Name: Mara Kerr
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Date of Birth: 12 Firstfall, 8 Dragon
Occupation: Grey Warden
Companion(s): Duff, an old black wolf with greying fur around his muzzle
Many remember Mara with long black hair always pulled back in a neat, braided bun, but a few twists and turns in her life have caused her to cut her hair short. When it’s down, it runs to her shoulders in jagged edges. On days where her mood is a little on the bright side, she puts her hair up in a puff of a ponytail with a braid running along the right side of her head.
At 5’5” Mara is a tad on the short side of things, but that doesn’t make her any less intense on the battlefield. Her movements are quick yet wary, and her grey eyes don’t stay focused in one spot for too long.
Having spent years as a ranger, Mara has received her fair share of knicks and cuts on her light-tan skin. Nothing is too prominent besides the horizontal cut along the left side of her jaw - it came from a low-hanging branch that managed to slice a little too deeply when she accidentally ran into it. The scar is only about an inch long, but its presence has caused her far more grief than she ever thought it could. It is often an identifying feature for her, and one that she spent much time trying to hide before she was Conscripted into the Wardens.
Class: Rogue
Specialization: Ranger (Expert)
Weapons & Armor:
Mara’s favored weapon is a Sylvanwood bow enchanted with a Novice Frost Rune. Originally her father’s primary weapon, she took it up as her own after he passed away. On the rare occasion she doesn’t have her bow, she carries a mismatched pair of daggers: one an elegantly carved slicer with Warden regalia incribed on it, the other a simple iron blade.
As a Grey Warden, her armor is made up of a standard set of blue and silver rogue-class leathers featuring the Wardens’ Griffon insignia on the chest and shoulders.
Languages: Common (Spoken), Elementary Orlesian (Spoken)
Non-Combat Skills:
Master: Legerdmain, Tracking
Expert: Traps, Wilderness Survival, Navigation (land), Stealth (Wilderness)
Intermediate: Running, Stamina, Scouting, Natural Lore, Hearing, Climbing, Bowyer/Fletcher, Acrobatics
Novice: Searching, Poison Lore, Lock Picking, Fishing, Etiquette (Orlesian), Dancing, Contacts, Cartography, Bargaining, Animal Handling
Combat Skills:
Master: Tireless Hunter, Bows (Shortbows)
Expert: Go for the Throat, Camouflage
Intermediate: Dual Weapons (Daggers), Unarmed Combat, Fleet-Footed, Natural Hazards
Novice: Summon Companion, Exploit Terrain
Armor Proficiency: Medium
Since she has spent most of her life tagging along with her father in the wilderness, Mara’s social skills could use a lot of work. She is a rather curious person, one that likes to ask a lot of questions to the point of being needlessly nosey, but she doesn’t like answering that many questions about herself. She can talk all day long about hunting and wandering and shooting arrows, but as soon as the conversation steers towards more personal questions about her she’ll grow silent. She can be quite the lightweight, though, and a few whiskeys in her system will get her talking about just about anything.
Mara also has a very analytical mind. She takes in her surroundings and tries to pick out as many details as she can - they might be important later. Her alertness also makes her paranoid, and, despite her calm façade, she can become terribly anxious in unfamiliar places if she isn’t around someone she trusts (Duff is number one on her list).
Mara can be quite a stubborn woman. Once she’s made a decision, she’ll stick to it and refuse to budge. Her decisions aren’t completely set in stone, though, for if one were to take the time and chip away at it long enough she’ll eventually change her mind. How long that can actually take is anyone’s guess, though.
After becoming a Warden, Mara has grown bitter. She’s turned to new vices to distract herself from her circumstances, and she struggles often with coming to terms with her new life. She’s quick to snap at stupidity and patience with herself is shorter than ever before. Drinking is her distraction of choice. Quite the lightweight, a drink or two is an easy way to get her to speak of things she might not otherwise come forward with in a normal conversation.
As a young girl, Mara was initially raised to believe in the Chantry’s teachings down to its very core. All of those teachings faded away with the years that she spent learning to survive in the forest with her father, and whatever religious beliefs are left hardly affect her daily life. As far as Mara is concerned, if it doesn’t help her survive then it doesn’t matter.
Mara’s father was originally from Orlais. As a wandering thief, he managed to end up in Ferelden after tailing a particularly well-stocked caravan. He would have followed them all the way to Denerim if he hadn’t met a sweet girl living on a farm in Lothering. Originally their relationship had been brief, a few nights that shouldn’t have meant anything to him, but he found himself returning to Lothering whenever he grew weary of the quiet of the forest. Eventually their relationship blossomed into the birth of Mara, but it was a bittersweet event for her father. Mara’s birth took her mother’s life, leaving her father with a child he had no way of caring for. He instead decided to leave his daughter with her maternal aunt who would raise her on the farm.
Mara never knew what to make of her father when she was young. As she was growing up on the farm, her aunt would often bitterly complain about what a low-life her father was. The worst was when she would blame him for the death of Mara’s mother, a sentiment that Mara could never wrap her head around. These complaints would die down whenever her father visited the farm, though. Every few months he would come by, hand a pouch of coins to Mara’s aunt, and spend the rest of the day with his daughter. During those times, her father seemed to be the kindest person in the world. He would teach her anything from the basics of archery to simple Orlesian phrases to how to muffle her footsteps around the house. Afterwards he would disappear for another few months, leaving Mara to wonder how much he really cared for her until his next visit.
Originally Mara’s father planned on taking her away from her aunt when she turned fourteen. It felt like an appropriate enough age for him to start teaching her how to survive like he did, but his plans had to be moved up when Mara’s aunt grew mortally ill. Mara was twelve years-old, only a few months away from turning thirteen, when her father arrived late one night and guided her deep into the forest for the first time. Mara had been terrified - would her aunt make it to the morning? Would she ever go back to Lothering? Would she survive in this new life? Morning broke, and despite how exhausted she was, in the dawn’s light she finally saw who her father really was for the first time. He was sharply alert, one steady hand on her shoulder to keep her calm and the other gripping a dagger as they made their way further and further into the forest. This wasn’t the charming man with the silly Orlesian accent who had taught her how to properly hold a bow. This man was something that Mara had only heard about in stories from the children in the village, and she wasn’t sure that she liked him very much.
For the first few months Mara wanted to return back to the farm and pretend nothing had happened. She argued with her father about going back to check on her aunt, but he knew she couldn’t find her way back to Lothering from the middle of a forest. On multiple occasions she tried to run away only to be found a few hours later by her father. He never once berated her for her behavior - instead, he would simply move on as if she hadn’t run off in the first place. Eventually she gave up and grudgingly followed along with him in the wild, but it would take her another few months before she finally started reluctantly responding to the training he was trying to give her.
It took a year for Mara’s bitterness to fade away, but soon enough she was tracking beasts, setting traps, and skinning animals right beside her father without any complaints. They made a small living with the hides they would trade with traveling merchants; they used whatever resources they could find in the land around them to satisfy any other needs they could. For awhile it felt like an honest living, definitely nothing like the thieving lifestyle Mara’s aunt had accused her father of so long ago. Mara was fourteen when her father finally started teaching her how to pickpocket the unwary merchants they traded with, and it wasn’t long until he had her helping him raid caravans in the dark of night. Occasionally they would take a job guarding a merchant or helping travelers get through the forest in order to get some extra coin legitimately, but it was also a way for Mara’s father to teach her that they didn’t have to be thieves all the time.
When Mara was sixteen, her father wandered off for a few hours and came back with a small black wolf puppy he had decided to call Duff. He never explained to her where he found the creature, but over the next few years he trained the wolf as a companion. While doing so, he also taught Mara how to work alongside a companion creature. As a group all three of them were a solid hunting and tracking team, but Mara couldn’t get Duff to respond to her the same way he responded to her father. Oftentimes the wolf would wait for her father’s approval before responding to one of her commands, a behavior that never ceased to frustrate the girl.
When the Fifth Blight started spreading across Ferelden, Mara and her father did everything they could just to stay alive. Traveling merchants to steal from were getting harder and harder to find, and even the wild animals were becoming more and more sparse. Their first run-in with wandering Darkspawn had terrified both of them, but they had managed to escape and learned to avoid their tracks in the future.
The news that Lothering had been destroyed devastated Mara - she had planned on one day returning to her hometown, but nothing was left to return to. To distract her, her father kept them constantly on the move away from their old familiar routes and forests. At one point they even managed to cross over to Orlais, but Mara had become far too paranoid about their run-ins with Darkspawn to enjoy the sights of her father’s home country. Eventually they headed back to Ferelden and wandered along its Northern coastline.
Not too long into the start of the year 34 Dragon, Mara’s father was injured from a mercenary that had been guarding a wagon they had tried to rob. The wound was deep and grew infected fast, too fast for Mara to do anything with her limited first aid skills. He passed away within a week of taking the injury, leaving Mara on her own for the first time in her life. She still had Duff with her, but despite how long he had been with her he was still reluctant to follow all of her commands. Mara buried her father in an unmarked grave near a tree in the heart of the forests near Amaranthine, but she took the metal Orlesian pendant he used to wear around his neck as a memento along with his Sylvanwood bow.
Although she managed to survive on her own, she never realized just how lonely she would be after her father passed away, especially when it came to Duff. The wolf had always followed her father, especially since he had been the one carrying the treats all the time. Now that he was gone, Duff often challenged Mara’s authority by doing anything from ignoring her commands to nearly biting her on a few occasions. At first she was frightened at this change in behavior. She considered leaving him in the forest, but she worried that he wouldn’t be able to survive on his own at his age. Also, he was one of the last reminders Mara had of her father, and the last thing she wanted was to face the utter loneliness that came with abandoning Duff. Mara decided that she would start to imitate some of her father’s behaviors. Standing her ground was terrifying at first - she was never sure how Duff was going to react - but she also rewarded his good behavior with treats. After a few weeks he started to return to his old behaviors from when her father was still alive. Mara still worries about what he might do sometimes, but she still trusts him far more than most humans she has ever met. Even so, if she ever enters an area with large populations of people, she will find a safe area in the wilderness nearby for him to wander. She still fears what he might do if she lost her authority while they are around a lot of people.
It took awhile for Mara to realize it, but with her newfound control also came a newfound freedom. She could decide where she went now, not her father. She could go wherever she wanted, yet for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to head towards Lothering. Instead, she decided that she would take the opportunity to finally see all the places she had heard about in her travels. From huge cities to the tallest of mountains, she could go just about anywhere as long as she could survive.
For months she and Duff traveled around Ferelden, but it wasn’t enough. There were limits her father had put on her, limits she felt the urge to break. Their modus operandi was always one of stealth and simple targets - nothing extravagant. No heists, no break-ins, no nonsense. Mara started to test those old limits to see just what she was capable of doing. Her father wasn’t there to be the voice of reason for her, and soon enough she discovered she was quite good at breaking into homes and nicking a few coins here and a fancy jewel there. She began pushing even more until eventually she was sneaking into the estates of nobles and stealing prized possessions for sport.
It was one of these heists that started the events that would change her life forever. She was working her way out of an estate when a guard saw her. It was the first time anyone had witnessed her so clearly in the middle of a crime. She knew she should’ve killed the guard, but she knocked him out instead, staying her hand enough to let him live while she made her escape.
Apparently the guard was able to give a good description of her, for a bounty went up for her capture a few days later. She did her best to hide - cut her hair, traveled at night, kept her hood low - but that didn’t stop a friend of hers from using the bounty to blackmail her into one last heist for him. She reluctantly agreed to do it for him, but mid-way through the heist she was caught by a pair of guards and taken away to Fort Drakon.
It was at Fort Drakon that she discovered it wasn’t just a simple heist her now ex-friend had blackmailed her into - it was a setup. Before she could comprehend what was going on, she was charged and convicted of murdering the son of the nobleman that owned the estate. Any pleas of innocence on her part were met with deaf ears. Instead, she was sentenced to death for a crime she insisted she never commited.
As she was being brought out to the noose, the procession was suddenly interrupted. Mara hadn’t expected to Warden-Constable Cauthrien show up to her execution. The sight of the officer confused her until she revealed their purpose for showing up: Conscription. She was given a choice: join the Wardens and have her criminal record absolved, or go through with the execution. Mara was speechless. Staring at the noose, she couldn’t help but feel caught between a rock and a hard place. There was nothing the guards could do to fight it, and Mara couldn’t find it in herself to refuse, not with the noose looming before her.
Mara survived her Joining, forever changing the course of her life. Her first few months as a Warden were full of struggles as she tried every which way she could to resist her new life and argue her innocence for a murder that, while it was officially off her record, she still believed people would use against her. Bad decision after bad decision left her with a bitter taste in her mouth and a deep-seated hatred for the institution that she couldn’t find an ounce of gratitude for. Her only solace now is the chance to remove herself from any association with the murder, but without any leads to the real culprit she fears she may never truly absolve herself.
Last edited:
