Kettra Kata

In the ages past, Kettra's ancestors had belonged to a small settlement of Lalafell and Elezen on the borderlands of Gyr Abania and the Garlean Empire. In the of her Grandparents, that small farmland had become contested territory and eventually Imperial soldiers were sent out to claim it. Kettra's family became Imperial citizens, and after the border had come to encircle their settlement, became loyal vassals. Their family enjoyed all of the technological benefits of the Empire, and Kettra's parents were raised as Imperials, gaining an education in Imperial academies. Eventually the two became agents of the Empire, and were employed as spies, their cover being as a married couple of traders, sent in and around rival nations to gather intelligence on the economies of Eorzea's Alliance. Kettra was born as part of their cover, although the spies did come to love one another, and she was brought on the road with no clue to her parent's origin, traveling the countryside in and around their merchant caravans.

Kata was a woman of iron will and iron body, an acclaimed warrior of Ala Mhigo who rose up out of the fighting pits to become an Adventurer. Originally an orphan with nothing to her name, her fame as a fighter won her loyalty and admiration, and with the money from her wins, she created a homestead for those who would join under her banner. Clan Kata, as it came to be called, was a band of warriors who lived under the ideals of freedom from tyrany and the goal of striking it down. As Kata aged, she gave the orphans and street toughs who flocked to her side her name, and the warband of Kata became a true family of choice. That same family was dispatched by Ul'dah to deal with a couple of spies that had come to be found out by a captured Imperial agent who sung like a bird.

A one year old Kettra was sleeping inside of the wagon when Clan Kata struck, surrounding the caravan on the road and mercilessly attacking the Lalafell spies. As her parents died, she heard the noises and the screams and began to cry. The Kata warriors were lead by an aging Roegadyn lancer known as Khett. Khett heard the child from within the wagon and ran into the structure that had already been set ablaze by his kinsmen Dragging the baby Lalafell out and to safety, his heart melted as he held her, and so he took her with him, to the clan. Kettra, as she came to be called was raised as Khett's daughter, and grew up knowing only the clan, and her loyalty to it. Her father taught her to wield the spear and how to fight like a demon when called to it, but also imparted in her the strong ideals of protecting the weak, loyalty to one's nation, and giving it all for family.

As Kettra grew, so did her duties to the clan, and at the age of ten she was joining Kata jobs, working to carry extra ammunition for the archers and carrying messages across battlefields. By fifteen she was a frontline skirmisher next to her adopted father, and at twenty she had worked her way up to the role of field captain of her own team of lancers and archers. Fighting in a dozen battlefields across Eorzea, she became talented leader and well respected warrior of her own fame. And then on her thirtyfirst year the Garleans attacked Cartineaux, and Kata was called in to fight alongside the Alliance. Kettra and her father lead twin pronged assaults against the Empire's best, but they found themselves routed at every turn. The Imperials pushed them back and soon the two were back to back with a mound of their own corpses around them, surrounded by Imperial troopers. As the moon overhead screamed she felt something sharp at her back and saw Khett collapse to the ground, and then the moon above exploded and everything went to white.

When Kettra came to, six months had passed, and she had been taken shelter in the very church where her father and kin had been buried. She showed up at the Lichyard bloodied, huddled in rags, and starving.. and the priests had taken her in. She ate, slept, and otherwise was catatonic-- until she simply snapped out of it.

She left the church without a word of thanks, and stole the coffer of offerings from the priest's office-- using the gil to buy a new spear and sword, and replace her clothes. She eventually traveled to Ul'dah along the main road, holding travelers and merchants at the bladepoint for their goods and coin-- acting as the bandits she had killed for a living mere months before.

She arrived in Ul'dah and put out word with the local underworld that she was looking for work. Her first job was for a local crime ring that hired her to make collections from the refugees for her-- extorting those already down on their luck for coin or whatever they had, in trade for their lives. She did that for a couple of weeks, before she was noticed by the Monetarists. She was a known figure in Ul'dah, her family had worked jobs for them in the past, protecting trade caravans and re-claiming goods that were taken.

A meeting was set between her and a mid-scale merchant who was an agent of the Monetarists, and she was recruited for them, to enact counter-Royalist jobs and put down threats to the wealthy merchant elite. Since the job paid very well, she accepted, and began working for the power players in Ul'dah.

By the end of a year, she had made a name and reputation, even to the ear and tongue of the Syndicate, and was dispatched regularly for jobs of the utmost secrecy to the Monetarists in Thanalan. However, as she worked, a voice within her began to speak up more and more. Since the loss of her family, she had lost her conscience, and become a woman without morality or honor-- but the truth had begun to whisper to her. She opened her eyes and saw that she had been participating in damaging the poorest and the weakest of Ul'dah, enforcing the will of the wealthy, and ensuring they stay that way.

She resigned from her position, and used the great deal of coin she had amassed to buy her freedom from the Monetarists-- leaving her nearly gilless, but free to pursue her own ethical agenda.

Without a path ahead, she left Thanalan, and headed east.

Eventually, the hungry and aimless Lalafell came to the island chain of Hingashi, chasing the tales of other world-wanderers she had met in taverns or on the road. The ship that carried her from Eorzea had taken the last of her coin, and so she arrived in Kugane without anything to her name.

She traveled the port city and worked for a room in the Hostelery, providing entertainment to the patrons by way of stories and song from her far-off homelands. A week into her stay as storyteller and entertainer, a patron got too rough with one of the serving women, and Kettra removed the offending arm with her sword, unbidden and without a moment's thought. The patron was dragged out to the local medic, and the owner of the Hostelery put her in contact with a low-ranking lord in the lands around Kugane who was seeking retainers for his ongoing conflict with a higher ranking lord to the north.

Kettra met with the young Lord over tea, and the two became fast friends. They ended up drinking late into the night, moving to the harder stuff, and when she awoke the next day, she was dressed in the colors and insignia of his house, bearing the three legged crow of his banner. Despite a fuzzy memory, it was clear that drunk Kettra had signed herself into his service, and she went about learning what that meant.

Outside of learning the lifestyle of a Lord's retainer, the grim fact of ritual seppuku if he should fail in the conflict, and how to bow and sit in his presence, she was to be trained in the arts of the Samurai. This was highly irregular, as she was a foreigner and could never hold a title of nobility, but she realized that was her strength with her Lord. She became his wild card-- an immeasurable threat to his enemies who could never know what a 'foreign savage' had up her sleeve, despite her training as Samurai.

Kettra would move up the ranks of her household, becoming the lord's most powerful, prestigious and beloved retainer and warrior within six years. Besting her fellow Samurai in the dojo, she became his personal champion and on the battlefield, his second and if it came to it-- his Kaishakunin.

As the conflict with their neighboring lord became more and more pitched, the Bakufu's peace became torn apart, and war was declared between the two lords on the island of Shishu. Bannermen, house retainers, samurai and the lord's small armed forces gathered on the battlefield and faced one another. Kettra rode to the right of her Lord's horse, a shield on her left arm to protect him from arrows, and a spear in her right arm. As the sun rose, the two forces clashed amidst a rain of bowfire and spells. The battle was one-sided in the end, as the opposing Lord had a larger army, and a secondary force of mercenary ronin and ninja.

As her lord's unit moved in for a kill on their opposing lord's formation, they became surrounded-- as one of her lord's generals broke off and betrayed the young lord with his retainers. The pincer was perfect, and the young lord was impaled from behind, outside of the range of Kettra's shield. Seeing an opening in the formation, she hauled his body onto the back of her horse and fled from the battle.

Flanked by rival horsemen on either side, she threw her weapons in desperation and broke them from pursuit, making for the coast of the island. Abandoning her horse there, she beheaded the corpse of her master, and buried his body along the coast, and his head a mile south from there-- so his honor could never be destroyed by hanging from a wall or sitting on a pike.

When she returned to the site of the battle, it was already over, and local scavengers were picking over the corpses for weapons and armor. In her rage, she slew the scavenging civilians, and began to dig graves for all of the slain, on both sides. By the dawn of the next day, the battlefield was a Lichyard of its own sorts, and she left, now a Woman of the Waves- a ronin.

Now masterless, she decided to leave the Far East, and return to Eorzea, traveling the lands on what coin she had, and helping those who needed it. She declared her path to that of the Musha Shugyo-- the warrior pilgrimage. Rather than serving any lord or government, she would be a warrior of the roads, honing her craft without the protection of family or school.

Her path returned her to Ul'dah, where she would gain minor fame once more, now as an honorable warrior who would teach the defenseless to defend themselves, and join adventurers who sought aide in their hunts and deeds-- taking only what she needed to survive from their loot in trade for her services.

She continues to explore Eorzea, to learn new ways of the warrior, and study the lifestyle and mindfulness that her once-master had taught her.