Twik Pennywhistle

[Twik]

Name: Twik Pennywhistle

Age: 32.  Twik's racial heritage has slowed her aging and it's difficult to judge just how old she is; her face looks young but her size makes her seem more mature.

Race: Half troll.

Physical Description: Twik is 6'1" tall and 200 pounds with a lean athletic build and long limbs.  Her skin is a light grass green, her eyes are large and dark, and she has prominent fangs. Her human heritage has mellowed her trollish blood somewhat, and she might be considered attractive by those who don't mind their women tall and green. Her features are fairly fine with a sharp nose and mouth somewhat on the large side and masses of black hair.  
 
Twik has no discernable sense of style, wearing baggy outfits of inexpensive cloth. She often can be seen wearing a skirt and blouse made out of burlap feed sacks, dyed black to be less conspicuous. Sometimes she will wear a battered tea-length wedding dress that she found in an abandoned house.

Possessions:
Chain Whip
Vambraces made of leather and steel
Brass knuckles made of silver
Bow, made of spring steel.
Cittern
Small (300 square foot) log house. It has no electricity but does have running water thanks to a well and a gnome-built pump. Each morning Twik must wind the weather vane twelve times clockwise and 3 times counter-clockwise in order to have a day’s water.
 
Powers or Strengths:

Twik is incredibly strong, stronger than she looks; her muscles are unusually dense and effective.
 
She is well trained both with the chain whip and with empty handed martial arts techniques, with a good understanding of pressure points, joint locks, and throws as well as punches and kicks. She owns a bow made of spring steel with a draw weight of perhaps 300 pounds. She sometimes shoots it at targets, but it is a recent hobby of hers and her skill with the thing is only average.
 
Twik is a fine singer with a hypnotic alto voice, and she is a competent cittern and ukulele player.
 
Twik retains the regeneration abilities of her trollish heritage.

Weaknesses and Flaws:
Twik is badly socialized and somewhat crazy.  She is immune to embarrassment and does not notice when she is acting inappropriately.  She doesn't really understand the concept of lying and never lies herself, although she will sometimes withhold information.  She always assumes others are telling the truth and thus is fairly gullible, although she does understand that sometimes people are wrong about things.  Her dense muscles cause her to sink in water, and she is terrified of drowning, boats, and narrow bridges with low railings.  She is a poor reader and only reads out loud.

History:

Twik’s earliest memories are of pain. She was always an obedient child, not so much by inclination but rather because of the rune-stamped torc of silver which had been fastened about her neck. When the voices that mumbled from the darkness spoke to her her body obeyed, and she climbed docilely onto the rack or vivisection table. Above the neck her will was her own, and her screams echoed along the vaulted ceilings and stone corridors as she was pleased to send them. The Men in White Masks that bent over her never seemed to mind the din.

When she was seven, she began to fight, but only in dreams. She would stand meekly as they pushed the needle into her arm, and things would grow soft and gray about the edges, and then she would go to the dream place.

At first the dream place was disorganized and made little sense to her, but as the days wore on it took on an all-to-real solidity. The dream place then was a dirt circle walled by granite 10 feet high. Above this were stands for spectators--always unmoving black silhouettes, and above these a stone dome soared overhead to a point a hundred feet above the killing floor.

Twik faced a variety of opponents, some human and many fantastical demons with pinchers and wings and any other sort of appendage. Her weapon was the chain whip; a series of nine short metal rods linked by study chain, although she also fought with her hands and feet. Sometimes she won, and her opponent lay bleeding into the ground for a satisfying minute before she awoke in her cell. Other times she lost, and the pain and bitter taste of defeat followed her to a painful awakening. Despite everything she enjoyed these exercises, as they afforded her a large measure of freedom.

Sometimes Twik’s opponents would offer her advice, drilling her before the fight in proper techniques, and then falling upon her. These fights were the most terrible, as her opponents in these cases always outmatched her, although sometimes she would get lucky and strike a grievous wound.

The fighting seemed to be important, because after a number of years the Men in the White Masks (she thought of them as men, although the voices of a few of them occasionally revealed them to be women) offered her teaching as well. It was through them that she learned of pressure points. Lying on her table, they would tell her to pay close attention while they drove an iron spike into various parts of her body, and thus she learned the location of her targets. These proved useful in her dream fights, as strikes to these areas could temporarily incapacitate a limb.

When Twik was 9 she first heard music—the gentle singing of a voice from the hall beyond her cell-- and it struck her with the force of a divine experience. Here was happiness, fed directly into her brain through her ears! She began to sing herself, creating strange tunes from the depths of her brain. After a time she was rewarded with a gift; a ukulele, and she was able to teach herself to play it between visits of the Men in White Masks.

Twik left her world behind when she was 16. It happened suddenly and without warning. Her body, moving obediently as always, stumbled over a chisel which had been carelessly left on the floor and rolled under her foot, and she fell against a large torture implement of some sort, damaging her torc. She stood, and almost immediately felt the stab of a dart at her neck. Her vision blurred as her hands came up, reaching towards the nearest Man With a White Mask.

Later, Twik found herself in the desert. Her hands were covered in blood, and when she tasted it it seemed strange, not entirely like her own blood which she had tasted so often all these many years. For several days she stumbled through the wastes until she came to the town of Shim.

Twik was taken in by an old farmer named Metis whose eyesight was failing and who needed help tending his plot. She was at first too crazy to be of any great use, but after a time the fragments of her mind joined together to form a stable if not entirely rational whole. Twik worked for Metis for eight years, when his health failed and he died in bed. Twik buried him among the cabbages and packing her meager belongings, moved to Marn to start a new life.

Twik worked for a time digging graves, which her natural strength made her well suited for, while playing music as a busker when she had a chance. Over time she has become well enough known to get gigs in taverns, where she plays long sets for modest pay, sometimes alone and sometimes with one or more musicians that she knows casually. She usually sings songs of her own creation, which have attracted a modest following with their eerie haunting quality. Recently she has spotted a man with a white mask and grey cloak on the street, who seemed to be watching her as she went by.

[KoriStronghammer]

Don't really have a say, but I like this.

[Niabi]

First, I'm going to have to ask you Kori to not post in applications. We don't want new members to get confused of their approval status with too many comments on their app.

Twik, Approved. Welcome to Thar.