View source for Mariel

{{Character
|MUSHName=Mariel
|BGColor=#7ed879
|BorderColor=#0b7505
|TextColor=#0b7505
|Img=[[File:Mariel.png|450px]]
|Name=Mariel
|Gender=Female
|Age=Older Than She Looks
|Birthdate=Doesn't Celebrate
|Hometown=Tarjon
|Hair=Blonde
|Class=Herbalist
|Role=Drifter
|Theme=Wild ARMs 1
|Group=[[Caravan Kinship]]
|Player=Prism
|Profile=''"I believe that a flower which can grow in a wasteland is as strong as it is beautiful."''

Mariel is the last Elw living on Filgaia. A travelling herb merchant who trades her wares to Drifters, cooks, doctors, and others who need a bit of greenery in their life, Mariel has a nearly magical knack with plants and is one of the few people able to cultivate healing berries, as well as coax more mundane types of herbs and flowers to grow even in the desolate territories of Filgaia. Her herbal medicines are capable of helping even the deathly ill or badly wounded. Having kept up her lonely life planting greenery to slow the desertification of Filgaia for almost five hundred years, Mariel is quiet, reserved, and somewhat timid. Recent discoveries have pushed her to try to get over her fears and go out into the wilderness of Filgaia in search of lost knowledge about the world's history, the Elw, and their place in it. Mariel never speaks about why she alone stayed in Filgaia, or what she hopes to find out now. In fact, she prefers not to advertise her existence as a member of a now-legendary race and generally lets people assume she is the young Beastman she strongly resembles - because, as everyone knows, the Elw are no more.

|Background=As far as anyone knows, Mariel is a young beastwoman who works as a florist, herbalist, and sometime doctor.  Her herbal treatments are highly effective, she can treat even the very sick or gravely wounded, and is as good at surgery as any academy-trained doctor, but her first love is flowers. She travels apparently randomly for about half the year, showing up in various towns and cities to distribute her greenery and to give medical aid to towns so small or poor as to be unable to afford a doctor. The other half, she remains at home, cultivating plants to offset Filgaia's slow death by desertification.

Mariel's age is unclear. She looks about fourteen but has been doing this for decades - even old greybeards might be able to remember a Mariel from their youth. It's generally put down to a combination of whatever type of beastman she is keeping her young-looking and it being a family affair; surely there's been multiple Mariels over the last sixty years, right?

But the truth is, of course, stranger than fiction.

Mariel is the last remaining Elw on Filgaia. No other Elw has lived there for hundreds of years, having all left soon after the Day of Collapse. Rather than leave with her kin, she stayed for reasons she has never told a soul on Filgaia. Every once in a while a rumour about an Elw living in the wilderness arises, but generally it's ignored by the better-educated.

Her goal is to see Filgaia green and vibrant and filled with flowers once again. While she has not fulfilled her dream, she does what she can, growing plants in her various hidden gardens and pushing back against the slow decay of the planet. 

Recently, after talks with [[Fei Fong Wong|Fei]], [[Elhaym_van_Houten|Elly]], [[Cecilia Adlehyde|Cecilia]], and some others, Mariel has heard of other remnants the Elw left behind. She needed to know the truth - both of what happened that one day, and of the rest of the Elw's history.
|Powers=Mariel is an Elw, one of the original inhabitants of Filgaia. She doesn't hide what she looks like, trusting to the fact that pretty much nobody alive has ever seen an Elw to identify her and blending in with the beastman population... though it's not impossible for a scholar to make a guess as to what she is. She does not age, and will live as long as Filgaia does unless something kills her first. 

It's said that the Elw were more connected to the land than humans, even more so than the Baskar, and lived in harmony with the Guardians; they are said to have unusual magical powers since lost to the world. Some superstitious followers of Granas or the Nisan Orthodoxy believe they can bless, or curse, with a touch. The truth of what the Elw can and cannot do, like so much from before the Day of Collapse, has been lost to time.

But what is true is that, for most of her life, Mariel has been growing plants. Her green thumb verges on miraculous. Mariel can grow plants in Filgaia's poor soil, even plants thought to be impossible to cultivate like healing berries. Plants under her care thrive and grow strong. Her gardens are wondrous things. She knows how to use her plants, too; she's an herbalist, a cook, and a woodworker.

Mariel has a wide variety of mundane skills beyond the use of her plants - she's been living for a very long time and has been largely self-sufficient for centuries - but the most developed is medical treatment. She's learned how to perform surgery and other works of doctoring on both people and animals, especially using herbal and other natural treatments as an aid. She has lived so long that some ARMs - Ancient Relic Machines - are not especially ancient to her.

What Mariel is not is a fighter. She is not good at fighting and tries to avoid it; she has never used a combat ARM of any sort, even a modern gunsmoke weapon, and does not know martial techniques.
}}
[[Category:Characters]]
[[Category:Drifters]]