Post by Malevora on Jul 31, 2013 3:07:49 GMT -6
RESIDENT SMITH OF THE GREAT GA’HOOLE TREE, Sabine
Name: Sabine (sometimes called Sab, or Firetamer)
Gender: Female
Age: 18 moons
Species: Barn Owl
Kingdom: Guardian
Position: Resident Smith/Collier
Description: Sabine is a rather large owl, comparable to a young Great Grey owl. Her facial disk is shaped like a heart, as all Barn Owls’ are, and her eyes are a glinting onyx black. Occasionally her eyes will seem to have an ambery glow, almost like two live coals are nestled where her eyes should be. Her plumage is unusually pale for a Barn Owl, for instead of brown it is a pale flesh colour. She, unlike most smiths, has a habit of cleaning herself every night just before she settles down to sleep for the day. Her beak, however, is unhealable, as are her talons. They are both grey with soot and will stay that way for her whole life, no matter how many times she scrubs them with water. She is often seen with a hammer and tongs, a set of claws, or hot coals in her talons. She keeps said talons clothed in special battleclaws that belonged to her father, a smith in Tyto when she was young. She wears them part for remembering him, part because they are as much a part of her as her wings or gizzard, and part because her third talon on her right foot is a little deformed and she is embarrassed to let it show. If one sees Sabine before she has had her nightly wash, however, she is absolutely soot-black and almost unrecognisable as a Tyto Alba. She can sometimes leave a trail of soot when she hops forward, as there is this one spot in her tail feathers that somehow is packed with soot that she can never reach to clean. It irritates her to no end, and no matter how many times she dunks herself in the Hoolemere Sea, there is still soot in her tail. On the inside of her left wing there is a symbol inked with black dyes (of the kind used to write and illustrate books, but a lot more concentrated), a shape of five circles that are connected. This indicated that she was once an apprentice at the most renowned smithing school in the entire owl world; the Coalwing School of Blacksmithing. Her plumage is specked with greys that actually look a bit like ashes, if one made the connection.
Personality: Sabine is a very moral owl, preferring to talk things out rather than reply with claws. She will never attack while her enemy’s back is turned, while they are already grievously injured or when they are unconscious. She is known to sometimes go yeep or black out at the sight of blood, although she can steel herself and fight if she has to. In easier terms, she is a semi-pacifist. She dislikes even visiting friends if they are in the infirmary, because it would mean that she was surrounded with the sufferers of illness and injury. She is quite social, making friends with a person instantly, which leads to her losing a lot of friends when they turn out not liking her. She has a fear of crows that leads back to her childhood. She feels…. drawn to the ground, and is only truly at home when she is smashing the crud out of molten metal with her hammer. She is known as the ‘Firetamer’ because of the way she flies through forest blazes. When she is upset or stressed, she will often leave the tree and find a forest fire. Any who have seen her once she shoots into the conflagration will question whether she is just an ordinary owl. She flies in the craziest ways imaginable; spiralling and looping, twisting and flipping, soaring and plummeting, fire trailing from her wingtips like some bizarre child of the flames. In fact, in some kingdoms she actually is called ‘Child of the Flames’. It is easy to tell if she has been doing this recently because she actually sets her wingtips and the edges of her tail alight, and it leaves soot behind. (Until she washes herself, of course.) She is a free spirit and any attempt to confine her will end very, very badly.
Strengths: She is a pro smith, she is a very good flier and she is quite strong.
Weaknesses: She is not a very fast flier, she goes yeep at the sight of blood and she is never the first to strike, which gives her opponents a huge advantage. She also tends to be the first to make friends with an owl who turns out to be a traitor, which has happened a few times over the tree’s history.
History: Sabine was born in Tyto, in a small but sturdy Ga’Hoole tree. She was an only child, for the other egg in the nest did not hatch for some reason. From an early age she had liked fire, often sneaking down her nest-maid’s hole to the bottom of the tree to go to her father’s forge. She would stand there for hours on end, just staring into the flames. For a while it was thought that she had firesight; why else would an owlet stare into flames for hours? One day, her father came home from collecting coals to find that, once again, his daughter had escaped from the nest and was in his forge.
“What do you see, Sab?” he had asked.
“I see freedom,” the tiny owlet had answered. “and I see myself. Free, and fiery. Flying high, leaping. I see me.”
This was the beginning of the realisation that their daughter was different. When she learned to fly she was a natural; her first branching lesson was filled with her parents trying to catch her when she started spiralling around their tree.
Once she had completed her First Flight ceremony, her father took her to the Coalwing School of Blacksmithing; paying for her education with a donation of ten sets of training claws for the students to assist in collier training. She bid him goodbye and began her training. With each stage of her training, she was discovered to have a natural talent. One day, news reached this place deep in Ambala. The last known owl in the line of Theo the blacksmith was dead. A letter soon came to the academy. It asked for the eight best smiths to compete against each other in a contest of talent, strength and wits, then the winner must come to the Great Tree. Sabine was thrilled when she was selected to compete. She wasn’t so happy when her nemesis Foxine, a Great Horned Owl was also chosen. The ‘Game of Fire and Talons’ began. In the first round, Sabine competed against Lewyn, a Spotted Owl. The first round competition was a Colliering contest. Sabine easily defeated Lewyn, harvesting eight Grade B’s, eleven Grade A’s, three Glow-worms and five bonk coals. In the second round, Sabine versed Levi, a Whiskered Screech. This challenge was a Fire-Fight. Sabine chose a slender branch with tufts of pine needles on the end and lit it with one of her own Glow-worms. Using a bonk coal was no good, she knew, because the fire would simply devour the limb. Levi chose an immense oak branch twice his height, which he lit at both ends with a bonk coal. This made her smile. The fight began, and she took the branch in her talons and flew in an ascending spiral around Levi, surrounding him with flames. Then she plummeted down the middle of the flame-ring, striking Levi with the flaming needles on her limb. He panicked and beat out the flames, then went to lift off. However, his branch proved too heavy, and quickly burned away. Sabine struck; swinging the branch to Levi’s heart. Proclaimed the winner, she doused the flames and left.
In the third round, she was against a Tawny Owl named Cicae. This was a smithing challenge. They were required to forge the best battleclaws they could in a single day. While Cicae only finished a single set of claws, Sabine finished both claws and a somewhat weak helm. Obviously, she won that round as well.
On the final of the four days, Sabine’s final opponent was revealed. It was Foxine. The Great Horned Owl had outperformed her opponents in every task. The final challenge was an owl-hunt. Sabine and Foxne were blindfolded and escorted deep inside the largest forest in Ambala. The task was to collect five flags of a certain colour- red for Sabine, green for Foxine- and return to the Coalwing School. All tricks and traps were allowed; however, you could not steal your opponent’s flags and take them with you. Nor could you intentionally injure your opponent in order to slow them down. They were each given a map which showed the river and the locations of the flags, but not the edge of the woods. When they were released, Foxine zoomed off into the woods. Sabine, however, was smarter. She winged her way up into the air, above the forest and spied the five flecks of red. She gathered each one, passing one blue one on the way. She considered throwing it in the river, but decided against it. She saw her fifth flag. Just as she flew towards it, a shape dropped from above her, landing on top of her. Sabine cried out as she felt a rib snap, along with her wing. The bone punched through her feathers and the world swam as the blood ran out. Sabine yarped straight in her attacker’s face. There was a smaller crack from above her as she hit the ground; her attacker must have fractured something. Then she recognised the owl. It was Foxine.
“What are you doing?” Sabine cried. Foxine beat her wings and lifted off, wrapping her clawed talons around Sabine’s wings. That was one advantage that Foxine had. She may not have been smarter than Sabine, but she was bigger. She lifted Sabine into the air and flew to the river.
“Let’s see how well you do now, Firetamer,” the Great Horned spat. And with that, she dropped Sabine into the water.
Sabine hit the crystalline river in an explosion of bubbles. Water rushed around her. She slammed into a rock and her vision clouded with black spots. She surfaced for a second to see that Foxine still followed her. Suddenly Sabine found herself plunging into a thicket of tangled roots. She would be trapped here! She was going to die here, drowned with a broken rib, a snapped wing, surrounded by blood and felled by her spiteful rival. Her battleclaws were dragging her down. All of a sudden, she had an idea. She cut free a root and fumbled with it and a claw. Once it was attached, she hurled it from the water. It landed back in the water on top of Sabine, cutting her shoulder. The Barn Owl gasped, losing a bit of air. Another thick curl of blood emerged from her new wound. She pulled it back and threw it again. Her air was running out fast. This time it hit something, but there was a crack and a splash; it hadn’t caught. With the final iota of her strength, Sabine threw her makeshift grappling hook one last time. Suddenly the water was flooded with red, but just as this happened she realised that her device had stuck. She pulled herself from the water, gasping for air, choking out the water she had swallowed. Her throat was raw and she coughed gunk out of her beak. She looked down into the river and felt what little breath that had returned to her leave.
What Sabine hadn’t known was that on the second throw of her grappling hook, the battle claws had smacked into Foxine’s head as she hovered above, determined to watch Sabine die. The owl had dropped into the water and become tangled in the same roots as Sabine had. At the sight of Foxine in the water, blood leaking from her wound and whipped away by the current, Sabine felt herself go yeep and black out.
When she woke, the sun was beginning to rise. Sabine again saw the body of Foxine in the river. Gathering her wits, she gave the customary Barn Owl screech, over and over, until the throaty hoot of a Boobook owl answered her. Soon, the Boobook, Sabine’s teacher Chrysaor arrived overhead. Sabine spluttered out an explanation then keeled over in a combination of exhaustion and stress. Chrysaor rubbed her feathers then sent for the four stretcher-bearing owls to take the two contestants. The Boobook owl returned to the academy and took out a bit of her best writing parchment.
To the monarch of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree,
The victor of the Game of Fire and Talons was our best smith, our smartest student and our best warrior. Her name is Sabine Tytolia, daughter of Perseus Tytolia and Chevron Alba. She dislikes fighting, but will take up arms for a good cause such as yours. You may have heard of this owl before. She is the Child of the Flames. She is the Firetamer.
In Character:
Sabine returned to her forge with the final log she needed. Lighting down, she used one of her own axes to chop the wood into bits. She threw the bits into her forge. She then placed a load of coals on. Then wood. Then coals. Then wood again. The wood had caught fire by now. Sabine fetched a set of bellows and pumped them by lighting down on top of them, then lifting off again repeatedly. Soon the fire was hot enough to consume a length of wood in seconds. She lifted a lump of ore from her bench and dropped it into the smelter she had built. The iron soon liquefied and mixed with the coal dust, harden slightly. Sabine lifted the iron from the forge and dropped it onto her bench, cut off a small piece and resumed her forging. She seized her hammer and pounded the metal, then folded it. She slammed the hammer down again, and folded it. She did this several times until she was left with a long flat iron rod. She plunged the rod into the water, where a huge stream of steam issued forth. She then re-heated the metal. Then, picking up a whetstone, she drew it across the rod, sharpening it to a deadly keen edge. She then doused it once again and covered it with a mixture of clay and other substances, softening the iron. Then she placed it off to the side and picked up a small metal knife and a piece of wood from the canopy of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. She began to carve it into shape, the hilt of the blade. She did not even cut her talons. Soon she was left with a perfect hilt, thin but with the pommel round and flat. Sabine chose a rust-coloured gemstone and attached it to the pommel with a mixture of sap, water and a flour-like substance found in Ambala. This would hold the stone better than any glue. She then took the segment of metal she had removed before and made a silver circle to fit around the jewel, covering the wood. Taking up the blade once again, she made a hole in the hilt, filled it with the sap solution and stuck in the blade, which fit snugly. She waited for the sap to dry then polished the hilt with a black, tarry, mud-like liquid that both hardened the wood and dyed it black. Taking up another jar of the same liquid that was a rusty red rather than black, she tied a soft moss pad to one talon and spread the liquid all over the blade, dying it the same colour as the jewel in its pommel. Removing the pad, Sabine picked up a blade and cut a groove down the middle, which cut through the dye as well, showing the silver. She did this to both sides. Finally, she lifted her clawed talons and cut a symbol into the metal just above the hilt. Five joined circles. It was the symbol of the Coalwing School of Blacksmithing, but it had become more like her signature. She admired her handiwork for a while then placed it on a rack. Her blade was complete.
Name: Sabine (sometimes called Sab, or Firetamer)
Gender: Female
Age: 18 moons
Species: Barn Owl
Kingdom: Guardian
Position: Resident Smith/Collier
Description: Sabine is a rather large owl, comparable to a young Great Grey owl. Her facial disk is shaped like a heart, as all Barn Owls’ are, and her eyes are a glinting onyx black. Occasionally her eyes will seem to have an ambery glow, almost like two live coals are nestled where her eyes should be. Her plumage is unusually pale for a Barn Owl, for instead of brown it is a pale flesh colour. She, unlike most smiths, has a habit of cleaning herself every night just before she settles down to sleep for the day. Her beak, however, is unhealable, as are her talons. They are both grey with soot and will stay that way for her whole life, no matter how many times she scrubs them with water. She is often seen with a hammer and tongs, a set of claws, or hot coals in her talons. She keeps said talons clothed in special battleclaws that belonged to her father, a smith in Tyto when she was young. She wears them part for remembering him, part because they are as much a part of her as her wings or gizzard, and part because her third talon on her right foot is a little deformed and she is embarrassed to let it show. If one sees Sabine before she has had her nightly wash, however, she is absolutely soot-black and almost unrecognisable as a Tyto Alba. She can sometimes leave a trail of soot when she hops forward, as there is this one spot in her tail feathers that somehow is packed with soot that she can never reach to clean. It irritates her to no end, and no matter how many times she dunks herself in the Hoolemere Sea, there is still soot in her tail. On the inside of her left wing there is a symbol inked with black dyes (of the kind used to write and illustrate books, but a lot more concentrated), a shape of five circles that are connected. This indicated that she was once an apprentice at the most renowned smithing school in the entire owl world; the Coalwing School of Blacksmithing. Her plumage is specked with greys that actually look a bit like ashes, if one made the connection.
Personality: Sabine is a very moral owl, preferring to talk things out rather than reply with claws. She will never attack while her enemy’s back is turned, while they are already grievously injured or when they are unconscious. She is known to sometimes go yeep or black out at the sight of blood, although she can steel herself and fight if she has to. In easier terms, she is a semi-pacifist. She dislikes even visiting friends if they are in the infirmary, because it would mean that she was surrounded with the sufferers of illness and injury. She is quite social, making friends with a person instantly, which leads to her losing a lot of friends when they turn out not liking her. She has a fear of crows that leads back to her childhood. She feels…. drawn to the ground, and is only truly at home when she is smashing the crud out of molten metal with her hammer. She is known as the ‘Firetamer’ because of the way she flies through forest blazes. When she is upset or stressed, she will often leave the tree and find a forest fire. Any who have seen her once she shoots into the conflagration will question whether she is just an ordinary owl. She flies in the craziest ways imaginable; spiralling and looping, twisting and flipping, soaring and plummeting, fire trailing from her wingtips like some bizarre child of the flames. In fact, in some kingdoms she actually is called ‘Child of the Flames’. It is easy to tell if she has been doing this recently because she actually sets her wingtips and the edges of her tail alight, and it leaves soot behind. (Until she washes herself, of course.) She is a free spirit and any attempt to confine her will end very, very badly.
Strengths: She is a pro smith, she is a very good flier and she is quite strong.
Weaknesses: She is not a very fast flier, she goes yeep at the sight of blood and she is never the first to strike, which gives her opponents a huge advantage. She also tends to be the first to make friends with an owl who turns out to be a traitor, which has happened a few times over the tree’s history.
History: Sabine was born in Tyto, in a small but sturdy Ga’Hoole tree. She was an only child, for the other egg in the nest did not hatch for some reason. From an early age she had liked fire, often sneaking down her nest-maid’s hole to the bottom of the tree to go to her father’s forge. She would stand there for hours on end, just staring into the flames. For a while it was thought that she had firesight; why else would an owlet stare into flames for hours? One day, her father came home from collecting coals to find that, once again, his daughter had escaped from the nest and was in his forge.
“What do you see, Sab?” he had asked.
“I see freedom,” the tiny owlet had answered. “and I see myself. Free, and fiery. Flying high, leaping. I see me.”
This was the beginning of the realisation that their daughter was different. When she learned to fly she was a natural; her first branching lesson was filled with her parents trying to catch her when she started spiralling around their tree.
Once she had completed her First Flight ceremony, her father took her to the Coalwing School of Blacksmithing; paying for her education with a donation of ten sets of training claws for the students to assist in collier training. She bid him goodbye and began her training. With each stage of her training, she was discovered to have a natural talent. One day, news reached this place deep in Ambala. The last known owl in the line of Theo the blacksmith was dead. A letter soon came to the academy. It asked for the eight best smiths to compete against each other in a contest of talent, strength and wits, then the winner must come to the Great Tree. Sabine was thrilled when she was selected to compete. She wasn’t so happy when her nemesis Foxine, a Great Horned Owl was also chosen. The ‘Game of Fire and Talons’ began. In the first round, Sabine competed against Lewyn, a Spotted Owl. The first round competition was a Colliering contest. Sabine easily defeated Lewyn, harvesting eight Grade B’s, eleven Grade A’s, three Glow-worms and five bonk coals. In the second round, Sabine versed Levi, a Whiskered Screech. This challenge was a Fire-Fight. Sabine chose a slender branch with tufts of pine needles on the end and lit it with one of her own Glow-worms. Using a bonk coal was no good, she knew, because the fire would simply devour the limb. Levi chose an immense oak branch twice his height, which he lit at both ends with a bonk coal. This made her smile. The fight began, and she took the branch in her talons and flew in an ascending spiral around Levi, surrounding him with flames. Then she plummeted down the middle of the flame-ring, striking Levi with the flaming needles on her limb. He panicked and beat out the flames, then went to lift off. However, his branch proved too heavy, and quickly burned away. Sabine struck; swinging the branch to Levi’s heart. Proclaimed the winner, she doused the flames and left.
In the third round, she was against a Tawny Owl named Cicae. This was a smithing challenge. They were required to forge the best battleclaws they could in a single day. While Cicae only finished a single set of claws, Sabine finished both claws and a somewhat weak helm. Obviously, she won that round as well.
On the final of the four days, Sabine’s final opponent was revealed. It was Foxine. The Great Horned Owl had outperformed her opponents in every task. The final challenge was an owl-hunt. Sabine and Foxne were blindfolded and escorted deep inside the largest forest in Ambala. The task was to collect five flags of a certain colour- red for Sabine, green for Foxine- and return to the Coalwing School. All tricks and traps were allowed; however, you could not steal your opponent’s flags and take them with you. Nor could you intentionally injure your opponent in order to slow them down. They were each given a map which showed the river and the locations of the flags, but not the edge of the woods. When they were released, Foxine zoomed off into the woods. Sabine, however, was smarter. She winged her way up into the air, above the forest and spied the five flecks of red. She gathered each one, passing one blue one on the way. She considered throwing it in the river, but decided against it. She saw her fifth flag. Just as she flew towards it, a shape dropped from above her, landing on top of her. Sabine cried out as she felt a rib snap, along with her wing. The bone punched through her feathers and the world swam as the blood ran out. Sabine yarped straight in her attacker’s face. There was a smaller crack from above her as she hit the ground; her attacker must have fractured something. Then she recognised the owl. It was Foxine.
“What are you doing?” Sabine cried. Foxine beat her wings and lifted off, wrapping her clawed talons around Sabine’s wings. That was one advantage that Foxine had. She may not have been smarter than Sabine, but she was bigger. She lifted Sabine into the air and flew to the river.
“Let’s see how well you do now, Firetamer,” the Great Horned spat. And with that, she dropped Sabine into the water.
Sabine hit the crystalline river in an explosion of bubbles. Water rushed around her. She slammed into a rock and her vision clouded with black spots. She surfaced for a second to see that Foxine still followed her. Suddenly Sabine found herself plunging into a thicket of tangled roots. She would be trapped here! She was going to die here, drowned with a broken rib, a snapped wing, surrounded by blood and felled by her spiteful rival. Her battleclaws were dragging her down. All of a sudden, she had an idea. She cut free a root and fumbled with it and a claw. Once it was attached, she hurled it from the water. It landed back in the water on top of Sabine, cutting her shoulder. The Barn Owl gasped, losing a bit of air. Another thick curl of blood emerged from her new wound. She pulled it back and threw it again. Her air was running out fast. This time it hit something, but there was a crack and a splash; it hadn’t caught. With the final iota of her strength, Sabine threw her makeshift grappling hook one last time. Suddenly the water was flooded with red, but just as this happened she realised that her device had stuck. She pulled herself from the water, gasping for air, choking out the water she had swallowed. Her throat was raw and she coughed gunk out of her beak. She looked down into the river and felt what little breath that had returned to her leave.
What Sabine hadn’t known was that on the second throw of her grappling hook, the battle claws had smacked into Foxine’s head as she hovered above, determined to watch Sabine die. The owl had dropped into the water and become tangled in the same roots as Sabine had. At the sight of Foxine in the water, blood leaking from her wound and whipped away by the current, Sabine felt herself go yeep and black out.
When she woke, the sun was beginning to rise. Sabine again saw the body of Foxine in the river. Gathering her wits, she gave the customary Barn Owl screech, over and over, until the throaty hoot of a Boobook owl answered her. Soon, the Boobook, Sabine’s teacher Chrysaor arrived overhead. Sabine spluttered out an explanation then keeled over in a combination of exhaustion and stress. Chrysaor rubbed her feathers then sent for the four stretcher-bearing owls to take the two contestants. The Boobook owl returned to the academy and took out a bit of her best writing parchment.
To the monarch of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree,
The victor of the Game of Fire and Talons was our best smith, our smartest student and our best warrior. Her name is Sabine Tytolia, daughter of Perseus Tytolia and Chevron Alba. She dislikes fighting, but will take up arms for a good cause such as yours. You may have heard of this owl before. She is the Child of the Flames. She is the Firetamer.
In Character:
Sabine returned to her forge with the final log she needed. Lighting down, she used one of her own axes to chop the wood into bits. She threw the bits into her forge. She then placed a load of coals on. Then wood. Then coals. Then wood again. The wood had caught fire by now. Sabine fetched a set of bellows and pumped them by lighting down on top of them, then lifting off again repeatedly. Soon the fire was hot enough to consume a length of wood in seconds. She lifted a lump of ore from her bench and dropped it into the smelter she had built. The iron soon liquefied and mixed with the coal dust, harden slightly. Sabine lifted the iron from the forge and dropped it onto her bench, cut off a small piece and resumed her forging. She seized her hammer and pounded the metal, then folded it. She slammed the hammer down again, and folded it. She did this several times until she was left with a long flat iron rod. She plunged the rod into the water, where a huge stream of steam issued forth. She then re-heated the metal. Then, picking up a whetstone, she drew it across the rod, sharpening it to a deadly keen edge. She then doused it once again and covered it with a mixture of clay and other substances, softening the iron. Then she placed it off to the side and picked up a small metal knife and a piece of wood from the canopy of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. She began to carve it into shape, the hilt of the blade. She did not even cut her talons. Soon she was left with a perfect hilt, thin but with the pommel round and flat. Sabine chose a rust-coloured gemstone and attached it to the pommel with a mixture of sap, water and a flour-like substance found in Ambala. This would hold the stone better than any glue. She then took the segment of metal she had removed before and made a silver circle to fit around the jewel, covering the wood. Taking up the blade once again, she made a hole in the hilt, filled it with the sap solution and stuck in the blade, which fit snugly. She waited for the sap to dry then polished the hilt with a black, tarry, mud-like liquid that both hardened the wood and dyed it black. Taking up another jar of the same liquid that was a rusty red rather than black, she tied a soft moss pad to one talon and spread the liquid all over the blade, dying it the same colour as the jewel in its pommel. Removing the pad, Sabine picked up a blade and cut a groove down the middle, which cut through the dye as well, showing the silver. She did this to both sides. Finally, she lifted her clawed talons and cut a symbol into the metal just above the hilt. Five joined circles. It was the symbol of the Coalwing School of Blacksmithing, but it had become more like her signature. She admired her handiwork for a while then placed it on a rack. Her blade was complete.
Attachments:
