Guildmaster Thora, Mistress of the Hammer, Speaker of the Senate of T'ver

Guildmaster Thora Rahmani (a.k.a. Old Ironhide)

Resilience is not the ability to go unbroken. Resilience is being broken time and again, then standing up anyway.

— Guildmaster Thora

Guildmaster Thora, Mistress of the Hammer, Speaker of the Senate of T'ver has had a long and winding journey to her current life.
She is known for her fair judgment, her no-nonsense approach to life, and her aura of charisma. She has been to the ends of the world and back again, has suffered loss, and continues to get back up to her feet.
Guildmaster Thora was born and raised in a small town in the mountains of T'ver to a family of blacksmiths. In the brittle mountain winters, the smithy was a common community gathering place to exchange news and gossip. From a young age Thora would watch and listen as the townsfolk spilled their grievances to her parents' sympathetic ears while they worked the forges.
As she grew, she took on small tasks for the smithy, carrying water, fetching coal, and running errands. It was expected that she would apprentice to follow in her parents' footsteps. But fate had other designs.
Just shy of her first decade, her parents lost their smithy due to the underhanded dealings of a local businessman, forcing them to seek work elsewhere. Her parents took their household, which now included her two younger siblings, down the mountains to a larger coastal town on one of the popular trade routes.
This is where Thora fell in love with the tall ships.
After months of dogging the recruiters, Thora had herself accepted into the shpwrights' guild, training to become a ships' carpenter. She took to it, as they say, like a fish to water. She spent her journeyman years first in the shipyards of the city, then as an assistant carpenter on a merchant vessel making runs across the Scastian Sea between T'ver and An Gra.
It was during one of these merchant runs that she experienced her first shipwreck, the vessel being attacked by a dancing lady, a sea monster dubbed with the moniker because when their massive noses breech the water, their black underbellies droop and billow as gravity takes the buoyancy out of their flabs. The ship was reduced to splinters, the crew left clinging to the debris on the unforgiving sea. Though she and most of the crew survived, her right leg was neatly snipped off mid-shin by a scavenging shark while they waited for rescue.
Her missing limb was replaced with a wooden prosthetic grown from a tree of life, and has only needed to be replaced four times since. (Though to be fair, for most having only one would suffice.)
The shipwrights' guild at the time encouraged her to leave off seafaring and take up shore work, but Thora refused. Instead, she crossed the mountains to the other side of T'ver and made her way to the harbor of Byrock, where she easily found herself a new vessel. Word of mouth has it that any ship she set foot on would last a full four Death Runs longer than any other.
It was during these years making Death Runs that Thora met her partner, a tevani navigator and Loremaster named Merak. Over the course of the next two decades they outlived six ships together.
But as a Loremaster, Merak's passion was for the lost Hollow City. When one day during a layover in Byrock, word came to them of the (ill fated) Munelian expedition, nothing could dissuade him from joining. Thora objected, alarmed by the expedition's lack of preparedness and the green arrogance of their leader. The two had a falling out, and Thora stayed behind in Byrock.
Merak departed with the Munelian expedition, traveling up the western branch of the River Tirvidae. He was never seen again. 
Heartbroken, no longer able to face the river where her lover had worked and died, Thora crossed the mountains again to the familiar coast of the Scastian Sea. There, leadership woes in the shipwrights' guild had been tangling a web of trouble years in the making.
It turned out that the only thing that could overcome Thora's love of sailing was her passionate hatred of injustice.
For the first time, Thora involved herself in the guild's politics, quickly becoming a vocal advocate for safe and fair working conditions. Gaining the support of fellow guild members, Thora was able to work her way into the ranks, where she was able to achieve agency toward making practical and beneficial changes.
Over time, this brought her into the city's council, and eventually to becoming the guildmaster of the shipwrights. As the guildmaster of a powerful organization in T'ver, it brought her into the republic's larger political scene. Her innate inability to sit down and shut up led to her recent election to the position of Speaker of the Senate.
But in all of the intervening years, she has never forgotten her experiences on the river, and when the desperate proposal came from Rostead to send a new, better prepared and fully supported expedition up the River Tirvidae in search of the Hollow City, she turned it down flat. Until it became clear that Luenlan's Sanctuary zone had begun to fail. 
Guildmaster Thora reluctantly agreed to allowing the resources of T'ver to be added to the Vasserius expedition. She inspected the ship personally before allowing it to leave Byrock's harbor. After all, any ship that she set foot on would last at least four Death Runs longer than any other.
Perhaps there may also have been a small hope that this expedition, with proper leadership and support, could fulfill her lover's last wish to find the lost city at last. 
Find it, they did.

Current Status

Organizing a diplomatic visitation to the Hollow City for the Council of Seven

Species

Humans

Age

91

Pronouns

she/her

Gender

Female

Eyes

Piercing Brown

Hair

Black, shading to grey

Height

5'4"

Weight

101

Aligned Organization

T'ver

Other Affiliations

• Council of Seven