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Anicalysis

Anicalysis was born in the city of Miletus in Greece. Her family was borderline merchant class, owning a stable and raising horses as an extended family (uncles, aunts and so on) and her father and younger brother being in trade finishing weapons. She and her mother, Artemesia, helped in the stables with the rest of the women and her uncles and grandfather.

As she grew, Anicalysis got into trouble more and more frequently. Unlike the other females of her class and race, she would escape into the city and play with other children more often than not, getting into scrapes and fighting. Her mother usually came to reclaim her and helped to keep the gossip to a minimum, but more and more often her father was becoming aware of her "unnatural" tendencies.

Stories were beginning to filter their way through to the family about her hoydenish behavior and they were beginning to watch her more closely. Anicalysis was fast becoming frustrated with her life. She wanted to join the army, but couldn't because of her gender. Her outlets were becoming increasingly smaller and shorter so that the frustration built up inside. She was too independent and her life was so unfulfilling, she grew weary of the obedience expected of her and the sedentary life she was supposed to lead. She wanted to be free and not be stuck being a wife and mother.

One day when she was sixteen, Anicalysis was accompanying her mother and aunts to the market when an group of youths came by and began making comments about her. To her relatives' horror, she flew into a rage and became embroiled in a fight. Unfortunately for her, her father happened to be nearby and ran into the fray, dragging her home by her hair.

Once they returned to the family property, her father locked her in her room and forced her to wait for her punishment. It finally came at the dinner hour. Before the entire extended family, her father branded her with a hot iron with the symbol for a slave. After they had seared her flesh and woken her from her pain induced faint, her grandfather informed her that they would be locking her in her room until the morning when they would take her to the slave market and thus out of the family forever. She would henceforth be dead to her family.

As two of her uncles dragged her from the room, she could hear her mother weeping. After a few hours had passed and she was feeling more able, she waited until the last noises of the house had died down before she snuck a dagger from under her pallet and managed to flip the latch on the outside of her door. She had gathered some belongings together as she waited once the sickness and pain had subsided. Quietly making her way to the kitchen area, she gathered some food and herbs to help with the pain and infection before she stole into the stables.

As she passed her father and brother's workshop, she took the time to sneak in and steal some of the finished weapons to take with her as she didn't know how else she'd protect herself. She finally made it to the stable where she prepared a prize gelding and carefully led it out and down the road. Once she was away from the house, she mounted and dug her heels into the horse's flanks to speed it along the road.

She spent many months crossing fields and forests, avoiding well traveled roads in order to effect her escape. After almost a year as she was resting in an inn, she heard some men telling stories of a tribe of women, known as Amazons, who lived without men and were great warriors. She listened intently to the hazy descriptions of the area of the Amazons before making her way in the direction she thought to be correct.

Anicalysis finally reached a city called Amasia and in this town's inn, heard a story about Amazons who had helped to free the city of a band of Bandits. Making friends with the innkeeper's daughters, who were her age, Anicalysis set out in the direction given by them. She managed to get herself lost in the forest between the River Iris and the River Thermadon and as she thrashed through the underbrush on the edge of the Thermadon, she was suddenly surrounded by women in masks.

Anicalysis is five feet nine inches tall and of medium build. She has bright, sapphire blue eyes and long blonde hair. On her right arm is the scar of the slave mark her father gave her, which though healed continues to fester in her heart. She is a lover of nature and wild creatures and enjoys the solitude of the night.

Ani traveled with Zia and Thalia to the Roman Amazon homeland to defend it against the Roman Army under the new Caesar. 

Tae'Nah athelfi arche: 19 July 2005

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