Fayette Erskine

"I do not wish to die where I began."

## A Shattered Home

Fayette was born under the roof of a Witherland home.  Born to two merchants, she was neither spoiled nor a woman of a challenged lifestyle.  Her family made enough to get by, but not enough to spoil themselves.  As a baby, she was fawned over and protected as if she were a precious treasure.  Perhaps that’s why the next segment of life was so shocking to her.

The toddler was adorable, dressed in animal skins to stay warm and luring people into her parents’ stalls at merchant fairs.  However, in her terrible twos, she threw tantrums like any child, and wanted things from other merchants.  Her parents would slap her wrist and tell her ‘no’...at least, that’s how it started.  However, when these charades continued, her parents could no longer apologize to possible customers about their daughter who could not keep her mouth shut.  She’d been driving away business - important business, too.  Her parents began to leave her at home while they went to work, and when she began to wander and break things, they locked her in a cage just big enough for her to sit in.  The toddler would cry and cry and scream, and no one would hear her.  When her parents came home to see that she’d wet her crate after being left alone for five hours, she was hit for the first time.  Her mother, who refused to clean up such a mess, slapped the girl and handed her a towel to clean her own crate with.  Things only worsened as Fayette matured - the cage became too small for her, but her parents were unable to afford another crate.  Despite Fayette’s cries that she would be quiet, that she would be a ‘good girl’, her parents no longer trusted her and crammed her into the crate.  Fayette was not freed until the age of 10, when her cries were heard by a regular solicitor who had come to knock on the door.  He freed her, and while he offered to take her to the military for training and help, she refused, told him she was fine, and stayed at her parents’ home.  Upon her parents’ return, Fayette beat them both over the head with a heavy metal bucket, rendering them unconscious.  When she tried to put them in the crate, they wouldn’t fit, so she sawed off their legs and shoved all of them in there.  Now covered in blood, she sat outside the crate, watching her parents bleed out in her old prison.  “You’ve gone and made a mess,” she whispered.  “You’ll have to clean it up, mommy, just like you told me.”

## A Criminal Record

After she murdered her parents in cold blood, Fayette was escorted to prison.  With no one to vouch for her and no one who had witnessed her torture other than a solicitor no one knew the name of, she was unable to say that their death was justified.  At 10 years old, Fayette was thrown into a prison cell, and all she could do was laugh.  “This is much bigger than back home!” she’d squeal, rolling around on the dirt floor.  The prisoners often stayed away from her, although to say that she suffered no abuse in the establishment would be quite the lie.

Fayette’s body was abused over and over while in prison.  From inmates to prison guards, she was fought over.  When an inmate had her cornered, a prison guard would defend her, only to ravage her himself.  She didn’t mind, not really.  While it was terrifying at first, the little girl hadn’t had so much excitement.  As long as she wasn’t in her cage, she was happy.  At age 12, the prison head had caught wind of the things Fayette had had done to her body.  Covered in bruises, cuts, and a strange euphoria characterized only by the drugs she’d been given to make her squirm, the girl was transferred out of pity.  She wound up in Tempus Mortis, a prison in Feyshore.  While there, she was told to keep to herself, and that she did.  The child enjoyed her cell, the solemnness and the beautiful carvings of tally marks on the walls from prisoners past.  She passed the years by without incident, and in peace...until Tempus Mortis burned.

## A Whole New World

Fayette hadn’t been involved in the prison break of Tempus Mortis, but she’d managed to escape in the chaos.  She’d enjoyed her cell in the prison - but now she was given an opportunity, one she wouldn’t just allow to pass her by.  At 14, she was eager to leave, and that she did.  She left the prison, escaped to a nearby market and snatched some clothes, ignoring the cries that there was a prisoner on the loose.  She’d have silenced them, but there were too many.  She’d get her clothes bloody, and she didn’t want that.  With a quick change, she put on the new clothes (a beautiful sundress) and hurried to Araedia.  Word didn’t spread as fast as she’d thought, and she was just another nameless face in the crowd.  Determined to remain free of that damned cell, the girl left Araedia by boat and fled to the Southern Isles.

## Happiness Comes in Seconds

Fayette, at age 16, had settled into the Southern Isles.  She had a peaceful life, working as a wench at a local tavern.  However, she’d cut her name short, and now responded to “Fay”, and nothing else.  She did not post her last name on any document, and simply said it was due to being an orphan.  That earned the pity of most, and gave her a reason to avoid detection.  While working at the tavern, Fay met a young man by the name of Montreal, and noticed he’d come to the tavern often.  While Fay had never felt true happiness, she believed that this was as close as she was going to get.  Whenever Montreal entered the tavern, she would take a break and sit with him, enjoying their time together.  On holidays, she bought him gifts, as he did, her, and the two seemed to share a pleasant relationship.  They went out on her days off, enjoying not only nature but the marketplace and the civilians of the Isles.  They went swimming and held hands and kissed and enjoyed the sunset.  Fay was truly happy.

In the fall, Montreal confided in Fay that he was to be the next heir to his noble family name.  At 18 years old, Fay knew very well what that meant, and it troubled her.  However, Montreal popped her the question, and Fay accepted.  She would become the heiress, and Montreal’s wife.  She continued to work at the tavern, though, for the peaceful schedule and satisfaction it brought her to have things to do.  She almost felt...stable.

That is, until three weeks later, at the dinner where Montreal would be crowned the new head of his noble family, an arrow pierced his throat at the podium, leaving Fayette covered in his blood as she stood next to him.  Their marriage announcement was scheduled for that evening, as well as his acceptance as head.  Instead of weeping over her lover’s dying body, however, she stared at her dress, covered in his fluids.  She tried to rub it off, only for it to spread, like a contagious ink.  Fay then pulled the arrow from his throat, and stared down his family members.  “You...greedy nobles...which one of you arranged this..?  Huh?  Who?!” She’d shouted angrily at the family meeting, and proceeded to slaughter them with her arrow.  Sure, several of them escaped, but Montreal’s siblings, parents, and close relatives had been closer to the podium, and they were not so lucky.  It was a bloodbath, and Fay’s beautiful gown was drenched in red by the end of the event.  When authorities arrived, Fay was found wringing the blood out of her dress onto her lover, as if performing a transfusion.  She’d been carried away in a daze, unresisting, and had simply been tossed in a cell.

## New Beginnings

Fayette was approached roughly a week after her arrest by a stranger in black.  Still in her daze, she’d been fairly unresponsive, although she’d been listening to his words.  An invitation to join a group of killers or face death in this cell.  Neither way was pleasant - she’d wanted her life with Montreal, children, a back yard and row boat.  She’d finally sighed, and nodded.  “I do not wish to die where I began,” she’d said, and had gotten to her feet.  This, was how Fayette Erskine became a criminal and guild member for the Black Poppies.

## Here and Now

Fayette now lives in a home in the Southern Isles, and considers herself moderately stable.  She’s able to smile a hollow smile and help those who require her assistance.  However, due to her work in the Poppies, she’s also a bit rougher, and her daze from that day that Montreal died has never quite left her eyes.  Her soul is a shell, and one that carries nothing but pain, suffering, and ungranted wishes.  She’s bitter, sour, and will cut your throat with a smile.