Kanabae

ESO @name: @Riome
Character Name: Kanabae
Race: Khajiit
Age: 23
Sex: Transgender Female
Marital Status: Single
Side Note: Sorry the backstory is so long. I haven't seen anyone else do a transgender character yet in RP and I wanted to make sure I got everything right. Also, it involves Sheogorath so naturally I needed to write out the dialog.

Physical Description
Kanabae is a Khajiit of above average height with brown fur, black spots, and green eyes. She is slightly overweight with short, choppy hair. Kanabae typically wears secondhand clothes that others have discarded to save gold, but always makes sure to wash them thoroughly before wearing.

Flairs
Kanabae always carries her jeweled chalice to drink wine in. Despite enjoying good food and high society, the chalice is actually the only valuable object she owns though she will never admit that.

Personality
Likes:
-Fine food
-Cleanliness
-Music

Dislikes:
-Bad manners
-Daedra

Strengths:
-Perseverance
-Can use magic to heal
-Knowledge of alchemy

Weaknesses:
-Not a strong fighter
-Distrustful
-Socially awkward

Background
Born in Morrowind, Kanabae was adopted by a Dunmer couple as a baby and given the name Turil. Turil’s adopted parents were Falena and Belos Avalain and they were close friends of Turil’s birth parents. Shortly after Turil was born, a group of Dunmer who disliked Khajiit and didn’t want them living in the town came to the house to drive them away. They meant to simply scare the family away with a few spells, but one of the fire spells shot up towards the house and it began to burn. Turil’s father, to protect his child, placed Turil in a barrel of wheat and threw it out the window into the pond by their house. However, before either he or his wife could jump out the window the fire reached the small skooma store in the bedroom and the skooma exploded, killing both Khajiit left inside.

Belos was out behind his home working on repairing the well when he heard the explosion. He realized it had come from the direction of his friends’ house and rushed to check on them. Unfortunately by the time he arrived the house was nothing but charred wood and splinters. The mob of Dunmer had dispersed for fear of being imprisoned and Belos was just turning to leave to find a guard when he heard a cry. He looked around but saw nothing, then heard another cry. It was then that he noticed the barrel, only slightly charred from the heat of the explosion but otherwise free of burns thanks to the water, floating in the nearby pond.

He retrieved the barrel, saw the baby Khajiit inside and realized what must have happened. Belos brought it home to Falena and, as they were too old to have a child of their own, they both agreed to adopt the child. They decided to give the child the name Turil, after Falena’s father, and whenever Turil asked why they had given him a Dunmer name they would always insist it was because they wanted him to feel like their own flesh and blood, though secretly Turil had always suspected it was because they didn’t actually know any Khajiiti names.

The Avalain family was one of the wealthier families in the town, though no one was actually sure where their money came from. Some whispered that they were distantly related to house Dres, but these rumors were unconfirmed and few actually believed them. Nevertheless, the gold the Avalain family had was mostly put towards educating, caring for, and generally spoiling Turil. While Turil did put on weight from all the fine foods and pampering, he did not gain the “spoiled brat” attitude many would associate with one who had had such an easy upbringing.

This is largely because Turil himself did not see his upbringing as “easy”. Despite the loving care of his Dunmer parents, Turil was left with the constant reminder that he was not their child and that his birth parents had been lost to him. Turil was told by Belos that his mother and father had to travel far away on urgent business and that he was left to the Avalains because Turil’s parents had such faith in them. The lie may have been kinder, but it did not change the fact that he was the only Khajiit in a village of Dunmer.

This lie persisted as the truth, largely because no one who actually burned the home would ever admit to what they had done and the rest of the village just didn’t care that much. At the age of fifteen Turil left home and became a traveling merchant with a Khajiit caravan that was passing through the town. His adopted family offered to give him some gold to support himself but he declined, stating that he wanted to make his own gold. After he said goodbye to his family he set out to travel in hopes of becoming a successful merchant.

A year passed and Turil decided to set up a permanent shop in a small northern town called Blue Grove. Over the time he had traveled with the caravan he began to adopt the Khajiit way of speaking, despite having been raised to speak in the manner of a Dunmer, and this became the way in which Turil spoke to the town and his customers. Everything was going well at first until a group of bandits set their sights on the town. It was easy for the bandits to gain control, there were almost no guards and the only leadership the village had was an elderly man who had served as the village’s manager almost as long as the village had existed. The bandits arrived, overpowered the guards, then beheaded the manager and by the next day they had control over the town.

Turil had put all the money he had made as a traveling merchant into the store and because of that decided to stay. He put up with the bandits for almost two years but finally couldn’t take the robberies, beatings, and vandalism any more. Turil began working on plans for how he could deal with the bandits. The nearest town with a large guard force was at least a few hours away and some villagers had already tried recruiting their help to deal with the bandits, however they couldn’t afford to leave their town unguarded just to help. Despite being small the town was in a strategic location, surrounded by mountain and lake on all but one side, and any mercenary the town attempted to hire was quickly killed or forced to retreat.

After ruling out the possibility of outside help, Turil began thinking of how he could deal with the bandits himself. Turil wasn’t very strong and didn’t know any offensive magic, but he did have knowledge. During his time as a travelling merchant he had heard many tales of the daedra and the artifacts they had been known to grant to mortals. One in particular gained his attention, the Wabbajack. He didn’t know much about the artifact, but he had heard it had the ability to incapacitate people and, unlike most magic staves, it never ran out of charge. Turil realized that these were just rumors, but he reasoned that if he used the artifact on the bandits that took over the town, then they might be weakened to the point that the villagers could drive them out.

So, knowing only the name of the artifact, its basic description, and the daedric prince with which it was associated, Turil set off on periodic trips to locate the Wabbajack over the next three years. As more time passed Turil became increasingly discouraged, his trips to search for information on the Wabbajack became infrequent and eventually dropped to no more than one trip every few months. About a year after the trips stopped altogether and Turil had all but accepted that neither his business nor the town would ever be safe from the bandits, a strange man visited the shop.

The man was elderly and wore an unchanging smile under his cloak as he walked through the door followed a few seconds later by one of the bandit thugs, clearly meaning the rob the man. He walked to Turil and, without saying a word, placed a staff that appeared to be made of some kind of metal in front of him. Turil, recognizing the staff from his research, took a step back in surprise. He quickly regained his composure, glancing at the bandit thug behind the man. “This one will need to see proof of the object’s…’authenticity’, of course.” Turil said. As Turil finished his sentence the man grabbed the staff and swung it behind him at the thug who had raised his club to beat the man. A flash of light shot from the staff and when the light faded the thug was gone. However in his place was a skeever which then ran out the open door.

Turil wasted no time and immediately asked the man what he wanted for the staff. As Turil reached to open the chest of coins he kept behind the counter the man laughed “Gold? Why would I need gold, I have a city made of the stuff! …At least I think I do, or did…” The man stopped for a moment to think deeply about something “Or should! It must have run off, naughty city! Always misbehaving, and just after I gave it all those inside-out senche to play with!”

At this the man broke out laughing for a few moments before continuing “No, no little mortal kitty, what I want is much more precious than gold…A frog! A frog made of solid gas, that eats little Nord children! …No, what I want…What I want…? Now, what do I want…Oh!” The man stood up straight and smiled “You were a stray little kitty, abandoned by ol’ ma and pa but taken in by a loving couple who treated ye like their own…So! What I want is the left eye and littlest finger of yer pa, and the heart and three-fourths of the left femur from yer ma! Oho, isn’t that a nice offer? At least one of them will still be alive afterwards! Maybe both, that is if ma can grow a new heart quick enough!”

Turil was at a loss for words. The man was clearly out of his mind, Turil would never do such a thing to the only parents he had ever known, so he quickly thought of a plan to get the staff. The man had set the it back down on the shop’s counter. All Turil had to do was grab the staff and use it on the man, then he could reclaim the town from the bandits and save his store. Turil wasn’t particularly fast, but he reasoned he was quicker than the insane elderly man before him.

“This one desperately needs that staff, but” Turil quickly reached across the counter, grabbed the staff, and pointed it at the still-smiling man “he will not kill his parents!” Turil swung the staff at the man and, just like it had done earlier, the staff emitted a bright light. “This one is sorry, but he needs the Wabbajack to protect the people of this town from further harm by the bandits.”

However, as the smoke was clearing Turil heard the man laughing once again “Silly kitty, do ye think yer the first ta try and use me Wabby-Jacky against me? She knows her daddy, and like a good little iguana she won’t harm him. Unfortunately dear Wabby doesn’t like it much when mean kitties try and use her against her daddy…”

Turil felt the staff disappear from his hands “Beast! These people will continue to suffer if” Turil staggered momentarily as he saw the staff appear in the man’s hand and felt the air began to fill with energy, “if the bandits are not dealt with! That staff can save this one and his neighbors, yet you make such unreasonable demands!”

The man’s smile faded for the first time since he entered the shop “Unreasonable?! I only asked for but a few pieces of yer family fer me private collection, they wouldn’t even be missed…Much! Oh but no-o-o, you wanted to have it all, living parents and me dear Wabby! Selfish…What a simply selfish kitty you are. Wabby doesn’t like that, not one bit.” The man turned to walk away, tilting his head towards the staff “Oh, but before we go Wabby says she wants to give you something to remember our time together by! Such a nice Wabby, you tried to hurt her daddy and she still wants to give you a present! What could it be, a hat? No, no, what if you lose it, Wabby would be so sad...Maybe a new arm made of seasoned beats? Oh, but what if a mudcrab eats it! Now think, what can kind ol’ Wabby give ye that a silly, rude little kitty such as yerself won’t lose…” the man stops to think for a moment “Aha! I’ve got it!”

The man waved the staff towards Turil and disappeared in a flash of light, his words fading with the light “I’ll give ye a fresh coat of skin for yer bones, maybe some few new organs as well! Don’t worry a bit, I’ve wrapped them up nice and tight so ye can’t lose them! …Ok, ok! That last part was Wabby’s idea, such a little attention-horker she is…”

Turil, still blinded by the flash of light, fell back into the nearby chair to wait for his vision to recover. As he rested on the chair he heard footsteps enter the shop and heard someone, presumably a bandit, call out “Hey cat! Where’s the owner of this dump?” Turil, still unnerved by the earlier encounter and furious that he had come so close to his long-sought goal and failed, answered in a voice so filled with exhaustion and defeat that he barely recognized it himself “This one owns the store, and does not feel like dealing with the likes of you today. Just take what you will and go rat!”

The bandit scowled and drew his blade “Look lady I know two things here, one is that since we took this rat-hole of a town the same grumpy Khajiit bastard has run this place. True, you look enough alike to be related, but I’m not stupid. The second thing I know is that my friend went into this place to rob some geezer and never came out. I also don’t see him around here, so I’m guessing that fat bastard finally got tired of being pushed around and killed him.” The bandit stopped for a moment as if expecting some response, then continued “You do know what that means, right? That cat owes us his head for killing our man!” Turil felt something sharp press against his neck “Now, I don’t particularly care about you one way or another, but if you’re trying to stall me while your brother runs away I’ll just take your head and give it to the boss instead. You cats all look alike anyway, I doubt he’d care.”

Turil was getting annoyed with the bandit harassing him after all that had happened and his irritation began to show in his voice “You insult this one, make false accusations, and threaten him. This one will tell you only one time, he has no siblings, this is his store, and the bandit from earlier was transformed by magic and left. This one did not, and more to the point could not, kill him. Now take what you want and go crawl back to your master Lucan!”

The bandit, now enraged, approached “I’ll take what I want you damn cat!” then punched the still blinded Turil in the face, knocking him off of the chair. At that point the bandit began to repeatedly kick Turil for almost a minute before taking a step back “Play shopkeeper all you want in your brother’s place, but know this is how things work around here. You show respect and listen to your superiors, or you die.” The man turned to leave, then stopped at the door and added “Oh and if you see your brother let him know that if any of our men see him, he’s as good as dead!” Turil was left on the floor and lost consciousness a few minutes after the bandit had left.

When Turil woke up the sun was setting. He noticed some blood on the floor and remembered the beating the bandit had given him before he passed out. Turil stood up, wincing at the pain in his side, then went to the well to get a bucket of water and wash away the blood. Turil pulled up some water from the well and saw his reflection. The water was still settling and the reflected image was wavy, but Turil felt something else was wrong with it. Turil looked down at his body for the first time since the old man left and saw that it was no longer the body he grew up in, but that of a female Khajiit.

Turil left the bucket and hurried back to the shop. He locked the door behind him and went into the back room to try and think of how he could return to his old body. He knew that Sheogorath was responsible for his transformation and remembered some of the things he had heard about other daedric curses transforming mortals. Turil recalled that the werewolves originated from Hircine’s power and reasoned that if he could get close enough to study some werewolves and their transformations without being torn to pieces, he may be able to learn how they transform to wolf from mortal and vice versa. From there he might be able to develop a way to transform back to his old self.

After thinking the plan over for a minute however, he decided that the chance of being able to apply werewolf transformation to the reversal of his curse was slim, and that the chance of him being able to study werewolves up close without being killed was even slimmer. With this in mind Turil decided to put the werewolf study plan on hold unless he couldn’t find a better option.

Turil remembered that the old man had used the Wabbajack to transform him. He realized that the staff used some kind of magic to transform him, meaning some other kind of magic may be able to transform him back. During his time as a traveling merchant, he had visited various towns’ mage’s guilds but had never heard of any of their wizards using transformation magic or even knowing much about it. However, he also remembered one of the guilds’ alchemists teaching new mages about the infinite potential of alchemy and how, depending on what you put into it, the right potion could do almost anything. Turil paused for a second and tried to remember that instance. He remembered it was near a mage’s guild, and that people were gathered to hear the man…Then remembered the man was standing in front of a cart and may well have just been one of those shady merchants selling miracle cures from a traveling cart. Even so, Turil decided to make a note of the idea and then move on.

There was always the possibility of using the staff to change himself back. However Turil quickly realized a few obstacles to succeeding in that plan. The first being that the man who came to him earlier that day was most likely Sheogorath himself. If that was the case, then Turil reasoned he would have a better chance with the werewolves than trying to steal the mad god’s staff from his own hand. The second flaw in that plan would be the nature of the Wabbajack itself. The staff could transform a mortal into literally anything, therefore the odds of the staff changing him back to a male Khajiit were virtually nonexistent. However, from what he had observed today it seemed as though Sheogorath might have some way of focusing the staff to achieve a specific result. Turil realized that even if someone other than Sheogorath could focus the staff that way, there would still be the matter of figuring out how it is done. That process would no doubt require many test subjects and attract the attention of guards. In the end, Turil decided to simply make a note of that plan as well.

Turil thought long into the night, but only came up with one other plausible idea. Temples were known to heal disease and remove curses, so perhaps one could help him. He decided that this plan would be the quickest to act upon, and resolved to leave in the morning for the nearest town. He packed some supplies, set them by his bed, and went to get some sleep before the journey. Turil did not have an easy time getting to sleep in his new body and it didn’t help that he kept his blood-stained work clothes on. When Turil did find sleep it was almost morning and he did not wake until the sun was nearly at its highest.

He reasoned that even if he hurried and got a ride from a carriage, he would still arrive at his destination after dark. He was too nervous about his plan not working to live with that anticipation for another day, so he grabbed his bags, locked the shop, and left for the temple. Unfortunately on his way out of town Turil was stopped by the bandit who had attacked him yesterday. “Hey now,” the bandit called as Turil walked by “Where do you think you’re going, off to flee to your ‘brother’?” Turil ignored the bandit and walked by, but the bandit reached out and grabbed his arm “That lie won’t work anymore, we asked around and everyone says that shop cat was raised in Morrowind by some elves.” Turil tried to pull his arm away “This one has never said anything about being related to the shopkeeper, that was your assumption.” The bandit tightened his grip on Turil’s arm “Who are you cat?”

Turil almost said his name was ‘Turil’, then stopped himself as he realized what would happen if he said that “K-Kanabae, this one’s name is Kanabae and she would appreciate it if you would let her leave. This one does not know the shopkeeper and simply wishes to leave this terrible place.” Turil expected to be beaten again, but instead the bandit just stared at him for a moment, then scowled, released Turil, and walked away. At that point Turil decided things would go smoother for him if he kept the name Kanabae and stopped referring to himself as male when speaking, at least until he was able to transform back.

When Turil finally arrived it was dark, as he had thought, but he still decided to see if there was anyone at the temple. There was a single monk tending to the temple when Turil arrived. Turil approached the monk “This one has heard that a daedric curse may be removed at a temple to the divines. This is true, yes?” The monk nodded “Aye, some curses. Have you been troubled by a daedra child?” Turil nodded in response “A daedric prince named Sheogorath has given this one this body. This one was a male, then a man used an artifact named the Wabbajack to curse this one with a female body. Please tell this one, are you able to remove the daedra’s curse?”

The monk seemed only slightly surprised by the story “Sorry to tell you, but transformation curses are quite difficult to remove and I’m afraid no one here is able.” Turil’s head sagged in disappointment, then the monk spoke again “There may be a way though. If you were to stay and devote yourself to Stendarr, he may shine his favor upon you and relieve you of your curse.”

Turil took a step back in surprise at the sudden offer. He thought for a moment about his other options, and decided he could accept the monk’s offer and study alchemy and werewolves on the side in case Stendarr decided not to help him. Turil accepted the monk’s offer and devoted his time to Stendarr and the study of alchemy. After a year or so had passed and he saw no change in his condition, Turil decided to return to the merchant trade far away from the village of bandits. However Turil was not unaffected by the things he had heard of Stendarr during his time in the temple and although Stendarr had not returned him to his old body, Turil still worshipped the divine and donates a portion of his profits as a merchant to any nearby temple of Stendarr.