[Characters] Archivists Anew

[Amarga]

Post your characters here! Also make a quick character sheet, a simple thing marking your two elements of soul, three individual health elements, and your specialties.

[DrowNinjaPrincess]

 

Submission Name: Henrietta "Rita" Windsor Gender: female Concept: a young, shy, and awkward but brilliant scholar Elements of the Soul: Phost and Wist Specialties: empirical method, book knowledge, tinkering Weaknesses: forgetful, family, physical Appearance: A youthful, mousy woman with long, dark hair with big natural curls, which either fall haphazardly past her shoulders, or look somewhat more presentable when tied or pinned up. She wears glasses with rather big frames. She has soft features and fair skin, which is almost on the borderline of becoming olive if only she would spend time outdoors more. She is fairly short and quite thin, making her exceedingly light-weight. Rita often dresses modestly though typically has a repertoire of more comfortable clothes, should the mood or occasion strike her. She loves shawls and small cloaks - even though they are going out of style - and frilly skirts and blouses or prudish ones, and sandals and boots.. really whatever seems to strike her fancy at the time. Which by now one might realize she has a pretty awful sense of fashion. Personality: Socially awkward to say the least, Rita still tries to be friendly but sometimes says the wrong thing, or can't think of the words she should have said. She enjoys life and nature, but only insofar as it remains charitable and pleasant. She just as much loves civilizations and its trappings: tea, cozy fires, comfy furniture, books, machines, puzzles. In a conversation, she is far better at simply listening, for often times a good listener is all one needs. It's a great way to not put her foot in her mouth too. But her mind often wanders and she daydreams as well. There is never a dull moment in her dull life, because when life gives her lemons, she somehow manages to make lemonade out of it, even if it does wind up being too sweet, too sour, or too watery. Even if she is well-meaning, sometimes things don't pan out how she expects. Backstory: Rita, or Henrietta, grew up among wealthy snobs, who in all honesty seemed to always have it out for her. To this day she was never really sure why. Her leading theory is that maybe she was an illegitimate child, or maybe her parents and her family were just so dysfunctional that she was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was always we can't afford this, finances that, followed by some extravagant party or an extended vacation. Henrietta did well with her schooling, but couldn't really make friends. When she got home, her friends were the books, and her parents were fine with that because that just meant they had to spend less time supervising her, and her older brother and sister grew rather disinterested with her as well. By the time Henrietta entered her teenage years, she had just about exhausted all the books in the library of her home, and that was just as well because her home felt like a pot that was boiling over. She was no longer allowed to build her strange 'experiments' out in the yards, or go out in general. But while her older siblings got rides to and from school, she had to walk. And it was a bit of a walk... On the way to and from her academy, she would pass by a library, and like a moth lured to flame she was drawn into it. But there, she felt she could meet people with similar interests, and she could actually feel useful and help out.. be a part of something. She could also even special order books of her own choosing. And her parents had to interact with their strange, invisible child even less. It was win-win for everyone. At some point, Henrietta became involved with the Bureau of Occult Affairs, and she had not even realized it at the time.

Henrietta Windsor

Elements of Soul Cards	Principles	Status
Phost	Lantern (2) Sky (1)	Ready
Wist	Winter (2) Lantern (1)	Ready
Health	Heart (1) Scale (1) Nectar (1)	Ready
Health	Heart (1) Scale (1) Nectar (1)	Ready
Health	Heart (1) Scale (1) Nectar (1)	Ready

Phost: +2 Lantern, +1 Sky
Wist: +2 Winter, +1 Lantern

Specialties: Empirical Method, Book Knowledge, Tinkering
Weaknesses: Forgetful, Family, Physical

[MoldyNolds]

Character Submission Name: Quintus Kaldera Gender: He/Him Concept: Nimble hands and nimble mind, tempered by time and intoxicants. Terrified of the end of his existence. Elements of the Soul: Chor; Wist Specialties: Tradecraft; Archivist; Physician Weaknesses: Elderly; Drink & Smoke; Being Forgotten Appearance: Quintus is old. And not just "gentleman of leisure" old, but legitimately geriatric. He's got a permanent, if slight, hunch to his spine. He carries a wooden walking stick, but only for those days when his hip is being uncooperative. Or if the road is long and he's become winded. Or if he's forced to climb more than a single flight of stairs. A bulbous nose is usually red from too much drink and his skin has turned craggy from decades of pipe smoke. Stringy white hair covers his ears and when it's not pulled back into a messy ponytail it hangs down to mingle with wiry, silvered beard hair. Both sets of lenses in Quintus' bifocals are thick; he can see little more than formless blobs of color without his glasses. His traveling clothes are well-made, if worn, and about two decades out of style. His back can handle little more than the two medium-sized cases strung across his shoulders. One of which contains everything he brought with him to Gossburrey save for the other; a second-hand violin. Personality: Quintus is simultaneously grateful for the simple, peaceful life the Hours have blessed him with while also sour that the greatness of those he's read about his whole life has not been visited upon him. There's more to this life... this reality. Much more, and Quintus isn't ready to leave it behind, not even close. Kindly and considerate, Quintus is happy to share his accumulated wisdom and experiences with whomever will listen. Often he will meander from the topic at hand into a tangential anecdote about his life or an interesting book he found in his library that one chill fall afternoon when he found himself alone, wandering the stacks. Still, there is an underlying impatience and vibrancy to Quintus. He seems to retain a hunger for 'more' that most of his age grow out of. He refuses to accept that he has reached the final stage of his life; unprepared to acquiesce to that which others of his generation have acquiesced. It is not uncommon, in fact, for Quintus to become quite ornery and lash out whenever his age is called into question. Backstory: The middling town of Osros had just enough amenities so most people never felt like they had to leave and ended up spending their entire lives there. Such was the case for Quintus. By the time the Great War had broken out Quintus was very nearly too old to enlist. Luckily his skills as a physician made him an asset to the war effort and he found an outlet for his growing wanderlust. Upon his return he once again settled into a quiet routine, spending the following decades in the company of his partner whom he loved dearly and who loved him back in equal measure. He was never quite able to 'settle down', however, always jumping from one hobby to the next. He found himself quickly becoming proficient in a number of tradecrafts including tailoring, bookbinding, The process of flaying whale blubber and processing it into oil, respectively.flensing and trying out. It was the bookbinding that drew Quintus to Osros' library. He found he had an insatiable craving for knowledge, and by the time his partner had passed from this realm Quintus had learned as much as most laypeople about Hours and Aspects, which is to say very little. Burdened with a newfound grief and loneliness, this old man began to develop an obsession with the myth of the Long. Refusing to bow to time, Quintus gathered up his essentials and pulled whatever strings he had to pull to become part of the Gossburrey Caretakers!

Statblock Quintus Kaldera (He/Him) Chor {Ready}   Heart (2): The Heart Relentless beats to protect the skin of the world we understand. [The Heart is the principle that continues and preserves.] Grail (1): Hunger, lust, the drowning waters. [The principle of the Grail honours both the birth and the feast.] Wist {Ready}   Winter (2): ... [Winter is the principle of silence, of endings, and of those things that are not quite dead.] Lantern (1): 'Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.' - Thomas Browne. [Lantern is the principle of the secret place sometimes called the House of the Sun, and of the light above it.] Health {3 Ready}   Heart (1): The Heart Relentless beats to protect the skin of the world we understand. [The Heart is the principle that continues and preserves.] Nectar (1): The green wealth in the world's veins; the pulse of the seasons. [Long ago, some called this principle Blood.] Scale (1): Hard without, hard within, hard to rouse, harder to subdue. [What is left of the crude powers of the deep earth.] Specialties: Tradecraft; Archivist; Physician Weaknesses: Elderly; Drink & Smoke; Being Forgotten

[cottontailwind]

Character Profile and Submission Name: Madame Darling, Wilhelmina Gender: she/her Concept: Underbelly confessor who only laughs at night. Former hostess of nightclubs and, ahem, evening tearooms, with a soft spot for dregs and scoundrels. Elements of the Soul: Shapt, Trist Specialties: entrepreneurship, music, fortune telling Weaknesses: drink & smoke, savior complex, law enforcement   Appearance: She used to be indistinguishable from any respectable governess. Or headmistress on travel - that was an easy story to tell. Never had any stray hair unpinned. Never slouched. Never slurped one's tea. But creeping time and much smoke had begun to wrinkle her eyes and cheeks. Now she kept her face only somewhat painted. She'd allowed whimsical colors into her shawls. Perhaps most telling - more than preferring black currant - she lounged in her chair and, when sipping her tea, gazed over the teacup at company! So very uncouth. The propriety of implied station became less and less important the more she held onto those little idiosyncrasies of the people she'd lost along the way. Personality: During the day, she was so very... pleasant. Knowledgeable of every recent gossip. Clever enough to dispense advice in the guise of lyrics and philosophers. Educated enough to make coffeehouse scholars red in the face. Poised enough to carry on unfettered. For those who knew to see it, she studied each passerby with shrewdness and pulled her shawl tightly about her as they went. As the sun set, gone was the collective delusion of "goodly society", the pregnant setup to every punchline. For all the laughter and music of her dives, each of the lost souls who wandered in - whether giving or receiving pay - had a sadness about them. An emptiness. Some dark part of themselves locked away. Madame Darling found in each of them an opportunity for good. An opportunity to practice that kindness that the world so often made to be weakness. But if these poor folk were so easily helped, they wouldn't be in one of her tearooms past nine o' clock, would they? Her constitution for drink and smoke was infamous, and combined with the allure of seeing what was assumed to be an upstanding lady of society let her hair down and laugh at one's profane jokes (and sometimes, under the guise of reading tarot), Madame Darling was able to pull secrets from both patron and employee alike. And she used these secrets to steer them to something better. A bit of respite. Maybe salvation was too much to want for them. Sometimes there was only a lesser evil. She was an underbelly confessor and she only laughed at night. What they didn't know was that for those nights she ended in sobriety, she cried herself to sleep in silence, unsure if she'd been able to save them. Backstory: Father's hat shop went bankrupt. Mother died. Father remarried. Twice. Removed from kindergarten teaching due to licentious headmaster. Ejected from the nunnery due to an un-discussed public scandal. Got married to some faraway military something-or-other through a newspaper advertisement but found it... unsuitable... and decided to run away. Typical unsettled early life. She sang and played the guitar for a traveling circus with dreams to join an orchestra, but by the end of the Great War, only made it as far as a sometimes-hostess of dive bars and, ahem, evening tearooms. The soldiers and deserters and injured made for great stories and no shortage of desperation to quell. From across the addle-brained and moon-touched and those-in-permanent-reverie, Madame Darling gathered strange tales of pocket cults whispering about fragmented souls. Strange tales indeed, and over time, these tales overlapped one another. But with that time, she found her venues closed every few years, for over-extortion or land acquisitions or overzealous bobbies with political aspirations. It was difficult to tell how many goodbyes was too-many goodbyes, but eventually Madame Darling set out again, with a single luggage and a single guitar case in tow, and no particular destination. Osros seemed as nowhere as anywhere; certainly, she hadn't intended to land here. Perhaps the Bureau saw her in a roadside inn, casually drawing out the hidden truths of fellow travelers at supper. Perhaps the Bureau saw her smuggle guidance through strangers' doubts and defenses and egos. Perhaps they heard her give direction to the innkeep's practices that suggested she could organize and make sense of the unknowns of the Archive. Regardless of why, she likely already saw the bureau agents before they approached, and read on their faces an oddness in their desires.

Madame Darling's Statblock Name: Madame Darling, Mrs. Wilhelmina (profile) Elements: The change and the longing. Trist is hardly described any other way. Change doesn't like to stay still and the longing is always moving forwards. Dreamers, barbers, artists, athletes, prophets, outlaws. Everyone changes, but not everyone who changes walks with Trist. How strong is your yearning, little Moth? Primary (+2): Moth. I knew a man who captured moths in a bell-jar. On nights like this, he would release them one by one to die in the candle. [Moth is the wild and perilous principle of chaos and yearning.] Secondary (+1): Moon. Secrets are soft; night is softer still; the sea speaks. It is not always wise to listen. [The nocturnal, the forgotten.]Trist 1/1, Eloquence and understanding. The door opens both ways. Shapt knows how to open those doors that others dismiss as impassable. Diplomats, con artists, burglars, priests. Whether physical or mental, these individuals know how to open all the doors opportunity offers. Who's scar has opened for you today, key? Primary (+2): Knock. The Knock permits no seal and no isolation. It thrusts us gleefully out of the safety of ignorance. [The Knock is the principle that opens doors and unseams barriers.] Secondary (+1): Forge. 'Fire', I once read, 'is the winter that warms and the spring that consumes.' [The principle of the Forge transforms and destroys.]Shapt 1/1, The dwelling place of the Soul. Your flesh, your blood, your bones. Every nail and scale, and tooth and fleshy truth. (For the purposes of our game you'll start with three of these, maybe more, maybe less. Sometimes, you might find an opportunity to make Health more powerful, though there is always a price to be paid for this sort of transaction.) Everyone has this. Those who don't, aren't. Those who aren't… can be difficult to deal with. Best keep some around just in case, a bit extra always comes in handy when push comes to love. The question remains, can you have too much? Primary (+2): none. Secondary (+1): Heart. The Heart Relentless beats to protect the skin of the world we understand. [The Heart is the principle that continues and preserves.] Secondary (+1): Nectar. The green wealth in the world's veins; the pulse of the seasons. [Long ago, some called this principle Blood.] Secondary (+1): Scale. Hard without, hard within, hard to rouse, harder to subdue. [What is left of the crude powers of the deep earth.]Health 3/3 Specialties: entrepreneurship, music, fortune telling Weaknesses: drink & smoke, savior complex, law enforcement