About Handsome Henrietta HowardBackstory:
Henrietta Howard had a, well, a difficult relationship with her father. Hank Howard had expected her to take over the family business, to tinker away and work on junk collected from scrapyards. She was very not about it.
Ol' Handy Hank died when she was 8 years old anyway, but not before writing it in his will that she would inherit the workshop when she turned 18. The will also stated that Kurava, Hank's half orc apprentice, would raise her, and not her mother, so she could be properly educated as an engineer. Eventually, despite Kurava's willingness to part with the child and Henrietta's own desire to stay with her mother, the courts ruled that Kurava had to follow Hank's wishes, for she was Henrietta's mother now. Neither of them were very thrilled about it. Kurava tried desperately to get Henrietta interested in the workshop, but the girl proved too distractable: all that was imparted on her was how to lift heavy things and a basic understanding of engineering. The young girl spent her life staring out the window, watching wild horses run over the hills and wishing that she could be like them, running free. She regularly snuck out at night to do just that, running in her nightgown, climbing up rocks and felled trees and trying to sneak up on horses to jump on their backs. Oh how she wished she could ride something. After years of washing ratty and mysteriously muddy nightclothes, Kurava asked Henrietta what she was sneaking out to do every night, and she confessed. Upon hearing of the child's dreams of riding horses and great beasts, Kurava took pity on her and taught her how to wrangle and ride animals. Well not animals. Spiders. Henrietta took to spider racing like a fish to water, running down the track, along walls and ceilings, beating out the competition every time. She and Kurava grew into fast friends, sisters even, and they closed down the workshop to pursue her fast-moving career as 'Handsome Henrietta Howard,' pro spider jockey. This, however, did not sit well with the restless spirit of Ol' Handy Hank Howard. His wishes having been denied, Hank visited Henrietta in a dream, demanding she quit and return to the family practice. But she was far richer than he had ever been, and argued with him, calling his career meaningless, pointless and boring. In her dream, the ghost of her father climbed into her hand and slapped her. And then she awoke, her own hand having fallen on her. Initially, she thought nothing of it, but then her hand began throwing races. Despite urging her great beast forward with the reins, her hand would pat its side and ask it to slow. Receiving two sets of conflicting orders, the spider would buck her off and attack her. No one believed her when she explained what happened. But it happened again, and again. After the fourth time, she had had enough. Drunk and angry at herself for this repeated embarrassment at the high point of her career, she tied her arm to a column and cut off her hand with a saw. Her severed hand twitched and seized like a dying spider, oozing blood from its stump. She stepped on it once, twice, and then it grew rigid, lifting itself and crawling up her body, dripping blood all over. Her screams awoke Kurava, who ran downstairs to find her friend and adopted sister badly bleeding, tied down and under attack. The hand was strangling her. The two of them pulled and pulled, but could not gain purchase on the twitching thing, wet with blood. Henrietta's sight began to fade and her legs grew weak from lack of both blood and air, when finally, through their combined effort, they threw the thing off her. Kurava launched herself atop it and stabbed it with a knife until it stopped moving. Only for the dreams to begin again. In her dreams, she knew that that had been her father, exercising his will over her, telling her that he could still punish her. But she was steadfast, and refused to be dominated, to have her life decided. She was going to race and that was that. He was just going to have to get used to it. A week later, her hand was back. Kurava took her to doctors and healers trying to discern what to do about it. All were convinced that the hand was normal, even the healers who had helped seal her wounds, and knew from firsthand experience that her hand had been missing swore that it was her hand, that it was normal, and nothing out of the ordinary about it. So they started searching for answers outside of the normal. They met a spiritualist, a kind older woman who invited them to a seance, where any question they had would be answered. Unbelieving but desperate, they attended. The woman summoned forth the spirit of Hank Howard, the spirit in Henrietta's own hand. In Hank's voice, he accused his child and apprentice of betrayal. How dare they work together to undermine his legacy. It was Kurava that spoke him down, telling him that Henrietta was his legacy and that she was the best spider jockey around. How dare he lay a finger on her, the pompous ass. He was not the man she had known, but a twisted and cruel spirit brought about by two decades of impatience and anger towards his daughter's refusal of the workshop. The spirit sobbed, and sank back into the shadows. The spiritualist, possessed of herself once more, told the pair that Henrietta could learn to control him if she took the time to do so. Said he could be an asset, an ally. When they asked for further advice, she simply shook her head and directed them to her friend, a gnome wizard in a tall tower to the south. The wizard laughed at the story, and with some effort, popped his own hand off and threw it down at the ground. It clambered up his frame to his shoulder, where it sat fidgeting. This was just a thing that happens sometimes, he explained. The hands of good people get possessed by malevolent forces, but you can learn to live with it. He took her in, and taught her how to master the hand, to work with it not just as an extension of her body, but as something more. He taught her how to sever it cleanly and to cause it to grow and shrink on command. She could even ride it. Oh, how her father must have hated that, to be sat upon like a common racing spider. And he did hate it. He made that very clear. She could feel his thoughts, know just how demeaning he thought it to be, but she broke him like any other steed, as Kurava had taught her. She even got permission to ride him in the spider races. Sheet:
Init +5; Perception +8
----------------- DEFENSE ----------------- AC 18, touch 14, flatfooted 14 HP 40 (3d10+9+1) Fort +8, Ref +4, Will 0 ----------------- OFFENSE ----------------- -----------------
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