Volney V
Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2022 10:31 pm
Volney - V.
Details
Full Name: Volney V.
Race: Human
Sex: F
Age: 33
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 165lbs
Birthdate: 5 Frost 89
Birthplace: Zaichaer (East End)
Profession: Merchant
Housing: 1 basic 20x20 single room cottage
Partners: None
Titles: None
Factions: None
Fluencies: Two Fluent Languages: Common, Kathalan
Conversationals: None
Ineptitudes: None
Appearance Caucasian, brunette with brown eyes, short hair, ample bosom, somewhat thick in the hips, largely unassuming, but when dressed up gains more attention.
Personality Bitter, sarcastic, able to be vulnerable but does so sparingly, easily irritated by misunderstandings and quickly gravitates to the misunderstood. She is embarrassed of her resentment of other women for what they are afforded (versus her upbringing) and hides her jealousy well (or so she thinks).
History
Volney was born the third youngest of four children but raised as the oldest following her eldest sibling’s disappearance and second born sibling’s untimely death at age 7. Her parents are decidedly complicated, however maintaining a steady position of provincial mediocrity, well, at least as far as the eye can see. In public, they tiptoe, at home, they spin—but not in the way a spiral does with that sort of forward or backward propulsion, but in the way a top does, balancing perfectly in place, dizzying only their own selves chaotically and in perpetuity. In other words, the city proper has never heard of them, and what little the surrounding areas know of the Voltz family, they are as harmless, even boring—the little chime-making glass workers that they are, providing all sorts of trinkets to the children and tourists all over and living humbly and tucked away as they do. However, their primary shoppe dwelling is so humble, in fact, that it yields nearly no guests inside— a fact absolutely required to maintain the image of innocence on the exterior to hiding the web spinning the aforementioned sin inside. In truth, Volney has been required from birth to be quite the keeper of secrets. Very few know that most the walls in her cottage are false, most the doors, trap, most the staircases, collapsable. She often wonders how she learned to walk in these winding halls, or how she learned to speak properly when nearly all the words she knows now are seeming euphemisms for illicit materials and activities. It’s a wonder she could ever sleep through the evening rituals of clearing the liquid glass remains from the kiln and tossing them for to be reduced to ash, especially when some of that burning had a little bit of a…scream..to it. How this was safe enough to last in for 33 years, it’s hard to say, but, alas home wasn’t built in a day.
In a family with lies for family ties, there are very few things we can really know to be true. Suppose we should begin with those sparse facts that we can measure of this origin story: First, we know that the Voltz family owns a series of five small wagon- based traveling souvenir shoppes that are pulled to and set up in various neighborhoods across Zachaeir, each wagon returning home nightly to a primary shoppe (aforementioned) where the family prepares the crafts and trinkets, and where also many employees, contractors, and the family members themselves appear to craft, eat and sleep. Second, we know that the business is named…"WindWorks"…apparently per the workshop-based glass wind chime craftsmanship. It is particularly unclear, by any evidential means, which business came to be first— this small, rickety wheelbarrow-of-pastiche-fine-art franchise, or the Dornkrik’s massive aeronautic engineering enterprise of comparable name. This brings us to our third known fact. Old Man Voltz despises the Dornkirks, and habitually spits at the workers who speak well of them. This seems to co-occur with Volney’s rebellious endorsement of the Dornkirk which has been inconsistently tolerated when she herself would negotiate face time with the youngest Dornkirk boy when crossing paths as teenagers.
Then, there are the things we somewhat know. First, we somewhat know that parts of the creation of the wind chimes are completed by what would appear to the public to be “curiously cloaked laborers” that complete intricate pieces quite swiftly, perfectly, and unusually. Perhaps… magically? Second, we somewhat know that by all accounts Volney’s eldest sibling has returned, as someone must be tending to her duties whilst she’s away and rumor has it that it’s “the family’s eldest daughter”. But isn’t that Volney? Third, we know that there has been exactly one ever observed exchange roughly three seasons ago between Old Man Voltz and political officials. This exchange seems aptly timed with Volney’s simultaneous discovery of a large chest of bills and coins along with a high volume glass order that has yet to be fulfilled even in part. Fourth, we know that Volney has a warmth for the cloaked employees, and that she has been known to share much of her own earnings with many of them. And fifth, we also somewhat know that at present, Volney has set out to relocate to the city to connect with her old acquaintance Brenner, and that she has put great faith in what she perceives to be possible wisdom that he might hold about what exactly she should do next in her self-discovery, feeling inexplicable kinship with him with little in common save the coincidence of the corporate nomenclature of their families of origin.
And finally, there are the things we don’t seem to know at all. First, who ordered all of this glass, what could it possibly be for, and when will it come to be collected? Second, how is Volney, a woman who has dwelled exclusively between the seasonal wagon locales and her own home for the whole of her life planning to ask her questions of this boy she hasn’t seen since they were both just teenagers? Third, how is Old Man Voltz, with his chest full of money, struggling to pay his cloaked employees for their mysterious work? And finally, why does that kiln sometimes scream at night?