Stitches

The Saltaire District

Victor Strade and Adrian
Trade District - Central District

Heston was a city of vibrance. The crowds called out their signature market cries as ripples in the undulating crowds moved citizens to and fro, each elaborately and cheerfully dressed in brightly dyed clothes. Bunting fluttered in the breeze and the sun glinted off the metal flagpoles, holding banners and tapestries. The noise of hooves on the cobbles rattled its steady rhythm to the din of the market in the Trade district as Adrian, trembling, affixed the oil-soaked bandana around her nose and mouth and did her best to appear utterly impassive as her bony fingers gripped tighter and tighter still onto Victor’s hand.

Even on the worst of days, Adrian had a little edge on the usual limits of human perception in the state she was in now. Colours were brighter, sounds just a little sharper, and movement in her periphery stood out just enough to be irritating. Smells...it was hit or miss, and most of the time it missed dismally and left her nostrils perpetually assaulted with body odour. The sleepy hamlets and lively townships that Victor took her through couldn’t hold a candle to the sensory onslaught that was the city of Hestor, and that’s why she had the peppermint bandana to - at the very least - cut through some of the torment. Still, it gave her an atrocious headache when coupled with the thumping, droning noises and the dizzying array of unfamiliar sights.

Fortunately, Victor had sent word by courier from one of the outlying villages and once he arrived at one of the many taverns on the borders of the Trade district, situated far enough from the noise of the market, all it took was a brief introduction and one of the maids brought them to their room. The moment Adrian entered she ripped off her bandana, drew the curtains shut and landed face-first on the bed.

“Aaaaaaargh. Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh,” Adrian let out muffled groans of pain into the sheets. Her head was pulsing and the afterimages of the day were burned into her eyelids in splotches of colour.

“It’s okay, there there.” Victor absentmindedly comforted her as he waddled around the room, impressed with the stature of their room. Then again, anything was more fancy than what he was used to. “We can rest up for a bit but there’s still some important rules we have to follow. Well… -you- have to follow” he continued unpacking their gear as he spoke to Adrian.

Adrian continued grumbling until things took a relatively sensible shape again, at which point she lifted herself from the bedsheets and squinted at Victor confusedly. “Rules?”

“Yeah. Like the ones we have for hunting. Same applies when you’re in the big city.” he went on to explain. “Our contractors are nobles - the Prince in fact. The way we conduct ourselves has to be a bit more… “in line” then when in the wild. You follow?” he paused his unpacking, waiting for a response.

Adrian continued to stare at Victor. There was a pause, then a slow “Yes.”

“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?” he stared back at her.

Adrian picked at a loose thread on the bedsheets’ embroidery in a sullen silence.

“Just… behave, yes?” Victor sighed defeatedly, clapping his hands together once. “Now come on, we have to go or we'll be late.”

“So soon?” Adrian grimaced and slid off the bed, grabbing the bandana. “Okay. But no more…” she gestured out, vaguely, towards the window. Victor just snorted bemusedly and went downstairs to check the city map.

The route to central District was fairly uneventful; even without a map it was simple enough to navigate yourself towards the middle of Heston. Here the bustle of the city diminished into large, opulent houses with beautiful gardens. Adrian had dared to take the mask off by then, and though the new experiences set her on edge there was nothing too severe in the centre that could make her feel physically overwhelmed. The difficulty lay in finding the right building to enter, but that was in and of itself a simple affair since there were guards patrolling every street. They were not the first, nor the last to walk in.

The room was pleasantly decorated despite its vast emptiness. Whilst Victor listened attentively to Roman's briefing, Adrian's gaze kept wandering around the room to take in the many complexities of the ornaments - and of the other people gathered around her. When a lull in the speech finally came around, it was enough to draw Adrian's attention back in time for the court's mage to come out of an adjacent door. Victor snatched a stern glance at Adrian but softened upon seeing that she was up to her usual pastime of staring at strangers, so whilst he listened to the words, Adrian focused on other things.

When Roman finished his spiel, Adrian glanced up at Victor, who glanced down at her. The pair exchanged glances again. Victor inclined his head towards Roman and Adrian cleared her throat. “In the…” she paused and Victor made a cough that sounded eerily like 'letter’, “...letter, you said people disappeared slowly. Not at same time.” Her voice was strongly accented, and raspy. “Did you check for pattern? Did you do anything outside of district, before sending people in?”

The Saltaire District

Double post.

The Saltaire District

As a cantrip, is she able to add that to her current list of spells? Also, how will you handle the use of equipment, given Victor will need to prepare before setting out? How many things can we bring?

The Saltaire District

@Lord Orgasmo can Adrian detect magic? Are there any side effects of being in the First World for so long? I was under the assumption she's able to sense magic like many Spellcasters but since you're using an established system I thought I'd check

The Saltaire District

I'd also like to know what activity requirements are. Me and Dino usually work in collabs, which don't typically take too long but recently our schedules clash and it's hard to find time to write. Also, even if we aren't allowed to post in it yet, could we see the first IC post in advance to help combat this? A bit of a headstart, especially in the holiday period, will help us out immensely.

The Saltaire District

Adrian

Tall and slight of frame, Adrian displays all the elusive qualities of someone from the frozen northern wastes. Her skin is pale, but pasty - her eyelashes and hair are a carrot orange, with the shock of hair being cut just above the nape and left to its own devices. Her eyes were a piercing green; again, not in the way of conventional beauty but bordering on the unsettling, two pinpricks boring into whatever they settle their gaze onto. Her figure is nigh-androgynous. Though she leans to the feminine, her raspy voice and odd demeanour make it difficult to pinpoint the gender.

outfit

Her outfit is just as baffling as her features. She is wearing a T-shirt, so large and baggy that the sleeves reach her elbow and the V-neck cuts to the bottom of the breastbone (though it appears someone has made a rudimentary lace to protect her decency). This obvious hand-me-down is contrasted sharply by a pair of perfectly tailored britches made out of leather. The seams are worn, and appear to have been stitched and re-stitched several times over, but the qualities of the material suggest that this was their primary purpose - to be taken apart and put together again, a thousand times over. All around her ankles are strips of sturdy linen, wound over and over and then once under her heels to hold on some very oddly-made footwear. They look like normal shoes, but leave the achilles tendon exposed from the back of the ankle to the base of the heel.

---

Adrian or Ade.

She’s definitely a woman, but the age is...hard to determine. She has the height of an adult but childish features. Her comportment is strange enough to make it tricky to put her into any fixed age-range, but you can tell she is either a very tall teenager, or an immature young adult.

A Skinwalker.

The simplest classification would be a Hunter.

...Strange.

In brief, Adrian’s behaviour is strange. Her movements are long, slopey; she takes long strides, frequently wanders off, and often becomes fixated upon the most inane of objects. She stares - a lot. She learns through observation and carefully replicates what the people around her are doing. She is more than content to be left on her own for extended periods of time, she doesn’t like to be touched by people she doesn’t know, and she’s shy in the sense that she gets uncomfortable when people address her.

Aside from that, she has absolutely no concept of personal space. Manners are quite disassociated from her behaviour and speech. All the subtleties of average conversation and interaction have to be learned, and though she knows some, it is apparent that Adrian doesn’t know how to properly function in a social setting.

All these would have been quite suspicious were it not for her accent. It is glaringly obvious that she isn’t from Heston. She probably isn’t even from the same region, or country. She frequently (and frustratedly) has difficulties expressing the more complex thoughts that come across her mind and it’ll put her into a bit of a sulk. And yet - when she does speak in her native tongue - it’s none you’ve ever heard of. Northern, for sure, but very old. It’s the accent and the language barrier that helps to excuse her eccentricities as being ‘foreign’.

The weary woman stared hopelessly down at the ivory clump of flesh pressed to her breast, watching it meekly as it suckled, drawing the milk with such fervour that it started to run pink with the blood drawn from the beginnings of sturdy teeth. The start - and the end - of little Andrina, from a desolate tribe of natives who lived in the tundra plains. She looked up at the two arguing in the hut with her, their shadows cast large and monstrous by the flickering bonfire.

“{...-absolutely a risk to the tribe, especially when she discovers her true potential. I’m not asking you, priestess, I’m begging you - can they take her or not?}” pleaded the man, his red beard quivering with anxiety. The old woman he was talking to bridled. She cast her stony gaze down onto the weary woman, her features as inscrutable as always.

“{It was no mistake that the Gods chose her,}” the Priestess pointed out - no sense of hostility, no judgement, merely stating a fact. “{Our druids could have taken her in, many years ago, but there simply aren’t enough...}” Pity broke through the wrinkles. “{I do not know what you would have to give to make them take her.}”

The weary woman stared into the flames. “{...They can take me,}” she mused. Both faces turned to gawp at her with bemusement.

“{You? What use would the Fey have with a seamstress?}” Scoffed the husband, shaking his head firmly. “{To leave would be an embarrassment - to return, rejected, would be a disgrace. Stay with me. We can raise her ourselves. She needn’t find out about her power.}”

The weary woman’s gaze returned to the baby and the growing bruise around her areola. “{I’m the vessel of a million unspoken words,}” she murmured. “{My voice was drowned and given away at birth too - to you, to the tribe. I sat and I listened. I filled myself with knowledge - I have no life of my own but I clasp the lives of countless others near me.}” Her hands drew the baby closer still, peering into her freckled face and those slits - bright, bright green ever since the bite. “{I am a maker - of children, of clothes unimaginable. Give me materials and give me time, and I shall endlessly spill forth dresses and new creatures to amuse themselves with. Allow them to use me until my usefulness dries up.}” She wasn’t asking the man, but the Priestess before her. The Priestess glared back down at the impetuous woman.

“{They will devour you and everything you once were. They will take more than you could possibly consider. When the Pixies and the Nymphs have had their fill, you’ll be less than nothing. Is this the fate you want to prescribe yourself to, knowing that if they find you to be an unreasonable sacrifice, you will have to stay at the shrine and beg until the cold snatches you and the child?}” The Priestess hobbled over to the weary woman and crouched so her own pebble-grey eyes watched for any flicker of doubt.

Andrina’s mother had no doubt - no emotions were left. The babe had sucked her dry. “{The tribe thinks I am an adulteress. I am already less than nothing.}”

Few considered the weary woman’s bargain to be sufficient, so fewer still weren’t surprised when the mysterious Fey folk took her - baby and all - into the standing stone, where it rippled like water and engulfed the mistake and the maker of the mistake. They landed in a wooded glade and forced the weary woman to rear her child, regardless, as penance for her negligence. She taught her little girl the language of her homeland and how to sew. She tried to teach the rest - the traditions, the songs, the stories - but they weren’t as strong in Andrina’s memory as the first two. Whilst in the home of the Fey, the First World, they changed their names - Mother, and Adrian. Bad things happen to those who willingly pass on a name to a Fey Creature. Their treatment to Mother was excruciating; it siphoned every pore and pocket of energy within her and she seemed to shrivel and shrink in on herself. In return, the Dryads took care of the child when the moon hung wide and full in the sky. They took one of Mother’s lives every time Adrian took one of theirs by accident. When Adrian was just reaching puberty, Mother had no more lives to give and explained how she must go away now, forever.

“{When you are old enough, and these creatures have shown you what they will, find home.}”

Adrian had always mused over what Mother meant by that. Over time, her teachings began to fade into memory - patchy and inconsistent. The Nymphs would speak to her in her native tongue and also another language, newer - softer and rounder than the jutting consonants she was accustomed to. Adrian picked that up as well, but in pieces. It was harder to learn now that she had outgrown speech.

The Pixies also taught her the way of the world she lived in - the nature of a hundred thousand plants and how to use them so she can look after herself wherever a leaf or stem poked through the earth. How to navigate the duff without making a sound, and how to use the boughs of trees as handholds to leap and swing from. They taught her how to tickle fish and follow the tracks to the doe in the clearing. She learned, with time, how to evade the Satyrs’ thieving fingers and never to follow the echo of a Nymph. But, Fey-like as she was, she was set apart from them - regarded with wariness and treated with mistrust. She did not learn the ways of man.

They all taught her about her powers. It was a link - the only link - to the beasts around her so she treated it with respect. Many, many years passed within the First World and she grew and became better at controlling her body but her mind was impulsive, chaotic from all the games and pranks of the Fey Folk. One day, Adrian felt she knew all she was going to know from them and asked to leave. They warned her she will never return - and she took the promise solemnly, knowing that the Wildlings do not use their words superfluously. She left all the same and wound up a long, long way from Home.

On the edge of the forest, she found herself a human man, dressed oddly in coloured cloth and leather stripped of its fur. She asked him for help to find Home, and the man reluctantly agreed, presuming his way to be northwards anyway. This man, she would come to find out, was Victor Strade; a hunter of monsters, ghouls and all manner of beasts that the normal settler couldn’t handle. Victor quickly discovered Adrian’s condition and decided that the safest way to deal with her was to keep her close, so she wouldn’t be detected. He was a ‘hunter’ in the sense that his version of having ‘dealt with’ something was to find an alternative to slaughtering the beasts. Killing only sparked vengeance within a monster, and entices it to kill even more. Adrian followed him and watched him work. She learned. She listened.

Their journey took them wherever the coin would flow, because each strip of wilderness between one town and another needed resources to last them out - resources that they bought with coins in the preceding village. When the Prince called upon Victor, it was only natural that Adrian would follow. She knew they would receive more coin than usual, which they could set aside to build up the equipment needed to breach the snowy north. The call took them to the city of Hestor - a new sort of environment for Adrian, who had never set foot in anything larger than a village.

---

Adrian herself doesn’t carry much; it’s Victor who keeps track of the inventory they share. She has her special outfit, replicated two or three times for washing. She sometimes carries a bag of edible plants to snack on. In terms of weapons, she technically owns a shortbow and a quiver full of arrows, but Victor is the one who keeps a hold of it and only gives it to her when necessary. She has a hunting knife on her at all times.

Adrian excels immensely in two things and is pretty much useless in all others. She is a child of the forest, which means she is absolutely brilliant at foraging, tracking, hunting and identifying all things natural. She can stalk even the flightiest of deer. She’s light footed enough to give a ghost a fright. Furthermore, the sheer quantity of clothes she goes through and her mother’s teachings have made her into a fairly decent seamstress. Anything outside of that realm, however, is a hopeless endeavour. She can’t quite pack a punch when she’s just a girl, nor is she too well-read; in fact, she’s barely literate as it is and that’s for her native tongue. She’s not at all charismatic. She doesn’t have a lot of stamina.

Skinwalker: Adrian can transform, at will, into something not-quite-human. She becomes taller, stronger, with flaps of skin sloughing off her muscles and a wrinkled snout full of teeth. Her skin toughens and erratic sprouts of ginger hair protrude from odd angles around her body. If anything, she most resembles a naked mole rat with a mouth full of carnivorous teeth.In this form, Adrian has a peculiar quirk; whenever she eats the heart of a magical being, she takes on a fraction of its abilities - now mutated and better suited for her beast form. Since she has only ever had access to the hearts of Fey creautres, Adrian has the following abilities:
Touch of Bloodletting (This spell causes existing wounds on a target to bleed profusely)
Keen Senses (Heightened Perception and Low-light Vision)

---

Adrian originated from another fantasy RP that me and DinoNuts (AKA Victor) were in. The art is mine.

The Saltaire District

Ahh but it's a high level spell to cast and they CBA dragging her back in unless she got something real good to show them. I'll fix up the stat part and chuck her in, then let Dino know to start working on Victor.

The Saltaire District

I really don't get the Pathfinder jargon, mind, so I don't know what Swapping Spells is. I've never played with that system ^^"

Anyway I fixed Adrian up for you, lemme know if there's anything else I need to fix!

The Saltaire District

@Lord Orgasmo

Hey, thanks for replying so quickly - I'm more than happy to work with you to get Adrian included into the RP, so I'll go through the issues as they show up in your post.

The first (and most obvious) error that I've made so far is that I've written it in such a way to assume that the Prince has directly asked Adrian - he didn't, he definitely asked Victor who will be a character of his own run by a different player called DinoNuts. Dino just woke up so he'll be working on his sheet as soon as Adrian's been given the green light. That makes Adrian sort of a....sidekick, brought along to assist in any way she can.

As for being constantly winded and not being able to read, she's just a flighty, sprinty kind of gal - obviously she's able to function like any other human being but she's built for speed and agility. Given her skills, a lot of them can be transferrable to an investigative situation - her tracking skills in particular have made her observant, she knows what to look for in the more minute cases - scuff marks on a floor, indentations in the wallpaper, misplaced dust. Not to mention that her abilities also make her stealthy and agile; even in a crowded street, se can climb gutter pipes and wiggle through open windows. We are, after all, investigating the disappearance of an entire district's worth of people, and I'm more than happy to play a character who isn't the ideal candidate because (as you've said before) she's more of an apprentice than anything else. She also has her uses in beast form, mainly increased sense of smell, heightened hearing, etc.

I'd like to hear more about how Pathfinder represents the Fae then, since all I've ever known are mischievous tricksters who talk in riddles and steal away children - this particular tribe mistakenly worshipped some sort of Pixie as a deity, which is why she was taken away. I'm more than happy to give Adrian low-light vision, but wouldn't healing spells be minor casting abilities?

I can definitely make her a skinwalker. To be fair, she's far more humanoid than wolf in her original concept too. She's very fleshy, can go bipedal, has hands and all that jazz. She looks nasty. From what I read in the link you provided, Skinwalkers have control over their beast form as well - that's easy enough to arrange. Adrian already had a decent measure of control to begin with, she just became a lot more impulsive when she transformed.

So yeah, do tell me more about these Pixies and Nymphs, and I can alter her experiences appropriately (and maybe a bit more about skinwalkers, just in case I got my information wrong). Is there anything else I should fix up?

The Saltaire District

New and Improved Adrian 2.0!

Adrian

Tall and slight of frame, Adrian displays all the elusive qualities of someone from the frozen northern wastes. Her skin is pale, but pasty - her eyelashes and hair are a carrot orange, with the shock of hair being cut just above the nape and left to its own devices. Her eyes were a piercing green; again, not in the way of conventional beauty but bordering on the unsettling, two pinpricks boring into whatever they settle their gaze onto. Her figure is nigh-androgynous. Though she leans to the feminine, her raspy voice and odd demeanour make it difficult to pinpoint the gender.

outfit

Her outfit is just as baffling as her features. She is wearing a T-shirt, so large and baggy that the sleeves reach her elbow and the V-neck cuts to the bottom of the breastbone (though it appears someone has made a rudimentary lace to protect her decency). This obvious hand-me-down is contrasted sharply by a pair of perfectly tailored britches made out of leather. The seams are worn, and appear to have been stitched and re-stitched several times over, but the qualities of the material suggest that this was their primary purpose - to be taken apart and put together again, a thousand times over. All around her ankles are strips of sturdy linen, wound over and over and then once under her heels to hold on some very oddly-made footwear. They look like normal shoes, but leave the achilles tendon exposed from the back of the ankle to the base of the heel.

---

Adrian or Ade.

She’s definitely a woman, but the age is...hard to determine. She has the height of an adult but childish features. Her comportment is strange enough to make it tricky to put her into any fixed age-range, but you can tell she is either a very tall teenager, or an immature young adult.

A Skinwalker.

The simplest classification would be a Hunter.

...Strange.

In brief, Adrian’s behaviour is strange. Her movements are long, slopey; she takes long strides, frequently wanders off, and often becomes fixated upon the most inane of objects. She stares - a lot. She learns through observation and carefully replicates what the people around her are doing. She is more than content to be left on her own for extended periods of time, she doesn’t like to be touched by people she doesn’t know, and she’s shy in the sense that she gets uncomfortable when people address her.

Aside from that, she has absolutely no concept of personal space. Manners are quite disassociated from her behaviour and speech. All the subtleties of average conversation and interaction have to be learned, and though she knows some, it is apparent that Adrian doesn’t know how to properly function in a social setting.

All these would have been quite suspicious were it not for her accent. It is glaringly obvious that she isn’t from Heston. She probably isn’t even from the same region, or country. She frequently (and frustratedly) has difficulties expressing the more complex thoughts that come across her mind and it’ll put her into a bit of a sulk. And yet - when she does speak in her native tongue - it’s none you’ve ever heard of. Northern, for sure, but very old. It’s the accent and the language barrier that helps to excuse her eccentricities as being ‘foreign’.

The weary woman stared hopelessly down at the ivory clump of flesh pressed to her breast, watching it meekly as it suckled, drawing the milk with such fervour that it started to run pink with the blood drawn from the beginnings of sturdy teeth. The start - and the end - of little Andrina, from a desolate tribe of natives who lived in the tundra plains. She looked up at the two arguing in the hut with her, their shadows cast large and monstrous by the flickering bonfire.

“{...-absolutely a risk to the tribe, especially when she discovers her true potential. I’m not asking you, priestess, I’m begging you - can they take her or not?}” pleaded the man, his red beard quivering with anxiety. The old woman he was talking to bridled. She cast her stony gaze down onto the weary woman, her features as inscrutable as always.

“{It was no mistake that the Gods chose her,}” the Priestess pointed out - no sense of hostility, no judgement, merely stating a fact. “{Our druids could have taken her in, many years ago, but there simply aren’t enough...}” Pity broke through the wrinkles. “{I do not know what you would have to give to make them take her.}”

The weary woman stared into the flames. “{...They can take me,}” she mused. Both faces turned to gawp at her with bemusement.

“{You? What use would the Fey have with a seamstress?}” Scoffed the husband, shaking his head firmly. “{To leave would be an embarrassment - to return, rejected, would be a disgrace. Stay with me. We can raise her ourselves. She needn’t find out about her power.}”

The weary woman’s gaze returned to the baby and the growing bruise around her areola. “{I’m the vessel of a million unspoken words,}” she murmured. “{My voice was drowned and given away at birth too - to you, to the tribe. I sat and I listened. I filled myself with knowledge - I have no life of my own but I clasp the lives of countless others near me.}” Her hands drew the baby closer still, peering into her freckled face and those slits - bright, bright green ever since the bite. “{I am a maker - of children, of clothes unimaginable. Give me materials and give me time, and I shall endlessly spill forth dresses and new creatures to amuse themselves with. Allow them to use me until my usefulness dries up.}” She wasn’t asking the man, but the Priestess before her. The Priestess glared back down at the impetuous woman.

“{They will devour you and everything you once were. They will take more than you could possibly consider. When the Pixies and the Nymphs have had their fill, you’ll be less than nothing. Is this the fate you want to prescribe yourself to, knowing that if they find you to be an unreasonable sacrifice, you will have to stay at the shrine and beg until the cold snatches you and the child?}” The Priestess hobbled over to the weary woman and crouched so her own pebble-grey eyes watched for any flicker of doubt.

Andrina’s mother had no doubt - no emotions were left. The babe had sucked her dry. “{The tribe thinks I am an adulteress. I am already less than nothing.}”

Few considered the weary woman’s bargain to be sufficient, so fewer still weren’t surprised when the mysterious Fey folk took her - baby and all - into the standing stone, where it rippled like water and engulfed the mistake and the maker of the mistake. They landed in a wooded glade and forced the weary woman to rear her child, regardless, as penance for her negligence. She taught her little girl the language of her homeland and how to sew. She tried to teach the rest - the traditions, the songs, the stories - but they weren’t as strong in Andrina’s memory as the first two. Whilst in the home of the Fey, the First World, they changed their names - Mother, and Adrian. Bad things happen to those who willingly pass on a name to a Fey Creature. Their treatment to Mother was excruciating; it siphoned every pore and pocket of energy within her and she seemed to shrivel and shrink in on herself. In return, the Dryads took care of the child when the moon hung wide and full in the sky. They took one of Mother’s lives every time Adrian took one of theirs by accident. When Adrian was just reaching puberty, Mother had no more lives to give and explained how she must go away now, forever.

“{When you are old enough, and these creatures have shown you what they will, find home.}”

Adrian had always mused over what Mother meant by that. Over time, her teachings began to fade into memory - patchy and inconsistent. The Nymphs would speak to her in her native tongue and also another language, newer - softer and rounder than the jutting consonants she was accustomed to. Adrian picked that up as well, but in pieces. It was harder to learn now that she had outgrown speech.

The Pixies also taught her the way of the world she lived in - the nature of a hundred thousand plants and how to use them so she can look after herself wherever a leaf or stem poked through the earth. How to navigate the duff without making a sound, and how to use the boughs of trees as handholds to leap and swing from. They taught her how to tickle fish and follow the tracks to the doe in the clearing. She learned, with time, how to evade the Satyrs’ thieving fingers and never to follow the echo of a Nymph. But, Fey-like as she was, she was set apart from them - regarded with wariness and treated with mistrust. She did not learn the ways of man.

They all taught her about her powers. It was a link - the only link - to the beasts around her so she treated it with respect. Many, many years passed within the First World and she grew and became better at controlling her body but her mind was impulsive, chaotic from all the games and pranks of the Fey Folk. One day, Adrian felt she knew all she was going to know from them and asked to leave. They warned her she will never return - and she took the promise solemnly, knowing that the Wildlings do not use their words superfluously. She left all the same and wound up a long, long way from Home.

On the edge of the forest, she found herself a human man, dressed oddly in coloured cloth and leather stripped of its fur. She asked him for help to find Home, and the man reluctantly agreed, presuming his way to be northwards anyway. This man, she would come to find out, was Victor Strade; a hunter of monsters, ghouls and all manner of beasts that the normal settler couldn’t handle. Victor quickly discovered Adrian’s condition and decided that the safest way to deal with her was to keep her close, so she wouldn’t be detected. He was a ‘hunter’ in the sense that his version of having ‘dealt with’ something was to find an alternative to slaughtering the beasts. Killing only sparked vengeance within a monster, and entices it to kill even more. Adrian followed him and watched him work. She learned. She listened.

Their journey took them wherever the coin would flow, because each strip of wilderness between one town and another needed resources to last them out - resources that they bought with coins in the preceding village. When the Prince called upon Victor, it was only natural that Adrian would follow. She knew they would receive more coin than usual, which they could set aside to build up the equipment needed to breach the snowy north. The call took them to the city of Hestor - a new sort of environment for Adrian, who had never set foot in anything larger than a village.

---

Adrian herself doesn’t carry much; it’s Victor who keeps track of the inventory they share. She has her special outfit, replicated two or three times for washing. She sometimes carries a bag of edible plants to snack on. In terms of weapons, she technically owns a shortbow and a quiver full of arrows, but Victor is the one who keeps a hold of it and only gives it to her when necessary. She has a hunting knife on her at all times.

Adrian excels immensely in two things and is pretty much useless in all others. She is a child of the forest, which means she is absolutely brilliant at foraging, tracking, hunting and identifying all things natural. She can stalk even the flightiest of deer. She’s light footed enough to give a ghost a fright. Furthermore, the sheer quantity of clothes she goes through and her mother’s teachings have made her into a fairly decent seamstress. Anything outside of that realm, however, is a hopeless endeavour. She can’t quite pack a punch when she’s just a girl, nor is she too well-read; in fact, she’s barely literate as it is and that’s for her native tongue. She’s not at all charismatic. She doesn’t have a lot of stamina.

Skinwalker: Adrian can transform, at will, into something not-quite-human. She becomes taller, stronger, with flaps of skin sloughing off her muscles and a wrinkled snout full of teeth. Her skin toughens and erratic sprouts of ginger hair protrude from odd angles around her body. If anything, she most resembles a naked mole rat with a mouth full of carnivorous teeth.In this form, Adrian has a peculiar quirk; whenever she eats the heart of a magical being, she takes on a fraction of its abilities - now mutated and better suited for her beast form. Since she has only ever had access to the hearts of Fey creautres, Adrian has the following abilities:
Touch of Bloodletting (This spell causes existing wounds on a target to bleed profusely)
Keen Senses (Heightened Perception and Low-light Vision)

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Adrian originated from another fantasy RP that me and DinoNuts (AKA Victor) were in. The art is mine.