Vanessa Tulpa

### Powers

Murder Expert, Elemental Contracts of Smoke, Contracts of Darkness, Lethal Mien Form, Winter Court Mantle, Holder of the False Face of Truth, Wearer of the Dead Man's Boots

## Changeling information

### Blessing

Affinity for Wits, Subterfuge and Stealth

## Life Before Arcadia

 Vanessa Ann Tulpa was born in Farmington, Iowa, in the year 1937. Raised alone for most of her childhood away from other children, she became intensely interested in fantastical stories, in particular Celtic mythology and legends of Fairie circles. This captivated her through her her youth and she dreamed of being pulled into a magical land of Faeries, and she spent years studying and learning all she could about fantastical lands abroad. When Vanessa was 15 years old, her brother Vincent Tulpa was born, an event that unfortunately claimed her mother's life. Her father worked as a farmhand, and spent long days working to provide for his family, and Vanessa raised Vincent mostly on her own. Misfortune comes in waves, and the next several years her family was destitute, and her father passed in a tragic farming accident, leaving Vanessa to raise Vincent, now 6 years old, all on her own. Vanessa moved to Iowa City, Iowa with support from sympathetic relatives in the area, and began working three jobs to support her brother. She worked days as a receptionist at the University Housing Offices, nights sorting and cataloging books at the University Library, and weekends as a waitress. In this way she was able to support her brother, who was often watched by the same relatives in Iowa City who helped them move, but they had their own burdens. Vanessa finally got to the point where they had enough money to begin her own studies, taking only night courses at the University studying History and Mythology. When Vanessa was 26 she had the opportunity to take an internship with a professor whose pet project was Fairie Circles and their relevance to History and Mythology. On a cold night in September of 1963, she and the professor went to an area steeped in mythology in Iowa City, a graveyard where gravestones were arranged oddly in a circular formation. What happened next was lost to time and memory except for those who orchestrated events, but Vanessa was pulled violently from her own world into one full of darkness, fear, and anger, all for violating a strange rule of which she had no knowledge.

## Arcadia

 Vanessa has very little workable memory of time in Arcadia, but what little she does are images of brutal violence, fear, and waiting quietly alone in darkness for the chance to kill. Perched atop a dark pit full of unthinkable horrors, and made to fight them, force them back into the pit in violent. Unthinkable years on end, unable to sleep, made only to keep watch, and fight for her very life with brutal monsters. Vanessa began to think that all there was in the world was darkness, fear, and violence. She lost herself to it, and became nothing but the brutal watcher on the edge of danger, relishing the fight. Eventually came the opportunity to escape, or the chance, she thinks, maybe an offer or a trick , but what matters is it was taken without question, and Vanessa was able to emerge back into the mortal world, partially human still, but dramatically changed.

## Iowa City, 2014

 Vanessa emerged from Arcadia in the same place that she left, though she was very far removed from the same time. She found herself in the Iowa City Cemetary, near a statue known as the Black Angel nearly 50 years later, and outwardly had not aged a day. Her form was changed dramatically though, her mouth split down her chin into a horrible mandible, her skin a cold clammy gray chitin, an extra pair of eyes above her own, both pairs of which her large and black like a bugs eye, or an alien, her fingers extended into long dark talons, and wings of smoke seems to float around her arms with the pattern of a moth. None of this appeared to be true the the mortal eye. There were others that emerged changed with her, other Changelings, as they were called, Teddy, Beatrix Lu, and Fatimah Haik, who like her were drastically changed. The more severe change was not physical, though. Vanessa found the world hard to adapt to, but not because of the difference in time, or the lost years, in fact new technology and the changes in the world intrigued her. What had changed was herself. Before Arcadia, she was curious inquisitive and caring for those around her, selfless to a fault, But now every touch from another person was a threat, with the possibility of her being caught, or hurt, and she could not let that happen. Her life became filled with fear, and the only vertainty she had was one given to her in her time in Arcadia, that violence was the answer, and theat was welcoming, and that is how she would meet resistance. With the others she became embroiled in the society the Changelings, other like themselves escaped from Arcadia changed, and found herself welcomed into the Winter Court, more more secretly and truer to herself was her role in The Duchy of Truth and Loss, where she would eliminate Fetches, creatures of magic and glamour made to take the place of those stolen to Arcadia. In this time, Vanessa also met and fought with another changeling, a Fire Elemental named Xiao Zhi, on several occasions, both of their violent natures bringing out the worst in their encounters.

## The Truth and The Accord

 For a time all was well with the group that became known as the September Motley, but over time the group drifted apart, each pursuing their own interests. Particularly Fatimah and Vanessa resolved to be on either side of a schism, the rights of the fetches, Fatimah advocated for their humanity and free will, while Vanessa viewed them as nothing but tools of the dangerous True Fae. During this time, Vanessa also grew much closer to Xiao Zhi, and the two became engaged in a passionate relationship. Although it was not long before they were brought together again my something fierce and terrible, The Truth. Awakened to horrible awareness of the fate of the world, and mechanisms plotting against it, the September Motley discovered other agents fighting against the Truth, the New Orleans Accord, and untited with them to gain information about the Truth's actions in Arcadia, as well as the actions of the mysterious God Machine. In doing so, they encountered a banished True Fae, called A coin, and through the encounter the True Fae was killed. After that encounter the immediate threat from the Truth was pushed back, but Vanessa remains vigilant.