Zessan Marr - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Zessan Marr

Nickname

The Quiet Hands

Race (Grade)

Vishkanya (F)

Class

Herbalist

Height

6'3"

Birthday

Thawbloom 20, 1277

Age

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Birthsign

The Bloom Nymph

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Bloodline Ability

🔮Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Zessan Marr, The Quiet Hands

Appearance

Zessan is built like a man who has spent a lifetime hauling stone, with broad shoulders, a deep chest, and heavily muscled arms he has never once trained, worked, or lifted a weapon to earn. He has simply always grown this way, larger and denser than any other Vishkanya in the tribe, a fact that has followed him since childhood and that he has never fully gotten used to being asked about. Bands of orange and black scale-work run down his face in a sharp diagonal pattern and continue across his chest, shoulders, and forearms, and he wears his dark hair pulled back into a high tail that keeps it clear of his face while he works. He wears small round wire-rimmed glasses at all times, without which the world past arm's length dissolves into shapes and color, and he moves through Ssi'Korr with the careful, economical motion of a large man who has spent his whole life being told, one way or another, to take up less space.

Unique Characteristics

Zessan is functionally blind beyond a few feet without his glasses and keeps two spare pairs hidden in different corners of his workshop after learning the hard way what happens when the only pair he owns breaks during a harvest. His hands, despite their size, are extraordinarily gentle and precise, capable of separating a single delicate leaf from its stem without bruising it, and most of the tribe has, at one point or another, watched him work a plant with a care that seems almost comically mismatched to the size of the fingers doing it.

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Personality

Positive Traits

Unmatched skill identifying and preparing remedies
Patient, exacting teacher of apprentice herbalists
Genuinely gentle in a way that isn't performed for show
Generous with remedies, even toward those who mock him
Quietly proud of his work, not how he looks doing it
Calm under pressure, never raises his voice in crisis

Challenging Traits

Deflects any conversation that turns toward romance
Reflexively downplays his own strength around others
Overexplains remedies rather than talk about himself
Avoids mirrors and portraits more than most would guess
Assumes rejection before anyone has said a word
Bristles quietly at being treated as a curiosity

A plant does not care what you look like or what people whisper about your blood. It only asks whether you know what it needs. I have always found that easier to answer than most questions people ask me.

They look at my arms and think one thing. Then I put on my glasses and they think another. I have stopped trying to convince anyone which one is true. I am not sure it matters which one is true.

Slower. If you crush the leaf before it is ready, you have wasted the leaf and taught your hands nothing. There is no rush in this work that is worth losing the lesson.

Likes

The particular quiet of the herb garden at dusk
Apprentices who ask why instead of just how
Correctly guessing a plant's use before tasting it
A clean pair of lenses and good working light
Being asked about his work instead of his body

Dislikes

Being stared at, then immediately looked away from
Matchmaking aunties who mean well and wound anyway
Herbs picked too early out of impatience
Being held up as proof of anything about bloodlines
Loud, crowded rooms that blur without his glasses

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Background & History

Growing in Two Directions at Once

Zessan's body and Zessan's eyes went in opposite directions from an early age, and neither the tribe's healers nor his own parents ever found a satisfying explanation for either. By ten he was already taller and broader than boys four years older, without ever having trained for it. By eleven he could no longer make out his mother's face across a cooking fire. The tribe's herbalist at the time, an old woman with failing patience and a soft spot for strange children, made him his first pair of ground-lens spectacles out of curiosity as much as kindness, and it was in her workshop, waiting for lenses to be shaped correctly, that Zessan first became genuinely interested in the plants she kept drying from the rafters.

A Student the Old Herbalist Didn't Expect

What began as a distraction while waiting on lenses became an apprenticeship, and the apprenticeship became, within a few years, something closer to a succession. Zessan's memory for plants, dosages, and preparations proved exact in a way his teacher's had only ever been approximate, and his large, careful hands turned out to be better suited to delicate harvesting work than anyone expected from looking at them. By the time he was twenty, herbalists twice his age in Ssi'Thesska were sending runners to ask his opinion on preparations they weren't certain of.

The Match That Wasn't

When Zessan was twenty-three, a match was proposed between him and a young woman from another hunting line, and for a short while it seemed likely to proceed. Her family withdrew the arrangement after several weeks of quiet inquiry, citing his eyesight as evidence of frail stock, despite his obvious size and strength standing directly in front of them while they said it. The contradiction became something of a standing joke among the tribe's matchmakers, who could never quite agree which trait should be weighed more heavily, and Zessan learned that year to stop waiting for anyone to resolve the argument on his behalf.

Following the Tribe to Ssi'Korr

Zessan left the Verdant Expanse with the rest of Ssi'Katha's people, bringing with him what dried stock and seed he could carry and very little else, and he has spent the years since Ssi'Korr's founding rebuilding his herb stores from scratch in unfamiliar soil. He is, by wide agreement, the finest herbalist the settlement has, responsible for most of the remedies, salves, and antidotes the tribe's hunters rely on, and he has trained two apprentices since arriving without ever raising his voice at either of them.

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Goals

Learning Wildgrove Thicket's Green

Most of what Zessan knew from the Verdant Expanse does not grow in Wildgrove Thicket, and he has spent much of the past several years quietly re-learning his entire trade against a new jungle's plants, testing preparations on himself before he will risk them on anyone else. He considers this ongoing work rather than a project with an end point, and he keeps meticulous notes he intends to eventually pass on, whether or not he ever finds someone to pass them to directly.

A Third Apprentice, Eventually

Zessan has an unspoken rule that he will only take on an apprentice who asks him a genuinely good question in their first meeting, and he has been quietly evaluating the tribe's older children for over a year without finding one yet. He is in no hurry. He would rather teach no one than teach someone who is only there because their parents suggested it.

Making Peace With the Argument

Zessan no longer expects the tribe to settle whether he represents strong blood or weak blood, and somewhere in the last few years he has begun, tentatively, to stop needing them to. He has not given up on the idea of a mate entirely, but he has quietly started to wonder whether he even wants the kind of match that requires someone to first win an argument about his genetics, rather than simply deciding they like him. He has not said this out loud to anyone. He is still working out whether he believes it himself.

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Ssi'Korr

Role

Tribal Herbalist of Ssi'Korr

Tribe

Ssi'Katha

Duchess She Serves

Ssariel Kre

Supplies Her Hunting Parties

Eric Esmond

Closest Friend

ATTENTION!

Zessan Marr has never trained to fight and carries no weapon, but he has also never had reason to learn the actual limits of his own strength, and he does not reliably know how much force he is using in a given moment. He is gentle by nature and avoids physical confrontation entirely, but an untrained shove or grab from him, given in surprise or in defense of someone he cares about, has more force behind it than either he or the person on the receiving end typically expects. He is also functionally blind past a few feet without his glasses; knocking them from his face in a struggle will do more to disable him than any blow.