Pastry Garden

Life is competitive for a noble Torix with many rival siblings. Only a few will inherit estates and thus become capable of (legitimately) starting a brood of their own, and those that don't still squabble among themselves for influential leadership positions. This was especially true of Charis, who had nearly twenty other noble sisters and brothers all gunning for power. The odds were stacked against her, but young Charis was ambitious and bright. Through intrigue, bullying and some other underhanded actions she has admitted to very few even years after the fact, she eventually secured herself two good husbands and a small but fertile uninhabited demense near the edge of Daktylis territory.

As she underwent preparations to establish her colony, a serious complication revealed itself: her pheromones were critically weak. All Torix have pheromone glands to aid in subtler forms of communication (usually indications of emotion or the general state of a colony), and the pheromones of breeding queens and fertile princesses are strong enough to be detected by their antennae for miles. While it is not actually mind control as many other races mistakenly believe, these pheromones do allow queens to keep colonies of even thousands of worker daughters well organized and informed. Worker Torix do not need to hold any leadership positions so long as the queen and the other ruling nobility have pheromones to communicate with them. Charis expected her pheromone glands to grow to their expected state when she reached maturity, but it became apparent that this would never be the case. Torix culture does not look highly upon queens who cannot control their brood, and with this defect Charis feared she would lose everything she worked so hard for.

She went to numerous Torix healers, and they all told her the same thing: this is not something that could be fixed. Refusing to accept her fate, she set forth from the lands of her House with her husbands and a few attendants to search the lands of other races for something that could help.  Her intention was to locate either sorcery or surgery that could repair her body, visiting grand universities and isolated experts alike. While she originally had hoped she would find what she sought before long, the journey kept going on and took her farther from home than she ever expected. She and her often got caught up in some manner of local conflict, or were waylaid by misfortune or their own mistakes, or simply ran out of money and had to find ways to support themselves as the adventure dragged on. She saw world full of cultures vastly different to her own; even foreign Torix seemed to behave oddly. They were totally alien at first, though as time went on and she began to know the other peoples of the world more personally, she began to see how people built societies that worked (more or less) without the rules and rituals she once that were absolutely necessary. While she never gave up on the core ideals that were instilled in her by her upbringing, she saw saw parts of her tradition being unnecessary or even counterproductive to what she imagined was a good society.

And so, eventually she made the decision to return home with her band, its ranks now having been swelled with some new friends she made along the way.  Years on the road with no results made her give up on restoring her body, but with the knowledge she gained abroad gave her hope that she could perhaps run her colony in a way that didn't necessitate such direct control over her brood. While it was an exciting, hopeful prospect, she was still worried. She was unsure how her House would take this unorthodox behavior, and she was haunted by the myraid ways her engineered society could possibly fall apart. Still, she pushed onwards, as she always had during her travels. She made her preparations and started her brood.

Her brood is still relatively young and small, numbering only a little over 200 workers, though her demense does contain denizens of other species and a number of transient residents like traders and specialists. Without her pheromones, her workers need to be more independent, and authority is much less centralized than in other colonies. She hopes that the cultural difference between worker and noble will eventually disappear over time, though some old habits die hard. The rest of the House view her colony with suspicion, though for now they seem to tolerate her. She rules with a gentle hand, though there is much work she does away from the public eye of her brood in ensuring the independence and stability of her lands.

While Doodads can be born through normal reproductive methods, sometimes they are be created. Ingrid is part of the latter group, having come into existence through her blacksmith father trying to create a powerful magic weapon in his forge. The spell did not work as intended, and instead animated his anvil into a Doodad child.

Over the years he raised her as his own daughter, teaching her his craft. He named her Ingrid after his late wife, and Wayland after the legendary smith, which he felt was a fitting title. Ingrid grew tremendous in size, and through the blacksmith's love and tender care became in turn a loving and tender woman, despite her bizarre stature. As much as she loves her father, she yearns to leave the nest one day, always pestering passers-by from outside the village about stories of the world beyond her hometown.

A product of both craft, sorcery and love, Ingrid Stahl is a unique creature. She appears as a titanic woman with skin of steel and a head shaped like a blacksmith's anvil. She towers over seven feet tall, though weighs a surprisingly manageable 350lbs, indicating her flesh is not normal metal. She is thickly built, with broad shoulders, bulging biceps and leg muscles and a solid neck and back. Her core is sturdy and broad, though a little soft indicating her body is balanced with fat as well as muscle. Or it would be if she were a creature of flesh and blood.