Emi Hayes
Farren’s parents, Hector and Emi Hayes, are brilliant inventors, well-known and respected in certain circles and thought, with some justification, to be insane by the general populace. They were certainly an odd pair with broadly different beginnings.
Born to an affluent family, Emi received a first-rate education and saw much more of the world than most children her age because her parents insisted she accompany them on their travels. Her father was a merchant who owned warehouses in all the major cities along the Wyr River and his caravans went as far north as the Cloudcrystal Skyfields and as far south as the Pytharon Empire. During these trips and in addition to her formal education, Emi learned the laws of the various areas in which her father did business, the geography of the caravan routes, and how each product was packed for transport. She learned the art of negotiation from watching her father close deal after deal. Seeing her aptitude for numbers and figuring, Emi’s father gave her a job in his main warehouse, where she lost no time in learning the inner workings of the business and developing new, more efficient methods of storage, including designing and building a shrink ray to increase warehouse capacity and shipment quantity. After her mother died, her father insisted that Emi travel with him once again, which she was more than willing to do, partly because she had missed these trips and partly to study the current transportation methods in use so as to improve them.
On once such voyage, just as the forward guard pulled ahead to search out a safe camping ground, bandits poured down from the surrounding hills and sprang from behind rocks, trees and brush, their shouts filling the air as densely as their arrows. Emi’s father shoved her under a wagon, telling her to stay put while he helped fight off the hoards, but he was struck down before his sword was fairly clear of its scabbard. Bandits swarmed from wagon to wagon, taking what they pleased and burning what remained. Flames engulfed her wagon and the wood above her groaned threateningly, but still she lay petrified until the last blood-spatter boots had hastened past. She wriggled out as quickly has she could, but the wagon collapsed on her, momentarily pinning her down, searing her back and right arm.
Terror silenced her for months after the attack and she sheltered in her study, avoiding the murmured condolences and pitying stares that met her at every turn. As soon as she had returned home and her father’s death was known, legal proceedings had ensued, resulting in her father’s business being divided between Emi and her uncle, who wanted nothing to do with her suggestions, inventions, or advice. She was too busy creating some safer mode of transportation as retroactive protection against the bandit attack to take much notice of him until one rainy day when she overheard him speaking in the most condescending manner to a young man. She recognized the man as an inventor who lived in town and was now trying to sell an invention, or rather an idea, for a new and safer mode of transportation that he was developing. As the man walked away dejected, Emi hurried after him, so relieved to have found an ally that the fact that she had never actually met him didn’t occur to her until several stumbling sentences into their conversation. Their minds met instantly and their hearts were not long in following. That first conversation satisfied both that they were working on the same project and, as two heads were better than one, they should work together. Her uncle met them with neither mind nor heart, so she met him in an attorney’s office to sell him her share of the business for rather much more than it was now worth under his shortsighted leadership.
Hector and Emi were married shortly thereafter and used the proceeds of the sale to purchase a small farm on the outskirts of a small town. They built a lab, well furnished with all the tools they might need, many of which they themselves had designed, and when their daughter was born, they build a vuechi to protect her from any danger. But surely no danger could ever enter that happy little home.
Born to an affluent family, Emi received a first-rate education and saw much more of the world than most children her age because her parents insisted she accompany them on their travels. Her father was a merchant who owned warehouses in all the major cities along the Wyr River and his caravans went as far north as the Cloudcrystal Skyfields and as far south as the Pytharon Empire. During these trips and in addition to her formal education, Emi learned the laws of the various areas in which her father did business, the geography of the caravan routes, and how each product was packed for transport. She learned the art of negotiation from watching her father close deal after deal. Seeing her aptitude for numbers and figuring, Emi’s father gave her a job in his main warehouse, where she lost no time in learning the inner workings of the business and developing new, more efficient methods of storage, including designing and building a shrink ray to increase warehouse capacity and shipment quantity. After her mother died, her father insisted that Emi travel with him once again, which she was more than willing to do, partly because she had missed these trips and partly to study the current transportation methods in use so as to improve them.
On once such voyage, just as the forward guard pulled ahead to search out a safe camping ground, bandits poured down from the surrounding hills and sprang from behind rocks, trees and brush, their shouts filling the air as densely as their arrows. Emi’s father shoved her under a wagon, telling her to stay put while he helped fight off the hoards, but he was struck down before his sword was fairly clear of its scabbard. Bandits swarmed from wagon to wagon, taking what they pleased and burning what remained. Flames engulfed her wagon and the wood above her groaned threateningly, but still she lay petrified until the last blood-spatter boots had hastened past. She wriggled out as quickly has she could, but the wagon collapsed on her, momentarily pinning her down, searing her back and right arm.
Terror silenced her for months after the attack and she sheltered in her study, avoiding the murmured condolences and pitying stares that met her at every turn. As soon as she had returned home and her father’s death was known, legal proceedings had ensued, resulting in her father’s business being divided between Emi and her uncle, who wanted nothing to do with her suggestions, inventions, or advice. She was too busy creating some safer mode of transportation as retroactive protection against the bandit attack to take much notice of him until one rainy day when she overheard him speaking in the most condescending manner to a young man. She recognized the man as an inventor who lived in town and was now trying to sell an invention, or rather an idea, for a new and safer mode of transportation that he was developing. As the man walked away dejected, Emi hurried after him, so relieved to have found an ally that the fact that she had never actually met him didn’t occur to her until several stumbling sentences into their conversation. Their minds met instantly and their hearts were not long in following. That first conversation satisfied both that they were working on the same project and, as two heads were better than one, they should work together. Her uncle met them with neither mind nor heart, so she met him in an attorney’s office to sell him her share of the business for rather much more than it was now worth under his shortsighted leadership.
Hector and Emi were married shortly thereafter and used the proceeds of the sale to purchase a small farm on the outskirts of a small town. They built a lab, well furnished with all the tools they might need, many of which they themselves had designed, and when their daughter was born, they build a vuechi to protect her from any danger. But surely no danger could ever enter that happy little home.
Relationships
Legal Status
Married
Spouses
Hector Hayes
(Husband)
Siblings
Children
Gender
Female
Eyes
Black
Hair
Black
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Pale
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