Mayela Ironleaf

== Appearance ==
Mayela is a fairly average-sized Tauren woman, with cream-colored fur and bright green eyes. She sports several scars of various shape and form, though quite a lot of them are tucked beneath clothing and armor. Her gear and fur is dusty and weather-beaten, often darkened in patches by dried blood, caked dirt, and other, less pleasant things. She rarely spends the time to clean herself unless something on her is potentially harmful, or she is required to track something reliant on sense of smell; if not, she assumes - usually correctly - that she'll be slogging through a river or other body of water at some point during a month. Dipping the top half to meet the bottom half while crossing is usually enough. As a result, she tends to smell somewhere between unpleasant and horrifyingly bad, depending on where she's been and what she's been doing.
As a duty-bound Scout of the Horde, she is rarely without her tabard; the current one is almost a year old now, and despite constant maintenance it sports several holes and gashes, though most of them have been mended surprisingly well. Mayela keeps a lone feather carefully braided into her mane alongside a small purple flower; what reason there is for them, if any, isn't anything she bothers mentioning, but they do tend to stand out amongst her otherwise unwashed appearance. Her job demands she be armed, and so she rarely goes anywhere without weaponry for any reason. Furthermore, she would be loathe to part with her weapons even if she no longer required their presence - they're old, worn, and well-loved; a part of her and her life, friends as much as the dog is. A slightly stranger constant is her ancient, battered, wide-brimmed leather hat, which - while she claims she doesn't believe in luck - is certainly something she's suspiciously loathe to lose, be rid of, or even take off.
In the wilds, Mayela is sure-footed and fairly quiet. In the city, she moves like a woman with a score to settle, shoving people out of her way and keeping her eyes focused ahead, towards whatever her goal may be. When she's at rest - or, more accurately, has stopped moving temporarily - she doesn't so much look as glare at people, and it is the rare (or dimwitted) individual who would believe she was at all someone to make polite conversation with.
As for the dog, well, it looks just as bad, and as an added bonus looks likely to eat any small children or animals that are left unattended for more than a moment or two.
== Personality ==
It's fairly unlikely that anyone has ever accused Mayela of being a nice person. She's generally hard-hearted, anti-social, and disturbingly morbid. She is blunt not out of honesty's sake but simply out of a complete and slightly malicious disinterest in everyone else's feelings. She does have some redeeming qualities - she is dutiful, level-headed, and stoic to hardship, among other things - but it's not likely worth the effort involved in digging them up. She tends to a slightly softer side when around other warriors of the Horde, but she has a hard time expressing it. What Scouts she has trained generally found her to be about as loving as a wounded harpy, but every one of them was made better by her almost vicious efforts at compassion.
First and foremost a Scout of the Horde, Mayela finds purpose in her assigned duties, from mail-delivery to combat reconnaissance, and fixates on them to the exclusion of everything else. She actively hates company, much preferring to be on her own and doing something far away from civilization. On the odd times when she has no assigned task, she gives in to alcoholism, often drinking herself into a dark and brooding stupor until she finally passes out in a corner somewhere.
Mayela has never named the dog, never finding the need to; after all, looking at him and saying something works fine, and a whistle carries a long way. He generally hates absolutely anyone who isn't her, and is definitely not Cute, Adorable, or Cuddly. More applicable descriptors would be Foaming, Vicious, or Oh Gods It's Eating My Face. Anyone stupid enough to try touching him deserves to learn how to live with one arm. There is no master / pet relationship between the two of them - they're friends and companions, and do things for one another out of mutual respect and love. If he wants to chew someone apart or piss on something badly enough, it's going to happen. The fact that Mayela tends to hate the things he wants to chew apart and/or piss on is just another reason why their relationship works.
== History ==
=== Childhood ===
Born to the plains of the Barrens, Mayela's life was nomadic like any other Tauren. She performed small tasks for her tribe until her forty-third year, when she was deemed old enough to begin helping with the tribe's hunts, gathering food and killing Centaur and Quillboar as they came. She was an excellent shot and an intrepid and stubborn tracker, often stalking prey alone for weeks, but was otherwise unremarkable.
During her forty-seventh year she met the wolf who would become her traveling companion, badly wounded and rife with disease, while out alone in what would later become Mulgore. She tended to him with what knowledge of herbs she had and, after two days of feeding his belly and soothing his wounds, was finally allowed to handle him without fear of aggression. She took the opportunity and quickly lifted him to her shoulders, carrying him for another two days without rest before finally reaching her tribe and their healers. The wolf had no desire to leave, and Mayela had no desire to chase him off; the two have been together ever since.
=== The Coming of the Horde ===
Thrall and his Horde arrived during Mayela's sixtieth year, ushering in a new stage of her life. Her tribe had been traveling the Barrens and were just rounding the Ashenvale-Barrens border towards Stonetalon when Cairne, Grom, Thrall, and the Horde arrived, seeking the Oracle. Cairne called the small tribe to his side for war and they responded promptly, pledging their braves and hunters to this new cause. This was Mayela's first taste of true war, and she saw a great deal of death and carnage during those short, bloody hours. Much of her tribe was decimated, but she had survived her first battle of the Third War. Many were still to come, but that first one taught her many things: the faces of this new enemy, their technology, that the world was large, and that most of it wanted to kill everyone she knew and loved. Most importantly, she learned to hate. That would carry her through much in the coming years.
=== The Third War ===
Mayela was a Scout during the Third War and earned several commendations for her cunning, fearlessness, and capability in combat. After her first battle, she was active in many historic events: she was present during the battle to redeem the Warsong clan, fought in the battle of Mount Hyjal, helped scout and clear the centaur from Mulgore during its founding as a permanent settlement, and aided in the razing of Theramore. Aside from these sections of popular history, she was also involved in many more mundane skirmishes and reconnaissance duties that few other than those present at the time would remember.
The war changed her. It made her hard to the loss of people she cared for and inured her to the many forms of death that could be visited upon friend and foe alike. She was wounded several times over, and was held from death by her own will just as often as with magic. By the end of it she knew of no other Tauren from her tribe that had survived, and what friends she once had were all dead. Honorable deaths they may have been, but that did little to sate the loneliness. She turned to drink to ease the nights after Hyjal and has seen little reason to stop.
=== The Years Between ===
After the war had settled out and her people had a home, Mayela found herself performing more and more mundane tasks. She mostly delivered reports from one place to another, usually coming from or going to Orgrimmar, carrying and delivering mail along the way. While lacking in excitement, she enjoyed the constant movement and exposure to new locations, and those who lived in the smaller settlements tended to be quite happy about and appreciative of her arrival; she was their only link to the rest of the world and their families, after all. As well, these were frontiersmen like herself, people she could relate to and enjoy company with for a few hours or a short night, making her short stays pleasant and cozy. Those first two years after the war were happy times for her. Unfortunately, they didn't last.
Having seen and actually reported on the creatures later known as Silithid, she was certainly surprised to discover they were building an army large enough to raze the continent, and possibly even the world. Once word got out about the war, her duties increased ten-fold, and as it dragged on each run became more and more dangerous; she saw her fair share of combat that year and came across far too many overrun settlements out on the edges of the wild. While she was never involved in the actual cleansing of the Silithid temple-fortress (not that she would have worked alongside Alliance crap-bags anyway), casualties pushed her to the front lines. Time spent scouting and clearing bug-tunnels sharpened her senses and instincts, but also made her slightly claustrophobic; as well, while she has no honest fear of arachnids, she's never been able to shake the urge to kill them whenever the opportunity presents itself.
While the end of the Silithid War and the crippling of their temple was a welcome respite, it was short-lived. The Horde barely had a year's time to lick their wounds and celebrate their victory before the Dark Portal was re-opened, thus beginning the Battle for the Outlands. Scouts were in high demand in ravaged Draenor, and Mayela was kept constantly busy mapping what sections of the planet still existed, reporting on flora and fauna, and helping to build new outposts. Skirmishes and small-scale warfare was constant with any number of enemies: the Alliance, the wildlife, the indigenous people...in some cases, even the plants wanted you dead. In time however, the war was over, the Betrayer was dead, and his lieutenants were all sharing the same shallow grave. Mayela Ironleaf went back home to Azeroth, along with thousands of her fellow soldiers of the Horde.
=== Present Day / Northrend ===
It has now been nearly five years since the Third War, and Mayela is closing in on her sixty-seventh year. She has seen war and death across Azeroth for almost ten years now, on multiple continents and even different worlds, against every enemy imaginable. She is middle-aged, weather-beaten, and as unrelenting as ever, though perhaps not as spry as she once was.
She is currently stationed in Northrend, performing basic troubleshooting and message-ferrying duties for isolated camps across the continent. She was recently offered a promotion to Scout Commander for her actions in bringing the Taunka into the Horde - a position she quickly declined, preferring her continued independence to being a glorified calf-watcher. Her wishes were respected, and she and her dog continue to trudge through the ice and snow, quite content to deliver mail.
Category:Horde
Category:Tauren
Category:Hunter
Category:Horde Hunter