#zhanali

she’s a shaman, born and (mostly) raised in Dazar’alor: her parents were both guards for the city, and she tended to be left to her own devices a lot, so she developed a habit of wandering down by the coasts outside the city quite a bit, not having a whole lot of oversight. it wasn’t that her parents didn’t love her, they just couldn’t keep eyes on her all day, and if she wanted to be out exploring, she’d be out exploring lmao. it was during this time she figured out she had some kind of affinity with nature magic, and over the years began experimenting with stronger and stronger powers.

in the end her exploring kinda came back to bite her when she wandered farther than she ever had and found herself captured by a pirate vessel that’d run aground on one of the nearby, smaller islands. purely out of habit, Zhanali tended to smooth the waves as the ship went, and it didn’t take long for the pirate ship to figure out the source--Zhanali.

she spent months with them as a young teen, not having any idea where she’d ended up or how to get home, but she finally lashed out at them when the ship’s crew tried to make her sail the vessel directly through a storm: the storm reacted to the strength of her anger and fear--hugely uncharacteristic for her, but everyone’s got their breaking points--and by all appearances, the ship had just been struck by a massive bolt of lightning. the shock of it made her hair start to grow white, eventually, but there were other consequences to the flashy display. a certain night elf pirate captain, whose vessel happened to be avoiding the storm in question, saw the other ship get lit up from a distance and ordered her crew to investigate.

Miri didn’t find much at the ship’s wreckage--the accidental lightning bolt shattered the bulk of the ship--but she did find a terrified Zhanali, clinging to a piece of the ship.

Miri and the crew of the Silent Tide took Zhanali aboard and helped her recover from her ordeal the best they could, but ultimately Miri knew this wasn’t the place for someone as young as her, and asked Zhanali where she could be dropped off. returning to the sea around Zandalar saw the Tide be targeted as a pirate ship (which, in all fairness, it is), and attacked. Miri managed to go aground on the coast away from Dazar’alor and assigned one of her crew to make sure Zhanali got back to civilization safely.

(as a side note, this was also the circumstance where she lost her eye wrestling a naga that tried to pull her under the water while she salvaged some of her ship’s cargo, but anyway)

Zhanali was reunited with both her parents, and undertook more serious education in the use of her magic. when they figured she had a unique talent for nature-based magic (and had some experience helping ships sail more smoothly, even if she earned that experience in a less than favorable situation) she became a sort of....good luck charm and guide for smaller vessels: both fishermans’ vessels as well as official fleet patrol ships, later on.