Charlotte Myska

[Charlotte]

Name: Charlotte Myska (she doesn’t know her real last name, but she took on Myska as it was a nickname for her when she was little, as she was “little and quiet as a mouse [myska]”)
Class: Thief
Hair Color: Blonde
Eye Color: Blue
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 140lbs
Age: 24

Appearance: While thin and toned from her athleticism, Charlotte’s body still retains much of its womanly curvature, though she carefully maintains her size and weight. Her complexion has pink undertones and is rarely blemished. In keeping with her reverence for her personal appearance, Charlotte is careful to keep her hair clean and long, and it is always pushed over to one side. Her blonde locks are naturally wavy, but she has been known to take the time to naturally straighten it. She tends to wear makeup, darkening her eyes and adding color to her lips. This isn’t to say Charlotte can’t be found dirtied up, but if she can help it she makes sure to maintain a clean and presentable appearance.

Clothes: A woman who recognizes a large part of her strength lies in her appearance, Charlotte does not hide her body under shapeless frocks and billowing robes. Form-fitting clothes and leather tend to grace her body when she is traveling, always of dark color with splashes of red or green and always with her sword on her hip. When “consulting” she can be found in any manner of clothing, from colorful dresses to tightly-tied corsets to, well... Only when it is frigid cold out will she cover herself with a cloak, and even then it is only out of necessity; she hates the idea of covering up what she has deemed as one of her strongest assets.

Personality: Charlotte is a woman who was born with the power of observation, and much of her personality has been shaped by that fact. She has an uncanny ability to sense other people’s thoughts and motives – she picks up on little cues which can go completely unnoticed by others, such as facial expressions and stance. She has been able to hone and use this talent to get people to let their guard down around her, and her skill when it comes to the powers of observation have been key in her work on countless occasions.

In her teen years Charlotte was an absolute lush, partaking in all manner of alcohol, substance – if it made its way through the Lycian underground, the woman has probably partaken in it. While she still enjoys a good time, the matured young woman is more responsible with her activities of excess – she adheres to a strict “no drinking on the job” policy, and she refuses to become emotionally attached to anyone after her relationship with Simon.

Over the years she has become extremely guarded, to the point that she’s only let a few people know her real name. In part her guarded nature is because she has a habit of becoming passionate about what she’s doing or people she chooses to care about – she doesn’t take kindly to a failed job, and she takes even less kindly to someone she cares about in any regard hurt on her watch.

She doesn’t like sharing details about her personal life, though she has no issue making things up to fill the conversation gap. In conversation, especially when it gets too personal, she’s very evasive, guiding it to where she wants to go instead of addressing the other person’s questions. She also prefers to get someone else talking and revealing things about themselves first before chiming in; it helps her to get the best read on how she should tailor her response to get the information she needs.

Charlotte is spontaneous, unafraid of picking up and doing something unplanned at a moment’s notice; however, when there’s something important at stake, she does prefer to take the time to come up with an action plan and make sure that at least her initial bases are covered. Either way, the woman does well to fully immerse and dedicate herself to whatever it is she is doing; she’s found it’s the best way for her to succeed.

While she keeps virtually everyone at arm’s length now, Charlotte does find at times that she wishes she had someone to confide in, or at least someone who knew who she really was. The thoughts are fleeting, seeing how if that were a reality she would put herself in danger, but she does find herself wondering if she could ever feel how she did about Simon again. Years of working as an escort, though, have tainted her ability to open up and allow herself to feel something for someone she is with – if she does, she simply assumes it’s simply a momentary infatuation.

Born in: Western Isles

Story: Charlotte grew up on the streets in the Western Isles, and she learned very quickly that a future of hardship lay in front of her. Her mother had been an escort and died from disease when Charlotte was very young, and the blonde never knew her father. With no family and no place to call home, the young child found herself having to choose between being taken to the orphanage or living on the streets. And while being on the streets was a wretched life, life in an orphanage in the Isles would come with much more pain and misfortune than not.

So barely a child, Charlotte found herself running with a group of other orphans who were known as urchins to most of the town. They lived in old moldy crates in the back alleys and were regarded as little more than dogs. Growing up her stomach never knew the feeling of fullness, even when she was able to find a decent piece of stale bread. It was in the streets that the young girl first learned to steal; begging was too noticeable, and she was much too young to resort to selling herself for a meal. While still very young, the girl quickly learned how to move with a quiet foot and quick hand, and was one of the better urchin thieves in her town.

Her childhood was nothing of note until she was nine, when she was finally caught by the town guard sleeping under a shelter in the rain and sent to the orphanage. The woman who ran it, Mrs. Parge, was a wicked person, who exploited the children rather than trying to find them good homes. There was no prospect of actual adoption for the children, so it was not uncommon for Parge to send some of her orphans back onto the street to rat out the other urchins, promising a hot meal to the one who got the most children caught. Once old enough - usually around ten or eleven - they would be sold to merchants, work camps, or Isle businesses as indentured servants until they came of age. Those too young or not valuable enough to be sold were often made to work around the orphanage and beaten for the fun of Parge and her men.

When she was eleven Parge sold Charlotte to a nearby tavern to keep their back room clean. Though she never saw any of the coin, Charlotte was just happy finally be away from the orphanage. While she wasn’t supposed to do anything except what she was told, Charlotte couldn’t help but chatter with the staff that came back in search of something. When the teenager was alone cleaning out the barrels the tavern used to make their ale, she often thought of what kinds ales she would brew if she ever had the chance. She would annoy the brewer to death with questions of how everything worked, and she would often simply ask to watch him work.

Eventually Charlotte proved her worth enough to her employer to be an apprentice to the brewer. While she was happy to be done with cleaning the back rooms, Charlotte hoped to be able to experiment with new ingredients and techniques while her mentor insisted on her learning the basics and focusing on brewing a good ale first.

It was during her apprenticeship that Charlotte began to grow interested in working in the front of the house in the tavern, enjoying the opportunity to converse and mingle with the patrons, as well as people-watch and eavesdropping on others’ conversations. She quickly became loved by the tavern patrons, who always asked when the blonde would be working the front of house. They would oft confide in her thing they shouldn’t, all because the young woman was affable and easy on the eyes. Charlotte liked it because she could hear stories from the mainlands, a place that sounded so far off but seemed to hold a promise of a different life than the Isles could ever offer her.

Brewing beer could only keep the young woman interested for so long, though, as she realized wasting away in a backroom was wasting what she believed she was discovering was a talent of hers. So at fifteen Charlotte cut her apprenticeship short, stealing away from her host and taking off with a traveling caravan of illegal smugglers she had met in the tavern, who were headed to Lycia, the mainlands Charlotte had secretly hoped she would get to see someday.

While at first her companions tried to keep Charlotte at a distance from their job, she became intrigued with the mystery of their work and frequently requested to help them. Finally giving in, the smugglers discovered what Charlotte had during her time in the front of the tavern: she was exceptionally good at reading people and persuasion, and she even had a quick hand. Eventually they let her help in their conversations with suppliers and buyers. She was so good, in fact, they began paying her and referring to her as their “private consultant.” Considering the sometimes dangerous nature of their work as well, they also taught Charlotte how to wield both a sword and dagger so she would be able to protect herself and the others in the caravan.

Around the age of 16 the leader of the caravan, a man named Simon, took an interest in the flowering young woman, and the two began a romantic relationship. While exciting for Charlotte, the man was not as kind a lover as one would hope for their first love, and would often find herself bloodied and bruised if the man devolved into a drunken rage. But she did not leave, not wanting to lose the smugglers for the protection and training they provided. So instead, she learned different ways to curb the man’s rage, some far less innocent than others.

But the young woman could only keep the man’s anger at bay for so long. Two years after joining the smugglers, Simon lost himself in a rage and directed it towards the blonde. Despite fighting back, the woman barely escaped the man with her life. It was then she realized no one but herself would keep her safe from the man; no longer would the smugglers be able to keep the man at bay. So once she was strong enough, Charlotte stole away in the middle of the night with enough gold to make it to Lycia.

Charlotte found herself alone and without allies, but this didn’t deter the blonde. Before long she found herself working in a small brothel on the outskirts of Ostia to make ends meet, though she moved to Laus no more than a few months after arriving, after discovering her old lover had somehow found out about her whereabouts. It was then the woman decided to begin going by a myriad of different names, though she eventually settled on Myscha.

In Laus, Charlotte quickly became one of the most requested courtesans in her brothel, which catered to men who required more discretion due to their status. The woman was quick to learn how to cater to the tastes of some of the most powerful men in Laus and Lycia, from bishops to counts and even a few lords from neighboring countries. And with this, came something she realized she craved more than anything: information. The lords and ladies who came to the brothels in Laus often were loose-lipped, leading to plenty of rumors floating around the other courtesans.

While the other ladies were content to simply chatter amongst themselves, Charlotte decided to use the information to her advantage, and began trading secrets. At the same time, she began to make house calls on the side, during which she began to steal items again, selling them back to their owners through extortion and blackmail. Charlotte became well versed in many of the Lycian courts and their inner workings, becoming a source for underground information and sometimes negotiation with the nobles of the land - all for a price, of course. It was also at this time that the blonde had gained enough wealth to buy a small home in the capital of Laus, where she keeps what belongings she has - mostly a myriad of dresses and jewelry given as gifts from her clients or lords/ladies she has worked for.

After a while Charlotte left the brothel she worked for, having made plenty of gold to sustain herself through her multiple endeavours. But she still craved more information, realizing this was most valuable to the lords and ladies of the land, and thus began hiring herself out as a “private consultant.” Jobs like escorting a baron to a ball or wedding to discover deep secrets about his personal life, or working with a minor lord for a few weeks to plant an idea in the man’s head - these were not uncommon for Charlotte to do, and she was quite good at what she did as well. Of course, the blonde was not fully content with just staying in Lycia, so she also began to accept jobs from a few of her former escorting clients - the most prominent of which was Baron Balsam - ‘retrieving’ valuable items for them in between her usual work.

Current events

For a brief time the blonde considered joining with a small band of thieves to form a thieves guild, believing that working with the group could lend to additional resources and potential an expanded spy network for her to gather information with. However, it quickly became apparent that one of the members - a man named Ryuzaki - was mad with a lust for murder and power, and his friends did not seem as disturbed by this as Charlotte was. As well, the blonde had felt herself becoming much too close to another in the group; after a job with just him in Bern for the rebels, the young woman decided to break all ties to the group, disappearing in the night after splitting the pay for the job.

Once back in Lycia, Charlotte was tempted into a job in the Isles moving a dragon stone for her long-time client Baron Balsam, who promised her a magic dagger/artifact and a hefty sum of gold for its return to him. Without much delay she was off, traveling with a group of miners to a gold mine deep in the Isle mountains, to move the stone out from under the Bishop’s nose. Things quickly went awry, with a cave-in injuring the blonde’s foot and rendering her essentially lame for the remainder of the trip. Thankfully for her, though, it seemed she would make more than one friend on the road this time. First there was Gabe, one of the miner’s sons who became smitten with the blonde, offering to carry her after her injury, which the blonde was quick to accept.

And then there was Ryker. The teal-haired ‘miner’ had seemed out of place to the blonde, but it wouldn’t be until she tried to steal away in the middle of the night with the Bishop’s stone, that she would discover the man was really an Etrurian agent by the name of Saturos Prox. The Bishop’s men quickly caught her as she tried to board a ship out of the Isles, having lost the stone to the agent after stopping to rest her foot. The men locked her into a cellar and beat her to near death - until the agent appeared again, saving her from the clutches of the Bishop’s men and smuggling her out of the Isles. The man offered her a literal second chance - she could take the stone and not fail her employer, if she became an agent of the Prophet - one of the Inquisitional Intelligence agents that were only spoken of in hushed voices on the streets of Etruria, lest one be found out by one of them. For the blonde, the choice was obvious. Joining with the Inquisition, at least for a time, would afford her more resources than she could have ever dreamed of on her own.

Before going to Etruria to reunite with the operative, though, Charlotte recovered from her injuries in her small home in Laus and received her reward from Balsam. It was during this time, too, that she met a Sacaen man named Tizato in the streets of Laus. What started as a one-night stand quickly developed into something else, which the blonde did her best to cut-off. But time and time again, the two crossed paths - during a smuggling job moving supplies from Laus to Santaruz while the embargo was still in effect, in Laus again, and even in Santaruz after the woman had protected Count Tristanine of Santaruz from an assassin by taking the man’s life - the first time she’d ever killed a man, something the worn woman had not been ready to deal with at that point.

Parting ways with the Sacaen after a tense reunion, Charlotte reunited with Saturos in a small town in Pharae, gathering information on a refugee line that had been used for more than a few persons of importance - including a young girl who might have been one of the lost princesses of Etruria. As of late the woman has been working solely out of Eturia, working minor jobs as she began gathering a network of resources to gather information for her, having realized after her trip to the Isles that doing everything on her own may not lend to her safety all the time. With an old associate, the woman has been buying orphans throughout Lycia and training them to read and thieve for her, so they can gather important information and documents from the Lycian elite as her “little mice.” As well, after discovering her colleague was stealing from her, the woman was able to relieve him of owning a string of brothels in Laus; now owned by the blonde, the courtesans now also act as her “little birds,” relaying key information through her information network to Charlotte. She plans to continue building her network, recruiting more courtesans and brothels from other territories and buying orphans until no important information can go unseen by her network in Lycia.

Commission by Cookyy (my sister). Check her out, she is fantastic!!!

[Deleted]

This was an interesting read. Accepted.