Simeon Aytak

[Simeon Aytak]

Simeon, from the tents of Aytak, of the sons of Basalom Appearance Race: Benshira Gender: Male Age: 22 Birthday: 2nd Day of Summer in the Year 492 AV Birthplace: Sunberth Occupation: Herbalist Appearance: Despite being a Benshira, Simeon possesses only a slightly swarthy complexion with a distinctly reddish hue, having grown up in Sunberth and never set eyes upon the desert homeland of his ancestors. Years of indentured servitude have given Simeon strong overall musculature and broad shoulders marred with fleshy long strips of pale scar tissue - a testament to his time under the whip. Apart from his scarred back, Simeon is also marked by thick blotches of scar tissue on his forearms and parts of his face - sugar burns from his time as slave. Although he inherited his mother's exotic beauty, Simeon is heedless of his appearance - growing up as a slave tends to have that effect. Therefore, while he can be considered fairly good-looking, his lack of common cosmetic knowledge, or perhaps the lack of care with regards to the latter, has led to him sporting a wild, unruly beard, which dramatically alters his serene, youthful facial features, giving him a fierce, almost feral appearance. Simeon takes after his mother in terms of his eyes, which are a vivid violet-blue in color. His serene, if passive gaze, tends to balance out his savage facial appearance. Simeon sports raven black hair that reaches down to his shoulders like a river of ink, but he will usually tie it up into a crude ponytail most of the time. --- Character Concept For Simeon Aytak, the intricacies of herbalism and the thin barrier that separate medicine from poison are an art form - and he is Sunberth's most devoted artist. Although a Benshira by birth, Simeon never grew up anywhere near the desert, having been born into a life of indentured servitude which he only recently left behind him. This means Simeon has little to no understanding of what is ostensibly "his" culture, instead identifying much more with the local customs and beliefs of his birthplace: the lawless pit of unadulterated death and debauchery that is Sunberth. Although Simeon's mother attempted to teach him the culture of his people, her early death and Simeon spending the majority of his life as a slave meant little knowledge was actually properly passed on to Simeon. Therefore, while aware of some aspects of the Benshira culture, Simeon is largely passive about actually upholding any of it. For example, while he knows his culturally-proper name is "Simeon, from the tents of Aytak, of the sons of Basalom", he simply refers to himself as "Simeon Aytak". At a glance, Simeon appears to be a respectful, calm, and mild-mannered individual... but this deceiving outlook is simply the byproduct of a life largely spent in chains. Deep inside, Simeon is of a fanatical, somewhat mentally unstable disposition, and is driven by a manic thirst for knowledge. Simeon also lusts greatly after wealth and power, which are not uncommon traits for a denizen of Sunberth; however, his desire for material gain tends to be largely driven by his pursuit of knowledge rather than simple greed. After all, without money or influence with the right contacts, it would be impossible to obtain the necessary ingredients and equipment to fuel his obsessive experiments. --- Character History Simeon was born to Zadariah, a breathtakingly beautiful Benshira woman with violet-blue eyes and smoky brown hair. She was the wife of Jekon, an accomplished warrior whose martial valor was matched only by his adoration for his wife. The blissful couple lived in the tents of Aytak, who was descendant of Basalom, the fairest of all Abiyram's sons, who surely had blessed Zadariah. Within a year of their marriage, Zadariah became pregnant by Jekon, who, delighted, promised to return with a great bounty by nightfall. Beauty can sometimes be a curse. Hours after the menfolk had left, slavers swiftly struck. These slavers were experienced hands at preying in the desert lands around Yahebah, and knew of the cultural norms and customs of the Benshira. The knew most of the menfolk capable of defending the old, the women, and the children, would leave in the day and return in the night. After days of observing the tents of Aytak, they knew exactly when was the most ideal time to strike. The tents of Aytak fell swiftly after a token resistance. The old, including Aytak, were cut down where they stood. The women and the children, snatched away, so that a heartbroken Jekon and his fellows returned to a devastated home. Although Jekon and the rest of the menfolk gave pursuit, the slavers were, by then, long gone. The pregnant Zadariah was determined to live for her yet-unborn child, no matter how much suffering she had to go through. She was shipped to Sunberth, and sold as a pleasure slave to a wealthy magnate with extensive ties to the criminal underground. Although revolted by the magnate at first, a saddened Zadariah agreed to please the man and do anything he asked of her if he would allow her to deliver her son and not abort him. The man agreed, and so Zadariah's torment began. Much humiliation, and many degrading, disgusting acts was Zadariah forced through, but she bore it all without complaint. She became a favorite of the magnate, and when the time came for her to go into labor, the magnate even supplied her with midwives to aid her delivery. Thus, Simeon was born, a slave from his first breath, raised by Zadariah until he was six years old, taught the ways of his people, educated in the bare bones of his culture, and allowed to serve with the nominally female housekeeping staff until his mother passed away due to sexually-transmitted disease. With his mother's death, there was nothing to keep Simeon with the housekeeping. As a boy of merely seven years, Simeon was forced to work the magnate's walled sugar plantation which lay near the city of Sunberth in close proximity of the city's own walls. In spite of his youth, the taskmasters showed no mercy, whipping the young hide off the boy should he so much as stumble, and if he cried out, the whip would slash red across his flesh once again. The other slaves were sympathetic to the young boy-slave, perhaps the youngest slave amongst them, though none truly knew their age, really. When you live as a slave, why bother counting the years you have spent suffering, especially when you suffer in a hellhole like a slave-driven sugar plantation? Only those who have toiled a sugar plantation know the terror of its production. Once the sugar canes were harvested, they were mixed with root crops, and the mixture boiled to create murky white vats of thick, seething liquid sugar. It is this liquid sugar that is cooled and sieved to create the fine white sugar so many use in their daily lives without a single clue as to how dangerous it is to produce. The incredibly dense liquid sugar had to be hand-stirred in their massive vats, and the boiling liquid sugar on the surface had a tendency to jump and scatter - often only the faces and arms of the slaves who stirred the vats. Simeon's face and arms bears many sugar burns as a result of this. But the years working the plantation was not all bad. The close proximity to the boiling sugar, helping with the cutting of the root crops, the harvesting of the sugar cane, the exposure to the wilderness... he developed a keen sense of smell that allowed him to identify plants through his nose alone. Simeon's lucky break came when he was about seventeen years old, having served under the whip for ten years. He, and a number of other strong-backed young slaves, were tasked with carrying the boxes of refined sugar to Sunberth under the eye of a particular greedy taskmaster. After they had unloaded the goods, Simeon's nose caught a particular scent - a most intriguing scent. It was the smell of sugar, but it was altered - there were other smells in it as well. The smell of something that grew around the plantation, which the women-slaves sometimes gave to the men with which they used to make poultices to stop the bleeding of open wounds. The smell of a plant, or rather, that plant's sap, which could alleviate the pain of a hard lashing. The three smells combined to create ... a new smell. A totally different one, but yet, with the shifting properties and fragrances of its core components. Simeon followed the smells to the window of a herbalist by the name of Bartyom, who looked up, startled, and tried to shoo the wayward slave away. But Simeon entered the store, and curiously asked the herbalist about the smells - correctly identifying all three plants in the potion Bartyom was boiling ... after having smelled them from more than a hundred feet away! Impressed, Bartyom engaged in conversation with Simeon, until the angry taskmaster burst into the store and dragged Simeon away. For his insolence, Simeon was whipped within an inch of his life, and had to be borne away by his fellow slaves, where he was so badly injured he was incapable of so much as eating on his own. The taskmaster, at this point, considered Simeon a crippled laborer, and decided to mix poison into his porridge to hasten his death, so he could sell his corpse to the reapers of Sahova. But Simeon's sense of smell saved him again, and he refused to eat the porridge night after night. Right when he was about to starve to death, Bartyom arrived, having tracked Simeon down. Bartyom was very much interested in Simeon's keen sense of smell, and offered to buy Simeon off the taskmaster. It was fortuitous, then, that Simeon had already been whipped and starved to a state of near-death that the taskmaster was readily given permission by the magnate. Why not sell a crippled slave they were going to sell to Sahova anyway? Bartyom agreed to pay more than what a Sahovan body-buyer would pay, and the deal was made. Simeon was carted home by Bartyom to Sunberth, and his new life, as a herbalist's assistant, began. Bartyom had tracked Simeon down because his uncanny ability to easily identify the components of a potion through smell alone was priceless. It meant Bartyom could simply buy the potions of his competitors, and through Simeon, uncover their zealously-guarded recipes and reproduce these potions as his own, but for a cheaper price. For this purpose, Simeon was educated in all manner of herbs by Bartyom, who had to have Simeon know the smell of the potion component so he could identify it when he smelled it; occasionally, Bartyom would tell him about the uses and properties of each component as well. Under Bartyom, Simeon was educated in the intricacies of herbal lore, learning which components were poisonous, which components were not, how the root of a flower might be edible but the leaves of the same flower might be lethal, how some poisonous components became remedies when mixed with other components, how the smell of foul components could be concealed with the fragrance of boiled petals, and so on. With Simeon at his side, business was booming for Bartyom. It got even better when Simeon started to not only reproduce what he smelled, but also add to it to make the reproduction even better than the original. No longer did Bartyom have to sell his reproductions for cheaper - he sold them for several times the price! But the more Bartyom taught to Simeon, the more Bartyom started to discover the young man was almost fanatical in his pursuit of knowledge, showing subtle, but evident flashes of anger in his eyes when told by a tired Bartyom he needed to rest for the day and could not teach him any more, showing more interest in the poisonous side of the flora than the beneficial... But Bartyom had greater concerns to attend to, since his place of business happened to be Sunberth. His competitors, at this point, had had enough. He had driven many of his fellow herbalists out of business, and the competition that remained wasn't about to risk bankruptcy in a city where failure means being clad in chains and living as a slave, selling your organs, or worse, ending up on a corpse ship to Sahova. When Simeon was twenty-two years old, he woke up one morning and exited Bartyom's storehouse to water the plants, as he usually did. But he smelled something. The smell of oil. The smell of saltpeter. The smell of smoke in the air. Just as his mind processed what these components combined to create - Bartyom's storehouse exploded in a vicious conflagration of ashes and flame. Simeon was thrown across and entire street by the blast. By the time he stirred, the man who owned him was dead, his storehouse was in ashes, and Simeon was a free man with little to nothing to his name. And that, was more than anything he had in his life at that point. The now-free Simeon roamed Sunberth aimlessly for a few days after that, shunned as a beggar, no better than a purposeless slave. But perhaps aimlessly was not the word that should have been used. As Simeon wandered the streets of Sunberth, he passively started picking up new scents and smells, determining their composition, and marveling at the complexities. Then, at the apex of his desperation, he wandered out in to the dangerous wilderness beyond Sunberth, driven into fearlessness by his hunger. He began to seek out the wild herbs he had learned to recognize near-instantly by smell, harvesting as many as he could find. He ate the ones he knew could alleviate hunger, and he kept rest as he tried to make his way back to Sunberth, with the intention to sell them. But, inexperienced as he was, Simeon quickly lost his way, and by the time darkness started to fall, he still was nowhere near Sunberth. It was then he spotted a fading fire in the distance, and approached it quickly, only to find a thoroughly-wrecked caravan with the unfortunate denizens screaming as they were eaten alive by starving wolves. The terrified Simeon managed to force himself into an uncanny calm; he stripped naked, emptied his bladder into his rags, and then clasped them to his nose as he ran towards the campfire and threw in all the wild hemlock he had gathered. The poisonous smoke produced from the highly-toxic plant swiftly brought the wolves to their knees, and killed off the remaining doomed members of the caravan, but it very nearly brought Simeon to his death as well. When Simeon finally awoke from his deadly stupor, it was daytime, he was nauseous, had a pounding migraine, had a befouled face crusted with his own piss, and was ringed by dead wolves and men. He scavenged what money and equipment he could off the corpses, rekindled the fire, and managed to boil himself a herbal remedy to beat his ailments. He then set off again, and by chance, found one of the horses who had fled the encampment, saddle, tack, and all. He managed to draw the starving horse to him with wild dandelions, gave it a drink of water, and managed to saddle it, though his inexperience on horseback resulted in him falling off several times. Fortunately for Simeon, the horse knew the way, and guided itself back to Sunberth, bringing an exhausted Simeon to safety at long last. With what he had scavenged and harvested following his traumatic experience in the wilderness, Simeon managed to set himself up as a street herbalist. He kept the horse, using him to hold the saddlebags filled with equipment he bought with the coin of dead men. Though the experience in the wilderness was fearsome, Simeon ended up gaining a deep respect for herb lore, which had saved his life. Now, after a life under the whip, and a brief dance with death, Simeon's life as a free man begins. --- Language Fluent Language: Common Basic Language: Shiber Poor Language: Fratava --- Skills Skill EXP Total Proficiency PoisonArboreal, Fungus, Roots #10 (SP) #10 Novice Horsemanship #5 (SP) #5 Novice Philtering #9 (SP) #9 Novice Herbalism #16 (SP) + #10 (RB) #26 Competent Medicine #10 (SP) #10 Novice --- Lores Lore of Sunberth Street Layout Lore of Herbal Smells --- Possessions x 1 Waterskin (Starting Package) x1 Large Tent (Starting Package) x1 Large Tarp (Starting Package) x1 100ft Rope (Starting Package) x1 Lantern (Starting Package) x2 Torches (Starting Package) x1 Bedroll (Starting Package) x1 Blanket (Starting Package) x1 Fishing Tackle & Hooks (Starting Package) x1 Compass (Starting Package) x1 Aventhalian Sleigh Horse (Starting Package) x1 Full Set of Tack (Starting Package) x1 Mortar & Pestle (Purchased on Creation) x1 Ladle/Cooking Utensil (Purchased on Creation) x1 Iron Pot (Purchased on Creation) x1 Gloves, Boxing (Purchased on Creation) x1 Simple Brazier (Purchased on Creation) x1 Toolkit, Herbalist (Purchased on Creation) x1 Knife (Purchased on Creation) x1 Book/Simeon's Journal (Purchased on Creation) x1 Ink, Vial (Purchased on Creation) x1 Quill (Purchased on Creation) Clothing: x1 Simple Shirt (Starting Package) x1 Simple Pants (Starting Package) x1 Simple Undergarments (Starting Package) x1 Simple Cloak (Starting Package) x1 Simple Boots (Starting Package) x1 Apron (Purchased on Creation) x 1 Backpack (Starting Package), Containing: x1 Metal Comb (Starting Package) x1 Metal Brush (Starting Package) x1 Soap (Starting Package) x1 Razor (Starting Package) x1 Week's Worth of Balanced Rations (Starting Package) x1 Eating Knife (Starting Package) x1 Flint & Steel (Starting Package) x1 sq yd of Whole Cloth (Purchased on Creation) x1 Set of Large Saddlebags (Starting Package) , Containing: x5 oz of Crushed Apple Seeds and Cherry Pits (Roleplayed) x1 Poppy Solution: Poppy Seeds, Cherry Flesh, Honey (Roleplayed) x2 oz of Elderberries (Purchased on Creation) x2 oz of Onions (Purchased on Creation) x1 lb of Fly Mushrooms (Purchased on Creation) x2 oz of Coriander (Purchased on Creation) x8 oz of Ginger (Purchased on Creation) x1 oz of Sage (Purchased on Creation) x2 oz of Marjoram (Purchased on Creation) x12 oz of Salt (Purchased on Creation) x1 oz of Basil (Purchased on Creation) x1 oz of Mint (Purchased on Creation) x1 lb of Almonds (Purchased on Creation) x3 lb of Sugar (Purchased on Creation) x3 pt of Honey (Purchased on Creation) x3 oz of Garlic (Purchased on Creation) Heirloom: Simeon wears a bright red goat-hair bracelet around his right wrist, a traditional Benshiran crafts product. The bracelet was made by his mother, Zadariah, who wore it since before she became a pleasure slave. It was given to Simeon by Zadariah upon her deathbed, in the hopes it would tie him to his lost culture more. --- Housing Location: Sunberth House: Simeon lives out of a bedroll in Sunberth's tent city as a wandering herbalist, with only his steed as companionship. He avoids the actual streets of Sunberth at night due to the roving gangs, though he does peddle his services in the streets in daytime. --- Ledger Purchase/Purpose Cost Total Character Creation +100 GM 100 GM x1 lb of Apples -1 GM 99 GM x2 oz of Cherries -1GM 98GM x2 oz of Elderberries -2SM 97GM, 8SM x2 oz of Onions -1GM 96GM, 8SM x1 lb of Fly Mushrooms -1GM 95GM, 8SM x2 oz of Coriander -2SM 95GM, 6SM x2 oz of Lemon Balm -4SM 95GM, 2SM x10 oz of Ginger -10CM 95GM, 1SM x1 oz of Sage -1SM 95GM x1 oz of Thyme -1SM 94GM, 9SM x2 oz of Marjoram -8CM 94GM, 8SM, 2CM x12 oz of Salt -12CM 94GM, 7SM x1 oz of Basil -1SM 94GM, 6SM x1 oz of Mint -3CM 94GM, 5SM, 7CM x1 oz of Poppy Seed -8GM 86GM, 5SM, 7CM x1 lb of Almonds -3GM 83GM, 5SM, 7CM x3 lb of Sugar -3GM 80GM, 5SM, 7CM x5 pt of Honey -5SM 80GM, 7CM x1 Mortar & Pestle -1GM 79GM, 7CM x1 Ladle/Cooking Utensil -2SM 78GM, 8SM, 7CM x1 Iron Pot -5SM 78GM, 3SM, 7CM x1 Gloves, Boxing -3GM 75GM, 3SM, 7CM x1 Simple Brazier -5SM 74GM, 8SM, 7CM x1 Toolkit, Herbalist -20GM 54GM, 8SM, 7CM x1 Knife -5SM 54GM, 3SM, 7CM x3 oz of Garlic -12CM 54GM, 2SM, 8CM x1 Apron -3SM 53GM, 9SM, 8CM x1 sq yd of Whole Cloth -5SM 53GM, 4SM, 8CM x1 Book, Blank -3GM 50GM, 4SM, 8CM x1 Vial of Ink -1GM 49GM, 4SM, 8CM x1 Quill -3CM 49GM, 4SM, 5CM Services Rendered +8SM 50GM, 4SM, 5CM --- Thread List Sweetness on the Streets (4th Fall 514AV) Toxicity Rising (5th Fall 514AV) Doctor x Doctor (6th Fall 514AV) Cat in Cold Water (12th Fall 514AV)

[Simeon Aytak]

Doctor's Journal 6th Day of Fall, 514AV Patient presented with a light fever, severe coughing, throat inflammation, and disorientation. Conditions manifested likely within 24 hours of prolonged exposure to unclean water. Initial suspicions about hypothermia were inconclusive; patient did not present with external shaking. Suspected Kelvic in human guise, so avoided onions and garlic for treatment. Administered single-dose tincture consisting of one ounce of lemon balm to lift the fever, one ounce of thyme for the cough, one pint of honey for the throat inflammation, and two ounces of ginger for the disorientation.