Deirdre d’Armorica

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Deirdre

Deirdre was born in a forest at the End of the World, in view to the cliffs of Finis Terrae, the extreme western point of Gaul. Her mother is an itinerant herbalist from a lost Celtic tribe, and we know nothing of her, less alone her name: she is Mother to Deirdre, and that’s enough both for her and for anybody else they meet. Under her tutorship, the young child of the woods learns the laws on the Great Mother, the Lady of Earth, ancestral deity that supervises the World and all its creatures. They live in the forests as their folk does, designated for that reason by city-dwellers as Wood Folks, Little Folks, or even Elves.

We learn this way as the Elves are but the un-Romanised native inhabitants of Gaul, still connected to their old religion and culture, but reduced to live small numbers in the forests that still cover much of continental Europe. They interact with the dominant Latin population by trade and occasionally visit the cities, but mostly refrain to mingle with those they still perceive as intruders in their ancient world. Their culture includes ancient knowledge connected to natural science, that is unknown to the now largely Christianised City Folks, and these tend in turn to associate to the Elves magic powers and - to an extent - even an affiliation to the Evil One.

Deirdre is born under the New Moon, the night of the Spring Equinox of 476 AD, that she would call Ostara in the year of the consulship of Basiliscus and Armatus; chance is, that same day will be later used to mark the beginning of the Middle Ages, as it signs the legal ending of the Western Empire. The City Folks realm is now in crisis as well as the Woods Folks’, and all the young Elf life will run along the edge between two collapsing worlds, both descending into the obscurity of the Dark Ages.

Deirdre is quite tall, slender, almost bony; she has the same emerald green eyes and the same fiery red hair as her mother, but unlike her who is all sprinkled with cheerful freckles, she has perfectly clear and clean skin. Apparently thin, her training in dance and acrobatics has made his slender muscles much more robust than it might seem: she is extremely agile and fast, and also capable of lifting objects much heavier than one might expect. Life in the forest has developed her senses, such as sight and smell, much more than normal, but above all her hearing has an extremely high sensitivity quite typical of her people, often in fact called "with long ears".

She normally wears the typical clothes of her people, suitable for life in the forest: linen or wool tunics of various shades of green, with or without a hood and a ca depending on the season. Her habit of living in the open has also made her particularly resistant to the cold in spite of her slender build, and this together with the uninhibited attitude of those who live in nature, often leads her to wear clothes that are not in keeping with the city dwellers' morals: her arms and legs are often uncovered in the good season and this sometimes creates her problems. Her jewellery includes a Celtic torque at her neck and a “magic” dwarfish arm band in steel (wrist-to-elbow) that she uses to fend enemy sword bows.

Contrary to what one would expect of an “elf”, Deirdre is not a proper vegetarian: she moderately consumes game that she hunts herself with respect, and has a real passion for fish. She perfectly knows the nutritional qualities of herbs and makes extensive use of them, but her only dogma is respect for life and the laws of nature (which imply the option of taking life if needed). The absence of Christian morality allows her to get drunk without too much shame, and what prevents her from doing it more often is simply the hatred for the headache that inevitably follows her intemperance.

Her few but beloved possessions include her mom’s cauldron, harp, comb and tin mirror. Her weapons are her (stolen) composed bow and a “magical” two-hands sword forged by the East Hills Dwarves (made in steel rather than iron and so much lighter). She also has a short dagger tied at her right calve/boot. She usually carries her heavier weapons on her horse, but when on her foot her dwarfish sward hangs behind her back.

She has a great horse called Beowulf and a smaller one called Poldo: the first is her battle mount that she stole to an evil prince, and the latter was her lost dearest Lavinia’s mount, and she uses him to carry her heavier stuff, like her harp, the cauldron and the clothes. Deirdre is also normally followed at distance by a faithful couple of grey wolves (Wulfa and Wulfer).

Deirdre would prefer to play her harp than to use the sword, but the cases of life will lead her to have to use her weapons much more often than she would choose, and when this happens, her numerous enemies belonging to both the worlds of the Forest and the Cities, will learn that underestimating her can be embarrassingly dangerous.

In fact, the absence of any Christian morality and the habit to natural law will mean that for Deirdre killing or being killed is not immoral or criminal, but simply an unpleasant fact of life, and in any case absolutely natural.

When the time comes, after a painful trauma, all this will make her a loyal warrior, but also an absolutely relentless one in her thirst for justice.