Full name: Astrid Mongain
Nationality: Saldaean
Place of birth: Maradon
Profession: Gleeman Bard
Appearance
A slender woman with dark, almond-shaped eyes and a boyish haircut.
Background
The only daughter of a Bannerman in the Saldaean Calvary, she grew up being doted upon by her father until she ran off with a Malkeri refugee to hunt for the Horn of Valere as deluded young lovers thinking they would be the next Birgitte Silverbow and Gaidal Cain. They got as far as Irinjavar before a farmgirl caught her lad's eye and she ended up sailing alone down the Arinelle on the first riverboat that would give her passage.
After arriving in Andor she made her way to Caemlyn and talked her way into a job briefly waiting tables at the Black Fox, learning how to throw knives from the retried thieves that frequented the tavern before restlessness set her back on the road. She traveled from place to place doing odd jobs, working in a dressmaker's shop in Far Madding, then mining in Baerlon, then a smith's apprentice in Jehannah, where she met a gleeman who had fallen in with a travelling menagerie. Noting that the life of a gleeman would involve constantly moving from place to place and deciding it was as good an excuse as any to indulge her constant wanderlust she started following the menagerie, and the gleeman, picking up juggling and acrobatics along the way as she started to memorise the songs and tales he would spin.
The show eventually made its way to Tear where the gleeman cornered her and told her he had figured out what she was up to before they had got as far as Altara and presented her with a patchwork cloak, telling her she had best be making her own way now, as there were more songs and stories in the world than any man or woman could hope to learn in a lifetime, so she had better get started. She set herself back on the road that evening, and never stopped.