Clockwork Abattoir: A Cadaverous Earth campaign

[Ghostman]

Do you have a preference for any of the 4 syndicates? That is, Brass Skulls, Orchid-Eaters, Nine Eyes, or Yellow Dragons?

There doesn't seem to be much information on them. Going purely by names the Nine Eyes has a nice ring to it though.

Anyway, here's a (tentative) description of my character:
[spoiler=Xavier]

[ooc]
I fully admit to taking inspiration from Batman and the Thief games.
[/ooc]

Xavier fights cautiously. Xavier fights dishonorably. And Xavier kills.

Xavier is a professional hit man, an artist of cold-blooded murder. Although slaying men is his business, he doesn't consider himself a warrior. He never engages his targets in combat if he can avoid it, prefering to dispatch them via more effective means. He favours methods that are contemptible, dishonorable and decidedly unfair: poison, arson, planted explosives, orchestrating "accidents", strangling sleeping victims in their beds, etc. As long as he performs his job correctly his targets will never even know what got them, let alone have any chance to fight back. Should his plans go awry he won't hesitate to flee; he feels no sense of pride nor honor that could compel him to stand and fight. He is a ruthless pragmatist that kills without mercy, though never without reason.

Xavier is neither tough nor very strong. He is agile and possessed of lightning-fast reflexes, keen perception and sharp intellect. Although his movements are swift and precise, they are also completely devoid of grace and flair. He has no interest in the pompous showmanship of buffoonish swashbucklers, no time to waste on fancy flourishes.

His greatest expertice lies in stealth and acrobatics; he blends into the shadows and slips through the dark alleys of Skein with the ease of a ghost, dashing silently across rooftops and scuttling through the narrowest of windows and hatches. Few are the locks that can hold him out. When he isn't out on the field stalking his next victim Xavier tinkers in his laboratory, mixing deadly poisons or constructing various gadgets ranging from simple tools to intricate clockwork mechanisms and alchemical aids.

Xavier is a man of average height, with a wiry athletic build and pale complexion. His sleek coal-black hair is cut short, oiled and combed back. His face is clean shaven and narrow with sharp features. A deep scar runs from his right cheek to his forehead, interrupted by a mechanical clockwork orb that replaces his lost right eye. Xavier usually hides this device under a black eyepatch while in public, primarily because it gives him a disturbing countenance that attracts unfavourable attention from the population of Skein, but also because the preternatural vistas this eldritch mechanism reveals can be unsettling even for someone as cold-blooded as him. His left eye is of icy blue color, in contrast with the blood-red hue of it's artificial pairing.

His clothing is of quality suitable for a middle-class skeinite, albeit without the slightest hint of the typical pretenses to imitate the flamboyance of the nobility. We wears a brown shirt, black trousers and a cowled gray cloak. On his feet are boots augmented with clockwork enhancements, on his hands leather gloves similarly improved. His belt supports a sheathed sabre on his left hip, a holstered pistol on his right, and an array of strange little tools and vials between. The lower half of his face is covered, in accordance with customs of Skein, under a veil of black silk.

Weapons:
* Sabre
* Pistol
* Blowgun; shoots poisoned darts
* Several concealed daggers and throwing knives
* Garrotte wire

Special Tools:
* Rectractable metal claws embedded in his boots and gloves enable him to scale walls.
* Smoke bombs fill an area with thick black smoke that obscures vision.
* Flash bombs blind briefly anyone who stares directly at the flash.
* Searing powder inflicts agonizing pain on contact, though it doesn't actually cause any damage.
* Explosive mines triggered by tripwires can be used to set up an ambush or trap an escape route to stop pursuers.

[/spoiler]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Ghostman,

I'll doctor up a post for each of the syndicates (I've already run a rough draft by Steerpike).  

As for Xavier:

I like the name. Does he have a surname or additional moniker?

The description is also well-written. I also highly approve of him concealing his mechanical graft -as such are stigmatized in Skein. I also really like how you have him dressed as a nondescript middle-class citizen, as sumptuary laws will play heavily in certain wards. With the description of him tinkering, you'll want to consider picking Artifice as a focus or selecting skills in crafting.

With weapons, have you considered a sword-cane?

For your listed special tools:

The claws/boots can function as expertise in climbing. (or you can wait till you have the money and time to actually craft them as a permanent theurgic device that would act as a benefaction on climbing tasks).

A smoke bomb could be a theurgic device. Same with a flash bomb, dose of searing powder, or explosive bomb. Just remember the limited number you begin with.

I look forward to seeing his stats.

[Steerpike]

I really like both of the characters posted so far.  Incredibly true to the setting.

Xavier reminds me a little bit of Corvo Attano from Dishonoured (which I've been replaying recently).  Very cool.

Mine is on her way.  I got a little carried away with her storiette.

[Rose-of-Vellum]

I await with bated breath.

[Rhamnousia]

Phrixia Gronne, the Rogue Bravo

A former corsair and bravo from the City of the Lamprey, Phrixia Gronne has always had a talent for violence, having killed her first man in cold blood (and under less-than-honorable circumstances) while still a girl. Possessing a ruthlessly amoral philosophy that cherishes nothing but her own survival and seemingly devoid of ambition beyond satisfying her appetitive urges for blood, sex, and coin, she carved out a comfortable niche for herself in Lophius' cutthroat society without ever swearing fealty to someone other than herself. It was almost by accident that she discovered her nascent ability for witchcraft, but her general unwillingness to focus meant that she has yet to learn more than a handful of petty incantations, but that does not dissuade her from referring to herself as a "spellsword" when boasting of her skills. When she answered Skein's call for mercenaries during the Adumbral War, she did so only because she thought she could profit off of the bloodshed without putting herself in any real danger; when the odds of victory turned against the corsairs during their first engagement with Crepuscule's mercenaries, Phrixia jumped ship and swam for shore as quickly as she could. She then spent the remainder of the war traveling the length of the Radula as a freelance sellsword, joining the battles just long enough to loot what she could and disappearing as swiftly as she could. She settled finally settled down in the Clockwork City only because she'd made fewer enemies there than in either Crepuscule or Lophius; she considered Skein's rigid class hierarchy stifling and dull, but found herself sufficiently entranced by its wealth of fineries and arcane lore to not seek opportunities in another of the Twilight Cities; originally planning to flee down the Radula River as soon as she was sure most of those who knew her face had gotten themselves killed, as the years went by, she has become increasingly comfortable with her labyrinthine, smog-choked surrounding, the acrid aroma of industry now nearly as pleasing to her nose as the stench of swamp muck. No longer as piratical as she once was, she mainly finds employ as a freelance sellsword and bodyguard for Skein's many competing merchant factions. There is little lost love between her and the local criminal cartels: while she affords them the barest modicum of respect, she also kills those underlings who cross her path without a moment's hesitation.

Phrixia is an exceptionally-tall, long-limbed woman whose substantial curvature does not fully distract from her powerful, tightly-corded physique. She is darkly complected even for one from Lophius, with deep-set olive green eyes (often ringed by thick smearings of white kohl) that seem to flash at the promise of violence and oily raven hair that spills down around her broad shoulders in a tangle of loose curls, kept out of her face beneath a colorful bandana. Her nose is shapely, her jawline chiseled, and there is an almost feline quality to the curl of her lips made all the more prominent when she smirks in mirth or anger. Virtually every inch of her body, from her feet to her throat, is covered by tattoos intricately etched in black and gold ink; the designs are largely geometric arabesques, incorporating a great many clutching tentacles and leering death's heads. The majority of her thick scars are self-inflicted decorations, the most notable exceptions being several circular arrangements of deep puncture wounds along her forearms, "love-bites" earned while dueling leechkin. A natural dancer as well as a killer, she moves with a supple, almost predatory grace, seemingly always balanced effortlessly on her toes as she spins about. She speaks Shambles with a distinctive, Glatch-infused accent, and she always seems to reek of liquor, cigarette smoke, and the heady floral perfumes she anoints herself with to the point of excess.

Her distinctive, colorful garb marks Phrixia as much a foreigner as her swarthy complexion: a pair of knee-length leather maiden boots; close-fitting, high-waisted trousers with a brocade sash worn round her waist as a belt; strips of black cloth wrapped about her palms and wrists; a loose, open-breasted tunic of pale damask beneath a richly-embroidered brigandine jack so perfectly tailored to her form that it does not seem to weigh her down in the slightest; and numerous pieces of gaudy jewellery gracing her hands and throat, nearly all of them plundered. In deference to Skein fashion, she also dons a simple rectangular mask of dark lacquered wood. Always at her hips are her two closest companions: a swept-hilted rapier she's named "Blackwand" and light, nimble revolver called "Salamandrine."

[ooc=Phrixia Gronne: Graceful Human Rogue (Way of the Blade & Pistol) 1]
XP: 0
Benefits Gained:
Grit: 2
Pools (Edge): Might 10, Agility 14 (1), Intellect 12
Damage Track: Hale

Defenses: Agility (expertise)
AC: 2 (medium); Might Cost: 0; Agility Penalty: 0
Recovery Rolls: 1d6+1; Rolls Left: 4

Languages: Alleyspeak, Shambles

Lifestyle: Decent. Phrixia rents a single spacious and well-appointed room in a boarding house on the periphery of the Indigo Ward, an establishment more often frequented by travelers from Lophius than by members of Skein's established criminal community.

Senses: none to speak of

Skills: balance (expertise), persuasion (expertise), physical performing arts (expertise), running (expertise)

Attacks:

• Blackwand (light bladed)


• Salamandrine (light ranged)

Tricks:

• Armor Proficiency: She can wear any kind of armor. She reduces the Might cost per hour for wearing armor and the Agility Pool reduction for wearing armor by 2. Enabler.


• Gutter-Witchcraft (1 Intellect point): She can perform small invocations: temporarily change the color or basic appearance of a small object, cause small objects to float through the air, clean a small area, mend a broken object, prepare (but not create) food, and so on. She can't use gutter-witchcraft to harm another creature or object. Action.

Flaws:

• Prideful: a roll of 1 on any Agility task leaves her dazed for one round due to shock and shame.
• Taste for Madwine: Phrixia can go a number of days equal to her Might Pool without taking madwine. After that, she must make a Might defense roll (DC 3+1 per previous check) or lose 2 Might, Agility, and Intellect points per day until she takes the drug. Until then, or until she overcomes her addiction, she cannot recover points in her pools and shifts down one step on the damage track.

Items:

• Eldritch Oddities:
  
  • The Red Hag: an eldritch tattoo of a hagfish inscribed in vivid carmine, which ceaselessly wriggles and squirms its way across her skin of its own accord, occasionally disappearing into a black and gold arabesque only to reemerge somewhere else on her body. Close inspection of the animate illumination reveals it to be a tughra (a stylized signature) formed of curling Glatch script.

• Theurgic Devices:
  
  • Doppelganger's Defensive Ring: An iron mourning ring engraved with hellish glyphs, containing a single bound imp of exceptional rascality. On command, the ring disintegrates and releases the demon within, who assumes a form identical to Phrixia and grants her a benefaction to Agility defense actions for ten minutes.
  • Oil of Viciousness: A small glass flacon containing an ugly, viscous mixture comprised of a dead soldier's blood and yellow bile and the ichorous effluvia of a Sallow Seas demon. When the oil is used to anoint the edge of a weapon, every wound blackens and sizzles from the eldritch cruelty, inflicting an additional 2 points of damage. The effect lasts for 28 hours, at which point the oil's potency evaporates.
  
  Mundane Possessions: Blackwand, Salamandrine (12 bullets), custom-fitted brigandine jack, clothing, cigarettes (12), bottle of brandy, bottle of madwine, matchsticks (10), , 60 crowns.
  

[/ooc]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

I'm not quite done with her, but here's my mostly-finished character. What do you think of her so far?

As with the other characters' crunch, I'll wait to review it till you're finished. As for the flavor, I like it a lot. I especially like the names of her weapons, and her overall appearance (especially the white kohl, dark skin, and olive eyes).

In terms of background, I would suggest adding a line or two that mentions (a) how/where she picked up witchcraft, (b) a corsair captain or piratical faction she previously sailed under, and (c) what she 'does' in Skein currently (or how she supports her hedonistic lifestyle). For example, does she 'work' as a river-pirate, lead a dock-gang, serve as a tramp-bodyguard to merchants, or something else?

On one more general note to everyone who has posted -what's up with the 'X' parade? Mr. Nix, Vex, Xavier, Phrixia. Any chance I might ask someone to mix their name up a little (besides Mr. Nix, since it's a title as much as name, and changing the spelling would render its meaning moot). Tis a minor, but by no means mandatory, request.

Also, Ghostman, I sent you a pm with a cursory outline of the syndicates.

[Rhamnousia]

It took me forever and a day to come up with Phrixia, so I'm pretty intractable on that.

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Understandable.

On another front, I posted a statblock template.

[Seraph]

I will consider renaming Vex.  That one's not as crucial to the character design as "Mr. Nix" and was chosen on a whim.  What if I called him "Pest" instead, and maybe reflavored his poison attack into a fast-acting form of pneumonic plague?  Or something.  Actual pneumonic plague may be too contagious to be mechanically comparable. 

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Up to you, SH, about the name. Either moniker describes the demon as a bête noir. And you can change the cosmetic description and even mechanical function of the poison, but it cannot be changed to a disease, as a disease requires multiple rolls. But the symptoms could be akin to what you describe -even if not as lethal as pneumatic plague (which has like a 95-100% kill rate, IIRC). 

[Rhamnousia]

I've gone and tweaked her description somewhat, but I'm utterly stumped when it comes to oddities and theurgic items.

[Seraph]

Up to you, SH, about the name. Either moniker describes the demon as a bête noir. And you can change the cosmetic description and even mechanical function of the poison, but it cannot be changed to a disease, as a disease requires multiple rolls. But the symptoms could be akin to what you describe -even if not as lethal as pneumatic plague (which has like a 95-100% kill rate, IIRC).  

Actually it was only about 85% (as if an 85% kill rate is terribly low for a disease).  And I was going off of reports that the pneumonic plague could kill its victims in a few hours, whereas other forms of the plague took much longer.   But I get what you are saying about diseases functioning differently and that is fine.  I could also just say that the venom imitates the effects of plague, and is easily mistaken as such.

[Steerpike]

Just realized that Phryxia is just a shade away from a Bastard from Bastard's Bastards.  Which is awesome.

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Thanks for the additions, Superbright. As for potential eldritch items, here's a couple of ideas (which are by no means exhaustive):

A clockwork respirator/aspirator that allows you to breath air/breath water for a period of time (say 10 minutes) -which could be useful either when trying to swim, or cross noxious or lethal gases (e.g., Skein's sewer-pipes).

A porcelain doll, dressed in a miniature dress of pristine, ruffled silk, satin, and lace -if poisoned or diseased, its owner can kiss the doll, attempting to breathe the sickness into the siphoning doll, allowing you a 'reroll' against the poison/disease. If successful, the dress blackens and shrivels with rot, and cracks form over the doll's face. Either way, the doll can only be used once before losing its potency.

An ensorcelled earring, formed from the body of a jeweled beetle, which sings lewd tunes on command (Phirexia is the proper name for jewel-beetles).  

A memento from Lophius, a drooling idol of one of the countless Driftwood Gods.

A hexed tattoo that allows you to disguise your appearance for a minute.

An eldritch tattoo of an sirae that dances, flies, and cavorts across your skin, weaving through the arabesque gold and black markings.

A shrunken head that spurts nursery rhymes if you put a coin in its mouth.

A clay talisman looted from a member of the Order of the Mandrake, which when commanded, unleashes a ear-splitting scream, dealing 2 points of damage to living creatures in short range. After the scream, it crumples to dust.

A hip-flask covered with the filleted, sutured tongues of cacklegeists. The tongue-leather squirms when liquid is poured into the flask, and laughs incessantly when the hip-flask is empty.

A music box with seven tiny clockwork figurines that chase, whirl, and ultimately behead one another, reassembling when you rewind its key.

Obviously, some of those are potential oddities, and others are potential devices. Personally, I use the opportunity to flesh out my characters' backgrounds -mementos from past loves, defeated foes of significance, reminders of abandoned faiths, etc.

SH,

Yes, as a level 2 poison, it's not likely to have such lethality -but feel free to use the RL preliminary symptoms as springboards.

Steerpike,

I concur, on both points.

[Steerpike]

[ic=Catena]Fungi and obscene graffiti mottled the decaying brickwork of Swinehowl Alley, one sigil proclaiming the crooked side-street the domain of the Nine-Eyes, another image depicting the Magistra Jeanne Phan-Luru (identifiable by double-headed raven heraldry) fornicating with a clockwork paramour.  The lurid drawings competed for wall-space with faded bounty notices and posters urging citizens to get tested for harrowflux infection.  The alley was clotted with refuse: overflowing garbage-bins, corroded gears and other machine parts, a mildewed heap of pamphlets calling for the expulsion of ghilan from the city.  A bedraggled man twitched nearby, lips black from shadowmilk.  The sound of clanking chains and creaking wood emanated from the nearby docks, alongside the dull cacophony of the Jewelled Monstrance.  Swinehowl Alley was dark, even at noon, the buildings to either side shrouding it in gloom.

The rancid odours of the Radula curdled the air, mingling with the other multifarious reeks of the Indigo Ward – tar, blood, wine, semen, sewage, smoke.  Catena ignored them all, unperturbed by their pungency: she had grown up in the slave-caverns of the lilix surrounded by the omnipresent stench of sweat, piss, and excrement, the fetor of a thousand men and women crammed into a too-small pen.  She turned a corner, following the zigzagging alley to its point of termination where a grubby leechkin slouched beside a wooden door.  The creature wore a fine waistcoat and trousers, along with a shabby top-hat shadowing its mouthless visage; its toothy palm-maws hissed as she approached.

"I'm here to see the Oddsaugur," she said simply.  Her voice bore a sibilant accent.  "Eaters' business."

The leechkin looked her up and down suspiciously, its yellow eyes narrowing.  "Surrender your weapons," it croaked, after a moment's consideration.

"Other than these I'm unarmed," she said, holding out her chains.  "Search me if you want."  She stepped forward, putting both hands on the back of her smooth, hairless head.

The leechkin took the chains and dropped them into a nearby barrel, then patted her body with slimy, long-fingered hands.  She wore a sleeveless vest of red leather, black hose, and hob-nailed boots; the creature investigated her garments, its breath hot on her skin as its palm-mouths exhaled.  Satisfied, it opened the door, stepping aside to let Catena enter.

Inside, the old knackery had been outfitted with benches and tables where a handful of men and women lounged, watching two women with stiletto knives circle one another inside one of the rusty cages where horses and pigs were once slaughtered for rendering.  Catena ignored them, threading her way towards the door to the backroom where another two guards – humans, armed with cudgels and wheellock pistols - surveyed the room.  These searched her a second time before, reluctantly, admitting her to the chamber beyond.

Inside sat a hunched and bloated figure, swathed in rags beginning to mildew.  The swollen corpse's flesh twitched and fluctuated beneath the faded cloth wrappings as the shade controlling it like a macabre marionette quivered and pulsed.  It tapped at the glyph-etched keys of a rusty machine, a scrap-fashioned, bastard twin to the grander Sortilege Engine of the Copper Ward, built from scavenged scraps and castoffs.  The machine was a mass of exposed gears, pumping pistons, and steaming valves, cobbled together in an ugly mass of metal.  The corpulent grave-spawn bookmaker adjusted a pair of round spectacles and squinted at the readout the churning machinery regurgitated.  The windows of the room had been carefully boarded up and swathed in curtains so that no sunlight could enter.  One wall was dominated by a huge painting liberated from some nobleman's household, an erotic sinscape of demonic and human flesh commingling in the moonlight.

"Yes?" the Oddsaugur rasped with its ruinous voice, not looking up from its work.

"I'm here to collect," Catena declared flatly.  "You owe the Eaters a lot of chitin, augur."

The creature waved a bony hand dismissively.  "I'm good for it," the shade insisted.  "Should have it be next Molting.  Early Ashwick at the latest.  Tell your drugged-up employers they needn't worry.  I've worked out all the kinks; my calculations are flawless this time."

"I don't think you understand," Catena continued.  "This is your last chance.  You have to pay now.  As in, open the safe I know you have behind that painting and give me what's inside it."

"Or what?"  The Oddsaugur chuckled.  "The Orchid-Eaters didn't even bother coming themselves.  Too strung out on their pollen to get off their pimpled arses!"

"I assure you, my employers take this matter very seriously."

"Then they shouldn't have sent a pale little girl to do their dirty work.  What're you going to do?  I've got two men outside with hand cannons and half a dozen more in the room outside.  Go back to your drugged-up masters and tell them to be patient."

"This is your last chance," Catena said patiently.  "I urge you to take it."

"You make these old bones shake, kid," the Oddsaugur said, looking up at her for the first time.  "But seriously, fuck off back to the Greenhouse or I'll have Hardskull and Blisters out there send you back in pieces."

Catena sighed, then moved.  Bursting forward fast in a blur of sudden motion (like a spider, suddenly scuttling in a single, jerking spasm of movement) and grasped the shade by its long, mouldering hair, pushing its face down towards the exposed machinery of the engine so that its rotting features were mere inches from the churning gears.

"The combination," she said flatly as the grave-spawn thrashed, trying to free itself from a grip like iron.

"Guards!" It croaked.  "Get in here you bastards!"

Catena sighed again, flinging the shade away into a corner and springing rapidly towards the door as it swung open.  Seizing the first tough by the wrist she twisted, hard, producing a sickening snap.  The man howled in unexpected pain as his pistol clattered to the floor; she kicked the man hard in the solar plexus, knocking the air from his lungs and sending him barreling backwards into the second thug behind him.  With a smooth motion she plucked the man's wheellock from the floor, took half a breath to aim carefully, and then fired a bullet at near point blank range through the skulls of both guards, spattering the room behind them with blood, brains, and fragments of skull.

She remembered once, seeing a lilix forewoman take care of two subordinate slaves in much the same way, lining them up one next to the other.  Two slaves were worth only one bullet, she'd said, her mouthparts chittering in the spiderfolk equivalent of laughter.

There were shrieks, grunts, curses, and cries of alarm.  A gutter-witch was barking some incantation, weaving strands of numina into a mass of glowing eldritch worms, congealing between his fingertips.  Catena growled and hurled the pistol at his face, shattering his nose, while others in the room drew daggers and rapiers, advancing towards her.  Unarmed again she dodged the sword-thrust of the first to step over the bouncers' corpses, then rammed an open palm up into the man's face, driving bone and cartilage up into his skull.  He staggered backwards, blood spurting from his nostrils, and she was still moving, keeping low to avoid the crossbow quarrels now whistling overhead.

The smell of blood and smoke filled the air, reminding her of the stench of the pits, of the mines deep in the Chelicerae Mountains where men and women, her kindred, died by the dozens, while the lilix snapped their whips and snarled orders.

More quarrels thudded into the wooden walls as Catena snatched up a half-full bottle of wine.  A burly man hefting a hatchet and a lithe, tattooed women with two daggers - – one of the girls from the cage – came at her.  She flung out her arm, sending a stream of wine into the eyes of the man, then side-stepped a dagger-swipe and smashed the woman in the head with the bottle, braining her.  The knife-fighter toppled and Catena stomped hard on her throat – once, twice, thrice.  Blood welled beneath her hobnails as Catena grabbed the discarded daggers, just in time to parry an overhead blow from the recovered tough's hatchet.  She plunged the second blade into the man's belly, just above his groin, and hugged him close, twisting; two crossbow bolts hit him in the back.  She shoved the dying man into the second pit-fighter.  The witch, recovered, spat a second hex, manifesting as a glob of caustic bile.  The acidic vomit hurtled through the air, nearly searing her hairless scalp.  She hissed softly and threw her remaining knife, embedding the blade in the magus's chest.

She had learned early in life what theurges could do, when she'd watched a lilix priestess torture a heretic to death in a public square in Chenzirr, weaving a cat-cradle sigil out of cobwebs between her fingers, a criss-crossed pattern that sliced the screaming dissident into half a hundred parts, the cuts clean and neat, like the work of some slaughterhouse mechanism.

The crossbow-wielder was reloading.  She came at him bare-handed and covered in blood as he fumbled for quarrels.  Wrenching the mechanism from his hands she slammed the butt of the repeating crossbow into his face, breaking his jaw and spraying teeth across the floor.  He'd loaded two of the quarrels already; raising the crossbow slightly she put both bolts into the chest of the leechkin bouncer at the door.

Those left in the knackery fled as Catena returned to the backroom where the Oddsaugur was still picking its gas-bloated bulk up from the floor.   Calmly, Catena finished reloading the crossbow and fired three bolts, aiming carefully, pinning the grave-spawn to the floor.  Then – slowly, deliberately – she threw back the curtains, revealing the boarded-up windows.

"The combination, Oddsaugur," she said in the same unruffled monotone she'd used before.  "Unless you're eager to work on your tan..."[/ic]

Catena was born in the black pens of Dolmen, one of the albino slaves of the lilix.  Bred for endurance and stamina, such "subhuman" labourers live a life of squalor and pain, competing with one another for food, space, and light.  It was here, in the sweaty, pallid press of bickering flesh, that Catena (then known only by her designation, Zyrix-Mhalofneshea) first learned to fight, sparring with other children and with adults, breaking arms and noses to keep herself fed.  A frequent troublemaker as a child and young adolescent, she was whipped mercilessly by her arachnid overseers after killing several slaves in self-defence, snapping one's neck with her bare hands, beating another's head into the ground till his skull cracked, tearing out the neck of a third with her teeth.  She spent a period in the lightless mines of the Chelicerae Mountains and another in the factories of Xelschemyr before being purchased by a freedwoman with a manse in Illhillisz to work as a servant.  She performed her duties well and would soon have earned her freedom, but before she could an assassin sent by a rival freedwoman merchant broke into the manse of her mistress.  She killed the assassin with a hatpin to the throat, but also destroyed the venomous spider the assassin planned to poison her mistress with.  Since slaying a spider is a capital crime in Dolmen Catena knew she would be publicly and gruesomely executed if she remained in the manse.

Quickly, Catena devised a plan to escape her fate.  One of the Ladies Revenant, Genevieve, had sent a vessel to Dolmen in order to purchase corpses, raw material for the necrotheurgic experimentation of the Revenants.  Fleeing through the streets of Dolmen (dispatching several patrolling guards as she went) she made her way to the docklands of the Foreigner's Quarter and crept onto the boat, concealing herself in the foul mass of cadavers stored in the hold.  The corps-barge was bound for the spires of Somnambulon before her crime was discovered, and Catena was able to slip over the side and escape into the wilds of the north.  Wandering the Baronies, the Slouching-devil Mountains, and Barrow Scrub, Catena worked as a mercenary and bodyguard, honing her skills and learning Shambles.  Eventually she found her way south to Skein, where she began hiring herself out as a freelance enforcer and tough.

Physically, Catena is a short, sinewy woman with alabaster-pale skin, huge reddish-pink eyes, and a hairless scalp (she can grow hair – unusually thick and perfectly white – but keeps her head hairless).  Her back is a mass of scar-tissue from the whips of the lilix and her neck and wrists are riddled with small puckered scars where overseers fed on her blood.  She is extremely strong and semi-feral, with finely honed reflexes and killer instincts.  Capable of fighting without weapons, she nonetheless favours a long chain that she uses to strangle, whip, and bludgeon foes.  She is utterly without mercy and has no discernable moral compass, doing whatever she needs to survive.

[Stats to come!  Just a few details to work out.]