Eleanor Blackthorne [TW]

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Eleanor Blackthorne
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Nov 23, 2018 7:33 pm
Topics: 1
Race: Passive
Character Sheet: Character Sheet
Plot Notes: [url=http:/fullurl/]Plot Notes[/url]
Writer: Thistle
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Tue Dec 11, 2018 12:10 am

Eleanor Blackthorne

Image.

Race: Passive
Birthday: Dentis 6 2699
Age: 20
FC: Ilka Bruhl
Place of Origin: Anaxis
Current Location: Brunnheld
Occupation: Scullery maid
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Physical Description


Nature has not been kind to Nell. Born with a host of congenital issues that left her markedly different in appearance, most issues are obvious on sight. She has a crooked, hunched back, that has left her with a sharp wedge shaped hump rising up from between her shoulders. Her arms and legs are too short, so that her hands and feet start halfway up from where they should have. Her fingers and toes are likewise affected, with the first four fingers on each hand and the last four toes on each foot stuck together, leaving only her thumbs and big toes free.

Less obvious are the issues with her skin, nails and hair. Her skin is covered in patchy pink places, appearing as lines on her arms and legs and circles on her back and stomach. The skin is thin in those places and easily cut. Nell also has patches of darker skin that sometimes resemble freckles, especially on her face. Her nails are small and poorly formed as well. Her hair is a dull reddish blonde, and so fine it breaks when she brushes it. Her eyelashes and eyebrows are so thin, they almost aren’t there at all.

After her back, it is her face that Nell is most self conscious about. Her jaw and forehead are unusually large, while her chin is unusually pointed, giving her whole face an overly exaggerated oblong shape that is emphasized by her hollow, barely there cheeks. The bridge of her nose is wide and flat and long, seeming to Nell as if it is little more than a clumsy afterthought done by someone with little knowledge of what such a thing should look like.

Her eyes aren’t quite where they are meant to be either, with one a bit higher and the other a bit lower than was common. They don’t sit properly in their sockets, but curved inward, giving her eyelids an unusual appearance. The top were sunken in, while the bottom were swollen, and so she was left with permanent bags underneath her eyes. Nell’s eyes are also quite small, and very round, seeming to her to be far rounder than proper eyes ought to be.

Nell's hair is nearly as unmanageable as the rest of her. When she’s required to, she'll braid it, or pile it into a messy bun held together with pins and loose ribbons. If left to herself, her hair is usually hanging loose and is often in her face. Most days it is a mess of tangles, with everything from small pebbles to dried flowers trapped in the strands. Getting a brush through it would be almost impossible--even assuming she would sit still long enough for someone to try.

She prefers simple, loose fitting dresses, made from soft material, though she tolerates coarser cloth. Nell wears shoes reluctantly, and when permitted is always barefoot. Her hands are rough, calloused and red from years of hard work. Nell appears furtive, almost feral, and is prone to darting away and hiding in small spaces when frightened. She frequently avoids eye contact when speaking, though she can stare when she is particularly interested in something or someone.

Nell's inability to look people in the eye, coupled with her peculiar bird-like head tilt that she uses to convey everything from bewilderment to interest, often leaves those around her with the distinct impression that something is 'off' about the young woman. She is unable to keep still while speaking, and has a number of nervous habits, ranging from biting her lower lip and twisting her thumbs around the loose threads in her clothes. She carries herself hunched inward, and often seems to skulk rather than walk.

text
Diablerie:
Nell’s diablerie is a whimsical one, and has only manifested once, when she was around eight, right after she’d broken one of her grandmother’s favorite dishes. Simply put, anyone within a radius of 20 feet from Nell will experience audio and visual hallucinations of kittens. Those closer to her will be able to actually see, hear, and feel the phantom kitties, while those around the edges will only hear faint miaows and purrs. .


Personality

Nell is sheltered, and childlike. She lacks a great deal of practical knowledge and, while literate, her skills are poor. She has a particular fondness for sweets, and will happily eat them for hours on end. Though shrewd and clever, Nell is also plain and simple, with a naturally curious--and quite gullible--streak. She's easily manipulated, and a prime target for bullies.

Extremely conscientious, Nell holds everyone--including herself--to the same high standards. There are no shades of gray for her. Everything is either black or white, good or evil, and every person is the same. She has no tolerance for mistakes, either from herself or another person. Despite this, her fear of confrontation means she’s far more likely to judge someone in silence, or assume she’s misunderstood the situation, rather than outright confronting the person.

Approval means the world to Nell and she will go to great lengths to obtain it. Obedient to those she knows and trusts, she is wary of strangers, and is prone to silent staring. She can be painfully shy and awkward, and is mostly incapable of standing up for herself. Her history makes her particularly susceptible to threats of physical harm, but emotional manipulation works as well. Nell desperately wants to be "good," which, for her, means doing what she's told, when she's told, how she's told.

Polite to a fault, Nell says, sir and ma'am like a properly brought up girl of her time. Her penchant for politeness can probably be unnerving, as she says please and thank you before and after every request, no matter how trivial, because she struggles to tell when those phrases are appropriate and when she can leave them off. Better safe than sorry is her motto, so she thanks people for everything from compliments to offhand comments about things she might be carrying, and she says please for requesting anything from the repetition of a question to asking someone to hand her an item she can't reach.

Nell has had little in the way of formal education. She can read, count, and do simple sums in her head, but struggles with writing. Despite her lack of formal education, she's capable in other areas. She has a big imagination and a natural gift for remembering and telling stories, though she usually lacks an audience--except the mice, or the dishes.

While she is dependable enough with her chores if given specific instructions, supervision is usually necessary. She can scrub a floor or a dish, or hold a mop, but even then she is prone to wandering off if something more interesting catches her eye, or getting so lost in her head that it isn't unusual to come upon her staring into space with a dripping rag in her hand.

She is also unusual in other ways. Nell has strong reactions to various textures--lumpy porridge, faty meat, or meat with too much gristle, and stale bread are some of the things she finds particularly upsetting. She can't stand touching course or sticky substances or dried on food. Rough fabrics like wool or lace, dresses with high collars, and hose also bother her. While she likewise despises brushing her hair, she's old enough now to do it without much of a fuss--though if left to her own devices, she often looks unkempt.

She adores nursery rhymes and often mumbles them to herself as she does her chores. Back home, she'd also befriended a host of small creatures that made their homes in and around her house. All of them, from the robins that live in the gardens, to the family of mice in the attic, have names. Nell considers them her friends, recognizing them on sight, and will happily spend an entire afternoon in their company. She will continue this practice in her new home.

Frequently lost inside her own head, Nell seldom speaks, and when she does, she often stammers. Words and sentences are hard for her to form, and take time to construct inside her head. She thinks in pictures, though those pictures often move, and usually there is dialogue, and translating that into speech is a tremendous chore. Speaking to her animal friends is far easier. She mimics their sounds and of course they understand her because they're friends. She loves games of all sorts, from hide and seek to make believe.

She has been brought up to believe that she is not as smart as those around her. Slow and Simple are some of the kinder things she’s been called over the years. This, coupled with her lifetime of seclusion and service, means that she remains ignorant of the events going on in the wider world. As a result, she lacks an opinion on most political matters, and is quite content with her life as it currently is. After all, she couldn’t possibly manage on her own, could she?


Backstory

TW: child abuse


The manor house was old, its red brick hidden beneath a thick coat of ivy. The house perched at the top of a hill, with a narrow dirt track curving up to an elegant circle drive. Behind the house the mowed lawn sloped down and down and down until it ended in a dark, dark forest. The drive itself was tree lined, and there were several trees clustered at the base of the hill, though the hill itself was kept neatly mowed year round. Beyond the house stretched a great expanse of moor and at the very edge of it, the sea roared, lapping hungrily at the shore. It was a wild, desolate place, and like all such places, it housed a great and terrible secret.

Four floors were within the house. The kitchen, servants' hall and scullery were in the basement. The parlor, sitting rooms for men and women, dining room and drawing rooms were on the first floor. The second floor contained the bedrooms for the lord and lady of the house and another, smaller room, with a rusted deadbolt on the door. The third and fourth floors were devoted to the servants' rooms, split at the center, with the women in one wing and the men in the other. A maze of stairs and secret entryways, hidden panels and concealed doors, ensured that the servants could move about the place largely unseen by the Lord and Lady Blackthorne.

At least, such was the intention. But intention is rarely reality and so it was in the Blackthorne home. The young Lady Eleanor, youngest daughter of Lady Anne and Lord Harry, had found love with the son of a neighboring family. That might’ve been all well and good, save for one small detail: the young man was already married. Naturally, the Blackthornes were appalled to learn of the scandal, and even more horrified when they discovered that their daughter was with child. They promptly cut ties with the other family, and gave out that Eleanor had gone to stay with distant relatives elsewhere in Anaxis. She hadn't of course. Instead she remained at home and gave birth with the help of a midwife, whose silence was payed for with a stiff bribe.

Nell was born at midnight, on a cold, rainy night near the start of Dentis. She came out into the world tiny, pale, and frightful in appearance, as if her mother's foolishness had brought with it a special kind of curse. Small and mewling pitifully, she had her mother's red hair and her father's blue-gray eyes. Though concerned at her appearance, Eleanor was thankful, both that the baby had finally arrived, and that it lived. She was a shy, soft spoken, easily charmed woman. Simple, said some of the kinder villagers, foolish, said others, and misbegotten halfwit, said her father. Still, she was pleased to have her babe at last, someone who had at least a small part of Daniel in her.

Eleanor's mother and father were less pleased. Not only had their daughter insisted on keeping the babe, despite their advice, but now that the child was born, it was apparent--at least to them--that something was amiss with it. What healthy, sound newborn did not bring the house down around it with its wailings? But Nell barely made a peep. And what of her host of deformities? Surely Eleanor would grow tired of the creature and Henry or Anne would find themselves caring for it. Well, Eleanor would find herself in for an unpleasant surprise if she expected them to do more than what was required. She had made her decision, and Henry at least intended to see that she stuck to it. Fate it seemed had other plans, as not long after the birth, Eleanor took sick and died.

Her parents mourned her, but there was a part of them that felt more relief than sorrow at her death. Now there would be no one to come poking about, seeking for a baby that never should've been. No one to come asking after the nursery door that seemed always locked. No one to go hunting up the mysterious young farm wife who seemed to come and go from the house at all hours, and always looked as if she did nothing but sit about and nurse infants all day. No one to ask after the strange sounds that so often woke the servants in the night-sounds that were eerily similar to a baby left on its own to wail its distress until it learned to quiet itself.

Though at first all seemed well, and Anne was inclined to ignore her husband’s dire mutterings, eventually, problems began to manifest. True, Nell sat up, rolled over, and crawled only slightly later than was normal for children her age--and that could easily be blamed on her misshapen back, and too short arms and legs, which made movement difficult—but her other peculiarities were less easy to dismiss. She would cry for days on end, and would not be consoled no matter what was tried. Only a grizzled old woman, one of the family's tenants, could sooth her, and that only by wrapping her so tightly in blankets that the little mite could not stir a limb. then she was content as a lamb, and would lay peacefully blinking up at the world around her. At other times she was so still and eerily silent that Lady Blackthorne would stand with her hand over the babe's mouth to be sure that Eleanor still breathed. The baby was fascinated by moving objects, and quite content to lay and watch dust mites floating on the breeze.

When she attempted to engage with others, she was clumsy and awkward. Repeating bits of overheard conversations to herself earned her no friends, nor did repeating them to other children, though it took some time before the connection stuck. She struggled socially, particularly with reading body language, facial expressions and other nonverbal cues. While she eventually mastered the basics---a smile meant happy, a frown meant anger, tears meant sadness--more nuanced expressions continued to confuse her. Raised eyebrows, for example, could mean anger or surprise or confusion, and when she attempted to guess, she was usually wrong.

Eleanor spoke oddly too, though she mastered words earlier than some children, learning to speak at age two. yet even this was peculiar and not as it should be. Either she replied with cobbled together phrases often taken from the bits of books she’d overheard others reading aloud or she answered with badly garbled sounds, as she often ran her words together without pausing between them. A typical conversation between Eleanor and another person ran like this. Someone would ask how her day was, and Eleanor would reply, A good servant is never idle. Sweep, sweep, with the broom. Wash the dishes, wipe the dishes, ring the bells for tea.Give the house a good scrubbing and do the laundry. Stitch, stitch, stitch! All the mending! Polly put the kettle on, we’ll all have tea.

She was a strange child in other ways, too. She cried when she ate lumpy gruel or stew, puddings and mashed vegetables Fatty meats or those with too much gristle were sure to bring on a tantrum. She whined about the hardness of the bread, and cried about touching stuck-on food. She wiggled away from hairbrushes, stockings, high collars and coarse cloth. Velvet and lace she found equally distressing, but she adored satin and even plain cotton if it was soft enough. Fond of sweet and tart flavors alike, as well as salty foods or those that used a lot of spices, Eleanor seemed to crave stimulation. She would rock and bite her hands or her clothes when upset, and twirl her hair when frightened. When she was happy, she would clap her hands, spin in a circle, or jump up and down.

She was particular about her collection of baubles--the trinkets she picked up from cast off items found in the storage rooms on the fourth floor, or in her brief, supervised visits to the walled in back garden--and would cry and insist on fixing it should it be disturbed. Sometimes she attacked her grandparents when they displeased her. Brushing her hair or forcing her to eat foods she could not tolerate were certain to get a reaction. Eleanor had a nasty habit of biting, kicking, scratching and elbowing whoever was closest to her when she got upset. As she grew, she often attacked herself, having learned that lashing out at her grandparents only led to punishment. Usually, she simply retreated somewhere small and dark and quiet and hid, rocking and singing or humming to herself until she calmed down.

Nell often behaved as if she were blind, though it was apparent that she was not. She struggled with depth perception, tended to look at things and people from the corners of her eyes so she could see them better, and stared at any source of light she could. She had trouble with clutter, struggling to identify individual objects, and reading remained a challenge due to the small print. She developed strategies to compensate, like holding the book or object closer to her, or using magnifying glasses. She found an old spyglass left in a box in a fourth floor storage room and she used that to see objects and people at a distance.

What Nell needed, Henry decided, was discipline. She’d been too spoiled by her grandmother, and that created all the difficulties. Eventually he persuaded Anne, and they set about rectifying their apparent mistake. And so when Nell was defiant, both her grandfather and her grandmother slapped her—especially when she refused to look at them. They both sent her to bed without supper, and they both reminded her, almost daily, that she was a wicked, incorrigible child, likely cursed by the gods for her mother’s foolishness.

Her grandfather took on the responsibility of breaking Nell of her defiance, as he saw it. And so, when she refused to eat her food, or change out of her nightgown, do her lessons or finish her chores, he took his belt to her back, backside, and the backs of her legs, leaving scars she carried into adulthood. If she did not apologize properly—as her grandfather defined it—following the punishment, it was repeated until she did. As a result, Nell has retained the habit of mumbling, “Yes, sir, I’ll mind you now, I’m sorry, I’ll be good,” even as an adult, regardless of who might be disciplining her, or whet that discipline entailed. When she disobeyed. Her grandfather shut her up in the cellar.When she argued or whined, he slapped her across the mouth. When she broke or damaged goods, or touched things she wasn’t meant to, he spanked her hands with a ruler. He used the same punishment for poorly done writing lessons and household chores.

Her grandmother determined to correct Nell’s more numerous peculiar mannerisms and various social faux pas. And so, when Nell rocked, or hid under tables, or bit herself, her grandmother paddled her backside with an old silver hairbrush, giving her bruises that took days to fade and made sitting almost impossible. When she fought Anne during bath time, done every day in ice cold water, where Anne scrubbed her skin till it was raw and red, her grandmother held her head beneath the water till she stopped breathing. When she was impertinent—when she asked impolite questions or seemed to talk back—grandmother washed her mouth out with soap. When she wiggled during mealtimes, grandmother pinched her arm, or lifted her skirt and swatted her bare leg. When she seemed inattentive, grandmother pulled her heir, or smacked her on the ear.

Though her grandparents despaired, eventually Nell grew into a quiet and seemingly well behaved child. She was skittish and timid, and barely spoke or moved when not doing her chores, for fear of breaking a rule. Her grandparents seemed to have many rules, most unspoken, and Nell never could figure them out without a great deal of painful trial and error. Her grandparents took her extreme docility as a sign that the girl had learned proper behavior at last, and she was allowed to spend her evenings with them, curled up on the floor by the fire, drawing while grandfather read and grandmother did needlework.

Nobody was surprised when she failed the test at ten. Grandfather had thought she was a Passive from the moment he saw her, and Grandmama eventually shared his suspicions. And so shortly after her tenth birthday, Nell was packed off to Brunnheld, to become a servant there. The adjustment was painful—literally and physically—but eventually Nell learned the rules and routines of her new life. She settled into the servants’ quarters, and was soon installed in the kitchens as a scullery maid.

Though Nell mostly remained within the kitchen over the next ten years, she was also sent to wash windows, sweep, and preform other simple tasks around the school. While her unusual appearance has not seemed to bother anyone overmuch, she has been confined to the kitchens under strict orders not to leave when visiting persons of importance tour the school.


Aptitude Skills

Mental
Average
Physical
Good
Social
Poor

Focus Skills

Combat

Nell is pretty non confrontational, but if pushed, she might lash out. In that case, she’d use whatever came to hand, from a broom to her fingernails or her teeth. Mostly though, she tries to avoid those situations and is more likely to flee than fight.

Linguistics

Estuan— fluent
Estuan Sign language—conversational

Magic

None

Professional

Scullery maid: proficient
Kitchenmaid: beginner
Housemaid: beginner
Between maid: beginner
Parlor maid: beginner


Career and Income

Occupation

Nell is a scullery maid at the University of Brunnheld. Thanks to the ten years she’s spent there, she’s proficient at her job and trusted enough to be allowed beyond the kitchens. She’s good with a broom and a mop, and knows how to do dishes, start fires, and make tea. She’s good at following directions, but still finds herself distracted.

Income: servant

Nell is a gated passive, and thus has no real wealth or personal possessions. .


Housing and Inventory

:Housing

She lives in a sex segregated form with two other girls. Nell is fond of them, but whether the same can be said of the others, she isn’t sure.

Inventory

  • Two plain cerulean dresses
  • Two powder blue aprons
  • Two plain white nightdresses
  • One set of shoes
  • Random loose buttons, ribbons and scraps of cloth she’d fished from the rubbish pile.


Goals

Nell wants you find a family and acceptance long term. Short term, she wants to be good at her job and avoid upsetting those around her.

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