While Shelda’s official role is an Upland Vythan, it would be unfair to dismiss her affinity to the earth’s harder stuff – so she is known to all as Stoneward. Indeed, while she is small of height, her presence is loud and unstoppable as an avalanche.
Origins
Before her calling into the Vythans, Shelda was a blockworker, who carted, split, and trued the blocks others laid. Not high craft, but honest graft, and one that grew her spirit as it grew her physical strength. She worked with Camorren granite, the region’s punishing yet prized abundance; the slow, loud, heavy work suited Shelda’s stamina and her fostered in her an affection for good tools.
Her days rolled to the rhythm of metallic ringing, stone groaning, and sudden silence as she formed blocks. She heard the land’s pulse in those vibrations long before she ever met a Vythan. Most evenings she could be found in the local tavern, voice carrying over the din, talking about all the rock she’d encountered that day — thick rock, big rock, rock keen to splinter, rock she swore had a crumble hidden in it.
It was during one such monologue on “the deceptive ways of schist”, with everyone nodding like it was weather talk, that a passing Vythan paused to listen a little longer than most. She’d never heard the title before, but when she learned she could do more with rock than split it, it felt like a calling. She joined his band soon after, once it was clear his interest lay in rock strata, not courtship.
Tools
- Resonance hammer — used to hear rather than strike, with heads in stone, metal and wood; each head material gives a different tone. She wears a few across a loop-belt, all nicked and polished from years of use.
- Stone gauge — a sliding measure she runs over a surface to read fault-lines and measure layers; a practical Vythan diagnostic tool.
- Cracker — a small clamp-like device that tests a fragment’s soundness.
Reputation
Shelda is the foundation to her house of Vythans; always present, yet never overbearing. Liked by all, and unfazed by change or challenge, she holds her place reliably at the core of their work and community.
A clipped laugh, a semi-permanent frown, and a wicked sense of humour are familiar to all who cross her path — for better or worse.