The following back story takes here to about 3 years from the start of play. Leaves room for encountering some other PCs that aren't from the Isles.
Samanta was born to loving parents in 1187 in small fishing village in the duchy of Naples. She was a precocious girl enjoying the sea and the ocean. Her keen intellect interested a local wise man who began teaching her some letters and a bit of Latin. However, this person wasn’t a wise man, so much as a watcher for those who possessed the Gift. He was beholden to a Tytalus magus by the name of Erimas. Erimas took Samanta as his apprentice, stealing her from her home in the dead of night.
Life with Erimas, beginning with the kidnapping from her home at the age of 10 was never really good. She was taken from the sea, and lived in an inland mountainous area she was unfamiliar with. The first few months she spent with Erimas were tortuous for her, as he did things to Samanta, drawing out her Arts. Sometimes when she slept, she thought she heard Erimas weeping, but the sound was quickly replaced by cursing of himself in Latin.
Years passed slowly, and Erimas, in concert with his sodalis Flaren pushed Samanta to learn the Art of mastering flames. She was ineffectual with the Art of Ignem, never quite as good as she felt they thought she should be. Sometime later they showed her how to make things manifest themselves, and she and Erimas discovered that she had a bit of a gift for that. Her studies continued haphazardly, and Erimas never really pushed her to learn much of the academic fundamentals beyond what she picked up when she assisted him in the lab. When she accompanied him in the field, her task was usually to take out the mundane forces while her master concentrated on the more magical creatures. At one point she was taught to sling stones with her Arts, and she became rather proficient at it, since it masked one of her weaknesses.
The last two years of her apprenticeship were marked by little magical study and an intense affair, culminating in her rejection of Erimas, and being named a magus in her own right and taking the name Talia. She quietly left Luctatio and lived for a time in Naples. She had assembled something of a crew of men, and one day, while a ship was in port and the captain away she and her men boarded it, stealing it and taking it for her own. When on board the ship she felt some of her magical nature begin asserting itself. She quickly set sail for Favonius, a covenant she’d hear Flaren speak about.
When searching for Favonius she first found Memnos, the Verditian shipwright responsible for building the magical ships of the covenant. She spent a few years working with him, helping him finish the construction of the Halcyon. Her primary job was doing the shakedown cruise with the intended captain, given Memnos’ fear of sailing.
As Halcyon was finishing construction she met Aeliophanes, and the pair fell madly in love. She sailed with him on his adventures for quite some time, honing her sailing skills, and hunting for the magical creatures, secret sites of magic. As torrid and passionate affairs often do, it ended poorly, and she left Favonius. A few months later she discovered she was with child, and bore a son, keeping the knowledge of her son a secret from Aeliophanes.
She spent some time in the seas of the Levant, but eventually made her way out of the Mediterranean. She was initially hounded at the Pillars of Heracles but managed to win through by setting the galleys coming after her ship aflame with a combination of Creeping Oil and several judiciously cast Pila of Fire and followed it up with a casting her Spell of Fair Wind.
The nef she had acquired foundered in the heavier seas of the Atlantic, and she and her crew were run aground not far from Lisbon. She spent a few years there, and filled out her crew, and investigated the ships of the region, completing her research into a spell to construct ships more accustomed to the winds and seas of the Atlantic. During her research she ran into a ship captain claiming to do work for Fengheld House, who was rude and insulted her, though he understood her status as a Maga.
In the dark of night she and her crew boarded the ship from Fengheld House, subdued her regular crew and set sail from the port. When at sea she wove her magic and created a cog, and transferred all the cargo over to it. They then set the other ship and crew adrift with only a main sail, and enough rigging to manage the main sail.