Penelope

Penelope, the Wicked, is an escaped convict of the Sunkeeper's order. She was taught the art puppetry as a child by her single father, allowing them to bond. After her father was murdered due to unpaid debts with local triad members, Penelope enacted her revenge with the murder of the killer's family.

## Lore

### Backstory

As a young girl, Penelope grew up pretty isolated in the mountains of Ocknuun, staying alone at home with her and her father, who would often be gone on long trips. She didn't meet many other kids, let alone people in such a remote area. This resulted in her emotional growth being stunted, lacking the proper exposure to other people.

It wasn't until her mid-teens when her father stopped heading off on his long trips. When he noticed his daughter had issues opening up, he attempted to connect with her by teaching her puppetry. This worked like a charm, and soon Penelope was enamoured with the art form, quickly showing aptitude in it. Eventually the cost of her father's long trips caught up to him. He had accumulated a large dept over his many trips and had ended up running in deep with the local Ocknuun triads. Unable to pay back the dept, he had gone into hiding to avoid them all together. As such, when the triad members caught wind of him living alone with his daughter, they seized the opportunity to take back what they were owed by force. Penelope's father stood no chance, with his daughter being the only witness to his death as she hid in a small cupboard.

Penelope survived the break-in attempt, and as she had now lost the only emotional bond of hers in her life: she went into grieving alone, burying him and sitting at his graveside, mourning the loss. During this time alone with her thoughts, she turned to puppetry as a means of coping with recent events. Making puppets in the likeness of her father to alleviate the pain, but this didn't work and only fuelled her anger to her father’s murderers as she made one soulless puppet after another.

After mourning, she set off to a local village to find information on the triad members. As luck would have it, she stumbled upon one of them in a local bar. Immediately she leapt into battle at the triad member, but he swatted her back. "Who dares attack Lao Kahn?", he shouted as he stood up, brandishing plated gauntlets whilst staring daggers down Penelope. As many of the local patrons fled the scene, she pulled out her puppets, and began brandishing them for combat, slowly chipping away at him. But that wasn't enough. Her puppets didn't seem to be doing much to the brute, and she was running out of them. As she was smashed into the wall by a devastating right hook, she noticed a small child and mother just outside, cheering on her attacker. It was his family, and immediately Penelope then was struck with an idea.

She sent her puppets over, skittering across the floor towards them. The child and mother screamed to Lao Kahn to help them, as the puppets began to climb over them. Lao Kahn ran over to aid his family, when suddenly: their screams cut short, and they stood still. Motionless like zombies, as the dolls clung onto their bodies for dear life. Lao Kahn looked over to Penelope. She smirked and then raised her a finger. As if she was conducting a stage play, Lao Kahn's wife and son bodies leaped onto Lao Kahn and began attacking him. As the puppets that clung onto their bodies continued to force the wife and son's arms wildly, Penelope then stood up. With her other hand, she directed the remaining swarm of her puppets towards Lao Kahn as he tried to remove his family without harming them.

Lao Kahn had had enough. "These puppets cannot function without a puppet master", he thought. Shrugging off his family, he turned and charged towards Penelope, gauntlets poised forward. Smashing through the remaining puppets, he raised his fist. Penelope smirked as his fist came crashing down. In one swift motion, she swished her fingers and Lao Kahn's family flew over.

And just like that, they dropped dead.

Their flimsy bodies erupted as they connected with Lao Kahn's gauntlets, their blood painting the wall sanguine. It took him a second or two, but once Lao Kahn realised, he froze to the spot. His wife and child, his family, laid across from him with gaping holes in their chests. As the remaining puppets still left standing scurried off of the now lifeless corpses, Lao Kahn collapsed to his knees in despair as Penelope walked over and put a needle to his throat. She mocked him, how him and the other triad members had slaughtered her father, how her father's death resulted in two, and would result in so many more. As she coaxed the rest of the triad members names out of the despairing Lao Kahn, forces of the Sunkeeper's order arrived. Penelope stood facing the guards and gleefully smiled, exclaiming that they could take away the triad member, and she would be back with the rest.

Much to her confusion, she was incapacitated and incarcerated. Locked up in the dungeon of the Sunkeepers, her madness furthered. The indignity and injustice of everything to her was maddening. The fact she was rotting away, whilst her father's murderers ran free to hide and escape drove her up the wall. She was already mad as she doesn’t see her actions as wrong, genuinely believing she was in the right, so this just added extra salt in the wounds. As her days in the dungeon continued, she became acquainted with a demon. This demon further incites her madness, agreeing to help her once they were free.

### Recent Events

Recently, thanks to a prank gone wrong by Huosheng, many of the prisoners held by the Sunkeepers have managed to escape from their captivity and are now freely causing havoc and mayhem across Ocknuun. And Penelope is no such exception. Currently, her and her newly acquired demon acquaintance are at large. With this new found freedom, Penelope is once again back on the trail of her father's killers.

## Personality

Penelope, having only known her father as a positive family figure for most of her life, lacked a lot of the typical emotional growth of a normal childhood. Being isolated as a child means she never properly developed a sense of empathy. In this case of her murdering Lao Kahn's family, she didn't feel sad for him at all nor for her actions. But she knew it would hurt him, so she went right along with it. This indifference of her has since put her at odds with many other people after her escape from prison.

As her father was her sole emotional connection in her life, she continues holding that grudge that he was taken from her and often emotionally lashes out due to this insecurity of hers. To compensate for this emotional trauma, she is shown to be pretty emotionally vulnerable, and can be manipulated easily in that regard.

## Trivia

* Penelope dislikes the flavour of green tea.
* Penelope's mother died of sickness soon after she was born, hence she doesn't have any memories with her to cling onto, compared to the emotional dependency she developed with her father.

## Development Notes

* Penelope's original title was simply "The Puppeteer", but that felt too literal of a title, so it was changed back to something vaguer to reflect back to the original concept of adding the one-word titles of characters.
* Penelope's original concept had her be involved with a wandering circus, but that concept was removed pretty early on.
	+ The concept of the wandering circus still exists and was instead used on a set of different characters.