[Child of the 7th Age]

Arwen –

I enjoyed your proposal so much that I am applying to play the fourteen-year old Millwind daughter. Please let me know if this will work.

I found it hard to write the first post without knowing what the other family members were doing. I will change the details as needed to respond to their posts.

~Child

****************

FOR: Elanor Millwind

1.) Have you ever played in an RPG at the Barrow Downs? – YES - Which one? Various including the Star RPGs, The Long Winter, The Hobbit's Gift, etc.

2.) How many RPG’s on the Barrow Downs are you currently involved in? One

List them, please: Here There Be Dragons

Please note you may play in only 2 (TWO) Shire games at one time. Exceptions to this may be made for this on a case by case basis by the Shire Moderators. (The Green Dragon Inn DOES NOT count as a game for this.)


3.) Have you posted in The Green Dragon Inn – YES

PROFILE

NAME: Elanor Millwind

AGE: 14 years old

RACE: Human

GENDER: Female

WEAPONS: Her young cousin who lives next door secretly taught Elanor how to shoot a bow without her parents knowing about it. Later on, after much begging and pleading, she persuaded her parents to allow her to secure her own bow and a quiver of arrows so that she can help protect the chicken coop, especially in winter when hungry predators sneak into the barnyard searching for a tasty snack.

Aside from this, the only other weapon Elanor has brandished is a large frying pan. Last summer, when her father was off in a neighboring village to sell some produce, a thief slipped inside the Millwood barn intent on stealing their only milk cow. Grunge, Elanor’s best friend who happens to be a guard dog, succeeded in bringing the culprit down with his sharp teeth and claws. Elanor was then able to knock the intruder out with a few strategic whacks to the head.

APPEARANCE: Elanor has bright blue eyes and a head of untidy auburn curls that she ties back with a ribbon. She generally wears long skirts and blouses like most of the other girls in Dale. Occasionally, however, when off on her own in the woods, she will slip on an old pair of Elian’s pants so that it is easier to run and ride. While Elanor can’t claim to be the most gorgeous girl in Dale, she is tall and slender and has a pleasant, cheerful face. Her attractive smile has not been lost on several of Elian’s friends who vie for her attention and favors.

PERSONALITY/STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES: To the outward eye, Elanor is a dutiful daughter who has mastered most of the household chores that girls in Dale are expected to learn. Although only fourteen, she already knows how to cook, sew, and keep house and can tend the garden and care for the various animals on the farm. Her parents are proud of her.

Elanor is deeply attached to all her family, and especially to her mother. Her parents rely heavily on her common sense and maturity and, for this reason, have her help take care of the younger siblings. Yet, despite her generally cheerful nature, she sometimes tires of the responsibility that comes with being the eldest child and longs for a break. On these occasions, she runs off on her own to get away from her brothers’ bickering and may ramble deep into the woods or over the fields. Sometimes she is accompanied by her two closest friends. One is Elian Whitfield, her next door neighbor and cousin; the other is the brown guard dog Grunge whom she’s raised from a puppy.

Despite her outward conformity to the norms and standards of the community, Elanor has ideas in her head for the future that might surprise her mother and father. She dreams of someday being a healer. Already, she has gathered together a small kit of herbs and has tried out some remedies on the small animals that live in the countryside surrounding their family farm.

HISTORY: She is the eldest daughter in the Millwood family. Her parents are Arinn and ________Millwood. Her younger siblings are the six year-old twins, Eli and _______.

----------------------------------

Child of the 7th Age’s post


Elanor got up from the lunch table and began to clear off the dishes, waving goodbye to her father and Eli as they trudged back towards the fields. Her mother was so busy with the farm and household chores that she had asked her to keep an eye on _______. Elanor had gone out to the garden to pick a bucket of beans for dinner. By the time she returned to the house, her brother _______was nowhere to be seen. She was only mildly concerned that he was missing from the house. He was probably off with mother in the garden or out in the barn playing with the cat who’d just had a litter of kittens.

Elanor sat down to finish hemming the dress, a task that her mother had asked her to start the evening before. She held up the skirt against the sunlight which was streaming in through the window and took a close look at her line of stitches. She still could not match her mother’s skill with the needle. Some of her own stitches were long, others quite short and a little wiggly. She’d need to work on that some other time. For right now, this would have to do.

Elanor was determined to finish her chores so she could meet her cousin Elian Whitfield and perhaps one of his friends as they had agreed the day before. They planned to hike north about a mile or two to see if there was anything new or different to report now that the Dwarves had carts of ore heading to the west. Rumor had it that the Dwarves had again started doing business with the Elves who dwelled deep within Mirkwood. Elanor had no idea if this was true but she wanted to get a good look at those carts and the Dwarves who were driving them. Someday, she promised, she’d take a great trip all the way to the Lonely Mountain where the Dwarf folk were said to live, with all their grand halls and piles of gold and other rare ores. But, for now, a little hike a mile or so north was all that she could manage. Elanor threw the dress down in a crumpled pile on the table and slipped out the front door, running down the pathway in the direction of their agreed upon meeting point.

*******************


The two teen-agers had trudged along for a half hour or so heading steadily north. Elian told Elanor stories he had heard from his grandfather: how the Dwarves had returned to the mountain some two hundred years before and had dug deep into the tunnels and come up with amazing treasure. Elanor wondered what the treasure would look like. She imagined heaps of gold and mithril sitting in three of four large piles in the middle of the Dwarves’ Great Hall. It might be nice, she reflected, to have a pin or necklace to wear. The two stopped and sat under an overhanging beech tree, drinking from the water bottles they had brought with them. Despite all their hiking, they had not seen a single Dwarf or any carts laden with treasure.

“We’d best get back,” Elanor pressed. “Mother expects me to help with dinner.”

“But we didn’t see any Dwarves!” her cousin objected. “And that’s why we came.”

”Maybe so. But we can always come again any time we want.”

Just as they were about to head south, Elian got up and excitedly pointed towards the hills in front of them. Some distance away and barely visible, there seemed to be a whole herd of Dwarves running to the west as fast as their short legs could take them. Some of them were waving swords, staves, and axes in the air.

“By all Beruthiel’s cats, what’s happening over there?”

Before Elanor could open her mouth to venture an opinion, there was a terrible hissing and whirling noise that came from the air. Instinctively, Elian grabbed for his cousin’s hand and yanked her down into the tall grass and ferns so that they were totally hidden. Coming straight at them, a sinister, twisting figure made its way southward, flying through the air. The creature was gigantic, its color just as golden as all the piles of treasure that Elanor had envisioned in the tales that she'd heard. Elian could glimpse two long fingers of flame that seemed to shoot out from the wyrm’s gaping mouth, leaving trails of ashes and smoke behind. The two children huddled together under the bracken afraid to look up or show their heads above the foliage. When the terrible shadow had finally swept over them, they staggered abruptly to their feet. Elian was shaking and Elanor barely holding back tears. “Our families!” they both cried at once. With that the two friends took off running towards the south.