[V5] Slaughterhouse Three | Meet the Character

 

art by its-sixxers

Penelope Germaine Armitage-Stoneleigh, on her gravestone; Mother Superior Penelope, to her pack; Penny, to the handful of individuals who think she's their friend. Lasombra, ninth generation (was tenth), Graverobber, Path of Death and the Soul.

Penny got away from me a little. 

She was meant to die in her chronicle, and she survived. I gave Haydes, who was Storytelling this venture into Sabbat country, an old NPC and said "this is her sire and he's actively trying to kill her, do what you will with this," and my man ran with that - but not far or fast enough, apparently. 

She was not meant to be as... sexually aggressive as she turned out to be, but her anarch "girlfriend" segued into a failed diablerie and one of the most sincere sect-crossed had-we-world-enough-and-time is-it-even-a-love-story experiences I've ever had the pleasure to play out.

She was always supposed to have a dark secret, to be the most awkward fit in the Sabbat - she's Camarilla to her bones, but she ran the other way from her sire, and now she's here and she's determined to make the best of it. I didn't go in expecting it to be tragedy, but that's Lasombra for you.

Born in 1919, Cambridge-educated mathematician, can do cryptic crosswords in half the time your dad can, and looks like Eva Green playing Hedy Lamarr. Graduated straight into Bletchley Park, had an affair with a Spanish translator who threw Penny over when her fiancé returned from the war, subject to scandal and had her life ruined over about three years.

She was, of course, being tapped for recruitment. Her sire, Roderigo di Gloria de la Madre, knew exactly what a giant anachronism he was, and so he made a habit of picking intelligent young women with highly contemporary skills as his ghouls and offering them a bargain. Ten years as his Bond Girl, in essence - travelling companion and travel agent, interface with the modern world - and if they survived that, a choice. They'd be set up for life with a decade of fuzzy memories, anywhere in the world, or they could take the Embrace, having more than earned it.

Penny opted for the Embrace, and shortly afterwards blew up a building with Roderigo inside it, then made a run for Sabbat country. Decades of deep cover in Arizona's settled Sword of Caine have done things to her - run her Humanity down to 4 on a good night, and made her the state's most and least successful pack priestess (amazing recruitment numbers, but don't ask about the survival rate).

Following the siege of Phoenix, Penny became disillusioned with the sect war as nothing more than a turf squabble - a sideshow to the real conflict she'd been told it was all leading towards. Perhaps she was recruited by the secretive inner circle of her sect - the Black Hand that wields the Sword - or perhaps her correspondence with a sweet, heretical Toreador and affair with a burned-out, devout Brujah talked her around.

Penny's current whereabouts are unknown. I'm absolutely going to use her again, though.