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BASIC INFO NAME: Galamiła (Gala) of Clan Racisława A.K.A.: The Forest's Heartbeat, Stag-Knight, Queensguard to Gilia St. Loe, The Echo of Her Ancestors CANON: OC HOMEWORLD: Land of Spirit Bound AGE: 20 - 30 GENDER: Female SPECIES: Human, Spirit FIRST GLANCE APPEARANCE: Link HEIGHT: 7'0 BUILD: Very tall, taller still when she's in spirit form, not a lot of softness and obviously a warrior by her scars, muscle, and athletic build. Imposing. HAIR: Dark, long, either in one big braid or down with smaller braids interwoven. EYES: Pale, green/blue. DRESS: Style of dress SCENT: Bark & iron. VOICE: Voice DEMEANOR: Often silent, rarely shy. Intimidating by virtue of her height, antlers, and rigid posture. Serious, but not unkind. PERMISSIONS BACKTAGGING: ✔ 4TH-WALLING: ✘ THREADJACKING: ✔ MIND-READING: ✔ FIGHTING: ✔ ROMANCE: ✔ INJURY: ✔ KILLING: ✔ (w/ discussion)

the cure for anything is salt water, sweat, tears, or the sea PERSONALITY The daughter of two respected warriors in a culture built on the glory of battle, Gala has known strength, duty, and honour all her life, ever since she was a young girl destined for greatness, like her ancestors before her. Her personality before war destroyed all those she loves is very different than the one she has now. Today, she is this: a wounded guardswoman who is dedicated, unwavering, to the princess she is sworn to protect. Assigned Gilia St. Loe's personal bodyguard and knight, Gala is seldom seen elsewhere but at her side or trailing along behind her - protective, too, of Gilia's handmaidens. Serious, rigid, and imposing, Gala needs to say very little to stay an intimidating presence, intense already by virtue of her nature as a Stag-Knight. She understands her role, and embodies it well. EARLY LIFE & WARRIOR TRAINING Born into a warrior's culture, Gala has know honour and iron from her earliest moments in life. An only child, she was the pride of her parents and, eventually, her tribe as well - she was a quick learner, persistent, and wanted more than anything to follow in her father's (not a chief, but among his best and most trusted soldiers) footsteps. And from her mother, a respected hunter and master of weapons, Gala learned versatility and survival in ways that easily put her among the most talented in her tribe. And of course, it was in her early years when Gala formed her spirit bond, like so many before her. A Stag-Knight like her ancestors before her, Gala had bonded both with her spirit and her stag companion, and was learning all of the power that came with it. Eventually, she met another young woman from another tribe who caught her eye. They shared the same desire to be a warrior worth talking about, they were both excellent riders with beautiful, intelligent stags they'd trained from birth, and there was - oh, there was so much fire. Competitive and hotly so, they fed off of each other, encouraged each other, laughed with each other and, unsurprising to everyone around them, fell in love with each other, too. They were a good match. Their tribes approved of the match, too, seeing potential in their love, teasing, eventually, that their children would be little hellions like their mothers, intelligent and strong, a legacy to behold. So they were showered in love and support when they were married, Gala at 18 and her wife at 19, and when they announced Gala was pregnant, with the first of what they hoped would be several little warriors? The joy in their communities was so great, the next morning was sluggish with hangovers. Life was good. It was easy, even if it was hard. Even in battle there was glory, there was triumph, there was love and all the wildness in her heart could flow over like a flood and be celebrated for the force of nature it was, the force of nature she was, with her wife at her side, riding into battle with her. It figures, then, that life and love as she knew it would die not on the battlefield, but home, where they'd withdrawn to in preparation for the baby and the rest of their lives together. BRUTALITY OF LIFE & LOSS (cw: graphic violence, death, death of a child, suicide attempt) War came, and it ripped from her everything she ever had hope for. The point of withdrawing from the front lines was to start their family without the threat of war, and yet it found them anyway - tore through her village, not ready, not well enough manned to stand against the invader's numbers. She fought, nine months pregnant and well into labour, laid on the birthing bed not moments before, Gala fought without armour, with only her sword, killed a few, even. But her baby was here, she hadn't yet been given anything for the pain of labour and childbirth, and there was only so much she could endure and hold back before even she, one of the greatest warriors their village had to offer, collapsed on the battlefield (their home) in the pain of giving birth. It was here that their other great young warrior, Gala's wife, collapsed on the battlefield too - with a sword through her heart, taking the blow for Gala instead. In the screaming that followed, roots ripped up from the ground in spikes and tangles, violent and wild, spearing through the one who'd taken her wife from this world, piercing and impaling others around them, a power Gala had never mastered before. Coated in blood and holding back from giving birth here and now, somehow, fucking somehow, Gala not only managed to get to the forest, but she did it with her wife's body in tow. Screaming for her stag in the madness, dragging the lifeless corpse of her greatest love and baby's mother, Gala got her body past the treeline - where she took an arrow and still managed to escape into the woods with her wife's body, killing the archer who'd run in after her with his own arrow, stabbing him in the throat after pulling it from her side. But... Later, when soldiers returned too late and began their search for survivors, what they found was grim. Her wife's corpse, of course. And Gala herself, responsive only when touched, clutching her newborn babe, wrapped in the ripped up rags of her skirt, cold and lifeless, and curled around the three of them: the bodies of both their stags, injured beyond hope, laid around their humans, protecting them still, even in death. When they tried to take Gala with them to safety, she asked for time to say goodbye in private. They granted her this - but were right to be concerned and check on her, because had they allowed her even a moment longer, she would have thrown herself on her sword. Screaming, screaming, screaming and kicking with what little energy she had left, the other Stag-Knights managed to subdue her enough to keep her from ending her life and, although they didn't have a Singer to soothe her damaged soul, they did have this: a baby stag they'd found, curled up beside it's dead mother after the attack. It was the only thing that calmed her, the only thing she had left in life, suddenly: a new stag bond. But, even after some time in safety, they knew Gala would never be the same again. How could she, with what she'd gone through? There was no way they could send her back to the field, they couldn't, so instead they turned to the alternative: sending her to the Isle of St. Loe to serve with the Stag-Knights who protected this country. A pacificist land, sworn strictly against violence and fighting, but with an ancestral pact with the Stag-Knights who protected them in ways the people of St. Loe could not do themselves. Protecting the royal family here... it was considered a cushy job. But cushy is what Gala needed. So she was sent to them once she could walk again, to recover, to train her new stag, and serve in a way befitting her condition. STAG-KNIGHT OF THE PRINCESS Princess Gilia St. Loe, She Who Sings The Ocean To Prosperity. It is here in the Isle of St. Loe that Gala met her, and where, subsequently, the course of her life changed. However deep the darkness that'd settled on her now, there was warmth and light in the presence of this princess. Sent to St. Loe to recover and train her new stag, still hardly more than a baby when she first arrived, Gala was assigned to Princess Gilia St. Loe (an easy ward, she'd been told, the easiest of the royal family to deal with on account of her mundane tasks) - and she took her, in her own, quiet way. The old Gala was gone, dormant at least, and nobody who knew her story faulted her for it. A terrible thing, unimaginable, painful in ways many are thankful to have never, ever experienced. And for those who were new, well, she was a good fit, wasn't she? Quiet, obedient, loyal - steadfast and imposing, too, in her dedication. Something for her to focus on. Give her purpose again. But the truth was much simpler than that: she liked Gilia. Gala might be cold, but Gilia was warm, she was beautiful and soft and kindhearted and Gala knew quickly she was naive, too, open to manipulation but undeserving of it, and Gala knew that Gilia needed her. Especially as time passed, and Gala began to see the way her brother, the Second-Child, Godfinn, the ruler of this country, was treating her. It was a difficult thing, to navigate royal families, discern between them all what was her place and what wasn't to interfere. Godfinn was untrustworthy. A snake. And while Gala was Gilia's guard, she understood enough to know she was sworn not just to Gilia but the royal family as a whole - and yet, it was Gilia she was truly loyal to. So it was great pleasure (that she hid, knowing how it would hurt Gilia) that, when Godfinn's betrayal of the country and the war he'd incited came to light and he was sentenced to death via drowning in the bog after having his limbs broken, Gala was one of the Stag-Knights to carry out his sentence. She still remembers the way the bone of his arms snapped under her trained, brutal hands. But she still remembers the sorrowful way Gilia was forced to Sing his death, too. For Gilia, Gala continued to serve. She was good at it. She was healing, her stag had grown into adolescence, and sometimes, gods, she even smiled. Mostly (always) for her princess, for Gilia, always at her side or close behind, protective of her (and her handmaidens, even), inspired by her kindness just as much as she was worried by it. She became well known as Gilia's guard, the tall, imposing Stag-Knight who was never far from her, quiet and cold and stern, with one broken antler that only ever sprouted leaves in autumn colours, despite the green foliage that came with her spirit form on other parts of her body. She was dedicated to Gilia. She loved Gilia. She was in love with Gilia. After all this time, gods, love had found her again. It became obvious to a few. One, Gala's old friend, who half-jokingly asked her about it, to which Gala gave him the truth. And the other, Gilia's mother, the Queen, the Sea Cliff, the real ruler of the country, who told Gala to at least be discrete when her daughter realizes the obvious at last, and otherwise? Trusted now that her daughter was in good hands, by a proven warrior who was so in love with her that she would do damn near anything for her. The problem being, even if she were to admit her feelings: the cost to be together... it was not something she could ask of Gilia. And it wasn't something she could give up, either. St. Loe were pacifists, the Stag-Knights were warriors, sworn to the blade from birth - with strict cultural rules in place that meant even if her feelings were returned, one of them would have to give up their life as they know it to be with each other. Gilia would have to abdicate the throne and turn from her family, her home - how could she be to selfish as to ask that? How could she think it? But if she were to give up her life as a warrior to be with her - how could ever hope to protect Gilia? And who- who would she even be? So Gala kept her feelings to herself, undetected in Gilia's naivety, loving her still, her love an echo of their ancestors hundreds of years before them, the ones who made this pact to protect each other and their people in the first place, the pact that keeps the Stag-Knights and St. Loe friends, all these generations later. It was difficult. A hard thing, to be so close to someone she could never have. It tested her, sometimes, and eventually, when she was asked by her chief to return to the field, at least for the time being, Gala accepted. While she was gone, Gilia was gravely injured in an assassination attempt. The window had been opened without that damn knight of hers behind her, Gala heard. Even with other Stag-Knights around and there to protect her, they failed, Gala failed, and she returned to Gilia's side at once - even if it was too late to undo what had been done. Gilia survived in the end, awoke to find Gala on one side of her and her stag on the other, protecting her from every side. But Gala knew then. This is where she belonged. Whatever heartache it brought, she belonged with Gilia, and she would never leave her side again. ABILITIES SPIRIT BOND Inventory item #1 description here. SPIRIT FORM Gala's secondary form, the wearing of the soul, outside of the body. While this form grants her power beyond what she could normally achieve, it is still her soul exposed - so any damage she takes while in this form will never truly heal. One of her antlers is permanently broken from halfway down, with the leaves that sprout around that area in autumn colours instead of the full summer colours of the rest of her foliage. WOOD MANIPULATION Can grow and twist branches, vines, and wood at will - often, she will use this ability to armour herself in bark, wood, and branches, or to manipulate the environment to either help or hinder.

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