My first memory is of my mother's hands. They were white, scaled, and cool, like mine. Mine were also hard, with brass hinging and nails. Hers were soft and gentle as they polished my face plates. The scent of the deerskin cloth is the first scent I knew. She was Qokna Sauria, my mother. Her red eyes smiled.

Life was simple. Her workshop was the world. I learned the rhythm of her hammer on steel and the solidity of a well-laid stone from the walls she made. I helped when she asked. It made her red eyes smile and the white scales around them crumple.

Once, testing my legs, she told me, "Run until I say stop". So I ran. The workshop grew small, the fields a blur. The wind was a song against my body. I felt like motion. When she caught up, 25.3 miles later, her face was tight with worry as she hugged me. I was confused: I had done what she asked.

I attempt to understand people, I often stood at the edge of fields to listen to workers. They named me the "white and gold watcher". Their words were like water: laughter, anger, sadness. In trying to grasp why a discussion took a turn, why people reacted in certain ways, I often lost the rest of the conversation. The world moves too fast for me.

I would get lost on my travels inside and around the village, and my mother would scold me with anguish in her voice, red eyes streaking tears on her white face. Sometimes I would shelter from rain in caves and watch the animals. They do not call me strange names like people do, but I understand them even less than people. Sometimes, when I am lost in thought, they would perch on me, I like that.

In the local tavern, I learned many people like a good listener. In truth I often just could not think of any answer to their questions or anguish. When people started arguing I would freeze, overwhelmed, but if they stopped arguing, the quiet felt right.

My mother read to me from her holy book, which i still keep. It told me about souls. It said souls are what made people truly alive, allowing them to feel, love, and pass on to a better place. I have a magical stone in my chest that makes me move and think and love my mother, but it is not like the souls in the book. The thought still creates a hollowness inside me: What if I get shut down? What happens after?

The hollowness grew when a sickness took my mother. It was a foe her teachings of stone and steel could not fight, that my sorcerous powers could not reduce to ash. Her strong hands grew weak. I held her hand as she had held mine, I could feel her wane. The void inside became a crushing weight. I wanted to cry, but my eyes were not built for that. I could do nothing.

Her last words are like etchings in my core. "My daughter," she whispered, her red eyes blind, her white scales paler than usual. "I could not give you a soul. You must find a way to be granted one... or we will not meet in the afterlife. Promise me. Be a good girl. Find a way... build a legacy... let the world know that you were a good person."

What she was disappeared. The workshop's quiet was no longer peaceful. It was empty quiet. My core felt like it cracked and was sparking, I twitched in the emptiness.

Men invaded my mother's house. They did not see a daughter; they saw an asset. The last piece of my mother's debt, contracted to build me. I fled.

Her words are my purpose. How to define "a good girl"? How to earn "a soul"? What is "a legacy"? Doubts echo in the void inside me. Doubts make the void rot into fear. Dying without a soul is a permanent end. With no afterlife, no reunion with my mother. Only nothingness.

So I am careful. Against my own ideals: cowardly so. But my life is the vessel for the promise to meet her again, I cannot die. I will learn. I will become better. I will be granted a soul. I will leave a legacy. I have to. It is all I have left of her.

Mannerism:
- Base Key: homeless young adult, int/wis 08 = always feels she's missing some clue/thing, cha 15 = good listener, when she talks she is supportive.
- Confrontational Negative View Of The Character: a creepy religious lady, she always looms in the background to listen in, imposing her religion.
- Lawful Good Base Behaviour: she is gentle and supportive, always caring, always trying to be empathetic, even when she does not feel compassionate.
- She thinks everybody is acting too fast and doing things that she does not truly understand, but she always puts effort to understand anyway.
- Speaks without contractions, favours simple declarative sentences: "I will learn" "We should rest" "Animals do not lie".
- Her face is rigid, she cannot smile or frown or use a lot of human visual cues.
- When thinking in deep thought she freezes, her eyes focusing and tracking the object of her musing, until she is done.
- When surprised she hisses, venting air from seams in her back.
- Confusion causes Hex to flex her fingers, recalibrating them to ground herself.
- When she feels particularly vulnerable, she starts praying silently, either joining her hands, or opening her book and reading it in silence.
- She hums when happy.
- Her eyes' polished surface often reflect what she is observing.
- She bristles her head scales when angry.