Jessica Winters

Jessica Winters
Semi-retired assassin/adventurer, part time shop owner.

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Age:
32

Birthplace:
One of the larger settlements in Gale, far north of the province of Sida.


Race:
Human, mostly.

Deity:
None.

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Jessica was born into a large, wealthy, highly religious, and respected family in a well protected and sheltered settlement in Gale. From an early age, she rejected the idea of gods and religion, angering her family by simply laughing at their worship of Aten, regarding it as 'silly'.

Upon reaching the tender age of 12, her parents decided having such a negligent and disrespectful daughter could severely damage their reputation, and very subtly and discreetly removed her from the family, simply casting her out into the wilderness. She roamed for a while, frightened and alone, unable to find her way back to her home, and knowing if she did she would be turned away. Eventually, she came upon a marauding band of hunters from another settlement, who took her in.

The hunters took her back to their own settlement, finding her to show interest in their hunting along the way. They taught her the basics of combat and tracking, as well as some basic skills required to survive in the wild.

Upon finishing their hunting trip and returning home, they adopted her as one of their own. They were not pleased to discover her lack of faith in any gods or deities, but were more tolerant and understanding, and simply allowed her to be. She proved to be a quick and eager learner in the arts of hunting and survival, accompanying their hunters frequently as she grew up. As well as this, she discovered a knack for bartering and diplomacy, helping the village that had taken her in when trading with other villages, spending her teenage years honing her skills in both combat and trading.

Shortly before her 19th birthday, she and several hunters from her village returned home from a long hunting trip to find the village burned to the ground, sacked and pillaged by bandits. The group swore revenge on whoever had committed this atrocity, gathering up what little supplies remained in the village and pressing on, following the tracks left by the raiders.

After following the tracks for several days, they came upon a camp where the raiders had stopped for a rest, being a group of ten or so, accompanied by several mages. The hunters waited till nightfall, before sneaking into the camp, intending to murder all inside. Jessica helped to take out the sentries, killing each with a single arrow to the throat. Once the sentries were dealt with and moved out of sight, the hunters sneaked in, locating the mages first, dealing with each one with a dagger to the heart as they slept, before simply massacring the rest of the raiding party in their beds.

Jessica felt disgusted to have killed humans for the first time, but the satisfaction of revenge and amazement of how easy it was to sneak in and take them out overrode the feeling of disgust. Afterwards, the hunters split whatever loot they could carry from the raiders stash, and buried the rest. They decided nothing was left for them here, and went their separate ways.

Jessica survived easily in the wilderness, having no trouble hunting for only herself after being used to hunting to feed an entire village. Over the next few years, she drifted from settlement to settlement, learning new things and improving her skills, listening to local tales and stories of lands far away. She longed to leave Gale, having nothing left in this cold province.

As she neared her 24th birthday, her travels took her into the mountains of Gale, to some of the few isolated settlements. She helped where she could, gathering supplies in exchange for payment, helping villages deal with bandits through negotiation or through her blades.

She traveled for a while, taking her time to explore some of the ruins littered around the nation's mountains, looking for anything of value or interest. Eventually, she came across a priest, who simply requested that she help him safely reach a certain tomb, promising to allow her to take anything inside as long as he was able to complete his mission. She accepted, and followed him, guarding him closely.

Nestled high in the frozen mountains, they found a simple, ancient tomb, sheared in half by a rockfall, leaving the interior open to the elements. Curious, she clambered down the sheer rockface, and ventured inside.

Inside, they found riches beyond her wildest dreams. Ancient weapons and armor littered the burials, along with stacks of gold and other riches. The priest thanked her for her assistance, and headed off into the ruins in search of something. Overjoyed, she scooped up an ancient crown from one of the burials, putting it on and strutting around the ruin, laughing to herself and dreaming of the things she could achieve with all these riches.

After wearing the crown for only a short while, she began to feel uneasy, calling to the priest for assistance. She felt an urge to remove it and cast it aside, but couldn't bring herself to. The priest returned after hearing her calling, shocked to find her with the crown he was looking for. In a desperate attempt to get the crown off her, the priest simply clubbed her in the head with his rather hefty staff, knocking her unconscious and sending the crown spiraling out of the wrecked tomb and off the sheer edge of the mountain.

Upon awaking, Jessica found herself changed, somewhat. She felt much calmer and concious of the world around her, but most noticably, she found her skin tone to have altered to a greyish purple. The priest who had knocked her out explained what had happened, and why she had changed. The crown was an ancient artifact from the time of Ossus' blight, made from pure Stygian, and infused with a demon's soul. Contact with the crown had corrupted her somewhat, but he had managed to get her away from the crown before any major damage was done.

The priest advised her to return home and rest for a while, helping her out of the ruin and down to the closest village before parting ways. Jessica ignored his advice, having nowhere to return to. She simply continued on, spurred on by tales of far away lands, and hoping to find more treasure similar to what she had missed out on in the ruin.

After the incident, she found herself suffering from a sort of multiple personality disorder, mostly approaching things calmly and somewhat kindly, whilst at other times opting for more ruthless and unorthodox approaches to solving problems, ways she had never dreamed of before.

Using information gathered from locals and her survival skills, she spent the next few years working her way over the many mountain ranges of Gale, headed towards Aeria's coast, eventually finding her way to Sida.

Upon reaching more civilized and heavily populated areas along the coast of Aeria, she worked on her skills and became a mercenary, specializing in stealth and assassination. Years later, she became a full time assassin, performing multiple, high paying contracts against well known members of society.

As she reached her thirties, she decided to try settling down, moving so far up the coast that she wound up in Sanctimonia. Liking the look of the place, she quietly and discreetly moved into the town of Surna, where she set up a general goods store, doing her best to blend in with the rest of the town.

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Jessica has a sort of multiple personality disorder caused by the corruption.

Her normal personality is calm, relaxed and friendly. She's a quiet person who tries her best to help out when it's suitable and prefers to be helping out in the background rather than on the front lines (metaphorically or not).

Her alternate, demonically influenced personality is more ruthless and uncaring, generally more 'evil'. She's more likely to wreck anyone who gets in her way's shit even if it's not nessecary.

To clarify incase i haven't really made it clear, she is one person, just with two 'modes'. I'm only referring to it as 'multiple personality disorder, as that's a simple way of explaining it. In both of her 'modes', she's still the same person and knows who her friends are and where her allegiances lie. The different personalities just affect how she achieves her goals or accomplishes her missions or treats others. for example, if someone had kidnapped one of her friends, this is how either 'mode' would deal with this:

Normal mode:
To find where her friend was, she would track the captors or hunt them down by gathering information from the locals/anyone who might know anything. Once locating her friend, she would take care to avoid being seen and avoid contact with anyone guarding her captured friend, only killing who she needed to.

'Evil' mode.
In this mode, she would be likely to torture or violently interrogate anyone connected to the captors in order to find the location of her friend. After finding out where her friend is, she would infiltrate wherever they were holding her friend and kill everyone as stealthily as she could, regardless of whether or not she could simply sneak past, leaving no survivors and not caring if any collateral damage is done to anyone not involved.

I've contemplated having some way of discerning which 'mode' she's in such as having her eyes change color when in either mode, but it seems like it would be a pain in the ass to keep changing those through description or /me, so it'll just seem like she has rather severe mood swings.

Jessica posesses a wide variety of skills as a result of her travels and adventuring days, listed below are the most commonly used.

Marksmanship/Archery:
{ | | | | | | | - - - }
Having been using a bow since an early age, Jessica is quite a skillful archer.

Swordsmanship:
{ | | | | | - - - - - }
Preferring a more sneaky approach to combat than a straight up fight,
Jessica can still hold her ground in a fight against any ordinary swordsman.

Hand-to-hand:
{ | | | | | | - - - - }
In tune with her stealthy approach to combat, Jessica has honed her hand-to-hand skills
enough to allow her to opt for a non-lethal way of dealing with enemies, as well as
allowing her to render her enemies unconscious if she gets the drop on them.

Medicine:
{ | | - - - - - - - - }
As a result of traveling on her own for most of her life, it is imperative she knows some basic
medical skills to keep herself in one peice and patch herself or others up.

Leatherworking:
{ | | | - - - - - - - }
To help lessen her reliability on others, Jessica is slowly learning to maintain her own armor and
to utilize the hides she obtains from hunting animals.

Alchemy:
{ | | | | - - - - - - }
To complement her archery skills, Jessica has learned some fundamental points of alchemy,
specializing in a small variety of poisons and other toxins which she can apply to her arrows.



General appearance:

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Height:
6'2

Eye color:
Blue.

Skin color:
Greyish purple.

Hair color:
Brown.

Overall appearance summary:
Jessica is slim, tall, and has an athletic figure. She prefers to keep her face covered
somewhat by her hood, or to simply stick to the shadows. Her clothing covers as much
of her skin as possible, and she rarely removes her gloves.

Clothing/Equipment:

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Jessica's day to day attire is as follows:
- Leather shirt + pants.
- Tough leather boots and gloves.
- Shopkeeper's apron.
- Underwear too since i feel if i don't mention this someone's gonna comment on the lack of any

When not in her shop, she swaps out her apron for the following:

- Studded velvet + Leather backed mantle.
- Leather hood, to help conceal her identity and to cover her face as much as possible.
- Tightly woven Scale mail lined tabard, designed to reduce noise when moving whilst providing protection.
- Sturdy belt with multiple pouches for her equipment and anything else of importance.

Weaponry:

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Generic Bow


Jessica's trusty bow. Nothing unusual about it, just a regular hunting bow with a
bunch of modifications made by a few blacksmiths over the long time she's owned it.

Narryn's Fang.

DISCLAIMER: NOT ACTUALLY ANYTHING'S FANG

An ancient, unusual dagger. Black and jagged with unknown red gems embedded into it, and a lethal cutting edge on both sides. Made of an indistinguishable ancient metal. Shaped to allow ease of throwing if necessary, feels awkward to wield for anyone other than Jessica due to the specially shaped grip, and causes an odd, uncomfortable sensation when held by anyone else.

May or may not posses magical abilities/enchantments. If it does, Jessica doesn't know of them. To her, it's just her trusty old knife with a hell of a mean blade.

(Knife may ICly have enchantments, but they're not active and don't do anything, and she doesn't know of them. The odd feeling thing is just due to the fact the knife may be some sort of occult artifact and the corruption lets her wield it without noticing any sort of strangeness. I haven't decided yet if it actually has enchantments so i'm leaving it open for possibilities.

Current:

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• Find a town somewhere to settle down in for a while.

• Purchase a house with her savings.

• Take up a profession to make some money.

Completed:

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None, yet.