FreemanHooves

**Hazel Freeman**, also known as The Antlered Lagomorph or simply "Dandelion," (OOC: FreemanHooves) is a member of the Huitca Federation and a citizen of Aequalis.

## Appearance

Hazel is a jackalope humanoid. Approximately 5 feet tall, slightly shorter than an average woman of her age and build, she is covered in spotted fur from head to toe. Antlers protrude from the side of her head and long, floppy ears flap against her shoulders. Typically, she wears a comfortable, pink dress that looks more like pajamas than something suitable for a member of the bardic trade.

## Personality

Hazel is an amicable individual, readily aiding any and all who need her help. Those who suffer often make it their goal to prevent suffering in all of its forms. This bard tries to go the extra mile, not only preventing suffering, but creating a sense of safety and happiness in her peers. With a love for her fellow man, and an unquenchable fire in her heart, she hopes her influence on the world will burn through despair. Though soft-spoken and generally amicable, she is quick to let this fire escape should the wellbeing of her friends be called into question.

Her general outlook on life is best summarized in a short, four-line poem she composed after escaping a life of servitude.

*"If I've bread to spare,"*

*"With you I will break it,"*

*"If greed and horror plague your land,"*

*"With you I'd escape it."*

## Biography - Origins to Rathnir

The Dandelion Bard's long and storied history doesn't begin with gods and kings. She never knew the feeling of silk, gold, or anything finer than the rugged pelts that lined her mother's cabin. Despite this, the carpet of her living room remains one of her earliest, fondest memories. It wasn't particularly remarkable. In fact, it could scarcely be referred to as a carpet. It looked more like a bear had been flatten and strewn across the floor. Still, that carpet was the first home she ever knew, and she'd be damned before she forgot it.

The cabin in the woods, its warm brown rug, and Hazel Freeman's mother are a vestigial remnant of her halcyon days, buried within her memory without much use. She had little connection to her people, a group of anthropomorphic jackalopes. As soon as she left the warmth of her mother's side at 14, she left her people behind. From that point on, she wandered the world. She found herself well suited to the life of a nomadic bard. Her mother had taught her foraging skills and her father's antlers, a trait he blessed her with, were naturally suited to personal protection. The wilderness was her home for years, and she thanked it for its bounties. When she finally reached civilized society, she was out of her element. Beyond Rathnir, the world is cruel.

Crueler still are the people in the cities she familiarized herself with in her adolescence. Towering pinnacles of stone and wood astonished her. She had tuned her lute with wanderers who told her that men could crack stone and build mountains from sheer determination. The glory of urban society blinded her, at first, to the unsavory nature of many of its inhabitants.

Money was a foreign concept to the jackalope. Her people provided for each other. A warm smile and a pleasant nod were their currency. So, when she snatched a loaf of bread from a merchant's table, she was quickly apprehended by the city's local militia. Their leader, a scarred and pale man with rippling muscle and a harsh tongue, looked her in the eyes. Those blue orbs, set deep in her furred face, were wide with fear.

The proposition he made to her was one that she could barely comprehend, but she realized it was her only option. Using her unassuming nature, she was to be indoctrinated into the militia's ranks and forced into a life of combat as atonement. Around this time, she sold her body as a soldier, but also as a courtesan. The paltry few coins she earned as a soldier were not enough to get by, and her body was seen as an exotic commodity.

So began her life as an object rather than a living thing. For pain or pleasure, she had no purpose beyond some form of servitude. It crushed her. It wore her down. She needed an out, or the city would kill her.

She chartered a ship with the intention of leaving the suffering she endured in that city of stone and pain. On fragile, quivering hooves she apprehensively boarded the vessel. It took her somewhere unknown. It scarcely mattered where she ended up. Anywhere would be better than that hellhole.

After many months at sea, the ship passed a sliver of coastline, and she jumped overboard. She would either meet better, safer people than the ones she'd met before, or she'd die alone, surviving on a distant island on her terms. As she swam closer and closer, the smell of urbanization assaulted her nostrils. It made her weary, but if she needed to stop in a harbor town to steal some sustenance she'd suffer such an inconvenience. The city that met her, however, wasn't the cold, hateful place she knew. It was warm, and friendly. She asked a local its name, who met her with no judgement despite her unorthodox appearance.

He responded; "Aequalis, the City of Equality." She smiled. It may not have been a cabin with a large, warm rug, but for the first time since she was a kid, she truly felt at home.

## Religion

Hazel Freeman follows The Pale Doe, a matronly figure from her homeland. Immortalized in folk songs, she is the god of deer and nature, "mother to all," and patron god of those who disagree with the gender they were assigned at birth. Little is known about this figure. Less still is known about her followers. Customs related to the Pale Doe can be witnessed only in the quiet moments when Hazel leaves Aequalis's comfortable walls and slinks into the forests to revel. Some say they hear her singing to herself, chanting hymns to invoke her matronly deity. These reports are disputed.