Ophelia Walker's page

Works for me!

I've been very much enjoying it! I do keep having to refer back to the book a lot since I'm new to the system, but I'm really liking what we're making.

--- Downtime ---

For the first days after the job, Ophelia barely leaves her residence, feeling profoundly guilty about maybe having taken Esta's life force away. It's only after the girl's spirit shows up that Ophelia begins to feel slightly better. It occurs to her that the girl is the first person to be in her home since Riven died, and even she isn't really there.

Still, she's glad for the company. While Esta seems to have quite a bit of energy, Ophelia worries over her, insisting the girl not over-exert herself. As she's playing with Esta one afternoon, she remembers vividly the amulet, and how it kept Esta around. It occurs to her that the girl could vanish at any time. It occurs to her that the same could be true of Riven. Despite the time she's spent trying to learn about the arcane, she still feels like she has barely scratched the surface.

She does her best to explain this to Esta one day. "Someone close to me had an... accident. Like you had an accident." She frowns for a moment, realising she is unsure of what actually happened to Esta, before leaving it alone. "I am trying to learn how I can keep you both safe. Some days I will need to go out alone to do that, and some days I may ask you strange questions, is that okay?"

Provided the girl understands Ophelia spends some time trying to learn more about the device used in Esta's necklace, how it was able to siphon Leviathan essence into her, how such a thing might be made, and what its limitations might be. Spending time with Aranna on her barge, she sips tea and explains the situation. "I've never seen anything like it. She was being fueled by it, kept here by it... Of course, now that I've removed it, I'll have to give her some of my essence from time to time." She frowns. "Unless I can get my hands on some more leviathan essence." Shaking her head, she adds, "Unlikely. Have you heard of a device like that before?"

Actions are: Long-Term Project, Train. Sort of going together in this case. Learning more about spirits and maybe how I can keep them here / make them more "whole"

Long Term Project : 1d6 ⇒ 3 That's 1 dot.

Apologies for my absence, I changed jobs and it cut into my time a bit more than I expected it to. Thanks for botting me, and doing exactly what I would have done, except far better. :)

As far as XP, I guess I get one for the Desperate Action, and one for Beliefs/drives/heritage/background. I don't think I get Vice XP, because while the device itself was occult, I sort of put my values / the job before my desire to have it and learn from it. Still, this is something that will affect Ophelia and we'll likely see again. So, 2 for me sound right there?

"'Had her chance?'" Ophelia repeats, incredulously. She glares at Fog, her voice icy. "She's a child. Perhaps you'd like to donate your Essence - if she lived long enough then surely you have as well."

"You are indeed a brave girl." Ophelia says with a sad smile. "It's a pleasure to meet you Esta. Run and get your snack while we set up the game, it's no good to play on an empty... stomach." Her speech falters but she recovers, much as she can.

Provided the girl takes leave, Ophelia turns to the others. Her voice is quiet, but firm. "I am not taking it from her." She says simply. "The necklace we are intended to retrieve is projecting Life Essence into her. It's the only thing keeping her here." She frowns, "Because the Life Essence is Leviathan, we could replace it with... different Life Essence and still retrieve what we came for, but I can't say how long that would last..."

Ophelia looks at the girl and feels her heart wrench in her chest. "I'd much rather it wasn't." She mutters to Fog as much as to herself. Studying the necklace for a second, Ophelia frowns, hoping that there's a different way.

Forcing a smile, she crouches down to the girl's level. "That's a lovely necklace." She reaches under her collar and shows the girl her own necklace, an old and clearly quite valuable necklace, encrusted with diamonds and emeralds. (something akin to this) "Daddy's are wonderful, aren't they? My own gave me this when I was not much older than you are now. I think yours is far more beautiful, though. Was it a present from your daddy?"

At the same level as the girl, Ophelia takes another look at her necklace. As it looked now, the necklace was the only thing keeping the girl together. She understood what it was to lose someone, and wondered if she was capable of inflicting the pain of loss a second time on this poor family. She takes a deep breath. "My name is Ophelia."

Saint nods. "A lady's jewelry box, I would think. And no one locks their jewelry box." He follows Guts, trying to put his feet in exactly he same spots as the more experienced sneaker.

"Of course not." Ophelia whispers with a smile. "A lady wears her best jewelry. I-" Her train of thought breaks off, and her eyes lock with Fog's. She nods, saying quietly, "There's someone else here." She reaches out with her mind, trying to feel what moves in the building around them.

Gather Information: 3d6 ⇒ (3, 4, 2) = 9

I will have a light load. Since Thief's Rigging gives +2, I'll myself also have 2.

Prowl (Untrained): 2d6 ⇒ (2, 3) = 5

Welp, sorry Fog.

Ophelia wonders for a moment how she gets saddled with joining Fog and Guts in the alley, rather than walking through the door with Dusky, but shakes her head. 'Part of being on a team means rolling with the punches', she reminds herself. Following the others, even as she tries to sneak, her heels inevitably clack against the cobblestone ground.

"You ought to find a nice girl like that." Ophelia teases Saint, watching the serving girl walk away.

Sitting and listening for a time, Opehlia opens her mind up to the conversations around, finally settling on the Iruvians. She feels a stab in her heart as the man speaks of his friend's wife having an interest in the occult.

Ophelia herself had never had an interest in the occult, but knew well the feeling of a nice surprise from a caring husband, who took an interest in your interests. She longed for those days, and wished that Riven knew how to give her the one gift she wanted now - to have him back.

That was the hardest part about this. She could prepare herself for an empty bed, for waking up alone, for interacting with people who she knew would ask how she was getting on, but these little surprises still managed to cut through her armour, catching her off guard, punching her in the gut.

She wipes a tear from her eye and clears her throat. "Do you think there's something to this merchant on Farrier Lane?" She asks Saint quietly. "Leviathan Blood diamonds are of some interest to me regardless, but I do not want my own... interests to force our direction."

Ophelia shakes her head when Guts stalks out. "Boy is likely to get himself killed." Turning from him as the door closes, she seems to have forgotten he ever existed, and returns her attention to the others, when Saint proposes a plan for them. "Mrs. Walker, please" Ophelia corrects Saint gently, her eyes twinkling. "I am still a married woman, you know. But I agree, I think we could indeed get further together than separately. Shall we?"

So I absolutely love theme songs so I had to find one that fits who Guts is at the moment. It isn't correct for the genre but I adore Firewater too much I hope you all like it.

Oh my god I haven't heard Firewater in about 10 years and now I need to go listen to their everything.

"A merchant and an Iruvian..." Ophelia muses. She brushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She was wearing a long black pencil skirt, boots that went up to meet it, and a white blouse with a blue waistcoat over it. Despite the location and atmosphere, she still looked both proper and stunning. The only sign of life's difficulties of late was in her eyes, which burned fiercer than ever as a result. Despite being a widow, she conspicuously did not dress all in black.

A look of disgust spreads across her face at Guts' proposal about intimidating or even hurting Jarro. "Just because we are in such a place as this," She begins, "Does not mean we need to behave as rubbish ourselves." She reaches up to her own necklace, given to her by her late husband. It was old, one of the few symbols of nobility that she still possessed, along with her appearance and accent. "There are other methods. If this Iruvian is a collector, we may be able to meet him in a more... social or business manner."

Tossing my missed dot into Wreck, and Everybody Steals into Finesse.

I'm inclined to think we should only give the Hive one coin, and give one to the Dimmer Sisters. It might be useful early on to have some kind of an ally, and I'm not sure if the Hive would ever really be that.

I also say screw the Wraiths, but giving them one coin may be seen as more "professional" than stealing from them was...

I thought our Rep was Professional, not Daring?

I believe when it came down to it, that more votes went to Daring. I voted for Daring because I was concerned that it might be easy to lose the reputation of Professional early (plus I like the idea of us biting off more than we can chew). But I'm honestly a fan of either, and can certainly work with either.

@Ophelia, any input on how Ophelia might know these guys? Though they're not all BFFs or anything, the guys all have friends in common and may have worked together in the past. What about Ophelia?

My suggestion was that she might know Saint's parents, but that doesn't get her into the shady side of things. We're using Eckerd for a lot of connections, but it might make sense if she's delving into talking to spirits that Ophelia might have contact with Eckerd and/or Fog's source for news of the newly dead. Thoughts?

I think a big part of it for Ophelia getting in is going to be needing money - with her husband having died, her on the verge of losing her job at the university, and her family cutting off ties with her, she's spending more time and money than she actually has with trying to learn more magic, and it's going to catch up with her. I'd sort of like to open her character there, without necessarily having worked with any of you before, but I'm not really sure how established we're all meant to be with each other.

That said, I definitely like the idea of knowing your cousin / parents - perhaps our families are old acquaintances? I'm not sure how old you imagined Saint being to suggest we knew each other as children or anything, but at the very least exchanging pleasantries around town seems like a place to start.

I don't know that I'd have a reason to be interested in the newly dead, though - unless the circumstances of my husband's death were strange and I'm having Eckerd keep an eye out for similar events in the future? I haven't really given a lot of thought to the murder itself, so we have a lot of flexibility there. What do you think?

I'm definitely in agreement with Thief's Rigging - that was my first choice for an upgrade. As far as Burglary, that's certainly a compelling argument... I'm on board with that change. I also like Six Towers for being close to our hunting grounds. The dereliction makes sense, too. I also do really like The Docks.

Whoa, those sheets look awesome! Is there a second upgrade missing from the Crew sheet?

Let me think about my 7th dot for a bit, I'm not super sure what I want to go with.

I'm really excited with what we have.

I left it blank on the survey. I think(?) it might be a bit easier to come up with when we have the other stuff ironed out.

Alias is up! And I've added a bit more info to it as well.

Character Relations

@Fog - I think Fog and Ophelia will get along quite well - with Fog interested in Ophelia's life continuing to spiral a bit out of control with her growing obsession with the spirit world. It might also be interesting if Fog was at the scene when Ophelia's husband died - what do you think?

@Ophelia - I think these characters will likely not know each other until they're brought into the crew together. Ophelia is working with some arcane things and Guts is not in that side of life at all. I can see him having a lot of questions for her when they're working together, trying to learn what she does.

I think that makes sense. We're pretty much polar opposites in our upbringings, so not having met before makes sense. I think we'll be able to have some fun with that - Ophelia may look down on Fog at first.

Still need to read up on the others...

Crew

Reputation - I'm into Professional and Subtle. Daring is also interesting - I sort of like the idea of us biting off more than we can chew, being these sort of underdogs, never afraid to back down from a challenge.

Lair - I'm super into the abandoned Lighthouse idea. I also really like the half-sunken grotto in the maze-link underground canals idea, as well as the junked rail-car. All of those sound really thematic and fun.

Hunting Grounds - I like Nightmarket the most. Silkshore is a close second. Espionage is my favourite here. Then Burglary.

Special Ability - I like Everyone Steals and Patron both, but I think Patron has more interesting story hooks, so I'm there.

Thanks so much for the selection! I'll get my profile updated soon.

About me: I'm a 30 year old web developer / comic writer in Boston. I've been playing games on here for about 4 years, and RPGs in general for two additional years (little bit of a late bloomer there).

As far as Crews, I'm thinking this:

1) Shadows
2) Smugglers
3) Hawkers