<div class="floatleft">(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/c4/a2/eb/c4a2eb3622a5fd5f4149b8e094a22fa3.jpg)</div><br/><strong>Name</strong>:  Danae Vine-Lott<br/><br/><strong>Race</strong>: Human (Mordent)<br/><br/><strong>Character Sheet</strong>: ddb.ac/characters/13428552/mqOlTT (http://ddb.ac/characters/13428552/mqOlTT)<br/><br/><hr/><strong>Age</strong>: 31<br/><strong>Height</strong>: 5'10"<br/><strong>Weight</strong>:150 lbs<br/><strong>Hair</strong>: silver<br/><strong>Eyes</strong>: blue-grey<br/><hr/><br/><strong>Description</strong>:<br/><br/>Born to good and socially ambitious yeoman stock in the town of Crawford, Danae was swiftly packed off to board at a girls' grammar school near Waterford. The experience proved miserable: the halls were cold, the discipline was cruel and unceasing, and the food repellent.  She did, however, show a preternatural talent for horsemanship and fencing, such that she would eventually persuade her family to buy her a commission in Mordent's Household Guards.  She joined as a Second Lieutenant, and was promoted to full Lieutenant following dashing gallantry in charging a goblin raiding party that had strayed into Mordentshire. By then, she was betrothed to Abigail Sexton, daughter of a prominent Sentire of the Church of Ezra.  The Mordentish Pure Hearts sect is quietist and agnostic on matters of sexuality, but the marriage did cause scandal among the decaying remnants of the local aristocracy.  Still, few would begrudge a decorated veteran her due, though the union remained the subject of feverish conjecture and whispers in the parlours of county squires.  Now with a cottage and a large plot of passable grazing land in the Great Moor, Danae is financially independent and superficially a pillar of local society - diligent soldier, devout member of the Church of Ezra, and with a moderately prosperous household with a few farmhands and domestics.<br/><br/>Tall, long-limbed, her physique forged and hardened by constant equitation and military drills, she has the commanding bearing of a career officer. As with most women of her family, her hair is moonlight silver, and has been since she was a girl, and her eyes a shade of blue approaching gunmetal grey.  In her mounting paranoia, she has begun to associate her unusual features with a generational curse.  Even when off duty, she prefers military cuts: grey jodhpurs with matching riding shirt, and silver embroidered woolen waistcoat and jacket.  She carries her rapier with her at all times as a symbol of her rank.<br/><br/><strong>Dark Desires</strong>:<br/><br/>Danae leads a double life. Her wife is petty and materialistic, and fixated with improving her social status.  Danae is unable to resist temptation of the flesh, especially when her preferred type of buxom, down-to-earth country lasses are on offer.  Long known to tavern-girls and farmer's daughters the length and breadth of Mordent while on campaign, Danae is serially unfaithful and genuinely prefers the company of women from the humbler classes. Her infidelity consumes her with guilt, and fills her with anxiety on the destination of her immortal soul.  Fuelled by her sense of persecution at the hands of village gossips, she has begun to suspect all of her mistresses to be witches or succubi, sent by Ezra to tempt her.  When she discovered strange runes written in what appeared to be lamb's blood in the room of her housemaid, Polly, her latest clandestine relationship, she became convinced of witchcraft was abroad in her household.  The girl, of course, received a beating courtesy of Danae's riding crop, but the<em>look</em>of ecstasy on her face betrayed the true nature of a corrupted soul.  They were<em>all</em>hell-bound.  She finally snapped on a cold winter solstice day, discharging five bullets from her pistol into an aged cart-horse she thought was leading the Wild Hunt.  Eager to avoid a scandal, her Colonel ordered her to take leave to recover in "more salubrious surroundings".<br/><br/>Compounding her mounting spiritual and moral crisis, Danae is addicted to opium. She first started taking anodynes of resin dissolved in gin when she received a bullet wound to her side on campaign (she is still proud of the scar).  Her habit is controlled, for now - though it has begun to cause hallucinations, which she interprets as demonic temptation or divine persecution.  When under pressure, however, she tends to relapse and use liberally.<br/><br/>Danae was both fascinated and repelled by the physical discipline she received at boarding school. She is convinced that pain is a trial for the body to purify the soul.  She actively seeks punishment from her lovers - and inflicts, it too - believing this to be a moral balance for her transgressions.<br/><br/><strong>Why board the Charlotte</strong>:<br/><br/>Danae has been ordered to take a leave of absence. Dementlieu is well known in Mordent as a den of libertinism, but the climate is infinitely better than Mordent's constant cold and damp, and it was the firm belief of her superiors that the sea air would do her well. She bought her passage to recuperate and gather her thoughts, though she is certain it will be impossible to leave her past and years of accumulated guilt behind.  Whatever assails her in her waking dreams will doubtless follow her.