it all started when...
Pandora was born to Lavrentios and Evdokia Aurothos. Three years later her younger brother Gavriil was born. Pandora's history has caused her to be very cynical. She has had to fight every day of her life for a crumb of respect from those around her. The Authoros family immigrated to Sythlus. While they were allowed to live there, they were not given the privilege and rights of citizenship. Her family continued to look for an opportunities to become citizens.
Her father, Lavrentios, governed an ill-disciplined household that barely made ends meet during his life and went bankrupt under the leadership of her younger brother Gavriil after Lavrentios' death. Pandora was sixteen when her father died. Pandora and her mother, Evdokia, worked quietly trying to slow their descent into bankruptcy by raising their own funds, hiding some of the household income to pay off debts and buy food, and inventing short term money raising schemes such as selling assets or advising Gavriil's spending.
Gavriil was too untrained and unskilled. He also had a proclivity for spending excess money, so he began to turn to alternative ways to make money such as marrying his sister off in a beneficial alliance, or selling her as a slave, to a brothel, or to whomever offered the highest price. Her mother, Evdokia, did not have the strongest personality and did not protest, perhaps seeing it as a necessary evil or the only option left. Even so, there was nothing that she could legally do if Gavriil got it into his mind that he would do it.
Pandora quickly figured out her options. Nobody wanted to marry a sinking family, so Pandora had no hope of pretending to have an honorable life once she was sent away from her family. She refused to become a slave or work in a brothel. Eventually, she learned that the army was willing to enlist women, particularly during that time because of unrest and tensions. She would prefer to die in the military than the alternatives she was given. She saw no other way to preserve her autonomy and have some grain of self-respect, as she figured her brother would find her and bring her back if she tried to work any other way. Her brother's plans did not come to fruition, because she joined the army around a year after her father's death at eighteen years old. She reminds herself what the alternative lifestyles are, and that she has the chance to become a citizen of Sythlus this way. At the very least she has income and her basic needs met.
The training was tough, but she lasted seven years there before her contingent was stationed near the Arena, a place known for forcing creatures to fight each other in order to survive. It was also a convenient place to send those who had committed crimes. They provided amusement and were punished, killing two birds with one stone. She learned how to use weapons well in the army, and she is known for her excellent technique. She has found a place teaching new recruits. While she is not a tiny woman, she is considerably weaker than many of the men. She learned that there is a lot of opportunity to make money fighting in the Arena, and she has the advantage of actually having been trained. She tries to sneak out of the camp every so often to participate in a fight hoping that if she becomes wounded it quickly kills her instead of her superior in the army punishing her or the managers of the Arena doing something about her.
Her childhood did not inspire a lot of familial love in Pandora. While there is resentment toward Evdokia, she would be willing to contact her mother again, but she wants nothing to do with Gavriil. She is afraid to reach out for fear that Gavriil will find her and take away her autonomy.
