OhJames/Challenge

History

This story, as with so many others, begins with a birth. It was not an auspicious birth, to be sure; rather, it was a shadowed birth, when the moon was shrouded in blackness and the stars winked glumly from far, far away. The children of these circumstances never turn out, muttered the elders and the soothsayers. The children of these circumstances grow up to be killers, muttered the aunts and uncles. The children of these circumstances ought to be left for the beasts, muttered the midwives and nurses.

But you are mine and I love you, muttered one young mother as she cradled a newborn girl to her breast in the dark of night. The wind was chill. It was cold.

The girl grew, in the manner of all children. She was selfish and charming, with an implacable will, though some would call it pig-headedness. Her stamina was remarkable, especially for such a thin, wasting little thing, and she could play long into the hours after sundown, though her parents warned her against it. But, in the manner of children, their stern words fell on deaf ears.

She kissed a boy in a meadow on the fifteenth eve of her birth. They lay together in the grass, giggling and toying with each other’s long, dark hair, so similar and comforting. The stars flickered above their intertwined forms while the girl laughed at her love. The boy laughed too, but he knew not why.

The girl did though. She had seen the whole thing, the big, grand joke played on the world. Dreams had come to her and told her so. She laughed at the flesh above and within her, at the stars in their smooth arcs, at the moon and the grass and the trees and the air. It didn’t matter, not one jot. There were older things, darker things, and they wanted their own.

The girl realized that she wanted that thing, that great, black completion, as well.

So she killed the boy. Stabbed his eyes with needles, ravaged his arms with shards of glass, and pierced his heart with a dagger and a kiss. Her hands bloodied, her eyes glimmering faintly in the half-light before dawn, she wandered off into the wilderness. After three days of her absence and the discovery of the boy’s body, the girl’s mother took a long rope, looped it around a tree, and sought her absolution. She found none; only a swift drop and a sudden stop, followed by darkness and forgetting.

But what of the girl? She wandered for weeks, her laugh tinged with insanity and colored by exhaustion, until she came to the sea. There she collapsed, and met with the Prince.

He took her into his strong arms, lovingly drew her blood with soulsteel razors, and promised eternal life and power. Needless to say, she accepted, even as she tore his pale lips with her teeth.

Thus was the The Bedlamite Treading a Razor’s Edge born, and the little girl, birthed on a moonless night to a loving, young mother, put to rest.

Description and Personality

The Bedlamite is quite mad. The night she was born was a night of grim confluences; she was tormented by terrible dreams of silence unending and the hatred those who rest reserve for all who yet live. These dreams drove her to kill her young lover and deliver herself, body and soul, into the waiting hands of the Bodhisattva Anointed by Dark Water.

She still bears the scars, both physical and mental, of her ordeal. Her form is slim, bereft of all but the most subtle of curves. She keeps her blood-red hair cut close to her scalp and, when worried or nervous, will constanty run one of her free hands through it. Mismatched eyes stare out of her gaunt and haggard face; one is black from edge to edge while the other is a vibrant, shining green. Occasionally they switch places. The expression she most commonly wears is a petulant, childish pout, while her body language suggests that she may explode outward in a storm of violence at any moment. When not feeling herself, the black eye acquires a green cast and tears up. Sometimes she can even be heard quietly crying below decks, sobbing one phrase over and over again.

"Killed him..."

The Crunch

Title: The Bedlamite Treading a Razor’s Edge
Liege: The Silver Prince
Caste: Daybreak
Concept: Reckless treasure hunter
Nature: Jester
Anima: Crows begin to alight on nearby branches and upon the Bedlamite's shoulders. As more Essence is spent, the phantasmal crows take flight and begin circling. Nearing the zenith of its intensity, the winds of her anima whip the crows into a sprialling tornado. Black feathers and blood rain down on all those nearby. All of this is eerily silent

ATTRIBUTES
Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 4
Charisma 4, Manipulation 4, Appearance 3
Perception 2, Intelligence 3, Wits 2

ABILITIES
Dusk: *Archery 3, Brawl 2
Midnight: Endurance 2, *Presence 3, Resistance 1
Daybreak: *Investigation 4, *Lore 3, *Occult 3
Day: Athletics 2 *Larceny 3
Moonshadow: *Bureaucracy 2, *Sail 4

ADVANTAGES
Backgrounds:
Abyssal Command 2
The Bedlamite's bodyguard takes the form of 20 mortal sailors and pirates who maintain her ship, The Bramble's Fall, along with 22 mindless dead who cater to their mistresses' every whim. These shamblers also make up her personal bodyguard; at least five are always with her.

Artifact 3
The Bedlamite has been granted several items of power by her lord. Among them are Biting Remark, a short soulsteel powerbow forged from the ghost of a vicious courtesan who brought an entire court to lustful heel. It is disturbingly languid and seems to twist in its mistresses' hands, and it can be heard to purr deeply to itself. The soulsteel used in its creation was also unusually lustrous, looking almost liquid in the proper light. In battle she wears a reinforced breastplate, which she has taken to calling Id. Very little is known of its crafting, though it projects a palpable aura of menace and screams terribly when in use. Hidden deep in the hold of The Bramble's Fall is a Morningstar Guide. The Bedlamite snuck it out of her master's treasury, thinking it to be incredibly important. She knows where she wants to go, but won't admit it to herself.

Contacts 2
In her travails, the Bedlamite has made the acquaintance of two unscrupulous thaumaturges, both of the scavenger lord variety. The first lives in Chiarscouro where he sells illicit drugs and minor artifacts to any takers. The second lives in Abalone, where he has been trying, unsuccesfully, to delve under the sea and find First Age ruins. In his spare time he tinkers with various transportation devices. They do not know of each other, and refuse to give the Bedlamite their names.

Liege 3
The Silver Prince has a modicum of interest in his little flower, and contacts her via Infallible Messenger at least once a month. Whenever she is not on a dig or search, she enters into his audience chamber on the night of the new moon.

Whispers 4
The Bedlamite was the Malfeans' from birth. Their silent voices echo in her mind at all hours of the day and even wake her in the night sometimes. Secretly, she is terrified of this invasion of her privacy, and has been working on a way to stop the constant whispering on and off for years. The voices can be so useful in finding lost things though...

Charms:
Archery: Bloodthirsty Arrow (157), Iron Sleet Attack (158)
Investigation: Excellent Inquisitor Attitude (189)
Lore: Crypt Bolt (191)
Occult: Terrestrial Circle Sorcery (197), Spirit Sensing Technique (198)
Larceny: Cunning Criminal Style (208)
Sail: Master Sailor’s Memory (218), Ghost on the Deck (219)

Spells: Emerald Countermagic, Infallible Messenger

Virtues: Compassion 2, Conviction 3, Temperance 1, Valor 3

Willpower 6
Essence 3: Personal 15, Peripheral 36, Committed 8

Bonus point spread: caste/favored abilities – 8, essence – 7
Liege point spread: backgrounds – 1, spell – 4, caste/favored ability – 1