Marit Nuldochter

I'm looking for a story worth telling

Marit is tall for a dwarf, standing at almost five feet, and unusually wiry for her race. Rather than a purely stocky build suited to the usual blunt attacks of the more traditional warriors, Marit is leanly muscled, with surprising flexibility. Her age isn't entirely known, as she was perhaps a year old before she was found as a child, but she has endured thirty winters since.

Though her name betrays her gender, most of the time she can pass for male when talking to strangers, particularly those from races where the women are beardless. Her own beard is cropped to sit quite close to her face, as to not get in the way of any fine work she needs to do, but her hair sits in two thick braids that fall over her shoulders. Both hair and beard are a reddish brown colour that even the most poetic have only ever described as 'rust'. Her eyes are the colour of the glaciers.

Marit's usual outfit is that of a travelling bard. She wears a high collared wool tunic of deep green, belted with cloth of blue. Soft leather boots come to her knees, and she wears black stockings under her tunic. Over all this she wears a treated leather coat that stretches from her head to her ankles, designed to keep the rain and snow out. She also wears a lot of jewellery. Her fingers are adorned with many intricate silver rings, inset with gems of all colours, and her ears, nose and eyebrow are all pierced. In her ears she wears plugs that stretch the skin. These are the simplest of her adornments, an inch across of plain silver. Her nose is pierced on the left side with a stud inset with rose amethyst, while her right eyebrow is home to a curved and pointed bar.

She can usually be seen on journeys carrying a stout stick, carved all over with her own designs, that she uses to test the path ahead of her, and a lute carried on her back, wrapped in the same waterproofed leather as her coat. Any other weapons are usually concealed underneath her clothes and definitely can't be spotted by anyone who isn't looking specifically for them.

Marit appears to most as open and friendly, talking a lot and laughing at her own jokes, as she has an intense fondness for plays on words.
She's travelled a lot in her life, picking up songs and stories from all over the continent, and she loves to relay those stories, either to pass the time as she travels, or at inns when she stops, in order to make some extra coin.

Beyond her stories, however, she is a private person. She can talk for three hours straight, and the only thing you would learn about her would be that she has a nice voice, and a rust coloured beard. This ability to keep secrets earns her more than her singing ever will. Marit enjoys keeping busy, never moving without a purpose, and she has a contact in every town.

No matter when you see Marit, she is doing something with her hands, be it sitting in a corner whittling, idly strumming her lyre, or gesturing wildly as she tells a story. In situations where she has to remain quiet and moderately still, she will idly twist the silver plugs in her ears, or her rings.

Marit is aware of her habits and the way people think of her, knowing that a lot of people find her annoying and whimsical, but she uses that to her advantage, as most people don't view a whimsical person as any kind of threat, and they certainly don't think that someone who can flit from topic to topic with a wave of her hands and a pun will remember all of the comments they make, and Marit is charming and curious enough that people are willing to comment on almost anything.

Her loyalties are to the Dwarven Queen, and the Princess Heir and, no matter how much you pay her, if you asked her to betray her rulers you would choke on your own gold.

Trained as a spy in the halls of the Dwarven Queen, Marit has an incredible memory for detail. Her training was intended to give her the ability do do almost anything in the service of the Queen, from assassination to carrying messages.
In that way, she trained in a multitude of weapons, though those she carries on her person are only simple knives, a garrotte (or six, steel lyre strings come in handy), and poison in one or two of her many rings. Despite the lack of weaponry, Marit is skilled at hand to hand fighting.

As a compliment to her other skills, she is also an apt lockpick, and carries the tools of that trade with her at all times.

Bard training is a great tool for memory retention, and so from a young age she was trained in the songs of not only her own people, but those of many neighbouring countries. That skill is now the cover under which she does her work for the Queen.

Dwarven society doesn't care about your gender, unless you're female, and in line to the throne. So when the Queen found a baby girl in the ruins of an enemy city and chose to raise it as her own daughter, there was an outcry from her nobility. If she was legally adopted, she would be in line for the throne, and as the queen had no born daughters of her own at that time, this would unacceptably make a child of the enemy sole heir. So Marit was never adopted in the eyes of the law, and a year later, the Queen gave birth to a legitimate daughter. In this way, Marit began to be taught, not as a future Queen, but as an advisor to one. She was taught to understand the politics of the world, to retain knowledge about kingdoms and individuals, and to recognise important people in a crowd.

She was ten winters old when the Queen realised that her trueborn daughter would not need an advisor for many years yet, and that Marit's political knowledge and good memory could be put to practical use in the meantime. So her training as a spy, assassin and bard began.

From her fifteenth winter, she was put to work. Her first few jobs were only as a messenger, and in the company of her mentor, the Queen's spymaster. For the past ten years, since her twentieth winter, she has been working alone, and utilising all of her skills. A majority of the time, she is merely information gathering, but every now and again she will get a specific job.

Her journey to the landsmeet is one such job. She received an order as soon as news of the High King's assassination spread, and has attended the landsmeet in order to gather information on the human nobility of Atamor, and the next ruler.

Like everything else about her, Marit's piercings look interesting but are ultimately shallow and hold no real meaning.