Strisci Madrante

::"They will never know your language. But no one is born knowing any language. The language you learned from birth and speak natively – other people have to learn that word by word. A ton of them won't even try. But you can't just stop speaking your language because no one understands."
An albino, deaf noctra hailing from Fol Atzo, Strisci Madrante is a member of the Madrante gang in the city. Snide and sarcastic, she's freely caustic to anyone who gets on her bad side, and being treated as dead weight for so many years on account of being deaf has led her to being both stubborn and quick to defend her pride.
==Background==
Strisci was the daughter of Boss Madrante, one of six children (though given comments by Gepetti Madrante, they could have been not truly related to Boss Madrante after all) born into the gang. Unlike her siblings, Strisci was much more frail, and on top of that, she was also deaf. Other than Boss Madrante, not many in the gang knew sign language well enough at first to communicate with Strisci, and so she was consequently treated as dead weight. Even when more in the gang started to learn sign language, they treated it more as a little trick to avoid others knowing what they were saying.
Desperate to prove herself, Strisci continually shouldered more responsibility than she had to, often using her seemingly harmless exterior to her advantage in fooling the Madrantes' enemies into believing that she could be trusted or tricked. Her ruthlessness once her targets had outlived their usefulness eventually let her climb the ranks of the Madrantes; when she's seen in the Nicta campaign, she's one of Boss Madrante's assistants in capturing victims for the Madrante Prison.
Despite how she was able to find a way to make herself useful, Strisci was still haunted by the deaths of her much-more competent siblings. Many of them were killed when on missions with her, but more often than not, Strisci was spared or not taken seriously by their enemies on account of being viewed as utterly useless. When their enemies could only kill one of them, Strisci always managed to get away alive. She realized long ago that she was only alive because she was seen as less dangerous than her companions, and this realization wore heavily on her long afterwards.
==Second Dream of Arplakoon==
===Nicta: The Corruption Deepens===
Strisci is first found in the Nicta campaign. Before the campaign's start, she found out that the Vacaddis had obtained Eiorozziore, and she was spotted when she fled to alert the rest of her gang. Though she escaped, the Vacaddis still knew that now the Madrantes would be ready for an attack.
In Arplakoon's second dream, she pitied Ezwell, whom had just been "arrested" by the Madrantes for causing trouble on the docks with the intention of shoving him into the Madrante Prison. Because he had clearly been singled out for being a geralkki lut, she saw similarities in him to her own life, and she struggled to communicate with him that she intended to help him. However, their plan to get Ezwell out of captivity peacefully didn't pan out; Boss Madrante caught onto the lie, and his subordinate, Gepetti Madrante, was about to drag Strisci into the depths of the prison to deal with her betrayal when Cameo and Rokordi arrived. They also intended to help Ezwell, having seen the scene on the docks that resulted in his arrest.
When Boss Madrante refused to agree to Cameo's compromises, a fight broke out. In the struggle, Strisci was shot while breaking Ezwell out of his handcuffs. Boss Madrante realized that he wasn't going to win. Because he thought that Cameo and Rokordi had come from the Vacaddis to capture him, he instead activated an alarm that would bring the police to the area, and he shot himself in the head. Rokordi knocked out Gepetti, and they all escaped, but Ezwell wordlessly insisted that Strisci come with them. Realizing the gravity of the situation, she led them to a safehouse owned by the Madrantes to explain the situation and form a course of action from there.
After spending the night in the safehouse and after Strisci taught them a few basic signs in Nicta-slio Sign Language so they could communicate basic things with her, they headed out to a hospital that wouldn't "ask questions" if they were paid enough. Shortly following being healed, they discovered that Grellego Madrante, the heir apparent of the Madrante gang, was dead. The news caused Strisci to despair, since it meant that the Vacaddis were on the move and that they wouldn't be able to get their names cleared, as Grellego had been their only chance. In all likelihood, the Vacaddis would ally with the Antico gang, who were "opportunists" that wouldn't think anything of forming a temporary alliance to eliminate another gang.
They eventually decided that they would have to infiltrate the Vacaddis and steal Eiorozziore before it could be used against the Madrantes. After acquiring disguises and recording devices, they did so, picking up Oscare Iono along the way. Boss Vacaddi offered them a mission to infiltrate the Madrante Prison and have physical evidence of what they found down there; because of the huge sum of money involved, they agreed. When they told Strisci what Boss Vacaddi had asked them to do, she instead got angry and left them to search Vacaddi headquarters on her own, apparently not caring if they went without her.
In the Vacaddi headquarters, Strisci attempted to assassinate Boss Vacaddi. Though she failed, she also succeeded in taking Eiorozziore and the walkie-talkie Boss Vacaddi would have used to communicate with the main group. Holding Eiorozziore burned her hands, as she didn't have godsblood, but she continued to flee with it until ending up in a secret passage beneath the docks. Cameo, Rokordi, Oscare, and Ezwell eventually found her again. The conversation with Strisci revealed that she had known all along about the horrors of the Madrante Prison, and also that everyone was turning against her. She had fled to the docks knowing there was a passage that would lead back into Madrante territory; however, contrary to what she had been told, there was a metal grate blocking the passage. She had been led into a dead end on purpose.
Cameo took Eiorozziore and was able to break through the grate with a slash of the sword. He also revealed to her -- albeit indirectly -- that Boss Vacaddi was, in fact, Strisci's mother, with the intention of this news causing her to abandon her revenge against the Vacaddis. At first, Strisci still insisted that Boss Vacaddi deserved to die, but they convinced her to not go after Boss Vacaddi. With the Madrantes effectively disbanded, the police and the Vacaddis would hunt her down if she tried to kill Boss Vacaddi.
After Cameo and Rokordi left with Hretlakk Flametail, Strisci had Ezwell, Oscare, and Isaak -- whom had just been released from the Madrante Prison -- accompany her to the West Block Prison, where Boss Vacaddi was being held. Strisci intended to free Boss Vacaddi and stand trial for the Madrantes' crimes. However, Boss Vacaddi, believing Strisci had come to kill her, informed Isaak of Strisci's role in the Madrante Prison. Enraged, Isaak shot Strisci just as she was about to break open the lock on Boss Vacaddi's cell, and she died.
===Dralvarus: The Unbound Chains===
Ezwell, haunted by Strisci's gruesome murder, made a bargain with Alvarus the Netherlord to bring her back to life. The group, consisting of Ezwell, Isaak, and Ddremmu, encountered Strisci in the underworld after they themselves died. Much to Ezwell and Isaak's surprise, Strisci was fully capable of hearing and understanding what they said, unlike how she had been in life. However, because of Alvarus' manipulation of the spirits' memories, Strisci didn't remember Ezwell, and she mostly remembered her father's death and being killed by Isaak. Nonetheless, they were able to convince her to help them fulfill Alvarus' demand so they could come back to life, though she was hostile to Isaak the whole time and bewildered by Ezwell's apparent knowledge of her.
Strisci sided with Renul the Wandering Star when Isaak attempted to kill her at Alvarus' request, though it seemed to be more out of a desire to not fight a god head-on, even with Oladani, and out of a hatred for Isaak. She also helped the group fight off Alvarus when he realized they had betrayed him; when they escaped from the underworld, she was deaf again. With nowhere else to go, as the world thought she was dead, Strisci stayed with Ezwell, eventually teaching him how to read as he helped fill in the gaps in her memory.
===Lyzots: The Piper's Call===
Strisci appeared in Lyzots along with Ezwell, traveling with him to help him find a cure for his aunt's scale rot. They had heard there was a doctor in the city of Tezzar, but they ended up getting wrapped up in the situation with the Piper and the cultists following him instead. When Ezwell briefly considered the Piper's offer to take on the role of leading the cultists, Strisci talked him out of it. Once the cultist problem was solved, Strisci went to live with Ezwell -- who had found a cure for scale rot thanks to the spirit within Zwehan Kut being a doctor -- at his aunt's house.
==Meta==
Strisci was an original character created for the Nicta campaign, and she has no "native story" like many of the other characters in Chrono Stars.
Her first name is derived from the Italian word "to sneak," strisciare. Boss Madrante is apparently unimaginative when naming his children.
Category:Characters
Category:Non-Player Characters