delven

Name: Cass
Age: 7 years older than I was when this game began
Contact: Telepathy
Other Characters: Yseult
Interests: Adventures, tomb raiding, treasure hunting, library ransacking, taking things both to and from museums, historical research, a character who is easier to dip into things without any of the layers of overthinking required with Yseult.


Name: Evelyn Farrier
Canon/OC: Native OC
Journal: delven
Race: Elf
Nationality: Free Marcher
Occupation: Lord of Fortune
Division: Research
Mage or Not: Not
Age: Mid/late 20s

History

Evelyn Farrier grew up in the Kirkwall alienage, in essentially the best case scenario version of that life: both her parents had jobs that weren't actively killing them anymore than normal, she and her half-dozen siblings were fed and clothed and had two and half whole beds to share. As a minimally-supervised child, she and a pack of friends snuck into a forbidden passageway and happened upon a little cache of forgotten artifacts. Evelyn in particular was taken with the experience, captivated by these relics of the past less for their value in the market (though that was fun, too) and more for their stories, which she knew must exist even if she had to make them up herself in the absence of research material. She convinced her pals to keep looking, and for a couple years they spent an unsafe amount of time treasure-hunting through Darktown tunnels and selling recovered trinkets until they got a little older and noticed how dangerous it was (and needed real jobs).

Evelyn found work as a housemaid in Hightown, but wasn't prepared to give up her interest in ancient odds and ends. As "luck" would "have it" her employer was not just a smoked herring magnate but an amateur archaeologist. Although he had no real talent and even less respect from his peers, he still had access to that world, and Evelyn made the most of it. She dove into his library in her off hours and finagled her way up to the post of his secretary, helping edit his misguided monographs and organize his often fruitless and occasionally disastrous digs. It was a pretty good life, all things considered, but she found it difficult to be content with that. When a couple Lords of Fortune were caught one night trying to steal a piece from her employer's collection, Evelyn helped them escape on the condition that she join them. Off to Rivain they went, and then a hundred other places since, and she's never looked back.

Personality

People have described Evelyn as "ambitious," usually in a way that makes it an insult to her and a warning to others. She'd disagree; she's not ambitious, she's driven. The difference is that she isn't aiming to achieve anything in particular—she doesn't aspire to become a world-renowned scholar, or to make a discovery that will force the world to sit up and take notice, or even to learn everything there is to know about x y or z. She doesn't care about accomplishments or accolades, position or power or principle. She just wants to find out what's next. Over and over, until someday the next thing ends up being the thing that kills her. She's driven by an insatiable desire to peek around that next corner, read that next page, in both the metaphorical and literal senses.

She doesn't fully share the death-defying adrenaline junkie thing common to many Lords of Fortune, her need for action satisfied as much by digging through an obscure manuscript for some bit of lost knowledge as dodging booby traps in a lost tomb. She loves tromping around the countryside with her friends because it brings new adventures every day, not because she's incapable of sitting still. What she doesn't like is routine, the sense of being trapped in a pattern where every day is functionally the same and the future is entirely predictable.

Her role in the group is somewhere in the middle ground between Xio's heights and Fiovara's depths, a bit more even-keeled mood-wise, if just as prone to flights of fancy. She used to be insufferably bossy, trying too hard to assert herself so people didn't write her off as a servant. She got over it, eventually, but can still get defensive and tetchy if people seem to be writing her off.

She's fairly outgoing, though well-practiced at hanging back to get the feel of the room first. As much as she doesn't mind testing boundaries in many ways, she's never felt much of an impulse to be defiant for its own sake, and isn't the sort to pick a fight she can't win on principle. And outgoing doesn't always mean forthcoming: she tends to keep a bit of distance from most people, even if it might not be obvious right away. (It's easy to miss when she never sticks around anywhere for long.)

She's been intermittently in touch with her family over the years, not trying to avoid them just often difficult for mail carriers to find. She visits occasionally and sends money more often, her treasure-hunting having helped her parents retire and buy a small piece of land near Ostwick. Her team are her closest people now.

Opinions & Affiliations

Humans: Prejudice against elves is a fact of life she doesn't think much about. Some people are better, some people are worse, navigating that is so ingrained by now that she spends very little time thinking about any of it. If someone said to her that elves should have more rights and be treated better, she'd agree, but she hasn't had much interest in getting involved in Causes.

Mages: Sometimes fine, sometimes not.

Chantry: She was raised Andrastian and the Chantry does more charitable work in the alienage than anyone else, so she has some baseline good feeling about it as an institution. But she was never devout to begin with and years of exposure to the wide world and its ancient mysteries and her friends' wildly different beliefs have eroded what faith she did have. She finds Andraste a more interesting and compelling figure than the Maker, and the history and lore is fascinating, but she struggles to view the Chantry or its religion as an ultimate authority anymore.

Riftwatch: Not super hype about coming back to Kirkwall and getting involved in an organization that seems to have a lot more rules and stairs and death and less treasure and mystery than she's used to. Not wild about sticking her nose directly into this war. Particularly unenthused by the concept of having a boss and maybe even orders which is the kind of thing that sounds an awful lot like it comes with a routine. But they all agreed it had to be done, and it is at least a new kind of adventure, so she's going to suck it up for now. It'll probably grow on her.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths:

• An extremely haphazard education, primarily in history, archaeology, and ancient material culture, aka treasure. There are narrow subjects she's gone down a rabbithole about, and broad ones she's just skimmed the surface of, and everything in between.
  
• Good at research, particularly treasure-hunting related.
  
• Good at maps and camping, has learned to spot common types of booby traps.
  
• A naturally hardy constitution and resilient personality. Quick, agile.
  
• Young spine, still good at sleeping on the ground.
  
• She can hold her own with a knife or sword or whatever, but only to the point where she's not a liability to her friends requiring constant supervision. She can fend something/someone off long enough to run away or yell for nearby help, but she's not battle-ready.
  
• Familiar with the warrens of Darktown and has some old friends who're now in the Coterie, but it's been a long time.
  
• OK with horses. Better with dogs and one Lesser Rivaini Forest Bear.

Weaknesses:

• Not battle-ready.
  
• Extremely haphazard education means plenty of blind spots.
  
• Elf.
  
• Chip on her shoulder can get in the way, but it's mostly filled in now.
  
• A bit selfish, generally inclined to put herself (and her friends) first.
  
• Slight chance there are people in Hightown who might want her very belatedly arrested.

Inventory

Some treasure. Some treasure that's been converted to coin. Some books, some maps. Joint custody of an artifact connected with Zazikel.

Motivation

Accidentally did some work for the Venatori that even more accidentally got one of her best friends kidnapped. Attempting to make amends/get some help.



1. Link

2. I have— [ A warped double-echo loops back on itself and hopelessly garbles the words, not helped by the fuzzed feedback of a smothered laugh. ] —go away.

Go, then! [ is a different voice, the laugher by the sound of it. She falls silent as the presence of a bear in the garden is announced. ]

It worked, [ she chimes in. Another woman, a Kirkwall accent clear now that the echo's been removed. ] And he's really a lovely bear. If anyone tries to fight him or evict him we'll be extremely cross. Or if anyone gives him anything sticky to eat, that would be almost as bad.

[ Her voice becomes half-muffled again, like she's covered her crystal with a hand to talk to someone in the room. ] But that time there was a— no, the river's not nearb— Oh they'll love that.

We'll have to let him in the baths, [ she says, with a note of warning the sternness of which is ruined by the fact that she sounds again like she might laugh ] If anyone gives him honey or jam, that's what's happening. So just. Be aware.