Post by amarillan on May 8, 2020 15:59:46 GMT -7
Name: Octavia
Aliases: Tavia, Vee, Sliver, Dancing Tear, Grey, Mirell Park
Age: 22
Appearance and Style:
Nothing stands out about this woman. In a sea of people, she is easily forgettable. She is average height and average build. Average looks with Mousy blonde hair and grey eyes. Her skin is a little sallow, but she is someone that you would overlook in a crowd or allow your eyes to pass over in a street. There are no big extravagant movements or showy displays.
She wears greys or browns, linen or cotton for summer and wool for winter, nothing finely made, just.. average. She carries a bag of accessories, that she can add when moving in different neighbourhoods. A stylish belt of interlocking gold links, a homespun cloak that looks dirty and other items that can be added to her garb to make her blend with the populace
Her persona wears a uniform of polished chainmail covered with a tabard in black cloth with gold trim while on duty and when off duty, wears bright colours such as reds and blues. She favours silks when in this garb
Significant Qualities:
There are people moving around the city every day whose physical presence is so non-stimulating that everyone ignores them. They are for all intents and purposes, invisible to denizens of the city. Such people are called 'grey men'. A gray man is the person who moves around the periphery of awareness without creating any stimulus. This makes that person invisible for all practical purposes. This allows the gray man to move about whether the purpose is for ill or good. A “gray man” is “an individual who possesses the skills, ability and intent to blend into any situation or surrounding without standing out, concealing his or her true skills, ability, and intent from others.” Octavia is a grey man, trained and skilled at moving and not being remembered bu those she comes into contact with. She has made being mundane her unique skill.
Living Relatives:
Her mother was a whore working in Zhentil Keep, now deceased. Her father could have been anyone. She had 7 siblings, however, only 5 are still alive, althought she does not know where they are or even if they are still alive, nor would she particularly care.
Jonaval - Elder Brother
Lissa - Elder Sister
Melopome - Elder Sister
Dessari - Elder Sister
Victor - Elder Brother
Five Things Your Character Fears (in order from least afraid to most)
* She knows people fall in love. She truly believes that it is just a case of right time, right person and the touch of Sune. She does not want such a complication in her life. Attachments are complications. Complications are a failure
* Having a flaw in her disguise, in her 'face'. She strives daily to improve her persona, so it is as real as her own personality.
* Growing old. She has seen the infirmities that old age brings and it makes her skin crawl. Drooling, forgetfulness, shitting oneself. It is not something she wants to go through.
* Her true self being discovered by those she is working against. She works hard at being unnoticed and unremarked.
* Death, despite being devoted to Loviatar, she still fears dying and joining the Maiden of Pain in her realm
Four Things Your Character Loves Dearly (in order from least beloved to most)
* Her bow. In her room, she keeps a collection of all the bows she has ever used. If sent to assassinate someone, she retires the bow used after the event, carving in the wood the name of the person killed with it.
* Money. Everyone loves money! or at least the things you can purchase with it. Ever fearful of returning to the abject poverty of her early years, she has a deep love of money, believing the more she has the further she has climbed from her humble roots
* Scars. Scars fascinate her. Her own or others. It does not matter. The way they trace across the skin is mesmerizing to her, although many times she is imagining the pain that went along with the giving of the scar.
* Pain. It is possibly the one thing that does get her excited and that brings a blush to her cheeks and makes her eyes sparkle brightly. She enjoys both giving and receiving. It does not matter to her.
Three Things Your Character Is Embarrassed About (from least embarrassing to most)
* She never had the aptitude to be a Priestess of Loviatar. The days of pray and study never came easy to her and inside she feels she failed the Lady of Pain
* Her Mother was a common gutter whore, who sold herself for coppers to anyone who had the coin to rub together
* That she, in her younger years, had little control when it came to giving pain, so much so that even the guards at Zhentil Keep began to avoid her
Two Things Your Character is Proud of (from least to most proud)
* Her skill at being mundane.. at being passed over and not noticed. Her ability to pass unremarked so that in a crowd, no one remembers she was there
* Her ability to extract information from those who do not wish to give it, usually in ways that are remarkably painful, physically and psychologically to the one being questioned
One Thing They'd be Willing to Kill or Die for (state whether they'd kill or die for it)
* Killing is nothing special, a skill she was taught early on. Dying, is another matter. She does not want to die, at the current time, there is no one and nothing she would give her life for
Birth and Childhood
Octavia was born in Zhentil Keep in 1478, the eighth child to a whore. Octavia never knew her father and her early years were spent in starvation and filth, trying to avoid slavers in the Northern districts of the Keep while stealing and raiding trash to get enough to fill her belly. Home was a lean to against the wall of a partially destroyed house, not that she spent much time there. It was barely big enough for a single person, never mind the eight others who made up her family. When she did manage to get a space inside, rest was far from available as her mother would bring her men back there to rut. There were days her mother seemed flush with coin and she would buy harsh drink and spend days in a drunken stupor. She also noticed that about these times, her older siblings would never return home. It was not until she got older that she made the assumption, her mother was selling them into slavery. When she was seven, she fell afoul of a Priestess of Loviatar, trying to steal a bauble from the woman as she was walking the street returning from her devotions. Upon being caught, the priestess backhanded Octavia so hard, her lips split, but instead of crying, the little girl merely licked at the blood seeping from her lip and stared up at the woman with challenge in her eyes. Upon seeing this, the priestess studied the child for a moment, before grabbing her wrist and hauling her unceremoniously through the streets to her home. That day was the last time she saw her mother or any of her siblings.
The following years were filled with new experiences and new pains. She was given food and clothing, a place to sleep out of the rain and cold and she was personally 'tutored' in the ways of Loviatar by the Priestess that had taken her in. She was also beaten and whipped, tormented and bullied for the amusement of the woman who held the little girl captive. She did not notice the bars on the window, or that she only had a thin blanket. To her, it was a heaven compared to what she had known. She tried to please the woman she was told to address as Mistress, but she was whipped daily, sometimes just a light reddening of the skin, but at others, until blood covered her body. The woman took her mind and warped it, teaching the little girl that pain was glorious and the fact that she could withstand pain was a gift from Loviatar. There were nights she cried herself to sleep, her body burning with agony and there was no position in which she could get comfortable. There were nights where she went to bed, with screams in her ears and covered in the blood of an unknown stranger, that the Priestess and her had spent hours perfecting the art of torture with.
In 1491, The Zhentarium retook the Keep, Octavia was at the Tower of Pain Exulted that day. It was her turn, along with others to clean the Temple, to make it spotless before the night's rites were to occur, to replace the silken drapes and clean the implements of pain. The noise of battle in the streets drew the girls to one of the barred windows and they watched as soldiers swept through the streets, driving out the pirates. One of the general's approached the Temple and was greeted by the High Priestess and then a small deployment of guards were stationed at the entries to the Temple for a week, until the Zhentarium had the Keep firmly under the boot once more.
It was just after this, when Octavia was told that she had no aptitude for clerical work, but that she was more suited to other forms of devotion to Loviatar. She was tutored in weapon play with a Captain of the Guard and it became clear that the weapon she was most skilled with was a bow. She was tutored in making herself unseen and unheard and in passing unnoticed. She was allowed to move freely about the Keep for the second time in her life and she revelled in the new freedom, in the sights of the Keep that was her home. She took lovers and flirted with the young soldiers, practicing the skills that she had. Inflaming passions and then cruelly and coldly destroying them, finding loving couples and then deliberately and with enjoyment, destroying the relationship. It was rare that a lover left her bed without permanent marks in their flesh, and soon, there were very few that would accept her invitations to play for word of what she was like had spread amidst the guard. She was trouble and a product of how she had been raised.
She was sent for more training, not with a weapons master, but rather with a mage. She was a weapon, but at the moment she was a club. Unrefined and crude. She worked hard to learn the lessons the mage taught her, not learning magic, but rather he managed to instill in her self discipline, something that the clergy of Loviatar had not been able to achieve. He honed her mind so it became a fitting companion to the skills of her body. It was from him, that she first learnt the value of not being seen, of being in a place, but having everyone's eyes pass over you, because you were mundane and not worth noting.
Where you are today:
Octavia was sent to Waterdeep, a devotee attached to the House of Pain in Undermountain. The High Priest there, used his connection to get her a job in the City Guard in Waterdeep. This is where she crafted her persona. A serious woman, called Mirell Park, with a reputation for going by the strict letter of the law, one skilled in the lighter weaponry and with crossbows. Diligent and devoted to the City of Waterdeep.
She keeps her more savage desires and pursuits under wraps, only reveling in them in private, in Undermountain. With being unable to indulge herself as often as she would like, she has a small ceremonial dagger that she uses to give herself shallow cuts along the tops of her thighs and her hips, leaving faint white traceries of scars when they heal. The slight pain and the rich colour of the blood soothe her. It is surprising what that place caters to. She does have ideas about setting up a brothel there. The House of Sweet Pain, after all, she is not the only one with such dark desires.
The world is filled with pain and torment, and the best that one can do is to suffer those blows that cannot be avoided and deal as much pain back to those who offend.
Kindnesses are the best companions to hurts, and increase the intensity of suffering.
Let mercy of sudden abstinence from causing pain and of providing unlooked-for healing come over you seldom, but as a whim, so as to make folk hope and increase the Mystery of Loviatar’s Mercy.
Unswerving cruelty will turn all folk against you.
Act alluring, and give pain and torment to those who enjoy it as well as to those who deserve it most or would be most hurt by it.
The lash, fire, and cold are the three pains that never fail the devout.
Spread Loviatar’s teachings whenever punishment is meted out.
Pain tests all, but gives strength of spirit and true pleasure to the hardy and the true.
There is no true punishment if the punisher knows no discipline.
Wherever a whip is, there is Loviatar. Fear her--and yet long for her.
Views on the world:
Octavia has little time for the games of nobles and politicians, however, her persona demands that she does upon occasion deal with them. In these times, she treats them as she is expected to and has upon more then one occasion allowed herself to be bribed to forget an incident should the price be right.
She fears all Gods, for they are fickle. She even fears Loviatar, even as she is devoted to her. Gods are power and power crushes the small and insignificant most of the time.
There is no one but herself she can rely upon. She has no friends, merely acquaintances, even within both Temples that have played a part in her life. There is nothing she cannot leave behind at a moments notice should she need to flee. True she might miss her collection of bows, but everything can be replaced.