Appearance:

Mouse brown hair, shaved at sides and back -shorter than many men- accentuate the finely chiseled planes of Harvest Moon’s pale, gaunt face. She cuts an ascetic figure in her plain brown traveling outfit. Loose, rough-spun clothes in colors of the dusty road capture her look.

From a distance, it might be easy to dismiss the five-foot girl in rough oversized clothing: A vagabond waif, a thief in the streets. Then she will move. Then she will look at them with her dark gray eyes, and, if the occasion should arise, those eyes will turn to stone hard chips.

Personality:

Harvest Moon is a young woman tempered by adversity. As such, she changes as she moves into the greater Wold around her. And yet, there is that core of her wrapped around her will, a will that has pushed her through the deprivation and horror of a childhood in a refugee camp.

Her childhood has given her an economy in all things: In word, in movement, in philosophy. Her concepts of Right and Wrong are yet to be set in stone. But, as she lays the her moral foundation, moving her from her position requires a Labor of Hercules.

History:

Harvest Moon was born in the refugee camps within the Contested Kingdoms. Her father died while she was at an early age. She has heard many times, that he was a good man. She cannot recall.

One of her earliest known memories, is a revelation from an early time when she first developed the ability to distinguish herself from other social entities in the world around her. At that time, she was 'Boo' Moon, and she recalls the time when she first realized that the woman who cared for her, the one who enfolded her in warmth, the one who placed bits of scavenged food to her dirty straining mouth, Boo Moon’s first clear memories is the realization that her mother was insane and mentally incapable of but the most basic of survival instincts.

It was the young traveling cleric Pasix Mixmindor who would give the dirty camp girl the name "Harvest". By this time, young Boo had reversed roles and had become the one to care for her mother. The cleric spent an afternoon entranced by the patience and focus of the dirty young waif as she lurked just outside a hole in a garbage pile for a rat to emerge into the sunlight. The rusty length of chain held in the girl’s hands smashed into the ground near the rats head, and then the animal was gone, scampering back down into it’s burrow.

And yet, the Moons, daughter and mother, did not go hungry that night. At the same time that Pasix Mixmindor gained a calling, Boo and her mother gained a protector. Years passed as Pasix schooled the young girl, now dubbed 'Harvest', first in the ways of survival, then in the manner and knowledge of the clergy. Though, in truth, the cleric’s young adopted charge seemed always to gravitate more to the former, rather than the latter.

Many years and many miles across the chaotic and embattled lands of the Contested Kingdoms later, Harvest Moon’s mother, at last gives her spirit back to the Wold. And, the young girl, now an acolyte of Gargal, stands in observance as her mother moves beyond.

At this time, an older, more venerable Pasix Mixminder, calls the girl, still very much in her youth, to his side.

“Over the years, I have come to see you as a daughter, young ... Boo,” the cleric says, invoking her old name in the depths of his emotion. “But, there is a time when even fathers and daughters must part. And now, now that your mother has passed beyond. I ... I think ... I feel that this time has now come.”

Harvest considers the words of her mentor in a stillness that belies the import of the moment. And, with characteristic directness and economy, replies with a single word, “Why?”

The cleric closes his eyes and draws in a deep breath. Nothing is easy. Dear gods, why is nothing easy? he thinks, knowing full well the answer.

“In this Wold, Harvest, there are voids that must be filled. If goodness and light steps up to fill the void, it’s that much better for the Wold. But the voids will take to bad just as well as good. And I know you can see that this will shift the balance of things toward darkness, suffering and the same sort of misery that lives like a leach in the kind of camp in which we met.”

“You and I have taken up our calling. And, in doing so, we’ve taken on a duty: a sacred duty. There are no powers without responsibilities. Nothing in this Wold is for free, girl. It’s our duty to go into the Wold, and to fill the voids with good, and justice, and light.”

Pasix stops there, knowing full well, that the “how” and the “what” of the act is a gritty stone upon which even the best hone their character and their sense of judgement: A lesson for another day.

“The land is vast, and to fulfill out duty, we must take separate paths. It is the dutiful way.”

Harvest Moon nods, her only concession to emotion, the rapid blink of her eyes. “Why now?” she asks.

“Because,” Pasix says in answer, “I do not know if I could bare you to leave were it later.”