Re: character backgrounds/bios
History:
Lady Penelope Ann Veracity Darkmoor, of the eastern Darkmoors, is the eldest daughter of an aristocratic clan whose rambling estate and ancient, brooding, run-down family pile sprawl over the lonely moors of England. The Darkmoors are an elder family; certainly, they predate the Conquest, being listed in the Domesday Book in more or less their current location. Many lurid tales have been told about the Darkmoors over the centuries, with gruesome deeds committed by its lords in medieval times, accusations of witchcraft, a whispered family curse and some outbreaks of insanity, and some dabbling in not one, but two Hellfire Clubs. The last century saw the construction of certain follies and grottoes on Darkmoor lands, which seemed to have some connection to, and were built in the style of, old Celtic religious sites. Nevertheless, the family, and their manor, were much decayed by the late 19th century, with dwindling fortunes and fewer Darkmoors.
Penny was the first-born of the latest generation, and, unfortunately for her father, female. With no male heirs forthcoming for her domineering, increasingly reclusive and irrationally ill-tempered father, she was forced to handle a number of affairs of the estate, and she grew up inquisitive, intelligent, and, in opposition to her father, free spirited. She explored the mansion and its secret passages and wandered the estates, playing among the follies, grottoes, and forbidding stone circles, and she even climbed the local tor and ventured into a winding tunnel that lead into a deep cave adorned with primal paintings left by Stone Age peoples. She also delved into the dusty tomes in the mansion's library, chasing after the family history and stumbling across all manner of strange tales and weird lore. It all gave her a taste for history, legend, adventure, and the macabre that was generally not fitting a young lady.
Finally, when she was of age and a debutante, it was expected that Penny would be married off to a suitable husband, a good match for the family. Penny had no desire to be a dutiful lady wife and breed, however. Instead, she sought a career as an independent woman, and more than a governess or secretary. She went to an Oxbridge university, received a broad education in the sciences, history, the classics, and mythology, and discovered a particular talent for solving other people's problems, from the mundane to the dark side of human nature, and beyond. She moved to London and set herself up, first as a scientific consultant to the police, and then as a private and consulting detective, in a manner similar to her colleague Mr Sherlock Holmes, from whom she learned the art of deduction. Her forwardness, logical manner, and choice of occupation proved quite shocking to male-dominated society, and as a woman she was often underestimated, which was to her advantage.
She soon discovered all manner of peculiar cases, with weird things coming from the fringes of the British Empire and old, dark secrets at its heart. Her earlier studies of the old lore made her aware of possible solutions beyond the mundane and ordinary, and she soon found them. An investigation of an alleged haunting she suspected to be a hoax to drive the owners out of an old house turned up a very real, very angry ghost. Penny headed back to her books of lore to find a way of putting the spirit to rest. Soon, everywhere, she discovered true cases of the supernatural, grotesque, monstrous, and otherworldly. What's more, Penny had a knack for seeing beyond the veil to the magical world behind the everyday. She adopted a pseudonym, "Penny Dreadful", after the lurid horror pulps, to protect her family name from scandal and enemies. She specialised in the bizarre and unexplainable cases that stumped the police and even Mr Holmes, though their solutions necessarily remained unknown to the general public for fear of causing a sensation. She necessarily such cases sought out, as she couldn't make a living waiting for the unnatural to come to her, becoming what some would term a "hunter".
She investigated mediums and fortune tellers, ghost hauntings, vampires, demonic possession, mischievous fey, mythical British monsters, and elder and incomprehensible things. She solved Holmes's unsolved case of Isadora Persano, found stark staring mad before a match box containing a worm unknown to science. She slew a Spring-Heeled Jack and an Owlman, sighted the Loch Ness Monster, and kept the Lambton Worm from awakening. She also hunted down the notorious Jack the Ripper, the most horrific of monsters. But far from a demon, she found him to be a perfectly ordinary, completely depraved, human. He came close to ripping out her guts when she turned the tables, and the knife, on him. The scandalous nature of the Ripper's identity meant the case had to remain officially unsolved, and her own position in London was precarious, so Penny decided to retreat to the colonies, to expand her business horizons. She considered India and Australia, but a letter from the Men of Letters settled the choice: America. It seemed she'd made an international reputation, and they apparently sought her expertise. Thus, she set sail for New York and new hunting grounds.
Allegiances:
Penny holds allegiance to Great Britain, queen and country. She supports the Empire, but deplores its excesses and cruelties, both abroad and at home. She is also a suffragist, taking part in protests and campaigns for women's right to vote and other freedoms.
She is strongly in favour of law and justice, but preferably the latter. She'd rather a good person go free for a crime than suffer unjustly, if she agrees with their motives, good character and honour, and amends and recompense are made. Similarly, the courts and gaols are not equipped to handle demons, so she's found it necessary to take the law into her own hands.
She also argues for the scientific approach, of logic, rationality, and the art of deduction.
She believes that monsters, the demons and the vampires and so on, stand against all these things she believes in, and that they must be stopped.
Personality:
Penny is highly intelligent and observant, and handles all her problems in a logical manner and applies the arts of deduction and scientific analysis. However but she won't stop at the impossible solutions when the supernatural is involved. She can determine a lot about a person on first glance, from habits to occupation, and its the discrepancies and oddities that give away an inhuman monster. She'll apply the same techniques to a monster's murder site as she would to an ordinary crime scene, and learn all that occurred. She is always polite and well mannered, honourable, and has a firmly British stiff upper lip.
She believes she is as good as any man, if not better, and she's right. She won't use her so-called feminine wiles or intuition, nor claim to be too delicate for anything. She's not above pretending to be a man if it can get her further or avoid undesirable attention, however. Some men may think her cold and unwomanly: Penny isn't one to scream and cry, shrink at the sight of blood, or turn hysterical in the face of terror as they may expect. Nor is she immune to the sight of such horrors, only inured through experience. The grisly murder scenes and cruelties she's witnessed, and especially those of Jack the Ripper, haunt her at nights. Her response is to throw herself into her work and treat them with an air of clinical detachment.
Growing up in her eccentric family left her distant and subtly off in her interactions. In a later century, she might be termed mildly autistic, or a case of Asperger's. She does have a caring side, as much as any person, but has difficulties showing it. Nevertheless, she is always confident of her abilities, though not unreasonably so; dignified in any situation; and independently minded. She's never one to be put off by social conventions or class divisions, treating all the same as she pushes through barriers. Science has shown her that all men and women and races are equal.
Having lived in a repressed culture of brief, chaste courtships and lifelong marriages of convenience, lacking great social skills, while pursuing activities many men find distasteful in a woman, Penny has had no romantic engagements. She is also, of course, a virgin, which makes her a potential target for virgin sacrifice. This isn't a topic for polite conversation, obviously.
Penny is capable of defending herself, but is no strong fighter. She learned the basics of the European gentlemen's martial arts of fighting with a cane or umbrella, kickboxing, and knifefighting from the London street gangs. She's also learned to fire a pistol or rifle, which proves more effective in scaring away ruffians or dispatching monsters.
She has a wide range of knowledge from her university days and travels, supplemented by her training in the arts of deduction from Sherlock Holmes, and some more illicit skills from the better class of London thug who occasionally owed her a favour.
She enjoys reading, both academic papers and books for research, and the new scientific romances of Wells, Verne, Doyle, and the like, as well as the "penny dreadfuls" she took her name from. These horror tales tend to be inspired by genuine monster encounters, with a few facts buried amongst the fiction. She also, to some embarrassment, collects souvenir spoons from the places she has visited, and all around Britan, Europe, and now America. She has a larger collection stored in London, and usually one or two on her person. After all, one never knows when they may need some sterling silver. A silver spoon,
correctly placed, can take an eye out of a werewolf, Penny can attest.
Penny has an affiliation with Scotland Yard, whom she regularly consults with, is a member of the Library of St. John the Beheaded in London (a secret vault of old occult books once banned by the Vatican), and soon to be one of the Men of Letters, though she criticises the choice of name.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:32, Tue 29 Oct 2013.