Vida
This is where I put a neat quote, I think.
Appearance
Vida's appearance was often... in contrast with her demeanor.
An odd juxtaposition of stoic professionalism versus the reality of her cold ruthlessness; cultured refinement in opposition to the violence her career as a sellsword promised; a pretty enough facade to conceal a hardened heart. It was something that appealed to a great deal of her employers - she had come to realize - and hurriedly worked to exploit.
Men and women alike often specifically sought her services for no other reason than the illusion Vida crafted of herself, even when there was never a lack of hired swords just like her to fill the position as their hired proxy.
Soon it became clear as to why, what her exploiting was for: she rarely looked nor played the part of a hired sword when in the company of clientele, instead choosing to accentuate the airs of an educated, accomplished professional like any other soul proud of the trade they worked in. That's what she was, wasn't she?
And why not, when it would make them feel more comfortable, like they could trust a woman who had obviously climbed so high despite her origins?
Not to mention a woman who would never truly betray them if she wished to preserve the dignity she so proudly flaunted?
Vida did not quite believe her own sales pitch, but if they chose to believe in it, who was she to discourage them? She certainly had no issue in cultivating this perception if it translated to steady employment.
How she presented herself to the outside world was ultimately another marketing tactic, a presentation that acted as a shield for her mind; something she would much rather remain concealed. All it took was an air of formality, and the outward façade of someone whose every action has been thought through and measured went a long way.
As for the woman behind all this masterminding... Vida herself was not at all unattractive, it was more than a small relief to know she could put her features to better use than the occasional punch in the face. Indeed she took full advantage of them by remaining regularly groomed and presentable. More than any mercenary or feudal era inhabitant had reason to, to be honest.
Where she could better her appearance without more than a few difficult minutes, she did. Her hair remained cropped and short, so she made sure to style it accordingly when the occasion arose, working to eliminate any unsightly tufts of hair, made sure it was drawn and combed neatly to one side. A proper framing for a proper face.
Another obvious habit was the coloring of her lashes with darkened charcoal or incense; a personal choice she thought carried... she didn't know, an air of mystique? All it largely did in conjunction with her withdrawn, pinched face and eternally frigid blue eyes was to give her a dark, gloomy, wearied expression.
She either didn't notice or didn't seem to mind, however.
All things considered, such an obvious, noticeable polish made clear the distinction between Vida and the others who shared her profession. Not exactly a difficult task for all the little advantages such a simple routine came with. Perhaps it was also as simple as the fact that it was nice to look nice, not that she'd care to admit it.
Skills and Abilities
***
Personality
Vida is the very definition of vanity when it comes to the work she performs, accepting with knowing pride the growing reputation she had been cultivating from the moment she chose her... particular profession.
This small concession of emotion is one of the few occasions where her sense of stoic professionalism might be peeled away. Vida, in other words, lives by and for her career.
Another equally telling quirk of personality had to do with her passion for the associated lifestyle of a mercenary; she revels in its excesses where every fight matters and every competition is a thing to be won. She may still maintain the composure of a cool-headed killer, but anyone familiar with the mercenary would soon find themselves with the realization that she takes an unusual degree of enjoyment in coming first.
Any sellsword worth their price-tag knows how important success is to the brand.
There is ultimately little deception over the fact that she likes to win and likes to see others lose, because if she wins, then she wins money, and if she wins money, then she has an excuse to live well; to flaunt her success with short-lived opulence and a temporary elevation to more sophisticated circles where an open coin-purse purchases respect.
All rather simple logic, really.
If one had the rare occasion to know Vida better, they might eventually notice how split she truly was about her past, when it becomes clearer and clearer how deeply divided the mercenary is between the deep insecurity of her social status and the way in which she tends to spend her time and fortune(s).
It's not as if she was ever subtle about it - Vida had no pretensions about her subtlety - and it showed in how blatantly the way she considered herself one of them as opposed to anyone resembling the crowds she actually regularly interacted with. Even if one of "them" meant little more than being a mere retainer; a resolver of their menagerie of headaches and woes.
Most everyone else was graced with the usual frigid demeanor.
Her resentment over an upbringing scarred by poverty is by and large the origin of this conflict, with the assumption that if she were to act the part and have the money to play the part - she'd be able to rewrite the part of her biography she wished most to. If only in the minds of those who would treat her as anything less than the way she saw herself.
It was easier to justify maltreatment of others with this frame of mind, in other words. Vida's perception of the world was to see it as a ladder to be climbed; socially, politically, and in all other ways. For her there was no leap of logic in then seeing those beneath her as less than, just as how she spent much of her life looking to those above her with envy.
Anyone that was not her was therefore an enemy in this perpetual competition; she would spare them no mercy.
This was only the natural progression of a woman who needed to fight from an age younger than most, and then needed to find another excuse to fight when she no longer had to - in the pursuit of something more than just survival.
She will always find another justification to do what she does, another way to account for the blood on her hands; there was no other choice in her eyes.
An easy way to compartmentalize and numb her heart to some of the more distressing actions she committed. Vida knew it was a cruel lens in which to view the world, but when had she ever been spared the world's cruelty?
All it truly boiled down to is the fact that she is and was incredibly effective at rationalizing everything she consciously chooses to do; doing so while hiding behind a façade of apathy and outward respectability in order to deflect most criticisms. And deflect she will, very much enjoying the uncertainty of those who deal with her, never hesitant in stoking what she considered a priceless advantage.
After all, to keep one's opponent off-balance meant everything to someone in her profession.
This small concession of emotion is one of the few occasions where her sense of stoic professionalism might be peeled away. Vida, in other words, lives by and for her career.
Another equally telling quirk of personality had to do with her passion for the associated lifestyle of a mercenary; she revels in its excesses where every fight matters and every competition is a thing to be won. She may still maintain the composure of a cool-headed killer, but anyone familiar with the mercenary would soon find themselves with the realization that she takes an unusual degree of enjoyment in coming first.
Any sellsword worth their price-tag knows how important success is to the brand.
There is ultimately little deception over the fact that she likes to win and likes to see others lose, because if she wins, then she wins money, and if she wins money, then she has an excuse to live well; to flaunt her success with short-lived opulence and a temporary elevation to more sophisticated circles where an open coin-purse purchases respect.
All rather simple logic, really.
If one had the rare occasion to know Vida better, they might eventually notice how split she truly was about her past, when it becomes clearer and clearer how deeply divided the mercenary is between the deep insecurity of her social status and the way in which she tends to spend her time and fortune(s).
It's not as if she was ever subtle about it - Vida had no pretensions about her subtlety - and it showed in how blatantly the way she considered herself one of them as opposed to anyone resembling the crowds she actually regularly interacted with. Even if one of "them" meant little more than being a mere retainer; a resolver of their menagerie of headaches and woes.
Most everyone else was graced with the usual frigid demeanor.
Her resentment over an upbringing scarred by poverty is by and large the origin of this conflict, with the assumption that if she were to act the part and have the money to play the part - she'd be able to rewrite the part of her biography she wished most to. If only in the minds of those who would treat her as anything less than the way she saw herself.
It was easier to justify maltreatment of others with this frame of mind, in other words. Vida's perception of the world was to see it as a ladder to be climbed; socially, politically, and in all other ways. For her there was no leap of logic in then seeing those beneath her as less than, just as how she spent much of her life looking to those above her with envy.
Anyone that was not her was therefore an enemy in this perpetual competition; she would spare them no mercy.
This was only the natural progression of a woman who needed to fight from an age younger than most, and then needed to find another excuse to fight when she no longer had to - in the pursuit of something more than just survival.
She will always find another justification to do what she does, another way to account for the blood on her hands; there was no other choice in her eyes.
An easy way to compartmentalize and numb her heart to some of the more distressing actions she committed. Vida knew it was a cruel lens in which to view the world, but when had she ever been spared the world's cruelty?
All it truly boiled down to is the fact that she is and was incredibly effective at rationalizing everything she consciously chooses to do; doing so while hiding behind a façade of apathy and outward respectability in order to deflect most criticisms. And deflect she will, very much enjoying the uncertainty of those who deal with her, never hesitant in stoking what she considered a priceless advantage.
After all, to keep one's opponent off-balance meant everything to someone in her profession.
Biography & Lore
Vida was not one to shy away from fate; she did not hide from it and she did not try to run from it. She had no other option but to embrace her destiny, so she would not be destroyed by her reality.
To answer in any other way in the face of her childhood would have been anyone's undoing. To deny fate was to give up.
To give up was to pass away, forgotten like so many faces she once saw in the alleys and workhouses of her home.
To answer in any other way in the face of her childhood would have been anyone's undoing. To deny fate was to give up.
To give up was to pass away, forgotten like so many faces she once saw in the alleys and workhouses of her home.
There was nothing nice or fair about the circumstances of her upbringing, and there certainly wasn't a great deal of options when one was born into abject poverty, except for the nagging thought that perhaps it was easier to simply surrender, to lie down for a little while. Vida imagined it was easy enough to do, she had certainly seen it happen enough times to recognize the apparent peace in their eyes in the exact moment they decided to welcome that dreamless sleep. It seemed all very simple - the only thing holding her back was a healthy balance of fear and arrogance, it was what always stopped her when even Vida's own body rebelled against the choice.
As with a great deal of things in life, there was always a coping mechanism. Even when the vultures circled.
She may have been vain in thinking that her fate was something more than succumbing to the elements or malnutrition (from her perspective!), but it was that vanity which she clung to in the darkest days, helping harden her resolve against whatever life threw her way. She found it was easier to cope with the depressing reality by inventing a sense of purpose originally denied to her; denying her own autonomy by contextualizing her struggles as something pre-arranged by fate; denying even death against all other odds.
Vida found her own fuel this way, stoking the flame of her determination with nothing else but an aggrandized sense of self-importance.
The streets belonged to her, they answered to her.
Vida's tale began in Dornoch; since then she spent every waking moment to guarantee that it would not end there. Why should she? She was never given the opportunity to call it home, it was always a fleeting concept that she was never able to hold on to for very long. Her parents were no different, only ever figurative; an abstraction where the closest people she may attribute the title to were the caretakers of the orphanages or boarding houses she often frequented in childhood.
Unfortunately these caretakers were rarely the role models one expected from their parents, it was often enough the contrary; for they seemingly did their best to act as yet another tool to be wielded by an unjust world. Vida knew of a few whom she favored with gentler depictions, but rarely did it outweigh the memories she had of others who enforced their arbitrary rules through punishment.
Why should she ever call this home, when it was nothing but a painful memory?
Vida hadn't dared to dream of a better life in her childhood, for the moment she could talk; she could also watch, and listen, and see that there was... absolutely nobody watching out for her, nobody to right the injustices committed by a world she came to despise, nobody to balance any cosmic scales. There would be no trial in this life for all the wrongs she had suffered, since the only judges fit to render any such judgement were human, with all of a human's flaws and imperfections.
Rather than submit, she found her own ways to survive; in ways she might make her own rules, design her own fate.
Therefore she decided to answer this quandary in the only way she could think of, the only way her personality allowed her.
There was no crime too savage nor victim too innocent to the childhood delinquents she found herself associating with as a teenager with... less than ideal job prospects. It was also around this point as well when Vida invented her little ladder, she saw how the rungs were climbed by the poor and the rich alike; for how were her actions so different from the merchants and the lords who held similar disregard for those who dared get in their way?
'This is their world' she'd tell the pack of positively feral teenagers huddled around a fire, 'is it not fair to play by their rules?'.
How the years flew by, months and days became a blur of pages in a book stained with shameful things.
This was a book she rarely opened, to read her story was to remember all the years between then and now.
… And it was something she had no desire to do, she had even less desire to share it with others as those close to her would come to discover at some point. As the years went, she'd only grow more certain of this; further cementing her resolve to weave an impenetrable veil over those innermost memories, to become someone unrecognized by her past. Her thoughts were her own.
Eventually, Vida developed from the socially maladjusted young lady of her youth to an equally maladjusted killer, one who often resorted to banditry on the outskirts of Dornoch. These were the years of her life she had taken less pride in, though it was easy enough at the time to get caught up in the moment.
She found herself fitting in effortlessly, finding immediate camaraderie with those she rode with. Most of these bandits and thieves were familiar faces from the years she spent growing up in Dornoch, rubbing shoulders with the dregs of polite society. Wanting to learn from them. Wanting to be taught by the wisest about how a child was to survive on luck and ability alone.
Their wisdom was evident: she'd proven it time and time again by surviving, by seeing another day, by relishing how her heart still pumped beneath her breast. How she proved it to herself whenever the rush of blood deafened her ears and blackened her sight. She was addicted to the adrenaline, the way she was assured beyond a doubt that her life was still her own.
There was even a certain poignancy to the feeling; she found a strange sort of beauty to the struggle, in the way that a rose's thorns were always prepared to draw blood, even as wilted as she felt.
Understandably the banditry became as dangerous as it was dull and the novelty of living under open skies had worn off, she knew this chapter in her life was ending. It was time to move onto the next one.
And if one were to be as frank as possible - there was more than enough coin to be made in legitimate mercenary work.