Mariel is an herb merchant who trades her wares to Drifters, cooks, doctors, and others who need a bit of greenery in their life. She 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 most desolate territories of Filgaia. On top of that, her herbal treatments and tonics are capable of helping even very badly injured people. Though she looks to be barely a teenager, Mariel has been selling her flowers for decades, and it's rumoured that 'Mariel' is a name shared by multiple people in her family, and she's inherited the position - or that she's something stranger than the Beastman she appears to be. Perhaps that's why she lives alone, in a hidden location, and only travels to various towns to distribute her plants or care for the injured and sick.
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.
