mickilennial — Roleplayer Guild

“What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.”Lubna, quoting a piece of poetry

Name
Lubna Ines Romijnsen

Gender
Female

Age
24

Sexuality
Heterosexual

Place of Birth
Ypern, Valois Republic

Appearance
When Lubna and her husband were called to arms in Ypern they were pretty much green recruits. Lubna was tall, lanky, but not pubescent. She was nearing her twenty-first birthday and had the body of an adult. Her brown hair was perfectly combed and her skin was untouched while her eyes looked on with determination and pride. 

What remains is… different. Nearly standing at six foot, Lubna’s five-foot-eleven listed height makes her one of the taller women enlisted. Lubna’s hair has become a bit matted and her skin has found its way through the ringer on multiple occasions. Her eyes are faded and full of hate and weariness. She soldiers on as she must, obviously, as she continues to hone her body despite being a woman in a mostly male-dominated designation. Female soldiers were rare twenty-five years ago and she knows the walls placed in front of her well. To survive and make it through this war she will have to be at her peak and she knows that.

Personality
Every soldier is supposed to follow orders.

Thing is, Lubna’s always had a sense of duty and respect for those above her station. As a little girl she did not dream of being an ancient heroine or defying the role she was assigned when she was born a woman. It just kind of happened that she was good at combat when the war decided to turn her life upside down. Had the war between Federation and the Imperials not occurred Lubna’s life would be vastly different. She probably would’ve been perfectly fine with her lot in life. It wasn’t often that the daughter of a tailor and niece of a cook would be anything but content. 

When Michaël Van Saksen placed a rifle in her hand in basic training she had never fired a gun before. Not for personal or private use. But as it was required she decided she would shoot and shoot well. This is a testament to Lubna’s sense of duty for her city and its people as well as her own inherent need to be the best she could be at something. In fact, the sense of being a perfectionist was something that had been ingrained with her since she was a little girl. When making quilts and blankets she had been scolded for doing things inefficiently and while a weak-willed child would’ve quit in frustration Lubna ushered on.

As this transferred to her way of handling things as a soldier it can be said the same harshness that she was given as a child transferred over in some kind of cycle of abuse. Lubna is not cold or cruel, in fact she tries her best to be warm and inviting. She’s diplomatic in disputes between her comrades and while she is enjoys being playful, she never tries to be particularly mean-spirited in her rousing of others. A sarcastic jab from the brown-haired woman is not so much snarky as it is frisky. 

It can be said, however, that mentions of marriage and children gives her sour memories and she does close herself off as best as she can when such topics are provoked. Losing her significant other was a great wound and she’s still bleeding from it. Perhaps it is a wound that will never heal properly. She wonders sometimes if she should talk about it; to grieve properly and finally close it as best as she can. But the women of the Hendriksen Family are not the type to vent upon their greatest regrets to people whom they work with, or even anyone really. “Put on your strongest face and mind your own business.” was an ideal that was instilled in Lubna at a young age and it is true of all Hendriksen women. It can be not the healthiest of ways to interact with the world and the people in it, but it is the only way Lubna really knows. Tears are for yourself, not for others. Not that anyone would ever know.

Rank
Corporal

Role
On paper, Lubna Romijnsen is a designated Rifleman, though she has been part of several skirmishes and battles where she’s need to spot from far range and attack in fast-paced blitzes across scattered trench lines. She’s been fighting since this war started and she intends to continue pressing on in whatever role that the higher up’s think she needs to be assigned to.

Equipment
Lubna wields the usual equipment of a Federation Riflemen, though she’s sometimes been tasked to shoot from further range or play with shock tactics. It varies but generally the standard loadout is present.

Potentials
► Hendriksen Hero
Lubna knows how to cook, sew, knit, and cobble. Her father’s ancestors created a dynasty of skilled craftsman and merchants and she has not forgotten where she comes from. When tenable she can apply her knowledge of her youth as needed. She can make bland foods taste better when the need arises. When push comes to shove, Lubna is still the daughter of a tailor and niece of a cook.

► Lead By Example
As someone who has seen the war since the very beginning, Lubna has done whatever it takes to survive. Whatever the mission, she knows how to survive. In the most tense and unwinnable situations her adrenaline and will to live will make sure she makes the right decision at the right time. This when conjoined with her reputation on the southeastern front can lead to others being inspired by her.

► Veteran Combatant
Lubna was conscripted very early into the war and remembers a time before the horrors of the Imperial Alliance. She has survived every inch of the conflict during her time in the southeastern front and has a set of distinct experiences and skills honed through that. This unfortunately includes a lot of psychological issues relating to her husband and the friends she lost in the heat of battle. 

► A Woman’s Lot
Losing her husband. Separated from her child. Constantly belittled by her superiors. Promoted for potentially vain, fickle reasons. Lubna has had to deal with a lot in her time in the war. This has created a great flame in her heart that has inspired what some have described as a willpower of inhuman origin. When the battle gets going the calm and spritely woman turns into a warrior that is difficult to be put down.

Biography
Lubna Hendriksen was born in Ypern, toward the eastern borders of the Valois Republic on April 21st, 1890.

The Hendriksen Family weren’t particularly of high status. Led by Jonathan and Patric Hendriksen, the family was comprised of successful merchants and craftsmen skilled in the various trade skills that the family had honed over four generations. Lubna herself hailing from Jonathan’s side of the family was acquainted with the skills of a tailor and cobbler, or well, it would’ve been considered such things a few centuries ago. Lubna’s mother, Arlette, had come from a family of barkeepers and as such Lubna had no real wealth of privilege upon her life in the northern sector of the city of Ypern. 

Her childhood was insignificant for the most part as a result. She learned clothmaking from her father, cooking from her mother and uncle, and had middling interests of her own. She enjoyed the liberal arts and classical education, things revolving around poetry and literature, though she herself was no poet or scribe; she was certainly no aspiring novelist; she just liked the words and what the words meant. It would be through this interest that she would find herself connected to Matthias Romijnsen, a boy a few months her elder and the heir apparent to a very successful businessman and politician known regionally as one of the more influential men in the city. Stéphane Romijnsen wasn’t initially enthused by his son’s efforts to woo the brown-haired girl, though eventually the two became rather inseparable. By the time Lubna was seventeen-years-old she had eloped with Matthias and the two were already expecting. 

Life was good. The status of Lubna’s family increased a tenfold through Lubna’s marriage. The Romijnsen Family was prideful and looked down on those of lesser status but they were not dishonorable. The marriage was seen as legitimate and all of the boons that came with it were granted toward Lubna’s family. When her child was born everything seemed to be good, but eventually trouble came a knocking through the fires of war. It was 1911 and somehow Matthias and Lubna could not avoid being conscripted despite their circumstances. Her father-in-law was displeased and tried to contest, but it was to no avail. In their absence he became the de jure guardian of Lubna’s child. It was for the best as it would soon turn out that Lubna and Matthias had no way in escaping their enrollment and training to respond to the Imperial threat to the east.

It was unfortunate that things would turn out like they did.

Lubna was trained initially by the codgy, several-sticks-lodged-in-his-ass, Michaël Van Saksen. A stereotypical wet blanket, Van Saksen constantly attempted to find some reason to discharge Lubna but as it would turn out his superior disagreed. The threats were clear and war was upon Ypern. While Lubna would not ever know Van Saksen’s reasons for his discontent with her, she still listened to every word he had to say and took his advice and instruction well. Behind the scenes Van Saksen was disgusted not for the fact Lubna was taken into service but the fact they would take a married woman, separate her from her child, and force her to fight. But if he were to train Lubna he swore to make sure she would be sharper than any other in his stead. If she was ever going to see her child again she needed to be better than even him. Basic Training would eventually lead to Lubna’s assignment under Sergeant Patric Addicks while her husband was assigned to a different command.

“They don’t need to be distracted.” They’d say.

Van Saksen would scoff, “They’ll be distracted no matter what. Moron.”

The drill instructor was reprimanded but he continued training. Lubna and Matthias were put on the frontlines. Lubna was never really quite sure why she was good in service to Ypern and the Republic. Her comrades were a mix of people who had volunteered and those who didn’t, some with experience with firearms and others with other useful skills. Vincent Hancisse was the son of a doctor in the largest hospital in Ypern. Johan De Vries was from a military family. Geert Decorte was a thief who chose the battlefield over a prison cell. Not many of them would make it into the following year.

Yet somehow Lubna did. Maybe it was burning flame of her love for her husband or her deepest wish to return to her child. Whatever it was worked. Some called it luck. Van Saksen called it talent. The brown-haired woman pushed herself forward, time after time, out of the mud and rubble, trench after trench. Nothing seemed to phase her. People she had come to know had mental breakdowns, but Lubna never did. This would come to be tested in the years to come, but for her first year the only thing she suffered was the horrors of war. The smell. The taste. The visage of the dead. On more than one occasion she had close call after close call and in the end the worst thing was the defending forces were losing more ground than they were gaining. 

They promoted her. Because she survived. Possibly because she was a woman. Command was always hard to read, but she followed her orders. Though, by 1913 things seemed to become harder-and-harder to do so without her own emotional misgivings. When she returned from a battle she saw a face she hadn’t seen in years. Van Saksen. He frowned and he smelled of brandy and scotch. The news was bad; so bad he had personally intervened and decided to tell his former recruit the news. He was no longer training fresh recruits, though that wasn’t why he was here. He told her to sit down. Her husband had died. 

She wanted to scream. She wanted to join him in the great beyond. It was one of the few times she broke; one of the few times she let the tears fall. She thought she had been so good at repressing it all and for a moment the world was over. Van Saksen wasn’t having it and in an instant she found herself snapped out of her own grief when the older man’s hand met her face. He put a bottle in front of her and told her how soldiers grieve. It never helped and going forward all it reminded her was what her mother had told her about showing reckless emotions in public. She wouldn’t do it again.

She ushered on. She still didn’t die. She wrote letters. The war wasn’t becoming any easier or any less of a failure by all appearances. However, in the cold winter of 1914 she found herself with a notice from high command, beyond that of her own Ypern. From the Republic. The Federation. She was to be reassigned following her “success” on the southeastern front. It was funny she supposed. How were they measuring success? It would be a question she would ask herself as she packed her things and followed her orders. At this point she isn’t sure how much more fighting she can take, but she’s not going to give in to despair. 

She’s going to survive this war.

Affiliations
It comes as no surprise that Lubna’s largest association is with Ypern’s Military Command, of which she served despite devastating losses since she was enlisted as a private in the southeastern front of the war. As territories were lost and friends buried, the brown-haired girl has become something of a outlier. A 5’11 woman who survived battles she should’ve died in and better, more experienced men should’ve lived through. Command has looked at her as a curiosity and though it was not intended to be so, Lubna does often wonder if her reassignment is for suspicious reasons. Still, she follows orders and has a close relationship with several members who served with her, commanders and otherwise.

Lubna was married into the Romijnsen Family in 1907 within an Yprern church of note. Her husband, the second son of an Ypern businessman and politician raised her status significantly, though not enough to avoid the fires of war. With her husband’s death in 1913 she is left widowed and dismayed. The relationship she has to the remaining Romijnsen family members is tenuous at best, but she at least bore her husband a child before they were both conscripted with that child now being raised in a safer city far from the frontlines. She writes letters often. She doesn’t get many back.

When it comes to her own family, the Hendriksen Family adores their daughter. She has lost a few cousins and at least one brother to the war and of her generation she has turned out to be one of the more successful ones. She writes home a lot to her parents. Her eldest brother, Vincente, serves in the military as a sharpshooter. She hasn’t seen him in many moons and often prays for his safety and health.

There also friends and acquaintances she is connected with beyond her service and blood, though she can’t say she has a close friendship or bond with them at this point in time.

Hendriksen Family:
Jonathan Hendriksen (1864- )
Arlette Hendriksen (1866- )
Vincente Hendriksen (1887- )
Thomas Hendriksen (1896-1913)
Déborah Hendriksen (1901- )

Patric Hendriksen (1869- )
Sophie Hendriksen (1870- )
Léa Hendriksen (1889- )
Peter Hendriksen (1896-1912)

Romijnsen Dynasty
Stéphane Romijnsen (1862- )
Veerle Romijnsen (1866- )
Paul Romijnsen (1884- ) 
Matthias Romijnsen (1890-1913) 
Cécile Romijnsen (1899- ) 

Jonathan Romijnsen (1908- ) 

Military Connections
Michaël Van Saksen (1874- ) 
Patric Addicks (1885- ) 

Relationships
TBD

Character Theme

Alandra Golduck frowned as she lowered her shield from her side of the caravan, her eyes scanning the forest brush in the distance for more movement; for more goblins.

The blonde-haired fighter hated jobs like these, though she knew full well they were the usual affair. They didn’t often make the best stories of heroic deeds, but they were the reality of Faerun. Very few people had stories like Rannek of  Nesmé, whom she had learned of through Jandek’s dwarven companion who had a penchant for stories. It had been years since the old dwarf had staggered south and she did miss hearing what he had to say. The thought buried, she was quick to remind herself though she was now alone she wasn’t completely so. The others who had been charged with the very same quest were a motley sort, though she never felt they were of the unseemly sort.

When the berserker fell to the ground she was caught off-guard just as the others were.

She did not know him well, but to die from a goblin of all things was shocking. But even the tallest and strongest could be felled by the smallest blade. As the Eladrin brought forth his strange sorcery on the last goblin the area around them became still. Was that the last of them? She wasn’t completely sure, even with the initial skirmish being over. She would be a fool to lower her guard in such a moment. She considered rushing over to Ironheart, but she was no cleric or paladin; had she done so the only thing she could offer was a shovel for the grave she would have to dig.

“Keep your guard up. There could be more of them.” She spoke, albeit briefly.

As the blonde kept her ears and eyes open, nothing strange seemed to stick out to her.

Sure, there was the path, but nothing suspicious that she could make out. The only thing she could hear was Ironheart as he choked on his own blood. Her eyes moved toward his direction. She frowned.

Rolls:
   Perception → 22

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