Gertrude Elsbeth's page

About Gertrude Elsbeth

Gertrude has had a problem with authority since the moment she was born, when she emptied her bladder on the midwife’s dress immediately. Upon hearing this, one might picture a little hellraiser of a child, running parents to exhaustion with antics, tantrums, and perhaps even property damage. But Gertrude has also been a quiet, serious person since the moment she was born, glaring at the aforementioned-nurse with a glower she would spend decades growing into. If asked to describe this seeming contradiction now, forty-something years later, she would simply say she does not have a problem with authority, but a problem with incompetent authority, and that the real problem is the preponderance of the latter.

Naturally, Gertrude has never been even ordinarily popular, much less extraordinarily popular. She is surprisingly fine with this, preferring the company of books and their worlds. Like many over-read, under-friended children, she learned to enjoy and value people more in the abstract, impersonal way. The few who know her well would know that despite her icy temperament and continuous expression of polite distaste, she is a deeply principled and empathetic person. Her passionate love for the rights and dignity of her fellow mortals is perhaps matched only by how much she hates holding conversations with them. “Mortals” is specified because she finds the idea of anything desiring worship, even a god, abhorrent to her very being. And, of course, the aforementioned problem with [incompetent] authority. As with most subjects, she can accept that other people might feel differently, and she is not taken to proselytizing, even when it comes to her antipathy to proselytizing. To do otherwise would be hypocritical—and while she may be a harsh, intense, acerbic presence—she pains herself to avoid hypocrisy.

Upon coming of age, she left to join the Templars, having expressed no interest in them before. This fact was borne out when she expressed little interest in the organization after joining, too. Thankfully, few organizations would not trade exuberance for quiet acuity. She still might be working at their headquarters were it not for her difficulty with the “quiet” part, as she could not help but voice her displeasures whenever she felt management was interfering with her work, the thing she actually cares about. That was what had brought her there.

Knowledge has always mattered more to her than anything, since that day when she was little and she realized that understanding what a bully was trying to get from her—reactions, a feeling of power—allowed her the ability to deny him both instead of merely reacting. When she learned of the Templar vaults, their potential secrets nagged at her. What knowledge could be contained behind those locks? What powers are being denied the people? Alas, she learned quickly that she is not as suited as she thought for the brand of patient subterfuge required to find out.

So instead she has turned her attention to a new project. Secreting knowledge away is not the only way it is lost and never shared, as it is so often lost to carelessness and chaos of life. Thus, she will attempt to collect and maintain as much of written knowledge as she can find.