Niamh Cavanagh

"I do not seek, I find... When you claim my expeditions a remarkable achievement in our history, I wonder what you find so groundbreaking in my pursuits. Could you not yourself decide to leave the comfort of your home to look for the truth and understand the magnificence and wonder of the world around you? Think not for a moment that I was set apart from my companions by a mysterious, unnamed quality that put me on this path. You could be the same, if only you were to ask the same question: 'Why?' and find the long silence and dearth of answers immensely dissatisfying. You wonder what makes me unique? While we disagree on that, I can tell you this: no brave man or woman ever let doubt keep him or her from acting when called upon. My inquisitiveness for the unknown and the uncertain leads me as far as I can go in pursuit of those answers and the truth, and farther perhaps than anyone else before me."

-- Chapter 13, Braving the Storm Race

• The Wicked Sisters are her matched swords.
• She is fluent in a number of languages, her accent tantalizingly exotic.
• Her training has focused on honing abilities to be a traceur.
• She always has a story.

I would have you know that I have been to the roof of the world, and I have never seen winter fair as your skin, nor known wind as keen as your mind. No wind the world round can math the swift keenness of your gaze, nor the first virgin's blush mirror the simple joy of your smile. No puzzle dares your intellect, and no art, no matter how vivid, may bring justice to your countenance, for it is the stuff spun from dreams, and woven upon looms none may imagine when awake.

-- Spoken by a certain lord

"I contend your opinion that choosing to ignore any limitations set by myself or by others makes me special somehow. Do just once what others say you can't do and you throw off your self-imposed shackles. Pay them no more mind. It is within everyone to do."

-- To a Leuvian nobleman, as recounted in The Chancellory

Niamh Cavanagh is probably not her real name, as the product of an illicit and romantic liaison -- or scandal -- between an Imperial knight and a well-placed noblewoman, but raised by neither. Instead she became the ward of Fionn Cavanagh, ostensibly one of the most famous and eccentric explorers Gateway has ever known. The stuff of their adventures through the Isles are almost legend, particularly the tales of the odd beasts and mythical creatures rumored to dwell on Mists.

After the Emperor dropped the Barrier they were literally on the first boat bound out of port. The next five years saw them plying the oceans from Aquilarco to Pais de Leuvier to gather information and experience what these forgotten and mysterious lands had to offer. She's survived shipwrecks and storms, bandits and bad food, and countless other mishaps. She arrives and leaves very unexpectedly to the Isles at the drop of a hat, in search of artifacts, new tales, and mischief.

As an (often the only) eyewitness and a key participant in these foolhardy and fascinating expeditions, her widely published accounts of her and her uncle's travels, which she penned, cemented her wide reputation as an explorer and author. She is internationally renowned for Realms Unknown, the first popular account of lands beyond the Barrier in almost two centuries.

Using Gateway City as a jumping off point, Niamh and the crew of The Wandering Star have visited numerous ports-of-call on daring adventures, and left an astonishing paper trail that defies credulity, but witnesses and later rumours confirm (more or less). Among her more notable exploits, she sailed to Hennetag and somehow incited a spirited defense of the naval port from pirates in the summer of 506, visited several sites thought only to exist in myth, and became an honoured visitor (or captive) in several countries. Her dazzling exploits, recounted in her encyclopedic memoirs, only add to her growing legend in the Empire and without.

What brings her back to Gateway after escaping time and again from the jaws of fate? The burning question on many traders and travelers' lips has any number of answers. Debts, escaping a jilted (powerful) lover or a juicy contract she couldn't refuse?

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.

-- Preface, Realms Unknown

Niamh is extremely resourceful and a trove of odd knowledge ranging from languages and mythology to the healing properties of alcoholic beverages and Tyrean courtship rituals. Her fascination for all things foreign is very well established through her writing, as well as a streak of good luck several leagues wide. She has a gift of getting out of trouble wherever it finds her, very often through her own cleverness or savvy. Her curiosity is insatiable and her temperament bound to get her into trouble or make her fortune.

In her, one can find an avid audience for other people's tales of harrowing drama and mischief, tempered by her generosity and ready lack of mean-spirited guile. Buried underneath all that occasional bluster and optimism is the rarest quality of all -- spirit of tolerance that outstrips what most would ever manage. No matter a person's background or creed, Niamh never judges strictly on appearances alone, and that has earned her welcome in more countries and villages than most of her peers.

The doors we open and close each day will decide the lives we live.

-- Chapter 4, Ourevaine

Under development.

I should have pithy comment here but I'm still spellbound and stunned. Maybe a result when she hit me on the head, or I imagined her bodice ripped...

-- Merchant prince, Letters of Montresso and Calipyrea

• Exploits: Niamh's adventures are the stuff of living legend. Use these RP hooks liberally. Doubt her stories, love her stories. Question her, contract her, or just ask her who she is.
• Children: Her natural and adoptive children need tutors, nannies, playmates and troublemaking connections.
• Crew: Were you on The Wandering Star or were you a rival? Did you have a pitched naval battle for that ivory idol that proved way more trouble than it was worth? Who knew the shaman-lord of the Delving Deeps wanted it.
• Curios: She collects oddities and wonders from around the world. Buying and selling and stealing, rewarding and borrowing and thieving. Did you give her one as a love token?
• Exes: Did you date her or have a brush with romance? Was it a platonic adventure?
• Lineage: Niamh's family history has never been concretely established. Interested? I'd love to determine who her parents and bloodline really are.
• Youth: Her childhood was unorthodox to say the least, being that her uncle Fionn carted her from place to place throughout Mists and the other isles. Did you encounter her? Maybe your parents or you were hired for some ill-fated expedition to find the elusive Guardian screech-bat and examine its breeding habits. If so, she's really sorry about the guano pellet incident, and had no idea she was that accurate with a slingshot. On the other hand, she has no remorse whatsoever about the harpoon and the keg of green ale incident. Nor should you.