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[CHAR] The Pyres Never Stop Burning (Old-School Occult Horror/Mystery)
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Character Sheet
Name: Joséphine “Fifi” Baptistine L’Hôte
Age: 23
Sex: F
Profession: Scholar
Interests: Although her education was quite thorough, in her time in Lyon, Joséphine has come to find her greatest passion lies in the young field of Linguistics, and has pursued this course of study eagerly. Beyond the realm of academics, Joséphine’s independent tastes are still young, and therefore quite subject to change. But as she delves deeper into the worlds of academia and independent living, there could well be any manner of matters that might grab her passions...
Personality: Joséphine L’Hôte is nothing if not an eccentric woman. At once bearing with her the noble arrogance of posture that befits a wealthy planter, and the dubious social position of being a white Créole in a world increasingly reticent to recognise such a thing as a valid category, Joséphine is well-familiar with navigating the many curious pitfalls of the Fin du Siècle’s social world. In many ways a foreigner both in the increasingly Anglicised Louisiana and in France for various reasons, combined with the forceful exposure by nature of her place and station of birth to the social complexities of the world that many could so easily miss, combined with her keen mind and newfound intellectual freedoms, Joséphine offers a shockingly open mind for someone who appears to the world as she does. With that said, she bears a formidable temper, like her father before her, and a passionate propensity for frustration. More than a few difficult puzzles have known her wrath. And underlying this, though she is formidably disciplined in well-trodden paths, when it comes to the unfamiliar—places where her parents’ intense oversight has not carved the way clearly—, Joséphine navigates without inhibition, without metric or regard for the matter’s or her very own limits. When presented with just the right opportunity, the maze of passions and proclivities can unite, and the disciplined student and naïve academic have potential to merge to form a researcher unbound.
Appearance:
Background: Joséphine L’Hôte was born in early 1878 as the only child of Monsieur Joséph L’Hôte fils and Madame Léopoldine L’Hóte (née Vigouroux). As a young child, she and her mother were subjected to the Yellow Fever, and, though both survived, Léopoldine has forever since been in perennially ill health. In some respects, Joséphine has thereafter lived a relatively easy, and entirely straightforward life, being the daughter of a wealthy businessman.
But a more nuanced story would clarify much about Joséphine as a person. As for her father, he is the current proprietor of L’Hôte Lumber, sharing ownership with his younger brother, one M. Damien L’Hôte. The L’Hôte brothers have inherited and cultivated a prosperous lumber enterprise from their father, who has, for over a decade now, been bedridden due to a severe back injury, and placed in the care of the brothers’ younger sister, Mlle. Claudine, who remains, for this reason and others, a Catherinette numerous times over. The brothers, then, work to support the entire family, and make well of it. Where both are shrewd and competent in their own respects, Joséph fils, hereafter M. Joséph, serves in a markedly more public capacity.
M. Joséph is a sociable man personally torn between his shrewdness as a businessman and his inexorable proclivities towards the fineries of life. In many respects, he finds himself torn by his very nature, be it the tension between business concerns and those of the family to which he and it belong, between his own dispositions, or towards his own views. This diarchic nature has done much to shape Joséphine’s life. In some areas, seemingly disharmonious elements produce an odd harmony. Most saliently of all, M. Joséph has seen to it that his daughter and his younger son alike have received thorough, rigorous education. On one account, as a man of younger money, he has a broad appreciation for the utility of education and holds to the rather Progressive notion that it is, in fact, important for all. But on another, in the end, he has been known to lament—to his own daughter, in fact—that his wife—her mother—received a less rigorous education simply for the fact that he finds this lesser level of education frustrating in a partner, and, that Joséphine would eventually ideally wed an intellectually sound man, she would be better to not be a bore.
Looking from M. to Mme. Joséph L’Hôte, one might initially wonder where their enduring common ground should be, if indeed it ever existed. Overtly, Léopoldine L’Hôte cannot be rightly said to hold the same genuine enthusiasm for a great many matters of high culture, preferring an assortment of entertainment sources which M. Joséph regards as thoroughly pedestrian on the whole, and has long struggled to summon patience for. However, though she lacks in entertainment of the matters themselves, she does hold a strong opinion that they are necessary inconveniences to undergo in order to maintain social ties. It is on this account of the importance of social ties that the two wholeheartedly agree. As a result, from an exceedingly young age, Joséphine has been given no recourse but to learn the ways of a good hostess, and learn them well.
Now, why is it that a woman so apparently disinterested in high culture would subject herself to it with stunning regularity? Looking back to the Vigouroux clan, Léopoldine’s relations have had a history which perhaps requires more attention than those of the L’Hôtes. Some generations ago, the ancestors of the Vigouroux line enjoyed an excellent station in Saint-Domingue—now Haiti, though they to this day refuse to even entertain the notion that it might be so—only to find themselves so fortunate as to have the opportunity to expel themselves rather than face the fate of many other of the island’s former overlords. Of course, let it not be said that the family was ever so readily discouraged as to reevaluate their business practices in light of one of history’s precious few successful slave revolts. Rather, like a number of their ilk, they found refuge in Louisiana, and they put their remaining coin into land, resuming their lifestyle with unrepentant immediacy. Some decades later, after no small amount of squabbling, infighting, and other such things between heirs of the mess of estates and investments the family had produced, Mme. Léopoldine’s maternal grandparents—M. François Vigouroux and Mme. Laetitia Vigouroux—definitively wiped their hands of the entire matter, on account of Mme. F. Vigouroux’s ailing health and increasing inclination to be free of the entire affair, a sentiment shared by M. Vigouroux, and made arrangements to walk away with money and investments and leave the plantation and remainder of the fortune to a cousin with whom the most enduring spell of the conflict was undertaken. It was perhaps some great measure of fortune that this decision was made in 1859.
Now, the question of how Léopoldine bore her grandparents’ name comes to mind. Here, the sense of pride carried within the lineage becomes more overt. Augustine Vigouroux, mother of Léopoldine, made the decision to pick a husband of social bearings that M. and Mme. François Vigouroux felt assuredly beneath her. However, Augustine was not dissuaded, and eventually a compromise was reached. Their children would take the Vigouroux name, lest they forfeit any inheritance. On some account, they regarded this as reasonable on the basis of the peculiar insistence that had arisen within the family that they held some manner of tie to the de Beauharnais family through the Vigouroux paternal line, for some of M. François’ elder siblings had chosen to flee to Guadeloupe rather than New Orleans those many years ago. That is to say, nobility by proxy of having family who were able to marry into nobility. Unreasonable, perhaps, but is it not also unreasonable to retreat to another colony to resume the same practices that led to one being revolted against and chased out from one’s previous place of residence?
This is to say, Joséphine L’Hôte comes from an eclectic lineage, and understanding this fact makes Joséphine herself appear far more transparent in her eccentricities and limitations. It was at her mother’s behest that she studied Latin and received a comprehensive religious education—the latter of which her father felt on some accounts quite simply wasted time altogether beyond a certain point. However, Latin itself was of keen interest to him, though English was as well, for it was by the utilization of the English language in addition to French that the L’Hôte business had remained competitive in the increasingly Americanized region. So Joséphine found herself studying French and Latin, but also English, for this practical measure of her father’s, and yet, as if to balance the practical with the impractical, she was also split down the middle with Classical and practical (e.g., business-oriented) educations, as if hiring extra tutors could force a child to learn faster. Whether or not it in fact did so, M. Joséph maintains firmly to this day that a childhood choked by and crushed under a truly intense education did his child well.
Combined with her mother’s rigorous routine of social matters and her father’s further insistence on supplementing every available moment of would-be relaxation with ensuring his child was adequately exposed to “proper culture”, it cannot be rightly said that Joséphine, in the course of her youth, ever meaningfully developed hobbies or found the time to nurture passions. Certainly, there are matters which she has enjoyed, such as Latin and arithmetic, and those she has found frustrating, most notably the practice of the overwhelming majority of the fine arts to which she has been exposed, but on the whole, there is little that has been cultivated in her life without an adult’s hand guiding it by hook or by crook. That is to say, Joséphine had, in the course of her development, scarcely enjoyed time to properly develop meaningful interests, or even deep friendships, for her mother’s engagements were less so suited to intimate arrangements and more so to keeping up appearances.
What can be said of Joséphine becomes most overt, then, in the aftermath of her débutante ball. At first, as a girl, Joséphine was by most accounts merely following in her father’s particularities when it came to the matter of men. Of course, on the other hand, with the rigorous schedule she found in the course of her life, there was scarcely much time to attend to the matter anyway. After secondary school, there remained no progress on the matter of marriage. Thus, even had she contested the matter, which she did not see fit to, Joséphine was off to college. Newcomb College, to be specific. Having to a degree exhausted extracurricular activities, Joséphine’s excess time became filled with another pursuit, one which she still regards with thorough ambivalence. If she had no suitors to attend to, then, according to M. Joséph, his daughter could contribute to the family business, and help foster its continued prosperity so that the next generations would be well cared-for. Although it certainly bore its benefits, time to socialize was scarcely one of them, and by her graduation from Newcombe, Joséphine had still scarcely found anyone, though not for lack of her mother’s trying.
It was at this point, then, that the question of will arose. To Mme. Léopoldine’s dismay, it appeared that Joséphine felt unready to marry, while M. Joséph bore a stunningly dim opinion of the overwhelming majority of potential matches Mme. Léopoldine had even offered. The family stood in deadlock on this matter for some time before a bold proposition between father and daughter won out. Joséphine, in the course of her studies at Newcombe, had found her fondness for Latin and historical studies, among other things, was sufficient that she had considered continuing beyond the bounds of education. Although she could scarcely be said to have had much free time, college, and some of the less-intensive administerial work her father had assigned her, had brought a slight bit of flexibility that allowed her the opportunity to consider, for the first time in her life, her own preferences. And to Joséphine, continuing education in specific areas of interest felt wholly comfortable, and quite sensible. Although Mme. Léopoldine deeply opposed the notion, M. Joséph offered his daughter some consideration upon her addition of her wish to study in France. For if there were no satisfactory Francophone suitors in Louisiana, she reasoned, would it not be best to look elsewhere, in a place with more Francophones than any other place in the world?
It was the Université de Lyon that received Joséphine L’Hôte’s petition to attend as a graduate student studying ancient languages and history under the Faculty of Letters, and it was in Lyon that the L’Hôtes saw off their eldest daughter to attend a higher level of education than M. Joséph himself had achieved. Although perhaps bittersweet at first, Joséphine has found the life of an academic most fulfilling, and has, over the past year, become increasingly reticent to even make a modest effort of procuring a courtship. Does Joséphine L’Hôte, Dr ès l., not indeed sound better than Mme. Unetel? The sound is ever-more titillating, to say nothing of the studies themselves. M. le Prof. Ferdinand Brunot is working on his History of the French Language, and Joséphine finds herself ever more deeply fascinated by the impossible depths of learning. To the fire with soirées, the joy of life was in the books all along!
Name: Joséphine “Fifi” Baptistine L’Hôte
Age: 23
Sex: F
Profession: Scholar
Interests: Although her education was quite thorough, in her time in Lyon, Joséphine has come to find her greatest passion lies in the young field of Linguistics, and has pursued this course of study eagerly. Beyond the realm of academics, Joséphine’s independent tastes are still young, and therefore quite subject to change. But as she delves deeper into the worlds of academia and independent living, there could well be any manner of matters that might grab her passions...
Personality: Joséphine L’Hôte is nothing if not an eccentric woman. At once bearing with her the noble arrogance of posture that befits a wealthy planter, and the dubious social position of being a white Créole in a world increasingly reticent to recognise such a thing as a valid category, Joséphine is well-familiar with navigating the many curious pitfalls of the Fin du Siècle’s social world. In many ways a foreigner both in the increasingly Anglicised Louisiana and in France for various reasons, combined with the forceful exposure by nature of her place and station of birth to the social complexities of the world that many could so easily miss, combined with her keen mind and newfound intellectual freedoms, Joséphine offers a shockingly open mind for someone who appears to the world as she does. With that said, she bears a formidable temper, like her father before her, and a passionate propensity for frustration. More than a few difficult puzzles have known her wrath. And underlying this, though she is formidably disciplined in well-trodden paths, when it comes to the unfamiliar—places where her parents’ intense oversight has not carved the way clearly—, Joséphine navigates without inhibition, without metric or regard for the matter’s or her very own limits. When presented with just the right opportunity, the maze of passions and proclivities can unite, and the disciplined student and naïve academic have potential to merge to form a researcher unbound.
Appearance:
Background: Joséphine L’Hôte was born in early 1878 as the only child of Monsieur Joséph L’Hôte fils and Madame Léopoldine L’Hóte (née Vigouroux). As a young child, she and her mother were subjected to the Yellow Fever, and, though both survived, Léopoldine has forever since been in perennially ill health. In some respects, Joséphine has thereafter lived a relatively easy, and entirely straightforward life, being the daughter of a wealthy businessman.
But a more nuanced story would clarify much about Joséphine as a person. As for her father, he is the current proprietor of L’Hôte Lumber, sharing ownership with his younger brother, one M. Damien L’Hôte. The L’Hôte brothers have inherited and cultivated a prosperous lumber enterprise from their father, who has, for over a decade now, been bedridden due to a severe back injury, and placed in the care of the brothers’ younger sister, Mlle. Claudine, who remains, for this reason and others, a Catherinette numerous times over. The brothers, then, work to support the entire family, and make well of it. Where both are shrewd and competent in their own respects, Joséph fils, hereafter M. Joséph, serves in a markedly more public capacity.
M. Joséph is a sociable man personally torn between his shrewdness as a businessman and his inexorable proclivities towards the fineries of life. In many respects, he finds himself torn by his very nature, be it the tension between business concerns and those of the family to which he and it belong, between his own dispositions, or towards his own views. This diarchic nature has done much to shape Joséphine’s life. In some areas, seemingly disharmonious elements produce an odd harmony. Most saliently of all, M. Joséph has seen to it that his daughter and his younger son alike have received thorough, rigorous education. On one account, as a man of younger money, he has a broad appreciation for the utility of education and holds to the rather Progressive notion that it is, in fact, important for all. But on another, in the end, he has been known to lament—to his own daughter, in fact—that his wife—her mother—received a less rigorous education simply for the fact that he finds this lesser level of education frustrating in a partner, and, that Joséphine would eventually ideally wed an intellectually sound man, she would be better to not be a bore.
Looking from M. to Mme. Joséph L’Hôte, one might initially wonder where their enduring common ground should be, if indeed it ever existed. Overtly, Léopoldine L’Hôte cannot be rightly said to hold the same genuine enthusiasm for a great many matters of high culture, preferring an assortment of entertainment sources which M. Joséph regards as thoroughly pedestrian on the whole, and has long struggled to summon patience for. However, though she lacks in entertainment of the matters themselves, she does hold a strong opinion that they are necessary inconveniences to undergo in order to maintain social ties. It is on this account of the importance of social ties that the two wholeheartedly agree. As a result, from an exceedingly young age, Joséphine has been given no recourse but to learn the ways of a good hostess, and learn them well.
Now, why is it that a woman so apparently disinterested in high culture would subject herself to it with stunning regularity? Looking back to the Vigouroux clan, Léopoldine’s relations have had a history which perhaps requires more attention than those of the L’Hôtes. Some generations ago, the ancestors of the Vigouroux line enjoyed an excellent station in Saint-Domingue—now Haiti, though they to this day refuse to even entertain the notion that it might be so—only to find themselves so fortunate as to have the opportunity to expel themselves rather than face the fate of many other of the island’s former overlords. Of course, let it not be said that the family was ever so readily discouraged as to reevaluate their business practices in light of one of history’s precious few successful slave revolts. Rather, like a number of their ilk, they found refuge in Louisiana, and they put their remaining coin into land, resuming their lifestyle with unrepentant immediacy. Some decades later, after no small amount of squabbling, infighting, and other such things between heirs of the mess of estates and investments the family had produced, Mme. Léopoldine’s maternal grandparents—M. François Vigouroux and Mme. Laetitia Vigouroux—definitively wiped their hands of the entire matter, on account of Mme. F. Vigouroux’s ailing health and increasing inclination to be free of the entire affair, a sentiment shared by M. Vigouroux, and made arrangements to walk away with money and investments and leave the plantation and remainder of the fortune to a cousin with whom the most enduring spell of the conflict was undertaken. It was perhaps some great measure of fortune that this decision was made in 1859.
Now, the question of how Léopoldine bore her grandparents’ name comes to mind. Here, the sense of pride carried within the lineage becomes more overt. Augustine Vigouroux, mother of Léopoldine, made the decision to pick a husband of social bearings that M. and Mme. François Vigouroux felt assuredly beneath her. However, Augustine was not dissuaded, and eventually a compromise was reached. Their children would take the Vigouroux name, lest they forfeit any inheritance. On some account, they regarded this as reasonable on the basis of the peculiar insistence that had arisen within the family that they held some manner of tie to the de Beauharnais family through the Vigouroux paternal line, for some of M. François’ elder siblings had chosen to flee to Guadeloupe rather than New Orleans those many years ago. That is to say, nobility by proxy of having family who were able to marry into nobility. Unreasonable, perhaps, but is it not also unreasonable to retreat to another colony to resume the same practices that led to one being revolted against and chased out from one’s previous place of residence?
This is to say, Joséphine L’Hôte comes from an eclectic lineage, and understanding this fact makes Joséphine herself appear far more transparent in her eccentricities and limitations. It was at her mother’s behest that she studied Latin and received a comprehensive religious education—the latter of which her father felt on some accounts quite simply wasted time altogether beyond a certain point. However, Latin itself was of keen interest to him, though English was as well, for it was by the utilization of the English language in addition to French that the L’Hôte business had remained competitive in the increasingly Americanized region. So Joséphine found herself studying French and Latin, but also English, for this practical measure of her father’s, and yet, as if to balance the practical with the impractical, she was also split down the middle with Classical and practical (e.g., business-oriented) educations, as if hiring extra tutors could force a child to learn faster. Whether or not it in fact did so, M. Joséph maintains firmly to this day that a childhood choked by and crushed under a truly intense education did his child well.
Combined with her mother’s rigorous routine of social matters and her father’s further insistence on supplementing every available moment of would-be relaxation with ensuring his child was adequately exposed to “proper culture”, it cannot be rightly said that Joséphine, in the course of her youth, ever meaningfully developed hobbies or found the time to nurture passions. Certainly, there are matters which she has enjoyed, such as Latin and arithmetic, and those she has found frustrating, most notably the practice of the overwhelming majority of the fine arts to which she has been exposed, but on the whole, there is little that has been cultivated in her life without an adult’s hand guiding it by hook or by crook. That is to say, Joséphine had, in the course of her development, scarcely enjoyed time to properly develop meaningful interests, or even deep friendships, for her mother’s engagements were less so suited to intimate arrangements and more so to keeping up appearances.
What can be said of Joséphine becomes most overt, then, in the aftermath of her débutante ball. At first, as a girl, Joséphine was by most accounts merely following in her father’s particularities when it came to the matter of men. Of course, on the other hand, with the rigorous schedule she found in the course of her life, there was scarcely much time to attend to the matter anyway. After secondary school, there remained no progress on the matter of marriage. Thus, even had she contested the matter, which she did not see fit to, Joséphine was off to college. Newcomb College, to be specific. Having to a degree exhausted extracurricular activities, Joséphine’s excess time became filled with another pursuit, one which she still regards with thorough ambivalence. If she had no suitors to attend to, then, according to M. Joséph, his daughter could contribute to the family business, and help foster its continued prosperity so that the next generations would be well cared-for. Although it certainly bore its benefits, time to socialize was scarcely one of them, and by her graduation from Newcombe, Joséphine had still scarcely found anyone, though not for lack of her mother’s trying.
It was at this point, then, that the question of will arose. To Mme. Léopoldine’s dismay, it appeared that Joséphine felt unready to marry, while M. Joséph bore a stunningly dim opinion of the overwhelming majority of potential matches Mme. Léopoldine had even offered. The family stood in deadlock on this matter for some time before a bold proposition between father and daughter won out. Joséphine, in the course of her studies at Newcombe, had found her fondness for Latin and historical studies, among other things, was sufficient that she had considered continuing beyond the bounds of education. Although she could scarcely be said to have had much free time, college, and some of the less-intensive administerial work her father had assigned her, had brought a slight bit of flexibility that allowed her the opportunity to consider, for the first time in her life, her own preferences. And to Joséphine, continuing education in specific areas of interest felt wholly comfortable, and quite sensible. Although Mme. Léopoldine deeply opposed the notion, M. Joséph offered his daughter some consideration upon her addition of her wish to study in France. For if there were no satisfactory Francophone suitors in Louisiana, she reasoned, would it not be best to look elsewhere, in a place with more Francophones than any other place in the world?
It was the Université de Lyon that received Joséphine L’Hôte’s petition to attend as a graduate student studying ancient languages and history under the Faculty of Letters, and it was in Lyon that the L’Hôtes saw off their eldest daughter to attend a higher level of education than M. Joséph himself had achieved. Although perhaps bittersweet at first, Joséphine has found the life of an academic most fulfilling, and has, over the past year, become increasingly reticent to even make a modest effort of procuring a courtship. Does Joséphine L’Hôte, Dr ès l., not indeed sound better than Mme. Unetel? The sound is ever-more titillating, to say nothing of the studies themselves. M. le Prof. Ferdinand Brunot is working on his History of the French Language, and Joséphine finds herself ever more deeply fascinated by the impossible depths of learning. To the fire with soirées, the joy of life was in the books all along!
Vitality: 17
Strength: 12
Skill: 10
Perception: 10
General Knowledge: 13
Rationality: 13
Spirituality: 11
The Great Game of Knowledge
The cards tell me that you have been blessed with a hearty and healthy nature, but that you are sometimes too airy and uncoordinated to take full advantage of it. You are quick to understand, however. If you keep your head on straight, you are sure to live an enviable life. But isn't there a skeleton or two in your closet? Things left forgotten are not, as it were, harmless.
Cards: The Artist (Reversed), Adam, The Alchemist, -hidden-, The Great Book
Strength: 12
Skill: 10
Perception: 10
General Knowledge: 13
Rationality: 13
Spirituality: 11
The Great Game of Knowledge
The cards tell me that you have been blessed with a hearty and healthy nature, but that you are sometimes too airy and uncoordinated to take full advantage of it. You are quick to understand, however. If you keep your head on straight, you are sure to live an enviable life. But isn't there a skeleton or two in your closet? Things left forgotten are not, as it were, harmless.
Cards: The Artist (Reversed), Adam, The Alchemist, -hidden-, The Great Book
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 | "SAMUEL TRENTWELL" "SAMUEL TRENTWELL" Name: Samuel "Sam" Trentwell Nationality: British Age: 23 Sex: Male Height: 5'8" Weight: 64kg Eyes: Hazel Physique: Slim Hair: Messy, chestnut brown Skin: Fair, often slightly smudged with grease or ink Colour: 4682b4 |
P R O F E S S I O N & B A C K G R O U N D :
P R O F E S S I O N & B A C K G R O U N D :
P R O F E S S I O N & B A C K G R O U N D :
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Profession: Inventor
Background: Samuel "Sam" Trentwell was born in 1878 in London’s bustling East End, the youngest of three children in a family of modest means. His father, Albert Trentwell, worked long hours as a machinist in one of the city’s many factories, while his mother, Margaret, contributed by taking in sewing work from neighbors. Their income was enough to keep food on the table, but just barely, and the cramped, soot-stained streets of the East End offered few luxuries for a growing family. Nevertheless, Sam’s childhood was filled with a vibrant curiosity that often pushed the boundaries of what their tiny household could handle.
From a young age, Sam displayed a knack for taking things apart—much to his mother’s consternation. She would often come across the dismantled remains of clocks, kettles, and even the family’s cherished oil lamp, their inner workings carefully spread out on the kitchen table. “I’ll put it back together,” Sam would always promise, and—miraculously—he usually did, often with surprising improvements. His fascination with machines and mechanisms quickly became the defining feature of his early years. While other children played in the streets, Sam could be found sifting through the scrap heaps near his father’s factory, pocketing discarded gears, springs, and bolts like treasures.
By the time he was 10, Sam had earned a reputation in his neighborhood as a boy who could fix just about anything. From broken watches to squeaky cart wheels, no challenge was too small for his nimble hands and sharp mind. His father, who spent his days surrounded by industrial machinery, quietly encouraged Sam’s interests, even sneaking home bits of scrap metal and discarded tools from the factory to feed his son’s experiments. Albert saw in Sam the potential for something greater—a life beyond the grinding, thankless labor that defined his own.
At 15, Sam secured an apprenticeship at a small workshop owned by an eccentric inventor, a man named Percival Finch. Finch was one of the few who recognized Sam’s potential, taking him under his wing and teaching him the fundamentals of engineering and mechanics. For Sam, it was a dream come true—a chance to learn from a master while immersing himself in the world of invention. The workshop became his sanctuary, a place where he could lose himself in the hum of machinery and the thrill of creation.
However, Sam’s relationship with Finch was not without its challenges. The older man was set in his ways, often dismissing Sam’s more unorthodox ideas as impractical. Sam, for his part, grew increasingly frustrated with the limitations imposed on him. He wanted to push boundaries, to experiment with devices that no one else had dreamed of—portable mechanisms, multi-functional tools, and compact inventions that could revolutionize daily life. Finch, though, favored traditional designs and was unwilling to invest time or resources into what he saw as fanciful diversions.
Their partnership came to an abrupt end when Sam, eager to prove his vision, poured months of effort into creating a prototype for a pocket-sized multi-tool. The device combined a folding knife, screwdriver, scissors, and a collapsible magnifying lens—a marvel of compact engineering, at least in theory. However, during its first demonstration, the scissor mechanism jammed, and Finch’s scathing critique cut deeper than the tool ever could. “Stick to what works,” the older man had said, his tone final. Humiliated and disillusioned, Sam left the workshop, determined to forge his own path.
Over the next few years, Sam struggled to establish himself as an independent inventor. With no formal education and limited resources, he found it difficult to gain the trust of potential patrons or clients. He took on odd repair jobs to make ends meet, working long hours out of a cramped rented room that doubled as his workshop. Despite the setbacks, he refused to abandon his dream, though the rejection and ridicule he often faced began to take their toll. His multi-tool prototype, which he continued to refine in secret, became a symbol of his persistence—a reminder that failure was merely a step on the path to success.
By the time he was 23, Sam’s prospects had dwindled. The scientific community in London remained dismissive of his work, and even the repair jobs had begun to dry up. He was on the brink of giving up entirely when the letter arrived—a summons to Loudon, a distant town he had never heard of, offering a claim to an inheritance from a relative he had never known. At first, Sam was skeptical, suspecting a hoax or some elaborate scam. But as he reread the letter, something about it ignited a spark of curiosity he hadn’t felt in years. What if it was legitimate? What if it was a chance not just to escape the drudgery of his current life, but to find something meaningful—something that could validate all the sacrifices he had made?
Packing his satchel with a few personal belongings, including his prototype multi-tool and his trusty notebook of sketches, Sam set out for Loudon. He knew little about the town or the inheritance that awaited him, but he was determined to seize the opportunity, no matter what it turned out to be. For Sam, this wasn’t just a journey to claim money—it was a chance to reclaim himself, to prove that his ideas had worth and that his life could be more than a series of broken dreams and half-finished inventions.
The road ahead was uncertain, but for the first time in years, Sam felt a flicker of hope. Perhaps Loudon held the key to unlocking not just his potential, but his place in a world that had so often seemed indifferent to his struggles.
Background: Samuel "Sam" Trentwell was born in 1878 in London’s bustling East End, the youngest of three children in a family of modest means. His father, Albert Trentwell, worked long hours as a machinist in one of the city’s many factories, while his mother, Margaret, contributed by taking in sewing work from neighbors. Their income was enough to keep food on the table, but just barely, and the cramped, soot-stained streets of the East End offered few luxuries for a growing family. Nevertheless, Sam’s childhood was filled with a vibrant curiosity that often pushed the boundaries of what their tiny household could handle.
From a young age, Sam displayed a knack for taking things apart—much to his mother’s consternation. She would often come across the dismantled remains of clocks, kettles, and even the family’s cherished oil lamp, their inner workings carefully spread out on the kitchen table. “I’ll put it back together,” Sam would always promise, and—miraculously—he usually did, often with surprising improvements. His fascination with machines and mechanisms quickly became the defining feature of his early years. While other children played in the streets, Sam could be found sifting through the scrap heaps near his father’s factory, pocketing discarded gears, springs, and bolts like treasures.
By the time he was 10, Sam had earned a reputation in his neighborhood as a boy who could fix just about anything. From broken watches to squeaky cart wheels, no challenge was too small for his nimble hands and sharp mind. His father, who spent his days surrounded by industrial machinery, quietly encouraged Sam’s interests, even sneaking home bits of scrap metal and discarded tools from the factory to feed his son’s experiments. Albert saw in Sam the potential for something greater—a life beyond the grinding, thankless labor that defined his own.
At 15, Sam secured an apprenticeship at a small workshop owned by an eccentric inventor, a man named Percival Finch. Finch was one of the few who recognized Sam’s potential, taking him under his wing and teaching him the fundamentals of engineering and mechanics. For Sam, it was a dream come true—a chance to learn from a master while immersing himself in the world of invention. The workshop became his sanctuary, a place where he could lose himself in the hum of machinery and the thrill of creation.
However, Sam’s relationship with Finch was not without its challenges. The older man was set in his ways, often dismissing Sam’s more unorthodox ideas as impractical. Sam, for his part, grew increasingly frustrated with the limitations imposed on him. He wanted to push boundaries, to experiment with devices that no one else had dreamed of—portable mechanisms, multi-functional tools, and compact inventions that could revolutionize daily life. Finch, though, favored traditional designs and was unwilling to invest time or resources into what he saw as fanciful diversions.
Their partnership came to an abrupt end when Sam, eager to prove his vision, poured months of effort into creating a prototype for a pocket-sized multi-tool. The device combined a folding knife, screwdriver, scissors, and a collapsible magnifying lens—a marvel of compact engineering, at least in theory. However, during its first demonstration, the scissor mechanism jammed, and Finch’s scathing critique cut deeper than the tool ever could. “Stick to what works,” the older man had said, his tone final. Humiliated and disillusioned, Sam left the workshop, determined to forge his own path.
Over the next few years, Sam struggled to establish himself as an independent inventor. With no formal education and limited resources, he found it difficult to gain the trust of potential patrons or clients. He took on odd repair jobs to make ends meet, working long hours out of a cramped rented room that doubled as his workshop. Despite the setbacks, he refused to abandon his dream, though the rejection and ridicule he often faced began to take their toll. His multi-tool prototype, which he continued to refine in secret, became a symbol of his persistence—a reminder that failure was merely a step on the path to success.
By the time he was 23, Sam’s prospects had dwindled. The scientific community in London remained dismissive of his work, and even the repair jobs had begun to dry up. He was on the brink of giving up entirely when the letter arrived—a summons to Loudon, a distant town he had never heard of, offering a claim to an inheritance from a relative he had never known. At first, Sam was skeptical, suspecting a hoax or some elaborate scam. But as he reread the letter, something about it ignited a spark of curiosity he hadn’t felt in years. What if it was legitimate? What if it was a chance not just to escape the drudgery of his current life, but to find something meaningful—something that could validate all the sacrifices he had made?
Packing his satchel with a few personal belongings, including his prototype multi-tool and his trusty notebook of sketches, Sam set out for Loudon. He knew little about the town or the inheritance that awaited him, but he was determined to seize the opportunity, no matter what it turned out to be. For Sam, this wasn’t just a journey to claim money—it was a chance to reclaim himself, to prove that his ideas had worth and that his life could be more than a series of broken dreams and half-finished inventions.
The road ahead was uncertain, but for the first time in years, Sam felt a flicker of hope. Perhaps Loudon held the key to unlocking not just his potential, but his place in a world that had so often seemed indifferent to his struggles.
E Q U I P M E N T :
E Q U I P M E N T :
E Q U I P M E N T :
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- Pocket Multi-Tool Prototype: A foldable tool combining a screwdriver, knife blade, scissors, wrench, and magnifying lens. Ingenious but fragile.
- Notebook: Packed with detailed invention blueprints and sketches.
- Basic Toolkit: Screwdriver, pliers, and small personal tools.
P E R S O N A L I T Y :
P E R S O N A L I T Y :
P E R S O N A L I T Y :
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Samuel "Sam" Trentwell’s life revolves around his unyielding passion for science and invention. A naturally curious and intelligent mind, he thrives on problem-solving, constantly seeking innovative ways to make the world more efficient and practical. Sam approaches life through the lens of logic and reason, yet beneath his analytical exterior lies a deep appreciation for the beauty and wonder inherent in discovery. He views science as more than a discipline—it’s a form of art that reveals the universe’s hidden mysteries, sparking a quiet reverence within him for the unknown.
This unwavering belief in his abilities, however, can sometimes tip into arrogance. Sam often struggles to recognize when his ideas, however creative, might be impractical or flawed. Failure stings deeply for him, as each setback feels like a personal affront to his intellect and ambition. While these moments of defeat weigh on him, they also drive him to persevere, determined to prove both his worth and the validity of his ideas.
Socially, Sam can be an enigma. His sharp wit and dry humor make him engaging in conversation, but his tendency to overanalyze or explain things in excessive detail can leave others feeling out of step with him. Despite this, his resourcefulness and unwavering drive make him a reliable and inspiring figure, capable of turning even the most unlikely concepts into reality. He’s a man shaped by his triumphs and failures, forever seeking the next great breakthrough.
This unwavering belief in his abilities, however, can sometimes tip into arrogance. Sam often struggles to recognize when his ideas, however creative, might be impractical or flawed. Failure stings deeply for him, as each setback feels like a personal affront to his intellect and ambition. While these moments of defeat weigh on him, they also drive him to persevere, determined to prove both his worth and the validity of his ideas.
Socially, Sam can be an enigma. His sharp wit and dry humor make him engaging in conversation, but his tendency to overanalyze or explain things in excessive detail can leave others feeling out of step with him. Despite this, his resourcefulness and unwavering drive make him a reliable and inspiring figure, capable of turning even the most unlikely concepts into reality. He’s a man shaped by his triumphs and failures, forever seeking the next great breakthrough.
S T A T S :
S T A T S :
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The cards tell a tale of a young man bound on a long and winding journey. Tossed by the winds of chance, in a world that seemed more cruel than indifferent, he never received that chance miraculous aid which might have set his heart towards heaven -- nor would he. That was not his fate - your fate, boy. You have been given few blessings in this life, apart from your cautious insight and calculating mind. Whether one such as you can succeed seems a matter of chance, but I advise you that boldness is auspicious for one who has few advantages.
Cards: The Black Moon, -hidden-, The Wheel of Fortune, Eve (reversed), The Cabalist (reversed), the Monk, -hidden-
Finished Stats:
14 Vitality
12 Strength
13 Perception
12 Skill
10 General Knowledge
16 Rationality
5 Spirituality
BurningCold Magical Bastard
Member
Seen
2 mos ago
Name:
Arcade Laurent
Age:
21
Sex:
Male
Profession:
Baker
Interests:
Arcade’s father, a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War, saw it fit to drill combat training into his son until his recent passing. So, while not necessarily interests of his, Arcade has some capability with marksmanship and swordplay. His true passions are less eminently useful, including a penchant for painting (although Arcade doesn’t think he’s very good), and woodworking. Mostly, he makes smaller sculptures and toys that he gives out to children visiting his mother’s bakery, though he’s also completed a few pieces of furniture as well.
Personality:
Much of Arcade’s character has been informed by the actions of his late father. Yet they are actions he has had to work to decipher and translate, to find the virtue underpinning the sin. Jean-Pierre Laurent was not an evil man, but he was a broken and misguided one, the lessons he imparted similarly so. Untangling the strand of bravery, and cruelty, and hidden sorrow that his father was, to find purpose in the pain, is the great challenge of Arcade’s life. If Arcade is one thing, for better or for worse, it is endlessly forgiving.
Conversely, his mother, meek and domineered by her husband until his passing, played a diminished role in Arcade’s childhood. The lessons she taught him were gifted in dribs and drabs, scant moments when they two had brief privacy together, and in all the many quiet, unspoken sacrifices she made otherwise. No longer a boy, but a young man instead, Arcade reckons fully with the strength of the woman that held a family together while her husband dragged her son off to play soldier in the countryside.
Arcade is a patchwork of bittersweet sorrows, simple wisdoms, and humble hopes for a future that is brighter than his father was ever capable of believing in. He grapples with his masculinity as told to see it by Jean-Pierre, and tries to strike a balance truer to his own nature. To find strength in vulnerability, and solace, rather than restlessness, in peace. To be his father as he could have been if not for the many disadvantages heaped upon him by war and madness and his own crooked childhood.
For his mother, he works every day to emulate her capacity to love, and to hope, and to take pleasure in the basic joys of being.
Yet, his father's blood is in him still, and darkness unseen may haunt his steps.
Conversely, his mother, meek and domineered by her husband until his passing, played a diminished role in Arcade’s childhood. The lessons she taught him were gifted in dribs and drabs, scant moments when they two had brief privacy together, and in all the many quiet, unspoken sacrifices she made otherwise. No longer a boy, but a young man instead, Arcade reckons fully with the strength of the woman that held a family together while her husband dragged her son off to play soldier in the countryside.
Arcade is a patchwork of bittersweet sorrows, simple wisdoms, and humble hopes for a future that is brighter than his father was ever capable of believing in. He grapples with his masculinity as told to see it by Jean-Pierre, and tries to strike a balance truer to his own nature. To find strength in vulnerability, and solace, rather than restlessness, in peace. To be his father as he could have been if not for the many disadvantages heaped upon him by war and madness and his own crooked childhood.
For his mother, he works every day to emulate her capacity to love, and to hope, and to take pleasure in the basic joys of being.
Yet, his father's blood is in him still, and darkness unseen may haunt his steps.
Appearance:
Arcade has a long face with gentle, well proportioned features. His skin is ruddy and lightly freckled, and medium length red hair that occasionally falls in front of his eyes frames a somber countenance. He stands at 5’9’’ in height, with a capable, athletic build and strong arms from years of carpentry and kneading bread for long hours. His heterochromia is a minor curiosity, and occasionally a conversation starter, but nothing of particular import to Arcade himself.
Though not typical for him, for this particular trip he has chosen to wear his father’s infantry saber at his hip. He’s never gone far from Paris before, and if he would ever get a chance to gain even the slightest use from his father’s training, it might help the whole affair feel less dour in his mind.
Though not typical for him, for this particular trip he has chosen to wear his father’s infantry saber at his hip. He’s never gone far from Paris before, and if he would ever get a chance to gain even the slightest use from his father’s training, it might help the whole affair feel less dour in his mind.
Background:
Jean-Pierre spoke little of his childhood, or indeed much of his life at all, the little Arcade could gather only putting together at best a patchwork picture of the man his father was. He seemed to have had a very hard, painful childhood. His time in the war with Prussia he spoke even less of. Still, since the age Arcade was strong enough to hold a gun straight, he was taught how to use one.
His mother, Adrienne, held down the business in Paris that inherited from her own family, working hard to keep a roof over everyone’s heads as Jean-Pierre drilled their child relentlessly and purposelessly. Political strife and upheaval may have plagued their nation, but any wars France was engaged in were far afield in foreign lands. Europe was tired. Arcade was tired too, but he tried not to let it show. He wanted to be a dutiful son, and he loved his father, even if it often felt like he was being raised by a military officer from the past than any true parent.
The moments he loved most were the quiet days when Jean-Pierre would wander off into the streets of Paris alone, and leave Arcade and Adrienne alone in the bakery. In their small home above the shop, they’d huddle together around a table and Adrienne would teach her son his letters by the light streaming in from the window. Aside from teaching him his basics, and eventually introducing some light concepts of bookkeeping and management as he got older, she encouraged him to nurse his true passions as well.
Gifts of paints, blocks of wood and carving equipment were Arcade’s favored possessions.
And then Jean-Pierre would return from God-knows-where with bruised knuckles and blackened eyes, his mind foggy and his energy drained. It was never alcohol, though. Jean-Pierre was broken, oftentimes harsh, and overall ineffectual as a man, but he was not a monster. He would never be his own father.
Life went on like this in a steady rhythm for the longest time.
Jean-Pierre would watch his boy, exhausted from a day of sparring, hunched over a small canvas in the corner of their sitting room, and see a light shining in his boy’s eyes that he could never begin to understand. The saving grace of this rusted automaton of a man was that he never begrudged his son for his small joys. If he could handle himself when the time came, who was he to force his child to be as miserable as he was?
Adrienne understood this. It was the only reason she didn’t leave him after the Third Republic reinstated her ability to do so. The shouting was enough. The “training bruises” her son would come home with were enough. If this man punished her boy for the crime of creativity, divorce may have been the least of the things she would do to him. Adrienne was demure, and raised to fulfill a certain role in life, but here she was, playing both homemaker and provider. Enough was starting to become enough.
Apparently Jean-Pierre agreed.
A few months before Arcade turned eighteen, his father was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the steps of a nearby chapel.
It was as if one dark cloud had lifted from he and Adrienne’s lives only for another to immediately descend. One day, Arcade will decide if he feels the exchange was worth the heavy cost or not. Then however, and now, he tries not to consider the incident too critically. At the least, he knows one thing.
Arcade loved his father, and he misses him.
Over the past three years, he’s taken a much more active role helping his mother manage the bakery, and very occasionally will sell off a painting or a piece of furniture of his own creation. Life was starting to truly start for Arcade, and maybe he wasn’t healed, but he was on that path.
The inheritance notice came as something of a shock. The money was significant, and certainly wouldn’t go amiss, but they did not need it. The reason Arcade travels to Loudon is for another reason entirely. Adrienne’s family history is well documented, while that of his father is not. The chance to connect with family on his father’s side, even if they are distant relatives, feels like an opportunity he’s obligated to take.
His mother, Adrienne, held down the business in Paris that inherited from her own family, working hard to keep a roof over everyone’s heads as Jean-Pierre drilled their child relentlessly and purposelessly. Political strife and upheaval may have plagued their nation, but any wars France was engaged in were far afield in foreign lands. Europe was tired. Arcade was tired too, but he tried not to let it show. He wanted to be a dutiful son, and he loved his father, even if it often felt like he was being raised by a military officer from the past than any true parent.
The moments he loved most were the quiet days when Jean-Pierre would wander off into the streets of Paris alone, and leave Arcade and Adrienne alone in the bakery. In their small home above the shop, they’d huddle together around a table and Adrienne would teach her son his letters by the light streaming in from the window. Aside from teaching him his basics, and eventually introducing some light concepts of bookkeeping and management as he got older, she encouraged him to nurse his true passions as well.
Gifts of paints, blocks of wood and carving equipment were Arcade’s favored possessions.
And then Jean-Pierre would return from God-knows-where with bruised knuckles and blackened eyes, his mind foggy and his energy drained. It was never alcohol, though. Jean-Pierre was broken, oftentimes harsh, and overall ineffectual as a man, but he was not a monster. He would never be his own father.
Life went on like this in a steady rhythm for the longest time.
Jean-Pierre would watch his boy, exhausted from a day of sparring, hunched over a small canvas in the corner of their sitting room, and see a light shining in his boy’s eyes that he could never begin to understand. The saving grace of this rusted automaton of a man was that he never begrudged his son for his small joys. If he could handle himself when the time came, who was he to force his child to be as miserable as he was?
Adrienne understood this. It was the only reason she didn’t leave him after the Third Republic reinstated her ability to do so. The shouting was enough. The “training bruises” her son would come home with were enough. If this man punished her boy for the crime of creativity, divorce may have been the least of the things she would do to him. Adrienne was demure, and raised to fulfill a certain role in life, but here she was, playing both homemaker and provider. Enough was starting to become enough.
Apparently Jean-Pierre agreed.
A few months before Arcade turned eighteen, his father was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the steps of a nearby chapel.
It was as if one dark cloud had lifted from he and Adrienne’s lives only for another to immediately descend. One day, Arcade will decide if he feels the exchange was worth the heavy cost or not. Then however, and now, he tries not to consider the incident too critically. At the least, he knows one thing.
Arcade loved his father, and he misses him.
Over the past three years, he’s taken a much more active role helping his mother manage the bakery, and very occasionally will sell off a painting or a piece of furniture of his own creation. Life was starting to truly start for Arcade, and maybe he wasn’t healed, but he was on that path.
The inheritance notice came as something of a shock. The money was significant, and certainly wouldn’t go amiss, but they did not need it. The reason Arcade travels to Loudon is for another reason entirely. Adrienne’s family history is well documented, while that of his father is not. The chance to connect with family on his father’s side, even if they are distant relatives, feels like an opportunity he’s obligated to take.
Stats:
14 Vitality
15 Strength
11 Perception
14 Skill
8 General Knowledge
10 Rationality
11 Spirituality
15 Strength
11 Perception
14 Skill
8 General Knowledge
10 Rationality
11 Spirituality
It's starting to become clearer to me... is that a love triangle I see in your past? Or was it someone very dear that you lost? Our fallen Eve card is so very forlorn. You are good with your hands - and you have not the eyes of a dullard. And yet it may seem that there is always some tenacious demon around the corner, tempting away the happiness you seek. Take heart, child. You may not know it, but you were born under a lucky star. The going may not always be easy, but in your darkest hour you are sure to find your way.
Cards: Luck, The Cobbler, Eve (reversed), -hidden-, The Devil
Stat Changes: +2 Skill, +1 Rationality. Some potential for Black Magic. You also have a special protection from the Luck card.
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