Mahlea Locklaha

 Mahlea Locklaha

Species: Human

Sex: Female

Gender Identity: Female

Sexual Orientation: Lesbian

Pronouns: She/her

Languages Spoken:

-Saraw Basic (Native language)

-Arturian (Fluent)

-Skellig (Conversational)

Eye Color: Brown

Hair/Fur Color: Black

Birth date: January 18th, 29 BR

Death date: January 27th, 76 AR (Age 105)

Birthplace: Grays Creek, Saraw Tribal Realm, Caput Tatiium

Place of death: Maxton City, Saraw Republic, Navayu

Burial place: Cremated, ashes scattered in Lowry's Swamp.

Titles:

-Knight of the Square Table (13 BR-death)

-Buster of UniSyn (21 AR-death)

-Interim Leader of Navayu (21-22 AR)

-GTU Senator from Navayu's 5th District (22-34 AR)

-Grand Chieftess of the Saraw Tribe (34-76 AR)

Residences:

-Grays Creek, Saraw Tribal Lands, Caput Tatiium (29-14 BR)

-Death Row, Red Cod Island Maximum Security Prison, Ninstints, Federal District, Caput Tatiium (14-13 BR)

-Castle Arturia, Caerbannog, Arturia (13-2 BR)

-Harrow, Ishga (2 BR-21 AR)

-Sky Palace, Arctic Zone, Navayu (21-22 AR)

-Grays Creek, Saraw Republic, Navayu (22-34 AR)

-Maxton City, Saraw Republic, Navayu (34-101 AR)

Affiliations/Loyalties:

-Caput Tatiium (later Navayu)

-Saraw Tribe

-Ishga Empire

-Knights of the Square Table

-Galactic Treaty Union

Family:

-Madison Lowry (Biological mother)

-David Locklaha (Biological father)

-King Arturius (Adoptive father/mentor)

-Bowdig (Adoptive mother/mentor)

Mentors:

-King Arturius

-Bowdig

-Michael

10 Closest Friends:

-Bowdig

-Michael

-Weasel

-King Arturius

-TBD

Students:

-TBD

Enemies:

-The Cabal

-Tatian Empire

-UNISYN

-Aryavartan Empire

BIO

Mahlea Locklaha was born 29 years before the end of Book 1 in Grays Creek, a small village deep in the swamps of the Saraw Tribal Realm on Caput Tatiium. While her early life was mostly uneventful, her family, as well as most of her tribe, however, struggled with poverty, in large part due to being denied the funding that comes from being a recognized tribe of Caput Tatiium due to Tate, the dictator of Caput Tatiium, refusing to grant them tribal status. As a result, food was often very difficult to come by outside of the major cities, so farming and hunting were the only real options. While Mahlea's mother tended to a small corn crop and raised chickens, her father would go hunting in the woods and sell whatever parts of the animals the family couldn't eat in the village market. He would sometimes bring home rice from the market, which her mother would sometimes cook with chicken in a dish called "bog". While Mahlea usually stayed at home with her mother, her father sometimes took her with him on trips to the market since he thought she needed to get out of the house more. On the way back from one of these trips, her father saw a perfect opportunity to shoot a large deer in the woods and Mahlea saw him take his gun out, shoot it, and kill it. Mahlea thought that was just the coolest thing ever and demanded to learn how to use the weapon, with her father eventually acquiescing and secretly taking her out to hunt more times, having her practice on the ducks in the swamp. During this time, her father also demonstrated to her the antiseptic properties of pine sap. 

When she was at home, her mother taught her the teachings of the prophet Subhraj Anand, made sure she prayed 5 times a day as per Anandist teaching, and took her every week to the village square to observe the Shamans. The Saraw practiced the unique Southern Sect of Navayan Anandism, a rigidly puritannical one that emphasized a literal reading of the Anandist Manifesto and Book of the Seven Truths; the idea that all other sects were heathens doomed to reincarnation as worms or insects; and the immorality of homosexuality, being transgender, abortion, premarital sex, marijuana, marriage outside the Southern Sect, and alcohol, and that those who were involved with these were apostates doomed to reincarnation as worms or insects. Mahlea internalized these ideas from an early age, which started causing problems when Mahlea realized at around 12 years old that she wasn't into boys... 

Mahlea's father was a great warrior in the Great Southern Revolt against the Tatians 2 decades earlier, and passed down the distrust he and many others in the Saraw Tribe felt towards their Tatian overlords to Mahlea. Her father told her tales of many of his fellow warriors, most of whom were abducted by the Tatians towards the end of the revolt and never heard from again.  Mahlea also witnessed a heavy Tatian military presence in her village from a very young age, with Tatian soldiers stationed at most street corners and stories of anyone caught speaking out against the regime either disappearing unexplained or dying soon after the incident under suspicious circumstances. These were the work of the Thunderbird's Talons, Tate's secret police force operating all over the planet but particularly in rebellious areas such as Saraw lands. When Mahlea was around 12 years old, she joined the Young Saraws, a group of teenagers dedicated to overthrowing Tatian rule and an independent Saraw Tribe. Neither of her parents were happy about this, as her father worried about her safety despite supporting the cause, and her mother both worrying about her safety and thinking that fighting was "unwomanly". 

Mahlea started sneaking out at night more and more to meet up with the Young Saraws, who trained her in the ways of stealth and wilderness survival, as well as bonding with her over their shared hatred of the Tatians. She taught them how to use and make firearms (based on her father's) in return, and she quckly rose through the ranks of the organzation. However, as time went on, her parents gradually started to figure out that Mahlea was part of the Young Saraws, and although they knew they were powerless to stop her, they tried other means to get her out of that group. When Mahlea was around 14 years old, she befriended a boy from the village named Holata Oxendine, which lasted around a year before her parents, especially her mother, took notice, and tried to arrange a marriage between them. While Mahlea and Holata were best friends at the time, Mahlea had no romantic interest or feelings for him, and Mahlea became absolutely livid with both her parents when she found out they were, together with Holata's parents, planning their wedding without even asking her. In the ensuing screaming match, Mahlea let slip that she was a lesbian and was attracted to women, and with that, both her parents threw her out of the house. 

After being disowned by her parents, Mahlea started devoting herself to the Young Saraws full-time, building a treetop hideout in Lowry's Swamp, a huge area of cypress swamp just north of Grays Creek where she would live and the group would meet. Mahlea worked meticulously for the next few months, recruiting dozens of new members and gathering intelligence on the Tatian military, Tatian politics, and the Thunderbird's Talons. Towards the end of the year, the Young Saraws learned that Tate planned to travel to Maxton City, the capital city of the Saraw Tribal Realm, to hold a rally for his next sham election. Along the way, he would briefly stop in Grays Creek for a meet-and-greet. Upon learning this, Mahlea and the Young Saraws promptly began planning Tate's assassination. On the fateful day of October 10th, 14 BR, Mahlea shot Tate while perched atop a tree. Although Tate was hit, the bullet merely grazed his forehead and face, blinding his right eye. Although Mahlea was able to escape the scene, one of the Thunderbird's Talons with Tate at the time was able to get a brief look at her, and there was soon a full-scale planetwide manhunt for an "unidentified Saraw Human girl". 

While there were a few Saraws who supported Tate, most sympathized at least somewhat with the Young Saraws, and when the news spread that Tate himself had been critically wounded by an "unidentified Saraw Human girl", hundreds of thousands of Saraws, from the tiniest villages to Maxton City, took up arms and started killing Tatian soldiers, police officers, anyone suspected of being a Thunderbird's Talon, sentients from other tribes, and anyone else with real or perceived ties to the Tatian Government they could find. Osceola Robeson, the unofficial Chief of the Saraw Tribe, whose allegiance the Young Saraws had sought to no avail for years, finally decided to get involved, declaring the Saraw Tribe "now and forever free", starting the 2nd Saraw Rebellion.

Being only a teenager and having no real administrative or political skills, Mahlea mostly let Osceola Robeson take charge of the rebellion, with the Young Saraws simply being one of many guerillas that rose up and fought to keep the Tatians off their land. Over the course of the war, Mahlea became very close friends with a fellow Young Saraw named Hialeah Hunt, and eventually, Mahlea developed romantic feelings. However, Hialeah was a devout Southern Navayan Anandist, and became disgusted with Mahlea when she told her about her sexual orientation. Relations between the two became very strained after that, with Mahlea becoming heartbroken and ashamed of her sexual orientation, while Hialeah secretly lost faith in the Young Saraws upon learning that they were led by a lesbian, and began working as an undercover informant for the Thunderbird's Talons. Using Hialeah's information, the Thunderbird's Talons were able to sneak up on Mahlea one day, knock her out with tranquilizers, and ship her off to the Tatian capital of Ninstints for her execution. Mahlea was taken thousands of miles from home and locked in a maximum security prison on Red Cod Island, a small island in Ninstints Bay, surrounded by Tate's center of power, to await her death. While in prison, Mahlea learned of the massive amphibious offensive Tate conducted on Saraw lands after recovering from his injury, and could only listen helplessly as whispers of murder and genocide made their way through the halls of the prison. When Mahlea heard that Tate had burnt Grays Creek to the ground and killed all found there to send a message, Mahlea fell into an even deeper depression than she was already in by that point. She stopped eating and drinking, and lay down in her hard and lice-ridden bed all day, waiting for the day of her execution.

On the eve of her scheduled execution, Mahlea dreamt of a red-haired Human Queen and a huge Bear King in a castle on some faraway planet, both telling her their kingdom needed her and imploring her to stay alive. When she woke up the next morning, she thought she was going insane from the fear of death, but when this dream failed to fade into her subconscious like other dreams, she realized that she needed to escape, even if not to help these mysterious sentients but simply because she would not give the Tatians the satisfaction of killing the last survivor of Grays Creek. Using the stealth skills she learned while in the Young Saraws, Mahlea stowed away on a food boat and escaped the prison less than an hour before the guards were scheduled to pick her up and give her her last meal. Mahlea wandered the streets of Ninstints for a month or so, under the new identity of Madison Hunt and having scarred her face with broken glass to avoid detection, until she could figure out where to go from there. Eventually, Mahlea realized by reading a Tatian propaganda newspaper she found in a dumpster that the ones she was looking for were Arturius and Bowdig, King and Queen of the Planet Arturia, and began trying to figure out how to get there. 

Mahlea started hanging around Ninstints Harbor, endlessly staring at maps on walls and poring over every pamphlet she could find to figure out a route to Arturia, eventually stowing away on various cargo and passenger craft on a Navayu --> Aztlan --> Rinascita --> Arturia route, arriving at the port of Falmouth. As more months went by, Mahlea's facial scars began to fade, and others began to recognize her, having seen her mugshot in newspapers. Although she was seen as a freedom fighter and practically a celebrity by much of the galaxy, Mahlea had no interest in the limelight, preferring to stay under the radar, as she was unsure who she could trust. In one particular instance, she was loudly identified by a drunken Badger at a pub and only narrowly avoided capture by the Tatian-hired bounty hunters sitting at the table opposite her. After that incident, Mahlea began scrambling to find a way out of that port town, eventually stowing away yet again on a wagon train headed for the Arturian capital of Caerbannog. 

In Caerbannog, Mahlea returned to her Madison Hunt alias and lived on the streets for a week, before being identified by Sir Michael Palin, one of the Knights of the Square Table, who had been sent by Arturius to break up a fight between Froudling gangs. Sir Michael Palin was killed in the ensuing fighting with the Froudlings, but Mahlea was able to escape and reach Castle Arturia, which Palin had told her about before dying. After standing outside for a while, she was eventually let in by another knight, who in turn took her to King Arturius and Queen Bowdig for testing. Mahlea barely passed Arturius's and Bowdig's tests, only doing so when she produced a small flame under extreme stress. She showed little to no talent for swordsmanship at first, her ability with Fire Magic was very weak compared to most other Fire students, and she lagged behind in her academic studies as well. Her only real strengths were stealth and physical fitness.

Through hard work and determination, however, Mahlea was eventually able to become somewhat skilled with Fire magic, eventually taking the tests to become a Squire. The first few tests were relatively easy for her, but the last one was to gather the ingredients for and forge her own sword on her own.