Se'ket was born amidst a raging snowstorm, in the depths of a lightless cave. This may have seemed inauspicious, but that was not even the worse of it. Her mother, heavily pregnant with her, had been the victim of a vicious bandit attack. It was her wish to give birth in her home village where her mother lived, and in haste and fear, she was willing to travel in a late fall caravan. Of Se'ket's father, her mother never had named him to anyone, for no one came forth later to claim the child.
The small caravan was laden with winter meat and other foods, along with the few people desperate enough to travel in such uncertain weather. Today, however, the gods were not with them. The caravan was set upon by brutal and lawless men as a terrible snowstorm began to blow, men more interesting in stealing their bread than earning it. The passengers were simply a means of amusement to the cruel bandits, and their dead or unconscious bodies were tossed in a deep cave afterward, thrown away like garbage.
There are several legends and tales of babes being adopted by wolves or lions or unicorns, raising them when their mothers meet with tragic ends in the wilderness. But for Se'ket's mother, no such magic was in the offing. In pain and fear, she gave birth to her daughter; then died of her wounds. In this cave, full of the bandits' discards, there were no friendly wolves, only the smallest of creatures, the insects. They were no tales of insects guarding human babes, at least until two days later.
In the depths of the cavern crept a druid, a man sent by those of his sect, the Children of Winter. They believed the world must be cleansed to make way for a new and brilliant spring, and by accepting and accelerating death, this could be brought about. Tugor had come to this cave to study the actions of the insects upon the dead; hoping to learn both more about the natural process and to gain insight into the shape of the world to come.
It was with astonishment that he found a healthy girl-child lying upon the breast of a decayed woman, the many insects around her paying her no mind. Seeing this as a sign from the forces of nature, Tugor brought the girl back to his home and told the others the tale. Though it seemed too far-fetched to be true, Tugor was not a man who lied. Therefore the girl had to have come as a sign from the Winter to Come.
She lived and was given the name of Se’ket, an imitation of a beetle’s chittering. Often she heard the story of her birth and rescue, and the elder Children would tell her what they believed it meant. Se’ket had no reason to doubt them. She could sit in the middle of a fire-ant hill and take no harm; she could gather honey from a hive without getting a single sting. It was clear that the creatures of the Winter to Come favored her, and she was instructed at a young age on how to channel their power.
Se’ket devoured her learning of the natural world, but began to long to see even more of it beyond the borders of her forest. She was very knowledgeable about all insects and other vermin, but wished to see and observe as many as she could in their own habitats. She felt that she could learn more of the Winter to Come by the movements and habits of the insect world. Perhaps not so strangely, she ended up in Sharn. Though crammed with people and not at all like anything she had seen before, she almost immediately felt at home.
This was a place where people lived like ants or termites, all together in a great hive. And down below, in the depths of UnderSharn, lived muckdwellers, carrion crawlers, and great swarms of unusual beetles, species she had never seen before! It was entirely by coincidence that a pair of students from Morgrave University came to her depths to study a rancid beetle swarm. While they remained at a safe distance, their jaws literally dropped as they watched a young woman walk in the middle of the swarm, almost seeming to become like a beetle herself.
Almost before she could turn around, Se’ket found herself hired as a “research assistant” to Regalt Turmin, Professor of Natural Sciences. He was a bustling man, bursting with energy about his chosen topics of natural behavior. Se’ket’s life story had him enthralled, and the fact that she understood insects and even wouldn’t take harm from small ones made her priceless to him. Though philosophically the two couldn’t be more different, Se’ket has been helping the Professor and his staff research various insect species. Recently, he has mentioned there might be a trip to Xen’Drik in the offing, something Se’ket can’t possibly pass up. Who knows what fascinating new friends she might meet there…
Se'ket would be a human druid Child of Winter, obviously.
