Martha Weatherstone

Name: Martha Featherstone

Race: Pegasi-Earth (wings, tail-whip)

Age: 27

Personality: loner, daring, potential trouble-maker, bargainer, a little sarcastic at times, but cheerful, always willing to try to help if she is able to, a bit quiet, but very trustworthy.

Job: Mercenary Archaeologist Merchant

Skills: bargaining, wildlife survival training, sword melee, basic engineering, mineral plant and liquid researcher, archaeologist, biologist, chemist, economics, travel management, card-playing

Abilities: flying, wing-holding, strength, tail-whipping, tail-holding

occupation

Martha is a nomadic-mercenary-merchant with her main skills being in biology and chemistry. She constantly travels and lives across the land, and collects many curiously unusual fantastic items that are very common in one place, and sells them where they are rare everywhere else in Equestria. When she stumbles across it, she also searches for rare artifacts similar to Daring Do that she sells to museums for profit.

Martha collects a very wide array of curiously unusual fantastic items. She does not sell standard objects that you would commonly find just anywhere in Equestria, only very specific spots. She often collects things that might be common in one place, and sell them in every other area. It not only sells well the further you get (not to mention more expensive, which means profit for her) but it always helps as an advertisement for all the different places to subliminally urge ponies to travel there.

What’s so special about Martha Weatherstone is her method of carrying all her wares. She carries a set of double saddlebags on her back that are actually magically enhanced to have more space inside them than it appears on the outside, she ties a tarp and a small tent on her back, bears a small field knife and scabbard on her right flank, but what she has the most of is adventure pouches. She wears three of them around her front right hoof, and wears two on her other three hooves, and has 7 more linked to the main saddlebags. She also has several very small bags tied securely to the right side of the saddlebags and has two glass jars securely held securely on the back of her saddlebags, one on each side. All these adventure pouches and bags and jars are for all the different kinds of rare “treasures” she collects to sell. Mostly they are herbs, but they can also be certain usable minerals, some special liquids, rarely she finds and catches some rare small bugs, beetles, and butterflies.

Martha is not an adventurer, she doesn't brave booby-trapped temples and fortified palaces to get artifacts. She’s still becoming a famous archaeologist merchant. Her rare artifacts are more often small amulets or talismans or pieces of pottery. Occasionally she’ll find something fantastic, such as a golden goblet or some treasure or even  old parchment.

backstory

Martha grew up in Fillydelphia, where she unfortunately was put up for adoption nearly right after birth.  all her life though, she never sought to question her biological parent's reasoning for leaving her, but instead took up the stead and grew to see the orphanage she stayed at her family instead. times were occasionally tough for Martha, but she pulled through with the help of the ponyfolk who cared for all the fillies at the orphanage.

Martha has always loved to read since she was a kid. while she was in the orphanage, her favorite book series was Daring Do. she would reread them over and over again, always daydreaming of going on adventures like Daring Do. she still loves to read the Daring Do books today, although she has also taken a fancy to the Pony Box Mystery series as well. She always makes sure to pass by the bookstore and library during her stay in the city. Partly why she likes these two series the most is that she can get them paperback and they are somewhat thin novels, so she can fit one or two novels in her saddlebag to read when she needs to stop and rest while travelling.

Martha has always been facinated with plants and biology. she earned her cutie mark, an violet orchid flower in front of a trail of magic, when she discovered a rare type of orchid growing in a cave within the hills outside of Fillydelphia during a field trip with her class. she plucked one up and rushed it to her science teacher, who was quite shocked that she discovered what appeared to be a very rare type of flower. when Martha learned that she had discovered a new type of flower, she burst out with happiness, and that was when her cutie mark appeared, bearing the exact type of flower she had found.

When Martha graduated from Hoover Hills academy in Fillydelphia, she went on to major in biology and minor in chemistry at the Fields Granham University in Manehatten. she graduated when she was 23, being in college for 5 years and earned a degree in biology and chemistry. and from there, she went on to begin to make a job for herself, travelling the land in search of curiously unusual fantastic items to sell, all just to help provide a portion of the money she earns to help the orphanage she grew up in, and then continue helping other orphanages in need.

daily life, personality, and hobbies

While Martha naturally enjoys travelling a great deal, and she enjoys the excitement of returning to places, and harvesting plants and minerals and other objects, she does need time to take a break from it all and rest from her business work. Since Martha only does business during the daytime, and the market plaza often closes down an hour before evening arrives, she has several hours left in the day in which she doesn't have to work. So quite often, she will pack up her booth (which is only a type of tarp spread over the ground, with her tent held on long poles over the area to keep the booth shaded) and if she is in a city with a small little house she owns (which really are more like small personal shacks), she’ll unload her stuff there, and then go out into town to do some shopping. If Martha is in a town that she doesn't have a small shack in, then she’ll rent a small, cheap hotel room. She doesn't exactly prefer this, often she’d rather sleep outside in her tent, but during the wintertime, she doesn't really have a choice. 

While Martha does move around a lot and never stays in one area for more than a few days at most, she does keep small storage houses that she owns in many of the big cities. She isn't able to keep items that require her to maintain a fresh state, but many other items that are non-living she stores in each storage house, as well as various other littered artifacts, objects, and some personal belongings.

Martha is a fantastic card player. Naturally, she doesn’t gamble money, as she doesn’t make the most money herself, and doesn’t like to gamble. But if there’s a friendly card game, Martha will do all she can to be a part of it, whether it be simply playing for fun or a fierce poker game with fake chips, Martha will always be up for the challenge against another card player.

Martha often will go to a popular bar or café in the evening as her way to socialize and get cheap meals (this is where she often plays cards).

While Martha is rather an ordinary simple pony who isn’t well known, over the years she’s begun to make several acquaintances, particularly with most bartenders of café’s or bars she often visits on her stays in the cities and towns. She is most well known in Ponyville, often being visited by Twilight for her wake-up leaves, and by Zecora the Zebra for all her potions and plants she has. Martha has Zecora on special order, keeping her fruits and nuts she usually crushes and mixes to make potions untouched for Zecora, who greatly prefers having the plant rather than the final potion.

Being that Martha is always moving around, she never has the time to really settle down and meet with anypony to really get into a relationship. she's never had too much of a focus on being married anyways, and if she did, the first obligation would be that he would have to be as active in travelling as she was.

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and now, for a list of only SOME of the things that Martha sells when she stays in towns:

Gemstone Amulets:

Location Origin: Western mountains

These semi-colorful engraved stones are infused with a strange type of magic that is known to bring good luck to those who wear it. (Martha wears 4 amulets herself as a single necklace, but she takes it off when she sells her business for customer trust)

Ethereal jewels:

Location Origin: Forsaken Forest, Shimmerwood

These colorful rough gems glow brightly, providing ambient light to any room. Martha keeps a small light-blocking sheet around when she sells (since she almost always sells out in the daytime market) to drive any doubt about their brightness to curious customers.

Wake-up leaves:

Location Origin: Swallow plains (west of Hoofington)

 These tender crisp juicy leaves come from a plant similar to a coffee bean bush. They are comparable to caffeine. They not only help Martha stay awake when supply hunting, they help people like Twilight have all-nighters. They also work well with tea. Martha learned in time to ban Pinkie Pie from being allowed to buy them since it eventually lead to a ruined building.

Hollow Shade Mushrooms:

Location Origin: Forsaken Forest

Worth they fair price, these blue-bouncy mushrooms are fantastic for allergy problems and the common headache; unless you are allergic to the mushrooms themselves.

Honey Pollen:

Location Origin: Southern Everfree Forest

In the southern part of the everfree forest, groups of huge flowers produce clouds of pollen. This pollen, when collected at the right season, will be coated with sweet honey. It works great as a confectionary ingredient.

Ember Coal:

Location Origin: Dragon Mountain

Martha can only carry a few at any given time when travelling, because of their weight, size, and their heat. These special rocks have to be handled and wrapped carefully in special leather that specially comes in from the mild west into Canterlot which she then has to buy. These special Ember rocks light up into a fire when a single flame touches it, and will burn for months. The fire can be put out with a small dose of water over the rock, but don’t drop it into any volume of water; otherwise the heat will quickly escape from the rock and can no longer be lit.

Zap Apples:

Location Origin: North Everfree Forest

Martha collects these from the everfree forest where they originally first existed, not sweet apple acres. Since they come only once a year, she makes room for them as her special offer selling item in her item stocks when she travels during that time. They greatly help give traffic to Ponyville.

Crystal Roses:

Location origin: Crystal Empire

These rare flowers come from the Crystal Empire, and are fragile but will live long after they’ve been cut from the bush. They come in a variety of colors, and offer a fantastic display in any house or garden even naturally. They sell well everywhere, especially in Canterlot. Only problem with them is that they are, in fact, very fragile. Martha has to put them between plenty of cushioning material so that they aren’t shattered when she pushes the bag up against a rock or the ground.

Pepper Nuts:

Location Origin: Los Pegasus

These hot spicy nuts come from Los Pegasus, and are a delectable to any spicy loving pony. They are great to crunch on as a whole, or break apart the hard shell and sprinkle the spicy powder over food, or use as decoration, or ammo, or animal repellent.

Rainbow Bangs:

Location Origin: Manehatten

Martha more often has to use these all before she has a chance to sell them. They are small fireworks that put off a nice display of colorful explosions. But they are dangerous; the explosions are similar to that of a bomb. They make excellent means of defense in the wild. While Martha selling them (as they are more commonly only used by city officials on holidays, but still sold by stores to adult ponies) is perfectly legal, her method of obtaining them is actually illegal. Martha actually sneaks into the warehouses and takes just one from each crate, and take as many as she knows she can handle, and sells them. So she actually makes full profit off of them by illegally stealing them. She naturally doesn’t have them as a selling item too often to avoid being caught from sneaking in so many times, and she does feel a bit guilty for stealing them when she does. Even honest merchants sometimes have a dark secret or two up their sleeves.

Beneviolet:

Location Origin: Archback mountains

Extremely rare, she’s only been able to obtain a supply of them once, after managing to catch the attention of one of the deer massagers only once. She managed to persuade them to grab her a bunch of old flowers after offering him ten jars of jam. Once she obtained them, she immediately crushed the petals up to make several potions; not quite as strong as normal beneviolet or a young beneviolet, but still manages to heal most major magical illnesses. They however naturally are very, very expensive.

Golden Wheat:

Location Origin: Gildedale

When she collects it, she makes a giant bale out of it that reduces her to walking back to her nearest storage house, all the way back in Manehatten. It almost doesn’t pay off the work needed to carry it, as it has no healing or magical powers, only simply adds a very rich flavor as an ingredient or as a snack or side dish.

Berry Tomatoes:

Location origin: Western Equestria Lake, Bridle Shores

This wild vegetable/fruit can only be found down in deep lakes and some parts of the ocean. Their rarity and exoticness makes them expensive. But their size is small, so Martha can carry large quantities. These aquatic tomatoes have a salty taste, but what they are good for is if their juice is mixed and boiled, it can create a healing potion that cures most ailments, and works as a pain reliever.

Mystic seeds:

Location Origin: Dream Valley

These curious seeds have very mysterious magical powers. Only found on wild trees growing in the Dream Valley, in a very out-of-sight area, these seeds grow on magic that leaks out from the surrounding magic plants. These seeds have unknown powers when in contact with other magical things. They are dangerous, and Martha always warns the customer. Among the possible effects they can have are greatly speed growing, enlarged size, weight, density, or volume, chemically enhance the magical effects, or sometimes even make it completely detonate. Outside of possibly enhancing magical objects, they make a great snack food. [it is very important to note, that Martha experimented as great as she could to get the maximum efficiency from these seeds. She constantly uses them to enhance the potions, enlarge the volume of liquids, but most of all duplicate magical supplies as best as possible. Since she is the only one who knows about the area in the Dream valley, she always has easy access to it, and it’s only an hour by wing from most of south and western Equestria. ]

Phoenix Feather:

Location Origin: North Dragon Forest

These bright red hued feathers are best obtained during the molting season for phoenixes, when they are loose but still fresh feathers. Martha only collects the finest, cleanest, un-trampled feathers to sell. She often has to fly up to the nest to collect the best feathers, which can often be risky. The feathers make a great ear decoration, or as decorations. Their biggest use is as quills, since they not only are bright and colorful compared to the drab brown quills, they store twice the amount on ink, and last much longer, also being fire resistant. HOWEVER, that being said, a phoenix feather will catch fire if it is near a phoenix that sets on fire.

Tunye Seeds:

Location Origin: found in any large forest in Equestria

These seeds are magical, but unlike pepper nuts and mystical seeds, Tunye Seeds do NOT make for a tasty snack. Martha sells them as planting seeds that when planted an watered normally will grow into a small pink flowered Tunye tree in 3 months. However, when planted alongside a Mystical seed, the tree will sprout and grow into a full grown tree within several hours. But using any more than one mystical seed will cause a giant magical explosion. The petals of the Tunye flower can be used as decoration, eating, or crushed into a potion for curing the flu. Among her many many items, Tunye seeds are one of the cheapest and least sold, since they are quite common in almost all parts of equestria. Martha usually sells them as an option to buy along with mystical seeds at a discount.

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and so that is the end of my OC's Biography. phew. took me a couple hours to fully compile all together. if you have the time, i do suggest you read up on a bit of it, otherwise, enjoy my OC!