Scarli Mazla (Skahr-lee Mahtz-lah)

Article submitted to the Temple of Idikai by Flathac Anotor, in the year 1277 of the Age of Knowledge.   Scarli Mazla was a Bralonian natural painter in the 11th century of the Age of Knowledge. Incredibly prolific, she sold her first painting at the age of 12, and her paintings can be found across all Noreria, in both private collections and temples.    Scarli Mazla was born in Farofirth, Bralon, during the year 1103 of the Age of Knowledge, to parents Dern, a shopkeeper, and Naeta, a teacher.  While Scarli excelled in all her subjects at school, what she loved to do from an early age was art.  According to her mother, Scarli would spend hours after her schoolwork and chores were done, drawing in a book she had cobbled together out of paper scraps.  She got her first set of paints for her tenth birthday, and discovered her true medium.     Her first professional painting, of a stunted tree in the backyard of her childhood home with the vast desert beyond, sold to a man travelling through Farofirth.  She was painting next to the schoolhouse, waiting for her mother to get done for the evening, and the man saw it when he rode past.  Approaching her, he asked how much it would cost to buy it.  Showing a confidence that would stay with her well into her adult years, she quoted a price of 3 silver masks.  He paid without arguing, and she took the money proudly to her mother.     At the age of 23, she began travelling Noreria, funding her travels with the sales of her paintings.  These travels are reflected in the changing scenery and styles of her artwork, with many paintings of specific locales hung in the temples of those areas.  She travelled for the next three decades, returning to her childhood home in Forofirth at the age of 55.  Both of her parents had died, but the house had stayed empty, and she was able to move into it.     It was at this point that she began to sink into a hopeless depression, for reasons that remain unknown, though rumours abound.  Her paintings become much darker in both colors and subject matter, though they retained the nature that she loved so much.  Scarli never married, professing the worry that a partner would stifle her artistic ways, and her life became more and more isolated, despite the bustling village she lived in.  She rarely left the house or had visitors, but would often be seen wandering out into the desert for a day or night with her painting supplies.    It is believed that Scarli Mazla died sometime in 1165.  She left for a painting trip to the desert and did not return, and subsequent search parties found no sign of either her or her paints.  On the table in her house was a sheet of paper with only one line written on it:  

There is no hope left, only the hopeless reality of what is to come.