Only when youthful insolence was tempered by discipline, zealotry by selflessness, did the knight reach a point where she understood herself to be a servant of the people, both to the individual as she was to the whole. Even as her devotion remained, it was but a distant whisper of a more egregious animal, nowadays redirected in healthier ways than the indiscriminate thrashing against a world replete with nuance.

Unlike those she pledged her service to in the trade city of Saknne, her homeland in the northernmost reaches of Amol-Kalit was a different story altogether; the women of the village of Mavallos had no other choice but to reject the pampered lifestyle of those who lived in the great urban sprawls of the south.

Her childhood amidst the villages of the great desert meant that she inherited a far more difficult existence. She could not afford to blanch at it, as the only person in custody of the girl's safekeeping was herself, no one else. It was a fact of life that matured someone faster than their few years in this world might suggest.

To those villagers, life had never been a kind thing, nor ever one with luxury.

Therefore they had adopted a way of living more suitable to their environment. Where even the children learnt all manner of skills from a young age; how to hunt, forage, survive in the wasteland beyond the safety of walls and constant vigilance by a village militia. Ranna as a child learned more of a world without comfort than most would in the entirety of their lives.

So it was not such a strange thing to have accepted an offer that promised a life worth living for, and dying for. Where souls made angry by circumstance could be refined into blades capable of cleaving through even the most stalwart opposition that stood against them. And at a young age, a still angry girl accepted the calling.

The Priestesshood of Wrought Spears accepted all who knocked upon its gnarled doors, finding no lack of acolytes capable of enduring the endless training that entry into their order would promise. The angry girl who had been accepted in the ranks found the rigorous training easy enough; not a day went by where she felt her muscles hadn't yet been pushed beyond exhaustion, in one fashion or another.

But it was the beginning, a fleeting glimpse of how the rest of her life might look.

And as the months passed into years, Ranna found that she had outgrown much of the anger that had sent her to join. The freedom from it was a welcome sensation, as to continue in the way she had - vengeful and full of hurt - would have placed her immortal soul in danger. As for her body, she had welcomed one and every challenge all.

Eventually her duties had taken her to the cities, whereupon she met the Lady Samirya, soon to be Lady Vené Tanyakoettir.

To say they fell in love would have been an misinterpretation to most, for it was a platonic kind of love that the two women shared for one another. And they had met only by circumstance and a sense of duty, for the Priestesshood of Wrought Spears did not shy away from the task of bodyguarding, however looked down upon by other orders it might have been.

Ashamed as she was at the time to admit it, Ranna had enjoyed the presence of the cultured woman and her outlook of a world once narrowed by an overweening sense of duty. She had been prepared for difficultly, as she always had, but found the mission to be one where there was more than enough time to sit, and talk.

They were of a similar age, that had helped a little to bridge the overwhelming gap of lived experience.

When the Lady Samirya asked for the continued service of a woman who intrigued her as much as she had intrigued the noble woman in waiting, she had been unable to say no, at least by the end. At the time she had demurred and continued on with her service to the order, finding more comfort in the familiarity of routine rather than the gamble of abandoning it all for an uncertain future.

Until the day her own sense of duty, ironically honed by the Priestesshood, was what pushed her to finally leave its sanctuary. Not that they were duplicitous in their purpose, or shamed her in some way to serve, but it was first and foremost a business where their tributes ended in filling the great temple's coffers. To then be used for greater things; to be spent on community and expansion of their holdings, as much as their tenets promised.

They were not selfish in her eyes, but they were not as intent on the singlemindedness they had trained her for. And perhaps not quite as altruistic as she would've liked, having been raised by their own holy institution that preached a great deal of things.

And so she left, simple as that. An amiable affair colored little by drama.

Ayl-Maltene Ranna Anakanos had served them well in many ways, all of it dutifully performed until the very end. She was permitted to leave with her marque of service and enough references to carry her through the brief period of unemployment. Not to mention the offer that yet remained - the service to the House Vené Tanyakoettir


While there was little to say of what the following years would bring, as so much of it was the same as her life before, it was a life still wracked by all sorts of events, both big and small. Her service to her new House bringing with it its fair share of incidents, mishaps, and duties that often took her much further than the safety of the walls and gates of Saknne.

At some point she would earn all those colorful titles of hers, such as 'the Immovable' and so on. She hadn't encouraged such a thing but neither would she completely disregard them, knowing the sobriquets to either be apt or well-deserved.

Whether that was due to the actions she took on behest of her House, or of the several knightly orders she held a... tenuous membership towards, it was rather difficult to say. All she knew was that she enjoyed the work presented, and held to her vows wherever and whenever they might be made.

Perhaps most notably to her lady's children, one Sitra Vené Tanyakoettir in particular.