Auburn


 * Hell is here but it hath no fury
 * like this woman
 * - Devin Townsend: Kingdom

Name
Auburn, no last name, no fancy titles. Friends call her Aubs, or rarely, Burn. She aggressively discourages idiocy like "lady" and "miss", only tolerates "ma'am" from soldiers under her command.

Physical Traits
A short, broad-shouldered and unfemininely muscled woman with a rough, battleworn look. Her hands have the calluses and powderburn of far too much fighting and goblin science, her hair is scandalously short and universally untidy. She looks and sounds thirtyish (which is a good deal older than informed parties will say she is).

Her accent and vocabulary are uneducated and native to nowhere in particular. Her gear is usually in need of both cleaning and repair, and she rarely goes without a greatsword slung across her back. She walks like a lumberjack and when she smiles, tends toward a crooked banshee grin.

Occupation
Auburn's father served the Cathedral of the Light, and she has made it a point of pride to do the same. She takes her orders from Lord Grayson Shadowbreaker, or the ranking paladin commander in the local area.

In her spare time, Auburn dabbles with goblin science, mostly the explosive kind.

Background
Auburn's mother died when she was three, leaving her to be raised on the road by her father Trail. Trail was a reformed mercenary who'd then just taken a paladin's oaths and set to wandering the human kingdoms as penance for his past. Auburn grew up on the road, with a "family" of whatever old soldiers, reformed scoundrels and genuinely altruist Light worshipers chose to ride with her father at any given time. The result was a very cosmopolitan upbringing and being raised more like a son than a daughter.

Auburn was seventeen and just barely a soldier when the Scourge came, and her father's band was all but wiped out evacuating locals from plagued areas. She doesn't approve of Scarlet Crusade attrocities in the war, but has strong sympathies for them as one of the few outfits to successfully fight the Scourge. This does not extend to the Scarlet Missionary guild in Stormwind: while she has actively defended them from hostilities and is civil to them face to face, she's also repeatedly criticised them for wasting energy on foolish race politics rather than fighting the Scourge as she feels true Crusaders should.

After the war and the loss of her "family", Auburn travelled alone, for all purposes a common mercenary. She made it her personal mission to see the Scourge beaten and the men lost to it freed from undeath -- but being a teenager and not all that smart, for the first few years what she managed was mostly random vigilantry, occasional mercenary work and worlds of common trouble. Thanks to the example of her father's soldiers she has always been comfortable in bars, drinking uncut moonshine by the bottle and picking fights. She spent an extended period drinking her way up and down Booty Bay and working for the Steamwheedle Cartel, probably in exchange for her more advanced demolition tech.

Things began to change about four years after the war, when Auburn got her act together and reported to Lord Grayson Shadowbreaker at the Cathedral, asking to take up her father's duties. She was assigned to work with sir Ulthar, and after several false starts developed both respect and a comfortable partnership with him. She took paladin vows some six months later, just before the first Scourge invasion, which she spent fighting in the Plaguelands frontlines.

She joined the Order a month later, according to some rumours out of disillusionment with the Cathedral. Others will say there was a man involved. There is probably truth to the second, as around the same time Auburn's usual drinking, fighting and one-nighters suddenly became a great deal more pronounced. Somehow she still wound up as one of the Order's council, and was in the process of mobilising them against the Scourge when she went missing in action.

Auburn was reported killed in action in the Eastern Plaguelands on the first of November, shortly before the Order fell to betrayal by it's own. The report was made by an Argent Dawn patrol that discovered the burned and decomposing bodies of a Scarlet Crusade warband Auburn had been assisting. One of the corpses had Auburn's sword -- but apparently the identification was false, because months later, just before the Dark Portal reopened, Auburn was returned to the Cathedral, reputedly in a very bad shape. The exact details have been hushed up, but there are rumours involving capture and SI:7 business dating back to the war.

After some weeks recovering and a long, tense and very private talk with lord Grayson Shadowbreaker, Auburn returned to active duty with the Cathedral. She shipped out to Outland almost immediately, and served several months of courier duty from Honor Hold, actually staying sober and out of trouble for the first time in her life. Rumor has it this was partially because of [[Ulthar]'s disappearance in Shadowmoon Valley]. Auburn spent several unsuccessful months searching for him. The only leave she took was after enlisting Silnaen to find a way to cure Elizabetha's blindness. Auburn hasn't shared the details of the trip, past it involving druidic magic. She returned from it exhausted, and looking years older.

She was assigned to extended duty in the Plaguelands under unclear circumstances, officially long range patrol but rumouredly something to do with the time she spent MIA. This lasted nine months, involved a stint as acting Captain, and ended with dishonourable discharge from Argent Dawn due to neglect of duty. Auburn returned to Stormwind angry and vaguely lost, and for a while made herself useful in the surrounding areas while awaiting proper assignment from Shadowbreaker.

The last reports on Auburn's whereabouts are a few months prior to the new war in Northrend. To the best of anyone's knowledge she's spent the last year or so in Northrend, on assignment with the Argent Crusade.

Family
Auburn's mother Deirdre was a Westfall farmer's daughter, who had an unwise fling with Trail in his mercenary days and ended up pregnant. As far as Auburn knows, they were never married and Deirdre never forgave Trail for "ruining her life". Deirdre died of a fever when Auburn was three years old, and as part of his penance, Trail took her in himself to see her raised by at least one of her parents. According to him, Auburn gets her colouring and temper from her mother.

Her father Trail was a mercenary with an ill-reputed company, until a particularly ugly tour of duty drove him to leave that life and seek redemption in the Light, later with the Silver Hand. Trail tended towards a harsh and pragmatic view of the Light: everyone deserves a second chance, but the cost of one is proving worth it every last day from there on. Most of Auburn's values and training come from him, including her faith, her aggressively male manners, and her soldier's belief in loyalty between brothers in arms being just one step down from sacred.

I addition to birth-family, Auburn counts several adopted uncles, the survivors of her father's warband. The ones she still sees regularly are Ethaniel Whitebridge (currently a sergeant at Westbrook Garrison, married, three children -- Aubs sits down with him for a drink and catch-up irregulary) and Brennan Roe (a country preacher, married his dead brother's wife to take care of her and her family).

Given Trail's wild youth she's admitted it's possible she might have bastard siblings, but she's never heard of any.

Criminal Record
Never charged with anything more serious than drunken barfights, but implicated in several cases of armed vigilantry. She has been linked to the deaths or disappearances of murderers, rapists and other violent criminals the law has failed to touch, but concrete proof hasn't existed (or, possibly, has been conveniently misplaced).

There was a private bounty on her in Booty Bay, offered by a local crimelord named Baloor. This is probably defunct, though the rumor about it being a result of Auburn questioning him at grenade-point may still be about.

Personal Notes
Auburn started out as a generic mercenary bint whose dad was a paladin. I stole all her best bits from Ulthar, and I'm not ashamed in the least.

Auburn was inspired by Manowar, Mary Gentle's novel Ash - A Secret History, and a certain RL friend who trains army special ops medics and is developing an admirable collection of sons and firearms. Though people keep asking, the character has no relation to Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, I hadn't even seen the new Battlestar Galactica back then. If she did have a Galactica counterpart, it would be XO Saul Tigh.

Auburn respects two kinds of people: the ones who fight for what they believe in, and the ones who stand up to her for the right reasons. She slings Light like candy in battle, but outside it is as useless as healers get.

What I love about playing Auburn are the conflicts. Female but sexist, paladin but a drunk, faith versus friends, justice versus violence. Few people realise it, but under the strut, Auburn is a staunch supporter of authority, responsibility, and good old-fashioned values. She also has pretty much zero life of her own.

The stuff in the profile is hearsay. The stuff in the stories is true, at least in Auburn's IC opinion. Use common sense to figure out what you can and can't use as IC info.

Stories
Originally posted in the story sections of The Order's or Starlight's boards. The vast majority of this isn't IC knowledge, so play fair.

Days And Nights -- Random encounters with relevant people, living or dead. Individual pieces marked for chronology.

Friends Like This and Requiem -- Who says love is pretty, or even nice?

End Of Days -- Riding with old friends, current Scarlet Crusade.

Bad Places -- Returning from the dead isn't easy, even if you were never dead to begin with.

Wasted -- With every risk comes the chance of failure. What matters is how you deal with it.

Epilogue -- When players quit, the characters go on. This is "what if", Auburn fifteen years from now.

Dead Men -- When the choices are hard enough, even good soldiers have to fail someone. The question is who they choose.