Atharen, A Fantasy Roleplay Forum

Details
Age: 42 at present (20 when she meets her husband)
Race: human
Sex: female
Height: 5’1
Weight: 145 lbs (you try doing better at age 42 after four kids)

Occupation: Currently co-manager of an import-export business with her father Andros, briefly a street food vendor in Oxentide, before that a housewife on Mikronisi
Title: n/a
NPC Type: Plot NPC (for plotline "Fell & Dorothea" and any subsequent plotlines), then Companion NPC to Andros (beginning Glade 4623)

Skills

History: In another world, Dorothea Chrysostephanou would be a tenured professor of mathematics at MIT. If she had been born in Radenor, especially to a noble family, she would be a scholar or a guild fellow. Even if she’d been born to a rich family on the mainland, she might have been trained in philosophy and the sciences, if only to make a more entertaining companion for her husband.

But that wasn’t her lot. Born in total obscurity to an illiterate shepherd on an island no history book will ever record, she was destined to a life of frustration. At least most of the time.

Her intelligence was noticed from an early age. She could count the sheep at two and do mental math by four. At six, without knowing that writing even existed, she invented a system of recording numbers using rocks and taught it to her bemused parents. They found her bright and entertaining and indulged the way she would argue back and sometimes win with logical precision. But they didn’t foster her talents. They couldn’t. The idea of providing her with an education was literally unimaginable to them. Not even boys on Mikronisi got that.

Doing tricks with numbers was adorable, of course, but Dorothea had work to do. Taking the sheep to pasture with her sisters was tolerable, but spinning was her daily lot. All day almost every day: carding the wool, cleaning it, spinning the distaff to make the thread until her fingers ached and the sun went down. She hated it, but there was no alternative. Her parents indulged her but everyone had to pull their weight, including the family genius. Spun thread fetched more than raw wool, which meant more of everything they bought from Lower Village or the mainland - grain, wine, iron tools, pottery.

She wished for more as she grew up but couldn’t conceive of what that might be. That changed when a handsome stranger showed up in the Upper Village and taught her what she was missing.

[At this point, Dorothea falls in love with Fell, marries, and has four children. He dies or disappears after fifteen years together, at which point she reenters the plotline of her father Andros. Details will be worked out in a plot thread to be requested.]

When her father left home, Dorothea begged to go with him. She knew by this point that she could never be happy on Mikronisi, even in the midst of a loving family. She needed to see the world her husband had described to her and get a proper education, to make something of herself in a place where that would be permitted.

Andros reacted to her pleas harshly. He found her willingness to abandon her husband and children morally repugnant. They weren’t speaking when he took ship for the mainland, a fact both of them regretted the moment he left the pier.

So Dorothea sat and moped until her husband was conveniently removed from the stage. Without any brothers to act as her guardian, she became that rare creature in Mikronisi: a free widow in control of her own property. Quickly, she gathered what little her husband had left her, begged her brothers-in-law for the rest of what she needed, and packed her children onto a ship bound for Radenor. She would find her father, find her husband’s family, and make a new, better life for herself.


Personality: As a child, Dorothea was quick-witted and fun-loving, not just smart. She adored jokes and loved the company of her father and especially her older sister.Her youth spent at the distaff didn’t quite chase that out of her, and perhaps it was what appealed to her husband.

The life of drudgery and disappointment did, however, catch up with her eventually. She took it out on her children, becoming a demanding and somewhat distant mother. She loved her babies, of course, but they were a chain connecting her to a life and an island she increasingly resented.

Dorothea came to live for those times her father or her brothers-in-law would come home from the mainland with stories of war or adventure, and for the very occasional books they brought back. But in the long run, they only fed her sense of frustration. She wanted more than anything to go with them or even to stay in Evrotai and manage the family’s interests there, but that would never be allowed, despite all the logic she could muster.

When she finally made her escape, she was a rather hardened person. Perhaps finding an outlet for her intelligence and energy will allow the fun-loving girl she once was to re-emerge.


Appearance: Dorothea was an adorable child who grew into a beautiful young woman. She is the image of her mother and was widely considered to be the most attractive woman on the island. Tan skin, silky hair, and an inviting smile made her appealing to the point that she was almost never allowed out of the family compound after she hit puberty, even less than her mother and sisters..