Tsalta

Tsalta Kinnard is a half-elven (half-goliath) ranger from the woodland town of Fryberg.

Captured by jackalweres and taken to the smugglers' caves below Red Larch, Tsalta slipped away from her captors into the tunnel network, and was there encountered by the party in Session Four.

She remained with the group partly to determine why she had been kidnapped, and partly after being moved to tears by the plight of the others.

Tsalta has a half-gnome daughter, Rosa.

Personality
Exuberant and affable, Tsalta is the sort of person to greet strangers with a smile and a booming 'HALLO, PAL!' - it's not only physically that she's larger than life! She is without question the mother hen of the party, quick to help wherever she can and offer around her healing touch as necessary.

She adores the natural world and all its creatures, and abhors violence against animals (even those that are attacking - she’d rather simply subdue them). She does not eat meat, and disagrees strongly with hunting. Her favourite creatures of all the beasts in the land are cows, especially the shaggy orange highland variety that were commonly kept in and around Fryberg. (Having lived around cows for so long, Tsalta can perform a very convincing bovine bellow. Cows love it, and will come to her when she calls.)

Tsalta is also a very sensitive soul, easily moved to tears by strong emotion. She has a phobia of dark, confined spaces, and if forced into such an environment she's likely to clutch close the nearest light source while sing-songing under her breath about how much she doesn't like it.

She makes little attempt to hide how she feels about people - if she likes you (which she probably does), you'll know it, and if she doesn't, she'll not hesitate to say so to your face. As such, Tsalta struggles with maintaining deceptions - telling the initial lie is one thing, but the longer it continues the less she enjoys it.

However, she does have something of an impish sense of humour, and thanks to Faeleth, a growing enjoyment of the larcenous arts.

Background
Born and raised in the picturesque wooded town of Fryberg, Tsalta was raised by her elven mother, Bláths, and her dwarven father, Briatach.

(Unbeknownst to Tsalta, her mother had in fact dallied with a member of a roving goliath herd that had passed through the town - her parents opted to delay telling her this until she was 'old enough to understand'.)

In her youth, she would explore the mountains around her village, and happened across a cave whose occupant she struck up a friendship with, though they never allowed her inside and she never saw their face. Tsalta returned often to the cave over the months and years, to tell her mysterious friend whatever tales she had to tell, and in return Tsalta was tutored in her friend's native tongue so they could better converse. (It took a while to pick up the strange, harsh syllables, and to convert them to an unfamiliar alphabet of runes, but she got the hang of it well enough.)

As she grew up, the difference in size between herself and the other children of the village only became more and more apparent. By her teenage years, she could barely fit inside her mother's arboreal house, her weight a liability to the structure of the place. Because of this, she took to camping below on the woodland floor - and unfortunately, this turned a previously innocuous quirk into something that would profoundly impact the rest of her life.

Tsalta sleepwalks.

And one night, her nocturnal wanderings led her far enough away from home that she no longer knew which way home was. She searched and searched, but then would come another night where she'd wake up without any familiar landmarks to guide her. Eventually she resigned herself to it, and wandered the forests as it pleased her, living off of the land and appointing herself the friend and protector of the beasts of the woods. Every so often she'd stop off in towns that she happened across, and she hoped that some day she'd wander back the way she came. (In one such town, she was approached by a rather brazen old gnome, they shared a few drinks together and the result is a whole story of its own.)

Then, on a muggy summer evening as she sat watch over a herd of grazing highland cows, she saw one beset by a strange beast - not dog, not man, but something in between. She rushed to fend it off, only to discover it was not alone. The creatures overwhelmed her, knocking her unconscious, and she awoke to find herself in some kind of cell with stone tile and iron bars...

Appearance
Tsalta's two most striking features are her height and her hair - she stands at a towering 8ft tall, and her braided mane of curly auburn locks reaches almost to the ground. She's both well-muscled and a little chubby - life amongst nature has treated her well. She has olive skin, with a rosy glow to her freckled cheeks and evident smile-lines around her bright green eyes despite her young age. Her elven heritage shows only in her ears, which have subtly peaked tips.

She wears a well-maintained set of leather armor designed in the traditional style of her hometown, usually over a simple cream cotton undershirt. What was once a full kilt in her youth has been modified into a decorative element that no longer wraps all the way around - she's grown a little too large to wear it like she once did. A set of sturdy wool-lined boots completes the ensemble.

Tsalta's braids take many forms - she unravels and re-knits them into whatever style is practical, be it a ladder-braid made for ease of climbing for wee Spindleshanks, or a tightly bundled bun to keep her long long locks from trailing in deep waters. The only constant is the pair of braids that hang down by the sides of her face, decorated and held in place with various ties and beads. (One of these beads, cut from beautiful purple gemstone, is an heirloom from her Da's side of the family and it is the one hair decoration that she never removes.)

Sweet Loot, Items, Inventory Etc.
A calling-horn fashioned from the horn of Tsalta’s late favourite cow, Matilda. It is enchanted so as to conjure a single highland cow that will obey the summoner for an hour before vanishing. It will also call any natural cows in the area nearby. One charge a day. A purple gemstone bead bequeathed to Tsalta by her Da when she was a child. When the command word is spoken, it shimmers with Ancient Dwarven words spelling out the names of the family that came before her. So long as she wears it, Tsalta benefits from Dwarven racial traits as though she were truly half-Dwarven.
 * The Horn of Summoning Cows / Horn of Bellowing
 * Heirloom Bead (of Dwarvenkind?)

Unconsciousnesses and Major Injuries
Session Seven Session Seventeen
 * Attacked by ogre, felled by a javelin through the shoulder. Revived in the nick of time by Nothing after two failed death saving throws.
 * Not a bodily injury, but a true maiming nonetheless - while held down by jackalweres, the Collector gave her a quick and dirty haircut with her dagger.
 * Raked viciously across the back by the Collector's claws during the final battle.