#i have a pretty solid picture in my head about Ines pre-Kazdel

[kara-knuckles]

The more I think about Ines's life before she ended up in Kazdel, the more horror-esque my headcanons get.

I don't have a set age for her, but I think she was somewhere in the 10-12 range when Hoederer found her. I also put their meeting to January-February of 1079, which aligns with her 19 years of battle experience and gives me over a year of her life in Leithanien after the Witch King's death.

I think her family were supporters of the Witch King (though not necessary relatives), so they were in trouble once his reign ended and the bloody purge followed. They probably moved around a lot within the next year, until they finally decided to leave the country.

And just imagine how it would feel from little Ines's perspective. The adults in her life probably wouldn't go into too much detail about what was going on, but she could tell something was very wrong thanks to her Arts. And then she started noticing that every time they moved there were more oddities. Perhaps the number of servants around her dwindled over the months. Maybe she brought up some family friend and got a really odd reaction from her parents. What if one night she was awoken and told to just run and to not ask any questions, and she could swear she saw some people in masks on her way to the next safe location.

And all this time she could sense emotions of people around her. She is no mind reader, and I don't think she has a flawless understanding of what she sees in the shadows (on the contrary, I think she would misinterpret some emotions due to her age and inexperience), but she could still tell that there is rising anxiety, that the people who are supposed to take care of her are angry and terrified, and that there is some vague, unseen something that chases them.

And the reason I put her Kazdel misadventures at the start of the year is because I want her last days in Leithanien to be during early December. There is a certain bit of real life Austrian folklore I want to include, namely, the figures of Krampus and Saint Nicholas. I think, on Terra they would be represented by a Sarkaz and a Sankta respectively, and may or may not be a part of pro-Sankta/anti-Sarkaz propaganda.

And, like, little Ines probably never believed in any of the popular childhood characters. She could feel that the people in costumes weren't who they say they were, that Krampus wasn't even played by a real Sarkaz, and that there was no malice when someone would chase the kids to "punish" them. But this was the closest a relatively sheltered child would have for a picture of who Sarkaz were, and this image would be strong due to being one of the last things she experienced in her homeland. And I think it would help her to deal with her attackers. After all, it is easier to hurt someone when they are some fairy tale monsters.

But in reverse it means that she had a harder time reconciling that Sarkaz were indeed people. Ines was likely very sick during her first weeks in Kazdel, and her feverish mind was probably going into different extremes as she was receiving help from the people she saw as inherently evil. One moment she would think "Hoederer is nice, maybe if he covers his ears and doesn't open his mouth he can kinda-sorta pass as a Leithanian", and the next would be "no, no, no he is one of these devils who hurt me, he is an enemy".

And as she would learn to accept the Sarkaz as people, it would strengthen her dysphoria towards her own race. After all, how is she any different from them? She lives under the same roof, eats the same food, shares the same troubles. Back in Leithanien she probably spent most of her time studying things that were mostly useless to her, but in Kazdel life is urgent and from the get-go she was more involved in everything than she ever was before. She was a part of Kazdel and one of its people, so she started trying to be Sarkaz, since this was who she saw herself as.