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title: Mor, Una's mater
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# Una's backstory
Approaching and examining Sláine including actually smelling her, one of
the witch’s female companions, said “Mór, she stinks of the gift.”
The Witch approached, looking at the angry little girl again. Sláine tried
to strike her but her arms would not obey. “Clean her face,” the witch
told her companions imperiously, which they quickly obeyed. “It is
her,” The witch said absently to herself, then, “Tie her up and gag
her. She’s coming with us.”
## Apprenticeship
Brought to Mór’s sanctum, Sláine ws left tied up while her new master
set about performing some dark ritual, marking a circle around the edge of
the room. When she was done, Mór cut off Sláine’s braid and she was
finally untied and ungagged, told to stay, and Mór left. Seeing her
chance, Sláine bolted for the door only to find she was blocked by the
circle as if it were a perfectly smooth wall. She spent a year in that
room, learning of her new life, being taught Latin by a tutor brought into
the ward, learning that while Mór was tough and demanding, she also had
moments of kindness. Mór “opened her arts” and a new world opened
before her. Mór was quite disappointed that she had very little facility
with Perdo, the art of Mór’s greatest skill. Her parens had very strange
religious habits and Sláine could hear an odd singing constantly.
“Come,” Mór said, sometime after she had been there a year. When
Sláine stopped almost automatically at the circle, Mór laughed, “I
destroyed the circle almost a three months ago. It will not bar you but I
have your plait and I will be able to find you and return you should you
decide to run.”
Once her confinement was over, Sláine enjoyed much of her time there, at
the very least it was a world better than her Uncle’s in Ostmantown. She
was constantly learning something, lessons in the spear, in Latin and Artes
Liberales, singing instruction but then mandatory duty providing the songs
that keepFinn MacCumhaill asleep, and one season a year her master would
teach her some aspect of the Hermetic Arts. Her time working in the lab
with Mór was interesting but she much preferred being outside, fighting
with spear or throwing knives with one of the covenfolk. Those fifteen
years passed quickly, but she missed the dogs of Dublin and sometimes cried
herself to sleep when she thought of the day she met Mór. Mór also taught
her secrets of a group within the order and house that she belonged to, The
Cult of Mercury. Mór professed to be a Priestess of Victoria-Nike in the
three-faced guise of the three Morrígna. Mór confessed that she had been
granted a vision of Sláine before their first meeting and that this was
why she had taken her as an apprentice. She never did tell Sláine what
that vision entailed though. To Sláine, all this pagan stuff sounded just
as foolish as the Christian rules and rites that her uncle tried to make
her believe through the threat of violence though, surprisingly, Mór did
not utilize those methods of “conversion.” So she learned the pagan
rites, practicing them merely to not upset her master.
When her fifteen years of apprenticeship were coming to a close, Mór
presented Sláine with a spear, a shield, and a cloak reminiscent of a
hooded raven. Sláine was to wade into an ongoing battle, fighting whoever
was in front of her to get to the noble at the head of the fighting, then
give him a prophecy. While she was wounded during her gauntlet, she was
able to deliver the prophecy then escape. When she returned to Mór,
gauntlet complete, Sláine took the name Una.
