Lovette Ziniris McKinney-Bodwin

## Show Appearances

**Lovette Ziniris McKinney-Bodwin** (primarily pronounced *love-et*, occasionally *love-ay*) is a Player Character in the World of Aedron played by Grem. A half-Gnome engineer from the Steam Isle, she appears in season one and season two of *Check Please!*.

## Description

### Appearance

Lovette is a light-skinned and freckled gnome with ginger hair. She stands at 3'6" (a gargantuan size for most gnomes) and is usually seen wearing a blue longcoat and travelling suit. Lovette also wears a mechanical gauntlet of her own creation on her left wrist, but usually keeps it concealed beneath her sleeve.

Over the course of her adventure, Lovette's clothing had taken significant damage, and as of "Protection or Lies" (C1 S1 E46) she completely exchanged her outfit for a finer one of mixed gnomish/dark elven design.

As of "Happy Estrella Day" (C1 S1 E54), she also has the mechanical arms of her deceased rivals grafted to her waist.

Her appearance was further altered after having her right leg torn from her body after the party's encounter with Grishnal.

### Personality

While exceptionally neurotic, even for a gnome, Lovette is self-defined by her desire to make life better for the people she cares about. Unfortunately, her tremendous lack of self-esteem often means she refuses praise for her accomplishments, while massively over-analyzing her own failures.

While medical science in the World of Aedron is not yet advanced enough to diagnose it, Lovette is also afflicted with moderate severity Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Because the knowledge to form a diagnosis does not exist, she is unaware of her affliction and considers it a quirk of her personality.

## Biography

### Early Life

Lovette was born 47 years ago in the capital city of the Steam Isle, to the elven ambassador Lilith Ziniris and the businessgnome Seamus McKinney-Bodwin. Though it is traditional for gnomes of that region to have a combination of their parent’s last names, because of stigma around her elven heritage her name was extended to include both her mother’s and paternal grandmother’s maiden names. Being half-elf affected Lovette’s development tremendously, causing her to grow much taller than is normal for a female gnome, as well as possessing some of her mother’s more slender features. Because of this, Lovette’s early life heavily revolved around her mother, who shielded her from much of the bigotry she would face, and Lovette learned to speak elvish before speaking gnomish and refers to herself as a half-elf as much as she does a gnome.

The other most special person in Lovette’s life when she was very young was her grandfather, Desmond McKinney-Bodwin. Desmond was a legendary inventor, known for assembling clockwork contraptions that were thought of as impossible by the rest of gnome society. From this genius flourished one of the most prominent clockwork family businesses in the whole of the Steam Isle (if not the world), as his wife and children took the brilliance of his work to the market with a passion. Desmond himself, however, lost interest of the business quickly, more interested in the excitement of discovery and the positive change his contraptions could bring than the money he could earn from it. It was over this joy that he bonded with Lovette, and guided her through her early schooling years.

After Desmond, it was expected that every McKinney-Bodwin would excel at either clockwork inventing or the art of business, but Lovette was relatively middling in either. She was disinterested in mastering the techniques and practices that were considered tried and true, and more passionate about creating devices that helped others, first and foremost. For most of her teachers and peers, this attitude was discouraged, and her below-average grades reflected her difficulty to work within established guidelines. In her early life, her only real encouragement for her unorthodox methods came from her grandfather, but this changed when she met Moira O’Brien.

Moira was a classmate of Lovette’s, though a student of history and world cultures rather than clockwork engineering, and the only other gnome to encourage Lovette’s eccentric thinking. Afflicted with a major heart defect, she empathized with Lovette’s desire to not be satisfied with an unsolved problem, and when they both reached the age to enter their school’s boarding program, they became inseparable. The two of them spent countless nights hidden away in the workshops and laboratories of the Clockwork Academy, indulging every curiosity that crossed their minds. Because of Moira’s condition, she was unable to exert much physically, and so Lovette too found herself confined to the inside of the Academy’s halls almost constantly.

Moira and Lovette stayed fast friends throughout their schooling, but it was only a few months after the two of them met that Lovette’s grandfather and mother left the Steam Isle to explore the world. For the next decade, no one had heard any word of either of them, and when Lovette had turned twenty two years old, after twelve years of waiting, Lovette’s father, Seamus, had enough and funded his own expedition to find the two of them. Since then, she hasn’t seen any of the three of them, raising herself to be totally independent from that point.

Desmond McKinney-Bodwin and his lineage was known for one other thing besides their clockwork inventions and the resulting business: their feud with a rival clockwork business family. Cicilia O’Morris was an efficient and precise inventor, but any accolades she wrought were outshined by her peer. No matter how she practiced and perfected her techniques, the sheer creativity and inventiveness of her rival lost her every accolade and reward. But while Cicilia lacked Desmond’s skill in clockwork, she did have him beat in one area: cold, hard, cut-throat business.

Over the course of the next few generations, every member of the O’Morris family seemed to single-mindedly dedicate themselves to ruining the McKinney-Bodwin name, or the family themselves. At first these acts of sabotage were relatively minor, left to aggressive smear campaigns for the adults and simple bullying from the younger generations. However, over time, their tactics grew more dire, more serious. Gnomes of the Bodwin line were driven to bankruptcy, framed for crimes and even mysteriously hurt or their work sabotaged. Within a generation and a half, the once proud McKinney-Bodwin business was a fraction of its former self, and most of the remaining family members were left imprisoned, destitute or effectively neutered. When Desmond disappeared with Lovette’s mother, many of the family had given up hope, and resigned to being a third-rate clockwork family once again.

Growing up, Lovette mostly had run-ins with Colm and Daria O’Morris, who were her age and often placed in her classes. The two of them feigned friendship with Lovette, though it was largely an attempt to keep her within arm’s reach and emotionally dependent. Though they claimed ignorance of each instance, the pair would often sabotage her inventions, and before long it was difficult for Lovette to identify if any of her inventions’ failings were legitimate.

Gnomes in the Clockwork Academy go through three major thesis projects during their career: one after their first year to determine their specialization, a second to demonstrate their progress and a final thesis to graduate. It was during the second of these that Lovette’s educational career was cut to an abrupt halt.

For her second thesis, Lovette was driven towards a single goal: find a solution to Moira’s condition. Countless hours locked away studying both the physical and magical sides of clockwork, and Lovette had devised a way, she believed, to show the person she loved the life she watched everyone else live. She had designed a device that would gather magical energy from all sorts of small, individually unimportant sources around the environment, and use that energy to mechanically assist Moira’s heart. However, when the time came to finally administer the machine, things went horribly wrong.

She didn't understand exactly what happened or why, but Lovette’s heart machine had the exact opposite effect of its intention, draining Moira of nearly all her own magic and leaving her as an emotionless husk, permanently bedridden and seemingly unaware of her surroundings. While many of the McKinney-Bodwin family suspect Colm and Daria O’Morris, no concrete evidence of their involvement was left behind, and Lovette primarily blames herself. For doing something tantamount to killing another student, Lovette was expelled from the Clockwork Academy, only kept out of prison by what little influence her family had left.

Although Lovette was not imprisoned for her supposed crime, she did return to an empty home, totally devoid of all her immediate family. Having been expelled from the most prestigious clockwork university in all of the Steam Isles, she was seen as a dead end for her family’s legacy, and for most of her aunts and uncles, keeping her out of jail used up the last of their charity. Although she did retain some family bonds, most notably with her uncle Aiden and his children, Lovette was an outcast, destined to live out her days alone in her father’s storefront, barely managing to keep it afloat as her family’s assets were sold off one by one.

Everything changed after one auction to sell off more of her grandfather’s mysterious inventions. A small mechanical sphere, appearing to be totally useless beyond decorative purposes, would not sell no matter how low the price was set, and eventually Lovette took the machine home with her to tinker with it and maybe get some value out of it. It took a tremendous amount of trial and error, but she eventually managed to activate it, and out of the small device unfurled a six-foot tall mechanical man. Lovette took this as a sign, naming the machine Archivald, after the heroic elven knight of her mother’s stories, and from there formed a plan.

Her goal was twofold: leave the Steam Isle to find her family, and spread the magic of the McKinney-Bodwin clockwork business to the far corners of the world. It only made sense to her that the other peoples of the world, who were not so used to clockwork machines, would be more willing to invest in their own. So, leaving all of her father’s assets to his brother Aiden, she took a small portion of the family fortune and quietly left the Steam Isle, swearing to never return until she had her parents in tow.

## Known Abilities

While she did not build him, Lovette directs and controls Archivald, a "robot that can punch God," and provides a variety of custom upgrades for him and other members of her party. The majority of her gadgetry is operated through her mechanical gauntlet, which can also produce a number of effects on par with spells, including long-distance communication, launching projectiles, and activating a self-destruct mechanism on her other constructs.

### Spells, Traits, and Class Features

* Eidolon
* Life Link
* Summon Monster (VIII)
* Bond Senses
* Shield Ally
* Maker's Call
* Transposition
* Aspect (Wings)
* Greater Shield Ally
* Life Bond
* Oscillating Phase Generator
* Light (cantrip)
* Mage Hand (cantrip)
* Message (cantrip)
* Detect Magic (Cantrip)
* Feather Fall
* Magic Fang
* Mage Armor
* Snowball
* Rejuvenate Eidolon, Lesser
* Bull's Strength
* Evolution Surge, Lesser
* Haste
* Slow
* Summon Eidolon
* Evolution Surge
* Minor Creation
* Pack Empathy
* Restore Eidolon
* Evolution Surge, Greater
* Hold Monster (in theory)
* Teleport
* Create Demiplane, Lesser
* Marching Doom
* Simulacrum
* Summon Monster VII