When a Naval port was being built on the beaches of her home, Oralie, once lovingly called Orasa’i Olioli, didn’t feel anxiety like the adults in her village. All she knew was that they brought toys and sweets as rewards when she learned their language. Sure, they struggled in pronouncing her name and shortened it down to Oralie, but it didn’t matter to her. As the Chief’s daughter, Oralie became the conduit for conversation, not only with her own tribe but also with the Nazrani peoples on the neighboring islands.

This common tongue that she learned was something she appreciated immensely, mostly because as the ninth child born she would have to take on the magic known as cursed speech within her tribe. This duty fell on her and while Oralie was prepared to be mute unless it was time to protect her tribe, it was hard to grow up learning a sign language that only three others knew. Common tongue gave her a chance to speak to others and it seemed there was no magic in those words.

At sixteen, given her first set of tribal tattoos that sanctioned her to be an adult, she was also presented with a opportunity: the Anirian guardsmen that she had grown up with offered her a chance to join them. She was promised to be trained in the guard for a year or two, but would then aid their efforts. And in return: her earnings would go to her village which was beginning to look more “civilized” as the Anirians put it. So she went, spent a year and half of training and exceeding expectations of her. She fought bravely for Vel Anir.

When she was given some respite at the age of 20, she went back home to visit her island. She was aware that at the time other Anirians had moved there and began their own establishment, but an issue had occur. A sickness that seemed to have wiped them out, something about the wrath of Nazrani gods or other superstitions. Oralie hoped her village was fine, but upon entering her home, she realized no one on these clusters of islands were fine.

Two initiates and a dreadlord had decimated multiple villages, Nazrani, Anirian, her own tribe by allowing poison to fester in the waters. Fish and sealift were dead, plant life was nonexistent, and the crops that Vel Anir once greedily sought were unable to grow in the deadly soil.

Perhaps the worst part was seeing how no one had bothered to bury her dead friends and family, and their corpses were sickly sweet and rotting out in the open because they weren’t Anirian. Oralie used her cursed speech for the first time, saying “clean” and “purify” but to no avail. After all, her magic is only a destructive one. Useless in actually doing some good.

Oralie didn’t return to the guard but went to Vel Anir, wanting to find the idiots that could be so careless. The dreadlords she had met in the guard were no better: such great power they had and they threw it around carelessly, even if it meant their own soldiers got killed in the process! The justification of “if the end justifies the means” meant nothing but recklessness to her, but oh, she would have her revenge.

At least, she thought she would. Living in the slums, nearly attacked when one caught sight of her tribal tattoos on her throat and cheeks and tongue, Oralie wouldn’t have survived and been able to escape the harsh clutches of Anirians jails, but that was when the Hanged Man offered her something she couldn’t refuse. Something to hopefully stab the hypocrisy of Vel Anir right where it could hurt them.