Tziva Amnon

Brief Overview

Character’s Name: Tziva Amnon, usually goes by just Tzi.
Gender/Age: Female in her mid-20s
Race/Class: Human Rogue
Occupation: Protecting mystics, aiding Bendric and guiding the Greenwards of the Order of the White Tower.
Physical Description: Dark skin, hair and eyes but mostly unremarkable.
Marital status: Single; her life is devoted to her friends and her blades.
Family: Raised by father in Booty Bay, where he still resides.
Diction, accent, etc.: Tziva is generally shy and hesitant to speak with strangers, but those who know her probably wouldn’t be surprised to discover she grew up around sailors, as her speech is full of cursing, slang and often lacking in proper grammar.
Favorite Places: There will always be a special place in her heart for Stranglethorn Vale. Otherwise, Tziva enjoys the taverns of Stormwind (and picking the pockets of the drunks there).
Recreation/hobbies: Skinning and leatherworking, exploring, cooking, fishing, adventuring with friends, and people-watching. And, uh, relieving folks of their unguarded petty possessions.
Obsessions: weapons of all kinds, but especially knives and daggers.
View on the Horde/Alliance war: Ready to defend her friends and allies from any danger, including aggressive Horde. However, despite being intellectually aware of the horrors of the past, her many positive personal experiences growing up around Horde have made Tziva unwilling to define herself as “against the Horde.”
Ambitions: To expand her collection of daggers... and to build an entire menagerie of pet critters with characteristics ranging from “bitey” to “lucky.”
Religion: None, indifferent to that sort of thing.
Fears/Phobias: strangers, being caught unarmed, looking conspicuous.
General Attitude/Personality: Shy socially, but bold and confident in combat.
Character Flaws: Occasionally exhibits recklessness in battle (to Bendric’s horror), is blatantly avoidant of social situations, and has been known to fondle other people’s weapons without permission.
Character Strengths: Fiercely and unquestioningly protective and loyal to her friends.
Pets: Too many go count, though you will most often see her with her lucky frog.
Friends: Bendric is her best friend, but cares deeply about her other Tower guildmates.
Relatives: She has some uncles somewhere, but her only close relative is her father, retired from port guard duty in Booty Bay.
Enemies: Anyone who threatens her friends for any reason, any time.
As seen by others: A tiny bit quirky.
As seen by self: Passionate for the things and people she loves.
Scars (Physical, emotional, or mental): Knife fighting has resulted in a plethora of physical scars that Tziva is proud to wear.

History

To this day, Tziva only knows very little about her mother. The story goes that her father was a soldier, freshly discharged due to a bad combat injury, and her mother had been one of his nurses. It was in the infirmary where he stayed to rehabilitate that he had met a pretty young priestess, just beginning her training. Despite barely knowing each other, they had a brief, awkward fling, and the priestess became pregnant. She was fearful for the future of her studies and the ability to afford a child, as she was very young. Her father was an older man looking to settle back into civilian life and quickly agreed to take and raise the baby girl himself. By then, he was mostly recovered and had recently found new employment as a guard to both ship and cargo in the port city of Booty Bay. As soon as he was able, he and the baby Tziva headed for a new life and home in Stranglethorn Vale, leaving her biological mother behind.

Her early years were probably the same as any other child, save for one thing: Because there were rarely other children around, Tziva became adept at – and far more at ease -- playing alone. At an age where most little girls are playing dolls with other little girls, Tziva was learning to entertain herself. Her few encounters with visiting children were awkward, and she found the other kids weird. This unfamiliarity with her peers would leave Tziva lacking in social graces even into adulthood. Despite that, the little girl chattered enthusiastically with all the sailors, goblin guards and merchants around the city as she played with her toys along the docks.

Tziva loved growing up in Booty Bay. All the wonderful things brought in each morning on the ships fascinated her, and the foreign travelers and their exotic possessions gave her a sense of curiosity from a very young age. Tziva liked nothing better than to sit on the dock and watch the ships unload their cargo, or to swim beneath the pier’s barnacled planks and spy on the disembarking passengers above.

Though her father had taught her about the war, Tziva saw Horde on a daily basis and had a hard time connecting the stories she heard with the people she saw shopping and doing business around the city like everyone else. The Tauren would pat the child riding her wooden pony just as quick as the human, and so Tziva had trouble picturing them as sworn enemies of the Alliance. To this day, although she is intellectually familiar with the horrors of the wars, her first reaction when encountering a member of the Horde in her travels is always to wave, rather than draw her blades.

Her father was an educated man, and saw the importance of Tziva going to school from an early age. But Booty Bay was a city of business, and its only residents were a smattering of merchants and shopkeepers who worked there. There were no schools, as there were no children to go to them. To get around this, her father hired a tutor who traveled the entire length of Stranglethorn Vale from Darkshire three times a week to come and provide his bright young daughter with an education. Though she would never admit it, Tziva greatly enjoyed her visits from the tutor, although she was not an especially good student. She liked history and science, but found the grammar rules of Common boring, something evident in her speech even today.

Her father would often take the young Tziva on camping trips to the surrounding jungle where she learned to fish, cook, identify plants, and climb trees. He taught her basic hunting skills and how to use every part of the animal, from the skin to the meat, for a useful purpose. She was handy with a bow, and even handier with knives, whose utility quickly made them Tziva’s most trusted tool. These trips taught her a reverence for nature and instilled in her a fondness for animals. At the same time, she also learned to appreciate that an animal could also provide her with a hearty meal and some warm boots when she needed them. Tziva loved the jungle more than anything else and spent most of her time at home and in the city anticipating their next adventure out again.

As the child Tziva grew older, she also grew bolder, and began to sneak out of their small apartment at night when her father left his graveyard shift. She would head into the dark jungle and practice her skills in secret. At dawn, she would visit the hunter camp on the riverbanks in the far north. There she would share her morning’s kills with the waking hunters and listen to their tales of ferocious beasts, before scrambling to beat her father home from work. It was these experiences at the dawn campfires that made Tziva decide she wanted like the brave hunters with their noble animal companions when she grew up.

When Tziva was a young teenager nearing the age to start training, her father had gently warned her it would be difficult – if not impossible – for her to join the hunting profession and encouraged her to explore other options. But her heart was set, and so the disappointment with her inability to find a Hunter willing to apprentice a human was overwhelming. Feeling rejected, the teenaged Tziva brashly announced that she was going to join the Bloodsail Buccaneers instead to become a pirate.

To the impulsive teenager, pirates were cool and fun, and it would be an acceptable career alternative to being a Hunter. She began to hang out with the pirates regularly, to her father’s dismay. Her skinning skills quickly gave way to knife-fighting skills, and her blade started to cut more sails and ropes than hides. She learned how to work on a ship, and found climbing the rigging not much different than climbing a tree. On land, she perfected also the fine art of burglary, thievery and pawning stolen goods. It was an exciting life for the headstrong girl with an air for mischief.

However, after less than a year of flirting with pirating, Tziva’s rebellious period began to wane. Her strong loyalties to Booty Bay pulled her back and she abandoned her goal to be a pirate. Although she maintained her friendships at first, she ultimately decided couldn’t be a part of a group that plagued the town and the people she loved so dearly. For a long time after returning home, Tziva moped around apartment, jobless, doing not much besides occasional hunting and fishing. For money, she participated in petty theft with some of the shady “contacts” around town that she’d met through her time with the Bloodsail.

Just as Tziva was beginning to wonder if she’d spend the rest of her life as a mediocre burglar, her father – who had always emphasized the importance of a legitimate profession – introduced her to an SI:7 member who was visiting Booty Bay to make a large purchase of daggers. He had a better idea for her.

Training as a rogue was like second-nature to Tziva. It emphasized many of the skills she had already honed in the jungle and with her pirate friends. Better yet, her father was actually proud of her. After deciding it truly was the path for her, she moved to Stormwind to be closer to SI:7 base there, while still visiting her father and beloved jungle on weekends. It was there she met the mage Otmar and paladin Bendric who, first her employers and later her friends, would led her on the road to the Order of the White Tower and her new family.