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Saiya Wellstorm
Saiya Wellstorm
"Up." · Physical Trainer and Coastal Rescue Instructor
Basic Information
Full Name
Saiya Wellstorm
Nickname
Tidespark
Race (Grade)
Suli (E)
Class
Fighter / Ranger
Height
5'10"
Birthday
Rainsong 24, 1276
Age
Loading...
Birthsign
Bloodline Ability
Unknown
This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.
Physical Description
Saiya Wellstorm on the training beach below Tazzinburgh's bluffs, mid-set and not stopping
Appearance
Saiya is a tall, strikingly attractive woman built like the athlete she has been her whole life: broad-shouldered, powerfully muscled through the arms and core, and quick on her feet in a way that suggests she is always about three seconds from starting a race. Her long, wild platinum hair, darker at the roots and permanently salt-tangled, falls well past her shoulders, and her skin is a deep sun-bronzed tan. Her eyes are a sharp hazel-green under strong dark brows, and they tend to settle on people with a look of friendly assessment, as if measuring how far they could run. She dresses to move and nothing else: a close-fitting black top, black training breeches, and a plain black band at her throat. Her hair is usually still damp, because she has usually just been swimming.
Unique Characteristics
Saiya's family carries faint traces of both air and water in its jann blood, but she inherited very little obvious magic from it. What she did inherit is quietly remarkable: she can hold her breath far longer than any ordinary human, she moves through water with an efficiency that makes strong swimmers look like they are drowning, and she occasionally produces tiny static discharges when she is angry or excited. People who shake her hand at the start of a race tend to remember it. The dark slash beneath her left eye is a traditional Wellstorm family tattoo, a lightning strike meeting the sea.
Personality & Temperament
Positive Traits
- Relentlessly encouraging, especially with beginners
- Endless energy from sunrise to well past sunset
- Never mocks anyone for where they're starting from
- Goes straight into the water when someone's drowning
- Adapts any exercise to an injury or an older body
Challenging Traits
- Cannot walk away from any challenge whatsoever
- Wakes everyone at sunrise, volunteers or not
- Zero patience for "I can't" before you've tried
- Treats every casual boast as a formal challenge
- Sparks with static when she's angry or excited
Up. [Why?] Training. [It's barely light outside.] Correct.
The best swimmer in town? [Her head turns, very slowly.] Are you?
You're just walking to breakfast? Excellent. Lunges. [A pause.] You heard me.
Likes
- Sunrise, cold water, and a full morning ahead
- A beginner's first real, unassisted swim
- Any race, any wager, any time, against anyone
- A tired guard finishing a run he couldn't before
- Storms over the sea, watched from the shoreline
Dislikes
- Hearing "I can't" from someone who hasn't tried
- Trophies gathering dust on a shelf, hers included
- Mocking anyone for how they look while they train
- People who stand on the dock while someone drowns
- Being told to slow down, rest, or take a day off
Background & History
A Harbor Childhood
Saiya was born in 1276 in Tazzinburgh, in the old Suli quarter of the Midstep, to a family that has lived above that crescent harbor since the city's founding. In Tazzinburgh, swimming is less a recreation than a basic survival skill, and Saiya learned it early by chasing the crestwater seals out past the breakwaters, which her mother forbade, repeatedly, and to no effect. Like every Suli child she received an elemental name at her awakening, the moment in adolescence when her jann blood first showed itself. Hers showed itself at thirteen as a sharp crackle of static in the harbor water that made her swimming instructor yelp, and the elders named her Tidespark. She uses it only on formal occasions, which she avoids.
"How Much?"
Saiya first made her living through competitive athletics: swimming, climbing, running, wrestling, obstacle courses, and pretty much anything else where someone could point at another person and say, "Bet you can't beat them." Her immediate response was usually, "How much?" She became moderately famous on the northern coast's competition circuit and collected a respectable shelf of trophies, most of which she has never looked at twice.
Eleven
The event that changed her life was not a competition. In the winter of 1300, a passenger vessel was driven onto Tazzinburgh's rocky breakwaters during a coastal gale, and Saiya happened to be nearby. She was in the water before the Harbor Guard's rescuers arrived, and she pulled eleven people out herself. One of them was a young boy who had been under long enough that everyone on the rocks assumed he was dead. Saiya refused to stop trying to bring him back. He survived.
So She Started Teaching
Afterward, she gradually lost interest in competing simply to prove she could win. She had spent years building an extremely useful collection of skills and had mostly been using them to collect trophies. So she started teaching: harbor children to swim, dockworkers to lift without destroying their backs, and Harbor Guard recruits to keep running after they wanted to stop. Unlike a brutal drill instructor, she genuinely loves beginners. She will happily teach someone who cannot swim, modify every exercise for an injured guard, or spend months helping an overweight merchant get healthier without mocking him once. What she cannot tolerate is anyone declaring that they "can't" do something before they have actually tried. Teaching did not cure her competitiveness. At all.
Out of the Geldergreen
In recent years Saiya took her teaching on the road, and she spent most of the past year in Gelderai, just south of home across the Geldergreen's northern edge, teaching lowland visitors how not to fall off the canopy walkways and teaching the canopy's residents how to swim. When Gelderai nearly fell in Goldenleaf of 1306, she spent the worst days of her life on the forest roads hauling exhausted people who could not keep up. Afterward she decided she wanted somewhere colder, louder, and further away, and set out for Torheim, where she had heard fitness is practically a religion and a strong woman is considered a catch rather than a problem.
Just Passing Through
Silmarithil was meant to be a stop of a few days. It is enough like Gelderai to feel familiar, all living wood and lantern bridges, and different in enough ways that Saiya is in no hurry to leave. It is small enough that everybody knows everybody, the ground is actually within reach, its streams and ponds are cold and clear, and its Lanternwalkers are a company of Grippli acrobats who can outjump her, which she regards as a personal challenge. Within a month she had people doing morning exercises on the Hearthmarket green at sunrise, including several who never technically volunteered.
Goals & Aspirations
Every Child Can Swim
Saiya has decided that before the first frost, every child in Silmarithil will be able to swim at least across the widest pond in Greenbottle Rise, and she has already started working through the list. Parents have learned that there is no point in objecting. The children, for the most part, think she is the best thing that has ever happened to the town.
Torheim, Eventually
Saiya still means to go to Torheim, a city where the High King's own wife commands a warband, and where she has been told the stone-lifting contests go on all afternoon. She is simply no longer in a hurry. In the meantime she has questioned the town's resident Torheim half-giant about his home city at great length, received perhaps eleven words in reply, and challenged him to arm wrestle twice. He declined both times.
"Are You?"
Silmarithil is home to a retired half-orc gladiator champion who trains in the Elderwood every morning, and Saiya has noticed. She has not said anything yet. Her friends have noticed her noticing, and they are quietly clearing an afternoon.
Current Status & Relationships
Residence
Role
Physical Trainer
ATTENTION!
Saiya Wellstorm is an E-grade Suli fighter and ranger who can outrun, outswim, outclimb, and outlast almost anyone in Silmarithil, and she knows it. She is not a raw combat monster and has no interest in being one; her real value lies in what she can do for everyone else's bodies. If anyone is ever in the water and in trouble, she will be in it before you have finished shouting. Be warned that she cannot hear a boast without treating it as a formal challenge: casually mention that you are the best at anything physical and you will be losing an afternoon. If you cross the Hearthmarket green around sunrise, you may find yourself doing lunges. This is not optional. She also sparks with static when she gets excited. That is normal, and it only stings a little.