Ash

* Arc 2
* Arc 12

Official image of Ash, drawn by @grace.pptx on Instagram

Official image of Ash, drawn by @grace.pptx on Instagram

Ash is a Player Character from Arc 2 and Arc 12 and played by Julia.

*This page contains no spoilers for Arc 12 in the Arc 2 infobox and up until the section "Between Arc 2 and Arc 12". After that, please proceed with caution.*

## Description

Ash is a Fire Genasi and has dark red skin and fiery hair that is always crackling and has sparks coming from it. It's shaved on the sides and longer on top. She has eyes in the intense blue colour of very hot fire. She is wearing a black crop top and holds herself confidently. She comes from a family of monks and is one herself, a Way of the Drunken Master Monk.

For the heist itself, Ash wears baggy black pants that are singed at the ankle, a white button up, a black vest, a bowtie, and her bracers tucked underneath.

Ash was raised by her human mother Anne and stepdad Borris. For her, Borris is her father, and she is very close with him; usually he is less strict to her than her mother. She has five younger half-siblings and is the odd one out and only non-human. Her siblings and herself are all adults and moved out already, but not far away, and there are family dinners once a week with lots of pasta, and a bit of meat - they try to eat healthy.

Her family owns a restaurant called Traveller's Provisions. It is known for being a higher class restaurant and a bit fancy. Since she more or less accidentally burned down a competing restaurant (see Backstory), Ash is no longer part of the family business. Her family and her are still on good terms, she just is no longer allowed to work for Traveller's Provisions. She does, however, still have the uniform, and hopes to be allowed back. It got her down to be let go, and since then, she is hanging around in bars, tricks strangers into inviting her home and then robs them blind while they sleep. Her family knows that she is probably up to no good, but they are too tired to ask and never visit her, she visits them instead.

Paid for by the things she steals, Ash lives in a smaller, but fancy and lavishly filled apartment in Glaceria. It is furnished and decorated with some stolen trinkets, including fancy artwork and mismatched, but expensive looking furniture, including a grandfather clock, a pull-out bed, and a pretty well-equipped kitchen.

She has a very intense personality, and most of her feelings are towards herself, while she tries not to fuck up anything.

Ash loves her family and just wants to be told she's done good.

The patreon submitted item for her are the Bracers of the Gricks, or the Bracers of "I'm Walking Here".

## Backstory

Ash has her own way of trying to get the family restaurant to prosper; by sabotaging the competition. She visits the competing restaurants, and then releases rats in the dining room, or puts a bit of poison into their water supplies or food. After what was meant to be a small kitchen fire escalated into a burned down nearby restaurant, the city of Glaceria nearly shut them down, and she got fired from the family business a couple of months before Arc 2.

Before Arc 2, Ash knew of the Lovejoys, but did not really think about them, and neither really had an opinion towards them. Without knowing it before, she did rob one of them, Richard Lovejoy, before, though, and got a Lovejoy family painting and one of Robyn's outfits from that specific theft.

Viktor knows her because he was one of her "victims", and she stole a nice compass from him that sold for a few gold.

## Character Arc

### Arc 2

Starting off Ash finds herself as the only person Viktor and Borys can think of that is a criminal and might be able to hold the Ember Gem, the object the two men want stolen from the Lovejoys. She agrees to join the Arc 2 party and go on a heist to receive it.

During the arc, Ash manages to convince her family to let her work for the restaurant again. As she realises that she promised them to be better, but actually plans on using it as a way to get into Lovejoy Manor and steal the Ember Gem, she feels really bad for misusing her parent's trust in her. To her relief, the party finds another way in, a way that does not require her to disappoint her parents that much.

As they get to the Ember Gem, Ash really is the only person who can hold it, and feels a strong connection to it. As she tries to put it in her backpack, the bag burns away.

Upon breaking the gem, they release a genie named Ember, who turns out to be Ash's father. He did not mean to abandon Anne and Ash, he was just trapped in a stone the last time he returned to the Material Plane. Together with him, Ash visits the Lovejoys to get access to the portal to the Plane of Fire. Following the arc, she plans on regularly travelling between the Plane of Fire to spend time with her father, and the Material Plane to spend time with her mother, stepfamily and friends.

She becomes friends with her party, but especially with Robyn, who becomes her roommate when she can no longer go back to her family. Later, when Ash leaves, she invites Robyn to stay in her apartment whenever she needs to.

### Between Arc 2 and Arc 12

After jumping through the portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire with her father Ember, Ash becomes his assistant in the brass council. In this position, she mostly does paperwork or calms him down when he is being a menace again, but sometimes fills in for him in brass council meetings. He offers her many benefits, including access to government buildings and the decree that everyone in the Plane of Fire has to be nice to her. She enjoys it, and takes a liking to diplomacy and the business life, where she finds structure and new responsibilities, as well as some maturity. She does her best not to rob people anymore.

For Sasha and Mischka's wedding, she travels back to the Material Plane some time prior. As Arc 3 happens around that time, she soon finds herself trapped in the Material Plane while the portal is "closed for maintenance". Thus, she spends more time with her human family again, and enjoys it, but also itches to get back to her job.

Her Arc 12 look is more business-chic. She now wears her hair in a bob, as well as tiny sunglasses. She carries the dagger Tinderstrike, an Emerald Pen, and a Portfolio Keeper. Her Patreon submitted magic item is A Distraction, which allows her to cast *Delayed Blast Fireball*.

### Arc 12

Having gotten a bit of a big head during her time in the Plane of Fire, it takes Ash a while to get acustomed to other people not always treating her like royalty in the Material Plane. Her siblings tease her a bit, but she actually manages to make her mother listen to her proposals on how to run the business more efficiently.

At the start of the arc, the Arc 12 party realises that the infinite money they got from Ember's *Wish* spell has run out. Ash tries to contact her dad, but is unable to reach him, which worries her. Together, they travel to the Plane of Fire. The travel experience is different from what Ash is used to, as there are still remnants of the portal temporarily building a connection to Hell. Technically, nobody is allowed to travel over the Sea of Fire to the City of Brass, but since Ash is the boss, she is allowed to do it anyways.

Arriving in the City of Brass, they soon have to realise in horror that a revolution has happened. Pyros, one of the three members of the brass council, has taken the power for himself. Cinder, another member, lies impaled on the roof of the Charcoal Palace. To find out more, they go visit Clementine's casino, where Robyn, Mischka and Lyndell quickly get in trouble. Robyn is banished for trying to steal from another guest, while Mischka and Lyndell get put into the "casino jail" demiplane for trying to get her back. While Robyn is on her way back together with Richard, Mischka and Lyndell find Ember in casino jail, where they learn that he gambled away their *Wish* spell, and in his desperation then wreaked havoc in the casino.

The situation evokes a lot of conflicting emotions in Ash. While she is happy to have her friends with her, she is also concerned for their safety. She tries to maintain her normal personality, but feels sick to her stomach with concern for her father, especially as long as they are uncertain what happened to him. She also feels the sting of loneliness, seeing her friends again now, and pointedly asks Robyn why she hasn't visited her, although she quickly drops it as Robyn explains that she couldn't really come back easily to Glaceria and her family. While everyone else is trying to get back to the casino, Ash and Sasha play a few games, as there is not much else they can do. Ash is conflicted about playing, but gets assured that they will do their best to free Ember, and that none of them take the situation lightly.

## Trivia

* Julia's expectation for Ash was that she would be going to try her best to be confident, because she wants that people think that she is competent at stealing. She hoped that Ash would figure herself out and realise that she doesn't need to do all these crazy things, and could instead just help out her family without ruining other people's lives.
* Ash's darkvision shows everything not in shades of grey, but shades of red.
* Ash has the Observant feat, which means that she can read lips, which she picked up from sitting across the bar and trying to decide who has the most money.
* She is probably resistant to alcohol, because she burns it a lot faster.
* Ash only got a formal background between episodes 4 and 5, because they forgot it before.
* She has wine in her waterskin.