day looking to buy some parchment for letter-writing. What made Ispin different from other customers is that he took a genuine interest in people around him, so much so that her mother invited him to their house for a meal, her father being away on a trip to gather skins. During the meal, he asked her about her interests, and when she told him she wanted to write a book, he asked what she wanted to write about. When she confessed she wasn't sure, he laughed, but told her to keep learning, she'd eventually figure it out. After getting her mother's permission, he asked if he could write to Mery and she said yes.
When Mery turned 20, she applied to become an Aesthetic at the Great Library, mostly because Angus was doing it and wanted her to do it with him. To her delight, she and Angus were both accepted, but something didn't feel right. In Ispin's letters, he wrote about the importance of doing as the best way of knowing, and being an Aesthetic seemed to skip the doing part entirely. In addition, the idea of writing about the doings of evil entities as just another fact deeply offended her. She couldn't see herself ever being able to be neutral about the suffering evil inflicted on the innocent in the way the Aesthetics required.And so she reluctantly refused the offer. She fell in love with Angus around this time, but he didn't appear to see her as anything other than a kid sister.
Ispin encouraged her to become an adventurer, as he felt this was a great way to get to know more about the world, but for the next five years, Mery hesitated, primarily because she felt an obligation to repay her parents for her advanced education, and it was taking a while to reach that goal.
In his final letter to her, Ispin said he thought he might be dying and asked her if she knew yet what she was going to write her book about. He asked if she thought she could gain the experience she needed to write a good book if she remained in Palanthas. He told her he believed in her and was sorry he likely wouldn't be around to read her book.
Around the same time, Angus started becoming distant from her, making excuses to avoid her company. On a trip to the Great Library, she caught Angus kissing another girl. So that was why he was avoiding her! When she cornered him a few days later and asked him about the girl, he said it was none of her business.
Mery was more shocked by this response than she could say. Didn't friends share this kind of news and support one another in it? When she asked him these questions, he exploded at her, telling her he had considered their friendship to be over for a long time, that he was sick of her constantly hounding him like a puppy dog, and that he wanted her to leave him the h*$# alone forever.
Now she was hurt and angry. But she did a lot of soul-searching and realized she'd been sticking around Palanthas partly because of a stupid hope that Angus might finally start to care for her. It was now clear that not only would he never care for her, but he didn't even want her friendship anymore. And Ispin's advice was echoing in her thoughts - she should see the world.
A few days after she finally paid off the debt for her education, another letter arrived announcing Ispin's death and funeral in Vogler. That made her course clear – Vogler would be her first stop, and then she was going to travel around. She told her mother she was leaving Palanthas and wasn't sure when she'd be back. She then purchased passage to Kalaman on a local ship and set out, unsure of what the future might hold, but determined to learn as much as she could about the world outside of Palanthas.
Unrevealed Backstory
This is the verbal abuse. In progress.
Deity - With the addition of verbal abuse to Mery's backstory and her desire to heal from it, I've decided the deity she would favor the most is Mishakal, although Branchala would be her second favorite. Given the existence of a Temple of Mishakal in Kalaman, I definitely see Mery paying a visit at some point and learning more about what worshipping Mishakal entails.
Connections
Riaxis "Ria" Keryndon Darkmore – Mery's mother Ria, a human woman, has always had a fascination with Elves and had an affair with a minor Qualinesti noble as a young woman, resulting in Mery's conception. He abandoned her upon learning of the pregnancy, thus forcing Ria to return home to Palanthas, where, following Mery's birth, she struggled for 3 years to make ends meet to support her young daughter. Fearful of being alone and of failing her daughter, she married Bran Darkmore when Mery was 3. Due to Bran's ability to hide what he was up to, she did not believe Mery's claims about the abuse he was subjecting her to until Mery was 16, when Ria returned home unexpectedly and walked in on him verbally assaulting her oldest. Although unable to get Bran to stop what he was doing, Ria nevertheless took up aiding Mery, often going behind her husband's back to do so. When Mery moved out at 18, she encouraged her oldest to pay Bran back the money spent on her education, and worked to help pay for Mery's room and board so Mery could earn the money for the repayment as quickly as possible. At Mery and Janala's urging, she also kept multiple copies of the repayment records so Bran couldn't destroy the official copy and then claim the debt hadn't been paid. With her oldest away and her youngest married, Ria is now thinking long and hard about whether she wants to stay married to Bran. She still struggles with a degree of guilt over having allowed Mery's abuse to continue, but would welcome a visit from her oldest daughter.
Branokras "Bran" Darkmore - Verbally abused himself as a child and then orphaned at 15 due to his parents being killed by Elven criminals, and having no other relatives to take him in, Bran, still just a boy at the time, considered himself lucky when the previous owner of Benton's Bulk Parchments agreed to take him on as an apprentice in parchment-making in exchange for a place to live. He set about learning the parchment-making business with a will, learning in particular the importance of having a good reputation. Bran was gratified when the old man, having only a son with no interest in the business, agreed to sell it to him when the old man's health took a turn for the worse. Bran immediately changed the shop name to Bran's Bulk Parchments and then decided that he should marry, that it would be cheaper if he didn't have to pay helpers to work in the shop and the parchment-making shed. When he met Ria, he saw her as someone with a dependent personality he could control and her child Mery as just more free labor for his business, so he married her. But something in the child, Mery, set his teeth on edge. Although often quiet, when she did speak, she was socially precocious and intelligent enough he sometimes felt like an ignorant hick, a fact he found ridiculous given that he was an adult with years more experience than she. He determined he was going to put her in her place, but knew his wife would not approve of his methods, so he picked moments when no one else was around to "teach" his step-daughter the same way he had been "taught" that she was worthless and no matter how precocious or intelligent she might be, it wasn't going to get her anywhere. When Ria came to him and suggested that Mery be educated, he was initially opposed due to the expense, but Ria found a way to get the cost down. She also argued that if he didn't want to be stuck having to support Mery after she got older, an education was a sure way she could make her own way later on. He initially agreed to this, then decided he wanted to take the education away from Mery, but he wanted it to be her own failings that justified his decision to do so - just more proof of how worthless she was. Accordingly, he gave her large amounts of work to do in the family business that had to be completed in addition to keeping her grades at a high level. Yet the dratted child met the requirements, which just made him increase the requirements on the business side. No matter how much work he gave her, she still managed to both get the work done and keep her grades up. He hated her for how how brightly she shone in spite of his "teaching" in private moments and was only too glad when she moved out of the house when she was 18. He tried to find out where she worked during the day so he could keep "teaching" her, but the dratted girl never kept a consistent schedule. And when Ria announced that the debt for Mery's education had been paid in full, plus another 10% on top of that, a rage filled his heart against her, more so when he destroyed the record of her repayment only to have Ria produce another copy and inform him that she had registered a third copy with a local barrister. His rage caused him to offend a few long-term customers, causing the rest of his family to start to question his fitness to keep running the business. He isn't aware that Mery has left Palanthas, Ria having decided it wasn't something he needed to know, but if Mery showed up, he just might not be able to contain his resentment of her.
Tiquirith “Tiqi” Darkmore Mallory – A young human woman, Mery's younger half-sister, about 4 years younger than she is. Mery and Tiqi have had a relationship alternating between periods of closeness and distance, due to Mery's claims about Bran's abuse, Bran's abilty to hide what he was up to, and Tiqi's reluctance to believe her father capable of it. Three months prior to Mery's leaving Palanthas, Tiqi married Zayden "Zay" Mallory, with the plans being that Bran would train up Zay in running the family's parchment-making business and Zay and Tiqi would eventually inherit it. Tiqi would welcome a visit from her half-sister, but would want to avoid any mention of Bran's abuse.
Angus Whitequill – A human Aesthetic who currently works at the Great Library, Angus met Mery in the Great Library the same year she met Ispin but well before Angus was formally accepted as an Aesthetic. He is the closest thing Mery has ever had to a male friend and the only male Mery has ever had a crush on. He and Mery would talk for hours on end about lore and history, and he did in fact influence her love of history quite a bit, but was never willing to listen to her talk about subjects that interested her but not him, and had no interest at all in hearing about the abuse from her mother's husband nor did he understand how much she needed a friend at that time. When Angus and Mery both applied to become Aesthetics and were accepted but Mery turned down her acceptance, Angus felt betrayed and began pulling back from her, seeing no basis at all for continuing to spend time with her. To his annoyance, she kept trying to hold onto the friendship, but his dislike of conflict kept him from telling her outright that he thought they had outgrown each other and should stop spending time together. Not long before Mery left Palanthas to head to Vogler, he finally exploded at her with a lot more anger and vitriol than her actions actually deserved, given his own unwillingness to honestly tell her how he felt. He feels guilty and somewhat ashamed about this, but at the same time is enjoying not having to deal with her showing up regularly. If he were to encounter her again, he would try to avoid any mention of the past, particularly the part pertaining to his own shame and guilt, and would expect Mery to do the same.
Janala Marston - a middle-aged human woman who was initially just the widow woman Mery rented a room from when she moved out of her family's home at 18 and a year later became her mentor. Although Ria loved Mery and wanted the best for her, Janala had the life wisdom to start to teach Mery some of the things that Ria didn't know about how to have a good life and looked on Mery as the daughter she'd never had but always wanted. Among other things, Janala taught Mery about how healthy people relate to each other, how to talk to someone you're having a conflict with, how to stand your ground, and how men are different from women. She also encouraged Mery to be relentlessly dedicated to improving herself, owning her own mistakes, and going to bat for other people. She would be only too happy to see Mery.