Re: Party Design
Yeah, Kella was a hard minimum of 19 when she left home, and every year below about 24 on joining SC makes a big difference in her relationships. But I'd honestly conceived of her as a late addition to the group, someone who already had an established reputation as a weapon for hire* before she met this band of misfits who also had a name built up. And especially someone who thought she knew how to get by without those troublesome "emotional bonds" things. On the other hand, she runs on pure willpower. The, uh, incredible stats aside, she could be pushing 60 now but for one stark problem: rpol.net doesn't think human women over 28 exist, so the portrait is never going to be right. And god help you if you didn't want to be white.
Anyway, 20 years since first link-up works for me, and makes her about Markus' age, maybe a little older. If we'd been A Group for longer than about 5, though, let me just dial back the shell-shock and drowning-in-the-bottle notes. Those were early. Not that she really got better, mind you. But the emotional heft of mutual dependence and ass-saving and basically being a Family would have softened (distracted) her a lot. By the close of a decade, she'd have emerged as more of a caretaker. If we had a base of operations, it was Kella who made it cozy: good furniture, a garden plot, serious meals, maybe even holiday decorations. Twice, because the first time someone brought up that she was turning the place into a real home, she'd have incinerated her own work. Secret chagrin for the next three weeks, eventually she'd have given it another stab and just pretended to not hear anyone who pointed out that her grieving had become less dramatic. I think she'd have spent a while ashamed of betraying her old family by loving this one, but a person has needs.
*-I promise I am not trying to be edgy. I'm honestly just reconstructing some tropes: what kind of person does become the sort of optimization-bot munchkins love? 5e doesn't really give space to min-max, which is good. Makes the exploring of themes less obnoxious.