Sierra Hamilton

27

Autumn, Day 11

Female

Sierra has dark skin, long black hair, and critical red eyes.  She wears plain workman's clothing and chooses utility over style or fashion.

Miner

Sierra has been described as someone with a 'mind of metal and wheels', though that is not to say that she has a heart of stone.  Sierra simply desires practicality and efficiency, which may come off as a need to control. She lives a simple life, feeling that excess dulls the mind and weakens the body. Sierra shows care through actions instead of words, so while she's terrible at comforting people, she may attempt to solve their problems or simply do chores around their house for them if she feels indebted to them. She derives self-worth from being useful to others. She secretly, and not-so-secretly, judges others positively based on their usefulness and negatively based on their extravagance, and doesn't trust those who are rich or have lived comfortable lives. Sierra believes that the prosperity of Root River lies under the earth rather than above it and seeks to save Root River from the fate that befell her hometown by finding a motherlode in the mines. If she is unable to succeed at that, she would resort to 'saving' Root River through modernization and industrialization, putting her at odds with those who would prefer to keep the town natural and pastoral. Sierra is also something of a penny-pincher having lived a relatively poor life. She likes simple foods that give her long-lasting energy and foods that don't spoil. She often conflates enjoyment and decoration with decadence and opulence. The only thing she's really willing to spend money on is healthy nutrition so she can keep working.

Winter

Dark Blue

Toasted Reuben Sandwich

Sierra doesn't believe in the Harvest Goddess, or the supernatural. Sierra believes in "the sweat of a man's brow", and that hard work, not wishes, is the only thing that can change the world. She thinks the Rot is a natural occurrence, and if people blame BigCo for the Rot, she will counter that many other places have industrialized, yet don't seem to complain about the Rot, so either the Rot isn't real, or companies like BigCo know how to deal with it.

Sierra's father, Louis Hamilton, and mother, Linda Hamilton, live and work in a nearby city.

A male tortoiseshell cat (a genetic improbability) named Limp Biscuit lives with Sierra and Cletus. Originally, Sierra found the cat injured with a limp and nursed it back to health. She originally just called the cat 'Limp', expecting to release it back into the wild once it had healed. But the cat stayed around, though Sierra doesn't feed it, instead letting it hunt on its own. Someone eventually convinced Sierra that she needed to give it a cuter name, like 'Biscuit', so she started calling it 'Biscuit', but it wouldn't respond to the new name. So finally, Sierra settled on 'Limp Biscuit'.

Cletus Kang has allowed Sierra, while she is his apprentice, to live in his home, which is the town smithy, located in position 3. The property belongs to Cletus and is known as "Kang's Smithy".

Sierra was born in another rural town. Sierra's father used to be the foreman of the town's mine. A series of unfortunate cave-ins and accidents as well as a sudden inability to locate rich ore deposits led to the mine being deemed exhausted and subsequently shut down. When Sierra was 10, the Hamilton's moved to the city where Sierra's father became a factory worker, while her mother became a teacher, though previously she had been a homemaker. In her hometown, Sierra had been able to spend plenty of time with both parents, but in the city, they both needed to have jobs to support the high cost of living. Sierra felt neglected and kept to herself, blaming the mine's closure for her misfortune and the exhaustion she saw in both her parents' attempts at trying to earn a living wage. Upon graduating high school, Sierra took hard labor jobs to help contribute to the family finances, knowing they didn't have enough to send her to college.

One day, her parents surprised her with some money that they had been saving up. They remembered how much happier she was in the town she was born, and they had saved this money so that she could start a new life and make her way in the world. They convinced her that they made enough to take care of themselves, and that Sierra deserved a chance at freedom from the city and to see the world. She first went back to her hometown and saw that it had been more-or-less abandoned. Asking around, it turned out that it had fallen on hard times, and when BigCo moved in to develop it, the citizens said, 'no' because they wanted to keep it natural. BigCo left the town to its own devices, but it eventually started losing business and population started dwindling. Sierra then turned towards Root River, hoping that she could strike it rich in the mountain, save her parents from the city, and let them retire in peace, comfort and dignity.

To kick-start her mining career, she met with the local blacksmith, Cletus Kang, to learn the ins-and-outs of mining, though she also had her own father's knowledge to rely on. It was easy for Sierra to pick up on mining, since it was a low-skill job, but Cletus also began to teach her smithing, since he was getting on in years and hoped an apprentice could continue the upkeep of Root River's infrastructure and industry. Sierra refers to Cletus as 'Kang ShiFu' (Instructor Kang).

Mahina Wolff

Mahi, Hina, Wolfie

26

Winter, Day 9

Female

Owner, Werewolff Vineyards

Sarcastic, Kind, Patient, Wistful, A bit weird

Autumn

Wine red / Purple

Wine counts, right? If not, pad thai

She named her winery after a mythical creature. You tell me.

Seriously, yes. She is spiritual and she felt a presence upon entering the town that was unlike anything else she had ever felt. Something gotta be causing it. Good or bad.

Both her parents, Dwayne and Mariah, still live in the city, working as low-level executives at BigCo. Mahina has an older sister, Haumea, who lives in the suburbs of the city, with her husband and four children. They have made one visit to her sister's vineyard since Mahina took it over.

One cat named Lily, who just lazes about the house and does nothing except springboard off your head at 3am.

Plot #3, the sprawling estate near the river. It allows for easy irrigation of the fields and means that the vineyard can draw the water right up the hill to where the grapes rest. There's a main house and a guest cottage for traveling workers who want to earn their keep harvesting the grapes.

Mahina Wolff grew up in a loving home that was very well off. Her parents climbed the corporate ladder quickly at BigCo, and as such they were never wanting for anything. In fact, it was such a life that Mahina grew lazy and lacked motivation to do anything else. She breezed through college majoring in wine, sex and English, so a great use of her time.

Her parents were ticked and decided that if Mahina wasn't going to be productive like Haumea, they were going to force the issue. Her parents bought a portion of land in Root River, expecting Mahina to do something with the land to make its value increase before they eventually sold it to BigCo for a massive profit. The perks of insider trading. However, because they didn't want to be attacked and put Mahina's name on the deed, that meant the young woman could do whatever she wanted with it. Being outside the city and the lap of luxury for the first time actually filled Mahina with peace and excitement she hadn't known during her sheltered time at City University. She started researching what she could do and quickly found out that she could combine one of her old passions with this new opportunity. Thus, Werewolff Vineyard was born. Why Werewolff? Because regular wolves are cool, but werewolffs are badass.

Mahina slowly ingrained herself into the town's fabric, but after learning what some people thought about BigCo and their plans for the town, she has never told them about her parents or how she managed to acquire that land...