Hallayn, of Bree.

[hallayn]

HALLAYN, DAUGHTER OF BREE

[/center]

THE BASICS:

Name: Hallayn
Age: Twenty - eight
Gender: Female
Race: Half - Elf who has chosen a Mortal life; daughter of a Bree-land woman and a man of Imladris.
Birthplace: Inside Bree, in a dusty old tavern who's name is long-since forgotten, as it has been replaced by an old lumberjack's shop.
Current Location: Her family farm, Raen Farm, to the north of Bree.
Weapon(s): She owns a hunting bow that belonged to her father, but it is much more fitted for long-distance shooting and one or two shots; not so much the things of elven-make.

APPEARANCES:

Facial Appearance:
Hallayn has a rather youthful face - as did her mother - with pale, ruddy skin that is dusted with freckles, and a rather fresh complexion. She has dark brown eyes, and equally dark hair that reaches the bottom of her shoulder-blades at the very least. She never particularly enjoys tying it up, but when she does, it will most likely be dressed in ribbons and jewelry.
Build:
Hallayn's build is that of a farm girl; she is not very slender, though she is petite in frame, with a long torso and long legs to match. Her height is a variable 5' 6" to 5' 7", and she is constantly moving about on her feet during the day, making her lower and upper body strength rather equally matched.
Distinguishing Marks:
She has no real scars or marks to speak of, other than a few moles here and there. She bears a particularly bad scar running from the cusp of her right breast down to her left hip, from a bad encounter with a bull in her teenage years. She has since kept only dairy cows since that incident.
Face Claim: Gemma Arterton

A LITTLE MORE IN-DEPTH:

Personality:
In her youth, Hallayn was never once taught that a stranger was an enemy. Her father and mother were quiet, kind folk, who would help and offer shelter to any passing traveller they encountered by the front gate of their farm. Hallayn grew up listening, wide-eyed, to the stories that rogues, bards, farmers, marketsmen, archers, hunters, Rangers, and warriors told while sitting at her dinner table, indulging in her mother's cooking and her father's company. Dwarves, elves, and humans frequented the place, and the house must have seen a different face twice every week.

Because of this, Hallayn has never been much of a prejudiced individual. She is a homely sort, though she has little filter to speak of, and will often offer company and food to any person she meets on the road. She travels less than she'd like to, but whenever she does, she goes far past the Brandywine, and into the plains beyond. She is quite fond of dwarves and men at dinner, for she loves to feel that her cooking is appreciated (though she doesn't understand why her salads go rather untouched), and delights in her farm being a rest stop of sorts.

However, she can get quite mouthy, one of the many negative traits she has acquired in her lifetime. Other than her boisterous mouth and ease of annoyance, Hallayn's rural upbringing - around the tougher sorts of life, to add - has given her little filter when it comes to what she thinks of others. She is rather brutally honest, and very questioning, and though she will allow any into her home, she will often question them of their journeys and their going-to's quite incessantly.

On relationships and romance, Hallayn has often thought that she would do well without, for her tastes in men and women are rather skewed, and she has little time for courting and courtship with the animals she raises. However, if it were to come to that, she has little preference - dwarf, hobbit, human, or elf, she can find qualities she likes in all, and would rather prefer someone other than her kind if it came to that.

History:
The cries of the second daughter of Narmhel of Imladris and Deryn of Bree filled the night of the first Waxing Gibbous of Autumn at an hour so late, even the cattle and the dogs seemed to moan with annoyance. But the child that squirmed in her mother's arms was very awake, and very bothered to have been plucked from the warmth of the womb so quickly, and with so little blood, that she cried like that - as loud as an injured warg - for hours into the morning.

And so it was that Hallayn, daughter of Bree, was to be just as loud and boisterous and frightfully active for the rest of her life. Her childhood was a fine one, with nothing odd to boast of other than a few spills in the garden and fires in the kitchens, and she lived without care, boasting a lineage of Tellynsyr House in Rivendell, and of the Cutleafs in Bree-land. She had no idea of her father's mortal choosing, nor of her mother's susceptibility to illness and disease; not even when her mother disappeared in a doctor's wagon, her skin pale and blue, did she have any idea of what had happened.

Her elder sister, Merla, married off to a man from the families of Dale, who had been travelling through on his way home, and left Hallayn with a grieving, dying father, and a farm full of animals. With her father's frailty making it nearly impossible for him to work, Hallayn took the task on herself, at the ripe age of fourteen. A marrying age in most mindsets, Hallayn never once set foot off her farm, never to town or Bree's fine markets. Her youth was spent in the sheds and barn and henhouse of Raen farm, where she tended to her father and her livestock for years, never once seeming bothered or affected by the world's hardships.

A rogue travelling along the main road to Bree took rest in their house for a day. A man by the name of Badoet, the rogue boasted of treasures large and fights marvelous, and his tales were one of many to have caused the fanciful, naive Hallayn to wonder and desire for journeys miraculous.

She left her farm with a satchel and no horse to her being, on the eve of her seventeenth birthday; a walking stick, and an adolescent, scruffy dog named Pick were her only two companions, and she trekked in boots far too large, and a shawl far too thin.

She travelled far past Bree, past the Old Forest and the Brandy Hills, through the Shire - where she was rewarded with queer looks and much gossip - and into the Blue Mountains. Ered Luin was as far as she managed, for she recieved news that her father had died during her travels; this was a positively mortifying idea, you must realize, for she had all the reason to believe her father was perfectly healthy and capable when she left.

Her trip back was all the more slow, and Hallayn came to realize that no true benefit had come from the marvelous world she had gazed at through her window. After the funeral of Narmhel, when she travelled to Imladris to claim a Mortal life instead of that of an elf's, Hallayn vowed that she would never again set foot off her farm, and live and die there as her family had; for the world had killed her father, and she could not set foot in it again.

Which, of course, is a very melodramatic idea; but what can you expect from a spoiled youth?

With her father's death behind her, and her sister living a life happily far away from her, Hallayn now lives as if tethered to her farm, wondering if she should indeed sell the plot of land and follow the desire that looms over her, revoking on the vow she made those nine years ago. She yearns for a magnificent story of her own to tell, and frets that she will never have one to show.


Roleplay Sample:

Slick. Eerie. Shuffling about like a hobbled dog, yet slinking like a snake, but… all in all, more like an eel, or a leech.

Curling her fingers into her white linen curtains with a gentle sigh of distaste, the young woman turned back to the darkness of her kitchen, feeling blindly about for a match. No matter how odd or creepy the company, she had to at least offer lodging and food to any traveler outside her door. Her father always had, and if they indeed were dangerous, she had her dogs… hopefully. Were they asleep?

Poking the sleeping masses of brown fur and drool beneath the table, Hallayn struck the match between her fingers against the thick wooden surface, lighting her lantern and shuffling towards the front door. A shiver sprinted up her spine, and her fingers hovered over the doorknob, all the doubt in her mind piling up and up.

He could be dangerous. And not in the physical sense. He seems too jumpy, too wary of himself.

With a small grumble of ‘Well, who wouldn’t be at this time of night?’, the young woman pushed her doubts aside, clicking the doorknob to and fro and opening the door rather slowly. Pushing her lantern-filled hand out into the cool air of the night, she watched as the flame inside the glass slowly flickered to a point, bathing her porch and a length of the dirt road that split her farm in half with golden light.

“Hullo? I don’t mean to, er, frighten you, and I must apologize if I have, but— oh, you mangy things!”

Her voice melted into a harsh whisper as her dogs went barreling out of the house, eager to be outside and in the grass again. They stopped at the sight of the odd man at the gateway, but gave him no more heed as they tore off into the adjoining pasture, startling a few of the cows as they went.

Hallayn grunted, moving down her front stoop and out into the middle of the dirt road, jutting out her arm so that the light of her lantern fell onto the stranger at her gate.

If the shiver from before had chilled her, then the avalanche of both startled and frighted tingling that gushed down her spine froze her very core. Never-the-less, she managed a smile, clutching her other arm with a free hand and acting as if she had shuddered from the cold of the night breeze.

“It’s freezin’! Come, come inside and warm y’self! It’s far too late for anyone to be jauntin’ about, isn’t it? I’m sure the leftovers from dinner are still warm…”.

BEHIND THE SCREEN:

Alias: Shannon.
Codeword:
Experience: Seven to eight years, four of those being in literate roleplay. I mainly roleplay on Tumblr, but I began on forum, and I'm quite used to it.
How you found us?: Tumblr, the 'Balin' tag, actually! Heh.
Other Characters: None!
How should we contact you?: PM, please. ♥