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Temerity Boudreaux
[Character Picture]
[Character Picture]
| Age | 25 |
| Species | Least Weasel |
| Pronouns and Nicknames | She/Her, Merity, Merry, Itty, Itty-Bitty |
| Size | Extra Small |
| Build | Tiny sausage of muscle |
| Rank | TBA (Acting Master at Arms upon approval by the Captain of the Blackship!) |
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
Delicately small, but very resilient. Temerity’s movements are quick and energetic. She has many smiles, from the kindly, understanding and encouraging, to the wild, manic, and deadly. She is very whiskery, and expressive with them.
Temerity has the typical fur pattern of a least weasel - that is, during the warmer months she has chestnut brown fur with a white chin, neck, torso and the inner sides of her limbs. The lines between brown and white fur are naturally smooth, a fact accentuated by how well-brushed to a glossy shine Temerity keeps her fur. She is entirely white-furred in the winter. Her eyes are a striking blue.
For working clothes, over her cream-coloured shirt Temerity has paw-made a poncho and well-fitted pair of overalls, entirely made out of different patches of dark brown cloth. This creates a kind of ‘ship camouflage’ effect, she is very difficult to see when she curls up and hides her arms in the poncho, especially in the dimmer light belowdecks. When it is quite sunny, she has a straw-weaved broad-brimmed sun hat. In stormy weather, she can entirely wrap herself in a cloak meant for a bigger beast. If she is feeling fashionable in downtime, she will wear her tooth necklaces and bracelets, but puts them away when on-duty.
When Temerity needs to undertake the most secretive of stealth missions, she has a kind of form-hugging wetsuit made of sharkskin, which is easy to move in, keeps her warm if she’s swimming, and looks downright spooky if you encounter her at night while she’s holding a pair of knives and grinning at you wide-eyed… it’s for special occasions, put it that way.
For beasts unfamiliar with the appearance of a mature least weasel, the biggest give-away that Temerity is not a kit is her very much adult-sounding voice, which she speaks with a pleasant mix of Alkamarian and Vulpinsulan accent. Though she excels at quietude, when she wants to be heard, Temerity has a pair of lungs fit to play 1st Foghorn in the Bully Harbour Wind Ensemble.
PERSONALITY:
[Camp Counselor]
Temerity loves to listen. This can actually be quite intrusive to others - she has a tendency to eavesdrop - but she is also patient and understanding when other beasts wish to share their problems. She only offers her advice or ideas if invited, and always - always keeps a secret. Her advice is not always exactly appropriate or even legal most of the time… but she usually will at least have a good point.
[Prepared for Paranoia]
Temerity can never be too ready for a crisis. Entering a new place, she will figure out exits and hiding places on instinct. She will quickly itemise everything she sees in a room, determining what can be used as an improvised weapon or made into a makeshift tool. Having experienced supply shortages before, she will make secret stashes of necessities. However, she is not selfish nor self-obsessed - she will share what she has and put herself in danger to protect those she cares about.
[The Artilleryjill’s Daughter]
Temerity was born and raised on warships. She is a true daughter of the Navy, and from this has picked up certain eccentricities beyond the sway in her walk. She has a broad set of beliefs and opinions drawn from her artilleryjill mother, and other crewbeasts that she knew in her kithood. For example, one of many mottos she picked up - When in Doubt, Keep Firing. She can be possessive of the ship’s crew, and fierce in her advocacy of them. Whichever ships she ends up on quickly becomes her home and her castle that she would die to defend. Being on shore is dizzying to her, and away from the sea downright unacceptable.
STRENGTHS:
[If the Whiskers Fit…]
There are few spaces that Temerity cannot fit into. She is extremely flexible and agile, and uses this to her advantage to confuse enemies and throw trouble off her tail, as well as for surprise attacks, surprise hugs, and surprise intrusive questions.
[Armed and Delirious]
In another time, Temerity would have made one ‘Gates-damned good tank commander. If something needs destroying, she will have plenty of ideas, and the grit to pull them off. Whether it needs exploding, knocking down, gutting, strangling, or being crushed by a falling cannon that just so happened to be swinging dangerously from a dockside crane, Temerity excels at and thoroughly enjoys taking the world around her apart with as much overwhelming force and fury as possible.
[Oral Tradition]
Temerity is illiterate. She is nevertheless mentally astute, and possesses an incredible memory for facts and details, possibly because she simply has to remember things instead of writing them down. She is also perfectly fine with mathematics, and can do a surprisingly decent amount of complex sums in her head.
WEAKNESSES:
[Obfuscating Symbolism]
Temerity is illiterate. This excludes her from all the obvious benefits of reading - communication across time and space. It also means a lot of disrespect from other beasts that equate illiteracy with stupidity. This can sometimes work to Temerity’s advantage, but most often it does not.
[Hoarded Poverty and Haunting Paranoia]
An obsession with being prepared for anything has its downsides. Temerity has a hard time letting go of just-in-case junk, both physical detritus and mental hangups. She can be unfairly suspicious and distrusting, and overly stubborn.
[Ruthlessness is Mercy to Ourselves]
A jill that has learned best how to destroy struggles to learn forgiveness. Grudges and vengeance can tear a soul up inside, but Temerity finds it incredibly hard to let things go - even if it hurts her more to even the score.
BIOGRAPHY:
[The Initial Barrage]
Temerity’s mother did not want to go back to Alkamar. She had defected to the Golden Hide during the Winter War, but she was illiterate and distrustful of authority, and refused to sign any official papers no matter what she was told in either Alkamarian or Vulpinsulan. She refused to leave the Hide, convinced that she was under the captain’s personal protection as long as she stayed there, and that setting paw on land would give some pencil-pusher the pretext to arrest and deport her.
This was both legally incorrect, and a good sign of which parent bestowed rampant paranoia on their daughter.
Temerity was born aboard the Golden Hide as Témérité Ténacité Boudreaux, though her name was promptly misspelled and Vulpinised on the certificate. It was written during a battle against a pirate fleet, so everybeast had a lot on their minds at the time. Her mother was on duty, firing flaming projectiles at the enemy when she noticed that the Special Moment had arrived. The nearest mess-table had been shot to smithereens, so the surgeon and crew had to make do with resting the tabletop on the ballista, and delivering the kit in between artillery barrages.
Temerity’s mother liked to make jokes about how they nearly launched Temerity at the enemy, and how she was one rusted spring-release away from growing up as a pirate. The truth is, she was hardly up for making an accurate shot after having given birth, so Temerity would have probably missed the pirates and grown up as a shark instead.
[What Do You Mean They Cut The Power?!]
Temerity grew up almost as a part of the ship herself. There was a great need for small, nimble beasts to run from the ship’s magazine of various unpleasant munitions to the ballistae decks, and Temerity was the smallest, the fastest, and the best at dodging big beasts too busy to see her.
By the age of 6 and a half, Temerity was versed enough in steath, spying and theft to have made a youngest MAUL apprenticeship record, if only either jill or shady government department had know of each other’s existence. She had a sense of fairness that applied reward and punishment fairly across the crew - bad behaviour meant missing tools and holes cut into awkward places on uniforms - and good behaviour meant extra rations turning up in your bunk.
Temerity might have been thrown off the ship entirely for being the equivalent of the Hide’s resident tooth fairy, but for two factors. First, the other ballista-urchins, many of whom had been pressed against their will from the streets and orphanages of Bully Harbour, were absolute menaces without Temerity leading them. As the ballista-born daughter of the Hide herself, Temerity experienced a kind of adoptive motherhood over frightened, confused kits already used to having to use violence to defend themselves. It’s useful to have munition-runners that don’t just cower in the hold during battle, after all.
The second value Temerity had to her credit was being more violent and deadly than the rest of the urchins put together. Boarding actions were frequent and bloody, and there was no greater underage causer of traumatic injuries than Temerity, when she had a mind to turn the lower decks into a mad funhouse of booby traps and psychological warfare. Death at Temerity’s paws was sudden, brutal, and humiliating, especially once somebeast made the mistake of uttering the inspirational phrase ‘cut them down to size’ in her presence.
[The Final Argument of Ministers]
To her everlasting disappointment, some far-distant genius named Nicolas invented gunpowder, and managed to make the Hide an even more volatile and dangerous floating weapon than Temerity could. To be fair she had been working at a significant pawdicap, being an uneducated 10 year old, but it had been a surprisingly close race!
Though she had been killing from a very young age, it was decided amongst the crew that formally training the firebrand kit could only be a good thing. Her mother obviously had not taught her to read, but she picked up swordplay and gunnery fast, even if she had to actually stand on the cannon to aim it first.
It was a good time to be a gunner on the Golden Hide during the civil war - the rations were steadier than most beasts got, since the government could not afford to risk the defection of the pride of the fleet. The political situation mostly flew over Temerity’s head - the Hide was simply being attacked by a load of traitors, and she needed to blow them up. Simple as. The downfall of the Lord Protectorate and the rise of Empress Amelie and her rogue’s gallery of supporters was of little interest to the teenage Temerity. The only trouble politics ever gave her was when peace broke out, causing her to run out of things to shoot.
[Dry Dock Blues]
In 1762, the Golden Hide was put into dry dock to undergo a massive refit. The whole thing was shrouded in the secrecy of the Ministry of Innovation, a government department that Temerity seemed fated to be in opposition to. The engineers were of the opinion that lowly expendable crewbeasts should not be allowed to witness the installation of top secret military technology, and Temerity was of the opinion that engineers were homewrecking monsters that were responsible for her mother’s decline in health. Mme. Boudreaux the elder wept the day she and her daughter were finally evicted from the Golden Hide and discharged from the Navy, convinced she was finally going to be deported to Alkamar.
The last few years have been a mess for Temerity. Neither mother nor daughter could bear to be on land for long, and their measly savings barely covered food, and the older jill’s ever-growing medicinal needs. They had few friends - her mother’s mental health was not well understood, and she had started to refuse to speak Vulpinsulan altogether. The worst came in Black ‘65, the worst year of Temerity’s young life. The Hide was put back into service for the Urk Expedition, but her mother had fallen ill, and Temerity could go to sea no more.
The winter claimed her mother’s soul, and Temerity put her to rest alone. In grief and poverty, Temerity reached out for the only place she knew she could make safe for herself - a ship, at sea. However, it was too much to bear to return to the Golden Hide. Seeing the Hide back in port, the hated MinoInn’s monster in her belly smoking at her triumphantly… it made Temerity’s stomach twist. She needed to go on a voyage. A long voyage, away from shore and pain and loneliness. One from which she meant not to return.
POSSESSIONS/REAL ESTATE:
[Dentist Chic]
Temerity collects teeth, and makes necklaces and makes bracelets for paws, tails and ankles, following a theme. Some are entirely shark teeth. Some are entirely fox, or stoat, or rat. Some are the I-don’t-know-what-that-was teeth, usually from the occasions she’s killed woodlanders.
[Knives]
Oh, so many of these. Whalebone handles etched with scrimshaw, good for fighting in tight spaces, gutting, and skinning.
[Memento of the Father]
A locket with the side-profile of a resolute looking male weasel. Mother told so many stories, and if half of them are true, the old hob must be greatest thief and assassin in all Alkamar by now.
[Memento of the Mother]
A lucky blue gem the size of a pea, which appears to be a staring blue eye. It wards off evil. It’s similar in colour to Temerity’s eyes, which she inherited from her mother, so it feels like the old lady is watching over her.
SKILLS:
| Physical | Mental | Social |
|---|---|---|
| Stealth [Seasoned] (4) You’ll have to tear down the whole ship to get her out. | Gunnery [Proficient] (2) Ballistics may be a science, but Eyeballin’ It is an art. | Urchin Rapport [Trained] (1) Loves kits and hardly seems to have grown up herself. It helps she’s about their size too. |
| Fighting Style: Knives [Proficient] (2) Short bladed weapons for close-quarters combat. | Craft: Booby Trap [Proficient] (2) ’Spring-loaded’ has to be one of the most hackle-raising phrases this jill utters. | Cute and Cuddly [Novice] (0) Pretending to be harmless, sweet, or childlike can save your life! |
| Fighting Style: Blowdarts [Novice] (0) Concealable, deadly with the right poison. You could lose an eye, too! | Thieving [Trained] (1) Funny way of saying ‘efficient redistribution of resources’. | Feigning Ignorance [Novice] (0) Pretending to be too stupid to understand can also save your life! |
| Swimming [Novice] (0) Not the worst skill to have in the Navy… | Espionage [Novice] (0) Secrets are such fun when involuntarily shared! | |
| Total Points in Category: 6 | Total Points in Category: 5 | Total Points in Category: 1 |
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