Nathalia Altangerel, Keeper of the Chronicles
Written By: Joni
Created: March 2010
Curriculum Vitae
- Gender: F
- Hometown: Ankor Dail, Shienar
Channeling Information
- Elemental Strengths (strong to weak): Air, Spirit, Earth, Fire, Water
- Talents: Earth Singing, Concealment
Physical Description
Nathalia is of short to average height with an athletic build that sometimes makes her seem taller than she actually is. She has dark features and pale, slightly freckled skin. Her eyes are a cool blue-grey, under long dark eyelashes and brows. Her equally dark hair is wavy and falls just passed her shoulders. She has a sharp mind and steadfast resolve, for better or for worse—her determination, even competitiveness, forces her to pursue her desired result with alacrity and tenacity, yet her sense of honour and discipline from a Borderlander upbringing keeps her ambitions in check.
Biography
Her first memory as child was of crying and being hushed against her mother’s chest, as she sat with her sister, brother and cousins in one of the ornately dark rooms of the women’s quarters in the fortress of Ankor Dail. She knew vaguely of a great danger outside—one that could creep silently through the dark and kill her swiftly and without remorse—yet understood nothing of why they had to hide and let her father and the other men of the keep fend off the attackers. Years later, Nathalia didn’t know whether or not it was an Aiel or Trolloc raid that had reduced her to tears as a child—either was as likely during that time. Fortresses on the Spine of the World were as likely attacked by one as they were the other.
There were peaceful years, ones of fishing on the headwaters of the River Erinin, hunting parties that took them deep into the quiet forests of Shienar, riding from village to village to visit farms, where she and her brother were let to sleep in the straw of barns—a great privilege and great fun when their father allowed them to do so. Her family, the Altangerel House, was one of the lesser but respected Houses in Ankor Dail and across Shienar; her father and her father’s father, and her grandfather’s father, had kept their fiefs healthy, men trained, and estates in good working order. Efficient and honest, they lived to serve and protect the people of Shienar, the Borderlands, and Westlands as a whole.
Nathalia’s siblings—elder sister Joisuleen and younger brother Calver—were as set in their Shienarian ways as her parents. Joisuleen, elder by six years, was a proper girl, who followed in her mother’s footsteps in the day to day care of maintaining a household such as the Altangerel’s. Her brother, younger by just two years, was a comrade and playmate during their childhood, yet he accepted the mantle of responsibility that came with his inheritance of manor stewardship, and grew into a fine young man under the tutelage of her father and their shambayan.
As a youth, Nathalia didn’t know where she fit in to her parent’s household. Sometimes she was deemed as capable as Joisuleen when it came to helping the shatayan or organizing household necessities, yet her sister always won out when it came to having the real responsibility. She was allowed to train in weaponry with her brother, but only insofar as it didn’t interrupt her ability to be neatly washed and dressed up for suppertime—and as washing courtyard grit out of her long hair and fingernails took the better part of an hour, that time, too, was limited. Her days were busy, but not full.
That changed when a small party arrived from the west, proud and dangerous looking men on fine Tairien stock, women in long coats and dresses of all sorts of worldly fashions. Nathalia watched them arrive from one of the watch towers along Ankor Dail, a cold wind at their backs signaling another fierce winter storm. The clouds were already amassing overtop the Spine of the World—the travellers were riding hard, to reach the fortress before the storm hit.
The blizzard marked the beginning of a long winter, and a difficult one made only slightly easier that the three women were Aes Sedai from the White Tower. Her father, and Ankor Dail’s Lord Rier, knew them for who they were, and gifted them with the most beautiful guest rooms in the entire fortress. They were careful to see to the Aes Sedai’s needs in every way—waylaid as they were by the winter storms—and their attentions were rewarded in ways that only Aes Sedai could perform. Nathalia wasn’t able to interact with the women at first, as at sixteen she was expected to spend time with her mother and sister, instead of follow strangers around the fortress. But she heard quiet and awe-filled discussions of how the Aes Sedai had preserved all of the fall harvest so that none of it would go bad over the winter; how they had made never-melting ice to keep fresh milk from going off; how they had healed the Lord’s son’s arm, and that they were insisting on meeting as many young women in the fortress as possible before the weather permitted them to return to their duties. It was also part of the rumour that if these young women had a certain sort of aptitude, they would be required to return to the White Tower with the Aes Sedai to become Aes Sedai themselves. Overhearing her aunt and a goodwife speak in such excited tones made her belly almost ache; Light, could she ever become Aes Sedai, and learn how to do such wondrous things? It was an idea that excited her in its impossibility.
Of course, it wasn’t long before the Aes Sedai conducted their interviews of the young women in Ankor Dail, and it was found that Nathalia had the spark. She could use the One Power, and her life was about to change. The winter storm lasted weeks—time enough for her to get to know the party of Aes Sedai whom she would be returning to Tar Valon with. There was Merumia Sedai, of the Yellow Ajah, Faala Sedai of the Red, and Kirarelle of the Green. The handful of men with them were three of Kirarelle’s Warders, two Warder’s apprentices, and Merumia’s single Warder. It was during an indoor sparring match that Nathalia met Kaendren Dovin, one of the Warder apprentices. His skills with the sword were as finely honed as his southerner body, he was educated and travelled, and only a few years older than herself. They had an instant rapport, and would spend entire evenings talking about the White Tower, Tar Valon, his travels, and her life at the very Spine of the World. It wasn’t long before other feelings began to blossom, and they spent more time not talking in quiet corners of the fortress.
Nathalia’s departure for the White Tower was a tearful one, yet she felt as alive as a young girl in love and fulfilling a dream could be. Their journey back to Tar Valon was swift—none of the Aes Sedai wanted to be delayed due to the weather again—and within a space of a few short days, Nathalia’s name was written in the novice book, and she donned the white dress of servitude.
Life at the Tower
Tower life was hard, but not as hard as life in the Borderlands could be. In Shienar, it was doctrine that everyone had to work for the greater good. Once personal needs were met, there was always something to be done that helped ensure another victory over a Trolloc raid, to keep the fall harvest from spoiling, to learn or do to keep day to day life going smoothly. Whether a farmer’s daughter or a Lord’s daughter, everyone learned that hard work was the key to survival. This upbringing served Nathalia well in her first few years at the White Tower—where other novices had been used to being coddled, she kept her nose to the grindstone and applied herself with vigor to whatever her teachers set her to. She was not the most studious—she learned quite quickly that the Brown would never suit her—she was not the most caring—nor would the Yellow, her ability to Heal was abysmal—she was not the most level-headed—almost entirely ruling out the Grey and the White—but there were niches that she fell into that suited her just fine.
The one thing that impeded her training was Kaendren. She saw very little of him the first few weeks she wore white, and after months of time spent always in each other’s presence, found his absence almost harder to bear than no longer having her network of friends and family. That novices and Gaidin in Training could barely spend two moments together without an Aes Sedai sticking her nose in between them was another matter. There were evenings, however, where she was able to sneak out of the novice quarters and arrange a meeting with him. He knew many covert spots for clandestine meetings, and she found a few abandoned corners as well. Once she was accustomed to this secretive romance, she loved it—and him—all the more. She lay in bed dreaming of becoming a Green, of bonding him as her Warder as soon as she was raised to Aes Sedai, and arriving back home at Ankor Dail to help lead skirmishing parties against Trollocs. They would fight side by side with her brother’s best men, and they would lay waste to Shadowspawn all across the Blight.
That was, until the day that she thought she had left a book where she and Kaendren had met the previous night. She turned the corner in one of the Tower’s empty halls, and found him with his hands up another novice’s skirts, very passionately ignoring everything around him. Rage filled her like she had never known it before, and she embraced saidar and yanked the two young lovers apart with weaves of Air. She shook from the anger she felt, the betrayal and the pain, and shook from the amount of saidar coursing through her veins. She was a strong channeler, something her teachers occasionally remarked at, and the novice she’d found in Kaendren’s arms had nothing on her. The next few minutes were a blur to her—screaming at Kaendren, slapping him, and then an Aes Sedai (who had doubtless felt channeling nearby) appearing and slamming a shield between Nathalia and saidar. She spent the next six months in penance for channeling without supervision, and an additional three months for having canoodled with a Gaidin in Training (it hadn’t taken the Aes Sedai more than a moment to put together what was going on). She cried herself to sleep for the first week—partly because of a broken heart, partly from the welts on her bottom from having to visit the Mistress of Novices every night.
Kaendren said that they hadn’t been exclusive. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, but he needed more than what one novice’s schedule permit her to do. He still loved her, couldn’t she see that? It was just physical with the other girl. Only the Mistress of Novices’ switch kept her from channeling at him again. Kaendren left the Tower a month after the episode, and she heard rumours that a young Green had bonded him as her Warder.
It took months to earn her way back into the Aes Sedai’s good graces again. She applied herself diligently to lessons and readings, wrote essays and completed chores and signed up for volunteer work in Tar Valon to help feed the less fortunate. She didn’t even so much glance at the Training Grounds, or at a Trainee, for the better part of two years. There was no dancing at festivals for her. Nathalia became a straight arrow, flying head on into her Aes Sedai aspirations. Four and a half years after joining the White Tower, she was finally summoned to enter the Three Arches, and don the banded hem.
Acceptedhood
Having redeemed herself in the eyes of the Tower, and with greater freedoms in her studies and activities, Nathalia began to fulfill her full potential, both channeling and in the rest of her training. Her aptitudes in the One Power were now very clear, and sisters from several Ajahs began inviting her to their rooms to discuss her choices. Nathalia had dreamed of becoming Green as a novice, but had matured a great deal since then. She no longer wished to have several Warders and march into the Blight to take on the Dark One himself, as she had at sixteen. She wanted to be able to fight, both against the Shadow and for maintaining peace in all the lands. Men were as likely to take up arms against each other as against Trollocs, and the litany of wars and skirmishes and feuds since the Breaking of the World disturbed her greatly. History was something she excelled in, as was the study of warfare techniques and motions. Violence was certainly something to be abhorred, yet understanding how a foe thought and moved could sometimes be crucial to stopping him in his tracks. Nathalia’s Ajah choices became clear: Red or Green. Both appealed to her in different ways.
Nathalia spent five years as an Accepted, becoming both a woman and a mature one at that. Her horizons had broadened significantly since coming to the Tower—a Borderlander still, but now she didn’t always cast her thoughts northwards to what her mother, sister, and family would say or think about what she was learning or doing. Some of her Ajah tutors—including Kirarelle and Faala, who had first discovered her ability to channel—were generous with their worldly information, keeping her appraised of the goings on in other nations. False Dragons, political upheavals, increased or decreased Trolloc raids from the Blight. It was information that was relatively common knowledge in a place like the White Tower, and Nathalia soaked it in and wanted more. She loved her classes that pushed her to think in different ways about how the world worked, and enjoyed the company of her classmates when they argued (intelligently) back. She strived to always be able to counter their opinions, which earned her the attention and recommendation of her teachers and fellow students. Not all of it was positive—some Accepted seemed to want to walk placidly in the direction that their teachers told them to go—but there were kindred spirits amongst those who would argue back. Melina, a woman she’d known most of her training, was one such kindred spirit. For all Melina was being groomed for the White Ajah, their heated debates had them removed from the silent and jealously guarded Library depositories.
By the end of her time as an Accepted, Nathalia was deft with the weaves of her testing, and could perform them all under whatever duress her teachers could provide. She knew that the Red Ajah was the one for her—protecting the people against another Breaking, serving in keeping peace in the lands from male channelers who would slowly lose their sanity and bring chaos and violence with them—and waited with keen anticipation the day that she would be summoned, yet again, to prove herself to the White Tower. When that day did come, just after her twenty-fifth birthday, she was welcomed with open arms into the halls of the Red Ajah.
Life as Aes Sedai
As every new Aes Sedai learns, once donning the shawl there is as much to learn as there was while in white. Nathalia was swept into the Red Ajah’s traditions and customs quite fully, but it was only two years before she was sent with a few other of her Sisters to track down a man who had been spotted channeling in Amadicia. It was a difficult task to track the man with the ever-present threat of Whitecloaks, but they were successful in apprehending the man and bringing him back to the White Tower to be put on trial. It was her first exposure to a true madman—they had found the man crouched in rags and ashes, sobbing and wailing unintelligibly about the burnt homestead around him. The only thing that Nathalia knew to compare it to was what a farmhouse looked like after a Trolloc raid close to the Blight. But that all of the destruction could be caused by a single man instead of a Fist of Trollocs shocked her. The man had gone crazy from the Taint and had left a path of death and destruction behind him as long as her father’s holdings in Shienar. She felt pity for the poor man, but not regret that he had been gentled.
The years, then decades, passed. Nathalia spent time both in and outside of the White Tower, on missions to track down insane men, on errands for the Ajah administration, and helping to extend and improve the intelligence networks that fed the Red Ajah the information it needed to keep the Westlands safe from the men destined to slowly go insane. She did not question what had to be done—as one did not question putting down a rabid dog, she did what she had to do to keep herself and others safe. There were gruesome scenes to be held, when the crazed men evaded capture at any cost, and only the morality to find solace in at the end of the day.
A free thinker, Nathalia was not always in favour with her Ajah for disobeying orders or taking matters into her own hands. Her progression within the Red Ajah was therefore not as expedient as it could have been, but it was steady and soon her accomplishments, not just her strength in the One Power, earned her respect and a small amount of clout within the Red quarters. Nathalia never enjoyed the politics of the White Tower—her Shienarian upbringing made her uncomfortable with ceremony and intrigue not directly related to survival or duty—yet she was able to tolerate it enough to keep her head above water in the ever changing currents. Her skills and willingness in civic administration, in the White Tower and within Tar Valon, often seemed to earn her favour within the Ajah quarters. Few Aes Sedai were willing to “get their hands dirty,” so to speak, in helping with the mundane tasks of maintaining a city—yet if Aes Sedai help was requested, Nathalia was often one of the sisters assisting with the upkeep of the city.
She had held the shawl for nearly seventy years when she was selected to be a member of the party sent to the Black Tower to ‘fix’ the problem of the men who seemed to believe they were able to channel in the name of the Dragon Reborn. All of the Aes Sedai ended up Bonded to an Asha’man, and were shown quite a different sight to what they were expecting. The Amyrlin Seat at the time had led them to believe that the Black Tower was little more than a small farm with a few men playing at using saidin, grotesquely emulating the White Tower’s structure. What they found was entirely different. Nathalia spent just over three months in the Black Tower, living with the man who had Bonded her: Asha’man Guyrian Donnel. Their relationship could have been described as a friendship, and they developed a certain regard and respect for one another over the time they spent together.
Nathalia, by chance or circumstance, was one of the three Sisters returned to the White Tower on overtures of peace. The Amyrlin Seat was shortly thereafter deposed for having acted behind the Hall’s back, and Nathalia was named Keeper to her successor, Melina Damir.
Writing History
- Unawares – Raising string with Melina Sedai, Candance Sedai, and Asha’man Locke
- Possible Punishment – penance role-play with Novice Corvin
