Torin Fabian

Name:
  Torin Fabien

Age:
   23 or 24

Affiliation:
   Free Agent

Appearance:
Half Natime American and half English, Torin's shin tone was lighter than other native Americans but not enough for her to pass as English. She has hazel eyes, brown sometimes mixing with green or dark grey. She is rather bulky for a female, lean muscle covering her from her work. She is consistently covered in soot, smelling of a forge and it's many metals. Her hair is just long enough to tie back the dark trusses out of the way of her face but by no means exceedingly long. It would burn off if it had been.


Personality:
     Rough around the edges at first, she seems mildly off putting, possibly intimidating. She moves with all the grace of a herd of buffalo and has a frown to accompany it, the front she wishes to show. Inside, under all of that is actually all woman simply playing bigger than she really was, trying to keep a defensive wall up between people and her feelings. She is really just a frightened woman, wary of the past repeating and does not wish to be in her mother's shoes.
    Otherwise, first impression is that of a wounded badger ready to claw someone's eyes out. Getting to know her reveals her as fiercely loyal to those she deems worthy and quite amicable in conversation.

Favorite Weapons:
    She favors the sword and board or dual wielding a short sword and a longsword. Daggers are a bit too personal, but a last resort. She does not partake in ranged weaponry when she can help it.

Strengths:
    Deception and disguise
    Brute strength and an understanding of how and where to hit someone for maximum effect
    Crafter, knows a useful trade that will keep her from having to steal or going hungry.

Weaknesses:
   Physical: She is not particularly fast or delicate like most women. Being more of a brutish woman underneath her loose fitting clothing. She hides it deceptively well. Any dexterous feat would take hard training, thusly she doesn't dodge much, preferring to block or parry.
   Psychological: High distrust for strangers, past trauma tends to surface of her first and hopefully in her mind, her last, kill. She doesn't like to be touched. Not even brushed against unless she has warning. Some would call her paranoid. She has to be strong, she has a fixation to not appear weak in front of others.

Background/Biography:
     “Toooooorin!” The whine of an adolescent boy ripped forth from up the stairs. Reginald had always loved to pester his older sister, looking up to her when times got hard. His little ten year old fist pounding on her door. “Lemme in! I wanna go out and play in the alley! We have a ball!” He sounded so excited, yet so whiny. Shaggy cut dark hair with lighter dark brown sunkissed streaks was sticking up at odd angles as Torin sat up in her bed, book in hand. She grumbled unintelligibly, softly at the antics of her brother, making sure with a glance her door was tightly remaining shut.
 
       “Go. Away.” Her terse voice replied. If it weren’t for Reggie pounding on her door, maybe she could concentrate on what she was reading. Six long years gapped the two siblings and Torin had her fair share of annoyance dealing with her little brat of a brother. The pounding didn’t cease, neither did the pleas she was quick to realize. A rattling sound came from her door that she quickly identified as the handle and she hissed in agitation, folding down the corner of the page she had been on in her book and getting up to place her foot in front of the door before her brother could barge in. Again. She felt almost like she had zero personal space and it made her very angry. Honestly, she was doing her best not to just start screaming and reach out to punch her little brother.
 
    Her movements weren’t swift enough though as Reggie burst into her room, the door bouncing off the wall almost comically. “Sis! C’mon! You never spend any time with me anymore.” His pout let something to be desired, though Torin knew inwardly most people fell for it. They did everything Reggie wanted. Perfect little Reggie, always the center of attention. A snarl ripped from her as she stalked towards the door.

    “I thought I said ‘go away’. Are you deaf? I’m trying to read!” Her hand halted her brother’s entry into her room a little past the doorway and she walked him backwards out of her room. He had always treated her space like it was his, but what else what an admirer do? It was creepy. It was almost like having a stalker who does nothing but love you when all you want is left alone. That was the dynamic between brother and sister, though Torin’s temper and agitation was so thick, you could have cut the tension it caused with a dull blade.
 
     Reggie turned his dark brown eyes up to his sister, trying the pout once more to see if he could melt her resolve much like he used to be able to. It didn’t phase the hazel eyed girl though, even as a stormy dark grey crept into her iris as she stared down at her half brother. If he was night, then she was day. His skin held a lighter tone, light hair, light eyes. Just like his father. Maybe that was why she had come to hate her brother so much. He looked more like the man who had broken her English mother every day. He didn’t say anything though as he waited for her to melt.
 
     “I said no, Reg. Now, get out of my room. This is not your personal stomping ground.” Her tone held a dangerous edge as she pushed her brother the rest of the way out of her room and barricaded her door with a chair from her desk. Sadly, her room wasn’t very organized, then again she didn’t own much. Some clothes littered the floor and her bookshelf needed tidying. The desk had papers strewn across it with her attempts at drawing which in her opinion were nothing special even if people ranted and raved about them. It was a hobby to pass the time, not something that would help her keep her mother together. They were only designs anyway that she had conveniently drawn people into. Everything involved work somehow.

    That was many years in the past for her, almost a full decade now since she struck her stepfather over the head with an object that she shouldn't have been able to lift at a mere sixteen years. Adrenaline had fueled her the night her stepfather died by her hand and she had to pull her mother up from the ground. Little Reginald had been so scared that night but eventually he forgot the truth, believing his sister's lie that she had told to local authorities. Someone had tried to rob them, she claimed. But only after hiding some of the more valuable items for years to come.

     She shook away the memories of her past, feeling bile rise in her throat and her hand subconsciously going to the scar crossing her left side so dangerously close to her more vital organs. He had done that to her with his dying breaths. And that boy looked more like him every day. It was enough to keep her mother from ever really recovering. Sure, the woman moved around and spoke maybe a single word at a time, unable to carry on conversation.. But Torin knew that was as good as it was going to get with that child remaining as a reminder.
 
    Fury gripped her heart and she found reading would not calm her that night. There was sleep that needed to be gotten, but Torin would not find it no matter how hard she tried. She had work in the morning, the dawning light would signal her need to be at the Blacksmith’s. It was where her father had worked before leaving with a broken heart. Torin never had the desire to plead for her Native American father to return and care for her. She was his unwanted and unclaimed child that didn’t remember him, only the stories others would tell of him.

      Moving to her window, she gazed out into the darkened streets, watching the people that filled them at night prowl like they had something to hide. Wetting her fingers, she put out the candle she had been using to read by. She knew it was bad to read by candle light but there wasn’t much she could do. Working all day and sometimes late into the night to ensure the family ate left her very little time to herself. She pushed her window open so she could drop down and join the shadows which prowled the night.
 
    Skirts and dresses were no real issue for her, having found a compromise of leggings fit for a man and a type of ‘war skirt’ or at least, that is what most called her four paneled covering for her leggings. It allowed her to move, crouch, run and more importantly, climb. It had been at the behest of the Blacksmith that she found a compromise. Breeches alone would have been indecent by his standards. By every account, he had become more of a father to her in the past five years than anyone else ever had been. Matteo had not only taught her how to work the forge, building her strength. He also taught her how to wield the weapons they forged and made her do it in all different types of armor. A hood hung from under her blouse, the armor backed leather corset she wore a bit too loosely had enough attachments fabric wise that it could pass as a shirt. The shoulders and back held the hood, the clasps going down her ribs. A heavy hood lined with a lighter fabric hood fell back off of it and even the shoulders had places for her to attach pauldrons if she ever needed. It only hugged up her breasts though flattening them, she had to cut it short so she still had the flexibility needed, leaving her stomach revealed, making a shirt covering a necessity.
 
     With a simple movement, the lighter of the two hoods was pulled up, her form hidden under the baggy overshirt stained an even darker grey by soot. Torin could never manage to leave work clean. With her ‘training’ to pass the time and the honest hard work of smithing, she had shaped out to be a tough if rather physically filthy person. Only her eyes gave her away, they glittered under her hood as she pulled herself onto a low retaining wall and stalked its length like a cat. It made her feel good to wander the night like this. The raw feelings she’d had before were being smashed down as she focused on the people.
 
   It was strange, she mused more to herself about the people she saw than to another. Even with Matteo she held her tongue. It was a lesson she learned early on that had stuck with her. Lesson one, never say more than you need to lest you give someone a way to hurt you or others. It was drilled into her with every smack her Stepfather had given her. Her feet found their path without thought as she made her way to the center of the town. The local families and power plays meant very little to her, though there was always a few beggars that came to the smithy trying to catch her eye.
 
  ‘Ye best watch yourself, Torin. Those boys be young and foolish. Save ya virtue.’ That was what Matteo had told her one day after an older gentleman had stopped in for new shoes for his horses with his two sons. The younger of the two seeming to try and catch her attention. Torin had curled her lip, remembering her  stepfather acutely at the time and the animalistic glare of a predator had set the young girl off. It was the reason Matteo trained her if she was to be honest about it. She had been curious before, but now... Now Torin knew how to defend herself in the situations that undoubtedly rose up when wandering the streets in restlessness at night.

    ‘The Ghost’ they sometimes called her. She had become something of a local legend only whispered by the guards and the scum that would flit the alleyways as well. Legend had it a woman wandered the night sometimes. She rarely smiled, but if someone approached her, she would study them for a while to decide what to do about them. If a person spoke to her, she would humor them, but never saying anything too personal. If anyone moved to actually touch her, they ended up with a lesson to remember. It was just strange to her how the night took its sweet time passing by with only a whisper on the wind to tell of time’s passage.

WOOOAAAHHHHH THAT IS IMPRESSIVEEEEE

I was milling through my short stories and found it hidden in  dusty forgotten corner of my drive. I'm not usually one to share and it's been cut drastically short, but I am glad you like it.. now let's hope the moderators agree, yes?

::whistles:: I don't think there's anything I can even say about this. Fantastic writing. APPROVED

I'll have you know I actually gigglesqueed.... my writing usually isn't the well recieved, so I thank you.

On a side note that I should have mentioned early, you will have to add an actual bio for the character.

Aye aye Cap'n!

Bio:
Born to a colonist mother and a Native American father, Torin was to be raised in a small community outside any large city. It was after her father leaving when she was too young to remember that her mother moved them both to a larger town closer to the city after meeting a dashing Englishman who swept her off her feet, taking Torin in as an unwanted addition to his supposedly picture perfect life. With her new father insisting she at least be able to care for herself, she was taught to read and write, taken to church with him and her mother.

She was to know her religion, her more prominent authors of the time. An education she viewed as a simple way to pass the time since being an outsider made it hard to make friends. Native relations weren't precisely what one would call the best.

Years later after two failed children, her mother finally bore the Englishman a child. A lovely pale haired, pale skinned, pale eyed boy. Torin discovered an almost instant dislike for the child, having to help take care if it in addition to her lessons. She kept her mouth shut though after slipping a few times and earning a hard smack from her stepfather.

As her brother grew and she tried to branch out towards the only people who seemed to wish to associate, she learned about the blacksmith, the man who knew her father a while back. It had started with him telling her stories and her lending an occasional hand when she could between lessons. That was, until her stepfather drank too much on a night she came home late. Her mother tried to get between the fighting duo only for her stepfather to shift his target in a drunken rage.

It was the last time Torin would ever let herself appear a coward or weak. Foolishly fleeing when the chance came and rushing her brother back to his room. It took a good twenty or so minutes of listening to her mother and stepfather arguing before she crept back and confronted with the sight of him hitting her mother repeatedly, picked up the newest object heavy enough to stun him and swung for his head. That was the day her stepfather died, the day her mother went nearly catatonic, and the day she spun a tale that would make her hide the truth of the incident even from her little brother.

With no way to support the life they had before, she had to go to the one person she trusted. The smith Matteo, once friend to her real father and more if a father to her than the Englishman had ever been. He took her and gave her a chance to keep her family afloat in turbulent times. He gave her a job, he gave her a life and a future. Matteo never once brought up why he taught her to fight, but he did teach her to fight. Finding she was far more suited to close range combat than anything else. After all, her eyesight once too far was lacking. Aiming was an issue she never truly overcame.

The years passed with smithing and training and the occasional new book finding it's way into her hands. Torin watched as her tiny terror of a brother grew into a strong young man, eventually signing up for the militia. I it was the only reason she had to care about the outcome in this war. There may have been no love lost between the two siblings, but they watched each other's backs.

Neither had ties that they knew of to either Assassin or Templar causes, but both had heard the whispers of the people of a shadow war between the red coats and a league of cutthroat murderers who killed then vanished. It was always the talk of the few who stalked the night, like Torin had since her kill. It was a calming act for her. One meant to be solitary, but one never could resist overhearing such rumors when presented.

Nice job, thank you very kindly. ::nods::