Kat Teague backstory

Katherine Teague Backstory:

One thing that has been a constant in the archipelago since its colonization is chaos. Merchants and pirates claw at each others' throats for the same money, while privateers skirt the line between the two, and every crowned head and smuggler baron gets their cut. It's a hell of a life to get your start in, but Lord and Lady Teague have played the game as well or better than anyone. Sadly, it hasn't always gone their way, as evidenced in the case of their middle child, Katherine.

When Katherine was 11, rival pirates invaded the family estate in the dead of night, seeking to hold the child for ransom. Their luck turned just as sour as their targets' luck, when they hit a squall fleeing the island and went down. Katherine, washing up on a small cay, was the only survivor. She was not the only inhabitant of the sandy, lightly forested island. An old man, weathered by age and wearing blackened armor, stared at her as she washed ashore. He initially ignored her at first. But soon it became clear that nobody was going to take her off the island, so he grudgingly beckoned for her to follow.

First, he walked to a small freshwater stream, teeming with fish. He took a simple carved spear and began to demonstrate spearing the fish, but refused to give her any of his. He tossed her a stick and told her to find a rock to carve it. When she finally found one, he was leaving and night was falling. Furious and hungry, she spitefully spent all night trying to spear the fish, eventually getting enough to fill her belly. And it was a new day.

Each day for the next week went like this. He would demonstrate, but withhold, refusing to give any of his own to force her to become self-sufficient. And each day she would spitefully figure it out anyway, doing what she needed to do to survive. And finally, the first real lesson came at the end of the week. A group of pirates came ashore in a small boat, their larger ship anchored in the deep water off the cay. They dropped off a large crate of supplies: rum, salted beef, rope, cloth, and other necessities. The near-total silence of the last week was broken after they left, when she had to ask: why did they bring that to him? He explained that while he wasn't a pirate, he had fought their captain on this island some years earlier, and part of the peace was to bring him supplies every few weeks. When Katherine asks why they care at all about a peace treaty when they have a boat and he doesn't, he finally cracked a smile. "They fear me" He said, "And so they think me capable of anything."

In that moment she was hooked on his path, becoming his disciple and learning the ways of might and fear. It would be years before she left that island, bartering her way off the cay with the pirates that brought regular supplies, wielding a greatsword and an enchanted, blackened breastplate, to carve her own path in the world ahead of her.

She's a tall, slim woman with skin tanned from the sun and a body hardened by intense training and diet. Her hair is naturally strawberry blonde, but she's taken to dying it black as a homage to her new life. Her piercing green eyes have little warmth to them, and her lips are often curved in a wry smile, or a sneer.