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| - The woman once called Saychel Araka was born in The Lap to a minor house of lesser Dragon-Bloods, growing up in the lively, fertile land under the metaphorical guidance of that great stone protector. When she was about eight, her father, Saychel Herek, was called up for his ten years to the Wyld Hunt, chasing a northern Lunar seen a little too far from the borders of the Haslanti League. Her family traveled straight across the Blessed Isle to get there. Along with her early memory of the Lap's gentle climes and cycling seasons, her first sight of the Imperial Mountain--its overwhelming peace, solidity, endurance--shaped much of Araka's early philosophy. Then the family reached the garrison outside Cherak, where they would live while the father went Anathema-hunting. Young Araka had been close to her father, and was now alone. Against her family's advice and insistence, she often slipped out of the city to take long walks unaccompanied along the lonely Northern coast. It was on one of these later walks, near to her father's homecoming date, that she was taken. An enterprising party of faerie cataphracts accompanying a lesser noble, far from their home with the court of the Lions of the Snow, was getting hungry and desperate. The noble, deciding that perhaps her whim to see the Inland Sea for herself hadn't been such a good idea after all, was casting about for something to snack on before turning back for home... and found the now nineteen-year-old Araka. She was captivated by the vitality of the thoughtful girl, and ordered her entourage to take the young one captive. Suddenly captive, frightened and alone, the girl was spirited away back to the Raksha court. For the next five years, Saychel Araka lived in the midst of chaos. Nothing she experienced in the court of the Faeries, or on their many journeys north to the Wyld, ever made sense to her. For their own reasons, her captors never beguiled her, and they only ever nibbled at her soul; instead, she performed an endless series of incomprehensible tasks for them. They made her dance in sealed rooms, carry water downriver, pull every leaf from plants that grew back faster than she could cut. They even changed her: one morning she awoke to find her right eye missing, and the next day it had been replaced with a non-functioning construct of strange, hot gold. And nibble as her captors did, they ate what was most precious to her: her identity. Crucial memories were drawn from her, pieces of her personality. She forgot her home, her family, her very name. Fragments of her previous life remained to her, and she clutched them like talismans: a dreamy impression of springtime in The Lap, the gentle callused touch of her father's hand, the towering sight of the Imperial Mountain all remained etched on her memory even as everything else ebbed away. Then, one day in her twenty-first year, the faerie noble who had first taken her from Cherak called her into his presence and prepared to feed. She heard his voice, and she dreaded it, having seen the zombies he had made of other humans--some of them her only friends. She stared up at the tall, inhumanly beautiful figure, and knew that if she let him gnaw on her dreams again, she would lose all that was left of herself... and even knowing that she would die because of it, defiance reared up within her. The faerie reached down, lifting his prey's chin with one long, delicate finger. "Your dreams, little one--so sweet today," he purred. Her eyes narrowed, her hands tensed, and the nameless woman reached up to swat the Raksha's hand away. "You will never taste them again," she told him, almost calmly--and the Solar Exaltation burst upon her in a wave of golden light. The woman with no name fought her way out of the Wyld that day, leaving behind her a hundred shattered faeries. When she finally reached Creation, the memory of the Imperial Mountain asserted itself again. Behind her, chaos; before her, stability. She closed her eyes, feeling the sudden patterns of her newly awakened Essence, and shifted it ever so slightly: when she opened them again, the alien construct that had replaced her eye saw light, and more than light. Essence sight opened before her, and with it many truths of her universe. She knew then what she had to do. Many years have passed since then. Since leaving the court of the Faeries, the Solar has earned a name--Adamant Fern, suited to one of the South taken root in the ice, one who looks fragile as glass but cannot be broken. She has begun the long path of research and cultivation that will eventually make her a Primordial. When she sought to learn sorcery, she found that she'd already passed her trials of humility, fear, journey, and sacrifice in the Faerie court. Her meaningless jobs had made her humble; her nightmare years had shown her fear; her march to the Wyld had taken her across many leagues of wondrous Creation; and finally, the faeries had made her sacrifice for her when they devoured her past. She eventually traveled west, discovering by accident a long-forgotten manse and puzzling out its secrets to win the Whimsical Creation, a Spear-Thrower of Exalted Prowess, and a considerable library. Here she met the forerunners of the Thousand Hands Convoy; here she created for them their island home, earning their worship for the foreseeable future. She taught and guided them, eventually winning several mortal disciples. Her first disciple, Stance of Skies, is spiritual leader of the Hands; another, Saffron Dolphin, showed an aptitude for dealing with demons and now studies them happily while overseeing Fern's island estate. One day, visiting the Sailing Stone about three years after her Exaltation, Fern was called down to the aft beach to see the Solar-marked stranger who'd just washed up on the shore. The other woman she soon knew for an Eclipse Caste Solar; she welcomed her, and the Hands proved their hospitality. The Eclipse, Daughter of the Amber Melody, had just Exalted and was feeling lost, so Fern extended that welcome to help Amber onto her feet. They ended up friends, swearing a Circle-oath to each other and working together when their goals coincided. They were doing so when they boarded together a certain ill-fated ship and began their present adventures.
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