To many, the island nation, now Kingdom of Ryalta likely seems like an idyllic paradise. But those who live in a place where mercenary ideals and pursuit of power have often been the very engine that fuels the machine, those with little power and even less influence often find themselves scrabbling for even the smallest foothold in their world. And into that world came Lyris. Youngest daughter of a hardened salvager and his hard-scrabble wife, Lyris spent the early years of her life living a life of graft and hunger, never quite knowing when the next meal would come or from where. As soon as she was old enough, she began to work with, though truer might be to say for, her parents, taking whatever work she could find, need and desperation breaking whatever will the girl might have had to think beyond the pain in her belly and the plight of parents and siblings. Mucking stall, collecting fallen grains at the flour mills, scrubbing floors at the worst of the inns and drink houses that the island had to offer became simply…the only way to survive.
It was at one of those inns, more of a brothel, really when chance, or circumstance came to her. Though what is given in one hand, is often taken in the other. She had been promised a few hammers to work as a serving girl, delivering drinks, saving the prostitutes from having to do such menial tasks. Such manual labour did not, after all, bring coin in to the madam who ran the lodging. Lyris found herself approached by one of the men frequenting the establishment, and mistaking her for one of the whores who made the place their place of business, offered the girl a few hammers for her time. And while the thought of it sickened her, hammers in hand rather than the promise of payment, which was not always fulfilled, won the day, and she accepted. It was not an ideal life, of course, but what life could be, in her situation? And so, a different life than she would have wished for herself began. And if she often found herself on the receiving end of hard words and harder blows? Well, it seemed a small, if painful, price to pay not to feel that bite of hunger in her belly, or see the same in the eyes of parents and sibling. And so, she plied her trade, saving whatever money she could, saving always half of the payment for herself, unbeknownst to her family and tucking it away in secret.
After a few years of work, and after trade had improved between the island and the rest of the western world, Lyris, determined as she was to escape the hopelessness and brutality, managed to pay passage for a ship to Four Corners, and departed the island, vowing the herself that she would never again step foot onto its soil. Arriving at the city, she quickly found one of the brothels and took up her trade, the only one she yet had. And then, fortune of another sort did find her, as one of the courtesans from the Academy, doing her rounds of the brothels where, now and again, some stock which might be useful could be recruited, happened upon the girl and invited her to train as an apprentice, following all of the usual contracts and customs. And so she did, taking a new name, Elixane, and plying her trade, learning every skill and manner of art she could, anything that would allow her to forget the girl she had been in the streets of Ryalta and in the back alleys of Four Corners and become the woman she wished to be. Her keen mind, honed over years of hard scrabble, her looks, her skilled voice and her unwavering ambition to excel saw her well established for the work. When it came time to complete her apprenticeship, she chose to remain at the Academy. It offered a much more stable promise of income than attempting to work solely for herself. And at the Academy she's remained, an established courtesan, though always she seeks ever to rise in her ambitions, to climb the ladder of success and influence. To power, always on her own terms.