Bloodnose
| Age | 48 (Born Frimary 1716) |
| Species | Stoat |
| Gender | Female |
| Height | Above average |
| Skills (Seriously hampered by declining health) | Crossbow: Professional Knives: Expert Sword: Experienced Brawling: Experienced |
DESCRIPTION:
Somewhere, at some point in time, there had been something before Bloodnose, some creature born of beasts, with a face and a name, and friends and a family to hold them dear. That young stoatmaid perished, violently, and a new beast was born out of the splashing flame of a clingfire orb. This new animal bears the mark of her creator, the scar of her rebirth: an uneven, streaking mask of fleshy pink, red and grey that starts at the tip of her muzzle, stopping mercifully short of her eyes and north of her mouth.
With her face shrouded by cloth or bandage, the rest of the now middle-aged stoat's body comes unsurprising for her species - a slowly greying coat of brown or white, given the season, and a black-tipped tail, neither too long nor too short. Fitting her birth in war, she once possessed a fighter's build, lean and strong, not compromised by peacetime comforts or vanity, though age and a lifetime of smoking have long since taken a toll on her frame.
By the light of day, in her official capacity, the former aide and bodyguard of Willard Brudenell is an eye-catching figure enough, drawing casual attention either to her scarring or any attempts to cover or protect it. In this way, the knives she would wear under her otherwise unremarkable daily outfit often went unnoticed, and her ever-vigilant disposition ignored.
BIOGRAPHY:
It is generally agreed that the individual known as Bloodnose was born in Frimary, 1716 as Yirel Schwarvia - the daughter of a blacksmith and his loyal wife, eking out a middle-class existence in the Imperial Condos. She would help her father with his trade, developing a healthy respect for flame and its ability to destroy or reshape.
Such a life was never quite enough, though, and as the stoat came into her own she rejected the monotonous, complacent living of her family and their business for a life of excitement in the Slups - first among a band of young thieves preying on the shops along the Trenches, and then the Maelstrom cadre that the band soon came to be, fighting the Fogeys and the Grey Guard out in the streets.
So came her first taste of war, where the excitement soon turned to anguish, vengeance and hatred. Yirel died somewhere in the last throes of the fighting down at the jetty fort in 1733 - Maelstrom's last stand as any kind of fighting force. The Navy and the Guard burned the fort to cinders with new and horrible weapons, and Yirel and her comrades burned with it.
The scarred, empty, defeated stoat that survived the flames was released from prison when the Winter War came. The lumpy red tissue that covered so much of her face had won her a new name there - Bloodnose - and she took it with her when she joined the Stoatorian Guard, fighting for the same government she sought to destroy not even a year before.
In the massive attrition that the war and the bitter cold brought, Bloodnose soon found herself a Lieutenant, proving herself a competent, but cold and dispassionate young officer. When the war ended, and the records of her Maelstrom past and prison time were somewhat conveniently rediscovered, she was discharged from the Guard, and fell into the first mercenary outfit that would hire her.
It was through a Special Dispositional Service Corporation contract that she would meet the future ruler of the Imperium, one Willard Brudenell, becoming a part of his personal bodyguard. When good fortune and bold maneuvering won him the post of Minister of War, and from there, the reigns of the Imperial government, she rose with him, eventually becoming an official aide to the Minister's office.
The years went by with rapid pace. She'd always believed in the Minister, seeing him through various plots and crises, protecting him and his reign both officially as his bodyguard and - less officially - as his dark hand in the night. There was more to that - she'd fancied him, his genteel nature and gentle body. But though she faced all manner of threats to his rule with an unwavering courage, the resolve to pull herself closer to him never came.
The Verfolger-Misanthropy crisis of 1742 came and went without a dramatic shift in the political landscape, but Willard Brudenell's favor was taken by a different, more direct stoatess's charms, and for the first time in a long time Bloodnose faltered. She still believed in the new government - still believed in Willard's believing, but more and more she felt herself lost, out of place. Aimless.
When disaster and war came again to the Imperium, it almost came as a relief to Bloodnose. She could put her mind into her work, a soldier of the highest order, with near limitless resources behind her. In the field, she was a silent terror, a mythical killer - the tip of the SDS's spear through the civil wars that wrecked the nation. When, finally, the fighting came to an end, she was shocked to find herself on the losing side.
The new regime tried to be delicate, given so many years of war. Brudenell and his wife and the family they'd made were allowed to live in exile, and the bulk of his loyal officers were given amnesty, some even allowed to remain in their positions. For Bloodnose, who had so strongly tied herself to the fortunes of the Brudenell government and SDS Corporation, she was suddenly left without allies or employment, the reformed military deliberately distancing itself from old partisans.
She got by, as best as she could. Mercenary work proved all but impossible to find in the Imperium, forcing her to depend on her pension from the Ministry of War. Eventually she wrote to Willard for help, to keep herself out of poverty. He found her work 'protecting' old facilities of the United Shipping and Repair Company, with an inflated salary and a humble abode in the Imperial Condos, but this meager success proved to be more a source of despair than comfort. For years she soldiered on, trying her best to do her job and find a new purpose in life, to not give in to the encroaching sense of failure and defeat.
Despite her efforts, Bloodnose is a beast living out her final chapter. Shortness of breath and violent coughing fits grow worse with the day, forcing her into an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.
POSSESSIONS:
Simple clothes and knives, a nigh-limitless number of matches and cigarettes, and a home by the Docks, in the so-called Imperial Condos.
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