[Ealasaid]

Ealasaid's character - Benia

NAME: Benia Nightshade

AGE: 30

RACE: Men. Her father is from Bree; her mother, from Harad.

GENDER: Female

WEAPONS: A dagger and her father's sword.

APPEARANCE: Benia is about 5'7" with a slim, athletic build. She has an olive complexion. Her raven black hair is thick and straight, falling almost to her knees. She usually wears it in a single plait down her back. She is very beautiful in an exotic kind of way, with an oval face and large, long-lashed eyes of a dark amber color. She lines her eyes in kohl. The only jewelry she wears are silver dangling earrings, and a wide silver band on the middle finger of her left hand. A fine silver chain runs from her left earring across her cheekbone to a small stud in her left nostril. Tiny silver medallions hang, sparkling, from the chain.
Her palms and inner wrists (up to about 3" above her hand) are intricately tattooed with floral patterns and clan markings that identify her as a member of the Rain Clan of the Painted Sand tribe from the Haradrim desert. Usually, when she travels, she wears soft leather gauntlets to conceal the tattoos.
Basically a nomad, she doesn't own a wide assortment of clothes, only a cloak and hood, a couple of dresses (with requisite underclothes, of course), and a couple of veils, which she wears oftentimes when she travels, or when she wishes to hide from the world. Her clothes are all of the soft browns and greens of the forest. (She likes bright vibrant colors, but finds the earthtones more practical for all the travel she does.)

PERSONALITY: Benia is a courageous, yet gentle and caring woman. She is calm, confident, and practical, yet would willingly sacrifice her life if she thought it would save the life of another. She is fiercely loyal to her few friends and the remains of her mother's clan. When it concerns her own safety, she is more apt to flee from her enemies than to confront them, but if another's safety is in question, she will do whatever needs to be done in order to save or protect him/her.
She is shy around strangers, but, once her guard is down, likes a laugh and a good tale almost as much as the average hobbit. She has a beautiful singing voice and likes to sing, but rarely gets the opportunity. She is a skilled dancer after the fashion of Haradrim women, but does not know any of the dances done by the other peoples of Middle Earth.

STRENGTHS: Benia's greatest strengths are her courage and her generosity of spirit. She knows how to handle her father's sword, but only uses it in self-defense. (She is not a warrior or shield maiden by any stretch of the imagination.)

WEAKNESSES: She has a tendency to let her guard down sometimes at the wrong moments. Operating largely on instinct, she has also been known to be a little too quick to place her trust in strangers. Usually this is not a problem as she is usually right about people, but on occasion she has been wrong and ended up putting herself in grave danger.

HISTORY: Benia's mother came from the Rain clan of the Painted Sand tribe, a nomadic tribe of the Haradrim desert. They were warriors and horsemen, like the Rohirrim, but their horses were small and fast, better built to withstand the heat of the desert. Painted Sand was once a large and powerful tribe, but when they refused to fight on the side of Sauron in the War of the Ring, the entire clan was pretty much wiped out. To Benia's knowledge, only a handful of aunts and distant cousins remain. There may be others & she is always on the lookout for them. Because their lives are still in danger from those who followed Sauron, the tattered remnants of her tribe remain on the run, scattered throughout Middle Earth. Some of them remain in contact with one another by leaving obscure messages in predecided locations, but others are simply lost.

Benia's mother, Benia the Fair, left the desert with her parents and four of her brothers many years prior to the start of the War, but there was already a gathering of forces moving toward Mordor. They tried to escape north into Gondor and Rohan, but were pursued by orcs and hostile tribesmen. Her parents and one of her brothers were killed before reaching Harad's border. She and her other three brothers made it as far as Rohan, where they we captured by a Rohirrim horse patrol. Jack Nightshade, originally a Bree-man who had migrated to Rohan in search of adventure, was one of her captors. He and two others were given the chore of escorting the prisoners back to the city. By the time they arrived at Edoras, he and the desert lady had fallen in love. She remained a prisoner of the Mark for a brief time until her story was heard and verified, then she and her brothers were released. Her brothers swore their allegiance to Rohan and eventually found service as riders and scouts. Benia the Fair married Jack Nightshade and tried to make a home for the two of them in Rohan.

Jack became a close friend of Benia the Fair's brothers, often riding with them on patrols. Eventually, the brothers won permission to travel back to the desert to seek word on their kinsmen. Jack was granted permission to accompany them and, against his better judgment, was swayed by his wife's pleas and allowed her to accompany them as well. It was only after they had travelled a goodly distance toward Harad that it was discovered that Benia the Fair was pregnant. They had gone too far to send her back, so they continued on and Benia's daughter, Benia Nightshade, was born in the desert of her kinsmen. When the company finally reached the far savannahs, the ancestral base of the Painted Sand clan, there was no one left, just slaughtered horses and skeletons bleaching in the sun. They stayed there in hiding until the Benias were strong enough, then began the journey back to Rohan.

On the way back, they were attacked by orcs. The company was split in the fighting. Jack and his wife and daughter fled back into the desert. No one knew what became of the brothers. The Nightshades stayed in the desert, getting by as best they could until little Benia turned seven. Then Jack decided it was time to return to Rohan. This time they made it back, but things had changed. Jack was seen as a deserter and imprisoned. He managed to escape and, taking his little family with him, fled again. This time, they went North to Bree and his ancestral home. There, the Nightshade family took them in. They managed to stay there in peace and contentment for a while, but by the time little Benia reached her teens, rumors of trouble began to haunt them again. Mysterious strangers had been coming up the Greenway to Bree, asking about desert people and describing little Benia and her mother. It was clear that they meant them ill. Jack decided it was time to run again.

He bundled up his wife and now teenaged daughter, taking the unlikely road west toward The Shire. The strangers were in hot pursuit and nearly overtook them but for the brave interference of a hobbit called Gilly Burrows (now Banks), who at great peril to herself and her family, took it upon herself first to conceal the three of them and later to help them escape.

The three Nightshades did manage to escape, but were not so lucky the next time. They were overtaken by bounty hunters a short while later in some wild and lonely spot. Benia the Fair was killed and Jack was badly wounded. Little Benia remained unharmed only because she had been dawdling away from the camp when the tragedy struck. Carefully, she sheltered and tended to her father until he was well enough to travel. As soon as he had regained enough strength, they returned to his family in Bree, where he completed his convalescence. As soon as he was able, he took his daughter and the two of them vanished into the wilderness, never again attempting to call anyplace home for long.

Jack was heartbroken at the loss of Benia the Fair and never quite recovered from it. Eventually, he took to drink and was killed in a tavern brawl. Benia Nightshade was left on her own. She continued to travel, eventually working her way south again to the desert where she was able to locate a few surviving members of her clan, who tattooed her hands and finished teaching her the ways of the desert. Now she spends the majority of her time traveling from place to place, looking for her scattered kinsmen, helping them where she can and trying to assist in the rescues of those who are still imprisoned. She has never married, and, though she keeps in contact with her father's family in Bree, the connection is rather tenuous. Even though she is Jack's daughter, they still view her as a foreigner and help her on occasion only out of loyalty to her father's memory. They blame her and her mother for Jack's death.

She arrives at the Forsaken Inn as the result of a desire to see Gilly. Banned from the Shire (along with all the other Big People) by order of King Elessar, she sent a message to Bywater asking Gilly to meet her at the inn. She didn't go as far as Bree because of the tense nature of her relations with her father's family. The Nightshades are a big family, & she knew she could not be there unbeknownst to them.

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Ealasaid's post for Benia


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[ August 07, 2003: Message edited by: piosenniel ]