Setting Information
| Ash Divensky |
| Thursday, 09 April 2009 21:16 |
|
Name: Katya ‘Ash’ Divensky (Also known as: Zhulka of Ze’ev) Gender: Female Race: Werewolf Age: 29 Ash has become aware in the last five years or so that she is aging very slowly and would look closer to twenty than thirty if it wasn’t for the scars. She does not know what her natural lifespan is but has no reason to suspect that it is longer than a human’s – werewolves just appear to stay fit and healthy for longer. Occupation: Styles herself an ‘Investigator’, a post that she and her clients believe fills a much-needed gap in a city where the military are the only police. Jobs tend to be dangerous and lucrative but far apart. Physical Appearance: Normally Ash is a lean, tallish woman, built for utility rather than aesthetics. Her form makes a few concessions to feminity; a relatively small bone structure with fairly narrow shoulders and back, a slightly tucked-in waist, a little bit of curve to the hips and chest – otherwise she is all flat planes of muscle and long, powerful limbs. In general she is striking rather than beautiful, although there is an exotic element to her that some find attractive. She has fine, regular features and a fairly long face, with pale skin that only tans very lightly. Her large, expressive eyes are a striking blue, framed with a shock of prematurely white hair, shot through with blonde. Her hair is very long and thick, and she usually braids it or ties it back to get it out of the way, although it is very often loose and messy from running around in wolf form. All over her body are many small scars, but the most obvious are a long, thin, raised white line that runs vertically down her back from her right shoulder, a good foot or so in length (normally covered by clothing) and a similar thin scar almost an inch long, diagonally across her left cheek. Ash’s look is scruffy but clean. She favours loose, tunic-style dresses and occasionally a cloak for warmth, often without shoes and occasionally without trousers or even underwear. She does not share the nudity taboo most human cultures have, but keeps covered to avoid embarrassing others. Ash never buys expensive clothes because she is always losing them, 'somehow'. Some of the time she is a wolf of medium size (about five feet from nose to tip of tail), with a white coat shading to blonde. She appears sleek and healthy or dogged and tired depending on how she is feeling as a human, but her coat is nearly always well-groomed. Her eyes remain blue in wolf form, which can help her to pass as a large dog such as a husky or wolfhound if needed. She also retains her scars; although the one on her back creates little more than a ripple in the fur, on her face where the fur is shorter the other scar is clearly visible. For a moment in between forms, there are some hairy creatures so incredibly hideous they don’t even bear thinking about. Luckily they only appear for a second. Personality: Ash is opinionated, judgemental and stubborn as hell. She can be very kind and generous when she feels like it – although her generosity generally involves giving what people need and/or deserve rather than what they want - but this does not detract from a completely uncompromising attitude that arises from her conviction that being a good person and a nice person are not even close to being the same thing. Her two main goals in any given situation are to uncover the truth, and to inject a little justice into the situation. If it comes to a contradiction, though, justice wins – there is no sense in beating the truth out of people when a situation would be best left alone. Her commitment to justice comes not, as it might for many, out of a belief that there is a natural order in the world, nor does it derive from the worship of some deity to whom justice is pleasing. She has one conviction – the world is basically complex and random and no natural justice exists. Therefore, the only way there will be any justice at all is if we sentient beings really really work at it. Bending the rules and even laws to get it isn’t an obstacle. As a lone wolf Ash is inherently distrustful of any authority whose fitness to rule is not immediately apparent. However another strong trait of hers is a pragmatic nature that means she is willing to do a lot of things and put up with a lot of people she doesn’t like to achieve an end – and she might even be able to convince them that she doesn’t hate them. Ash does not follow any particular God and does not believe that the universe had a single maker or designer, but pays tribute to – or perhaps fears - the random nature of the magic, people, life and the universe the same way a gambler may plead with a roulette wheel or a pair of dice; ‘Lady Luck’ might just respond. This isn’t faith as such – it’s more like the non-superstitious ironmonger who hangs up a horseshoe in the door frame because ‘I hear it still works when you don’t believe in it’. Politically, Ash is fairly neutral on the big magic-versus-tech dispute. Ideologically she would tend to agree with the Techies, because the whole concept of evidence on which she bases her detective work relies on reality functioning in a reasonably predictable manner, just like tech. However, she would agree that reality does not function perfectly logically and it’s foolish to ignore that or try to change it. Also, she is a magical being, technically, so she probably couldn’t survive in an entirely non-magical climate. Other political issues, such as fairness in official systems of all kinds, any forms of discrimination or military bullying absolutely do interest her, but the big magic-tech debate she finds rather baffling, because on that front she figures that the city is pretty much ok as it is, and even if it wasn’t she doesn’t understand how it could possibly be more important than the fact that, for example, the city has only a military police force. Magics: Ash can’t consciously do any magic, she doesn’t know any spells and she kind of distrusts them. However, her magical blood has certain effects described in strengths and weaknesses, as well as the ability to transform, whenever she likes, into a wolf. This wolf looks and appears to be an ordinary wolf, and as such cannot wear clothes (so Ash has to find something to wear fast whenever she turns back) and cannot speak. It also has certain instincts, such as a desire to chase things, a dislike of daylight and crowded spaces, and a fear of fire, but Ash is in full conscious control of the wolf form and so is able to overcome these instincts. The longer she stays in wolf form, though, the harder it is for her to do so. Injuries and negative effects such as illness or spells remain when she changes. In a more heavily saturated magical environment such as her home country, Ash would also be able to take on a third wolfwoman form, with the strength and powers of wolf form, but bigger and stronger (albeit bulkier and less agile), and the advantage of opposable thumbs and a voicebox from the human form. Anywhere other than a very high magic zone, however, difficulties with conservation of mass and the laws of physics mean this is not possible. Although Ash in effect retains full control over her transformations, this is the case because she uses both forms frequently. The wolf form exerts a kind of pull on her which gets stronger at full moon and means she cannot stay in human form indefinitely; if she didn’t change for a few weeks, she would find herself changing involuntarily at full moon. Also, especially when it is getting towards full moon, Ash finds that anger, stress or danger cause her hair to bristle, her fingernails to grow and her strength to increase; if she was really pushed, her body might change in self defence. The pull of the wolf form is stronger where magic is stronger, and in high magic zones, werewolves find spending even a few days at a time in human form difficult and tiring to keep up. Staying in wolf form too long also has an effect; the wolf instincts begin to take over and the rational human brain begins to lose hold. Werewolves who have stayed in wolf form too long can forget how to change back, or lose the will to do so, and live out their lives as simply smart, resilient wolves, with a humanoid dash of malevolence if they happen to have been that kind of person. That’s where the horror stories come from. Lycanthropy can be likened to a magical virus of the blood; it turned Ash’s blood magical and she counts as a magical being for the purposes of dying if she enters a magical dead zone and other problems. It is also transmissible by blood. A single bite from Ash wouldn’t turn someone unless Ash happened to bleeding quite a lot from her mouth, but a drawn-out battle with open wounds and blood splashed around on both sides could well turn someone else into a werewolf. There is also, theoretically and according to what Ash has heard, the chance of transmission during certain other acts that involve the exchange of bodily fluids. Due to the magical nature of the disease the transmission, if anticipated or diagnosed quickly, can be stopped by magical means. In the latter case, most methods, magical or otherwise, that would prevent pregnancy would also prevent lycanthropy. Strengths/Good Qualities: (General) Enhanced physical powers: Ash, in human form, is faster, stronger and more endurant than a woman of her size has any right to be. In addition, her senses are sharper and her reflexes much faster. This effect varies with the moon – at new moon the enhancement is barely there, and at full moon the effect is at its most noticeable. It’s not superhuman or anything, but Ash definitely has better reflexes than most people and would tend to have the edge in an unarmed fight, or even be able to hold off an armed opponent for a little while if they were not too skilled and she was at the full extent of her powers. Heightened senses: All Ash’s senses are 100% - no short-sightedness here – and some are better, in particular her hearing and sense of smell. Throughout the month her capacities vary from ‘good for a human’ at new moon to 'awesome' at full moon; for a day and night at full moon Ash possesses all of her wolf senses (described below) in human form. In addition, although her eyes are no better than another human's, she can see in partial light to almost pitch blackness much better than the average human. Like most animals though, her night vision is pretty much grayscale. Vitality: Weapons and the like injure Ash as much as anyone else, but no matter how bad the attack, werewolves can only be killed by silver, fire, or old age. Of course, there are a vast amount of things you could do without involving either of those elements that would make Ash wish she were dead, but her wish would go unanswered – she would just have to remember that she will eventually get better. Ash heals no faster than a human or a wolf and is incapitated by injuries in the same manner. However, if the injury would definitely have killed a human – decapitation, drowning, stabbed through the heart, that sort of thing – Ash will appear dead, but unless she is cremated in the meantime, she will rise again unharmed on the next night of the full moon. This can create a bizarre situation if she has an injury that will take more than a month to heal, because it might be easier for her to kill herself the day before full moon and come back healed. The thing is, she wouldn’t have the guts to try it. Only silver or fire can cause her permanent injury, such as a scar or missing body part – anything else will be healed completely. Puzzle-solving: Ash possesses a very good memory and a logical, analytical mindset that makes her good at piecing together puzzles and solving problems. Details that another would discard as insignificant lodge in her memory until she finds the puzzle piece that connects them. Guile: Powerful as a werewolf is, she’d be no good against humans without a grab-bag of street smarts picked up from months (in Verre Zon and Novogood, see 'History') as a nosy parker. One of Ash’s favourites is obfuscating stupidity – she pretends to be slow, ignorant and generally animalistic, the way some people expect werewolves to be. In addition to helping people underestimate her, which is always useful, this helps her to threaten people – a human can perhaps be relied on to back down, but a dumb, brutish, bloodthirsty werewolf isn’t the sort of person you want to play chicken with. Ash is also more than capable of posing as a lowlife to pick up the word on the street. Fencing and sword combat: Although her training comes from duels and not from street combat, Ash is competent if rusty with the rapier, a weapon originally designed for close-quarters unarmed combat. She rarely carries her sword. (Wolf form only) Physical powers: The werewolf equals a fairly strong, fast example of a mundane wolf, stronger and faster than human Ash even at full moon. Senses: A wolf’s sense of hearing is considerably better than a human’s and is particularly good at hearing sound too far away for human ears. Ash mostly uses this for eavesdropping. Much more impressive is the werewolf’s incredible nose, capable of tracking people by scent, identifying who items of clothing belong to, determining who has been in a room lately and locating objects. As a wolf, Ash experiences the world more in smells than pictures, and finds her experiences difficult to explain to humans. People can keep themselves from being tracked quite easily if they know what they’re doing; crossing rivers, walking through busy areas, and walking near strong-smelling places like an abattoir or spice market are just a few ways, but anyone who doesn’t know they’re being tracked is likely to be found. Scents go cold in a matter of hours or days depending on the weather and the stillness or otherwise of the air. A good downpour or gale and anything outside is next to useless. Weaknesses/Bad Qualities: Fire: Ash has ancestral fear of fire. It will only burn her, like a human, if she gets too close or someone is trying to burn her, but burns on werewolves are slow to heal and can cause death. In order to be able to live around humans Ash has trained herself to tolerate candles and lanterns in the room as long as they are not waved around too close to her, but she wouldn’t carry one herself. Ash would not venture near a bonfire or burning building, and it would take all of her willpower not to run away whimpering with her tail between her legs. Silver: Silver burns Ash if it touches her like an acid, and silver actually inside her, such as a silver dagger wound or a silver arrow or bullet, would burn her from the inside and cause a painful death. Silver just on the skin or a shallow cut from a silver weapon is survivable, but intensely painful. Since silver is a metal it does not really smell, so Ash has no way of knowing if someone has a silver weapon, and she has even heard of a werewolf tricked into swallowing food dusted with silver powder, who died. Silver-coated weapons work just as well as solid silver, but a silver alloy, while it will cause immense pain, some burning or something akin to an allergic reaction (if just touching unbroken skin) depending on the concentration, will not actually kill her. Wolf instincts: While in wolf form, a number of instincts assert themselves which are, on the whole, entirely unhelpful to a detective working in the city. The longer Ash stays in wolf form, the stronger they get, and they persist, disappearing slowly, for a good ten minutes to hours or even days after she turns back into a human – roughly a tenth of the time she spent as a wolf. The wolf dislikes broad daylight, and wants to retreat to shadows or, if possible, only come out at night. The wolf hates being indoors. Small spaces it can handle, but the alien environment of smells that comes with a human dwelling can be disorientating and a wolf just wants to be outside where it can run. The wolf views unfamiliar animals either as potential prey or potential predators. It is hard to concentrate in the presence of small animals that make you want to pounce, or when a human who looks dangerous prompts you to either flee or attack. Ash has in the past been pushed into hurting people without meaning to if they unwittingly acted threatening or invaded her personal space. In general, the wolf is just plain not as smart as the human, and makes decisions based on immediate needs with no idea of planning or foresight. Also, other animals, particularly prey animals and those with good senses of smell, can tell that she's 'not right' and react negatively. Ash could never, for example, ride a horse, because it wouldn't let her get that close. Lone wolf: Ash does not work well with others, generally. This is partially because of her learned distrust of authority, and partially because of a racial instinct to work only with the pack and follow only the alpha wolves. This means that, if there were certain people she knew very well and trusted enough to consider them her pack or her leader, she would be intensely loyal and devoted, but Ash does not have a pack. This means that she dislikes people trying to tell her what to do or how to do her job, even if they are relevant experts or people she really doesn’t want to cross. Ash also finds social occasions very difficult, because being surrounded by unfamiliar people is very stressful for her. She has learned to cope with it, but if she has to be sociable for long periods of time, she also needs to rest, alone and preferably outside, or she will eventually become so uncomfortable and fidgety that she will be unable to function normally and may come across as very strange indeed. Social conduct she also finds difficult – conventions such as small talk and tact do not come naturally and she has had to learn these from scratch. Even body language she has had to relearn; for example instinctively, steady eye contact appears to her to be threatening and she has had to learn that it humans onsider it normal and an indicator of sincerity. Generally, more of her conversations are business-related or threatening in some way, and these she knows how to deal with. It’s the other stuff that’s tricky. This is not to say she’s incapable of enjoying a nice chat; she just may come across as strange or wooden, and she needs to be alone sometimes as well. Health: While in her moment-to-moment actions Ash seems calm, collected and discriminating, her smartness does not extend to all parts of her life. In particular, her dogged determination can take precedence over the really pressing need to do things like eat and sleep, meaning that she is very frequently not at her best for confrontations, hard thinking, or indeed anything at all. She’s just not very good at looking after herself, and the knowledge that she is nearly unkillable wipes away all (healthy) fears she might have about her near-constant insomnia, especially while on a case, her fairly heavy drinking, and her talent for getting injured taking risks she really didn’t have to take. To some observers, it seems almost as if she heard she was unkillable and decided to put that to the test. Her mental health isn’t too great either – apart from her obsessive nature when it comes to mysteries, which is sort of helpful, she also suffers from recurrent spells of melancholy, associated with insomnia and the drinking, which can lead to self-destructive behaviours. She is more likely to deliberately put herself in harm’s way by taking unnecessary risks than obviously hurt herself, but the outcome is the same. *Character History: Katya Divensky was born to a middle-class human family in the Novogood Republic, which occupies a small area in the north of what we would call Russia. It has a magical climate similar to Verre Zon’s but is surrounded by a larger medium-to-high magic zone – the Kingdom of Volvsk. Novogood is an independent human settlement tolerated but not respected by Volvsk, which is a mostly human country under the chaotic and despotic rule of an aristocratic werewolf minority. The werewolves are the pretty much undisputed rulers of the surrounding territory, ruling by force, and with centuries of tradition to back them up. They are an insular, backwards, xenophobic and violent culture. The throne of Volvsk tends to change hands every few years or so as rival packs compete for dominance. The wolves do not work, and what they can’t get from hunting, they receive, like feudal lords, from the humans that work the land. Anything else, they just steal. The most successful werewolf packs are successful because they reproduce not by having children (which would be far too vulnerable to enemy attack to survive into adulthood) but by recruiting promising young humans with promises of strength, power and immortality, or failing that, good old fashioned force. Katya Divensky was the eldest daughter of a soldier who made the mistake of deciding his duaghter would be better off armed from a young age and trained in self defence against any marauding werewolves. For a while, it was useful, but for Bars, a Beta werewolf of the Ze’ev pack, this tall, powerful teenage girl with golden hair, blue eyes and a big sword was too hard to pass up. He wanted her for his heir and, in and around Volvsk, werewolves are used to getting what they want. When he and his young ‘son’ Shutka started crossing the border to hang around with the family, Katya’s parents knew what was coming. It was pointless to resist, so they didn’t. At the age of fourteen, she was carried away to the Ze’ev castle in Volvsk. She never again saw her parents. This, however, wasn’t a simple case of abduction. Katya was fourteen by the time she was taken, and she had known Bars and Shutka for many years before that – before her parents even knew the wolves were after her, she and Shutka had secretly played as children, passing Shutka off as either a human boy or a stray dog. Katya knew what was happening, and if she had had a choice in the matter, she probably would have agreed to go, been eager even. Human life, even in Novogood was pretty grim as far as she could see, while the werewolves had anything they wanted. Katya, renamed Zhulka, remained in the castle for many years, being taught the werewolf way of life and raised to follow in the footsteps of Shutka and his mate. Her retraining – almost reprogramming – as an aristocratic werewolf was so complete that to this day she has almost no recollection of her real parents, even though she was a teenager when she left them. As far as she was concerned, she had always been a werewolf. As far as actually physically becoming a werewolf is concerned, her memory is decidedly fuzzy about when this happened – in the years following her abduction, she and Shutka would frequently tear into each other while playfighting and blood would be spilled, but her and Shutka also mated, as the werewolves put it, and Ash doesn’t remember which activity it was that caused her to turn. She does remember the full moon after it happened when she changed for the first time amid howls of pain and howls of pride from the other wolves, who nuzzled her and licked her and told her she was now a full member of the pack. The night she first changed, her hair – and fur – turned almost completely white, which the other wolves assured her was not unusual, but Shutka grumbled and muttered and made it quite clear that he wasn’t particularly happy about the loss of his little blonde girl. This was just the start of their animosity. Shutka’s next complaint was that Zhulka was too nice to the humans in the kingdom. The wolves were raised to view humans as inferior creatures, but this didn’t stop Zhulka taking pity on them and trying to make sure the wolves didn’t take all the food they had to eat and let them starve. Despite Shutka, Zhulka started implementing policies that were kind to the humans, under the pretext that they were beneficial to the wolves. Leave them enough food to eat, because if they’re well-fed, they’ll work harder for you. Protect them from other werewolf packs, because they’re a valuable resource. The older wolves couldn’t argue with the wisdom of these ideas, but this didn’t stop Zhulka’s peers from mocking her. They repeated the Volvskian saying which translates as ‘A wolf who works for humans is a dog’, the last word of which can only be translated as ‘dog’ or ‘bitch’, neither of which does justice to the profanity and insulting power of the Volvskian word to a werewolf. Despite all this, Zhulka was respected by the elders of the pack as a smart young kid who may be going places. The pack grew wealthier and won the next struggle for sovereignty, making Zhulka and Shutka comparable to minor princes and princesses. Zhulka’s pity for the humans notwithstanding, she was young, strong, fairly influential and certainly no outsider to the values of the culture – strength equals right, humans are not people as such, you advance only by killing your superiors and killing another werewolf in a fair fight is not murder. Shutka was still not pleased with Zhulka, but he didn’t leave her because right now being her mate was a more advantageous situation that not being. Instead he stuck close by her, smarming up to elders and taking partial credit for her ideas. The high-ranking werewolves of the court lived in a style that would actually be familiar to most human nobles; there were complex hierarchies, court gossip and scheming, arranged matings between packs, and of course the usual aristocratic – that is to say needlessly bloodthirsty – ‘sports’, chiefly hunting and duelling. Hunting was typically of humans; choosing those from enemy territories or the independent Novogood provided the best sport. The takings could be dead or alive, and the living humans could become new serfs or, if they had proved especially good sport, new additions to the pack. Zhulka preferred duelling. The wolves would duel in whatever form, often shifting as they fought, striving for dominance, or restrict themselves to one, agreed before the fight. The most serious of these games was one-on-one human form duels using silver-plated small swords or rapiers. These very defensive matches were won by a single cut anywhere on the body – a cut from a silver weapon would scar and be a permanent reminder of the fight. To kill someone intentionally in one of these duels was treated as murder. Amongst the older wolves losing these battles had severe consequences status-wise, but among the younger wolves it was still treated as sport, and nearly all wolves, Zhulka included, bear facial scars from this game. Ash still has fond memories of Dymka, the wolf who wounded her, as a friendly rival - and Dymka still bears her scratches on his face, although she doubts he remembers her so fondly after what was to come. Zhulka and Shutka soon became the Ze’ev’s primary contact with the human serfs, in charge of protecting them and collecting from them, which earned both of them the ‘dog’ epithet from pack-members and enemies alike. Shutka wasn’t happy, of course, but stood his ground because Bars was getting old, and the Beta wolf position would be open to him soon – then he could rid himself of the ‘dog’. Before this could happen, a far more drastic event occurred – the humans of the Ze’ev pack, now well-fed and encouraged by the lack of random werewolf murders among their number lately, rebelled against the disorganised werewolves and took control of the Ze’ev territory, which became Novogood territory when the Novogodians joined the war. The battle and resultant infighting amongst the Ze’ev drastically reduced their numbers, and those who lived mostly either sought sanctuary with other packs or fled the land altogether. Shutka and many other Ze’evs held Zhulka responsible, and in self-preservation, she accepted blame – but privately counted this a victory for justice over tyranny. Refusing to fight her properly, to the death, Shutka instead challenged his mate to a silver-sword duel, an almost unheard-of occurrence. Another pack, amused and interested, gave them the safety of a proper duelling ground and they fought, viciously, the way the older wolves duelled – it was no longer just a game. Zhulka won the duel with a gash in Shutka’s side; in keeping with the rest of the battle, her final blow had been much more vicious than most. She doubted at the time that it was a killing blow, but it certainly added serious injury to the significant insult of losing to a dog. Zhulka turned her back to leave and the stricken Shutka struggled away from the medic and lashed out with his sword, creating the laceration down Ash’s back that forms her second scar. Immediately, Shutka was held back and the wolves of the host pack came to tend to Zhulka’s wound, but the still-struggling and, it became clear, dying Shutka tried to keep them away, shouting, ‘Let the dog go to its masters!’ It transpired that Zhulka’s sword had hit Shutka at an odd angle and the tip snapped off and remained in his wound; that was what killed him. However, despite the accidental nature of his death, it was too politically awkward for the pack to continue to shelter Zhulka, so she half-ran, half-staggered, wounded and bleeding, to the only place she could think of to go: the former Ze’ev territory. The human’s recognised their old benefactor and the former serfs hid her from the Novogodian government, took her in and looked after her, surmising that she had been hurt for helping them. In the human settlement she was treated with a mixture of hatred, fear and awe but above all confusion – why would a werewolf turn against her own species for the benefit of people who never asked for her help? It was here that Ash formed most of her current opinions on justice – that it transcended species and culture, and applied universally, and that it was an uncommon commodity, a thankless task, and her duty wherever she found it. In time her presence became known to the people, and there was a faction who lobbied to have her assume leadership of the Republic and lead it to war against the other werewolves – without her initial knowledge or support. She moved in the political circles of the Novogood Republic for a time, but found them dreary, bureaucratic, and as corrupt as werewolf nobility. When fully recovered, Ash left what little money she had from her time as an aristocrat so she didn’t feel she owed the people anything, and left without a backward glance. Ash’s early twenties were something of a blur. After leaving her homeland she wandered many miles, living as a wolf and at times meeting with mundane wolves – sometimes she was treated as a potential friend, sometimes as an enemy. For over two years she lived in a large walled city far to the left of Verre Zon as the intelligent guard dog of the Captain of the Watch. He knew the strange creature he had acquired in the forest was no ordinary dog, and even that it occasionally became a naked woman, but he never suspected that it possessed mental capacities beyond those of a very bright canine – mainly because at the time, she didn’t. Ash barely remembers those years because she remained a wolf so long she lost nearly all sense of self and human intelligence. Essentially she was the wolf – dog, even – the Captain believed her to be. And then one day, without warning or explanation, she woke up human and naked in the yard and wondered what she was doing there. Although she initially felt disgusted, Ash – which was what the Captain had called her – decided she could accept her role as a dog, if it was one she intelligently chose to take. Ending up here, as a police dog, instead of a pet or a pest preying on humans proved to her that her sense of duty couldn’t be dulled even when all her mental faculties were. However, now she had regained herself she could no longer blindly follow the orders of the Captain who she now saw, though he was mostly fair, was often overly harsh on petty criminals and too forgiving of the indiscretions of the aristocracy. She would be a dog, if that was what working with humans meant, but she would work with them, not for them. Ash left to find somewhere she felt her skills could be put to use – if possible somewhere with no meddling, undeserving aristocracy – but first she broke the habit of a lifetime and said goodbye to the Captain, explaining her reasons for leaving. She first came to Verre Zon in search of the weapons of her homeland, because she heard you could buy anything there, but she soon realised that the city fit her requirements to a tee and set up shop there, at the moment working on a small private basis but with big ambitions. Belongings: One of her more vital possessions is a purse with an adjustable strap that she wears around her neck; normally it is worn long but can be shortened to collar-size just before she changes. This means she doesn’t leave her money in a heap with her clothes when she changes. She has lots of spare, cheap clothes, due to her habit of leaving outfits all over town when she unexpectedly has to change. Ash possesses both a regular edged rapier, ideal for unarmed, inner-city combat and a special one, in a locked case in her room, the point of which is silver-plated. This is of more sentimental value than practical; in Novogood and Volvsk every house contained a silver-plated weapon, but she does not expect to meet another werewolf in the metropolis. She hardly wears the regular rapier either, but it’s good to know it’s there. Ash rents a place Downtown, in one of the less respectable (and therefore cheaper) streets; she lives upstairs, and downstairs is her office. The office consists of little more than a desk, some chairs, and a dying pot plant, but it has a door with a window in it that has her name painted on it, and that’s the important thing. |
| Last Updated on Sunday, 12 April 2009 01:00 |