Josephine "Josie" Pellinoire

## She arrived in the City of Cyphers...

Josephine Pellinoire is a fetchling who has been serving as an assistant to Oil-Slick, her adoptive father and the owner of Gears & Mirrors, a shop that sells clocks and mirrors, since she was about seven years old. Currently, she's 17, which is the fetchling equivalent of a teenager. She lives in a crawlspace in the basement storage, and is given very basic food such as bread and cheese and water. She also receives a tiny pittance of money to purchase "luxuries", though most of it ends up going to bathing at the River Runner Tavern once a month, if she's lucky. She mans the front of the shop, but the reason Oil-Slick keeps her around is because of her ability to disguise herself once a day. She may be a decent clockworker, but she's an even better pickpocket, and if she wants to keep living and working at Gears & Mirrors, she'd better keep stealing whatever Oil-Slick tells her to steal. It's usually strange or interesting things, or small magical items or materials that can be used for spells. Josie is no fool; she knows that Gears & Mirrors is a front for an occult black market trade, but she doesn't dare say anything or she'll be kicked out onto the streets with nowhere to go, and as a fetchling who can't even shift to the Shadow Plane properly enough to fetch anything yet, she wouldn't last long.

## Now that she's older...

   Josie has always been a pretty weird kid, having been taken as a child from her kayal community and sold as a fetchling to Oil-Slick as his adoptive daughter. She's twitchy, awkward, creepy and dirty, and has trouble relating to people. Her hair is dark grey and frequently matted, though she does endeavor to do little braids and things when she has nothing to do with her hands. She hates having nothing to do with her hands. Her skin is ash-white, and she's almost constantly dirty and looks like she's been crawling in a chimney. She wears the work uniform given to her by Oil-Slick almost constantly, as she is saving all of her spare gold to purchase a certain pocket watch with a mirrored face in the shop. She will go so far as to tell others it's broken to ensure that it stays there until she can afford to buy it for herself. She obsesses over things very easily and has pretty bad aphasia, though she can keep herself speaking Common. Still, she is very smart, and manages to find ways to entertain herself. When Oil-Slick first purchased her to work in his shop, he gave her a plain black ring almost like a wedding band, though worn on her right hand, and she's spent a lot of time focusing on it, trying to get it to do the magic she knows she can cast. Finally, recently, she managed to form an arcane bond with it, and is spending all of her free time trying to learn more about magic so she can grow as a wizard and become powerful enough to leave her job at Gears & Mirrors.

## Since she learned how to cast first level spells...

Once she taught herself how to cast her first real spell, Vanish, rather than just a cantrip using the arcane bond she had with her ring, Josie knew she had real magical potential. Late one night, under the light of the full moon, she found her way to the Rotgut District, disguised as a human and wearing her thrown-together clothing which consists of a patchwork dark grey cloak and all grey, formless clothin

   g. She found the man she'd been looking for; a wizard not that much older than Oil-Slick named Archibald, who always wears a black cloak made of much finer materials than hers. However, he is willing to fill her spellbook with a few spells in exchange for whatever she manages to siphon from the occult artifacts and materials she pickpockets for Oil-Slick.

## She's made a few friends recently...

There have been a lot of new arrivals in Riddleport over the past month or two, and even besides the girl who washed up on shore a year or so back, she's actually made some connections. There's Kairo, who she met under some...strenuous circumstances, but who has quickly become her closest ally and beloved best friend. He buys her breakfast, lunch and dinner, and makes sure she gets regular baths. As it turns out, her hair is more of a dark silver than a near-black grey, once it's been washed and brushed out. She still spends all of her time wearing her ill-fitting work uniform, but she seems to be getting more comfortable in her own skin.

    She's even been gaining weight since she started eating three non-insect meals a day.

And then there is Linden, who makes her feel like her heart is going to either swan-dive into a stomach acid bath, try to escape out of her esophagus or explode entirely. They got off to a rocky start, and things are not quite perfect, but the pair are very affectionate and fond of each other, it seems.

## From rags to...slightly more noticeable rags...

Josie is not a noticeable person. She is clearly not human, but she is also branded as the daughter of a low-tier gangster, and is treated as such. Outside of the shop, she doesn't go very many places, certainly not places where she would draw attention. One day, she decided to go shopping in Lubbertown with Jasmine. She doesn't even remember what she needed now that it's all over, but there was an Iomedaean priest saying some not-so-nice things about the sex workers that are common in Riddleport. Jasmine, being a hostess at the House of the Silken Veil, was obviously not okay with how he was talking about a working woman from another brothel, nor was Josie. Fortunately for them, there was a Calistrian enforcer present, along with a few others, including a suited man who seemed fond of stepping on people and a friendly gnome. Unfortunately, Jasmine was reckless, and got caught casting a spell, and the mob of people who were listening to the Iomedaean's righteous speech of hateful degradation turned on them before the situation could be diffused. Jasmine nearly died, but she was saved by a violet-eyed elven woman who had never seen a mirror before. Josie didn't stick around much longer, instead purchasing several scrolls of Infernal Healing to help her friend, and making some new friends in the process.

## When the radar got too close to fly under...

It was only when she was out pickpocketing for Oil-Slick only to stick her hand in the pocket of none other than Kairo Rashiek that she realized she wasn't a nobody anymore. She was somebody. She was somebody to somebody who might actually *be*somebody someday, and that's what triggered this whole mess. Her duties were no longer so secret, and when she accompanied Oil-Slick as her custom-made alter ego, Eloise, to one of his important meetings, she was met with...nothing short of disaster. They were all there. Kairo, Linden, Jasmine

    , and... some other lady she didn't recognize, but she could only assume it was someone her friends trusted. They were brave heroes, all of them, but in the end she had to save them from sure death. In the end, though, everyone was fine. No one was hurt. But Kairo lost a bet against Oil-Slick, and they were forbidden from spending time together in the capacity they had been. She set to work on a plan, but it was a long-shot, and way earlier than she had intended.

## White noise...

In the weeks following the beginning of the end of the only world she'd ever known, everything was a blur. Day in and day out, it was just a constant barrage of people she was used to approaching on her own ending up being the ones to approach her. There was very little privacy to be had during this time, which was the opposite of what she was used to, and between her friends' near-constant concern for her well-being and keeping up with work and her various other duties to Oil-Slick, she found herself trying to retreat from it all rather than reach out. The white noise that near-constantly plagued her mind was building, and it was rare that she'd even find time to think, let alone relax by herself.

## When the bell tolled...

The weeks leading up to Oil-Slick's death were hell on Golarion, but once it was all over, there was just...relief. She was still plagued by nightm

    ares and various anxieties about pretty much everything, but there was finally room to breathe. She calmed a lot, and gave up her pickpocketing ways for the most part. She focused largely on running Gears & Mirrors for quite some time, progressing her relationships with Linden, Kairo and Jasmine first and foremost. She even decided to ask Jasmine and Kai to be a part of her family soon after the event.

## Growing pains...

Months passed. Josephine learned a lot, but more than that, she grew. She gained weight, grew two inches from 4'8" to 4'10" and started to fill out her frame. On top of that, she was bathing regularly, dyed her hair and started actually taking care of herself. Her hair grew to the point where it reached the small of her back. She was actually starting to feel like more than a glorified sewer rat, and on top of that, she discovered the miracle that is flayleaf. It helped to ease her stutter, helped her stay calm in social situations, despite the anxiety wreaking havoc behind her eyes.

## Learning to trust...

Josie spent a lot of time with Linden in the following months in an attempt to trust him in the same way she trusted Kai and Jasmine. It took some time, but it really felt like they were making progress. On top of that, she managed to land a pretty interesting job wherei

    n her skills as an illusionist and a chess player both came in handy. For all her efforts, she earned a pretty interesting pocketwatch, one far beyond anything she was capable of creating herself. It had a lot of parts she didn't understand, but she was able to adapt the things she did understand to her own work.

## New friends...

Josie always said she was never any good at making friends, and she wasn't. Not really. It was more like, the people who were her friends were good at making friends, and they chose her to make friends with. One way or the other, she managed to make two new friends; one Ishmahla Linqua, and one Damien Borgia. Ishmahla was pretty in line with the usual company Josephine keeps; charming, charismatic and unafraid to flirt with anything that moves. Damien, on the other hand, was nothing like any of them. In fact, he was more like *her* than anyone she knew. An alchemist from a family that bred intelligence into its every spawn, not only was he the very embodiment of everything she'd been craving, he was a cyphermage. They met one night, or morning, as it were, when she was standing at the Cyphergate observing its runes as she typically does when

    she needs to think. The conversation was awkward at first, but she soon learned that he was nothing if not a kindred spirit. They hit it off.

## Returning favors...

Her friendship with Damien bloomed like some twisted flower, and she reveled in it. He had his familiar deliver a completely in-tact half-orcish heart right to her very doorstep, and in return, she crafted him a wondrous item to get him started as well as one of her signature watches. She disguised herself as Eloise for the delivery, which only managed to turn into something...much different than what she had originally intended, but she did gain her first valuable piece of information. And to top it all off, she managed to record the words on one of her clockwork bugs. Better yet, Damien was none the wiser that Josie was the one who made the delivery.

Meanwhile, Damien's wasn't the only watch she crafted. She made one for Ishmahla, too, her newest 'nice' friend. In presenting her friend with the watch, she learned another unexpected secret. This one, though, she wasn't so happy to have.