Ganked from bookblather

[shadowsong26]

1. Pick one of my characters, any one (even if you're only familiar with a vague description instead of a name).
2. I will tell you the origin of his/her name.
3. I will tell you random facts surrounding his/her creation.
4. I will give you a random fact of his/her backstory.
5. I will give you a random fact of his/her forestory.
6. You may ask me up to ten questions about the character.

Comments

[bookblather]

Tell me about Taz!

[shadowsong26]

2. Her name actually didn't come from anywhere. It just sort of popped into my head. Which makes coming up with naming rules for other Islanders that much harder. ^^

3. To be totally honest? At least part of where I was going when I first started working on her was taking a lot of my favorite fictional smugglers/pirates (some Rhett Butlerm, some Barbossa from PotC, etc), taking the bits I liked best, and making her a woman. She's grown a little bit beyond there, but at least in the stuff I have from when I first started writing Feredar, she still kind of talks like Barbossa. Which is about as close as I get to writing dialect. Though she grew out of the rake aspects of her personality when she and Dallu decided they were romantically involved.

4. Taz is the only one of the main characters who's ever met a blood-mage. This is not a distinction she's particularly happy about.

5. Taz will later become one of the few outsiders to ever visit one of the Poles.

6. Any specific questions?

[bookblather]

How did she first get her own ship? Why did she go that way in life?

[shadowsong26]

She got her own ship because she's clever and keeps a level head in a crisis, which she proved by assuming command after an accident when she was first mate on her uncle's ship, and successfully handling an emergency trip to Heartwood.

As for why she decided to go sailing...well, the Islands are basically a loose-knit confederation of merchant shipping clans, and almost all the water-mages join crews. Taz just happens to be exceptionally good at all the other parts of commanding a ship, which helped her advance relatively quickly. She joined the crew of a ship belonging to one of her uncles as soon as she was legally old enough, and didn't leave until she was given the Morning Glory.