Scarlette Grudge

Faceclaim: Elcin Sangu

## Appearance

Scarlette is above average height and well-built. She has long ginger hair, brown eye and pale skin. Her right knee has scars left over from serious injuries received in the 1920s, scars on her right side, burn scars on her upper right arm, scar on her stomach, and now has a robotic left eye. Scarring from the initial loss of the original eye remains around the eye socket. She is also missing her right hand after it was blown off by a shotgun. The missing hand isn't as obvious however as she has a prosthetic one and wears gloves normally. Along with the gloves, Scarlette typically will wear shirts, waistcoats, long coat, pants and boots - almost in the style of the Victorian Era minus the tophat. Her outfits are also accompanied by a set of simple stud earrings. When she’s just relaxing at home, she can be found wearing cosy knitted sweaters with some more casual jeans.

## Personality

Scarlette is a supposedly intelligent woman who possesses keen investigative skills. She is a stickler when it comes to loyalty to those she views as allies, and justice for everyone, but is also stubborn as all hell. This stubbornness takes the form of never knowing when to give up and rarely taking a break, even if she’s halfway dead. Scarlette also believes in karma and that everyone eventually gets what they deserve. Despite her mostly serious demeanour, she does enjoy jokes and is known to crack a few every now and then. She also tries not to view herself above anyone else - until given reason or evidence that suggests otherwise. Unbeknownst to most, Scarlette also often uses the 'fake it till you make it' mindset in terms of her confidence. Because of some of the stuff in her youth, every once in a blue moon, she can have moments where self doubt pops up. For the most part, she tries to make this not obvious to those around her however.

## Magic

Scarlette’s abilities fall under a unique part of the sensitive spectrum. She possesses the ability to ‘see’, influence and manipulate others emotions. Despite being able to sense emotions however, the range of her ability is limited to the size of an average room. Another limit is it is impossible for her to differentiate between animal and human emotions as they appear the same to her  senses.

Unlike normal sensitives though, she is unable to read minds or control others directly. Scarlette is also unable to look into the future or see visions of what is to come. However, Scarlette is immune to having her own mind read as her magic clouds her thoughts from the prying eyes of others so much that it makes it impossible to understand anything happening inside. If a sensitive were to try to probe, all they would find is the equivalent of TV static and if they were really lucky, maybe an extremely vague thought of no or limited relevance.

## Backstory

### Youth

* Scarlette was born to Abernathy Silver and Sonia Marks on the 8th of January, 16XX. The youngest of three children with two older brothers; Aloysius Grace and **Solomon Wreath** respectively
* From a young age, Scarlette received much hate from her father. This was because he wanted all his children to be elementals much like himself and she showed absolutely no capability with manipulating the elements. Her older brother Solomon was also no stranger to this as he had received similar treatment but not to the lengths Scarlette had. When Abernathy discovered that the wacky emotion messing up was coming directly from his daughter, the mild hatred became an aggressive loathing for he utterly despised sensitives of any kind.
* At some point whilst she was still young-ish, her oldest brother Aloysius went and joined the **Church of the Faceless Ones** much to his father’s utter disgust. This of course meant that Abernathy’s anger was targeted towards Solomon and Scarlette. And then only Scarlette as Solomon went and joined the Necromancer Temple to study necromancy.
* Around the age of 11-12, a mob of angry mortals attacked their home looking for the “witch” and “demon spawn”.  Abernathy conveniently ‘disappeared’ in the hopes that Scarlette would be incapable of protecting herself. Unfortunately for this scheme however, Solomon had been on his way home for an unannounced visit and arrived just in time to see the mob setting fire to the home. He was able to get inside and find Scarlette and their mother before the mob could and got them to safety.
* Despite the now strained relations between Aloysius Grace and the rest of their family, he would still visit occasionally, often with his girlfriend of the time Nessa Dawn. Nessa was much like Aloysius in terms of manipulation. She put on a polite front to his mother and Solomon but found Scarlette to be quite detestable and had no qualms with harassing her when they were left alone. On one such occasion of this, Scarlette lost her temper completely at Nessa and lashed out with her still very inexperienced and uncontrollable magic. The result of this was permanent emotional scarring to Nessa and her losing the love and affection she’d had for Aloysius. He of course believed Scarlette had done this purposefully out of pure spite and to hurt him and made a promise that for as long as both of them lived, he would make her life as miserable and hellish as he could.
* Her father was presumed dead but a few years later he reappeared and revealed he had been responsible for the attack. Scarlette hadn’t yet taken a name and so he used her given name to control her; forcing her to remain defenceless as he beat her up.  It was in that moment, the name she would take came to her and [long dead given name] became Scarlette Grudge. (Scarlette because of the blood spilling and Grudge for the grudge she had formed against her father and a few other people) She then proceeded to focus her still quite untrained and weak magic on her father’s emotions and forced him into a position of vulnerability before attacking him. She didn’t kill him but he did manage to flee.

### Adulthood

* Before the war with Mevolent broke out, Scarlette was doing some investigatory work. She wasn’t an official detective, but for the time, she may as well have been one.
* At some point, Scarlette met and fell in love with a man called Darragh Tine. Unfortunately however, this man turned out to be a Faceless Ones spy sent to keep tabs on certain non-worshippers due to being on the brink of war. Whether he truly reciprocated those feelings or not, Scarlette would never learn as when the war broke out, their home was attacked by a guerrilla branch of Faceless Ones worshippers. Darragh was murdered as the group believed he’d betrayed them, and in the process his true alliance was exposed to her.
* The pair had two young children at the time and Scarlette was led to believe both had died as well. One survived however, a boy who went on to take the name of Padraig Guild, marry a mortal woman and have three children of his own; Sean Guild, Cassidy Guild, and Ellen Guild. The loss hit her hard but because there was a war to be fought, she didn’t have time to grieve or even give the deaths a second thought. Eventually, it became a memory she’d locked away in the darkest pits of her mind.
* For most conflicts at the start of the war, Scarlette ended up in groups with random people. However, after a particularly successful mission, Meritorious made the decision to keep the group together as an official unit. They weren’t on the level of the Dead Men but still got the jobs they were given done. The members of the unit were Benjamin Hunter, Typhoon Gavalda, Vidar Inghardson, Kiseva Watt, and obviously Scarlette Grudge herself. Unfortunately, Kiseva Watt died during the war after ironically being electrocuted (he was a lightning manipulator). Their unit was coined "Mercurial" due to the somewhat unpredictable nature of their actions and unorthodox methods of success.
* Whilst on a mission with her unit, they ended up getting captured by Baron Vengeous. In the process, the Faceless Ones supporters ended up branding Scarlette’s upper right arm with the symbol of the Church of the Faceless due to a request from an unknown person (hint hint, it was her brother). After the unit was rescued and safe, Scarlette took it upon herself to scorch the flesh to remove the obscenity on her skin despite the protests of the others. Due to the fact they were still days away from any medical attention, it ended up scarring a lot worse than it would have and if one is to really examine it, the branding can still be made out.
* During a particularly bloody battle, Scarlette found herself face to face with her brother Aloysius Grace. The pair fought and during the fight he was badly injured. He took advantage of this injury and faked his own death, the sheer chaos of the fight making it relatively easy to do so. By the time he began crawling away, Scarlette had already had to start fending off another lot of attacks from another person and didn’t even have a chance to double check.
* When the war began to draw to a close, Scarlette returned to doing detective work, and slowly started to make a name for herself in the sorcerer world. She was nothing compared to the great Skeleton Detective Skulduggery Pleasant but she was happy to be doing things to help anyway.
* Around 1885, she worked on a case for a man called Arimicus Rurfa. The case started out simple; his rubber ducks had been stolen and she was requested to look into the robbery. Soon though, it turned into a complete clusterfuck including a drug ring and human trafficking. Despite the annoying tendencies of Arim, he grew on her and they became friends after the conclusion of the case. To this day, they are still friends however  after the events in 1923, he became quite protective of her.
* During the late 1910’s, Scarlette decided to do some work for mortal police and managed to get a job at New Scotland Yard in London. Despite being a woman in the early twentieth century, she was still able to be quite successful and unlike most sorcerers actually enjoyed the company of mortals.
* Unfortunately, the job was just as dangerous as it is in the sorcerer's world and Scarlette ended up severely injured during an investigation on the White Family street gang. Due to the fact she was posing as a mortal, she couldn’t have the injury miraculously heal overnight so due to that and her stubbornness, she had to put up with mortal doctors and a permanently crippled right knee.

### Horror on the Orient Express

* In the time she was doing work for New Scotland Yard, Scarlette had become acquainted with a mortal psychologist by the name of Wilbur Abraham. In 1923, he approached her requesting assistance with a ‘quest’. He was not much of a fighter and didn’t quite know what kind of dangers awaited so took Scarlette with him. They headed to Bulgaria onboard the Orient Express and there met three people; Fuggy Sosad, Jackson LeFrane, and Kenta Hashimoto.
* The premise of the journey was to find missing pieces of a statue called the Sedefkar Simulacrum and destroy it. The group wasn’t the only one after it however, as a group of cultists known as the Brotherhood of the Skins were also after it.
* The first of many trials was meeting the literal Baba Yaga and her house in the middle of a Bulgarian forest. With the assistance of tribal men and women, they fought off the house and managed to survive. The events of this led Jackson and Kenta to retire for the time being.
* The next stop was Sofia. However, whilst onboard an incident occurred where one of the cultists had murdered a waiter and took their place in an attempt to poison the group. A new-old member of the group by the name of Tyro Stallion and Scarlette pursued the cultist, ultimately resulting in his demise as he fell from the train. Because of this, both of them were taken in for questioning by the police but were cleared of any charges.
* At the hotel they were staying at, the cultists attacked them. Of course, it wasn’t an ordinary attack, and instead severed hands came for the group. The others got off in one piece but unfortunately for Scarlette, a hand tore out her left eye as she slept. The following days, every so often, she’d see horrific images from wherever her left eye was until it was destroyed.
* That was only the beginning of a downward spiral for Scarlette - both mentally and physically. After much searching, they finally found the last piece of the simulacrum. Unfortunately though, not only did the group and the cultists want it, but something else too. That night, one of the former owners of the Sedefkar Simulacrum came for the group; a vampire of the name Comte Fenalik. Many of the people previously involved in the journey were targeted and many did not get out alive. Out of the 10 still around, only 7 survived the initial attack, and by the end of the night, those numbers were reduced to 5.
* The 10 consisted of Joey Joyce, Tyro Stallion, Fuggy Sosad, Conner Buldrik, Kenta Hashimoto, Jackson LeFrane, Charles Herring, Wilbur Abraham, Randall Porter and Scarlette. In the initial attack, Conner, Kenta and Charles died, and then during the night, Joey and Jackson joined those numbers.
* Fenalik wasn’t the ordinary kind of vampire Scarlette was used to dealing with; he was like the vampires of mortal fiction; turning into a bat, a mist, controlling people, and being weak to garlic and wooden stakes. The first incident of this was when he took control of Tyro. The group was forced to handcuff him and almost left him behind when fleeing. Scarlette and Fuggy went back for him and then he took control of Fuggy’s mind. The result of this was her turning her 12 gauge shotgun on Scarlette and shooting her. She was too slow to avoid it and ended up losing her entire right hand.
* They managed to beat Fenalik but not without physical and mental costs, especially for Tyro and Scarlette in particular. Despite the states they continued on though, seeing the journey right to its end.
* Reaching Turkey, Scarlette spent much of the first few days resting and healing up whilst the others gathered information. One key thing that was happening at the time was the disappearance of children. More information was gathered and the group headed out to a cemetery to go grave robbing. It turns out, this was an elaborate trap set up by the Brotherhood of the Skin to capture the group and during it, Scarlette suffered minor burns from a molten flesh creature that had attached itself to her. The cultists showed up and managed to capture both Scarlette and Tyro and drag them to a clearing in the forest.
* In the clearing, the cultists tried questioning the pair. Scarlette refused to answer, basically playing dumb, which resulted in the cultists putting a spell on her that caused her to pass out. They put a different spell on Tyro which led to him revealing the location of the Sedefkar Simulacrum and then they released a fused amalgamation of all the children that had gone missing. Tyro was able to get free from the restraints, free Scarlette, grab their stuff and then flee from the scene.
* After some time running, they encountered a man that offered help to them. Warily they accepted it but it turned out to not be a wise decision as the man was actually a cultist in disguise and led them into a trap in the Shunned Mosque. The group ended up being captured, but not before they managed to get the remaining missing children to safety. Unfortunately though, the cultists had the sedefkar simulacrum and had activated it.
* After being locked up, they managed to escape and got back to the Orient Express to return to London. The trip started out uneventfully, until a lot of the old enemies they had faced - mainly before Scarlette had embarked on the journey - showed up again. Things began to get wild on the train as the cultists took over and turned it into a god. This resulted in Scarlette’s sanity dropping to an all-time low and the infamous blanket cloak scene as she feared for her life under the cover of her bed.
* Snapping out of this, they were approached by a Dreamlands Prince who had a way of beating the cultist in charge of all this. The group did as was asked of them, killing the head cultist, but then the Prince tried to betray them. In response, Tyro shot him, and then killed him and they continued to London.
* In London, they headed to an antiques shop to complete the ritual of cleansing and destroy the Simulacrum once and for all. During this final confrontation, Scarlette was forced to watch on as all but herself and Randall Porter died. Fuggy Sosad was turned into the cultists bitch after the recital of a chant gone wrong, Gustave Hoitler was turned to oozing flesh after trying to wear the Simulacrum, and Tyro Stallion died from his connection to the pieces as they were destroyed. By the end of it, they were successful but at a large cost - namely the lives lost and developing a phobia of trains.

### After the Horror

* Scarlette’s final actions under this mortal disguise was to return Tyro’s hat and signature guns to his family. His nephew Iyro Stallion took a particular interest in the stories of his uncle and ended up becoming a student of sorts to Scarlette whilst she still worked at New Scotland Yard.
* After a few more years, she resigned from the mortal police and found her services requested by the Australian Sanctuary. For a while she worked there, helping out and solving various cases before finally returning to Ireland to continue her detective work there.
* It wasn’t until the new Roarhaven City was established that Scarlette really had any major pull in the Sanctuary. She was called in occasionally when Skulduggery Pleasant was unavailable but after his transformation into the mad god Centipleasant, she became a permanent staff in the Irish Sanctuary. Eventually, with the position of Head Detective empty for so long, and with the passing of China Sorrows, Scarlette was appointed Head Detective by the new Supreme Mage Sarah Sorrows. To this day, she remains as Head Detective and has been quite successful in her work thus far.

### Overarching Notes

* Over the years she has been alive for, Scarlette has slowly but surely been getting more proficient with her magic. Due to the innate nature of how her magic works and has woven itself, there’s literally no sourcebooks or guides for how to use it properly which means she has had to teach herself. With how much time she’s had, she’s somewhat of a professional with it and if, say someone a lot younger than her popped up with similar and/or the same type of magic, they wouldn’t nearly have as much control as she does with reading and manipulating emotions.
* In her youth, she was quite begrudging and would not let go of things easily - hence her taken last name of Grudge. Over the years, she has mellowed out considerably but if someone does something bad enough, then she will 100% hold a grudge against them. She doesn’t immediately act upon these grudges however, preferring karma to do the work for her.
* Despite her mother’s protests, due to her father deeming it unnecessary, Scarlette never learnt how to read or write properly until she was well into her twenties. In combination with her mind working faster than her hand can write, this has led to her handwriting being rather messy. It has also made learning how to read and write in other languages a lot more challenging than they would otherwise be due to her lack of support of learning her native tongue in her developing years.
* Her father did however allow her mother to teach her how to play the organ. However, as it has been a very long time since she’s played the instrument, a lot of what she learnt has been lost in the void of her mind.
* On occasion, Scarlette gets struck by bouts of self-doubt and feelings of almost being useless. This is a ripple effect from all the torment from her youth. For the most part, she’s able to get on fine and almost never has moments where it becomes visibly obvious.
* Scarlette is currently one of the only people who know the true circumstances around China Sorrows’ death. She was called in as part of the investigation team and was the one who dug the deepest, uncovering the truth. Despite her strong sense of justice, she is yet to reveal this information to anyone but the current Sanctuary Administrator; Stark Point-Break and is currently waiting until the time is right to expose **Sarah Sorrows**.

### Major Relationship History

**1646:** Scarlette’s first proper boyfriend was an Irish vampire called Leannán. She got through her bad boy phase early in life without ever realising it until it was all over. She was absolutely in love with him and he shared those feelings, but only because she was easy prey and he intended to suck her dry. At the time, Scarlette was quite young and still somewhat naïve when it came to some things, one of those things being vampires. She had absolutely no idea he was a vampire until it was almost too late. She barely escaped with her life but came out of it wiser and more cautious.

**1650:** Scarlette’s next romantic venture was a German sorcerer called Josef Hände. Unfortunately he had no interest in actually having a proper relationship with her and just wanted to take advantage of her for sex. One night, he took her out to a tavern/bar and knowing she was a lightweight, made sure she got drunk. Much to her protests of just wanting to go home, and even more protests to his hands attempting to go places they shouldn’t, she was almost sexually abused that night. Luckily for Scarlette however, her brother Aloysius (Surprising I know!) coincidentally had been at the same bar and witnessed the man dragging her off. As much as he despises Scarlette, he was still her big brother and so he actually helped her out and made sure the guy wouldn’t try something like that again.

**1653-1656:** This was the first serious relationship she had that had any real substance or length. An Irish mage called Aodhan Finn; they were together for three years and in that time, they went *all* the way. Yes, exactly what you dirty minded fucks are thinking. Unfortunately, in the third year of their relationship, Scarlette began to notice something had changed with his feelings and not long after that, he eventually dumped her.

**1683-1694:** In the thirty years between Adohan and this relationship, Scarlette had a handful of flings and attempts at dates that never came to much more than realising there were no feelings and quickly moving on. And then she met Irish sorcerer Darragh Tine. The two hit it off right from the start and what started as a friendship soon became more than friends. The pair fell in love and after five years of dating, ended up getting married. That same year, Scarlette fell pregnant with her first child, a boy. Four years later and she gave birth to their second and what would ultimately become their last child too. Two years after the birth of their daughter, their home was attacked by guerilla Faceless Ones worshippers and Darragh and their daughter was killed. Due to never finding her son, she was also led to believe he had died too.

**1893:** Due to fighting in a literal war, there wasn’t much time for settling down and serious romance and relationships. For a period of time, she once again had flings and attempts to date that all had the same result; no real feelings and a push to the curb. This next serious relationship was with a British mage named Henry Voxel. The relationship lasted only a few months as Scarlette soon discovered he had begun cheating on her with another woman. Henry was a stupid man, trying to cheat on a detective that had a sensitive for a best friend. And his stupidity got him dumped.

**1905:** The next relationship she found herself in lasted a half a year and was with a German assassin named Lukas Wildwood. He’d been sent to gain her trust and then kill her but he gained too much of her trust as she fell for him. He didn’t reciprocate the feelings but was able to pay an expert in sigils to make a sigil that would fool her magic to help the charade. And then he tried to kill her. That obviously brought the relationship to a bitter and swift end.

**1996-2000:** Scarlette’s last relationship of note before the current day was with a Turkish mage called Mazhar Ateş. The way she felt around Mazhar was a feeling she hadn’t had for a long time and after about a year of friendship, they became a couple. Their relationship lasted for 4 years but eventually both of them realised they’d fallen out of love and ended things. For once though, it ended on good terms rather than them hating each other and they kept in contact for a while. As both of them are quite busy however, they eventually fell out of contact and barely keep in touch anymore.

## Relationships

### Stark Point-Break

Stark Point-Break is the current Irish Sanctuary administrator and Scarlette's boyfriend whom she (obviously) likes quite a lot. At first, the pair were colleagues on good terms before eventually becoming friends. As their friendship grew, so did another feeling. Finally, after great levels of denial and teasing from her best friend, they admitted their feelings for one another and began dating.

### Arimicus Rurfa

Arimicus Rurfa is Scarlette's long time best friend of well over 100 years. As aforementioned in her backstory, the two met when she was called in to work on a case for him. Despite Arim's annoying tendencies and his supposed lack of intelligence, Scarlette was able to see past that and often noticed when he would say something actual noteworthy. Whilst others ignored it, she was quite particular about acknowledging and considering what he was saying. Soon after the conclusion of the case, they became friends. To this day they remain best friends, however after the events of 1923, he became quite protective of her.

### Aloysius Grace

Aloysius Grace is Scarlette's older brother. More information pending when I can be assed adding it and have made his page hehehee