History of the Ruto Clan
Ruth and Grayson
In her youth, Rosa Ruto was an explorer, her voyages sponsored by both the governments of Iothaenea and Astrialum. She explored the farthest stretches of Dovindi, even going as far as to venture into hostile and untamed lands blasted barren by the scalding heat of the sun, or frigid and stripped of life by the soul-stealing cold.
On one of her expeditions into the northern tundra of Astrialum’s hinterlands, she met a shy young sailor in the Astrialum Navy named Grayson. The two fell deeply in love and had five children, whom, once old enough, they planned to take along along on their travels.
The War
But then, war broke out between the two nations. Borders were slammed shut, roads walled, blockades formed, coastlines patrolled. Rosa’s sponsorships were pulled, her main source of income rendered impossible.
The young couple and their children were forced to settle in an overcrowded ‘Sauna City’, blossomed from an ice-drilling outpost carved in the ice of the CyroSea.
Here the children grew up, in cramped conditions, blasted by the cold of the blizards or the bubbling heat of the ice-drilling engines, the skies filled with smoke and smog and steam.
Rosa too was unhappy, and though she tried to lift her family’s spirits with stories of her voyages, her own joy began to chip and melt away like the ice below.
While never abandoning her children, she became distant from her husband Grayson.
Genki and Nomalanga
Genki, the oldest of Rosa and Grayson’s children, was never one to vocally complain, inside, he could not stand it. Seeing his mother’s deepening depression, his father’s complacency, the fighting and screaming of his younger siblings, never having privacy nor room, he searched for the quickest out he could find, and as a teenager he joined the Astrialum military.
Badly injured in a pivotal battle and honorably discharged before he’d even turned sixteen, while in the hospital recovering, he met a nurse’s assistant.
Warm, friendly and funny, the young woman would cheer up him with whispered jokes when her mentor wasn’t looking.
Genki and Nomalanga’s most vivid memory from those days recovering are of Genki laughing so hard at one of Nomalanga’s jokes that he tore open a sutured wound.
Terrifying, at the time, but funny to look back on now.
Soon Genki discovered that Nomalanga was actually an [[Iothaenean]] native, trapped in the wrong country when the war broke out. She was actually living in squalor, and her employers often refused to pay her, knowing she had little legal recourse in the midst of such a turbulent war, with nationalistic hatred at an all time high.
Genki felt rocked with guilt, surprised Nomalanga actually cared for him, knowing that in battle, he’d killed her countrymen. But Nomalanga never saw things as so black and white, understanding as she got to know Genki better that he had signed up as an out from poverty, never expressing any desire to kill for the sake of killing.
Genki insisted Nomalanga quit her job, and return home with him. He would find work back in the Sauna City, perhaps as an ice-miner if he had to, and support her until this war was over and she could return home to Iothaenea.
She did so.
But on the way home, snuggled in a small train cabin together, the two grew a little too close.
And conceived a child. Throwing their plans out of the window.
The Birth of MC
Despite making a cramped home even more cramped, the arrival of Nomalanga and the birth of MC was like a ray of hope for the Ruto family. Both having their son come home, unharmed by war, and bringing such a kind and lovely wife with him, seemed to melt the ice that had formed over Rosa.
Enchanted by her grandchild and trading stories about the geographic wonders of Iothaenea with her new daughter-in-law, she began to smile once again.
Nomalanga was wise beyond her years, honest and hardworking, and helped out her new family as much as she could.
And as far as children go, MC was a bundle of joy, a pleasant baby and a warm child, rarely crying, eyes always bright and curious.
Not too much younger than their younger aunts and uncles, MC grew up thinking of them much like older siblings.
MC’s Adolescence
When [[The Great Drowning]] happened, shocking the two nations and abruptly ending the war, MC was around ten years old.
They spend their adolescence in a time of uneasy peace and quiet fear.
Borders were slowly reopened, allowing travel between the two nations again, but the catastrophe at Titan’s Eye did little to ease poverty and unrest.
Astrialum doubled their efforts to break through the ice, hoping resources could be found below, causing waves of new immigrants to flood the Sauna Cities.
And though restrictions were eased, allowing Rosa to restart her career as an explorer, the market for people willing to risk their lives to explore the planet’s most dangerous reaches was flooded by people, younger more desperate people, fearful of the Titan’s Eye and willing to be paid much less than what Rosa once was.
In their early twenties, taking what they’d learned from their parents and grandparents, MC began working as a porter on the docks, helping supply these expeditions.
| It’s here MC met Taza, a newly arrived [[Isothaenea | Isothaenean]] immigrant who worked as a clerk in the same shipyard. |
MC was amazed by Taza’s fury and conviction. She was clever, excellent at what she did, kept her eyes on the books and made sure none of the other [[Isothaenean]] immigrants working in the shipyard were cheated out of what they were owned, or exploited for extra or dangerous labor.
Like MC’s parents before them, MC and Taza hit it off, fell in love, and got engaged.
The Attack
One evening while waiting outside a grocery for her MC to pick up the last ingredients for the family’s dinner, Taza was passed by a group of drunken Astrialum soldiers, who hurled insults and slurs at her.
Upon hurling insults right back, was struck in the head by a thrown bottle of beer, which shattered, sliced her face, and drenched her clothes.
Injured and righftully indignant, she opened a cannister of offal and blood that she’d gotten earlier from the butcher’s shop, and threw it upon her attackers.
This escalation likely could have ended much worse, had MC and the grocer inside not seen the group advancing upon Taza from inside.
MC had been taught how by their father Genki, and rushed outside to defend Taza.
But they’d also been taught when not to fight. And when they realized they were facing soldiers, whom had weapons, and were outnumbered, they tried to put themselves between their fiancee and her attackers, preparing instead to try and descelate.
That is until one of the soldiers off to the side drew his sword, and advanced on Taza as if intending to cut her down.
It was then without hesitating that MC threw a scalding pot of stew into his face to stop him, before grabbing Taza and fleeing.
The Aftermath
While in any other circumstances, the violence of that evening could’ve been overlooked as some sort of drunken brawl that had gotten out of hand, there had been many witnesses, and it was just their luck that one of the soldiers, the one, in fact, whom MC threw the scalding hot stew into the face of, was the son of a high-ranking government official.
He’d been blinded and disfigured by the hot liquid and steam.
And despite having been defending their partner from violence, perhaps even death, MC was honorable to a fault, and was willing to face the repercussions for their actions.
But Grandma Rosa would have none of it. Using this as the final reason she needed to pick up her family and leave this place, she and Grayson gathered up their entire family, and fled the city, and Astrialum entirely.
Next: The Storm.