Amaya

Human / Monk

Submitted character story

Amaya was born into a big family as one of the many siblings. Maybe she was the 5th, maybe the 7th of 13 children, the family lost track between the first and the last two. As one of the many, she never got much attention, be it from her parents or anyone else for that matter. Instead of making a ruckus like some of her siblings, she kept invisible. Listening in. Watching. Noticing. Perceiving. 

When she was 5 or 6, noone cared to remember the exact age of the middles, a monk travelled through her town. And that monk noticed. Her name was Tyssa, and she would become the most important person in Amaya's life. Tyssa not only saw the invisible girl, she saw beyond her invisibility. When she asked Amaya's parents to take her in, they reacted with spectacular indifference, an just like that, Amaya's new life as a Monk Trainee, Sister of the Jade Lotus began. 

The monastery itself was built in layers, like a blooming lotus. At its outer edges, Amaya learned form: strikes, stances, breath. Deeper within, she deepened her unsterstanding of what had brought her here in the first place: perception. How to read intention in a glance, how to feel tension before it becomes action. At the innermost sanctum, Amaya learned what was the core of the Order of the Lotus
The Open Hand is a philosophy of interruption. To strike is simple. To end a conflict, precisely, cleanly, without excess, that is what you are meant to do.

As final part of her training, every Sister of the Lotus is supposed to travel the lands and train at the other three Lotus monasteries, leaving Jade in the journey to Onyx, Amethyst and Jaspis.