Where are they now? (Jadarya)

[Elrion]

Was looking through the old board a while back, reading some of my unfinished mod threads. It's funny. With some of them, I just roll my eyes and say "Oh wow, I really don't know where I was going with that." With others, like Galliban's, I remember that I had a very clear idea of the storyline in my head, and I was left feeling kind of sad that the player left before I could finish it.

And then there was Jadarya's thread. That one was a lot of fun to read again. Mostly I liked the various characaters and Jadarya's interaction with them. I especially liked the evolution of Jadarya's relationships with recurring figures like Romus, Becky Rose, Racksha, and of course Morrigan.

So, feeling kind of nostalgic, I wrote the following vignettes to cap off the unfinished thread and give a bit of closure for some of the more important (and even some of the less important) characters in it. I also give the conclusion I had planned to a few of the hanging plot threads.

So without any further ado, a little trip down memory lane. (The thread in question can still be found at the Telgard yuku board: it's entitled "The Beginnings of a Plan.")

The Trial of the Century

After almost two year of often-cutthroat legal wrangling, Jadarya and her allies won their case. It was a close thing for a while, with the most serious legal threat being when Enrik very nearly proving to the court's satisfaction that Morgan's proposed legal guardian, 'Lord Philodendron,' was in fact an impostor and not a noble at all. Luckily, Romus and Lord Antonidas were able to turn the tide by producing voluminous amounts of masterfully forged documents accounting for virtually every relative in Lord Philodendron's family tree going back sixteen generations, as well as a veritable parade of minor nobles who were willing to swear on their mother's graves that 'Lord Philodendron' was a relative and/or life-long friend.

After that little sideshow, the case was more or less over. The evidence was clear: Enrik had failed utterly in his most important duty, which was to keep the Lady Rausse quiet and out of public sight. He hadn't even managed to keep her from killing again, as the fate of Teyden, the late unlamented House Guard, proved. Since the Lady Rausse had proven to be almost completely docile while in Tanager and Lord Philodendron's custody, and hadn't tried to escape from them once (though sometimes Jadarya had wished that she would, at least in the early stages of their relationship). As such, Lord Philodendron was given full legal custody of the Lady Rausse, as well as control over her estate. Enrik was left ruined and humiliated. He swore revenge against all of his opponents, and Tanager in particular... but without the fortune of the Rausse and Morgan estates behind him, it was most likely an empty threat at best.

Morgan's Inheritance

'Lord Philodendron,' as he was now more widely known, spent a great deal of time afterwards crowing about his amazing and brilliant performance in court. He then called Jadarya and Morgan to his office at his theatre for a formal accounting of the vast fortune pertaining to the combined Rausse and Morgan estates. After deducting Antonidas' agreed-upon fee, a gratuity for Romus for his excellent service, the bribe money paid to those nobles who had testified for them at trial, a fair-sized investment in Romus's theatre and a couple of other business ventures he had in mind, back wages for Vori, a birthday gift for Romus, and the cost of a large celebratory luncheon to which all their friends were invited... there was still a truly enormous amount of money remaining. Most of that money, Romus explained with all apparent honesty, was tied up in Morgan's various landholdings and in the maintenance of her properties, including her manor in the Inner City. Still, the Morgan and Rausse properties generated a nice and very sizeable stream of income, not even counting their share on whatever money Romus made on the money they had invested in his various projects.

"Which leaves you, for our current fiscal year, with... ah... carry the one, and..." After much hemming and hawing, Romus wrote down a figure and passed it across the desk: 1,000 crowns. "I may have massaged the numbers a little," he told them modestly, "to make the final tally come out nice and even like that."

Morgan had smiled pleasantly behind her veil. "That's nice," she murmured. "Now I can start collecting jewelry again."

Romus

Unsurprisingly, the results of the trial helped make Romus (now far better known as Lord Philodendron) a wealthy man. As time went by, he (and by extension, Jadarya and Morgan) only got richer. Many of Romus's business ventures went belly-up, surprisingly at not, but several of them proved to be wildly successful. One of those was Romus's theatre. And, perhaps to Romus's private disappointment, it was a theatre and not a brothel as he had hoped. That was mostly thanks to Wolf of the Shadows' investment. Upon finally learning that a Hand of Skaven was the part owner of his theatre, Romus had been terrified. He never did muster the courage needed to reveal to Skaven's assassin that the 'theatre' idea had only been a cover. Being Romus, however, before very long he recovered enough from his fright to begin using Wolf's involvment a selling point. Hence the theatre's new name, The Shadow's Hand. Romus even kept a private box high in the stands, ostensibly reserved for Wolf of the Shadows' personal use in case he ever decided to take in a show. Which, as far as Jadarya knew, he never did. But that never stopped theatre-goers from casting curious glances toward "the best seat in the house," as Romus called it, wondering whether this would be the night that the Wolf would be there.

Wolf of the Shadows

While Romus saw Wolf of the Shadows very seldom, if at all, Jadarya continued to hear from the man with some regularity. Among other things the Hand remained very interested in the money that the wealthy and  powerful Lady Rausse's estate could bring to Outer Maston. Sometimes, very infrequently, he met with Jadarya for what could only be referred to as social calls. He would show up to offer to share dinner with her, perhaps, or dancing at the Diamond. Sometimes he would want to discuss business, too. But sometimes he would ask her about her life, instead, and sometimes he wouldn't say a word. Months might go by between one such meeting and the next. All in all, the relationship between them... if it could be called that... was decidedly strange and ambiguous.

The only explanation Jadarya ever got was one night when Wolf told her that one day, after the strange events leading up to her trial and verdict of 'innocent by reason of madness,' Morgan had actually worked up the nerve to try to hire an assassin to kill her father. Given the vast fortune that she would inherit after Gimlet's death, added to the Rausse estate's already considerable holdings, Skaven had taken an interest. Wolf of the Shadows himself had been sent to carry out the deed.

"I failed in my mission," Skaven's assassin told Jadarya, "because you beat me to it." And that seemed to be all the explanation for his fascination with her that Wolf of the Shadows would offer.

Vori

After the dwarven assassin's year of service ended, for months Vori continued to work as a bodyguard for Jadarya and Morgan without payment, gruffly proclaiming that he would collect his wages once they had won the case against Enrik. Eight months later, he did exactly that. Sadly, his 'grand-da,' Duff, had died in the interim, during a final battle with the dark faerie called Quintain. Having inherited both his grandfather's house and, surprisingly, also his unusual talent for Spirit magic, he carried on Duff's mantle as Outer Maston's foremost protector of fey and custodian of faerie lore. And now that Jadarya no longer had as much need of him as a bodyguard, he took over his grandfather's role as a tutor to the young woman in the arts of magic, instead. Vori never did reclaim his title as a great and feared assassin. Within the shadowy world of mages, however, he would eventually be hailed far and wide as the first mage to both discover, and summon, the powerful and belligerent Beer Fey.

Becky Rose

Street children grow up fast, and nowhere more so than in Outer Maston. By the time the girl called Becky Rose was ten years old, Sally the doll was no longer in evidence. "Dolls are for kids," was all that she told Jadarya, if asked. Within another year, Becky was now going by the name of Rosa, and she had a growing following of younger children among the Happy Orphans. Word on the streets was the higher-ups among the Spiders had their eye on the girl, since even at such a young age anyone could see her potential. Some even claimed that she was a young Sinthe the Blade in the making. She never abandoned her friendship with Jadarya, however, and was always quick to come when called. Nor was she ever any shier about offering her services, when needed... sometimes as a friendly favor, and sometimes for a price. These days, though, she had a rather more expensive taste for food.

Raksha and Peregrine

Shortly after the question of Morgan's guardianship had been settled, Raksha and Darbi were married. Despite the young man's initial wishes, they never did move away to his estate in the country. Quite the opposite, actually. The destruction of Tegn had hit Perry and his entire family quite hard. As such, the little clan had become more tightly-knit than ever. Rsksha moving away was suddenly all but out of the question. She never did give up on her dream of becoming a great dancer, however, and actually made a great deal of progress at that goal. She was even featured prominently at the Shadow's Hand in several musical numbers, where her performance was very well received (even though the productions in question were a lot less bawdy than the theatre's usual fare, Romus being Romus theatre or no).

Also because of Tegn's destruction Perry had lost a great deal of his easy-going nature, along with his old home city and most of his brothers and sisters. He became (what passed for, in Outer Maston) a powerful and influential politician, doing his best to protect and provide for Tegn's few survivors, most of whom had settled in the fringes of Outer Maston. Word had it that the Tegn folk had formed a powerful and influential faction within what passed for politics in the Outer City. Some even claimed that their leaders, including Perry, were working closely with the Thieves' Guild in order to strike back at those in the privy council who had ordered their home city's purge.

Quintain

A major battle rocked the Outer City over a year ago, during which a gang calling itself The Family attempted a direct overthrow of Skaven. Despite a multi-pronged attack involving heavy dark magical support from the Wyrn Cult and even an army of undead, blood-drinking Mortes, the effort to overthrow the Thieves' Guild was just as big a failure as everyone probably should have expected. The whole mess probably wouldn't have affected Jadarya at all, except that Quintain was a major part of The Family's battle plans, opening up a second front in the little war with an army of dark fey and other assorted nasties. Happily Jadarya and company were already aware of that threat before it could fully materialize. Along with Vori, Morgan, Duff, and even Romus and Becky Rose, Jadarya confronted the Dark Knight of Faerie and destroyed him forever. Victory came at the cost of Duff's life, bravely sacrificed to save the others. It also came with a considerable bonus: with his alliance with the evil faerie disposed of, Gimlet's evil spirit was greatly weakened.

Ghost of Gimlet

Aside from being a sadistic monster with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, it turned out that Gimlet was also a mage of the Dark Order. Through a dark magical ritual involving the summoning of the evil fey Quintain, he had apparently hoped to father a male child, in order to displace the boy's soul with his own, and begin a chain of possessions with which he would cheat death forever. But instead of a boy, Morgan had been born. So then Gimlet had hoped to use her to produce a male child. Gimlet's depraved treatment of his daughter all but shattered her mind and spirit, and made her immensely vulnerable to possession, just as he had intended. As it happened however, Gimlet had gone too far in his efforts, leaving Morgan's mind and soul in a perpetually chaotic state that made her difficult to control effectively. Even when possessing the young woman, Gimlet was never entirely in control-- instead, during those intervals their personalities would fuse and blend in a variety of disturbing ways.

And in the end, it all came to nothing, anyway. With Quintain gone, a great deal of Gimlet's power was gone as well. Before very much longer Jadarya's nascent Spirit talent had grown powerful enough for the two sisters to extract him from his hiding place within Morgan and destroy his tainted soul forever. Or, at least, for what they hoped was forever. Whatever the case, Morgan was finally free.

Morgan

Unfortunately, it was just as Jadarya had supposed: Morgan had been through too much and was too damaged to ever make a complete recovery, or even to live independently without her sister's support. She remained placid and docile most of the time, and often given to fits of amnesia or hysterical emotion, as well as being more-than-ordinarily vulnerable to all kinds of spiritual possession. It was taking a long time for her damaged soul to heal. It seemed fairly obvious that her damaged mind never would.

Still, the Lady Rausse was happier now. She had learned to clean and mend clothes and take care of other household chores (aside from cooking-- having once burned through their best pot and then, in her panic, set the hem of her dress ablaze, Morgan had added 'fire' to her already extensive list of phobias, and thereafter could hardly even be persuaded to approach the stove). She continued to show her occasional flashes of assertiveness and initiative with greater frequency as time went on, and maintained her friendship with the loveable rogue, Sweeney. She also continued to pursue her interest in painting, which was nice, because while she was at work she could be safely left unattended for hours at a time, without Jadarya having to worry about her wandering off or hurting herself somehow.

At Romus's urging, one day Morgan allowed the little conman to try selling some of her paintings in the Inner City. The reception from the nobles there was even better than Romus had hoped. Morgan had become something of a celebrity in the Inner City following the trial: now absolutely everyone had to have a painting by the beautiful and talented, yet tragic and vulnerable Lady Rausse. Her paintings continued to sell very well thereafter, whenever Morgan could be persuaded to part with them. Nevernind that she had a habit of leaving them half-finished, and turning them over to Romus with a shrug and a murmur of "That's all" as her only explanation. It only seemed to add to their mystique. Overtime she would solidify her reputation as Lady Rausse, the Mad Artist of Maston.