Samin

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Information

  • Character Full Name: Samin Solargaze (SAH-min)
  • Character In-Game Name: Samin
  • Nickname(s): Lady Marin Lenthris (MAH-rin Len-TRAYS) (alias)
  • Association(s): Kirin Tor, Dalaran, House Solargaze (loose)
  • Age: 169
  • Gender: Female
  • Hair: It is of a soft golden colour, only barely brushing her shoulders and always nicely combed to the side.
  • Eyes: A light hue of glowing green
  • Weight: 62 kg
  • Height: 1,78 m
  • Alignment: Neutral Good

Skills and Abilities

Like most women of the Solargaze family, Samin is a fully fledged mage, meaning that she is well versed in most – if not all – of the Arcane magic schools, but an expert in but a few. Unlike her kin, however, Samin has mastered a technique that is not exactly conventional – a large and important part of her training was done under a rebel who shunned the methods of the Kirin Tor, and the result of that is Samin’s peculiar way of concentrating and the slightly unusual visual shape that her battle spells take. The difference runs no deeper though, as the effects her magic produces are identical to those of other magi.

The above implies that Samin Solargaze has delved quite deeply into the art of Evocation – and that is true – but her actual talents lie elsewhere. She is naturally strongest in Illusion, with Abjuration a close second. Samin does have an affinity of a sort for Enchantment, but it is very minor and hardly worth a mention.

Appearance

Samin’s garments vary greatly depending on location and situation; she has many, many things in her wardrobe. The woman will wear anything from scruffy leathers to beautiful dresses to fine furs if she wants or has to. However, that does not mean she doesn’t care how she looks – quite the contrary, really. Growing up surrounded by wealth, glamour and grandeur left her with a certain fondness for pretty things. That is one of the reasons why she likes to don beautiful dresses and jaunty robes when she can allow herself the luxury. However, this fondness is not limited to pretty clothes; Samin holds another soft spot in her heart for jewellery. Bands, bracelets, brooches, necklaces, earrings – she likes it all. Samin with no gold or jewels on her is a very rare sight – even when in rags she likes to slip on a ring or two. Yet, as mentioned above, it is a liking, not an addiction – should the situation demand it, she would throw it all away and put on a beggar’s garb. Her favourite travelling outfit is, contrastingly, quite plain and simple – divided skirts, a plain white shirt, an overcoat of painted leather – with just a minimal amount of embroidery - and, in colder environments, wools.

Samin has never been seen in armour or carrying a weapon of any sort - except, occasionally, an amulet or some kind of enchanted figurine, if they can be considered weapons. This Elf thoroughly detests such things; according to her, a clear mind and the Arcane are the only weapons a magewoman truly needs.

Other: Samin is a rather ordinary-looking and unremarkable woman. She does not have an exceptionally pretty face, or hair, or hands, or figure, or anything else. However, there is one special feature to speak of – despite being close to her middle years, Samin Solargaze still looks fairly youthful.

Personality

Lady Samin Solargaze is not a woman who would let one expect her to sit in a kitchen, make food and care for children – not without words as harsh as those of a street tough, at least. She is the angry opposite of that stereotype – Samin is a strong woman, as hard as she is fierce. A stubborn and unyielding warrior at heart, she may seem overly bossy or firm, but she warms up to those who can prove their worth and carry their own weight.

Two very specific traits dominate this woman’s personality – she is selfless and altruistic. She’s been chastised for being unladylike because of this, but angry words have never been enough to stop or change Samin. She is rarely able to muster up the willpower required to ignore a call for help or walk past a starving man or woman or child without placing a silver coin in their hand. She considers being overly helpful a weakness – which, in some ways, it is, considering the nature of her work – and has been trying to get rid of these 'smaller urges' for quite some time now. Despite considering herself a fighter for the greater good, the woman is largely unable to make sacrifices if it might hurt any but herself.

The above makes it obvious that Samin Solargaze is a woman who has her goals clearly outlined in her mind. Most of them come and go – Samin tends to involve herself in various ‘good’ causes fairly often – but one grand and extensive intention remains unchanged – she has dedicated herself to protecting the world and fighting Fel and other kinds of foulness in all ways possible, and she intends to uphold this promise just like she would uphold any other. This woman would rather die than disrespect and break her own word. However, there is an obvious and rather problematic contradiction here – deep in her heart, Samin despises herself and her race for succumbing to their addiction and using the destructive energy of demons for their selfish benefit.

It would be hard not to notice all the things listed above if there was a good deal of time to be spent with Samin, but there is one trait that is almost always immediately apparent, and that is Samin’s rather extreme feminism, coupled with dislike toward men. She will talk down to and perhaps even insult creatures of the male gender; they will find it that much difficult – if not impossible – to gain her trust. The Solargazes' luck with men is an undying joke in some of Silvermoon’s noble circles, but that is not the way they see it - her mother and her aunt, both very angry and spiteful women, tried to teach Samin many things when she was little, but this firm belief that men are lesser, squirrel-brained beings is perhaps the only one that she soaked up – and still it took her a couple of decades and a terrible experience with the other gender.

Samin is not without fault, however, and the most noticeable of them is her pride. She is an overly and overtly proud Elf and this - combined with her temperamental nature - tends to spawn the most unpleasant of issues at the worst of times – Samin is a touchy woman, taken by emotion almost too easily, and even a tiny misstep or a carelessly picked word can send her into the depths of fury. This dignity of hers works in strange ways, however – for example, the woman does not see it as shameful to go below her noble status – quite likely because she never cared much for it – but to be insulted or humbled or have her ability questioned is something she cannot put up with quietly. Because of this great pride, the woman can be seen as haughty, but despite her sharp tongue, she rarely places her nobility above another woman – or even a man.

History

One hundred and sixty-nine years ago, in the pretty morning of what would be a very sunny day even for Eversong Forest, the halls of the Solargaze Manor rang with furious cries. Back then, the place was still in its full splendour – a shining, smooth-walled tower still stood tall above the grand construction, a mass of polished and yellow-painted stone adorned with arabesques of gilded metal wherever possible, and the tiled roof still glittered bright sapphire and not yet deep crimson. Back then, the people that lived there were no different. Such outbreaks of emotion were rare in that cold family, but Lorelle of House Solargaze paid no mind to such low things as dignity that day – all of her attention seemed focused on the source of that ungodly noise, a little mess of far too little flesh and far too prominent bones. Weeping and laughing – oh, but it had to be something else, Lorelle Solargaze never laughed – as she cradled it in her trembling arms, the woman named that mess Samin.

It was the most joyous day of her life, but no more than that. Things were quick to return to what they had been before that moment – a moment she later regarded as embarrassing - and the woman never laughed heartily again. Lorelle Solargaze was a cold creature - a wealthy, but, despite everything, a very minor noble, she held her fair-haired head in chilly heights and spoke as if she were Queen – and even the birth of her daughter could not change what was rooted so deeply. She raised the child with cold care, calculated precision, and a firm hand. She did try to smile at the girl sometimes, but it never came out as anything other than a laughable grimace – Samin reminded her too much of Alarriel Silverheart, the squirrel-brained loaf who had run as far as he could upon learning that Lorelle was with child, and those were not things a Lady liked to remember. It was her fault that she had let herself be wooed by a smuggler’s rugged charm, but that was not the way Lorelle saw it.

Either way, she was an unfeeling mother. There was love involved, but that knowledge was for her and her only.

Samin grew up surrounded by all imaginable kinds of riches, but in her eyes, that was far from a happy childhood; where she wanted heartfelt warmth, she found only ignorant gold and sparkling jewels. Now, no one could say she was not paid any attention – it was the opposite of that, really – but where she wanted affection, encouragement and support, she found demanding stares, sharp words and never-ending lectures. Her aunt, Damienne Solargaze, was no less of an icy wall than her mother, and so she was forced to build happiness herself. Given a moment to breathe away from books, she would go out into the streets of Silvermoon and run and shout with other children she met there. They were a little careful around her at first – for what reason, she could not imagine – but that passed soon enough. The girl never cared that they were in rags and she in silk. It turned out so that they did not, either.

Not too much, at least.

As time passed, life in the Solargaze Manor grew only harder, but so did Samin – courtesy of her mother, no doubt. As a young lady, she decided that she had grovelled before the two women that ruled there for long enough – and how dare they give her those chilly looks, she was no child they could push around anymore! – and began to fight them word against word. Lorelle and Damienne were not women who took such nonsense, so it only made them more furious and life for Samin more difficult, but that was far from enough to make her back down. She was Lorelle’s daughter, after all. The girl’s studies were pushed even harder, and the freedom she was given became lesser and lesser. Samin had nothing against studying - it was nothing short of a religious passion for the girl - but those two stony faces grew more disgusting to look at by the day, until one morning when she found herself unable to leave the safety of her room and submit herself to lashing tongues again. She was infuriated by this weakness, infuriated by her own helplessness. Neither her mother, nor her aunt saw the girl that day.

Such disappearances grew more and more frequent rapidly, and the sisters pressed her harder and harder. One day, Samin did not return to her home. Cast into a fiery fit of rage, Lorelle and Damienne organised a search, but the City of Silvermoon was huge as well as magnificent and it was only after far too much time that their hirelings managed to spot the girl. Running away from home was something the two might have forgiven with less than a week of anger – perhaps less than two – but when they found out that Samin had involved herself with commoners and worse, all thoughts of leniency flew out of their heads like steam out of a boiling kettle. The women’s imaginations were not enough to come up with a punishment cruel enough to equal such a sin, so they arranged to send her to Tormielle, their mother and the High Seat of House Solargaze.

Tormielle Solargaze had given up the ruckus of life in the metropolis to lead her noble kin from a place where her mind could be at ease and her wits clear. Strangely, it was in her humble house – built upon a cliff overlooking a stormy sea, it lacked the grandeur the girl was used to, but she still thought it pretty, even if it was nothing but wood and stone – that Samin first felt – truly felt – the love of a dear one. Her grandmother turned out to be almost nothing like the women she had spent fourteen years with – Tormielle did share some things with her daughters, like her contempt – weak, but still contempt - for the male gender, but unlike them, she was firm in a gentle, anything but overdone way, and beyond that softly tough exterior lay a heart smoothed but not weathered by age.

Life with the elderly woman was nothing at all like the things Samin had expected. She found herself free to carve her own path and even considered running away again two times or perhaps three, but it was not long before it dawned upon her that none of that was needed. It was not long before she was taken in by Tormielle. A woman who had never taken her nobility for granted or held it above another’s head, she was an embodiment of all that Samin could connect to, and quickly became an idol. Lacking the haughty vein – of which Lorelle and Damienne seemed to possess a thousand copies each – she was, too, a friend. Aside from maintaining the relationship that Samin would later regard as the warmest in her life, Tormielle also took rein of the girl’s studies – it was under her sharp yet loving gaze that the rugged rebel of a young woman finally blossomed as a lady of proper demeanour and education – freely, without inhibitions. It was under that gaze that happiness became a feeling that visited Samin frequently.

Alas, one of those spurts of glee was what ended this heavenly life. On a day that promised only good things, Samin – in a moment of blind joy – felt the unquenchable need to write to her mother. And write she did – without thought, too – about herself, about her life, about her grandmother. The girl kept back nothing. That letter – the Light-forsaken piece of paper that Samin much later damned – revealed all; that letter told Lorelle Solargaze what a great influence Tormielle was, and how she encouraged all that was wrong with her daughter.

Samin was returned to Solargaze Manor the following day.

The girl had thought badly of life with her mother before, but if that had been terrible, this was torture. Luckily, despite everything Lorelle thought and intended, it was not meant to last. Perhaps it was coincidence or perhaps it was something else that pushed Samin into a room where Lorelle and Damienne were locked in a heated discussion – it seemed that the foolish women did not even bother to keep their voices low, even if the girl was supposed to be sleeping. What she heard terrified her. The sisters’ plan was to finally begin her training in the Arcane arts of the High Elves, but that was not what brought fear into her heart – she had always dreamt of becoming an Arcanist - no; what frightened her was that Damienne and Lorelle, both magewomen of considerable strength, meant for it to be done under no one but themselves. Samin could not bear the thought of having to submit to the two again; panicked, the only solution she saw was to call upon her grandmother for help, and that was what she did.

She never did find out what exactly happened later, but the end result was clear, and one that Samin was more than happy with – Tormielle successfully overruled her daughters’ decision and arranged for the young woman to be instead sent to Dalaran, the seat of the elusive Kirin Tor.

Unfortunately, at first, the studies in the city-state were not as great as Samin had expected them to be – she was but one student in a slithering mass of hundreds, all waiting to be taught about the secrets their world held, all sitting in disorganised classes - classes that, seemingly, were held only in passing. The thought of pleading with Tormielle for another favour crossed her mind more than once - even though the woman would never admit it - but each time she pushed that thought away – Samin held her back straighter than ever then, and she could not force herself to stoop so low. And so she made up her mind to push ambition away as far as she could – which was not very far at all – and make the best she could of what she did have. Days came and went, but nothing changed. The happiness Samin had once felt seemed distant as she sat leaning over old scripts in a cold library – and Light, perhaps Lorelle’s iron fist was not so bad after all. It seemed to have given way to anger. Yet still there was painful hope left inside that woman, which turned out to be just as well.

After far too much time of despair and hidden fury, the woman’s prayers were answered – Samin – the Lady Solargaze they called her now - was called before some minor council, where she was informed that someone had finally noticed her and that she would be assigned to a personal tutor. It was then that the woman’s passions were rekindled and unleashed – she progressed quickly and her teachers came and went without staying too long; soon enough she found herself standing before a High Elf called Meraanus Dawnheart, an insignificant member of the Kirin Tor who sought to lead her through the remaining stages of her apprenticeship. A man! A creature she had been taught to hate – and learnt to hate, due to a mishap in Silvermoon that involved the melting of her sense, the tangling of her wits and, for some reason, heat in crimson cheeks. And she was supposed to study under this great big ox! Samin was thrown into something beyond fury, but, unwilling to let her studies go, she accepted his offer.

To Samin’s great surprise, that thing beyond fury was gentled and softened by time – once the fires of it died down, Meraanus seemed strangely intelligent for someone who was supposed to have the brain of a squirrel, and – Light forbid! – even wise at times. How that was even possible was what she could not wrap her head around. But however strange that man seemed, Samin did not let such petty nonsense hurt her studies, which were going as smoothly as ever. Soon came the time for her to choose areas on which she would focus – while friends and acquaintances whined about the difficulty of it, Samin was quick and steadfast in her choosing – and, beside more conventional schools, the woman took an interest in ancient magic. It was somewhere around this time that she first heard about demons and their foul powers, which fools tried to harness. Abhorred and yet infinitely intrigued by this filth, she chose to delve deeper and deeper, until her scholarly studies of Fel overwhelmed almost all others. Yes, it was somewhere around this time that she spoke the oath – still quietly back then, still only to herself – that one day she would be a fiery bane to these monstrosities.

Aside from such occasional outbreaks of ardour and idealism, she led a quiet student’s life, trapped between white towers and violet palaces as she was, until one fateful morning, when Meraanus arrived even less composed than usual. Unable to show patience for the man’s strange behaviour, Samin snapped, and it was then that he, in a panic, offered the woman to change the course of her studies – Meraanus spoke of something that he considered much more refined than what was taught in Dalaran, something a little closer to perfection. After pushing past the initial confusion, Samin, hot-blooded whenever it was least needed, accepted – she did not know how much truth his words held, but they resonated well with her, and, in a way, she was eager to try something beyond what she saw as the Kirin Tor’s limited view of magic.

The woman’s studies in the city of the magi ended that day.

Meraanus took her to Miana Goldmoon, a woman of strange manners and stranger habits, a former member of the Kirin Tor, exiled by her colleagues for her unconventional views on the Arcane. Despite giving her assent, Samin had felt worry at first – some part of her Fel-hating mind could not help but see something dark in the man’s offer – and she was pleased to find that none of it was needed. The woman found Miana’s beliefs intriguing, and strangely similar to her own – she claimed - a little too much like a madwoman for Samin's taste - that the way the Kirin Tor and all those under them used their power was crude, perhaps even primal; she claimed to be able to give her magic a smoother shape. Miana claimed to be one of many, vocal where others were silent, and Samin had no reason not to believe her. The woman became her new mentor, and she took that with relief – she had come to admit that Meraanus had the brain of a dragonhawk and not a squirrel, but it was just as well that there would be less time to spend with him.

Miana Goldmoon taught the younger woman to bend the Arcane in different ways and give it an unconventional shape – different was her path, she said, but no more and no less effective than any other. It was with her that Samin pushed through the last years of her apprenticeship, and soon after was raised to the rank of a fully accomplished magewoman.

That did not mark the end of her studies, however – Samin had no desire to go and rot in her family's manor, and so she returned to Dalaran, where she resumed her scholarly work. Years went by bleakly - even though her thirst for knowledge was never sated - until the woman received news of trouble at the borders of Quel’thalas. This cast doubt into the woman’s heart - unnerved by the numerous reports of a very strange plague that were coming in, she let her worry win and finally returned to her family in Silvermoon.

At the worst possible time, so it turned out.

Mere days after her arrival, the Solargazes were awakened by screams and a hellish heat – an inexorable horde of creatures unlike any others – glimpsed only briefly through thick veils of flame and smoke – ran wild in the whole city, and the city seemed to crumble at their claws and feet. Samin tried to tell herself that it could not be, not Silvermoon, never Silvermoon, but that changed nothing and she was no milksop to wait until it did – separated from Lorelle and Damienne in some kind of cloud of death, she found her way through rubble and leavings of what seemed to be slaughter to a group of Elves who seemed to be holding out against the unseen force, if only barely. It was there, surrounded by fires no less deadly than the beasts, that she first heard about a fallen prince of a fallen kingdom and his bony army that never tired, never died. It was just like a man to go mad at the worst possible moment, but it had to be nonsense; too ridiculous to even consider, Samin told herself.

Unfortunately, it was not.

How long the battle – the ravaging, the massacre – lasted, Samin did not know; the passage of time slipped out of her grasp as she twisted the Arcane in ways she hoped to never have to even think about again. Luckily, the time she had spent gathering knowledge and practising was not for naught; Lady Samin Solargaze lived to see the cruel morning. The black curtains of smoke and fumes lifted quickly, but the survivors wished they hadn’t – they were left standing in a mass of smashed stone and shattered glass and broken wood, left to listen to the eerie cries of the dying and the wounded, their enemy gone but the results of his work too visible. Walls that had been whitewashed were washed in blood, and what had been gold or sapphire was cloaked in stains of scarlet. Rivers of all other shades of red sliced through what had been streets a moment, an eternity ago – wine, best Northshire wine and nothing else – and became pools too wide to leap over.

Ravens circled above what had been Silvermoon in black clouds that day.

Despite everything, Samin was overjoyed to see that Lorelle and Damienne had escaped with but a few minor injuries. The news that followed that pleasant moment were devastating however – Damienne, the new High Seat of House Solargaze, whispered words she never wanted to hear, words that spoke of Tormielle leaving the relative safety of her distant abode to defend the home of her kin, but to be ripped in half by a lumbering, gargling mass of scraps and chunks of flesh sewn together. The sight of her defiled body in a hole with thousands like it helped not a bit. Samin would never say, but it haunts her dreams still.

It was not very long before the bleakness came. The survivors, Samin among them, felt a terrible pain, a terrible longing – it felt like something had been severed, and where that string of sweet life – there was no other word – had been, gaped a deep, dark, empty cavern. Soon they were taken by this bleakness, and by the time the filthy cure came, most were ready to kill to sate that endless thirst. At first, Samin tried to fight, tried to find other ways, but all in vain; in the end, she and her family were with the majority. And it was with the majority that the woman committed the sin that she would never forgive herself for – she channelled the power of demons, she channelled Fel. Like channelling the Arcane, it felt like being filled with life, but it also had a darker undertaste – it was the sweet taste of death, it was decay mixed with joy and given form. Since that moment, there was no choice but to embrace this disgusting new way of life, and embrace it was what Samin – frightened, infuriated by her weakness as she was – did.

Days, months, perhaps even years – they were all the same for a while – trotted at the pace of a turtle. Some brought good things and some brought bad; one brought Silvermoon, another the Sunwell, and there were others still. For Samin, it was not until she came to terms with what she had become – grudgingly, but she did – that time gained speed. At some point after that she reached the decision that she had spent enough time rotting in what remained of her aunt’s manor like some hopeless wretch; that decision was what pushed her out of the city and into the world. Not too long after, she reunited with her teacher Meraanus Dawnheart. Through him, she established herself as a loyal servant of the Kirin Tor in Dalaran, and, insignificant flights of independence aside, to this day she has acted like one.

With no intentions to leave her position, small as it may be, Samin has made it her goal to protect her fragile world from any that might threaten it, and fight the never-dying threat of the Burning Legion. However, despite her pride, the magewoman is no longer sure if this is a task she can tackle alone, and thoughts of seeking out and uniting those like her cross her mind more and more often.