Carlennia Irim Irbrexos

The Lie

Carlennia Irim Irbrexos, last scion of the house Irbrexos and true-born daughter of
Constantius and Portia Irbrexos.
Fancy title… Good for making an impression, but of very little actual value. Constantius
drowned some twenty-six years ago, foolish and in debt to the powerful Jeggare family.
They were only too happy to accept the claim by a newcomer named Portia that she had
married Constantius in a private ceremony shortly before his departure and was left not
only widowed, but mother to his now fatherless infant daughter. The Jeggare
moneylenders were probably relieved that there was some member of House Irbrexos
left… Simply so that someone could sign away every single asset belonging to the family
to cover the debt.

This makes a perfectly decent story. One that satisfied a powerful families accounts and
buys a single mother and her daughter a title and a cover.

The Truth

Portia’s real name was Ashiunna Calvus. She was the seventh child of an unimportant
noble from a minor house, of whom only a single thing could be of mention… They are
sworn servants to the mighty House Grulios, one of the most powerful noble houses in
Westcrown.
Ashiunna was placed as handmaiden to the patriarch’s daughter and spent several years
in her service. She was satisfied with her station, picking out garments for her mistress,
combing her hair, gossiping about her suitors and so on. That all changed in 4680 AR,
when the King himself visited Westcrown.
King Terthule of House Thrune was an imposing man. Twice Ashiunna’s age, dark and
handsome, and wickedly dangerous. He was an aristocratic diabolist through and
through, when he liked what he saw he would stop at nothing to possess it, and
Ashiunna was a lovely young woman.
She was, like most people of Cheliax, infatuated with power and prestige, so she made no
attempt beyond what made the chase more interesting to stop him. Soon she found
herself living in a stately, and private, manor as the chosen mistress of none less than
the king himself. For two years she lived a comfortable life awaiting her lovers visits and
eventually gave birth to their daughter. Her joy of this was however short lived as news
reached her that the King had disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
Any hope was swiftly dashed when no less that five days later, the lost King’s niece
Carellia was crowned Queen and it became clear that the Kings disappearance was no
mere coincidence.
Ashiunna immediately started preparing to disappear as she knew all too well that it is
common, if not expected, that the first endeavour of a new regent is to eliminate any who
could make claim to their station. Her newborn daughter may have been born outside of
marriage and being only two weeks old was clearly no direct threat to anyone, but she
had the stark violet eyes of a pure-blooded noble and the asmodean priest that assisted
in her birth referred to her as having ‘great potential’… So a weak claim, but a claim
nonetheless.

She was busy packing her last few belongings when the soldiers came and began
slaughtering their way through the household. As her handmaiden came running in to
warn her, Ashiunna did not hesitate… She strangled her handmaiden, dressed her in her
own silken dressing gown and slipped the Calvus family signet ring onto her finger. Then
strung her up from a rafter and placed a toppled a stool beneath her, and then she ran.

Her escape was rushed… though she managed to leave the manor unnoticed and was
carrying a small fortune in jewelry, none of her previously laid plans would work now.
She headed to the docks and booked passage aboard the first ship leaving for a port
outside of Cheliax where her pure-blooded looks wouldn’t raise too much suspicion, a
former colony to the north called Korvosa.

Arriving in Korvosa she quickly found herself safety with the sole heir to House Irbrexos,
a man five years her junior who she could seduce with very little difficulty. She convinced
him to introduce her to his friends and servants as ‘his new wife’ as a sort of practical
joke and that it would only really work if he kept up the act… It wasn’t long before the
naive young Constantius washed up in bridgefront, having seemingly drowned after
falling into the river whilst drunk. This ‘accident’ left Ashiunna, or Portia as she called
herself now, and her daughter Carlennia as the sole heirs to his estate… For the notion
that her marriage to Constatius had been a farce was never mention again.

The estate, which had seemed quite adequate at first, turned out to be deeply indebted to
the Jeggares. They gladly accepted her signature as they took the house, the dock, the
trade barges and the textile mill… And half of the jewelry that ‘Portia’ hadn’t hidden
away.

Though she wasn’t left with the lifestyle she had hoped for and her face was now far too
well-known to attempt such a tactic again in Korvosa, Portia now had a strong and well-
established cover for her and her infant daughter.

Being a pure-blooded woman of noble birth Portia found employment as governess to the
children of the more affluent and conservative noble houses in Korvosa. Her wages
offered her and her daughter a decent life in a suite in Citadel Crest, and would
eventually pay for Carlennia’s education.
 Carlennia

Carlennia is a striking young woman. A full head of Raven black curls, violet eyes and
porcelain complexion make her pure-blooded birth clear to anyone who knows of such
things and she carries herself with the confident elegance of a noble.
Perhaps too striking to be called beautiful, she is tall but more lanky than slim, more
intense than pretty and certainly too dour in appearance. She was once referred to as
“not too bad to look at and decent breeding stock” by the patriarch of a family that her
mother tried to form a wedding contract with... She was twelve at the time…

From an early age she showed great passion, and indeed talent, for music. Her mother
allowed her to be taught the violin from a young age, reasoning that this would make her
a better prospect for marriage. When finally her mother accepted that she had no
possible way of providing a decent dowry, rather than acknowledge this, she made it out
to be a statement of strength that Carlennia should follow her passion, and be able to
provide for herself.
It took a few years before Carlennia saw through this farce, but she accepted that it was
not only true but also that keeping up appearances was indeed important.

As she studied music at the University of Korvosa she grew into an intensely passionate
young woman. She also found her talent for manipulating the somewhat daft daughters
of other noble families. She maintains friendships with many of them to this day, to them
she is a bit of a novelty and always makes them look brighter and more bubbly by
comparison, to Carlennia they provide her with work, information, plausible deniability
and status.

Upon completing her studies, with honours, she sought to advance her art to the logical
next step. She sought a mentor and found one in Penthraugh Gorvil, bardic master and
priest of Pulura. Penthraugh was a lonely old man with no family to speak of, a
congregation of only eight and a musical career that had long been passed by fashion. He
specialized in dirge pieces that would feature painful discordant moments, played on the
Chelish Vioncello.
It wasn’t hard for Carlennia to be taken on as his student, she was young passionate and
charming, he was old, lonely and willing to put aside his misgivings about her. They have
since grown quite close and Carlennia mostly refers to him as Uncle Pen.

Following her studies with master Gorvil, though they are certainly not truly complete,
she found employment, through her good friend Lirvinna Jeggare, at Marbledome with
the Korvosan opera company. She almost made it a year before the antics of Touran
Palastus, and the meager pay, made he quit. She has since struck out on her own and is
doing quite well. She plays at inns when she has to but her main sources of income are
funerals and proper concertos at noble manors, the Kendall Amphitheater and smaller
venues. She also performs at small gatherings of young nobles and has very little shame
in selling the small pieces of jewelry she is given as gifts at such events, if she was paid
in coin she would be working which is beneath her class.

She has found, through her friend Shoranna Endrin, a nice suite in a nice part of the
city to call home. In Cliffside, near the amphitheater, she maintains this rather decent
suite, with a servant and a decently furnished parlour. She rarely has guests and when
she does it is only ever for a quick glass of wine or two before heading out to a
performance or such.
She ensures it to be this way as she hasn’t had the coin to properly, to a nobles
standards, furnish the rest of the apartment, and she knows the inarguable value of
image.

Personality

Carlennia is ambitious and willing to do almost anything to achieve her ‘goals’. She
doesn’t necessarily know exactly what those goals are, but measures progress mostly in
the respect and affluence her name inspires.
Image is important to her, but she has carefully cultivated a reputation of being
rebellious and individualistic, within good taste of course. She claims sternly that the
reason she doesn’t reside in her family’s noble manor is that she wants to build, with
sullied hands and broken tools, a strength of her own so as to be a proper asset to her
house… In truth her house has no manor, no money and only two members in Korvosa.

She is manipulative and perfectly willing to play people out against each other if she
herself stands to gain from it. Though she generally focuses more on not getting caught
than on big win gambles, she has several times staked quite a bit in these endeavours.
The closest she came to getting caught was when she carefully cultured a deep
resentment between Ayslin Bromathan and Sarhain Leroung over their shared interest
in, the rather handsome, Petherwell Ornelos. As a result she became a close friend to
both these daughters of major houses as a shoulder to cry on, and she even spent quite a
few nights in Petherwell’s bed when she was supposed to carry amorous letters to him…
He was quite handsome after all.

She may seem snobbish and superior but this is, mostly, just part of the image she
portrays. In truth she likes spending time with those not of noble station as this allows
her to let her guard down a little. What she truly respects in people is strength of
character and the willpower to see things through, both of which is woefully lacking
among her noble ‘friends’.
 Dress and bearing

Carnellia dresses in black, always. Though this is quite common with chelish nobles, she
takes it to a bit of an extreme. Commonly the only spot of colour on her is her vibrant
violet eyes. Occasionally people will comment that she appears dressed as if going to a
funeral, to which she is very fond of answering that “maybe she is” in an ominous tone.
She prefers silver jewellery over gold as it suits her complexion better. She wears a
mithril amulet, one of the constellatory symbols of Pulura, which was a gift from Uncle
Pen.

She carries herself with a stoic and aristocratic bearing. Perfect posture and a tendency
to always sit like someone was painting a portrait of her. Her dress and hair is generally
kept pristine, unless a bit of marring better serves the story she intends to tell.
She is not afraid to trudge through mud and filth to achieve, but would never want to be
seen as having done so. “If you look beyond reproach, people will assume you are” her
mother would say, a lesson she has taken to heart.

She always wears dark makeup which with strong contrast accentuates her porcelain
skin. Though not all of these dark tones on her face are truly painted on.

The Curse

In truth Carlennia was born in the city of Westcrown while the city was, as it still is,
suffering under The Shadow Curse. The true origins of this curse are still not fully
understood, though it is believed to be Demonic in origin.
Carlennia was marked by the strange energies of that curse even before she was born.

This manifests most visibly by her lips and epithelial skin of the eyelids being naturally
charcoal black. This she, quite effectively, hides by adopting an entire look of dress and
makeup in complementary colour. She even wears a light amount of charcoal lip-mask so
that she leaves appropriate marks on glasses at social functions.
It is hard to say if her black hair and pale skin are also due to the curse, as they are
genetically common to both her mother’s familial legacy and to that of her real father.

The Curse makes her quite sensitive to light. Her eyes never fully adjust to sunlight and
her skin burns easily from direct exposure. This sensitivity is hard to hide so she has
incorporated it into her image and has, with some success, used it to enforce her
mystique. As a result of this sensitivity she is quite happy with the gloomy trappings of
fashionable chelish social functions and is likely one of the only students of the University
of Korvosa to prefer The Black Hall.
 Music

Carlennia is fiercely passionate about her music, though not too proud to be flexible.
Her favoured instrument is the traditional Chelish Vioncello, a large deep-toned bow
instrument quite reminiscent of cross between the far more common Cello, which
originate in Taldan music. The main difference between the two is that the Chelish
variant has a second set of sympathetic strings running down the back of the spine,
which allow the player to create resonant tones, and that it is meant to be played
standing rather than sitting. It is rather large and thus it requires a decent physique to
play it while standing. Because of this strain many performers, including some of the
most lauded, have come to have an affixed standing spike, like that of the common cello,
and playing it while sitting.

The music she composes herself are either reminiscent of Chelish operas, with all the
bombastic grandeur or that style, or dirgeful soundscapes full of layered, and occasionally
discordant, multiharmonics. These latter pieces are hard to appreciate for the common
listener but always elicits curious excitement from those with a musical education.
She has always tinkered with designing and altering instruments, mostly bowed ones,
and has a workspace dedicated to this work in her home.

She has maintained a pleasant relationship with the old caretaker of Black Hall, a
warmhearted but stern-looking dwarf named Burdan, who lets her into the building to
compose sometimes after classes have ended. There is an auditorium on the upper level
which has an especially good acoustic for her music.

When sitting alone with time to spare it is common to find her softly humming and
scribbling some new composition in one of her many journals.

Faith

Carlennia is fundamentally undecided in religion. Outwardly she pays service to

Asmodeus, as is expected of Chelish nobility, but she has never found that faith neither
compelling nor truly to her taste… Too many rules, and it seems everyone is just waiting
for an excuse to break them anyway.
She has dabbled briefly in the faith of Shelyn, the goddess of art, but found her following
far too flippant and easily impressed. There are some truly great artists among Shelyn’s
following, but the belief that all art is great simply for existing is somewhat laughable to
Carlennia.
She has spent a lot of time with priests of Pharasma and maintains regular friendly
contact with a few from the Gray. She can certainly see the value in their teachings and
the truth of their message, but can see no reason to devote herself to something as final
as death. She made her acquaintances from among the Pharasmin due to being hired to
play at funerals.
Carlennia’s teacher, Uncle Pen, is the sole priest of Pulura in Korvosa and has made a
very mild, and unsuccessful, attempt at introducing Carlennia to that faith. Carlennia
has found a lot to love in the Puluran faith, with the release from earthly concerns and
focus on beauty among the stars, and has a deep appreciation for their Music of The
Spheres. But this love and appreciation is not enough for her to count herself among the
faithful… She has a deeply set wish that she could be fulfilled by such simplicity, free
from worries of nobles and status, but it is simply not the case.

A few months ago Carlennia met a gatecrasher at a party held at the Zenderholm family
manor. He was a charming man only a few years her senior and she allowed herself the
distraction of his company. They ended up sitting in a secluded corner of the garden
discussing grander things, whilst drinking no small amount of wine. She admitted to
him, quite unusually for her, that she had struggled with faith. He told her of a faith
that she had never heard of before and that she hasn’t been able to find any word of
since. A faith in a goddess of Artists, Exiles and Midnight who would nourish Carlennia’s
art and keep her safe from those who would hunt her, the faith in The Redeemer Queen.
It was only when he mentioned that his goddess would keep her safe from being an exile
that Carlennia realised that she was being seductively manipulated by someone far more
skilled than herself… She had never told anyone about being anything resembling an
exile, she hadn’t even spoken of it with her mother for at least a decade. So she quickly
excused herself and fled, at a decent walking pace.
She hasn’t seen him since, but she is intrigued about this Goddess he spoke of.

Hiding her origins

In the 25 years since her mother’s arrival in Korvosa, a lot of work has gone into making
their cover as solid as possible. Far most of this work has been done by Carlennia’s
mother, but Carlennia has herself taken steps to build this foundation.
Some of these steps have been simple and victimless, like sneaking into the university
library after dark to steal, and destroy, a book on the heritable traits of House Irbrexos.
Other steps have been more merciless, and heart-wrenching. When her mother learned
that a former servant of the Irbrexos household, now a penniless old woman, would have
been working on the day that Portia claimed she had married Carlennia’s father, it fell to
Carlennia to ‘remedy’ the situation. She disguised herself as just another low-born
plebeian and snuck into the old woman’s house as she slept. Here she poisoned her store
of flour with a deadly mould, which killed the old woman just two days later in what
seemed just another death caused by poverty.
It wasn’t the first time she killed, and likely won’t be the last, but Carlennia still
occasionally wakes in a panic at night from thinking she is hearing that old woman’s
gentle snoring… She didn’t even know her name…
 Ambitions

Carlennia is exceedingly ambitious, though her exact goal can be somewhat nebulous. If
she was to state it, though she never would, it would be to “reclaim her birthright”…
Leaving it entirely unsaid weather this is the Irbrexos family status and manor or her
Thrune ancestry. Currently she is happy climbing the ladder before her, uncertain what
sits atop it.

For now her endeavours are to progress her music and to increase her prestige, her social
standing and her wealth. She has spent so much time and effort weaving the intricate
webs that allow her to maintain her standing that she has perhaps succumbed to
somewhat of a sunk cost fallacy. She craves social advancement, but it never seems to
make her any happier… It simply results in more striving, scheming and worrying.
It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy the, somewhat sadistic, glee of successfully manipulating
someone. It simply doesn’t giving her the pure ecstatic joy that her music does, and that
comes without the complications of court life.

Friends and Contacts

Carlennia maintains friendships among almost all of the noble houses, the only exception
being House Arkona. Far most of these ‘friends’ are really just means to an end to
Carlennia, even though she has known some of these people for many years and spend a
lot of time with them. Out of all of these people there are probably only two that she
actually considers friends.

Lirvinna Jeggare: Lirvinna is a true friend to Carlennia. They have known each other
since university and when first they met Lirvinna already knew that Carlennia’s family
was destitute… It was her uncle who had collected the debt after all.
Despite this they became fast friends. Lirvinna has always seemed to enjoy helping in
maintaining Carlennia’s cover, seeing it at first as a fun little game to get her friend
invited into the fancy parties, and later as genuine care for her closest friend.
Lirvinna also knows that Carlennia doesn’t need makeup for her lips to be black, though
she has accepted that she shouldn’t ask why.
Last year Lirvinnia was married to a boorish young man from a good family, this has
only increased their contact as Lirvinnia has even less reason to stay home.

Petherwell Ornelos: They had a fling back during one of Carlennia’s larger projects, but it
burned out after a few months. Despite this they have stayed friends as they both enjoy
each others company and insight when discussing the finer points of music or politics.
Petherwell, or Petti as she calls him, is a handsome and studious young wizard nearing
his final trials at The Acadamae. She fears for him as she has heard rumours that these
can be quite deadly.
Carlennia still harbours a slight crush for him, though she wouldn’t admit it.
 Gaedren Lamm

It came as quite a shock when Carlennia learned that her mother had been arrested for
the murder of a local merchant… Perhaps not quite as much of a shock as it would have
been to others, Carlennia knows her mother is a murderer, five times over that she
knows of and she is sure she doesn’t know of all of them.
She immediately went to work looking into the accusation, both out of concern for her
mother but also to salvage her hard built social standing.

The first clue that something was wrong was the victim. Some simple merchant peddling
imported Varisian scarves, far too colourful to be to her mother’s liking. What reason
could her mother have to not only murder this man, but to rush it so that she left a
witness.
Then there was the murder itself. The merchant was stabbed several times in his shop
and left to bleed out… Her mother would never lower herself to risking getting blood on
her shoes.

Through two bribes and some of her best work acting the hopelessly bereft daughter, she
learned of which Korvosan Guard was handling the murder. She found his preferred
drinking establishment and spent a few evenings there until she found the man in
question. A bit of seduction and a lot of ale made him quite talkative.

She learned that the witness was the fisherman who had a stall on the street just
opposite the merchant’s shop and that the only reason they would arrest a noblewoman
with only a single witness was his picture perfect description of her, and that they found
what seemed to be the murder weapon hidden in her garden.
Carlennia immediately, or as quickly as her hangover would allow, went to the Bailer’s
Reatreat tavern. Here she hired two tough looking men to come with her to confront the
fisherman. She didn’t pay them enough to actually get in a fight, just to stand there and
glower to aid her intimidation.

To say the least, the fisherman folded quickly. He admitted that he had been similarly
intimidated by Gaedren Lamm into providing false witness and planting the knife in the
garden.
Carlennia brought this to the Guard, but before they could confirm with the fisherman,
he was brutally murdered and strung up as a clear message.

Though this didn’t exonerate her mother completely, it did throw up enough smoke that
she was released due to lack of evidence. Carlennia’s mother is still furious and has lost
both of her positions as governess until her innocence can be properly proven.
Carlennia has certainly also felt the sting of this… Invitations to major social events have
been ‘mislaid’ and friends suddenly have very busy schedules.

These days Carlennia is considering weather to seek out this Lamm… Surely he could
prove her mothers innocence. And what sparsely little she has learned by asking around
makes him seem a thoroughly unsavoury character… One that there might be quite some
prestige in ridding the city of, or maybe a bit of goodwill with the Cerulean Society if
nothing else.