Marianne d'Ys

When you spend most of your life thinking you're hot shit, it's hard to break the habit. Mari fairly often comes across as haughty and arrogant. After spending so long isolated for her social position it's become second nature to throw up a wall and keep people out of her innermost thoughts and feelings. She finds it hard to fully vocalise how she feels, even to herself.

Rude, sarcastic and arrogant, it can take a few tries to get in past her defences and find her softer side. Her softer side is still rude, sarcastic and arrogant but sometimes she'll bring you cookies. She just doesn't get how to people very well. IF somebody does something for her it's likely she'll run off and bring them back the first nice thing she sees. Do you like rocks? Of course you do, everyone likes rocks. Enjoy your rock! Just as likely, she'll be pissed with them for putting her into their debt. Sometimes both of these situations at once.

She doesn't really want to be a leader, which is probably why she's such a bad one. She just wants to be by herself, most of the time. She's more of a follower, anyway. Tell her what to do and she'll complain and argue the entire time but still do it. She's well aware she's in no way cut out to be the next comte.

Always something of a crybaby as a little kid, she's still prone to tears. Lonely? She'll cry. Scared? Cry. Tired? Cry. Sad? She'll sob like her puppy just got hit by a car. She tries to hide this side of her as much as possible. If she's disappeared very suddenly there's at least a 65% chance she's gone off to cry. She does tend to bounce back pretty easy after. She freaking loves animals too. If you want to get into her good books, bring her an animal or let her see you treating an animal well. She was never into hunting back in TFW and now she's a Primer, she steers clear of meat products as best she can. She's got a terrible phobia of snakes and scales though. Ugh.

It's fairly safe to say that a good deal of the time (perhaps as much as 25% of the time) Marianne is a fucking dumbass. She makes a lot of mistakes and spends a great deal of time leaping into things without looking first. She acts on instinct a lot, rather than thinking things through. She's not very good at a lot of things.

What she is good at are the following: she's loyal (in her own unique way which may result in a lot of betrayal), academically speaking she's quite smart, she's good at learning and teaching and she can, occasionally, be a good friend. She can be sweet and kind and generous, but those are the sorts of things that have never gotten her praise before; "good" as a virtue is something she'd like to be but the concept seems very far removed from herself or her day-to-day life. Oh, oh, she's good at hugs too. She loves physical contact. It's just not something she can do much of.

Due to having a mother who died pretty painfully in childbirth, a father who keeps complicating the line of succession by fucking everything that moves and several bastard siblings, Marianne has a lot of hangups about a lot of things. Mostly sex things. It's an exaggeration to say she's never touched a man, but not much of one, and talking to her about any aspect of sexuality may result in her sticking her fingers in her ears and going "LALALALALALA". She's just anxious about her lineage; she's aware that while her father can pick and choose whatever kids he wants to recognise as his, she wouldn't exactly get that chance if she had a couple. Add that to the fact that she's betrothed to a family from a smaller, but militarily powerful nation she doesn't want to insult and her fear of childbirth - she is exceedingly careful and more than a little prudish when it comes to her relationships with men she's not related to.

Black magic carves a terrible price into the user. She's only used it once, but Marianne feels the effects. She can't sleep well, cursed with a mixture of insomnia and horrible, vivid nightmares. The former leaves her in a fuzz for days. The latter mean she gets some sleep, but she wakes up addled and confused, unsure of her own reality. To say she's thankful for EP's energy drinks and sleeping pills is to speak very lightly. To a more modern person, or someone with a better grasp of mental health, the horrible things she goes through at night would be identifiable as anxiety attacks. Sometimes they spill over into the waking world. But she doesn't plan on letting anyone in on that particular secret any time soon.

Marianne's birth was a moment of fleeting joy followed by deep mourning. The Comte's wife, Elena, a beautiful, fragile woman from a winter country, had suffered a haemorrhage whilst in labour. Marianne was named and then whisked away to a nurse so that the attending physicians could focus on her mother. Her father visited her once, in those first few weeks of life, but could not bear to look at her otherwise until she was nearly old enough to walk and talk. He had loved her mother more than anything else in the world - and that included the child that she had died giving birth to.

The Comtess had come from a place far to the east, a place of great winter snows. There were rumours, at first, that she might be a witch, for she had stolen the heart of the Comte the moment he had seen her and they had been married quickly. But those rumours soon ended, as she was beloved of the rest of the city as well, kind and calm and everything a noble lady should be. But there was a problem: she could not seem to conceive. Four long years went by without any sign of a child. There were more rumours, that the Comtess had been seen in the company of strange old women, that a sorcerer had been invited to the palace, that she took potions in her food. But she did, eventually, fall pregnant.

Whether it was magic involvement, taking a life in exchange for a life, or whether the Comtess was simply too weak to go through labour, Marianne grew up in the company of her wet nurse and her wet nurse's son rather than her mother or any natural siblings. She did not know her father well. He pushed his child away in his grief to focus on other things. But life wasn't bad for the heir. She had an excellent education and a loyal best friend in the son of the nurse. When she was twelve or thirteen, her father managed to arrange a match for her with the youngest of five princes from a neighbouring kingdom. Her future husband was a teen dreamboat, so she was pretty okay with that. They even kept up a correspondence and even though he wasn't clever and didn't share her interest in mythology or ancient language, she guessed being married to the guy wouldn't be too bad. He was extremely good looking after all. Perhaps if she'd had more of a choice, he would not have been who she'd chosen. Some nights, lying awake, she did ponder on the fairness of the situation, when she felt that there was a much more suitable match closer to home. But when you're brought up understanding that your future is a great deal more set than anyone else's, you have to learn to accept these things.

As the future comtess, she had an education unrivalled by anyone else's in the city. Her strengths were always in languages over sciences, and her martial education had some gaps - usually from her avoiding any classes which involved weapons, hitting or any kind of physical work - but she enjoyed her schooling tremendously. It was around this age that she became vaguely aware of rumours surrounding her birthright, of her mother's witchcraft. Rumours that a child born through magic had to be bad luck. The odd strange thing happened around her - candles went out while she was writing letters, or she'd find herself in just the right place to avoid school work after following a hunch. The nurse's son got in trouble for beating up a stable boy for repeating rumours about her mother being a witch and she kissed her knight under a tree and told him it didn't matter. Because it didn't - or she didn't mind, anyway.

When she was in her late teens, the nurse's son caught sick and died very suddenly. The pain was overwhelming. Things went from meaningful to hollow, as though a hole had been drilled inside of her and drained out some vital essence. She missed him every moment of every day, from when she woke up to when she went to sleep, and even in her dreams. She began to realise just how important it had been to have someone who was interested in her, as a person. An individual, divorced from the county. Her father occasionally spoke to her, but only regarding the city and the area around it which fell under their jurisdiction - he had lived so long without her that he did not know how to form a connection with his only legitimate child about anything other than leadership. Her nurse had withdrawn into herself and would speak to nobody. She had half siblings, results of her father's youthful and not so youthful indiscretions, but when she looked at them, all she truly saw were competitors. She spent time alone, mostly.

It was while she was by herself, in the castle's library, that she came across an ancient book, one only her talent for languages helped her translate. It told of the ability to change things, the ability to bring the dead back to life and change things for the living. Yeah, she thought. Despite everything I've been told that sounds like a good idea. She missed her nurse's son a lot. And if she could bring him back okay, perhaps she could one day bring back her mother and make her father okay again.

Issue: sometimes you mistranslate things, just so they'll fit your perspective. The book said the spell would bring life and motion to a dead body. It did not say it would bring her friend back. And so, when she stole down to the graveyard and cast that spell, what came out of it was not her friend. The spell itself summoned a demon to possess the dead; when she was confronted with the rotting corpse of her old friend, he did not recognise her, seeking instead to cause as much destruction as possible, nearly killing her and several guards who'd run when they'd heard the commotion before fleeing over the walls and into the countryside. Which wasn't a great start to anyone's morning.

Her father was, as anyone would be, furious. But the Comtes of Ys fix their mistakes. They take control when they've fucked up. And so it was that he sent his heir out into the world to sort things out. Warned not to come back until the revenant was dead, Marianne was sent out with a magical sword and a few well trained warriors.

She was never really very good at swordplay, so the sword ended up sold after a little while to pay the wages of her merry band of well trained but inexperienced warriors. Who weren't really that merry. And smelled. Ugh. Without any trace of the revenant's trail they ended up coming back to the castle and the Comte ended up allowing her back in after fuming for a bit. For the past six or so years they've used the castle as a base and have been making sorties into the woods surrounding the city, looking for the trail of destruction the zombie version of her childhood best friend leaves behind. To say she's not a fan would be putting things lightly. Always physical weak, the act of summoning the dead has left her with severe nightmares and insomnia. At least in the castle she can medicate her symptoms with wine - out in the field, she can't. It gets wet and miserable and cold and sleeping on the ground is uncomfortable.

While investigating some ruins she became separated from her companions after going in search of some interesting writing she found on the walls. There, she was confronted with not only a portal, but the decaying remains of the nurse's son. Rather than kill or maim her, he instead pushed her into the portal and clean into Earth Prime. And if you've never fallen into the Atlantic ocean whilst wearing armour, well - she doesn't recommend it.

At first she was blindingly furious at ending up in this strange world, away from everything she knew or was due to own. But the more time she spends in Earth Prime and the more she goes over her last encounter with the nurse's son, the more she wonders if this was an act of caring rather than one of violence. In Earth Prime she's free of all duties, free to make her own way. She's replayed their last encounter so many times she's sure she must have mentally edited some sections. Either way, she's alone in this strange mansion now, a free agent. Part of her is researching, working on a way home. She's not working very hard, though.

SKILLS: She's really fucking good at sneaking up behind people and stabbing them in the back. Has learned several languages (which more or less equivalent out to: French, Spanish, English, written Breton, written Latin and written Ancient Greek). Some military training (swords, shields, spears, archery), but unless she's up against someone with no training she's got an excellent chance of getting flattened in head to head combat. Even against someone with no training she's got a middling chance of being flattened in head to head combat. Enough experience with leading to know she doesn't like leading.
STRENGTHS: Very slight magic potential. Really good at learning languages. Can fall asleep anywhere, can eat most things, exceedingly fast at running in the opposite direction to all of her problems and mistakes. Also exceedingly fast at running into problems and mistakes.
IMPORTANT ITEMS: A signet ring with her own personal coat of arms on it (a cat passant on the top half, a boat tossed on some waves in the bottom half).