Piccola Tessere
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| Piccola Tessere | |
|---|---|
| Social Rank | 5 |
| Fealty | Velenosa "Velenosa" is not in the list of possible values (Redrain, Valardin, Grayson, Thrax, Pravus, Lyceum, Crown) for this property.
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| House | Tessere |
| Gender | Female |
| Age | 25 |
| Religion | Pantheon |
| Vocation | Soldier |
| Height | average height |
| Hair Color | Black |
| Eye Color | Green |
| Skintone | Pale |
| Journals | |
| Authored By / Featured In | |
| Active | |
Description
Of all the Little Snakes, she is the smallest.
Like any serpent, she has an air of cultured civility about her slender silhouette. When she speaks, she does so quietly but firmly. When she moves, it is with the grace of someone who has practiced physical arts for years. When she sits, her posture is properly strict and restrained. But it is her height – she is barely five-feet tall – that stands in contrast to her certain composure that is reflected in the flattened line of her mouth and the steadiness of her gaze.
In her eyes gleams the light of a feral heart.
Nature makes snakes precise and deadly predators. She stares with green eyes which are a little too large for her head and carry with them a baleful intensity. The skin which can be seen is laced with the scars of war, some thin and some not. Hardened hands bear long fingers; squared shoulders run to slight hips; and feminine features are nullified by dark hair cut short and left wind-swept and loose. And her demeanor carries wild fury caged in cold chains.
Though she be little, she is undoubtedly fierce.
Personality
All warfare is deception.
Outwardly, she is enigmatic by design. She is not short on words when she writes, but she uses few of them when she speaks. Her tone normally as soft as down, but the words she chooses are as sharp as the arrows she carries. She is green and she is black, like the colors she often chooses to wear: the color of olives for peace; the color of grief for war. The only thing that is certain is the deliberation in the display she projects.
Victory and defeat are matters of circumstance.
Inwardly, she is dreadfully focused outwardly. She has forsworn life, which only leads to death; but she has embraced death to find her life. Not knowing what will happen in the next moment, what moments she has she puts towards her projects in service of others, be they for her family, her friends, or her lieges. For her, the execution of service is the path to enlightenment. And the only way to perfect service is to give everything to its attainment.
The noblest struggle is justice before a tyrant.
Having had her nobility stripped from her, she is aware what it is like to live without that privilege; having had it returned, she understands the power of redemption. Of all the causes she aids, the most important is that of the common people, and nothing pushes her more in service than caring for and elevating them. She is fiercely loyal to her soldiers; she offers aid to all commoners who seek to rise; and she sees few as deserving of that which they did not earn with work or blood.
True wisdom is freedom from one's own ideas.
Background
Lady Pierina Tessere's fortune was as bad as her House's reputation.
Her father was one of the Countess' younger brothers. When she took over the House, he served as one of her consiglieres, specifically over the House's burgeoning fabric trade. For a while, things went well, and Pierina was born as the fourth of sixth children. Unfortunately, of them she was the smallest, and she suffered the usual slings and arrows of childish insults from her siblings, family, and peers. She was given the nickname "Piccola" by her father, which since became her nom de guerre.
As went all things in Countess Lucrezia's court, her father fell out of favor after he became a target of intrigue and investigation. Unfortunately, her father was embezzling money out of the family's coffers, and he was punished severely by ostracism and the loss of his estate. Soon after, her father was found strangled in his sleep, a deed allegedly done by those with whom he had made poor deals. Her mother found little charity in the Countess' court but found comfort in booze and the arms of men.
She and her siblings scattered to the wind. Survival was not easy on the fringes of Iriscal, but it could be done. Being picked on for many years made Piccola tough and tenacious, two features which caught the eye of a sellsword company looking to increase its ranks of fodder. Two years of tagging along on dangerous missions afforded her enough to buy her own gear and horse. She soon joined a different mercenary company, and then another and another until the day a message called her back home.
The Countess was dead, and in her place was Sabine. The message had come from the new Countess - Piccola never inquired as to how it reached her - and requested her return to Iriscal. And there, she was given a command and mission: to train and lead the House's cavalry in a manner befitting the House's ambition of prominence. It would be a chance to bring her family back into the House's ruling echelons, where it belonged. And no sane Lycean would give up that chance for redemption.
Or revenge.
