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Background
The head of one of House Arkanin's wealthiest, most military-minded banner houses, Gisela Quinn is a seasoned and charismatic leader, a competent and far-thinking steward, a fine horsewoman, a patroness of the arts (after her own special fashion), and a woman not to be trifled with either on the battlefield or in her own domestic circle.
1: SIR GISELA
The second of the three daughters of Rainald Quinn, Baron Quinn of Ghost Hills, and his lovely yet reproductively challenged lady Auvadia of House Charing, Gisela was born in 1823 and brought up with a diminishing belief in those mythical creatures known as 'little brothers', and an adoration of her two-years-elder sister Vivona which amounted almost to religious worship. (The little one, Aricia, was just a baby and thoroughly uninteresting.) The Baron and Baroness were brought closer together, rather than being driven apart, by their shared dynastic tribulations: Rainald came to care deeply for his wife, suffered as she suffered the miscarriages and stillbirths of their children, and gave up the hope of a son in truth some years before she did. To him it wasn't the crushing defeat it would have been to many another lord of Wayston: as a religious man, he believed marriage was a spiritual as well as a material covenant, entered into for life, not just until it failed to produce the desired results — as a practical man, he acknowledged the possibility that he might have only his daughters for heirs, and saw them especially well-trained in consequence — and as a proud man, he believed any daughter of his would be equal to the task. How could it be otherwise?
And, as Gisela at the age of five confided in one of her Charing uncles — by which time her parents had been wed eleven years without a son — if it really was true what the servants were all saying, that she'd never have a brother who'd be a brave knight and defend the honour of House Quinn… couldn't she do it instead? For Vivona? Everyone else thought it a very fine joke, but the next year her uncle returned to carry her away to Southmarch as a page. He put it to her father that if the future of their family was as it appeared, one of those girls ought to learn something more than pretty words and pretty stitching, in case. If this one was willing… She was, always; and it was agreed, the compromise being that when she was thirteen she would come home again to serve as squire to her own father, rather than any unknown knight.
As Rainald's squire, as a knight, as a light cavalry commander — and, at last, the overall general of their banner through 1846 till the end of 1848 — she saw plenty of action during the conflict between Aequor and Galenthia which stained those Thirty Years so amply with the blood of both kingdoms.
There being no shortage of opportunities for the display of valour on the battlefield, she took her share — nothing extraordinary, really, just the same death-defying heroic deeds anybody at all would perform in order to protect her comrades-in-arms and/or bring their corpses home to their mothers without too many bits missing. Her spurs arrived with minimal ceremony shortly after her nineteenth birthday, which had about it no ceremony at all. Perhaps it was early — promotion comes faster in times of war, and her father hadn't any sons at his side and few enough knights to serve as his officers. Soon thereafter she was installed as the captain of Baron Quinn's Light Lancers, a position she held for three and a half years. She earned the solid respect of foes and friends but no fame greater than that attending any female knight from the Duchy of Wayston. She was an oddity the Arkanin soldiery got used to quickly enough: most of them respected her birth if not her sex, and were just glad to have one more competent knight on their side against the forces of Aequor, one more commander who'd do what was needful without flinching and yet usually manage to preserve the lives of a higher than average number of the men under her orders.
Once she fought a duel with a male hedge knight in House Arkanin's service (one Sir Albin) who denigrated the notion of allowing women to take knightly vows and outlined too graphically (complete with hand gestures) what he considered to be the chief usefulness of 'women knights' to an army on the move. This inspired her to fly off the handle as she was occasionally wont to do, and indeed to play into some of the very prejudices he'd called upon to insult her. He demanded satisfaction — no knight may, under the code of chivalry, refuse such a challenge — when they met again under arms, she was the one who received it. Word got round, fortunately, and she wasn't called upon to prove the same point again to any other idiots on her own side of the line: her first duel was her last and taught her better than any sage fatherly advice or official chastisement could have done to govern her temper. With the Aequori on the march and all hands needed to see them off, why in God's name quarrel with one's own countrymen? No matter how they might deserve it.
She'd been her father's shadow for years already: the squire at his elbow, listening in every council of war, receiving lessons in command as much as in arms. Her segue from one post of responsibility to another, cavalry commander to her father's relief, was eased by a time as his second-in-command while she was recovering from injuries sustained to her left leg. The leg still plagues her in the present day, more or less depending upon the weather and the stress she's put upon it lately — but on the back of a well-trained Quinn warhorse it's no trouble worth considering. A man with her skill wouldn't have been invalided out of the army in wartime for that leg, not when he could still ride, fight, and think — Gisela never seriously thought of it.
2: LADY GISELA
The succession of House Quinn remained at issue: the war reduced somewhat the ranks of eligible bachelors; Vivona's first betrothed, several years her junior, was carried off in a skirmish by an Aequori raiding party three weeks before the wedding; a second match of sufficient status took time to arrange, simply because the fellow she ended up with hadn't become a widower yet when the search began; her health was delicate, and the wedding had to be postponed till after a succession of hideous winter colds; and then, at last, at the age of twenty-three, she was united with Aimeric of House Goldhollow, for whom she nurtured a certain tenderness which made the wait seem worthwhile.
Their marriage ushered in four years of false alarms and miscarriages and prayer, ending only with Vivona's death of puerperal fever, before she was ever a mother. Her husband was constantly in attendance upon her, rather than away at the front, it having been put to him that his primary duty to his new house was not just to get her with child but to keep her with child for a full nine months — a mission in which Baron Quinn, touchingly, considered the young couple might enjoy greater success if his daughter was less often fearful for her husband's life than his own Auvadia had been. When Vivona was delivered of a healthy child, then they'd be glad of Aimeric's sword and his experience — but not before — which policy was of limited solace to his masculine pride.
Her sister's death brought Gisela all manner of unsought inheritances. Vivona's personal belongings, which no one else in the family had the stomach to go through themselves and would have left otherwise for the care of servants, were the beginning — her father's title, wealth, and responsibilities would be the end — and, in between, she found Aimeric, twice a widower now, a man eight years her senior and a harmonious match for only one Quinn sister, yet whom their families insisted she must marry in order to preserve an alliance considered in those far-off days vital to the financial interests of both their houses. A Goldhollow, specifically this Goldhollow, was meant to father the next Baron Quinn and so it must be. He hadn't an unmarried brother remaining: if she'd held out more doggedly she might have got one of his cousins instead, but their shared grief for Vivona produced an illusion of affinity which lasted just long enough to ensure the making of the mistake.
This next Quinn marriage bore undoubted fruit upon three occasions, and Gisela showed her husband the same public respect she required from him — they were always seen to attend religious services side by side, in a display of perfect marital harmony put on to set a good example for underlings — but their marriage quickly came to be characterised by separate interests as well as separate bedrooms. His interest, in particular, was a lady-in-waiting named Marica, a bastard of the house with something of a look of Vivona about her; Gisela's was whichever beautiful boy she'd installed in the keep that year. Bards, musicians, poets — blonde, more often than dark — strictly temporary, and drawn from sections of society by which they were endowed with the sense to keep their mouths shut and be grateful for soft beds, hot baths, good food, new boots, and plentiful supplies of firewood, candles, soap, paper, quills, and sex. Call her a patroness of the arts. The nature of her devotion to which was an open secret among the Quinn household and its hangers-on, but so was the beneficial effect of such young men upon her temper — and, these facts being well-established with all except the oblivious Baron Quinn (who, like most fathers, didn't quite like to think of his daughters having husbands, let alone lovers), hardly anyone has suspected that, once in a long while, contributions to her entertainment were made by lovely young women as well.
In few matters were wife and husband united. Their duty to their families, the need to put up a convincing facade to protect the private peccadilloes which made life bearable, and the necessity of having Aimeric — admittedly, a decent military mind in his own right, when he was allowed to be for a change! — take over the generalship of House Quinn's arms. It was a bitter marriage gift for her to give — the one thing in her life she valued most — but she couldn't be on the battlefield and in childbed all at once, and in only one of those places could he act as her substitute. At least sending him out to fight would keep him from getting under her feet every moment of every day.
Producing the necessary children was a trial on both sides. Aimeric had agreed to marry a lady of beauty and refinement, whose love would make him the effective co-ruler of House Quinn: political necessity saw him now yoked to a slightly stocky she-knight with a gammy leg and a limited tolerance for his company. For Gisela, Aimeric was too old, too hairy, too prematurely scarred and grizzled, too obviously reluctant and far too perfunctory in his performances — fundamentally, he was a knight, and Gisela has always much preferred being a knight and drinking with knights to lying down with knights. To exacerbate which dreary and distasteful situation, she was obliged to refrain from seeking pleasure elsewhere till she was sure the required job had been done by the man she'd actually married. And that was only the beginning. For a knight of the masculine persuasion, marriage and fatherhood come in good time and offer a distraction only as great as he permits. But a knight who must acknowledge her higher duty to become a lady and bear heirs for her house, finds herself with a more time-consuming and world-altering task. Between the necessity of avoiding the miscarriages which had plagued her mother and sister, the confinement and then its aftermath, each child represented a year taken out of the life Gisela preferred, a year after which it was more grindingly difficult to return to her daily training and regain the muscle and the physical prowess she'd lost to the fat and the languor of pregnancy.
After presenting her delighted family with her son Thadeus in 1849 and her daughter Vivona in 1850, the sobering loss of another son four months before his expected birth in 1851 made her at first all the more reluctant to try again — she spent several years devoted to the active, outdoor pursuits she'd been pining for from her high castle window — and then all the more careful in her next attempt at childbearing. An accident to Thadeus, a fall from his first horse which might have ended much worse for him than it did, served to underline the danger of small families. She spent much of the following year carrying another son, this time to his full term: he was born in the eventful year 1857 (see below), and named for the recently deceased Baron Quinn.
These years of dutiful breeding were in the main too much confined, too far from men she knew fighting and bleeding and conquering and carousing without her — Gisela couldn't be with them, but she could oversee their supply lines and, in deepening her passion for and understanding of the Garaili chargers which have long been her house's pride and joy, she could see them provided with an apparently endless succession of highly distinguished warhorses, fast and strong, ideal for the scouts and skirmishers of light cavalry regiments. She strengthened House Quinn's bloodstock in more ways than one; beyond that she occupied herself in learning from her aging parents, learning to replace them as one day she must.
3: BARONESS QUINN
For some time Gisela suffered under the conviction that she was the wrong one: that her sister, the fine flowering of such chivalric ideals as beauty, generosity, and all-round nobility of character, made a more fitting heir for their father and would in succeeding him have led their lands and people into a new golden age. It took adulthood, determined study, hard work, several years of marriage to Vivona's idea of the perfect man and several children with futures to be considered, to teach her that perhaps the sister with the stronger will, the more pragmatic approach to politics and the management of men and estates, the greater willingness to get her own hands dirty in a good cause, might possibly have ended up in the right place after all from the point of view of those looking to House Quinn for leadership and protection.
How much she remains a knight is a matter into which it wouldn't be courteous to inquire. The training she pursues is more for her personal honour and satisfaction than for display in the wider world — she wouldn't expect her men to follow her, if she were a liability — but she isn't the warrior she was twenty years ago and she knows it too well to court embarrassment in tournament or in combat. Still, there are plenty of male knights in the world older and less capable than she, and no one's suggesting they be drummed out of the club and no longer addressed as 'Sir' because they're no longer cutting mustard. The two or three squires for whom she has taken responsibility over the years have proven themselves well-prepared for knighthood when it came to them: usually Wayston girls who hadn't an excess of other routes by which to earn their spurs. She saw them always driven harder in her household and in her service than boys serving the same role, to arm them for lives in which they'd be constantly outmatched by the men around them, constantly confronted with challenges and decisions men never have to face, and yet in which they might conceivably prove themselves smarter, faster, more sensible, and no whit less honourable.
She missed the last four years of the Thirty in marriage and childbearing; no coward, and with the record to prove it, she supported Arkanin neutrality in the Succession War and persuaded her father to do the same, considering the protection of the Galenthian borders they'd fought so hard to defend to be the higher good, and declining to spill any more Galenthian blood. She became more and more Baroness Quinn in truth; her father's death in 1856, his constitution weakened by the strain and injuries of a full Thirty Years of war and defeated at the last by an ailment in his lungs, brought her the title in fact.
In the year 1857 she was pregnant with their third child when she discovered her husband Aimeric, whose family had taken the side of Lord Anton Romante, was offering covert support to the Thorn and using Quinn men to do it. He hadn't dared such a step while Rainald was alive — but when it was merely a matter of thwarting the will of a wife he'd never cared for, he lost his scruples.
Aimeric was away from home when Gisela discovered his treachery: he returned to a confrontation with a white-faced and heavily pregnant Baroness whose husband had betrayed her, her principles, and her liege lords. She notified him of his disinheritance, his banishment from her lands, and the divorce she had already obtained. He left with the clothes on his back and his personal cadre of half a dozen knights and squires — more loyal, it transpired, to him and to Goldhollow than to Quinn; the rest of the Quinn arms adhered to their traditional loyalties. Gisela's son Rainald, never referred to as anyone else's child, as though he'd sprung from her forehead, was born three weeks prematurely, long after notices had been nailed up around the Duchy of Wayston explaining to anyone who could read them that Gisela Quinn was no longer married to Aimeric Goldhollow and was not answerable for his actions.
In private she felt a measure of the blame was her own, for delegating too many of her own duties to Aimeric, and not always for the best of reasons — for giving him too much credit for his unexceptionable record and ignoring the gut feeling she'd never been able to shake that she just didn't like that man — and for letting her usually (annoyingly) keen oversight of his activities lapse during this third and most draining pregnancy. She drove herself harder than she had in the past to return to a semblance of the fine physical condition of her youth, and as soon as practicable thereafter took over from the trusted Quinn knight who had notionally occupied the post of commander during the interregnum between lord and lady. Her elderly mother Lady Auvadia has a role still in the management of the keep, she trusts her steward Renata Parr to act when she's away (though an ultimate veto rests with her mother, who has yet to exercise it) — but the military power of House Quinn is firmly in her hands and will remain there until she's good and ready to pass the baton to her son Thadeus.
On the 5th of Septembre, 1860, Duke Gauvain Tarris and his household troops attacked the main army of the Thorn — among the latter, Aimeric Goldhollow. When word of his death in what was dubbed the Battle of the Betrayer, upholding a cause so hopeless that even its own chief partisans were turning their coats, reached Gisela at Ghost Hills, she ordered the opening of a great many barrels of ale so that all her people might join her in a pleasantly legless evening the inspiration of which she didn't trouble to explain. After all, he was nothing to do with her. She was just in a very fine mood for a couple of months.
In the spring of 1866 exploratory diggings in the Ghost Hills revealed a seam of copper which Gisela was quick to corner for her house's exclusive disposal. The copper head of her new walking stick comes from that seam's first yield; likewise copper ornaments which some members of House Quinn have been seen sporting, as particular gifts from her. However, the market for the wool from their sheep having not been as brisk in Murias as Gisela considered appropriate, she determined to explore the possibility of exporting through Four Corners instead. Her initial intention to send an agent, perhaps even Renata (who deserves a holiday), was modified by the news that the knight to whom her son and heir was squired intended to spend a long sojourn in that city. She elected to go herself.
On the Grid
- Overview
- Physical Description
- Quirks and Personality
- Bestiary
- Equipment
- Gallery
- Logs
- Memoirs
- IC Knowledge
Gisela Quinn is a woman of slightly greater than average height, and a strong, solid physical presence amplified by an air of competence and personal authority so assured it needn't trouble to trumpet itself. The curved body of a mother of three in her early forties is well-tempered by muscle built and lost but built again by long discipline in the training yard; she has broad shoulders, breasts bound down in a triumph of convenience over vanity, not much of a waist, and hard-working hands with short clean nails and a swordsman's calluses.
In her face she bears signs of the Garaili blood flowing still strong in Arkanin veins: a strong jaw, high cheekbones, clever brown eyes framed by crow's feet and thick dark brows. Her hair is fine but thick, dark brown threaded with silver, left to grow out in soft waves (and occasionally be caught into a very short tail at the back of her neck) until it becomes a nuisance and undergoes its next severe trimming. She doesn't smile often, her sense of humour tending toward the dry or indeed the withering, but when she does her teeth seem straight.
She smells of soap and leather, with a not infrequent whiff of pipe tobacco or horseflesh; when she's not in the saddle, she leans invariably upon a walking stick of good flexible ash topped with a knob of Wayston copper burnished by her touch. Her left leg is less reliable than her right, subtly shorter beneath her garments, giving her a permanent limp. The scarring upon it is of course seldom exhibited to the human eye — but there's an old, pale three-inch scar on her right bicep hinted at if she rolls up her sleeves far enough, and a little mark below her left ear where a brigandine collar didn't reach sufficiently high. When you've been talking with her for a while you might realise, depending upon the status of her haircut, that her earlobes aren't symmetrical anymore.
Assumed Quirks ~
- Born in the Saddle: The daughter of a house known for its bloodstock, Gisela learned to ride not long after she learned to walk. She has spent her life surrounded by and relying upon horses; indeed, since injuring her leg during her time as a commander of light cavalry she has been better off on four legs than on two. All manner of things become possible — hunting, hawking, sparring, hacking around to keep a personal eye on her lands — with the support and perfect unity of purpose afforded her by a suitably trustworthy steed. As the heir to House Quinn and then its head, she has taken a great personal interest in its stables and seen the reputation of the horses bred and trained under her aegis raised from "quite good" to "excellent". It's a tremendously engrossing and rewarding interest for anyone with a natural affinity for horseflesh, bringing benefit to her house not only from horses sold but from horses lovingly retained.
- Gourmet: Gisela has the Quinn love of fine food and wine; though she is not in general personally extravagant (the woman slopes about the castle in her father's old clothes, for goodness' sake), she employs and travels with a personal cook of renowned gifts (and that cook's own picked apprentice, herself a graduate of the culinary academy in Murias yet still wishful to polish her skills and her recipes in the kitchen of a genius), to ensure that no dish reaches her table which isn't of the first quality.
- Dutiful: With the right upbringing it's easy enough to see where your duty lies — and, for Gisela at least, it's impossible not to acknowledge and follow that duty. She does what she has to do, and pays the personal costs.
Justified Quirks ~
- Skilled Steward: The grounding in such matters which forms a part of the education of every noble scion, was rapidly and determinedly built upon whilst Gisela was grieving her sister's death, marrying the wrong man, and confined by two pregnancies in as many years. She proved to have as much of a knack for commanding servants and peasants as for commanding troops, for plotting maintenance and expansion and capital investments as for devising raids and skirmishes. One selects an objective; one gathers intelligence and develops a strategy; one briefs one's men and then one sets about it. And when one is facing the same enemies on the same terrain over decades, every year's experience builds upon the last, until one can anticipate problems before they arise and deal with them very smartly indeed. On the one hand it's a satisfying intellectual exercise, to make all the pieces fit together neatly and yet end up with more than one began with — on the other hand a barony is a living, tangible entity it's a pleasure to shape and to shepherd, for the eventual benefit of one's great-great-grandchildren. Gisela has come to love her job. Which is jolly lucky, considering it's the only one she'll ever have.
- Courageous: Gisela acquitted herself well during her portion of the Thirty Years War: six years her father's squire, and almost another six a knight. She never permitted the rational amount of fear she felt to stand between her and what was the right or the necessary thing to do; nor did she back down when challenged to a duel; nor did she shrink from the even greater challenges of marriage and motherhood. She was brought up to see herself as one link in a long, long chain of Quinns: she holds her own life cheaply by comparison with her ideals and the precious honour and continuity of her house. Whilst doing all in her power to avert the worst possibilities she may foresee, she will continue to face, with resolute bravery, whatever may come next.
Personal Quirks ~
- Secret Agnostic: Brought up in the worship of the One, like all good children of House Quinn in the devout Duchy of Wayston, Gisela's faith was shaken again and again by the events of the Thirty Years War and lost she doesn't remember how long ago. She's suspicious also of the church's extraordinary wealth, and of its secrets. She's no longer certain what if anything she believes in, except the traditions and duties of her own house, which have kept the Quinns strong through the centuries, through every war and every crisis up to and including the difficulties in their line of succession which brought her to the helm. She attends services with her family on every seventh day (unless she's got a particularly good excuse, such as a confinement or a long journey), paying the proper public honour to the Faith of the One as is expected of her as Baroness Quinn; she has sent her younger son to become a priest, in the belief that it is a life to which he is well-suited, but also because such an honourable disposal of one can only be to the benefit of them all; she meets regularly with her local priest and lets it be supposed she makes confession for the better-known of her sins — though in truth, their conversations tend in other directions. In private she follows on the appropriate days certain rituals handed down since well before Rickard Arkanin's grandfather's grandfather's day, common enough behind closed doors in Wayston. It's a highly political approach to religion. Offend no one, just in case, and keep your own counsel.
- Domestic Martinet: Most of what Gisela knows about leadership, she learned in the cavalry in the Thirty Years War. As a parent she is strict and conservative; she brooks no disrespect, no disobedience, and few if any excuses. Her children, having grown up for the most part without a father in their lives, learned very young to expect her to fulfill that particular archetype — and to go to their grandmother, Lady Auvadia, for mothering. They learned also to sort out disputes between themselves and reserve Gisela for their final court of appeal, for no matter how scrupulously patient and just she is when sitting in judgment as Baroness Quinn, there was no telling when she might not give her offspring a grumpy and arbitrary verdict, with punishment on both sides for wasting her time with what just seemed to her absolute nonsense. She can be remarkably tolerant and forgiving with her favourite members of the household, provided they never cross her invisible line — she is forging a much richer adult relationship with her son, now that he's of an age for it — but she was never an ideal person to be in charge of small children and only her family's dynastic exigencies could have persuaded her to procreate.
Horses: House Quinn breeds and trains the finest Garaili chargers: as Baroness, Gisela always has first choice from her own stables, and she has at present four particular mounts, two riding horses and two warhorses.
A chestnut palfrey with a light, slender physique and the smoothest gait you'll ever see, Feckless is Gisela Quinn's horse of choice for riding about town, hacking about her lands, and most of all for long journeys. He stands at a height of 14.9 hands in his dainty white socks, and his countenance is distinguished by a very shapely white star and stripe. He has a secondary career as a well-regarded stud horse; perhaps that's why he ambles about the countryside so proudly, with such unfailing elegance, and conducts himself always as befits the son of a warhorse who died in battle fighting for House Quinn, and the father of glorious star-and-striped herds.
When Feckless is having a rest Gisela can often be found on the back of a piebald stallion named Graceless, whose continuing survival in this world is one of her more conspicuous acts of charity. About fifteen hands high (he doesn't like to stand still to be measured) and mostly black he has white socks in front which don't match his white stockings behind, and a great big splodge of white over his neck and back (more to the right than the left) which tapers off into a streak down over his rump. His hobbies include getting his head stuck in fences, biting bits out of stableboys' breeches, covering your hand with more saliva than you've ever seen a single horse produce in one go in exchange for a tidbit he'll only search your pockets for if he doesn't feel you're being sufficiently forthcoming, leering at mares and noble ladies alike in the same upsetting, bare-toothed way, and chucking off his back every rider who isn't named Gisela Quinn. He's sweet as pie for her, does what he's told when she's doing the telling, and moves like a dream despite having a more solid build than the average palfrey, so really she had to take charge of him to prevent his driving another rider to equinicide. (Lending him to unsuspecting enemies is always good for a laugh, of course.)
Triumphs of Gisela's stables and stunning advertisements on the hoof for House Quinn's bloodstock and standing respectively at 15 and 15.1 hands in height, Aimless and Pointless are full brothers, born a year apart out of the same mare by the same stallion — who himself used to be Gisela's favoured warhorse. Many noble houses in the Civilised West have far less ancient and august pedigrees than these two black-pointed bay coursers, whose grandfathers and gentlemen cousins have carried into battle not only Barons Quinn but Viscounts Charing and Dukes Arkanin, whose bloodlines on both sides are indeed reserved for the use of House Arkanin and its vassals. Light, fast, strong, just the horses you'd want for hard battle though alas having come to Gisela only in recent years they see more hunting than fighting, they're the envy of many a less fortunate knight who must make do with hardly a rouncey to call his own. Few of the admirers of these sublime Garaili chargers know just how many special and interesting extra skills were included in the education they received from House Quinn's best horse-trainers and from their rider herself, who having been on carrot-sharing terms with both their parents all their lives has known them since before they came out of their mother into her hands. She has always found new foals vastly more appealing than human babies.
Dogs: House Quinn has maintained since time immemorial a pack of bloodhounds for hunting, their number averaging around twenty couple. Living between two rivers and their various tributaries they also have always on hand a few water spaniels for retrieving aquatic prey — small and rather attractive white and liver-coloured creatures with long curly coats. Gisela's particular spaniel is a bitch named Reyna, the runt of a litter who having been carefully brought up now does her owner credit, and whose indoor privileges are as extensive as those of the household's various pet dogs. They all roam about together at Gisela's heels sometimes, in a wildly mismatched and casually chaotic pack of their own. Her pair of Elementi, Gog and Magog, are four years old now and very handsome boys with white fur which glows in the moonlight; they are named for her great-grandfather's dogs, who were named for an old legend of Ghost Hills. The real reason she seldom entertains lovers in her own chambers is that there isn't room for two humans and two enormous warhounds all to sleep together in a pile, and anyway they tend to put chaps off their game a bit, she can't think why. They're such sweethearts, you know? Wouldn't hurt a fly unless the fly hurt her.
Cats: Gisela is not a cat person. There's a tabby in residence at Watchspur who insists on kittening under her bed once in a while, out of reach of the Elementi but strangely not really bothered by them or vice versa — but she evicts each new family as soon as decency permits.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Please pardon our dust, spiders, and/or dangling participles.
Armour:
- Plate Desc: Baroness Quinn is clad in full plate armour befitting her rank, made of blackened steel sufficiently lightweight to mark it as a master smith's creation for combat rather than jousting. It is sparsely adorned by comparison with the harnesses of dukes and kings, or great champions: in large part plain black, yet certain pieces are bordered with narrow bands of plating in a copper alloy, echoed around the widest part of her shoulders and down the outsides of her cuisses and greaves, rerebraces and vambrances. These have been engraved with a pattern derived from the arms of House Quinn, and certain phrases in the Old Tongue which spell out a prayer to the One for those going into battle. Her cuirass is scarcely shaped, bereft of the feminine touches favoured by certain other knights of her sex, and attached to a fauld of five lamés fastened about her hips with heavy copper-coated buckles; similar buckles attach a pair of tassets in front, overlapping the cuisses wrapped round her thighs; the poleyns which cover her knees flare into fins as they reach behind; her right pauldron is shaped to accommodate a lance rest; all has been newly and perfectly fitted to her form as it is in the present day. Good chainmail can be glimpsed wherever plate is inconducive to motion. Her throat is likewise protected and her head permitted to turn by an aventail of gleaming mail, steel links transitioning into copper at each of the points around its generous circle, fastened to a plain but well-shaped bascinet helm by means of vervelles in the shape of copper caltrops and a thin braided black leather cord woven through the top row of the rings. Lozenges of engraved copper shine upon each joint and knuckle of her exquisitely-articulated, leather-lined black steel gauntlets. With her pointed visor attached and lowered, she might be taken for a man of average height. With a woman's face visible, however, there's really no one else in Wayston this could be.
- Brigandine Desc: Baroness Quinn is attired in her own particular steel-riveted brigandine armour, its green leather so dark that in some lights it appears black. It is only a year or two old and altogether handsomely made, though in combination with the layers beneath of course it renders her form stocky and shapeless. Its only ornamentation consists of the arms of her house, edged in gold, over her heart. Brigandine braces and tasses enhance the protection offered to her arms and legs by the polished chainmail shirt and leggings beneath; her knees are covered by steel plate poleyns, above good but scuffed dark brown leather riding boots. She may be wearing a simple steel bascinet, with or without an attached visor; then again, the layer of padding which will later protect her head and her neck from contact with her helm may be tucked inside her unbuckled collar and loosened mail aventail, to let people get a good look at her meanwhile. Her long-sleeved mail shirt extends over the backs of her hands beneath matching brigandine gauntlets, each with its quartet of buckles extending up over her forearms, steel plates built in along the upper sides, and steel caps for the joints of her fingers. Every part of this ensemble is well-fitted to her, lighter than plate, comfortable as a second skin.
- An older, well-worn set of her dark green brigandine, with a nick in the leather on the left side of the collar, and which includes also some measure of arm and leg protection in the form of braces and tasses (though not poleyns, she added those later). An ample supply of good-quality chainmail and padded gambesons and so forth to wear beneath the protective outer layer du jour.
Weapons:
- Worn at her belt almost invariably: her father's Metalmire belt-knife, which at his death replaced her own, given upon the same occasion to her son Thadeus. Two other blades may be expected to be in her boots whenever she's wearing boots: the first came to her courtesy of an Aequori knight; she made use of his dirk in the battle at hand, and sort of didn't quite remember to give it back afterwards, shh. (Look, he cut off a piece of her ear! At the time she wasn't exactly the same sober, reliable, upstanding, law-abiding member of society she is now, and she liked to remember killing the bastard.) The other is the dagger with which her Uncle Gaufrid, that splendid fellow, slit the throat of a northern general in very close combat. It is obviously lucky.
- The superb narrow-bladed Metalmire longsword she received from her father when she was knighted, engraved along its length with a pattern based upon their house's sigil. Her father's greatsword, a heavier weapon than she'd have cared to wield herself even in her youth, which she is keeping quietly in trust against Thadeus's eventual knighthood. Otherwise TBD.
- A pair of Kentairish hand cannon, the very best that it may be supposed have been permitted to fall into the hands of a foreigner, and the necessary accoutrements for their use. Their style is more elaborate than she would have chosen for herself (the wooden stocks finely carved, the barrels chased with lightsilver and engraved) for the simple reason that they were a gift: from House Volmar, House Quinn's opposite numbers across the border, shortly after Gisela returned to them a prisoner who had escaped over the River Kent and been apprehended in her lands in the summer of 1865. She's not yet sufficiently proficient to consider them reliable enough for serious warfare — but they're good for letting off steam and scaring the crows apt to nest without her permission in a particular tower of Watchspur Castle. With Wayston at war again in 1866, and serious threats against the lives of loyal d'Armaz vassals in particular, she's been practicing harder…
Other:
- Spears and a hunting bow suitable for the happy dispatch of the One's innocent creatures from horseback. (Her arrows are fletched with dark green feathers.)
- Her usual smallish, slightly-curved heater-shaped shield made of laminated wood reinforced with leather and rimmed with steel. Something else which, like her plate armour, has seen little to no serious employment lately, given that there are perfectly good plain ones available for use in the training yard — whereas this one has on its front a fresh linen cover upon which someone with a steady hand painted the arms of House Quinn after the last time it came home perfectly solid and intact but with its pretty design scratched up a bit.
- Surplus kit from generations of Quinns, generations of war, lying round the castle.
(charles gisela jarret log sealing social thomas)
(elaine event gisela isabella jarret letholdus log myrana philippe sealing thomas)
(carnival emrys event gisela guillaume julieta log marguerite philippe shirlyn siada thomas yves)
(alejander carnival event gisela log philippe shirlyn stellan thomas yves)
(carnival event gisela jarret julieta log myrana shirlyn)
- 1866-11-11: Dinner in Firen
- 1866-10-29: Letter to Evae Arkanin
- 1866-10-25: Battling in Buckvale
- 1866-10-19: Wolf to Ghost
- 1866-10-12: The Pearl Writes from Firen
- 1866-10-15: Letters to House Brexos
- 1866-10-06: Letters Again
- 1866-10-06: O, What a Fertile Morning! O, What A Dynastic Day!
- 1866-10-04: Wayston Letters
- 1866-10-06: A Letter for Mattias Thynne
- 1866-10-03: Heads Up
- 1866-10-03: Special Delivery
- 1866-09-26: Report to Xavier Arkanin
- 1866-09-25: A Letter from the Pearl
- 1866-09-25: A Gift for Mattias Thynne
- 1866-09-23: A Gift for Evae Arkanin
- 1866-09-19: On the Rewarding Nature of Paperwork
- 1866-09-01: Stand Together, Or Fall Separately
- 1866-09-12: At Length, Understanding
It's pronounced with a hard 'G'. "Gi-SAY-la." Not at all Frenchified. Yes?
Just a few hints, in case it's easier for anyone than slogging through that admittedly long-winded background.
Gisela Quinn isn't a famous or notorious woman, beyond the fact that the heads of noble houses are well-known names in certain specific areas and circles. However, she has in late 1866 become known specifically as a close advisor of the new Duchess of Wayston, Evae Arkanin, one of the first to raise her banner in support of House Arkanin against House d'Armaz, and a commander of more than just her own troops. In one sense she came out of nowhere, in another sense she was always there, waiting till her duchy and her lieges happened to need her again.
The most commonly known facts about her, easily accessible to any PC with a knowledge of Heraldry or the ability to inquire of noble contacts, are:
- She's one of the few women to hold a Wayston fief in her own right, because her family was for a time unusually hard up for sons.
- She's also one of the few women from Wayston trained as a knight.
- She walks with a stick because of an old war wound.
- Her family's lands encompass large salt mines; they breed Garaili chargers.
- She remained strictly neutral in the Succession War.
- Her husband didn't, and she divorced him for treason.
The Duchy of Wayston: The area in which, of course, she's best known. If you're from Wayston or have spent plenty of time there, you're probably ICly aware of most or all of her family's recent history and the public information on House Quinn's wiki page. The extent of the strain in Gisela's marriage with Aimeric is not, however, general knowledge — they maintained a careful public front until the very end — and though they could never have passed as a devoted couple, no one outside her immediate family and household is aware that that household included both their lovers and a bastard of his. She is customarily quite discreet about her personal life, and even as a single woman rarely gives any hint in public as to who else might be concerned in it.
Galenthia: Probably less than Wayston, more than Aequor? You be the judge. However, it's not very likely you've met her at court: her mother (the other Baroness Quinn, a Charing by birth) has always been the courtier in the family, and the one more likely to represent their interests in Firen.
Aequor: She's never been to Aequor except when she was trying to conquer it. She's almost certainly only known to older characters of a martial bent who were on the opposite side of the Thirty Years War — or their younger relations who have been obliged to listen so many times to the same achingly dull war stories that a few of the names have filtered through into their consciousnesses.
Four Corners: Her only recent visit to Four Corners of any length was in 1866, from late Juillet till perhaps the 22nd or the 23rd of Aout. In short, she arrived shortly before there began to be distressing reports of plague in the city; and left at some indeterminate hour not long before Jaelynn Arkanin was taken out of the city in chains and the simmering conflict between the Arkanin and the d'Armaz began to boil… At that time rumours were circulating among those who pay attention to such things that she had begun a flirtation with Julieta Scuderio, the famed Pearl of Four Corners. Some at least were taken by surprise by the sudden and unheralded departure of the Pearl's new admirer.
Rikton: Very few know which masks she wore.
Relationships
Lord (Sir) (once Duke) Xavier Arkanin : First cousin. More obviously to come. |