I’m playing in a D&D one-shot adventure tomorrow night, and I wrote up some background. I like this character story a lot, and I would love to find time to play more. We will see.
Born as lightning struck the temple the town fathers prayed at, Abigail was marked from birth by the townspeople as cursed. Luckily for her, she didn’t spend much time in town – she grew up in the wilds, moving cattle from pasture to buyer with her parents.
Out on the drive, there wasn’t much reason to worry about “boys jobs” and “girls jobs” – everyone needed to get the herd to the buyer or no one ate. Abigail learned to ride and rope just like her brothers, and her nimbleness on a horse was apparent from an early age. It also turned out that being able to sneak up on a wayward calf or hit a rattler between the eyes from 20 paces were pretty handy things, too.
That didn’t mean she didn’t have a chance to learn about the ways men and women made it in the world, though. When she was 17, Abigail’s brother returned to camp one night with a woman who’d run away from a “stifling” life in court. Being the only two women anywhere near their age on the trail, Abigail and Maree bonded, and they exchanged skills – Abigail taught Maree how to ride and make sure the herd got to where it needed to go, and Maree taught Abigail all about the rules of being in town and spending time with the gentry.
A couple of years later, Abigail’s family passed through the biggest city she’d ever seen. A few nights of hot baths and having the chance to put on some clothes that weren’t weathered leather taught her another thing about herself – while the road would always be home to her, there was something about the city that she needed. The skills Maree had taught her helped Abigail not embarrass herself when she was in taverns and inns with people who’d grown up with city money, but it was her unpolished edges and the sense of humor one can only develop during a lifetime on the road with nothing but family and cows for company that helped her catch the eye of a local merchant.
He was older, and bored of the world he’d grown up in, and Abigail was a strong breeze of something new. They had a whirlwind romance that led to a slightly – but not overly – scandalous trip down the aisle. Abigail had an understanding of commerce, having helped her parents buy and sell cattle for years, and her new husband Poul was more than willing to let her help out with his business. They quickly added to his fortune, and as is always the case with money, it opened doors. Soon they would dine with lords and ladies one night, hash out a lucrative business deal the next, and then hop on horses for a ride out to her parents’ new ranch the next.
Unfortunately, new money and new fame also can bring unwanted attention. Abigail and Poul made money and friends in high places, but they also made enemies, some in even higher places. Some of that, to be fair, was because Abigail and her husband had discovered that the dexterity needed to kill a rattler was pretty much the same as that needed to swap out a bag of gold coins for a bag of copper pennies, and that her skill with a dagger translated pretty well to opening things that other people didn’t want opened. They were having fun, getting rich, and rising in court, and what more could they have wanted?
As it turned out, what Abigail could have wanted was for her husband to stay alive longer. One too many locks picked led to one too many angry bankers, and one night they discovered that Poul’s wine had been poisoned. It would have been Abigail’s wine too, except that she had just discovered that she was expecting and had decided to abstain.
When Abigail realized what had happened, she got furious. Sure, she and Poul didn’t much care for the notion of other people’s property, but they’d never actually harmed a soul. This was taking it way too far. She couldn’t stay in town long – whoever had killed Poul would soon try again to get her, and she had a child to protect. Abigail loaded up her wagon in the wee hours of the morning, grabbed their two fastest horses, and made her way out to the wild where her family was. Not before torching her house, though, and their store. She wasn’t about to let anyone get their hands on what they’d made – or taken – not after murdering her husband.
Abigail told a version of the truth to her parents – she didn’t want them rushing in to find Poul’s killer and getting themselves hurt, but she told the whole story to Maree. She knew Maree would understand, and she knew that Maree would understand why Abigail would have to leave when she could. The wrong word getting to the wrong ear could put her whole family in danger. Maree and Abigail’s brother’s inability to have any kids of their own made that part simpler, and when her son was born, she stayed around long enough to nurse him for a couple of months and then left him with his new parents. He’d learn the truth someday, maybe.
Twenty-three when she rode away from her family, Abigail is 26 now. She’d had enough money left over to outfit herself well and tuck away safety money in a few places, and she never stayed in one place for more than a few weeks. At home in a dusty barroom and at the side of some man who thought she was charming, or witty, or just available, most anywhere she went was somewhere she could fit in. Things that weren’t sufficiently locked down still found their ways into her hands, especially if those things had been previously owned by someone she could have imagined poisoning her and Poul.
Project Gemini 