Verity Price

* Fanart
* Official art

**Verity Alice Price** is a major character and narrator of the InCryptid series. She is a cryptozoologist and ballroom dancer, as well as the middle child in current generation of Prices.

## Appearance

Verity carries the classic Carew/Healy genes of the women in her family: She is thin and diminutive, only five-foot-two, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She keeps her hair in a short bob for practicality as much as anything.

While ballroom dancing or at work as a strip club waitress, Verity can be found in skimpy clothing that nonetheless manages to hide an impressive number of weapons. She can drop kick a man in stiletto heels.

When hunting or free-running, she opts for more comfortable clothes: broken-in trainers, gray-black body suit, grey hoodie, cargo pants, and the like. She has a custom-made tactical vest that is "half-corset, half-Kevlar, all military spec material."

Her idea of comfy clothes are jeans, a t-shirt, a flannel shirt, and sneakers.

In her Valerie identity, Verity wears a curly red wig.

## Personality

Verity is flirty, snarky, and impatient. She pretends to be irresponsible, but when push comes to shove she will keep those under her care safe with no holds barred. Her eating habits can be sometimes questionable; she's been known to forget to eat, and when she does she tends toward junk food like fried chicken and takeout.

When she falls for Dominic, Verity takes it in stride that she's falling for her family's sworn enemy; she doesn't have any particular crisis of conscience other than strategizing to keep her loved ones safe if the relationship goes south.

## Abilities

Verity underwent extensive combat training from a very young age. By elementary school, she could make almost any shot she took with her guns, tie up her opponents, find her way home after being dropped in the middle of nowhere, and navigate motor skills functionally blindfolded.

She loves being up high, specializing in free-running and parkour skills. She claims this is a direct result of her sister's fondness for pit traps.

Her weapon of choice is a handgun and a good roundhouse kick, though she is also skilled at throwing knives, the garrote, and more.

Having trained in gymnastics and dance, she is remarkably flexible and good at compartmentalizing pain. She is an award-winning dancer.

## Professional Life

> ***Kevin Price, regarding young Verity:** "If she couldn't learn to blend in, she was going to need to find a way to stand out that wouldn't get them all killed."*
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Under the pseudonym Valerie Pryor, Verity has developed quite the reputation as a professional ballroom dancer. She was runner-up on the reality television show *Dance or Die* and continues to compete in local and regional competitions through 2013. After realizing she can no longer split her time between professional dancing and cryptozoology, Verity attempts to hang up her Valerie wig. However, she agrees to return to a reunion season of Dance or Die in 2014 and ultimately blows her cover.

As herself, Verity works as a waitress/burlesque dancer at first Dave's Fish and Strips and then its rebrand, The Freakshow. Her time on Dance or Die actually makes her more relatable to the urban cryptids she works with, since it distances her from her ancestors' Covenant involvement.

In 2013, after the Covenant sent an investigative team to Manhattan, Verity realizes that her true passion is cryptozoology, while dance has become more of a hobby. She commits to the family business.

## Biography

In elementary school, Verity got into numerous fights with her classmates out of boredom and frustration with their lack of combat readiness, while already enrolled in ballet classes, her parents added gymnastics in order to help her burn off some of her extra energy.

One summer of the Price kids' childhood was spent being locked in the trunk of the car and dropped off in the middle of nowhere. According to Alex, Verity made it back to the house about half the time.

For her eighteenth birthday, Verity tested out her fake IDs with a randomly booked international trip.

In 2012, Verity embarked on her journeyman's year in New York City. Her parents laid down an ultimatum: she could no longer skirt the line between professional dancer and cryptozoologist. This time was intended to help her choose, and she is surprised when she ends up committing to the family business rather than dance.

## In the Series

### Singing the Comic-Con Blues

Years before moving to Manhattan, Verity is living at home and tapped to join her sister Antimony's first mission at the Emerald City Comic-Con. Verity attempts, with poor results, to let her sister lead and reveals that she wants to bridge the animosity between them but doesn't understand how to relate to her nerdy younger sister.

### Discount Armageddon

Verity faces down Dominic De Luca, a visiting member of the Covenant who intends to purge Manhattan of cryptids. They fall in love instead. Verity is kidnapped by a snake cult that has been sacrificing young women to attempt to awake the dragon living under the city, and Dominic and Sarah help rescue her and take down the cult.

### Midnight Blue-Light Special

When the Covenant comes to town, Verity questions Dominic's loyalties even as she tries to keep her cryptid allies safe. She is kidnapped by her distant cousin, Margaret Healy, and does her best not to reveal her family's secrets until her allies can come to her rescue.

### Verity and Dominic Shorts

Verity and Dominic drive cross-country back to her family home in Oregon. They summon Rose Marshall in New Orleans, visit the family homestead in Buckley Township, Michigan, check in with family friends at the Carmichael Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, and have a shotgun wedding in Las Vegas. Finally they reach Oregon, where Verity must succeed at the hardest challenge of all: keeping her parents from killing her new husband on sight.

### Chaos Choreography

Verity is invited to compete on another season of *Dance or Die*, but discovers someone is killing the eliminated dancers for a sinister plot. She works with Dominic and Alice to take them down, and in the process she calls out her family's existence to the Covenant on live television.

### Backpacking Through Bedlam

Verity and Dominic now have their first child, Olivia Price. Verity has also appended De Luca to her surname. She meets Thomas and Sally for the first time when they and Alice come to New York to fight the Covenant.

## Relationships

### Dominic De Luca

Verity is physically attracted to Dominic from the outset, even when their first meeting finds Verity upside down in his ahool trap. She identifies him as Covenant almost immediately and tries to avoid him, but he tracks her down at both work and her apartment. She teaches him not to be so prejudiced about cryptids, especially sapient cryptids, and makes him question many of the Covenant's teachings. Eventually they give in to lust and sleep together. By the time Verity is kidnapped by the snake cult, Dominic is well aware that he is in love with her.

However, he doesn't fully separate from the Covenant until several of their representatives come to Manhattan to check up on him. He plays both sides for a little while but, when they kidnap Verity, he lands firmly on the side of her and her family's teachings about cryptids.

After the Covenant is sent packing, the two set out cross-country to Verity's family home in Oregon. She introduces Dominic to a number of family friends to give him context about her life and upbringing, and the two end up getting married in Vegas.

As a husband, Dominic is fiercely devoted to Verity's well-being even as he recognizes her tendency to throw herself--quite literally--into danger.

#### *Quotes*

* **Verity:** "I wasn't worried about [Dominic] hurting me -- with my training, that sort of concern is generally oriented in the other direction -- but the knowledge that he was one of the few men I'd ever met who *could* take me in a fight was enough to make my knees go weak."

* **Verity, to herself: "**Bad Verity. No Covenant hottie for you."
* **Verity, to herself:** "No, Verity. Bad Verity. Giving in to the raw hotness of the Covenant boy once was bad enough. Doing it again would show a serious lack of judgement, as well as a definite failure of self-control.
* **Dominic:** "You are insane, infuriating, and in dire need of aid if you're going to survive this. My help was always yours. All you had to do was ask for it."
* **Dominic, regarding the "defining the relationship" talk**: "I am so much better at this with women who aren't you."
* **Dominic:** "You are a fabulous, insane, infuriating creature."

### Antimony Price

Verity and Antimony are not terribly close as siblings, even though they would tear down the world to protect each other as family. They just don't get each other. Verity is all about dancing and makeup and high kicks. Antimony prefers comics and roller derby and distance attacks. Verity tries to relate to her little sister but just manages to alienate Antimony further.

### Alex Price

Verity is closer to Alex than to Antimony, perhaps by virtue of being the two elder siblings. As they grew up, Antimony began attacking the two of them in earnest so that Alex and Verity couldn't gang up on her as the smallest sibling.

### Sarah Zellaby

Sarah follows Verity to Manhattan for Verity's journeyman year; however, this is less due to the cousins being close and likely more so that Sarah can audit university classes while remaining close to family. Still, Sarah loves Verity and scrambles her own brain trying to rescue Verity from Covenant capture. The family doesn't blame Verity for her role in Sarah's injury. Most of them, anyway.

## Trivia

* Verity has won the family betting pool of "who will die first?" three out of the last four years, and sometimes even bet on herself. She was disqualified when she went on national television.
* Verity's father wanted to name her Alice, but her mother balked since Alice is weird. They compromised with the middle name.
* Verity hates taxis and subways freak her the hell out. She attributes her avoidance of traveling by ground on Antimony's love of pit traps and land mines.
* According to Mike, Verity once kicked a boundary imp's ass with a concussion and a broken arm.
* According to Sarah, While Verity loves her colony of Aeslin mice, she *really* enjoys complaining about them.
* Verity's favorite holiday is Halloween, and eating as much candy as she can during her "cheat" time
* According to Alex, Verity is obsessed with a crowd paying attention to her.
* Seanan has confirmed Verity is named after Verity Lambert, the first producer of *Doctor Who*. It is unknown if her parents named her after the producer or if that was simply the authors' inspiration.

**Chaos Choreography**

* Verity says her preferred form of combat is throwing knives and staying as far away from her opponents as possible. Antimony disagrees with that assessment. (Ch. 10)
* Verity is a hugger. Valerie is not, mostly because hugging makes it hard to conceal how many weapons she has on her person. (Ch. 11)

* "Valerie" has performed with walking pneumonia (Ch. 16)
* Verity once served as a marriage counselor for a hidebehind couple in Portland (Ch. 16)
* Verity loves prawns, Chinese takeout-style (Ch. 17)
* Verity tries hard not to "out" cryptids, even to each other (Ch. 17)
* Per Alice, Nobody expected Verity to be the first in her generation to the altar. (Ch. 19)

## Quotes

**Discount Armageddon**

* **Verity:** "Crazy has its benefits. Crazy gets all the knives." (Ch. 8)

**Midnight Blue-Light Special**

* **Verity:** "Gravity isn't cruel. Gravity is exactly the same for everybody. Gravity doesn't *care.*" (Ch. 10)
	+ Reminiscent of her great-great-grandmother Enid Healy's words: "Gravity doesn't play favorites." (Epigraphs)
* **Verity:** "I guess stress makes me stabby." (Ch. 12)
* **Verity, to Margaret:** "Oh, Christ, you're a metaphor villain, aren't you? You're the rat-catcher, I'm the rat, you're here to exterminate the vermin, is that it? Wow. Do they have a cliche course that they make you guys go through before they release you into the field? Or maybe you're that talented." (Ch. 20)

**Pocket Apocalypse**

* **Verity**, paraphrased by Alex: The best disguise a woman had was makeup, well-applied, and removed when necessary. (Ch. 11)

**Chaos Choreography**

* **Verity:** "Gravity and I have an agreement. I treat it with respect, and it doesn't smear me across the nearest flat surface." (Ch. 13)

* **Verity:** "'Favors to be determined later' are the way people wind up breaking into tombs looking for the lost idols of spider gods who really just want to be left alone. To select a purposefully nonspecific example." (Ch. 15)

## References

1. ↑ Waking Up in Vegas
2. ↑ Backpacking Through Bedlam
3. ↑ Midnight Blue-Light Special Ch. 7
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Midnight Blue-Light Special Prologue
5. ↑ Pocket Apocalypse Ch. 4
6. ↑ Pocket Apocalypse Ch. 3
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Discount Armageddon Ch. 16
8. ↑ Discount Armageddon Ch. 20
9. ↑ Midnight Blue-Light Special Ch. 4
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Midnight Blue-Light Special Ch. 7
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Singing the Comic-Con Blues
12. ↑ My Last Name
13. ↑ Midnight Blue-Light Special Ch. 6
14. ↑ Midnight Blue-Light Special Ch. 19
15. ↑ Midnight Blue-Light Special Ch. 19
16. ↑ Pocket Apocalypse Ch. 2
17. ↑ Pocket Apocalypse Ch. 5
18. ↑ Something I'm dying to know