See Tilly’s character sheet for everything else.
The first thing that people notice about Tilly is that she is very ugly. In her mask, she has chemical burns marring her slender face and has gone bald. Her arms have patches of wispy hair wherever the flesh has not been burned away, with longer dark hairs toward the outside. Her legs are similarly scarred.
In her mien, there are obvious acid burns on her face and sloughed-off skin on her arms and legs from bad fire burns. Her skin tone is goulish white, giving her flat oval face the appearance of a particularly ugly dinner plate. She has black feathers running up the outside of her arms and lower legs, outlining wings.
Tilly prefers short-sleeved tops and mid-calf, loose shorts.
Most of Tilly’s possessions are cheap and unremarkable. The few pieces of gear listed here are special in some way, even that’s just because they have stats.
A cheap, simple street bike the local shop had for $30. It’s 100% trash, but it works.
An old-fashioned sling Tilly brought with her when she escaped her keeper. It’s technically made of arcadian material, but not in any kind of showy way.
Rules for different types of sling ammo are reproduced here for convenience. If there’s a conflict, the official house rules win.
| Ammo | Damage | Cost | Special |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bullets | 2L | • | - |
| Lead Shot | 3L | • | AP 1 |
| Stones | 1L | - | - |
A hedgespun staff about 5ft long with a leather sling on one end. It’s carved to have a smooth, lightly flowing profile which gives the staff an almost elven look. When used as a sling, the body bends just enough to act like a spring, pushing a little extra power into the shot. As a fighting staff, its mass shifts with each movement, making it more nimble in the hand.
For ammunition, add +2 to the damage values in the table for normal sling ammo.
A blood-forged iron axe on a nice hardwood handle. Purchased from a smith in the goblin market in exchange for a pint of deer blood.
Various pieces of camping and hiking gear for long hedge expeditions.
A white hedgespun shawl which provides 1/1 armor while worn.
Info about the tokens that Tilly has.
AKA Ferretaur Token
Incomplete: 21/40
This grants +1 to attack rolls when there are two of them fighting a common enemy, +2 if there are four or more of them in the pack. They detect the presence of this magic with a Wits + Wyrd roll. If someone spends time on an extended Wits/Intelligence + Occult roll at ½ hour/roll and earns 6 successes they can figure this out and extract one token from each boar. If they get an exceptional success on a single roll they can learn enough about it to craft more tokens. These are 2-dot tokens, activated just by holding and concentrating (plus the usual activation fee). The drawback is that those drawing on this power take a penalty to both Empathy and Socialize in the following scene equivalent to the bonus granted by the token (-1 or -2, depending on how many were in the pack). The catch is that each person in the pack for which this was activated, whether they paid the proper cost or not, will take an extra 1L damage per person using the catch during the fight, in a manner determined by the GM. Perhaps an enemy’s attack hits extra hard, or if they don’t take any hits they might cut themselves on their own weapon or fall and cut against a sharp stone or stick.
Only works in the wild hedge, not in hollows.
Brief summary of the pledges that count Tilly as a signatory.
Greater alliance, guard dreams.
Boons:
Help the freehold in some way, don’t screw anyone in the freehold.
Boons:
Follow monarch commands, help the court, do not reveal court secrets.
Boons:
Tilly was born in 1996 and graduated high school in 2014 as an average student. She felt betrayed when her graduation seemed to change nothing about her life. There were no newly opened doors and the world her parents had promised for years simply wasn’t there.
She got a job in retail and continued to look to drugs for a way to escape. Her dealer Harry Braun was one of many “friends” she joined for parties and nights out. After years of scraping by, she asked Harry if she could get in on the town’s drug trade, and he set up a simple mule job to start her off.
The recipient of the bag was James Kearney, a real gang member. The transit and dropoff were going fine until payment came up. James paid Harry, then confidently assumed that Tilly wanted some sexual action for her cut. He was dead wrong. Harry intervened and got punched in the stomach for his trouble, and Tilly ran off into the night, chased by James. She lost him in a thick tangle of roses and hawthorn trees, and her Keeper snatched her up.
The imperious Keeper used Tilly as an errand girl, fetching rare ingredients for the arcane brews and magical workings that filled Its private chamber. Tilly was, admittedly, bad at this. Though the Keeper refused to look upon Tilly, she could sense the great being’s growing impatience as she returned empty-handed from her first few outings.
Tilly wasn’t alone, thankfully, and made the acquaintance of some of her Keeper’s other servants. A withered old man named Basset gave her a glimmer of hope: in shelving and copying their Keeper’s notes, he had learned to make a few of the dreadful brews himself. He made her a potion to help her sight, and her next mission was a success. Basset deserved a tithe, of course, but at least now she wouldn’t be skinned for meat, or subjected to the thousand other tortures the servants whispered about at night.
In time, the tithes proved too much and she asked how to permanently fix her eyes. Basset directed her to Dallas Gray, a fearful stodger in his own right. His price was higher, but he agreed to improve her vision. Once that debt was paid, the cycle started again with other body parts.
Tilly’s missions quickly became more dangerous. Icy, dark lakes and ever-shifting valleys gave way to mires filled with acidic vines and midnight hills of firey tar. She returned from them all, but not without many hideous scars.
Tilly was far from the only person her Keeper relied upon for supplies. Felenac and his goblin troupe sometimes came to the edge of the Keeper’s demesne, selling their trinkets and arcane gewgaws. Tilly knew what they would value in trade, and struck a deal one summer to help her escape.
Unfortunately, Felenac also knew the vast wealth of the dread Keeper and made a second bargain to hand over the cart she rode in. One of Felenac’s unseen brethren smuggled her out of the cart just as it passed back into the gates, thus fulfilling both deals and securing two payments. Meanwhile, the troupe left Tilly in the deep hedge to fend for herself.
Tilly grew very skilled at sneaking, searching, and watching for hours on end. She has an affinity for high places where she is easily overlooked, and for the shadows which help her to hide. She openly envies the beauty of others and uses her own ugly mug as a social weapon of sorts, reveling in the discomfort she can cause.
Unrecognized by herself, Tilly harbors a deep self-loathing fueled by misplaced guilt. She believes her old drug habit damned her, making her someone who deserved the horrors of Arcadia. The scars she has are an intense source of shame and she instinctively weaponizes her appearance to hide how she feels.
Paradoxically, memories of drug use are what helped lead her back to the human world. She misses the escapism and moments of hollow happiness that came from her benders. Since she blames those same drugs for her durance – as indicators of her moral failing – she now shuns all mind-altering substances in an almost Mormon way. Coffee, tea, alcohol, cigarettes, pot, and other recreational drugs are verboten. She even feels guilty about chocolate, since it contains traces of caffeine. She’s terrified that if she starts on any form of drugs again, she’ll be re-captured. In essence, she’s hiding from what she considers “drugs” as much as she’s hiding from her actual Keeper.