How many for anyone, really? How many events, so small as to pass unnoticed by all who might look until each constituent part finally came together, piece by piece, into what would culminate into a fully realized person. Complex and irrevocably individualistic in their own right. Someone with her own principles, her own personality, her own merits and her own failings. All those little details that might endear her to some even as it left others frustrated.

Sitra wouldn't have known, she had just been born.

To a pair of doting parents who counted her as merely another child amongst a veritable litter of siblings; while she possessed the unenviable role of a middle child, she also came to accept it in time. There were certainly worse places to be in a family so large.

The oldest suffered the brunt of familial responsibilities while the youngest were oft the targets for all manner of jealousies and misplaced frustrations.

It didn't help that there was a veritable gap between the children and their two mothers, opening the youngest up to the resentment of the oldest who saw the former as interlopers. Such is the way of things. Such was her role as meditator between the two age groups from early on, something she both resented and took a perverse pleasure in, depending on the day.

Let's see. There were her two eldest brothers as well as an elder sister. Then arriving at the rear were two younger sisters and a younger brother. While she certainly enjoyed the symmetry on a purely theoretical level, it was decidedly less endearing in reality. And try as she might to keep the peace, Sitra quickly discovered that there was never to be a lasting truce beyond the occasional prickly ceasefire.

It was certainly far easier said than done to play the intermediary.

At least it taught her well to navigate social conflict without any undue scarring.

The Vené Tanyakoettir family was one of many aristocratic houses of the trade city of Saknne, situated on the river bordering the Allir reach and the Spine. For all the claims of noble birth they maintained their titles in much the same way as their peers had: through lucrative trade between the two continents. The fertile yields of the Allir Reach on one hand, with the mineral and salt deposits of The Spine on another.

Growing up under such circumstances meant that even the girls of the family were subjected to an exhaustive education that tended to focus on more… practical subjects, and with the careful tutelage of pedagogues they learned as much about mathematics as they did about etiquette. Most study sessions were focused instead on the basics of how to balance taxes and ledgers, rather than the study and observance of religious texts.

And for all Saknne’s trend towards conservatism, they took full advantage of the ungendered ability to operate an abacus, opening up avenues of learning so oft denied to the rest of the world. To some degree the disparity would always remain, but at the very least one could say that the Vené Tanyakoettir children were treated as equal under their family banner.

All of this to say that Sitra was granted a rather well rounded education as the years passed. It was not something to take for granted. Nor did she, utilizing every advantage learned from dusty old tomes on politics, economy, geography and so on to ensure that she might cultivate that very confidence she grew to discover she had.

As well as to further her ultimate goal of acceptance into an inquisitorial or justiciar order.

If not as a precocious child, then at the very least as a woman now matured, capable of speaking on her own behalf and making her own decisions. That too was a gift she could only thank her parents for, as all children in their household were afforded the respect of speaking and being heard. For better or for worse, she was thus shaped as a young woman with a mind of her own and a voice with which to use it.

And use it she did. For instead of entertaining marriage prospects at an age where most girls were at least contemplating it, she sought the tutelage of masters who would shape her body and discipline her spirit into becoming an instrument wholly contrary to the domestic hearth that produced so many proud matriarchs of their society.

To one tutor in particular did she cling; a retainer of her mother, both of whom hailed from their homeland in the northernmost reaches of Amol-Kalit. Her name was Ayl-Maltene Ranna Anakanos. Ranna the Stalwart, Ranna the Twisted Spear, Ranna the Immovable.

She was a woman older in years, at least to the desperately young Sitra, and was more than willing to indulge the middle child of the house in which she served. To the girl did she impart lessons both on the martial and on the academic; of worldly and not so worldly things. At first it was merely a distraction from the tediousness of Sitra's studies, and yet she found the more she devoted herself to it, the more it became a passion that ended in defining the greater part of her young life.

Perhaps the greatest lesson of all was unintentional in its teaching; of what it meant to live and pursue the traditions of a warrior rather than that of a trader, or that of a young noblewoman in waiting. While it was not what ultimately sparked her rebellion, it certainly provided her the perspective necessary for the seed to be planted.

Where once the rest of her life seemed so certain, mapped out in excruciating detail and meticulously crafted with the careful hand of those privileged through aristocracy, it was here that Sitra might demonstrate just how singular she could be.

Lucienne Vené Alfsonne, of her father's blood and Saknne heritage, was dead.

The woman whom she had so long looked up to and admired in a way, wanting like so many other girls of her age to emulate the grace, the humility, the unyielding faith of her paternal grandmother. The woman with whom she shared so many confidences and idle hopes, a companion that occupied that strange liminal area between the sheltered household of childhood and the distant world of adulthood.

Her idol in some ways and her hero in others, as it had been for so many of her generation.

Not that her death truly came as a surprise, even had Sitra dared not contemplate it before.

What came of it after, in the tombs of her father's ancestors, was the event that would shatter any illusion that she would go on to live the comfortable life that had been planned for her since the beginning. She sat in observance of the rites of her family, waited out the night vigil for the deceased that many children had done before; the vigor of their youth acting as a bulwark against all things attracted to any death brought on by advanced age and sickness.

For Lucienne Vené Alfsonne did they sing the hymns and spoke of their venerable ancestors, as did they pray the litanies and ask for repose of Lucienne's immortal soul. Only then was the tomb closed and sealed, not only on the matriarch, but the young Sitra as well. No longer was she the little girl, or the child on a grandmother's lap, but instead a guardian to watch over a matriarch's long night.

Sitra Vené Tanyakoettir had just turned seventeen.

As with most traditions, there were stories that were told alongside them. Sitra knew them all, and listened to them like so many other attentive ears that sat around a storyteller's circle. The only difference was that she didn't think them to be true; not in the way in which she saw story turn to reality, that night.

It was a complete severance of everything she thought she had understood to be real and true. Her perception of the world, and her place in it. No longer did she find innocence in the complacency brought on by human civilization and their assumptions that they could protect themselves with walls, and traditions, and prayer.

How could she ever marry and have pretty little children like they had wanted her to do, with this realization?

Again, it is to be said that there wasn't just one rationale as to why Sitra turned out the way she had. To understand why she abandoned the life planned out for her, in simple terms, was to search in vain. To try and ascribe only one reason would be a simplistic answer to a complex person; the sort of simplification that left her family in confusion and heartbreak one event after another.

Like the mightiest of mountains, the slow drip that eroded it was a lifetime of experiences.





The mayhem that wracked the house in the subsequent weeks could have filled books, perhaps even an entire shelf in their family library. Hopefully enough pages in each volume to accurately express the drama that ensued.

With Syelene's interference came a series of increasingly volatile attempts to dissuade the other girl by all manner of healers, spiritualists, family - and an actual diplomat, to boot. Eventually it found its culmination in that time where her father's ire boiled over enough for him to utter the words to Sitra's face. It was to be death if she did not desist in shaming their dynasty.

By an executioner's hands rather than that of her "affliction".

At that point it became evident to both parties that she would not bend, nor was anyone particularly thrilled to break the girl. It was enough for a ceasefire. There would be no more of this theatre in the household; Sitra would eat again, and in turn there would be no more talk of marriage.

The thing about time is that it cannot help but wear down anything that passes it by.

Sitra had not yet turned twenty, yet she had earned her freedom for the rest of her life after six grueling months of torture, for everyone involved. She was not proud of it, neither did she or others speak of it but in hushed whispers and careless comments after frustrated arguments. Sitra hadn't meant it to be such a cruel war. Rather it had been to make a point. Despite it all, she still hated hurting her family so, as they naturally hated being hurt.

Thus with her freedom won did she embark upon the journey so long sought after. Not that she went into self-imposed exile alone, nor would anyone seriously let her, despite the concessions made. Ayl-Maltene Ranna Anakanos was more than a retainer in the traditional sense of the word.

She was first and foremost a knight of her order, and often left for months on end to pursue her duties to the order. The only difference this time was that she did it with an odd squire in tow, to learn all she hadn't had the chance to when the lessons were only conducted in half-seriousness.

As the months passed, so too did her affliction, and her heavy heart.

Nobody could accuse Sitra of being slow to learn, and so she did; the process of being taught in most orders was done from a young and tender age, and she was no longer any of those things. Therefore were she to learn, she was compelled to learn far more quickly than most pupils would.

Oh, were there mistakes. Nobody could deny that either.

There were successes, too. Even her family could not deny as much on the rare occasion they returned to her Saknne estates, permitting her the opportunity to account them all with an almost childish happiness of those successes. More often than not however they were in written format, as letter writing did not require that their journeys return them to her birthplace after every hallmark moment.

It was only after she was almost to turn twenty-one did she realize the trap so carefully set, after she had long assumed herself free and clear of all consequences caused by her rebellion. Sitra Vené Tanyakoettir was to finish the bulk of her squiring under the guidance of the Knights of Anatheum, the literal nobodies of this day and age. So worn down by the cruelness of time as the oldest of statues in Saknne.

Her only attachment to the order was the long history of sponsorship by the House of Vené Tanyakoettir, though it had somewhat waned as the years went by. Less and less money did the order see as less noble sons and daughters graced their halls, until none remained.

Aside from her distant cousin Bebin Theros, that was. A man she met only once.

To say she was happy about this unexpected revelation was... questionable.

Sitra may have been a stubborn soul in her youth, but she also saw herself as dutiful. Her duty to her family's prospects simply diverged a little more radically than anticipated.

She might not have had the intention of serving by wearing a gown, yet she would serve all the same.

If her father meant to exile her to a band of hedge knights to complete her training, then she would go. Her own happiness was always a vague, obscure thing that was oft overshadowed by a passion she held - heedless of anything except her own pursuits. Enjoy as she might her freedom; the choice made to carry a blade was not out of anything that might be construed as enthusiasm.

Whatever Sitra ever decided to do, she put all of herself into.

Her passion was to serve, to cut away at the blight in this world, and so she would serve.

Knights of Anatheum or not.