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| Full Name | Romilda Noirin Vane |
| Avatar | Victoria Asher (Vicky-T) |
| Sex | Female |
| Birthdate | October 8, 1982 |
| Blood Status | Pureblood |
| Occupation | Guerrilla Artist, formerly a Terrorist |
| Wand | 12" Walnut, Dragon Heartstring core |
| Alumni | Gryffindor |
| Affiliation | York |
| Player | Cass |
| Journal | maybenotatall |
Oh, we are restless and tired of sleeping with giants
Of modern mankind with their egos of fire and it seems like it's been a lifetime
A lifetime we've waited for.
A simple question, kid, "Are you with me or not at all?"
Are we wasting time or is it wasting us?
It's been a lifetime waiting for now, now.
Home Life
Mother: Dusteena Vane, alumni of Hufflepuff, 1971
Father: Tristan Vane, Slytherin alumni 1956
Siblings: None
Relationships with parents: Romilda is their only child. Both Tristan and Dusteena are purebloods and, as a result, had a great deal of trouble even having one child, let alone many. She was raised as a princess, in terms of the love and affection she was given - Dusteena ended her career at the Daily Prophet when she learned she was pregnant - unusually, for people in their position, she stayed at home to raise Romilda by her choice, not because Tristan expected it of her, nor because she gave a damn what society thought. When Romilda entered nursery school, she returned to work, but not at the Prophet. Though she could have gone back, she chose instead to open an apothecary's shop in wizarding Bristol.
However, Romilda was not raised in a wealthy family, nor with a great deal of material comfort. Affection took the place of things - not that the family was poor, certainly, but there was not a great deal in common between Romilda and some of her contemporaries, given things to make up for lack of affection. Her parents intended her to know the value of a Galleon and to consider it wisely - they have succeeded, in general. She is neither a miser nor a spendthrift with what money she has.
Background: Romilda's father is a first-generation Italian immigrant. Born in Osimo, near Ancona and close to San Marino, his parents emigrated to England in about 1940, as a result of the war with Grindelwald; he completed Hogwarts in 1956. Her mother is English who completed Hogwarts in 1971. They met because Tristan's younger sister, Catarina, brought Dusteena home one summer for a visit; despite Dusteena being 15, the pair fell in love and married when Dusteena left school.
Her name reflects her Italian heritage: Vane is an italian surname, though very uncommon, and Romilda is from the Lombard and means "heroine". Noirin is a Gaelic corruption of the Italian Eleonora and means "compassionate".
Romilda explains it to Ana here
Home: Currently resident at the Flint estate, Knaresborough. Previously, she generally lived in Outer York, though occasionally in Inner, and sometimes in Under.
Finances: Marginal. Romilda does have gainful employment with the Hit Wizards, but much of her money tends to go to getting materials she needs for art, some of which has intrinsic value of its own, even in the new economy. She prefers to live alone, and tends to be a bit of a nomad, moving from, essentially, squat to tent to abandoned house to tent to wherever as the area gets on her nerves or people try to move into the same place. She doesn't have anyone to share expenses with and distrusts bartering with anyone she knows, which tends to put her into a position of using cash, and that drains her resources faster than it would if she could trust barter, but in line with her upbringing, she's decided that peace of mind is worth the money.
Personal Life
Personality: Romilda's family and upbringing has resulted in her odd personality. Though she was sorted into Gryffindor, she is a negative-virtue Gryffindor, rather than a positive-virtue one. Her mother's Hufflepuff traits express themselves, in Romilda, in her extreme stubbornness and desire to get what she wants; her father's Slytherin personality means that she does not rule out pragmatic means of achieving those goals. Additionally, as the only child of her parents and the oldest grandchild of her family, Romilda is quite used to getting what she wants, assuming that what she wants is not material goods. She accepted her family's relative (for Purebloods) poverty with ease, making all of the things she wanted either emotional or intellectual; she remains non-materialistic to this day, though she is able to pretend that she is as needed.
She has never successfully been in a relationship with a man or a woman; indeed, it seems reasonable at this point to say that the way things went for her in fourth and fifth year, where her attempts at flirtation and attraction were rejected for wildly different reasons and negatively enforced by outside events (the humiliation of pursuing Potter, the torture she suffered the next year) has caused that part of her personality to never develop. She occasionally develops a mild infatuation, but she generally knows better than to say anything about it, particularly when the person in question immediately develops a strong bond with a person Romilda has been a rival of before. In Romilda's subconscious mind, her lack of protection in relationship situations has meant that she must not truly be allowed to have a relationship, and she has, generally successfully, cut that part of her life out entirely. And yes, she is compensating by her choice of careers. If she's not allowed to be female, then she will be male, because it's safer.
Romilda is highly paranoid, not as a medical diagnosis, but situationally. She assumes that anyone she comes into contact with from Hogwarts remembers her as the idiot she was in fourth year, and she assumes a level of defensiveness in interactions with those people that is extremely hard to overcome. She tends to have similar assumptions about other people, and is constantly wary and alert for evidence of denigration in other interactions. She tends to live in her own head, not particularly by choice but because she hasn't yet realised that no one remembers what happened, and if they do, they really don't care. She's extremely proud of what she did after school, but believes, again, that it would be another judgement criteria, so she generally doesn't mention it, particularly since people would be likely to think of her as having some involvement with the group that actually set off the charm bomb.
Politics: Romilda is generally apolitical - she tends to see it as happening far from her, since she is used to being merely a tool for the political powers-that-be. Her one major political action, with Summer's Brigades, was not truly a political action for her - she sought no power in the world that would become, not even power-behind-the-throne. She wasn't politically unobservant in that situation, she simply wanted to make a change she felt was necessary and important and then fade out of sight again.
Marital status: Single
Relationship status: Becoming involved with Eddie Carmichael. Always closer than lovers with Marcus Flint.
Strengths: Tends to be inadvertently charming. Aggressively assertive in many situations, particularly job-related ones. Culturally competent within a given range of situations. Adaptive in job-related situations. Smart, and frequently clever about how to make something happen or work. Resourceful and pragmatic. Well versed in Muggle culture and customs. Has been trained out of magic response to situations. Gifted with vehicles and weaponry of most types (there are physical limits on what she can handle, though, because of her size).
Weaknesses: Generally very poor at social interactions and approaches them from a posture of defensiveness. Has difficulty in situations with a high discrepancy between social classes; as Romilda identifies as the wizard equivalent of skilled working class, despite her education and bloodline, those discrepancies tend to be toward the upper classes. Very willing to take personal statements at face value. Poor at resolving incompatibilities between offered statements. Self-effacing. Poor at strategy; impatient. Tends to take the brute-force approach and smash it until it works. Lacks finesse in so many, many ways. Exhibits rapid-cycle bipolar tendencies as a result of her social dysfunction and paranoia; anything can set her off, and does. Slightly too pragmatic about disposal of known enemies. Has access to an enormous well of Fail.
Quirks: Dislikes sleeping in the same place twice in a row. Bites her lip in concentration. Does not generally allow people to see where she's living. Collects odd scraps, not to have the objects but for later use as art projects. Is a very good shot with a 9 millimeter; her guns are, at this point, extensions of her body. Always carries a gun. Does not generally carry other kit with her unless she knows she'll need it. Smokes under stress. Hates brooms and flying, and is fairly poor at it. Is - very secretly - an optimist.
Fears: Blindness, magic, falling, embarrassment and mockery, the sound of heavy artillery.
Philias: Secure isolation, the dark, the scent of cordite, driving, the feel of semtex, the process of building physical art (not the preliminaries, though).
Magical Errata
Boggart: A mocking figure with no visible face
Patronus: Striped hyena
Mirror of Erised: Romilda, safely hidden from all the demands of her own mind and other people.
Amortentia Potion: Old stone, burned parchment, firewhiskey. The scent of whiskey makes Romilda sneeze, and the other two should be obvious.
Aesthetics
Appearance: Romilda is not conventionally pretty, nor does she care to be. The best word to describe her appearance is probably striking - her eyes in particular stand out, and she has strong cheekbones. Her hair is worn long, but generally is pulled back out of her way. She dresses to de-emphasise her body, since she's not attempting to show off and is extremely uncomfortable being approached on the basis of her appearance.
She is missing two toes on her left foot and has scarring on that calf; walks with a slight limp as a result. Has the hands of someone who uses them for moderate physical labour - a fair layer of callus, many small scars and other marks. Some of the scars are from her military services, but most date to fifth year. Calls the wound on her leg a war injury, which it was, depending on how you define war; it's a remnant of her days as a terrorist.
Height: 5'3"
Hair: Dark brown
Eyes: Green
History
Romilda's early life was nothing out of the ordinary. As mentioned, her family loved her and took the effort to raise her well, knowing that she was likely to be a House sport, given the unusual combination between her parents - they chose to place no particular values on her other than that she be a good person, strong and moral, and determined. Neither of her parents came from a recent tradition of blood purity (though there are skeletons in Tristan's family's closet) so that was nothing they pushed on her.
She grew up relatively serious and quiet, but generally confident. When she received the letter to Hogwarts, she was excited, but unafraid. After listening to her parents' stories, it was almost as though she knew the place already. She was surprised to be sorted into Gryffindor, having expected that she would go to Hufflepuff (she suspected she wasn't cunning enough for Slytherin, which is correct). But despite the stories, Romilda was no Harry Potter, and the Hat wasn't interested in bargaining.
Her first few years at school were fine. She made friends with the other girls in her year, and was at least casual acquaintances with the boys. Often the life of the party, at least among the younger years, Romilda found that she had a taste for social power, and cultivated it carefully; gradually, she became the ringleader of the girls in her year, and not solely of the ones in her house. She developed a bold, loud voice and was known for her bold personality. Somewhat indifferent, academically, she was far more interested in power.
During her fourth year, a summer spent nursing a helpless crush and the belief that she had ability to create an attraction where none previously existed led Romilda to openly and aggressively pursue Harry Potter, whom she saw as the next step on the ladder to success in the school's social structure. She wasn't above resorting to drugging him, which went awry, but that was the Hufflepuff tenacity and Slytherin desire to win coming to the fore more than something she decided on as appropriately moral. After that occurred, combined with her humiliation on the Quidditch pitch during tryouts, she dropped out of sight of the school, returning home that summer with her tail tucked. She wasn't sure what she wanted to become, but she knew that that year had been unacceptable.
Her fifth year was subdued, in part because Romilda sought privacy more intently than ever, and in part because the nature of the school had changed. Where it had been a welcoming place before, now, run by the Carrows, with Death Eaters openly walking the halls and Dumbledore gone, it was a place where fear ran through the corridors and a misstep could kill you. Or your family. Despite all that, she enjoyed a decent month or so at the beginning: decent grades, helped by the fact that going to the library to work meant that she could conduct a quiet mutual infatuation with Graham Pritchard, and that minor romance itself. She deliberately notched her personality back, choosing to develop a new approach to life where others couldn't notice. But in October, that changed.
From October through May, she was regularly tortured by Graham Pritchard, acting on Alecto Carrow's orders, but she had no idea that it was him, given that he took care, at least until she learned to simply close her eyes and keep them shut, to approach her from behind and hood her before she could see him. The response she adopted was one of giving in, and of hiding. She stopped sleeping in Gryffindor Tower and instead, moved about the castle, sleeping in different places every night, trying to find a place that he couldn't find her, but because she didn't know who he was, it was never clear whether he'd found her by chance or because she set a pattern she didn't know, so even if she'd gone safe the night before - and most nights were safe - she still moved on the next day. She disappeared from the school's life almost entirely and was bitter about the fact that no one even remarked on that, but she also couldn't simply approach someone about it - who could she trust?
No one who would let the Carrows take charge of the school, she knew that much.
With the Battle For Hogwarts, it all ended, but she didn't even conceive of the fact that the torture would logically be over until the next year started again. But even though she gradually relaxed, she never again spoke to Pritchard, and she kept her habit of moving about the castle to sleep. She made a decision early on to not be a victim, and pointed out to herself that others had suffered similar abuse; her story was hardly unique. That allowed her to shove it away in the back of her mind; she has not truly forgotten her fifth year, but it holds little power over her, so far as she knows.
She left the school with slightly better than average grades, but decided that the wizarding world, still rebuilding socially and physically after the war, was not the place with the future, and she chose to leave it, traveling to France to enlist in the French Foreign Legion. After completing the training, she was sent to French Guiana with the 2e Régiment Étranger d'Infanterie, but only lasted there for slightly over a year before deserting and returning to England. This action, as yet unexplained in game canon though she alludes to it here and here in conversation with Andrew (split because of thread break), has been said to have earned her an arrest warrant from the FFL.
Since the Summer of Rage
On her return to England, she fell in with Summer's Brigades, a terrorist group composed of both Muggles and wizards, dedicated to the overthrow of the existing social and political order, seeking to reveal the existence of wizards to the Muggle world. It was the same ideology, essentially, that Potter would later espouse, but Summer's Brigades also practiced selective assassination and generally sought to implement their goals via power vacuums. They did have the intent of eventually taking over the Ministry, though the group was never large nor that powerful. (This also earned her an arrest warrant.)
But before they could implement any sort of directed plan, or at least get far on the one they'd developed, the Summer of Rage happened. Most of the members were killed early on, and Romilda was stranded in Manchester. She made her way to York early on, but - as is her established pattern - hid in the city for a long time before finally deciding to approach Seamus Finnigan about a job working with the Hit Wizards. He eventually chose to promote her to 2nd in command, with a formal rank of Captain; she flourished in that job for quite some time, until other events led to her "quitting" the Hit Wizards and joining the militia, as part of a sub-rosa investigation into allegations of dirty militia.
Romilda has formed a strong attachment to Marcus Flint, starting with the rescue of his wife and developing from there. At the ball, he told her he was gay; in a journal conversation, she told him what Graham had done. Then they gave up having secrets from each other. She's moved into his estate in Knaresborough - Marc's gift of a motorbike has in part facilitated that - and the pair are extremely close, with each other and with Ana, Marc's wife. She finds him to be an immensely steadying influence and tends to be much calmer around him. They speak the same language of protectiveness toward each other: both have huge issues that the other is positioned to see and not have the same take on. She is unwilling to countenance anything that will take higher precedence than Marc in her life - you want her, you get him.
In addition, she is tentatively starting a relationship with Eddie Carmichael, as part of dealing with Graham's treatment of her; Romilda psychologically stopped at age 15 in a lot of ways, and has spent the past dozen years avoiding being female and avoiding relationships. She identifies as a submissive, and is interested in exploring the idea to find out whether it's true that she is. She is also starting to recognise that she has a lot of psychological catch-up to do.
On the side, during her time in York, Romilda has also functioned as a guerrilla artist, putting up occasional pieces around the city. They function as her commentary on situations and events, but in part because of the grueling schedule of the Hit Wizards, they're not frequent. She does not have a specific medium that she works in, preferring to use whatever best suits the piece she wants to create.
Military Honours
Tireur d'elite medal - awarded for marksmanship skill.
Current Activities
Primary plots: Militia reformation and Remembering history
Secondary: Pritchard's rescue of his brother and the development of that situation with regards to their past history; the situation currently developing with Marcus Flint and his ducklings.
