Character Name: Madeline Hargrave
Race: Half-Elf
Age: 68
Gender: Female
Character Description:
Madeline Hargrave was a slender 6’ woman, with dark hair and a grey complexion more faded than would be expected of her race. Alcohol abuse, tobacco, and a great deal of stress over a great deal of years have left her looking closer to thirty-five than twenty. Her ears ended in a slight point, her eyes lavender blue, and her hair a dark brown color. A half-elf, she could pass for a human at a distance.
She gave the impression of a statue. She had a hard face, careful and deliberate posture, and strong features. She was not soft or elegant, but she /was/ handsome. She wore a corset, tied tightly and paired with a bell curve dress to try and accentuate a feminine shape that nature had not provided to her.
(At least one to two paragraphs describing your character’s physical appearance, including height, eye color, and skin tone.)
Character Occupation: Nurse, Courtesan
Character Personality/Traits:
Madeline was a woman who at the end of the day never assigned responsibility to herself. Self-concerned, she might have condemned her actions when she had done something to make herself unhappy, but when faced with an accusation she will have a hundred reasons that it wasn’t her fault, only willing to accept when no one is accusing her. She might privately accept blame, but never in front of someone. She can be obsessive, and knows this fault of hers, carefully snipping her thoughts and focusing intently on other things when unhealthy thoughts begin to creep up .
She rarely smiles or acknowledges a person unless directly addressed. She takes pride in what she knows well, and when she’s firmly set on something - such as Aderoth being a male aspect - she will treat all dissenting opinions as ignorance. She’s not completely unpleasant - She has a good, decent sense of humor and keeps in touch with the people she knows, even if she may act as if she knows better than them. She has a decent singing voice and likes to use it.
Character Biography:
It was just after the fall of Thonduhm, and in the countryside of Kouren Kai a small town was fleeing in the face of impending doom. Gertrude Hargrave had taken charge of her niece; A small half-elven baby conceived with a strange magician with a grim demeanor. The child’s mother stayed behind, trusting in the armies that now began to move through the plains to protect them. For she was weak from childbirth, and braving the roads in this state, both known and newly tread towards Barkamsted, seemed a more likely cause of death than the Orcs who now advanced towards them. Unfortunately, she was proven incorrect.
Madeline never knew her mother as a result, and her aunt Gertrude survived, raising her in the safety of Barkamsted. Her aunt was a decent figure for bringing her up, but the lack of support and Madeline’s obsessive temperament made it a rocky endeavor. Gertrude offered her an Illusion trinket mirror, but it never worked in Madeline’s hands. As an adult, she began to work as a nurse, tending those who returned to the city with injuries, and often venturing out to camps where soldiers defended outward. These camps kept her nerves raw, and she became nervous that eventually, the Orcs would find the camps, and then they’d be swept away in the tide of blood.
She met a man there who she grew to love, as she nursed him back to health. His name was Rory; And unfortunately, he was taken. His brother, Garrett, fancied her as well - And though Madeline had hoped that Rory’s wife would pass away, he was one of many who fell to the Orcs. She couldn’t get him out of her head for a long while after that, and because of that, she gave his brother a chance. That chance metastasized, eventually, into marriage.
There were periods when they were safely inside Barkamsted, and in one such period, Madeline fostered a child - Not with her husband, but with one of his closest friends, a soldier named Lysanthur. Her love with Garrett was empty, and she just /wanted/ a connection so badly. Lysanthur’s passion burned more furiously than Garrett’s, and so she took it more readily.
This child, she believed, was a punishment. Though she’d wanted children, she knew it wasn’t her husband’s. It left her deeply concerned for whether he’d find out, to the point it made her sick - She wanted nothing more than to be rid of it. A nurse at home took care of Madeline’s child, and soon Madeline was sent home as well. She’d become somewhat unreliable, and depressed, her hands shaky, speaking to walls and empty rooms. For a long while she did not hold her child in her arms, but she began to warm up to it.
She knew that child wasn’t hers. When she was alone, she thought she could hear that the child would reveal her unfaithfulness, that its existence wasn’t right. It was difficult to reckon the innocent babe with her feelings. She tried to love the child, but she only felt the oppressive emptiness of guilt.
She grew worse when Garrett returned without one of his legs; It was abjectly alarming. For days, then weeks, her mind didn’t stop going over how different life would be. Not only for him, now an invalid, but for Madeline who would now be expected to take on extra responsibilities to care for him on top of trying to manage their limited finances in the struggling wartime economy.
She held the child in her arms one day and offered her mother’s heirloom mirror to him. Though she spoke sweetly to him, though the oppressive aura was soft enough that day that she could focus on the love she had for her boy, he had to go and ruin it.
He’d cast a spell, that’s all it was. She’d panicked, and she’d felt jealous. A few hours later, Garrett was rubbing her back on their bed, comforting her - She wasn’t allowed near the child anymore, and that for some reason gave her such a deep pain she didn’t think she’d be able to go on. Natasha, a friend of hers who had worked with her as a nurse, stepped into the role Madeline had left unfilled, and she had limited contact with the child after that. She stepped heavily into drink and tobacco, and never quite stopped using either one.
After the reclamation of Falkvard, they sent him away with Lysanthur as Natasha departed. The war effort was drawing near to an end and nurses from everywhere were needed, drawing Natasha away. Garret, having trouble moving, trusted his good friend to take care of the child for a time. It was at this point that he began to focus heavily on his wife’s mental health.
They tried various remedies, one of which left a hole in her skull and required a long period of convalescence. It seemed to get better, as when people drill holes into a person’s head they quickly figure out how to convince said trepanners no more medical attention is required.
Garrett and Madeline decided to give their child another chance. Unfortunately, it was too late. Lysanthur had died in their absence, and the child was nowhere to be found. Many weeks of searching went by, and nothing came of their search.
All pretense dissolved, Madeline suggested that they take a break, and moved away from Garrett.
Times had improved immensely. She’d hardly been a large part of the end of the war, the closing of the demon gates. A flood of new labor and goods from the Alliance’s new allies, from open trade routes across Saphriel, spelled prosperity for many new merchants. However, Madeline found her business in an area she had experience in; Being a whore.
Freelance at first, she found a successful business partner, a pure-blooded elf she quickly grew to hate. She wasn’t all that terrible, but Madeline latched onto every little thing; Condescending comments, Madeline’s jealousy of her appearance or clientele, and then withholding well-earned money. Though the woman was unbearable, her connections were too valuable to toss away. She always had business.
The situation grew untenable for Madeline, even though her boss never noticed. She grew into a curled-up ball of emptiness and anger and hatred and it was difficult to even sleep thinking of that woman.
One night, the elf was passing payment to Madeline in a dark alley where no one had bothered them before. “Where’s the rest?” Madeline asked.
“That’s it for now,” she said. “I’ll send more later, but I have payments I need to make; I’m sorry I can’t offer more at this time.”
“I earned it,” Madeline said, gritting her teeth. Her vision grew red, and the hundreds of tiny thoughts from the last several months jumbled up into an incandescent ball of fury in her skull. “It’s- It’s not /yours/ to keep from me!”
“Don’t get into another argument with me, Mud-Elf,” the woman whispered, her voice harsh and short. “It’s time for us both to go home, and I’m not making nearly enough to cover what I need to! This will be enough for you. You live alone, I have my daughter. Just wait one month; I promise, you’ll have what you earned.” Seeing that Madeline was shivering from a cold rage, she quietly thanked the half-elf and left.
Madeline’s eyes fell on a loose brick. She bent down and picked it up. She crept up at a swift jog. She didn’t care if she ended up in jail for assault, even if the stupid smug elf got to complain about being hit. She was just so /angry/, and anything in the whole world seemed preferable to letting that anger go without being acted upon.
The brick came down on the taller woman’s head from behind. The stupid, pretty, pure-blooded elf crumpled to the ground like a puppet, strings cut. She frantically reached out to support herself against the wall, her arm not moving quite correctly, before slumping face-up onto the ground.
Looking up, she saw Madeline looming there through blurred eyes, and she was confused and terrified. She tried to say something, anything, but it came out as a soft groan.
“... Cercien?” When there came no reply, Madeline grew suddenly timid, set the brick down, and fled. She waited in her home to be carted away. She thought of what she’d say in her defense even through the long hours of the night. A week went by, and she hadn’t left her house, and then two. By the time she’d started leaving to purchase groceries, she realized that if they’d find her it wasn’t going to be today. The crime scene was empty, and people spoke of the murder in hushed tones. The discretion of the two prostitutes served them, because as the years went by the guard never found a thing.
Though safe from the reach of the law, Madeline couldn’t hope to protect herself from herself. She quit roaming the streets and became a clerk at the Barkamsted docks, where every day she was forced to confront that she had gone too far, that she was guilty, and that she might never be able to make up for what she’d done.
It was the wake-up call she needed, ironically, to begin living a better life. She actively addressed her obsessive thinking, she reaffirmed to herself each day that the things she thought about weren’t productive. She obsessed about not obsessing, and over time it began to work; By the time the plague came she’d been working on the docks for years, and she ended up having a nice small period of time where she got to be the only one in the warehouse. The plague affected friends of hers, who she’d begun reaching out to again, including her aunt.
Guilt continued to weigh her down, but it failed to fester. Her lost child, and her murder, became motivations to gain a healthy mode of thought. She didn’t stop drinking, or smoking, but she did use either one far less often as she got better. The years weren’t easy, but they were less lonely. She narrowly avoided being murdered on the Barkamsted docks when the Ca’Liar came by, by virtue of having been off that day. And though she went through times of struggle, times where food was scarce due to blight, or long winters, times when friends in Falkvard were attacked by Sons of Itiris, she began to live a happier, better life.
After years of working as a clerk at the docks, she grew quite grumpy at the odd weather. Safety meetings became an annoyance as they happened often, and she had to go help shelve things at the warehouse when water rushed up on the docks, despite complaints she wasn't suited to lift things. Time off was nice, but having to evacuate as the water level rose two heads abover her height wasn't. She was also grumpy about the winter, but this time it didn't stop after a year, and she came home with her coat soaked through every day. So, dissatisfied, she put in a month's notice and then departed her job at the Barkamsted docks to spend a time coasting along on her savings, moving off to Falkvard for a change of environment and people.
Other/Extra:
Will be played as the second character I have on HeartOfChaos, taking my 4th character slot.
Starting Item:
Blue Wool Blanket
An old crochet blanket, a few beads and wooden charms hanging on through the threads.
Congratulations, your application is ACCEPTED! Please helpop while staff are online to receive your starting funds and items. Please also be sure to keep track of your funds to keep them split from what your other character on the account has. We look forward to seeing Madeline in and around the kingdom in all of her glory. Good luck!
Your application is PENDING! We're currently reviewing your application. It's clear a lot of thought has gone into this character and there's a lot of great work being done here. The only thing we wanted tocall out is that with the recent long winter, her work as a Dock Worker would almost certainly be affected and we wanted to know a bit of how she's been handling that! If we could get some extra details about her life in recent years regarding this, that'd be superb and we'll get you moving towards that accepted character status!