Born in the later portion of the 19th Century—it is not polite to ask a woman’s age —Vibia Mystiere was born of an affluent British merchant family in the East Indies city of Bombay. She was raised to become a good wife of an aristocrat, hopefully one of a higher station. She spent her younger years learning the finer arts of high society from her nanny and her private tutors behind the high walls of her family’s estate. Only later did she venture out into the quagmire that British ruled India had become, seeing for the first time the poor and exploited workers locked eternally in the bonds of the caste system strictly imposed under the Crown. She became as involved as she could, trying to improve the plight of the Indian people, but her position kept her socially occupied after her coming out party, and the hum of civilized life caused her to forget her “childish” idealism, as other people saw it.
As his affection chilled, her wounded heart drew away from
the courtly life and into a dark despair, striking her quite ill. Out of concern for her continued health,
Vibia’s loving father decided to have her sent back to his old homeland,
England. In a near feverish stupor that
only worsened with distance from India, she found her way quite accidentally on
a train destined for strange and distant lands.
The train, having been incidentally switched to an unused side track,
did not arrive at her rural England destination, but instead pulled into the
outlying fringes of the Independent State of Caledon, which quickly became her
new home.
At the right old spinster age of 26, she had given up hope
of finding any suitable suitors and instead embarked upon an education that she
had long since neglected in the halls of the Oxbridge colleges. Upon graduation with a Bachelors in
Theoretical Etheric Manipulations and a certification of Airship Operations (small,
armed), she set out in search of a good location to ply her new trade.
A short course later in this new fangled “heavier-than-air”
flight, and she was off on a promising career in the extermination of air
krakens, which swarmed around the skies below Iron Cloud. As thrilling as that was, she eventually
returned to her love of adventure, exploration, and airship travel. She set sail for various destinations about
the world, including some field study of two groups of humanoid-cat people; one
a primitive forest-dwelling tribe with the notable exception of a highly
advanced prison in a place ominously called Howling Valley, and the other that
occupy the Orwell castle, full of mythological and technological oddities and
wonders. She doubted they built the
structure themselves, as they have an amazing preoccupation with the
continuance of their species. She later embarked on a wonderful excursion where
she documented the native habits of a people that time utterly forgot,
immersing herself in the culture of Roma for some time.
As fascinating as it was to observe a group of honest-to-Zeus
living and breathing Romans, complete with legionnaires, senators and their own
Imperator, wanderlust drove Vibia ever onward.
That is until one fateful day when a storm over Fishers Island blew her
beloved airship off course. The strong
southerly winds dragged her helplessly deeper into tropical waters.
Hours of fighting the wind finally took its toll and she
lost her footing and her white-knuckled grip on the wheel. The resulting fall threw her backwards and
her head struck one of her cannons, leaving her unawares as her ship drifted
closer to a strange phenomenon. She
awoke on a beach on an unknown desert island, painfully aware that her ship was
in no condition to ascend to the skies until repaired.
Marooned now on the island of Glint, she has begun repairs
to her ship, while also making the necessary contacts within the local
community, which seems oddly enough like a ragamuffin collection of living
driftwood, washed ashore by some similar tempest that dragged her to the sandy
beach. A wide array of oddities from the
depths of imagination itself seem to intermix freely on Glint, and has given
rise to a proto-government, called The People’s Republic of Glint. Such an odd thought, seeing as many only
loosely resemble right, proper people.
Still, with an open mind and a keen eye for research, Vibia presses on --
for SCIENCE!
Stats:
The following is a classic World of Darkness PnP style stat block (rating skill level on a 1-5 basis). This is really more of a tool for me to flesh out Vibia's character to the fullest degree I could before I get too deep into role playing her. If you're unfamiliar with cWoD and would like more of a description than a list of numbers, feel free to skip the numbers and read the rest if you please.
Name: Vibia Mystiere
Nature: Gallant
Demeanor: Bon Vivant
Essence: Dynamic
Tradition: Sons of Ether (Electrodyne Engineers)
Attributes
Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 1, Charisma 3, Manipulation 2, Appearance 3, Perception 4, Intelligence 3, Wits 3
Abilities
Alertness 1, Awareness 1, Brawl 1, Dodge 1, Expression 1, Streetwise 1, Subterfuge 1, Crafts 2, Pilot 2, Etiquette 2, Research 2, Stealth 1, Survival 1, Technology 2, Academics 3, Cosmology 1, Culture 2, Enigmas 1, Investigation 2, Medicine 1, Occult 1, Science 2
Spheres
Forces 2, Matter 2 (Specialty), Prime 2
Advantages
Arete 2, Willpower 6
Genius 4, Talisman 3
Personality
Hard times and wounded hearts make some people cold, but not Vibia, well, not exactly. Realizing that the life she dreamed of as a child was always going to remain just out of reach, she has embraced the motto, “Just to fill the hour – that is happiness. Fill my hour, ye gods, so that I shall not say whilst I have done this ‘behold an hour of my life is gone,’ but rather ‘I have lived one hour” – R.W. Emerson. To that end, she has tried to see as much of the world as she could, learn as much as possible, and love as deeply as her wanderlust will allow. Still, she has been entirely unable to shake her life-long insatiable thirst for attention, which has made long forays into the great unknown deeply disturbing at times. She fears being eternally alone in equal parts with rejection and boredom.
Essence / Genius
She’s not really sure when she was able to fully grasp the concepts of etheric manipulation, nor can she recall the day that advanced mathematics made sense to her, but she does remember her dreams from that night. Dancing symbols arrayed across an expanse of blackboards, twisting and turning themselves into new forms, strange patterns and ever-shifting shapes. Sometimes, when the wind is still, her mind tempest tossed, and her eyelids heavy, she can still see those odd formulas dancing on the blackboard of her dreams. On days that she feels really lucky, but only every now and then, everything in the world makes sense as the chalky outlines solidify for a brief moment, before waltzing off to their own tune.
Attributes: Physical
Her small, thin frame accentuates the fact that Vibia is neither unusually strong nor particularly well conditioned, but her fluid movements clearly show a naturally lithe grace. While she might not always land on her feet nor get up quickly after the fall, she certainly can flit about a dance floor, walk a tightrope slowly or navigate her way around a hand-painted Royal Doulton tea set without much incident – as long as her corseting isn’t too tight or the room too warm. She does make a point of only swooning to the acceptable level in polite society, but has been known to retain the serves of a private doctor whenever possible, lest she be overcome by some foul illness.
Attributes: Social
Always quick with a smile, a kind word in a soft spoken voice, and a shapely ear to confide in, she does her best to exemplify the charm and grace of her well-mannered upbringing – when in public. However, she has learned that interesting people are more fascinated by like kinds of people than demure, shy debutants and a well-spun yarn with a smooth delivery can sometimes be more truthful than the facts.
Attributes: Mental
Since the first time she saw the reality of native life in India when others could not, she has made it a habit of paying very close attention to her surroundings. Continually probing the nuances of nearly every situation, she tries to let no detail slip past her, and often lets the mood and texture of a scene wash over her. She has a mind that is capable of keeping pace with all but the most intellectual of academia, and a tongue that is just quick enough to get her into trouble, and sometimes out of it again. ((Vibia is so far more well-spoken than I and can spell better than my fingers can on the fly. She likely sees more of her world than my pixilated window allows me to see, so some kindness in that regard may be due her. Very few natural things sneak up on her.))
Abilities: Talents
She is often times more alert to the changes in her surroundings than many people consumed with their own doubts and distracted by their bellies, and rarely ignores the subtle pinpricks that accompany unusual beings, events, and places of power. While she has always avoided physical altercations, she was trained to resist the advances of unsavory men. Her time onboard airships has taught her to get out of the way of loose cannons and untethered lines, and she has on more than one occasion called upon those skills to avoid the tip of a gladius or the swipe of an oversized paw. By no means is she confidant in her ability enough to trust her life solely to it. From time to time, she demonstrates some talent in expressing herself well through her verbal and written words, but without more practice, her prose would likely be rejected by all reputable publishing houses, even under a masculine nom de plume. She rarely shrinks away from the seedy underbelly of the lands she explores, even when she should, but she has learned a few things about dressing the part and opening locked doors, provided the mechanism is poorly crafted and a pry bar is near enough. Although not a practiced liar, she does fashion the occasional innuendo and has been known to talk her way past obstacles.
Abilities: Skills
She knows her way around a machine shop and is able to fabricate many of her own parts. With a little extra effort, her inventions not only work (most of the time) but also look like they’re supposed to work. She is certified for small airships and fixed wing aircraft, although she isn’t completely sure how those ones work yet. She understands the fabric-skinned wooden frame, but suspects the designers forgot to put in large enough internal balloons to keep them from crashing to the ground when not traveling fast enough. Sadly, she’s well acquainted with that aspect, but any landing you walk away from…. Her upbringing taught her well enough to mix in polite society, and as long as she limits herself to bawdy “gentlemen” adventurers and merchants that have yet to realize their fortunes, she does just fine. Her time at Oxbridge accustomed her with the ins and outs of well-stocked libraries, and she applied her study skills to the diverse oral traditions she encountered during her time with various castes and tribes. She may not have the exact passage or tale she was looking for, but in a short time she can figure out exactly where to find it. Under a new moon or in a dark cellar a man without a match can’t find her if she just stands still and remembers to turn off her aether goggles. She is perfectly at home in the temperate English forests and high-walled Colonial Indian gardens, barely in want of a servant to retrieve a fig from a tree. She is skilled enough at a drafting table to make a blueprint of a steam driven device with at least one function that will generally work at least once at half power, and mechanically inclined enough to ignore her own plans while she chucks it all together from spare parts and cast-off items.
Abilities: Knowledges
After completing her degree and pondering her future life in the Ivory Tower, she decided to end her academic career by choosing to be a person that can do instead of being relegated to “those who can’t – teach” – H.L.Mencken. She is well aware that the Earth is crisscrossed by extraordinary gateways that lead to other places, but she still has yet to figure out which doors lead to virtual heavens, and which ones lead down below. Provided that any newly discovered culture is hierarchal, systematic, and overly bureaucratic, she is fairly capable of deciphering taboos and cultural mores. She has been known to lose a few games of chess from time to time, but does enjoy a good jigsaw puzzle or puny word play. Her inquisitive mind was spurred on by her love of detective novels made manifest in her collegiate years by cracking such tough cases as “The case of the dormitory knicker bandit” and “Who used spoiled milk in the Devon cream pie?” The explorer’s life is full of many bumps, bruises and scraped knees that sometimes require more attention than a kiss and a quick rinse of iodine. Not far from the (mostly) harmless domain of the spiritualists, there does lay the wicked hand of dark beings, and it frightens Vibia to no end. Although heavily dated, she does have a firm understanding of Victorian age science.
Sphere “Magic”
Vibia does not believe in magic of any sorts, period. There is no such thing, only charlatans with parlor ticks, simpletons that accidentally stumbled on some completely natural and explainable chemical or physical property, and a decreasing number of unexplained phenomena. With a little help from her, the body scientifica will eventually explain everything in the cosmos. However, her technological devices are (or rather were) sufficiently advanced in applications as to produce “...a performance that may some day be considered understandable, but that, in these primitive times, so transcends what is said to be the known that it is what I mean by magic." – Charles Fort. ((I don’t plan on using the M:tA system in RP outside the fact that is justifies (to me if no one else) how she has insanely complicated machines, made of impossible metal alloys, that make use of improbably small amounts of steam to produce an astounding force-output to fuel-input ratios; all powered by an outdated concept/cosmic energy – you know, steampunk.))
Advantages
She is a techno-“magically” talented (but still unskilled), confidant “lady” airship captain that sees chalkboards full of numbers almost every time she closes her eyes. It takes her a good six stupid mistakes in a row before her willpower is exhausted and she needs a tankard full of wine and a social limit to push.
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