@Hexaflexagon That all sounds good to me! The idea of a diselpunk world is particularly interesting because of the scenery it brings to mind.
One of the reasons why I was particularly interested in the cultural aspect of the chosen time period is because I was hoping to create a female character, and dresses are not ideal for action scenes.
Can one leviathan be bonded to more than one human or do each of the rpers create a specific monster for their character? Also, how similar is your roaring 20's to the one we're familiar with? Is it just the general atmosphere we're recreating, or the technology and rules as well?
Claret flew from roof top to roof top, the pattern of sprinting and leaping across the city’s buildings closer to true, unbridled pleasure than any other feeling she knew. The full moon was high, the musk of the densely populated capital faint this high above the streets, and the muffled sounds of ordinary life were made hardly audible by the wind in her ears. Fog hung around the edges of her vision, hiding much of Lundine beneath its choking, clutching fingers, but the Lady Night saw nothing but the next gap to spring. She was as free as the hawk that represented her alias’s proud family, until she came to the last building on the fringe of the city. As the impressive outer wall loomed above her, Claret skidded to a halt and looked down at her hands, only to find them smeared with blood.
Then, with the distant cry of a hunter’s falcon, the young woman gasped awake from her daze. She was in her own opulent chambers, the too-warm fire illuminating hands stained with ink, not the crimson ichor of some poor fool’s heart. Claret glared accusingly at a bottle of deep red wine sitting on her writing desk. The next time she had a couple glasses, the Lady Night would be more careful with the potent vintage.
Very little light streamed through the window before her, and, past the bottles of ink and fine wine, the Lady Aren could see a midsummer evening falling on the castle grounds. She hadn’t slept more than a half an hour then; there would still be time to send the missive she had been writing to her contacts in the city. Claret made a point to always know what went on around her city. Such knowledge both made her better at her job, and gave her a means to save her own skin, if certain things about her past were to become known or Duncan’s not so stable reign were to end unexpectedly.
The red-headed woman cleaned ink off long, delicate fingers before deftly folding the letter and smoothing her clinging crimson gown. She was surprisingly clear headed: a chronic insomnia was more likely the cause of her unplanned nap than the wine she had consumed. The Red Countess left her rooms quickly and started up the eastern stair case to the rookery. Her burnished messenger hawk would be as eager for a mission as she herself was.
The Lady Night was bored. It had been two weeks since her last mission, and the court had been relatively quiet during all that time. There hadn’t been a whisper to distract her from her pococurantism. Hence the lack of sleep: with no activity to occupy her during the day, Claret’s overactive mental faculties refused to shut down after moonrise. Therefore, it is not difficult to imagine, even though she kept the emotion from her face, that Claret was delighted to see Lord Richard Mawr striding towards her from the general direction of the King’s quarters. The tall man had a purposeful look about him which boded well for the red woman’s monotony, even if it didn’t necessarily mean he had a task for her.
Lady Catherine du Aren dipped her chin gracefully to the approaching nobleman, before raising her head to meet his blue eyes. “Good evening, Lord Richard. I hope to find you well."
Claret is lithe and strong, two attributes required by her line of work. She is shorter than most expect, thin and small chested. The assassin is characterized by dark red hair, pale skin and olive-shaped, caramel eyes. In her work, Claret dresses all in black; tight trousers and shirt, dyed leather boots and thick cloak. Clothes that hide every aspect of her identity. In court, she dresses modestly in order to hide scars and muscle definition that no proper lady should have.
Personality: Claret is not the type of woman to question fate. Chance took her from her parents so she learned to survive. The world has given her the skills to kill, so she has become an assassin. She became successful at her craft and so was hired by the late King. The Red Countess’s feelings rarely come into the matter; she rarely stops to consider them. She simply accepts things as they are and moves on. Claret is a intelligent and logical thinker, an efficient assassin, a skilled manipulator. She has a sense of humor, of sarcasm, but little understanding for the nobility and their soft concerns, and no qualms about exploiting them for her benefit.
Official History: Catherine De Aren is the orphaned child of the wealthy, if eccentric, nobleman, Charles De Aren. Falsely accused of consorting with Rivania in his youth, Charles left the court and spent the majority of his life managing his country estate. This is where his daughter, Catherine was born. Catherine’s mother, Elizabeth, died in child birth, and Catherine has come to the castle to find a husband after her father’s untimely death by illness. Despite rumors of a large dowry, the enigmatic Catherine is still unwed after two years of court life.
Per ardua ad alta (Through straits to heights) Colors: red, black, and gold
Claret was born to commoners in the city of Lundine, but she has no idea whether she had good parents or not, if she had brothers or sisters, if they were well off or paupers. Her time in this stage of her life was cut short by her capture by child slavers shortly after her fifth birthday. The weeks and months she spent traveling with the slavers between Lundine and Rivania are now only a blur in her memory. Claret remembers the pain and terror of those weeks, but little or no details. Her first clear memories are of Rivania, and the street children she banded with there. Shortly after arriving in the foreign country’s capital, the girl escaped from her slavers, joined and eventually came to lead a rag tag group of children living on the streets and abandoned buildings of the city. She learned to pick pockets and locks, to steal and sneak around her city undiscovered. Despite the mites and diseases that plagued her band of street rats, this wasn’t an unhappy time for little Claret; she had a family, they weren’t starving, and while they had to run from the law, there was still fun to be had within the tight little group. Then, the now ten year old little girl picked the wrong man’s pocket. He was a low level criminal who was fortunate enough to call himself a member of the city’s largest and most influential organized crime syndicate, the King’s Thieves. Seeking to ingratiate himself with a cruel and unpredictable leader, this low-life brought Claret to meet Vincent Arundell. known to his subordinates as The King. While her ernest captor probably assumed Claret would end up in a brothel, training to buy back her freedom with her body, her tenacity and fearlessness impressed the criminal king. An incredibly paranoid man well past his prime, he had set out to groom his own heir out of fear that choosing one of his too eager seconds would only shorten his own life span. Claret was young, clever, completely unattached to his organization and had all the makings of a fighter; the old man couldn't have wished for a better candidate. For the next eight years, Claret trained with the best of the worst, all of the most talented thieves, spies, and assassins that would pass on their deadly arts. From the dancers, tumblers and courtesans in Arundel’s court she learned the more subtle arts of disguising oneself and interacting with the nobility. Arundel himself taught her the politics of the underworld. It wasn’t truly a pleasant life, being heir to the King’s Thieves. Between avoiding or surviving assassination attempts on her own life, learning from tough teachers, and appeasing the ever more paranoid Arundell, Claret accumulated her share of scars. However, it all ended on her eighteenth birthday: word came that Vincent Arundel was dead and his red headed heir was to join him, unless she fled. The King’s Thieves had been overthrown by the very men Arundel had feared. It was with mixed feelings of joyous freedom and a touch of sadness for the people who had raised her that Claret left Rivania for her homeland of Brythunnia. But once back in Lundine, the assassin went to work immediately on creating a name for herself as Lady Night. For the next year she worked on more and more difficult assignments for the wealthy, spying, stealing, and killing for a living. Eventually, Claret attracted the attention of the late King Aedin II Mawr, who hired her and constructed the alias of Catherine du Aren in order to keep the assassin at court without attracting too much suspicion. Unsurprisingly, Claret adapted to this new role easily, finding the official court easier to navigate than the criminal one she’d been a part of so long. By far the easiest task given to the Red Countess was to convince Duncan that he needed her skills as much as his father had.
Claret is lithe and strong, two attributes required by her line of work. She is shorter than most expect, thin and small chested. The assassin is characterized by dark red hair, pale skin and olive-shaped, caramel eyes. In her work, Claret dresses all in black; tight trousers and shirt, dyed leather boots and thick cloak. Clothes that hide every aspect of her identity. In court, she dresses modestly in order to hide scars and muscle definition that no proper lady should have.
Personality: Claret is not the type of woman to question fate. Chance took her from her parents so she learned to survive. The world has given her the skills to kill, so she has become an assassin. She became successful at her craft and so was hired by the late King. The Red Countess’s feelings rarely come into the matter; she rarely stops to consider them. She simply accepts things as they are and moves on. Claret is a intelligent and logical thinker, an efficient assassin, a skilled manipulator. She has a sense of humor, of sarcasm, but little understanding for the nobility and their soft concerns, and no qualms about exploiting them for her benefit.
Official History: Catherine De Aren is the orphaned child of the wealthy, if eccentric, nobleman, Charles De Aren. Falsely accused of consorting with Rivania in his youth, Charles left the court and spent the majority of his life managing his country estate. This is where his daughter, Catherine was born. Catherine’s mother, Elizabeth, died in child birth, and Catherine has come to the castle to find a husband after her father’s untimely death by illness. Despite rumors of a large dowry, the enigmatic Catherine is still unwed after two years of court life.
Per ardua ad alta (Through straits to heights) Colors: red, black, and gold
Claret was born to commoners in the city of Lundine, but she has no idea whether she had good parents or not, if she had brothers or sisters, if they were well off or paupers. Her time in this stage of her life was cut short by her capture by child slavers shortly after her fifth birthday. The weeks and months she spent traveling with the slavers between Lundine and Rivania are now only a blur in her memory. Claret remembers the pain and terror of those weeks, but little or no details. Her first clear memories are of Rivania, and the street children she banded with there. Shortly after arriving in the foreign country’s capital, the girl escaped from her slavers, joined and eventually came to lead a rag tag group of children living on the streets and abandoned buildings of the city. She learned to pick pockets and locks, to steal and sneak around her city undiscovered. Despite the mites and diseases that plagued her band of street rats, this wasn’t an unhappy time for little Claret; she had a family, they weren’t starving, and while they had to run from the law, there was still fun to be had within the tight little group. Then, the now ten year old little girl picked the wrong man’s pocket. He was a low level criminal who was fortunate enough to call himself a member of the city’s largest and most influential organized crime syndicate, the King’s Thieves. Seeking to ingratiate himself with a cruel and unpredictable leader, this low-life brought Claret to meet Vincent Arundell. known to his subordinates as The King. While her ernest captor probably assumed Claret would end up in a brothel, training to buy back her freedom with her body, her tenacity and fearlessness impressed the criminal king. An incredibly paranoid man well past his prime, he had set out to groom his own heir out of fear that choosing one of his too eager seconds would only shorten his own life span. Claret was young, clever, completely unattached to his organization and had all the makings of a fighter; the old man couldn't have wished for a better candidate. For the next eight years, Claret trained with the best of the worst, all of the most talented thieves, spies, and assassins that would pass on their deadly arts. From the dancers, tumblers and courtesans in Arundel’s court she learned the more subtle arts of disguising oneself and interacting with the nobility. Arundel himself taught her the politics of the underworld. It wasn’t truly a pleasant life, being heir to the King’s Thieves. Between avoiding or surviving assassination attempts on her own life, learning from tough teachers, and appeasing the ever more paranoid Arundell, Claret accumulated her share of scars. However, it all ended on her eighteenth birthday: word came that Vincent Arundel was dead and his red headed heir was to join him, unless she fled. The King’s Thieves had been overthrown by the very men Arundel had feared. It was with mixed feelings of joyous freedom and a touch of sadness for the people who had raised her that Claret left Rivania for her homeland of Brythunnia. But once back in Lundine, the assassin went to work immediately on creating a name for herself as Lady Night. For the next year she worked on more and more difficult assignments for the wealthy, spying, stealing, and killing for a living. Eventually, Claret attracted the attention of the late King Aedin II Mawr, who hired her and constructed the alias of Catherine du Aren in order to keep the assassin at court without attracting too much suspicion. Unsurprisingly, Claret adapted to this new role easily, finding the official court easier to navigate than the criminal one she’d been a part of so long. By far the easiest task given to the Red Countess was to convince Duncan that he needed her skills as much as his father had.
