Arlechina Quinn
Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 8:06 am
Player Name: Jodika
Name: Arlechina Quinn
Age: 22
Race: Human
Height: 5’4”
Weight: 120lbs
Physical Description: The suspect was described as a woman of medium height… or anywhere from 5’ to 5’10 depending on shoes, stance and body language. Her features were highly symmetrical, which caused her to appear really quite good-looking and ensured that there was nothing distinguishing about her at the same time. She could have been anything from an old teenager to a woman in her mid-thirties.
Or, another day, she was incredibly striking. That makeup! That scarf, that coat, that hair! You’d know her anywhere. Except you wouldn’t. You’d know the scarf, or the coat, or the hair or the makeup. Makeup came off, clothes were changed, and a woman’s hair could be any colour or style tomorrow.
Quinn in neutral – if there is such a thing – is a lean and generally small woman out of costume, in constant movement on nimble toes because while it’s bad enough getting caught as someone else, it’s just plain embarrassing to get caught being yourself. Her real hair is very brown or black or perhaps very dark auburn, and cut deliberately in a way that defies description, at least by anyone who wouldn’t wish to refer to another’s hair as looking like a mullet that had gracefully let itself go.
Posessions: As a rule Quinn wears nondescript clothing , a cheap shirt and knee-length skirt, with britches and very good, soft leather boots underneath. A long, faded black riding-coat is usual, its many pockets containing;
Makeup
Two normal and one tapered deck of cards
Loaded and normal dice, identical in appearance
A scarf
A pair of spectacles
Gloves
Cigarettes
Glass jewellery
(In a secret pocket) Lockpicks
A penknife
A very nearly diamond ring
(Sewn into the lining of her coat) A real diamond ring
Up to 100 Bishani, spread around various pockets, visible and hidden
The coat is reversible, and on the other side it is a smart, deep red ladies’ coat.
As Quinn by necessity travels light, many of her belongings are kept for her at the Drunken Rat Inn – barpeople on average being the sort of people who, when paid 10 Bishani a month to keep ‘Miss Artix’s Trunk’ in their storage area, understand that not wondering what it contains in included in the fee. It contains:
Various articles of clothing, from cloaks to courtly dresses to rags to military uniform
Wigs
Hair dye
Wound wax, which can also be used to construct false facial features
A sturdy shovel
She also owns a considerable amount of money, totalling almost 2000 Bishani, which is hidden (usually buried), in a number of locations known only to her.
Powers or Strengths: As mentioned in the possessions section, Quinn is really quite rich, not that you’d know it if you met her. In fact her gold hoard has only ever been tapped into once in a time of extreme bad luck, and generally she behaves as if it didn’t exist.
Quinn is a highly talented actor, able to slip in and out of roles at a second’s notice. Her gift of the gab is her main strength – she can use logic and illogic in a way that would tie an ordinary mind in knots, speak in such a way that she seems to say something completely different from what she is actually saying, and still come across as a charming and likable person.
She is an expert cold-reader, and in the course of a two-minute conversation could acquire, without your even noticing it, enough information to, if she so desired, convince you she was psychic. There is, however, nothing magic about it. It’s a skill.
Second only to her silver tongue is her skill at sleight-of-hand. Card tricks and various other ‘magic’ tricks are a hobby of hers as well as an important part of her career. She has perfected palming and replacing items to the point where someone would almost have to know she was doing it to have any hope of catching her at all.
Her third useful skill is that she is a very fast runner when she wants to be, and can ride a horse, even without a saddle or while being pelted with fruit at a speed that would challenge many a professional horseman, provided she’s riding away from something. She is very physically agile as well as mentally, capable of performing some impressive feats of acrobatics, and with the upper body strength to climb like a monkey. However, she rarely uses her acrobatics to perform with, but they are very useful for escaping those determined to use violence to obtain money from her, whether it’s her money or theirs.
Weaknesses: Quinn has no magical power and no firepower when it comes to fighting. A big part of how she rationalises what she does to herself is that she has never raised a weapon to anyone in her life. She wouldn’t know what to do with one and any weapon in her hands would be more of a danger to her than the enemy.
She is physically strong for her size, but it is a wiry sort of strength, built for the endurance necessary in running and acrobatics, not feats of strength or fights. She would easily be overpowered by muscle.
A person with Quinn’s talents could go very far indeed, and there are two main reasons she doesn’t:
Quinn does not think big. She is a petty swindler. She could get away with a lot more, but she never comes up with that kind of idea by herself. She’s still clinging to some extent to her hopeless dream of being an actor, and doesn’t have the malice of forethought required to take on a really big job unless she was somehow put up to it.
Quinn is addicted. She could easily make enough money to settle down and do it. She could make an easy, honest living on the money she has stashed and live a life of leisure if she was so inclined, but while she assumes that she has the same drives as anyone else, she is sadly mistaken. She couldn’t stop being a conwoman if she tried. She is addicted to putting the gleam in her eye, the trainwreck fascination of looking in on some of the worst human (and other sentient) nature has to offer every day of the week, the hope she brings people that today, just today they might get lucky, that glass might be diamond and things might not be too good to be true. Most of all she is addicted to the danger, the sense of flying when she is getting away with it and the huge, heady adrenalin buzz that comes after being found out and running away and still waking up the next morning, alive.
History: Arlechina Quinn was born 22 years ago in the town of Shim, the daughter of jewellery maker Brighella Quinn. She was educated at home in reading, writing, and the ladylike arts of sewing, music, horseriding and dance until the age of 14, and that is that last anybody has heard of Arlechina Quinn.
Brighella, though grasping and unscrupulous in his work life and often absent from his home life, was had good intentions as a father and whenever there was a problem with his daughter, he would attempt to solve it by throwing money at it. So, Arlechina had a childhood mostly characterised by luxury and boredom. She remembers her mother as a distant lumpy figure in an uncomfortable-looking dress, and was raised by servants, many of whom also had day jobs in the town. The servants were the only thing that relieved her boredom; she was an articulate, likable child, so most of them didn’t mind spending time with her. It was from them that she learned how to gamble and how to cheat at it, how to bluff and fake her way through problems. She took this skill back to her governess, and through faking illness or otherwise, managed to get more time to spend with the servants. She’d sleep all day, feigning illness, and spend all night running around town, scaling buildings in a place that to her looked like one giant playground. One of the servants worked as a fortune-teller on occasion, and she introduced Arlechina to the art of cold-reading. At first she was incredulous as to how it could work, but the woman explained that it is very, very easy to get someone to believe something that they want to believe. This is a lesson that has stuck with her, especially when she realised that that was what her father did. I mean, jewellery was pretty, right? But it was basically shiny rocks and shiny metal. Why did people pay so much money for bits of shiny rock and shiny metal? Because they believed in the dream that shiny rocks and shiny metal were more than shiny rocks and shiny metal, they were gold, diamonds, emeralds, pearls. They didn’t just look pretty, they conveyed status. They were important. So, logically, couldn’t you get even more profit on something that looked good enough to convey that status, but wasn’t actually diamonds? The answer was yes, as long as you believed in it. Belief was everything, substance nothing.
The last place where she gave her real name was the receipt for some bread, dried meat and oats, bought in Shim as packed lunch for her and her horse on the ride over to the big city, where Quinn went to seek her fortune as an actor, dancer and musician by the name of Zanni Artix. Zanni remains one of her favourite characters to play in and around Marn, and she does still get the occasional performing spot in the city, but doing it for a living began to bore her. She took to climbing on buildings again, and it took getting caught and eventually let go after no evidence could be found that she planned to actually rob anyone before she decided a change was in order. She started small - a little gambling, which she was good at anyway, then she began to cheat. She always knew not to win too much, and if she went overboard she’d make sure to lose, then pick a few pockets on the way out. A few glass rings and a few confidence tricks later, and she was a fully-fledged conwoman. She made big money, but it was never about the money, so she hoarded it, just in case.
Now for the future she entertains vague ideas of larger raids, maybe cracking open a few banks or a little subterfuge and blackmail, but as of yet, she hasn’t done anything of the sort. There’s always tomorrow…
Current Personas:
Asra: Main storyline persona.
A traumatised refugee found in the military compound in Marn. Asra first appeared chasing after her former fellow incarcerate, Kira, who does not speak and shows severe physical deterioration. Although she has not shared too many specific details about her ordeal, it appears the two of them were used in magical experiments of some kind. Asra is inquisitive, easygoing and quite bold and cheerful considering what happened to her.
She appears to be about 17, somewhat too thin, not particularly clean and dressed in rags with a tattered but still whole long black coat. She has black hair and blue eyes, and is about 5'3".
X
A spy-for-hire in Marn. When Lord Panterras put the word about that he needed a spy, it was the mysterious 'X' who answered the call. Talented, stylish and manipulative, X uses every skill and item of knowledge at her disposal to get her way, even to the point of blackmailing the hand that pays her.
She is of indeterminate age, medium height and wiry build. Her form-fitting black clothes cover her entire body including the hands. Between her scarlet flowing scarf and black hair, only a small strip of face and eyes can be seen.
Zanni Artix
Zanni is not an unusual sight on the Marn night scene. As an actress, she has been there and done that without ever - it seems - quite making it to the top of the game. Her talent is not in question - and neither is her insanely luvvieish behaviour.
A very distinctive figure because of her chin-length, golden-blonde hair and signiture bright red coat. Zanni is always elaborately made up and draped with costume jewellery.
Columbina
An exotic lady gambler from east of Thar Shaddin. Columbina is a woman of few words, but those who can get her to talk will hear wonderous and exciting tales about a land far far away, the location of which is vague enough that even the most well-travelled will not suspect they have even been close to it. She has never been caught cheating, and is rarely even suspected of it, but she does.
A striking figure with a wild mane of chestnut hair, kohl-rimmed eyes and exotic jewellery. Columbina typically wears a deep-coloured and very decorated tunic, trousers and scarf, often with a black coat thrown over her shoulders to keep out the chill in this colder land.
Name: Arlechina Quinn
Age: 22
Race: Human
Height: 5’4”
Weight: 120lbs
Physical Description: The suspect was described as a woman of medium height… or anywhere from 5’ to 5’10 depending on shoes, stance and body language. Her features were highly symmetrical, which caused her to appear really quite good-looking and ensured that there was nothing distinguishing about her at the same time. She could have been anything from an old teenager to a woman in her mid-thirties.
Or, another day, she was incredibly striking. That makeup! That scarf, that coat, that hair! You’d know her anywhere. Except you wouldn’t. You’d know the scarf, or the coat, or the hair or the makeup. Makeup came off, clothes were changed, and a woman’s hair could be any colour or style tomorrow.
Quinn in neutral – if there is such a thing – is a lean and generally small woman out of costume, in constant movement on nimble toes because while it’s bad enough getting caught as someone else, it’s just plain embarrassing to get caught being yourself. Her real hair is very brown or black or perhaps very dark auburn, and cut deliberately in a way that defies description, at least by anyone who wouldn’t wish to refer to another’s hair as looking like a mullet that had gracefully let itself go.
Posessions: As a rule Quinn wears nondescript clothing , a cheap shirt and knee-length skirt, with britches and very good, soft leather boots underneath. A long, faded black riding-coat is usual, its many pockets containing;
Makeup
Two normal and one tapered deck of cards
Loaded and normal dice, identical in appearance
A scarf
A pair of spectacles
Gloves
Cigarettes
Glass jewellery
(In a secret pocket) Lockpicks
A penknife
A very nearly diamond ring
(Sewn into the lining of her coat) A real diamond ring
Up to 100 Bishani, spread around various pockets, visible and hidden
The coat is reversible, and on the other side it is a smart, deep red ladies’ coat.
As Quinn by necessity travels light, many of her belongings are kept for her at the Drunken Rat Inn – barpeople on average being the sort of people who, when paid 10 Bishani a month to keep ‘Miss Artix’s Trunk’ in their storage area, understand that not wondering what it contains in included in the fee. It contains:
Various articles of clothing, from cloaks to courtly dresses to rags to military uniform
Wigs
Hair dye
Wound wax, which can also be used to construct false facial features
A sturdy shovel
She also owns a considerable amount of money, totalling almost 2000 Bishani, which is hidden (usually buried), in a number of locations known only to her.
Powers or Strengths: As mentioned in the possessions section, Quinn is really quite rich, not that you’d know it if you met her. In fact her gold hoard has only ever been tapped into once in a time of extreme bad luck, and generally she behaves as if it didn’t exist.
Quinn is a highly talented actor, able to slip in and out of roles at a second’s notice. Her gift of the gab is her main strength – she can use logic and illogic in a way that would tie an ordinary mind in knots, speak in such a way that she seems to say something completely different from what she is actually saying, and still come across as a charming and likable person.
She is an expert cold-reader, and in the course of a two-minute conversation could acquire, without your even noticing it, enough information to, if she so desired, convince you she was psychic. There is, however, nothing magic about it. It’s a skill.
Second only to her silver tongue is her skill at sleight-of-hand. Card tricks and various other ‘magic’ tricks are a hobby of hers as well as an important part of her career. She has perfected palming and replacing items to the point where someone would almost have to know she was doing it to have any hope of catching her at all.
Her third useful skill is that she is a very fast runner when she wants to be, and can ride a horse, even without a saddle or while being pelted with fruit at a speed that would challenge many a professional horseman, provided she’s riding away from something. She is very physically agile as well as mentally, capable of performing some impressive feats of acrobatics, and with the upper body strength to climb like a monkey. However, she rarely uses her acrobatics to perform with, but they are very useful for escaping those determined to use violence to obtain money from her, whether it’s her money or theirs.
Weaknesses: Quinn has no magical power and no firepower when it comes to fighting. A big part of how she rationalises what she does to herself is that she has never raised a weapon to anyone in her life. She wouldn’t know what to do with one and any weapon in her hands would be more of a danger to her than the enemy.
She is physically strong for her size, but it is a wiry sort of strength, built for the endurance necessary in running and acrobatics, not feats of strength or fights. She would easily be overpowered by muscle.
A person with Quinn’s talents could go very far indeed, and there are two main reasons she doesn’t:
Quinn does not think big. She is a petty swindler. She could get away with a lot more, but she never comes up with that kind of idea by herself. She’s still clinging to some extent to her hopeless dream of being an actor, and doesn’t have the malice of forethought required to take on a really big job unless she was somehow put up to it.
Quinn is addicted. She could easily make enough money to settle down and do it. She could make an easy, honest living on the money she has stashed and live a life of leisure if she was so inclined, but while she assumes that she has the same drives as anyone else, she is sadly mistaken. She couldn’t stop being a conwoman if she tried. She is addicted to putting the gleam in her eye, the trainwreck fascination of looking in on some of the worst human (and other sentient) nature has to offer every day of the week, the hope she brings people that today, just today they might get lucky, that glass might be diamond and things might not be too good to be true. Most of all she is addicted to the danger, the sense of flying when she is getting away with it and the huge, heady adrenalin buzz that comes after being found out and running away and still waking up the next morning, alive.
History: Arlechina Quinn was born 22 years ago in the town of Shim, the daughter of jewellery maker Brighella Quinn. She was educated at home in reading, writing, and the ladylike arts of sewing, music, horseriding and dance until the age of 14, and that is that last anybody has heard of Arlechina Quinn.
Brighella, though grasping and unscrupulous in his work life and often absent from his home life, was had good intentions as a father and whenever there was a problem with his daughter, he would attempt to solve it by throwing money at it. So, Arlechina had a childhood mostly characterised by luxury and boredom. She remembers her mother as a distant lumpy figure in an uncomfortable-looking dress, and was raised by servants, many of whom also had day jobs in the town. The servants were the only thing that relieved her boredom; she was an articulate, likable child, so most of them didn’t mind spending time with her. It was from them that she learned how to gamble and how to cheat at it, how to bluff and fake her way through problems. She took this skill back to her governess, and through faking illness or otherwise, managed to get more time to spend with the servants. She’d sleep all day, feigning illness, and spend all night running around town, scaling buildings in a place that to her looked like one giant playground. One of the servants worked as a fortune-teller on occasion, and she introduced Arlechina to the art of cold-reading. At first she was incredulous as to how it could work, but the woman explained that it is very, very easy to get someone to believe something that they want to believe. This is a lesson that has stuck with her, especially when she realised that that was what her father did. I mean, jewellery was pretty, right? But it was basically shiny rocks and shiny metal. Why did people pay so much money for bits of shiny rock and shiny metal? Because they believed in the dream that shiny rocks and shiny metal were more than shiny rocks and shiny metal, they were gold, diamonds, emeralds, pearls. They didn’t just look pretty, they conveyed status. They were important. So, logically, couldn’t you get even more profit on something that looked good enough to convey that status, but wasn’t actually diamonds? The answer was yes, as long as you believed in it. Belief was everything, substance nothing.
The last place where she gave her real name was the receipt for some bread, dried meat and oats, bought in Shim as packed lunch for her and her horse on the ride over to the big city, where Quinn went to seek her fortune as an actor, dancer and musician by the name of Zanni Artix. Zanni remains one of her favourite characters to play in and around Marn, and she does still get the occasional performing spot in the city, but doing it for a living began to bore her. She took to climbing on buildings again, and it took getting caught and eventually let go after no evidence could be found that she planned to actually rob anyone before she decided a change was in order. She started small - a little gambling, which she was good at anyway, then she began to cheat. She always knew not to win too much, and if she went overboard she’d make sure to lose, then pick a few pockets on the way out. A few glass rings and a few confidence tricks later, and she was a fully-fledged conwoman. She made big money, but it was never about the money, so she hoarded it, just in case.
Now for the future she entertains vague ideas of larger raids, maybe cracking open a few banks or a little subterfuge and blackmail, but as of yet, she hasn’t done anything of the sort. There’s always tomorrow…
Current Personas:
Asra: Main storyline persona.
A traumatised refugee found in the military compound in Marn. Asra first appeared chasing after her former fellow incarcerate, Kira, who does not speak and shows severe physical deterioration. Although she has not shared too many specific details about her ordeal, it appears the two of them were used in magical experiments of some kind. Asra is inquisitive, easygoing and quite bold and cheerful considering what happened to her.
She appears to be about 17, somewhat too thin, not particularly clean and dressed in rags with a tattered but still whole long black coat. She has black hair and blue eyes, and is about 5'3".
X
A spy-for-hire in Marn. When Lord Panterras put the word about that he needed a spy, it was the mysterious 'X' who answered the call. Talented, stylish and manipulative, X uses every skill and item of knowledge at her disposal to get her way, even to the point of blackmailing the hand that pays her.
She is of indeterminate age, medium height and wiry build. Her form-fitting black clothes cover her entire body including the hands. Between her scarlet flowing scarf and black hair, only a small strip of face and eyes can be seen.
Zanni Artix
Zanni is not an unusual sight on the Marn night scene. As an actress, she has been there and done that without ever - it seems - quite making it to the top of the game. Her talent is not in question - and neither is her insanely luvvieish behaviour.
A very distinctive figure because of her chin-length, golden-blonde hair and signiture bright red coat. Zanni is always elaborately made up and draped with costume jewellery.
Columbina
An exotic lady gambler from east of Thar Shaddin. Columbina is a woman of few words, but those who can get her to talk will hear wonderous and exciting tales about a land far far away, the location of which is vague enough that even the most well-travelled will not suspect they have even been close to it. She has never been caught cheating, and is rarely even suspected of it, but she does.
A striking figure with a wild mane of chestnut hair, kohl-rimmed eyes and exotic jewellery. Columbina typically wears a deep-coloured and very decorated tunic, trousers and scarf, often with a black coat thrown over her shoulders to keep out the chill in this colder land.