Profile

BASICS

Name: Cathleen "Cate"
Age: 21
Birthdate: March 13 (Pisces)
Class: Archer
Country: Dentoria
Family: Douglas (father), Jacquelin (mother, dead)
Languages: Trade
Blood type: A


HISTORY

Having a child in a small country town always comes with associated risks. A gentle, sweet woman named Jacquelin fell victim to one of these risks when she gave birth to her first and only daughter, Cathleen, in the midst of a summer storm. Jacquelin survived, but could never have another child despite the dreams she'd once had of having a house bursting at the seams with a family of her own.

Cathleen grew up surrounded by friends and adored by her parents. She was a cheerful, spritely little girl who always had a smile on her face. Her father, Douglas, was the little town's resident tailor, with a little shop of his own. He made Cate's clothes -- at least until, to the surprise of nearly no one in little Stoneybrook, Cate's mother finally died when Cate was three.

Douglas never knew just what to do with Cate the way her mother had, and Jacquelin's death had devastated him. And with no one else to take it out on, he turned to Cate.

Douglas never took his frustrations out sexually, but he did most everything else. When they argued, he would demean her with words before anything else, and then, when things escalated, he would take action physically. The people of Stoneybrook didn't talk about what they knew was happening with Cate, because it wasn't something that happened in a nice town like theirs. They ignored her bruises, or constructed their own excuses for them, or believed the excuses she gave. Those that didn't know what was happening didn't ask, and those that did know pretended they didn't. And as for Cate, she learned to avoid her father, to not argue with him, and she was young enough that doing so wasn't difficult.

Douglas got less stable as he got older. By the time Cate was twelve, he spent most of his days drunk, his tailoring all but forgotten, and she spent her nights in her room with the door locked and the windows shut. She stayed with her friends when she could -- their mothers clucked their tongues and shook their heads, but no one ever said anything. They never did. She found ways to avoid her father's wrath at night, and kept out in the town during the day, when he wasn't snoring off his hangover in bed during the daylight hours. It was easier than living with him had been, before he was the town drunk.

But her father's refusal -- or inability -- to work left her with no source of money, and no way to pay for food or the life she and her father had been living before then. She found herself facing the prospect of being left homeless and without food if things got bad enough, or at the very least, being subject to even more of Douglas' outraged fits. And with every year that passed, and every year that Cate looked more like her mother, she feared more and more that the fits would get worse.

It was Quent who came up with the idea -- Cate's older childhood friend whom she begged for help. He gathered a few other children from the village -- some their age, some older, and they set to harassing merchants who came along the road near Stoneybrook. It took several tries before they worked out the pattern -- Lionel, one of the older boys, would shoot horses from the trees along the side of the road, Erik and William would take out any hired mercenaries, and Cate and the younger boys would scour the goods in the caravan. Sometimes they took food. Sometimes they took nice things to sell for money. Sometimes they just took whatever looked appealing at the moment.

Cate learned to shoot a bow by necessity, and with Lionel's help. She soon took his place in the treetops while he went off to do respectable work in town.

It was likely that most of Stoneybrook, if not all of it, knew what their children were up to. But whether they disciplined their children and tried to put a stop to it, or not, it kept going. And no one talked about it in public. Things like that didn't happen in a nice little town like Stoneybrook.

Douglas knew, though, and he was the one to finally bring it up in an argument with Cate when she was sixteen. He threatened her, beat her, drunk both with alcohol and on his fury. He still didn't go any further than bruises and bloody noses, but Cate knew that next time, he would, and there would be no going back after that.

So she ran away.

Quent came with her. Lionel came with her, too. They got a few of the other kids to drag themselves along, as well, though they didn't last as long. They stumbled their way through the Dentorian countryside, knifing mercs and robbing caravans to keep themselves alive, every night one of the crew dragging themselves back home for the life they'd left behind back in peaceful, friendly little Stoneybrook, where nothing terrible ever happened.

Through a mix of stubbornness and sheer luck, Cate and the others managed to join up with a crew of outlaws that weren't much better than they were. Cate kept her job of shooting horses from the trees, while Quent helped the leader, Erik, knife mercs. Lionel was already gone by then, and the last of the others vanished not long after, leaving just Cate and Quent.

It wasn't too long after that -- a couple years, maybe -- before Crazy Andy started gathering the outlaws of the Dentorian countryside and making them into an intelligent mass. Cate's crew was one of the first to join up, with them all just hungry and looking for an easy way to get along in life. Cate, always eager for someone to look up to, made Andy into an idol as much as mother figure. Andy rewarded her by giving her a prominent position in the camp, which only made Cate more loyal to her -- a fact Andy likely knew. She told herself she would do anything for Andy. She believed she would do anything for Andy. She would live for Andy, fight for Andy, rob caravans and kill soldiers for Andy, and she told herself that she would die for Andy.

But she wouldn't, not really. And she didn't, in the end.

Instead, she allied herself with Hasten of Lireth on a promise. A promise that he'd take her home. He'd give her a new life, a new family, a new backstory. One a little less terrible and sad. And he'd give her a way to maybe make something of her life, if she really tried. A way to maybe follow the dreams she'd always had in her heart, but kept buried for fear of her father, or for want of food, or because it was too hard to think of dancing across the stage when she was just trying to keep alive from one day to the next. Hasten extended her an offer to disguise the girl she'd always been and have the chance to be someone else instead. A girl who'd led a hard but better life and was going home to her rightful House, as Andy's daughter.

A convenient lie, of course, but Cate embraced it. It was the only way out she had -- from dying with all her other friends, and from the entire mess her life had been up until then.


PERSONALITY

Cate is, at her heart, a very friendly and outgoing person. She prefers to keep her issues to herself, though she likes to help other people with their own. She likes to talk to people, likes getting to know who they are and what their stories are. She likes helping with problems, hearing about what's frustrating people. She tends to freeze up when she's talking about herself, usually unsure of what to say. When she does talk about herself, she tends to omit details in order to make her life sound better than it was, whether out of embarrassment or just because she doesn't want to sound like she's fishing for pity.

When she's in a situation she's not used to, she tends to close off for a while until she becomes more comfortable with it.

She's eager to impress and anxious about what the results of failing to impress the people she cares about would be. As a result, she's easily swayed if the right words are said, or the right perspective given to convince her to an opposing viewpoint.

As a result of her history with her father, she can't stand confrontation and tries her best to avoid it whenever possible. She'll apologize ceaselessly, take blame she doesn't deserve, or change her point of view in order to try and avoid a confrontation. This even carried over to her work with her group of outlaws, where she only rarely killed soldiers or mercs and left the bulk of it to the others in the group -- and even to the method she used to take advantage of merchants. She'd much rather avoid a fight than get caught in one, even one that she's just a third party to.

Despite her history with her father, she tends to still think of him fondly and wish that things could have been better with him. She often wonders what he's doing and if he ever thinks of her. She has a lot of nostalgia, both for him and for perfect little Stoneybrook where nothing bad ever happened, and often wonders how her life might have been different if she'd never left home. Even though it's easy to remember that it probably would have been even worse, it's hard for her not to wonder at all.


APPEARANCE

Cate is very tall, very thin, and very long-limbed; most of her height is in her legs. She has an odd sort of fluidity to her movements, with a natural gift of agility that she's often not aware she has. Despite this, she has young features -- large eyes, a somewhat androgynous figure -- that tend to make her look more like a teenager than an adult. As a result, people often assume her to be younger than she really is. Though she has a sort of odd natural grace, she tends to look a bit awkward and out of place in comparison with her lush clothing. She has long, thick, mousy brown hair that she tends to tie back since she was brought into House Lireth, either braiding it or tying it at the back of her neck. She tends toward awkwardness, unused to her new surroundings.

Her eyes are bright blue, a trait that people have come to see as a sign she has Lireth blood.

She tends to talk in more common dialect than would be expected from any noble lady, though she is obviously trying to correct her manner of speech (with limited success). She tends to stumble, hesitate, and stutter over her words as a result of constantly second-guessing what she's saying.

played by dots, pb is lim kaana from dragon knights