Name: Emily
Title: Earthwarden
Age: 19
Sex: Woman
Backstory:
The Pit. With the popularity of Duskstones growing with the discovery of its peculiar qualities, the small mining operation of Penumbra became a sprawling enterprise – the few tunnels of old made way for gashing maws that burrowed straight for the center of the world. With it came the legions of the destitute looking for work, and finding only an Inferno as they descended everyday into the darkness to mine the eerily luminiscent crystal. The shantytowns and ghettoes overcrowded the small wretched towns of the original inhabitants, arraying themselves like a scab over the earth, a scab that you scratched only to reveal the pus of sheer human misery, leaking from every crevice. Soon, the land around the pits and tunnels were not enough, and the town, the wasteland of the wretched, seeped and creep down into the deep. Now, at night, a constellaton of flicering star comes to life for those willing to peer over the edge. For those bellow, the open sky has long ceased to be a reality, one replaced by the darkness of the shafts or the greasy rain that batters their tin roofs. The deepest recess of these pits became holes for wastes and corpses, a disgusting marsh of the dead and the defecating, an open sewage for everyone above to smell. You got used to it. No, no you don't, but you learn to kind of keep it at the back of your mind, even as it aggressively scratches at the edges of your awareness.
Money is like warm air – it fills up and moves upward. It is therefore a testament to the prosperity of the miners that most of them, once going down into the pit, seldom come back ever again. Whole generations have come and gone now without going out of the pits. There always new holes being opened. New tunnels dug. Old sites rediscovered. More, always more, is extracted from the earth. More, always more, is extracted from the miners, until they are but husks, and one day, they are just rolled over into the abyss. Another soul into the dark – into the Dark, some would say. The miners are largely held to be the most supersitious of all Penumbran folks. They are, after all, the worst scum of them all – it is no suprise then that they indulge in almost childish exercises of the mind and indulge in magical thinking. Nor is it documented or cared for when men, women, and children disappear in the nigh-permanent night of the Pittowns. When mothers pump out children by the dozens and lose them by the dozen, who keeps tracked of the disappeared? Who keeps track of these lives spent in what looks more like warrens than houses?
It is in this world that Emily was born. 7Th child out of 15. A girl, to boot. But you could say that she was born lucky, all things considered, as her father was a foreman – in the hierarchy of the depths, such a job held a certain status – and notoriety. A foreman was a man of the Corp, a messenger of the people from above. A man with a whip to keep the beasts working, in line, and docile. Her father was an ambitious man. He was one of the few who dreamed to climb upward and out of the pit – even if it meant having to fight his way up the corporate ladder. And if he wasn't able to do it, his children would. They would climb over his shoulders, forever upward until they see the sky. Emily received a smidgen of education – especially in matters of money, geology, and mechanistics – the last of her siblings that was afforded one. But her father's ambition overran his means – and he found himself stuck in his ascent. It was clear that Management had lost interest in him or is advancement. Being a child, Emily then went down into the shafts and tight confines to remove rubble or get some ores that the adults couldn't reach. On one occasion, the tunnel she was sent into collapsed behind her. For most this would have spelled the end – for Emily, it was a beginning. In the complete darkness, scared witless, she began to see the faint, but intensifying, luminescence of the rocks around her – following what appeared to be a trail, she found herself in a great cave – and what turned out to be a secondary shaft. In the cave, though, was massive shard of duskstone of great purity – the kind jewellers and industrialist alike dreamed of. Fear having been banished by avarice and desire, she plucked the great crystal from the wall, it's soft light belongin to her alone now. A mark, a birthmark by all accounts – one that her father had always warned her to keep hidden, began to itch... and bleed. Bleed a dark ichor.
And as the shadows grew around her, in the darkness she knew that she had found a lair of the Dark. Just beyond the soft glow of duskstone, she knew the darkness was crawling with creatures born of Dark, the monsters the women and children whispered fearfully. She stood there, how long she did not know, on the edge of tears, trying not to cry and alert the monsters in the dark. After who knows how long, she followed a tugging suggestion, a sense of direction, and she wandered further into the mines. Further, and further, and further, forever upward, forever spiralling upward in a darkness without time and space, beyond the light glow around her.
And eventually, she found the surface.
It wasn't the surface she knew. It was green. Very green. A verdoyant green, moving softly under a soft summer sun, big fluffy clouds rolling quickly in the sky. She fell to the ground, and cried – in disbelief that she made it out of there, and at the sight of a world she had only heard rumors of. Once she regained her senses, she scanned the horizon and saw the city of Penumbra, the everdistant megalopolis, now so painfully close. She had a plan, a fantasy, or rather, it was the fantasy of her father – to go to penumbra and become rich. Very rich. If only he had a big break, he would muse, if only he could find the fabulous diamonds every miner hopes to find and everyone wants to get their hands on. Kind of like the gem she had herself found and holding in her bloodied hand.
With her future fortune in hand, she headed to the city. Only to find authorities at the Corporation to be less then sympathetic – though in a very great hurry to seperate her from her prize. In fact, they took the gem and sent her on her way back – back to the pit. But as she was about to put back into a truck full of recruited immigrants headed for the pit, a man grasped at her arm and dragged her to the side.
“You, young lady, have been marked, do you not know?” he said cryptically.
“I what?” she asked, scared and confused at the sudden intrusion, trying to shake herself off from his grip. The overseers had seen nothing of the little kidnapping.
“Your hand. That is the mark of the blood. The mark of the Hunters. Do you know not know of the hunters?”
“I 'no of the 'unters, t'ank you very much.” she replied.
“Then you understand that from the moment you were born you were bound to become one of them?” he asked, showing her his own mark, etched in the flesh neatly upon his chest.
“You are not going back to the Pit, young lady. You are going down a dark road of a very different kind, I fear. Welcome to the Brotherhood.”
And so it was largely through a series of misfortunes that Emily stumbled upon the destiny that was hidden from her in the depths.
That was 5 years ago. Since then she has undergone education and tutelage under the watchful eyes of the Brotherhood, becoming learned in the way of hunting beasts of the Dark. Her true calling, though, came with crafts. She blossomed into a skillful engineer and grew particularly interested in Duskstones and their relations to the Dark and the qualities that lied within its facets.
Aspect of the Hunter: Earthwarden which allows you to sense metal and stone. You can feel the vibrations of the earth you may see anything nearby that is grounded. You may also absorb the energies of duskstone to heal yourself and grant you a temporary increase of strength. Careful though, there is such a thing as too much power.
Stats: Rank them A through E. Average denizens of Penumbra have a rank of E in everything.
Strength – D
Vitality – D
Skill – B
Knowledge – A
Bloodlust – D
Darkness – C
Skills:
Mechanical Affinity - Emily has a true knack for anything with gears, moving parts, or fueled by duskstones stemming from a childhood spent in the company of mining machinery.
Inventory:
2 Pistols
1 Rifle
1 Shortsword
1 Lightweight Gear Box
Ammo