Stazi’s Humble Beginnings

Anastasia was raised in a quiet home on the banks of the Shrike river. She was born to the Sidorovavich family, or so she had always been told. Her father was part of the town watch in Restov, and her mother was employed by the local apothecary. They were simple folk, devout Erastilians, always wanting to lend a hand to those less fortunate than themselves. They believed this to be the best way for them to build back into the health and prosperity of their community. Anastasia’s mother often used her skills as an amatuer herbalist to give aid to the poor and needy, and doting mother that she was, she took Ani with her wherever she went.

Ani was a quiet baby, placid and content. She did not speak for the first six years of her life. While her father was somewhat concerned about his child’s lack of communication, her mother continually assured her husband that there was nothing to fear. Ani was bright, even if she was quiet. Her mother saw signs of it everyday in the way her daughter took in the world around her with wide eyed wonder. Quick, attentive, and inquisitive, Ani absorbed all she could about her surroundings. It was all her mother could do to keep Ani’s fingers out of countless jars, and her feet from traipsing after a butterfly into some unknown danger. In a desperate attempt to distract her child Ani’s mother sat her down with a pictorial guide to the local flora, hoping the simple book would give her a moment's peace. And by some miracle of Erastil it worked! Ani became enraptured with the written text well before she even spoke.

Her childhood was a quiet one. Always by her mother’s side, reading anything she could get her hands on. Customers of the apothecary were delighted with the young girl’s precocious nature. One arthritic scribe, who came in frequently for salves to stave off the inflammation, would bring her all kinds of texts. He even took her to the library with him on occasion.

The one thing that could pull her out of her reverie in books was her intense interest in life and death. Every time her mother took her along to help out the poor Ani would pepper her with questions. Easy ones at first, like why did the baby cry, and what caused a fever, and how certain administrations of herbs could help cure what ailed a person.

But as she grew older the questions became… stranger. Could a person’s blood be replaced with any other humor and they still go on living? Could a dead person be brought back to life through any other means aside from magic? What caused the death of every expired person she saw? How could you know for sure that death was caused by one reason or another? Was sickness necessary, and how could it be avoided? Could physical attributes from other living things be mixed with the sentient species in order to make them stronger, or immune to disease?

Her mother, as well as the apothecary she worked for both did their best to patiently answer Ani’s growing list of unanswerable, and often shocking questions. They saw her curiosity as a tool for her growth and did their best to steer her in the right direction. The apothecary even showed her how to dissect the bodies and organs of specially preserved animal carcasses in an attempt to teach her the intricacies of the body, only proving to set Ani on a course of obsession with pulling things apart to see how they worked. Much to her father’s chagrin. Limitations on such activities were quickly set to times of instruction from the apothecary when she could be closely observed and taught the proper ethics of such work. This could not fully sate Ani’s thirst for experiential knowledge, but love for her dear mother (and not wanting to add cause for her mother to worry) kept her in check.

Though Ani’s life was filled with many people around her, she was often kept to herself. Being always with her mother, whether at the apothecaries, or in the slums, was her only form of socialization. And other than the aging scribe and the apothecary himself, Ani had no other friends. She did not mix well with other children, finding their simple interests bewildering. Her attempts to join their play never lasted. She would either grow bored and leave, or she would frighten the other children away by her oddities. Her reputation as a strange child grew and many teased her because of it. Thus she decided they weren’t worth her time, and was more than satisfied to keep to her books. This was another cause for her father’s concern that his only daughter was not quite right. He and his wife had tried desperately to have more children, but it was not to be. Thus he had laid all his hopes and dreams for the future on the shoulders of his waifish daughter who cared more for books then she did for the people around her, and whose intense curiosity for the grotesque and improper only seemed to grow despite parameters being set for her benefit. He did not set out to hate his daughter, but a slow resentment toward her began to form in his heart. Erastil’s denial to grant them more children had never sat right with the man, after all they had done as a couple to protect and provide for their community. But he could never fully face this truth, and thus he turned the seed of bitterness toward his deity into a slow rejection of the only legacy he had left: Anastasia.

The tension between Ani and her father only got worse the year she turned 13. It was the year the sickness came to Restov, wiping out many of the poor families in the slums. The desperation gripped the unfortunate, who in turn threw themselves into violence. Ani’s father spent many long hours trying to quell the growing unrest in their city, complaining every day that their jail cells were not large enough to handle this much lawlessness. Her mother, on the other hand, worked herself, and Ani, to the bone trying their best to stop the sickness from spreading, as well as giving some solace to those that were dying. These were long, grim days for the Sidorovavich family. What meals they had together were filled with intense conversations about what could or should be done in this dire situation. Ani, as always, had many opinions which needled at her father due to their increasingly uncouth nature. Arguments between them grew fierce until the worn and weary lady of the house tearfully beseeched them to make peace and speak no more of such things. After that the mealtimes became solemn affairs, and Ani often asked to take her meals alone in her room. It was there that she began to throw herself in the study and practice of simple alchemy. It was a painstakingly slow process as she did not possess the correct equipment, nor did she wish to attract undue attention to herself. Still she poked away at it, burying her own resentment in the wonders and mysteries of magic and science.

As time went by the city guard stopped housing the rabble rousers as soon as a few of their soldiers contracted the illness and died. Wishing to bring the worst of the violence to an end, as well as fearing for the health of the rest of his citizens, the mayor drove the sick, as well as their close relatives, outside the city to a hastily constructed shanty town a mile away. He also gave his guardsmen permission to dispatch any more of the would-be rabble rousers without trial. It was not long that the poor became too ill and broken spirited to cause any more trouble. Still Ani and her mother made the trek every day to bring them what aid they could. After a year and a half, and the population of the lower class had dwindled greatly, the sickness finally seemed to have run its course. With great sighs of relief and whispered praises for health to the god of hearth and home, the Sidorovavich family became harmonious again. Though still weary they began to look forward to their future, planning for bigger gardens and summer trips to the riverside. Ani’s father even proposed that they consider sending Ani to school, acknowledging that her brilliant mind would go to waste without proper education.

Ani herself had started to bloom into womanhood, having surpassed both of her parents in height by great significance. Her fingers grew to an awkward length, so much so that Ani started to wear gloves and hide her hands in the folds on her skirt. Her eyes changed as well, from a muddy hazel to two distinct colors--one green and the other yellow. Her father marked this change, finding it odd that her features were not falling in line with what he would have considered hereditary. He began to wonder why she did not look like his family, or that of her mother’s. But his questions were quickly forgotten as their town became free of the sickness. In his relief that life would return to what it should be, he dismissed most of these changes to be some oddity of her awkward age that would eventually resolve themselves given time.

But time was not on their side. Ani’s mother contracted a cough that lingered much too long. She allayed her family’s concern, chalking it up to the change in weather, and the heaviness of pollen that spring. Then one day, as Ani was with her mother in the apothecary, her mother collapsed after a sudden, severe fit of coughing. The examination of the apothecary confirmed what Ani knew in her heart to be true. It was the sickness, and her mother was too far gone for anything to be done. She had been hiding most of the symptoms for months, and her family’s relief of seeing the end of the plague had blinded them from noticing anything more than a nagging cough. Ani cursed herself for this grave lapse in judgment, and what time she did not spend by her mother’s side she spent seeking ways to cure her through alchemy.  

As the long hours spent studying, and by her mother’s side caught up with her, Ani began to experiment with unstable, mind altering substances in order to heighten her mental acuity as well as keep her tired senses alert despite the lack of a healthy sleep schedule. These drugs did indeed aid her as she hoped, though they came with certain side effects. Strange hallucinations began to appear before her, a bit distracting to be sure, but not wholly insurmountable. Her impulse to explore the macabre grew stronger as well, though she saw nothing wrong with this, reasoning that her curiosity was for the greater good. Ultimately her goal was to save her mother. And the deceased plague victims were no longer needed by anyone in the land of the living, so what would be so wrong with a little exhumation and detailed examination of a few of their bodies? And so it was that Ani set up a crud lab in an abandoned shanty at the edge of the district of hovels forsaking sleep for the study and examination of the effects of the plague victims' deceased bodies. Her obsession with discovering the cause and hopeful cure for her mother wound up consuming more and more of her time, and she became more and more absent at her dying mother’s side.

Just when she felt as though she were on the verge of discovery, Ani, who had been absent from home for a couple of days, returned to find a stone-faced father and sheet covering the all-too-still body of her mother. They buried her mother’s body the day after that, and many people whose lives had been touched by Ani’s mother’s generous spirit came by to give their condolences. Even so Ani could not let herself mourn. It was beyond her imagination to grasp that her dearest mother was gone. A silent frenzy gripped her as she lost herself to her experiments in her makeshift shanty lab, seldom to be seen even by her father. When she did emerge her wild intensity caused a stir to those whom she encountered and rumors began to spread. Whispers of the Sidorovavich misfortune quickly spread, for what was once such an upstanding family was now quite destitute. The gracious mother taken by the sickness, the strong father taken to drink, and the bright, though somewhat strange young daughter taken by insanity. Pillars of the community utterly shaken and toppled. Some even wondered if it was some ill-fated curse from the gods themselves.

Ani’s madness gnawed away at all that was left of her propriety, and under the dark of night, under the crazed belief that she had finally found a cure, Ani stole down to the graveyard and dug up the body of her mother. And with a strength more befitting one who had worked hard labor all their life, and not the veritable bookworm that she was, Ani swiftly carried her mother’s remains off to her shanty lab. There, in her drug-addled state, Ani desperately tried to bring life back to her mother’s corpse. Yet no matter what she tried it was not to be.

Scant days later, in a moment of grief stricken sobriety, Ani’s father went to visit his wife’s grave only to find it empty. This shock threw him back to the drink, and in his stupor he stumbled down to the town square wailing and ranting about how his wife had been stolen from him. One of the old watchmen who had worked with Ani’s father took pity on him and brought him home to sober him up. And yet, once he was sober he repeated what he had found, that his wife’s grave had been robbed of her body. What was thought to be the rantings of a drunkard was proven to be the appalling truth. The watch did a cursory investigation, finding only footprints that led off toward the shanty town. But they would not pursue it, for though the sickness had ended that place still held the stigma of certain death. Ani’s father, bereft of his wife and abandoned by his child, could not let the matter rest. He had to find what had happened to his wife, so he took it upon himself to search the shanty town alone.

One can imagine his utter shock and anger when he stumbled across the horrific sight of Ani crying over the mutilated corpse of her mother. The grisly sight of dissected human remains suspended in strange liquids made the whole scene worse. Ani’s father rushed at her, grabbing her collar and cursing at her. He called her a cruel, durranged, heartless daughter of a witch! Spitting in her face, he disowned her as his child, and disparaged any love he had ever felt for the wretched creature that she was. He always knew, or so he claimed, that Ani was not his. He cast her to the ground and, in his blind rage, grabbed the nearest thing he could find to strike at her.

It was over in a moment. The sudden, violent breach of what Ani had thought her private sanctuary threw her into a swirling panic, but her self preservation had not left her. As her father swung out to strike her, the hands she had been so careful to hide shot out on instinct. Her now claw-like fingers found their mark, and the now lifeless body of her father slumped to the dirt. Her panic deepened, driving her to her feet to run, run as fast as she could. To run from her father’s blood, and her mother’s bones. To run from everything she had ever held dear. Though, to Ani, everything she held dead had crumbled to ashes in front of her leaving her free to run and become someone new. No more would she be Anistasia Sidorovavich. Even the shorter, sweeter “Ani” she abandoned for she couldn’t bear the thought of the name her mother called her crossing stranger’s lips. Instead she became Stazi, cool and aloof, on the search for knowledge.

Stazi soon found, however, that those who successfully pursued knowledge also held at least one of the following three things: money, power, and fame. All three of which seemed to elude her grasp. Thus she found herself sitting in an alley, watching the death of her dreams and the resurrection of her old, harmful habits. With what she could scrape together she managed to craft a crude approximation of one of her drugs. She told herself that she only needed it for the moment, to get through her slump and think of what to do next. But one slump led to another, and the crude manufacturing of these mind altering substances began to attract men of dubious character seeking to find alteration themselves. And they were willing to pay. And money is good to have when one is living on their own. So Stazi sold her wares from the back alleys, blissfully unaware that she was impinging on the sales of powerful crime leaders who had been operating in the area far longer than she had been. Such men did not like losing their money and sent a couple of men to take care of her. But these hitmen were less than successful.  

And this was how Reede found her. Upon hearing a struggle down the street as evening darkened the sky, the upright swordsman went to investigate the matter. There he found a wide eyed, unarmed young woman shaking and covered in the blood of her dagger wielding assailants, whose bodies lay lifeless on the ground beside her. He took pity on her, seeing that she was in some sort of danger, as well as very mentally addled. And thus began their strange partnership as Reede took Stazi under his wing, to protect her, recuperate her, and set her on a path more useful than the one she walked before.