LucretiaRostay[ NAME: Lucretia Rostay. (Her older brothers call her “Luc” and her mother calls her “Lulu.”) AGE: 18 years old. PLACE OF ORIGIN: Aquila. (Lucretia comes from a huge beautiful manor house and enormous estate on the outskirts of a few small villages a day’s travel from the capital city of Aquila, called Gardenia Manor.) RACE: Human. SEX: Female. HEIGHT: 5'9 tall (175 cm). WEIGHT: 135 lbs. (61 kg). HAIR: Shoulder blade-length thick curly dark blonde hair. EYES: Big almond-shaped dark hazel eyes with long eyelashes. APPEARANCE: Attractive; sexy. Clothing style: trendy instead of fashionable; comfortable. Lucretia’s skin is the light bronze of an iced latte and her form is angular and athletic. Her exotic face with its strong almost hawk-like bone structure is softened by the curtain of her dark gold hair or made more dramatic when it is pulled gently back to reveal small ears and a classically perfect neck and shoulders. Her big eyes are like drowning pools of dark brown except in certain lights where a ribbon of darkest olive green appears around her pupil. BACKGROUND/HISTORY/ETC: Tomboy; Drama Queen; Lucretia Rostay grew up as an only daughter and youngest sibling in a family that already had an ex-soldier for a father, an ex-beauty queen as a mother, four rambunctious brothers, six dogs, a dozen horses, a few select live-in servants who were more like aunts and uncles, and a strange little exotic monkey from Mother and Papa’s offworld honeymoon. Despite Mother’s efforts to make a lady of her daughter, Lucretia preferred outdoors to salons, riding to embroidery, running to dancing, and the company of her brothers to those of girls her own age. Her brothers began to call her “Luc” and often would dress her in their cast-off clothes and take her out with them pretending she was their little brother. This way she was dragged along on various adventures and learned to ride astride, to fence and to fight her own battles, either with her tongue or with her fists. By the time she was 12 this was getting harder all the time, and not just because Mother disapproved and would keep an eye out to make sure her daughter wasn’t leaving the house except in appropriate clothing and with her face and hair clean. For one thing, while Luc was still tall for a girl of her age, she was beginning to develop other, less boyish features, and her long hair was getting harder and harder to tie up in a cap. Finally, when she was 13, Mother and Papa ambushed her on the way back from the swimming hole and told her with no pretense of discussion that she would be spending the next six months with her aunt and uncle a few villages away, where she would learn with her three teenage female cousins to be ladylike and refined, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. Luc knew better than to argue with Papa, but once she was at her aunt and uncle’s house, she tried to refuse to learn anything. She threw on any old thing she could find, snuck outside to climb trees and refused to be friends with her cousins. Then Aunt Melantha threw a big party and little Lucretia was required to attend, which she did in her usual manner of careless dress and unbrushed hair, fully intending to hang out in the corner with her usual group of young men, talking about military maneuvers and breaking horses. Instead, she saw *him* and fell instantly and hopelessly into childish crush. He was from Aquila city, and he was already 17 years old and at first she thought he probably didn’t think she was pretty as he asked each of her pretty girly cousins to dance in succession. She found she despised the shadow, hated and couldn’t stand to be ignored or to feel inferior to others. It made it even worse when she overheard her aunt asking him if he wouldn’t be willing to dance with little Lucretia at least once, and he said, “Who? Oh... I... didn’t see her there.” He was gallantly willing to dance once she’d been pointed out to him, but Lucretia wasn’t about to let that happen. She ran sobbing into the night, climbed up her favorite tree and refused to come down until no less than seventeen people had begged her. When she did finally return, *he* had already gone. Still a tomboy at heart and still more comfortable with boys, Lucretia nonetheless now saw a use to her aunt’s training and jumped into it with all her formidable talent and personality. She straightened up, moved more slowly and gracefully, brushed out all her gorgeous spun-gold hair, began to follow trends not because she cared about them but because she liked to have everyone look at her as she entered a room. It wasn’t hard to be the center of attention in the small villages, not with that natural white-hot beauty and the charisma and self-confidence that oozed out of her in waves. Her only competition was pretty little Vivien Greywood and Lucretia was half convinced this was because little Vivien was easy, not because she could actually compete with Luc’s intensity and beauty. Now at 18 Lucretia has been invited to travel to the capital to be bridesmaid to her cousin Andrea, who she remembers from a few childhood gatherings to be a sweet, quiet girl. Lucretia knows that you’re not supposed to upstage the bride at a wedding, but nonetheless she fully intends to do just that. SKILLS: Lucretia is a force of nature. When she walks into the room, the electric shock of her depthless dark eyes infects anyone she meets. Not everyone likes her, but it is very hard to simply ignore her presence. So her primary skill is Charisma. Her secondary skill is Athletics. Lucretia is still in superb physical shape, since she still prefers the outdoors and more “manly” pastimes despite her interest in the courtly scene. Her body is strong, muscular, lean, trained and flexible, which helps her with running, dancing, fencing, fighting and riding. She wouldn’t be as good as someone who specialized in one of those as any of their skills, but she’s got an advantage to physical things. Her tertiary skill is Strategy - game and military. Ever since she was tiny, Luc loved to play war games of pretend with her brothers, chess and go and other strategy games with Papa, and talk about real life maneuvers with all her guy friends. She has a good mind for it and the requisite killer instinct. DISADVANTAGE: Lucretia’s disadvantage is Jealousy. She has to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. She doesn’t like it when other people take the spotlight but she really absolutely CANNOT STAND to be ignored. EQUIPMENT: Luc “owns” very little since most of her stuff actually belongs to Papa, but she has a horse of her own, a gray stallion called Languid Moonlight (she calls him Lan), a complete wardrobe, a plain little rapier which her older brother Rinaldo gave her and that she’s hidden from Mother and Papa, a strand of black pearls from Mother, and a decent allowance of spending money for her trip to Aquila. |
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