| Age | 23 |
| Species | Red fox (fire and ice) |
| Pronouns | She/Her |
| Size | Small |
| Build | Slight and short but leggy and vigorous |
| Rank | Foreign noble of questionable real status |
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
A bright young vixen, slight and short but leggy and vigorous.
She has a somewhat fluffy pearl gold (or ‘strawberry blonde’) coat with a cream front and dark markings around eyes, nose, and extremities except for her tail tip which is also cream.
Coming from her often cold, often wet homeland, Adalina is well equipped for rough weather with sweaters, a hooded oilskin jacket, and even a poncho for warmer rains. In fair weather, on the other hand, she tries her best to stay cool, enjoying bright cotton dresses and wide-brimmed straw hats. For work she has her trusty leather apron and toolbelt, of course, and in the field trousers and boots are a practical necessity regardless of temperature.
She has a narrow straight wrapping gash of a scar running vertically down the left side of her snout and a matching, less often visible, one on the outside of her thigh. They are perhaps unfashionable on her small frame but she wears them soberly as a reminder of the danger of even the civil applications of explosives. The professor who had been setting the charge wasn’t lucky enough to survive his chemist’s mistake and Adelina has never complained about the marks.
PERSONALITY:
Always excited to meet new people and see new sights, Adalina is charmingly straightforward and earnest.
She is curious about everything and machines most of all. Enthusiastic about applying innovative devices to help people with their daily lives or achieve otherwise impossible feats. Blissfully unaware that many people would rather not have to learn new and technically challenging ways of doing everything.
As ready as she is to plow ahead regardless (or heedless) of any long term complexities she does have a cautious streak when it comes to immediately physically dangerous arrangements, especially when it comes to explosives.
Add an element of conflict; subterfuge, threats of violence, or even simple bad-faith arguments and Adalina might be at total loss. She has, so far, lived a charmed life. There have been challenges but mostly ones imposed by natural forces and faced together as a community.
STRENGTHS:
Irrepressible curiosity
Charming enthusiasm
Sharp perception and intuition
Good education including a deep understanding
Fit and healthy
Keen nose
WEAKNESSES:
Unrestrained curiosity
Slight build with strength to match
Averse to violence
Eager to please
Inexperienced with subtlety
Sensitive nose
BIOGRAPHY:
A Bright Start
Born into the still privileged but increasingly common [szlachta] semi-noble class of her [homeland], Adelina Laska grew up in a comfortable home with only a few servants and the expectation that, like her parents, she would have to cultivate a professional career and earn a living. It was a relief then when, after a rocky start with an especially strict grammar tutor, she began to excel in her studies. And seemingly excel more with each new subject, each year. So much so that at 15 she was recommended for special preparation to attend the [prestigious school in the capital] with a generous grant from the [crown] to pay for it. So long as her studies continue to do the realm proud, of course.
A particular relief for her because, as much as she liked sail boats and cooked fish and field trips with her father on the boats and at the fishery he oversees... the smell was always too much for her to relish the thought of following precisely in his footsteps. Still, the pride her father takes in the prosperity of that enterprise and even more so in it having helped stem the tide of hunger in the cold years of Adelina’s childhood have left her with a persistent interest in the production, distribution, and preservation of food.
A Good School
Naturally, like most of her classmates with any tolerance for numbers, she studied siegeworks, fortress geometry, and hydrologic engineering — the great mathematical earthworking skills to expand, protect, and make fertile the realm. Well, the [king] likes to imagine [the homeland] being well equipped with noblebeasts ready to do all these things were there the need or opportunity. Really the lavish spending on [the school], foreign guest professors, and a few scholarships each year are about as much as the realm can afford in the way of great works. It’s a good thing then that the school does quite well at keeping up appearances and prestige overseas, its graduates being able to keep pace with the young nobles of at least other second-rate powers.
As impressive and challenging as earthworks could be she was always most drawn to the dynamism of steel working, glass blowing, and the movement of clever mechanisms. Everything from crossbows to channel locks, cannon to windmills... dry docks, cranes, bellows, and waterwheels... pneumatic toys from overseas and singing clocks from inland... Machines that she saw more and stranger specimens of each year at school. And that’s without mentioning the even stranger rumors. And so she absorbed as much on the engineering of these machines as she could, her imagination running wild with the possibilities.
Her enthusiasm in combining this interest with her hydrologic training and passion for food surpluses pushed her to flirt with disaster both legal and technical in the last year of her schooling.
An Energetic Capstone Project
Requisitioning whole classes of first years, the school groundskeepers, and as many of her friends as she could charm into joining the project, she set about upgrading the local irrigation canals and installing a set of wind pumps. The farmers were skeptical at first but seeing her at work, earnestly wading into the mud, persuaded most to join the effort. The landowners were another story — understandably upset as Adelina had neglected to get their permission for the work.
Fortunately with an endorsement of the merits of her design from some of the engineering department faculty and a few of the political connections of the school’s administration the ruffled feathers were smoothed. It didn’t hurt that the system did save a fair amount of labor. And that the university promised to lead support should the pumps prove ‘finicky’.
The Right Connection
The administration and her mentors were careful to temper the praise she received for this project with warnings not to expect such overreach to be so easily forgiven in the future. But there was one of her professors, a guest undercover from the Vulpine Imperium, who had already taken note of her potential and had no intention of letting it go to waste here. Particularly because if she stayed she would only continue to absorb the technical misinformation that MinoInn had assigned him to spread in this backwater of a country.
POSSESSIONS/REAL ESTATE:
< personal effects >
< a letter of introduction >
< travel gear and purse of coin for travel expenses >
< some engineering tools and examples >
< a claim to hospitality with her parents back home >
< the money back home that her parents saved for her later education and possible dowry that they are still holding for her >
SKILLS:
| Physical | Mental | Social |
|---|---|---|
| Youthful Vigor [Trained] (1) | Sailing [Novice] (0) | Infectious Enthusiasm [Proficient] (2) |
| Keen Senses [Novice] (0) | Management [Novice] (0) | Ernest Charm [Trained] (1) |
| Experimental Engineering [Seasoned] (4) | ||
| Siege Engineering [Trained] (1) | ||
| Hydrologic Engineering [Trained] (1) | ||
| Metalworking [Trained] (1) | ||
| Glassblowing [Trained] (1) | ||
| Teaching [Novice] (0) | ||
| Total Points in Category: 1 | Total Points in Category: 8 | Total Points in Category: 3 |
