Name: Louise Tempest. Call her
Temp if you wanna keep your face pretty.
Age: 26
Gender: Female
Appearance: Look for the short young woman in a tie, with a messy flop of hair, freckles covering her cheeks, and a mouth full of curses. She'll be easy to find – brawls tend to be hard to miss.
Occupations (Former, Current or otherwise): Clock Maker Enforcer
Bartender
Assets: A Reputation
A Sharp Suit
Some Busted knuckles
Personality: Temp lives up to her name – loud mouthed, short fused, and always ready to crack a bat over some kneecaps. It's easy enough to write her off as a violent lost cause, a grown-up delinquent that you'd do well to stay far away from. Most do. Temp knows she has issues –
anger issues. Her first instinct when faced with anything even mildly inconvenient is to resort to violence. Whether she's throwing fists or words, she tends to set people off. That's fine, she tells herself. Who needs them anyway? Not Temp, no sir.
If asked, she'd say her strengths are that she's quick on her feet, tough as nails, and unwilling to put up with anyone's shit. And she is all these things. But she's also brave, pragmatic, clever, and curious, with enough determination to see through any challenge. And while she loves a good fight, her anger is more often than not fueled by a strong set of morals that her grandpa wove into her like a seam in a coat.
History: Temp grew up in little town called Dodge with her grandpa, a tailor named Gabriel Fournier. He was a harsh old bastard, chewing out her ear whenever she got into fights or ran around in the suits he made. But he took care of her -- cleaned up her cuts and started leaving out suits that just
happened to be her size. He tried to teach her tailoring but she just kept on stabbing herself with a needle and throwing tantrums. He'd just about given up on teaching her a trade (because Lord knew she needed a trade to support herself -- no way in Hell anyone was ever gonna
marry her) when the two walked by a clockwork shop on their way to a concert being held in the town square.
Louise -- Gabe didn't care what the brat wanted to call herself, her mother had named her
Louise -- paused mid-step to look in through the shop window. The sunset made the ticking clockwork gleam, and she took a step towards it, eyes watching the steady
tick, tick, tick, of the gears. Her grandfather had a fine metal pocketwatch sure, and she'd always had a passing interest in it; the delicate gears and tapes, the steady clicks of time. But seeing it all up close like this… how did it
work?
Gabe watched as his granddaughter stared in open curiosity. An idea formed in his head.
Within a month (it'd taken much negotiating and pleading, what with her reputation for trouble) she was made an apprentice clockworker under Finnegan Choq, owner and operator of the shop Choq's Clocks. The ticking brass of gears and clockwork became home.
Her grandpa will always be first in Temp's heart. But she managed to make room for old man Finnegan once she started learning from him. Gabe passed when she was 18, a month before she graduated from her apprenticeship, and that… well, if
that wasn't a kick in the shins. Temp grit her teeth and told herself to fight through it. She'd make her old man proud. She’d
thought she’d made Finn proud. But the day he told her she’d completed her training to become a fully fledged clockworker, he sat her down with a sigh.
He said that it was best if she went her own way. She was talented – talented enough to start her own shop if she wanted. But she brought too much trouble to keep her around the shop. Finn had kept her as an apprentice out of respect for Gabe, but there'd been too many fights, too many mornings of fixing broken machines and cleaning metal shards from her knuckles.
Maybe she hadn't made anyone proud after all. Maybe she wasn't capable of it.
Temp hasn't dared open up a clock face since Finn dumped her. Instead, she ran into the arms of her other love: violence. The alleys and bars of town were chaos in those weeks following her graduation. It was a common occurrence for the sheriff's deputies to throw her in a cell to cool off for a night or two. It wasn't long though, before someone decided to put her fists to good use.
Sasha, the owner of the seediest bar in town, had been trying to get Temp on her payroll for the better part of three years. But Gabe would never hear anything of it, always grumbling about how Temp could do better than some half-brained bouncer. But Gabe wasn't there to tell her no anymore. And thus, Temp became Sasha's right hand, breaking up fights (with a little too much gusto) and tossing out drunks. Sasha tried to get Temp in on the more questionable work she did – shakedowns and intimidation. But Temp always told her to piss off when she tried.
A couple years later, something dark grabbed hold of her dusty little town: a creeping, crawling sickness that moved through the town like curling vines, ensnaring everyone it could manage to wrap itself around. First you got sick. Then your spirit dwindled, your eyes dimmed, you coughed and vomitted and couldn't get out of bed. Then you died. After enough deaths with no sight of a cure, there was a panic. People started fleeing the town in droves. Temp was one of the last holdouts, jumping on the final rickety wagon out of the dead town, helping a kid up to his mother when --
Finn.
Where was Finn?She couldn't stop herself from running back to his shop. He'd been fine the last time she'd seen him from across the square, he was healthy, why wasn't he –
Finn was sitting at the front counter. He was gazing down at an old pocket watch. Temp recognized it. He'd always fiddled with it, but no matter what it never worked. He glanced up at her before turning back to the device in his hands.
"I'm sick," was all he said. Temp felt something break in her. She immediately opened her mouth to argue, to yell and scream, but he silenced her with another look. "I've had a good life. Long. Get out of here, kid. Grow older than I did." He held the pocket watch out to her – something to remember him by. In that moment Temp was gripped by burning rage.
What
right did he have? Who said he could pretend to be some dying, benevolent grandfather to her, imparting this last gift? He'd thrown her out like she was nothing, after all she'd done. She'd trusted him, relied on him, and
what had he done?Temp hated him. She
hated him and she was glad he was dying.
Hot tears pricked at her eyes.
She looked at the watch in his crooked, wrinkled hands. Her fingers twitched to take it.
Then her hand snapped into a tight fist and her jaw clenched shut. She spun from him and ran out the door, slamming it behind her.
Temp tells herself she doesn't regret it.
Additional Info: Terribly superstitious. Blame her grandpa.
Do you have a personal story arc prepared: In the works
Theme Song: Hellraiser by Blues Saraceno
Musoka
