Arlyn Penderyn

A disgraced former noblewoman who now makes a living as a Cutter on the streets of Doskvol.

Name

Arlyn Penderyn

Age

Young adult

Playbook

Cutter

Heritage

Akoros

Background

Noble Duelist

Vice

Food & Drink

Personality

Arlyn is highly entitled and prideful due to her sheltered upbringing. She is confident and intimidating, but also easy to bamboozle. Throughout her life, she’s left serious family matters to her elder brother Markyn and never developed a sense of responsibility.

She doesn’t have much of a sense of justice, but does have a strong desire to save face and to appear successful and competent. Her desire to be seen as a well-bred noble can lead to moral choices - as long as the right person is watching.

She lacks self-awareness about her class and believes that nobles are naturally better and are brought up to be good people (although they are beginning to seem increasingly petty to her). She views those less well off as an exotic curiosity.

Biography

Arlyn is the second child born to the Penderyns, one of the wealthy naval families of Doskvol. From a young age she had a penchant for martial arts, which her parents encouraged, thinking that she would make a fine commander for a hunter ship one day.¹ She has won plenty of national level fencing tournaments (events open only to fellow members of the nobility of course). She had a particular enemy at these events, Marlane, one who got revenge for lost bouts by making a fool of her at social events. Also, she has never fenced against her older brother Markyn, nor gained his acknowledgement in any way, which frustrates her.

She often slipped out of the family estate to eat the finest, rarest and most illegally smuggled delicacies to be found all over Doskvol. There she found out about underground dueling events where she could test her skills against real swordsmen. She began to compete under the false identity of “Allen”.

At this this point, she was found by Grace who began to extort her for money under the threat of revealing her activities to her family. Arlyn really liked Grace though so she didn’t mind. Whenever she ran out of pocket money to pay the fees, she would do jobs for Grace instead, ranging from threatening other victims she was extorting, to thefts based on Grace’s leads. She quite enjoyed these stints as (in her mind) a chivalrous knight serving her lady.

It all went wrong when she was caught stealing from Baroness Nymaska, a close family friend and business partner of the Penderyns. Shocked and betrayed, the Penderyns had no choice but to disown her. Now that she was no longer going to be a source of money, Grace wouldn’t keep her around either. (But Arlyn still really likes her.)

Arlyn didn’t really view this turn of events as being her fault. She just got unlucky! Things shouldn’t have had to change just because of that. Her parents clearly loved their reputation more than they loved her. She refused the small allowance and ticket to Skovlan that they offered when they disowned her. Instead, she became a thief for good. She plans to make it big and go back to her previous way of life.

She still can’t resist the lure of delicious food, especially paired with a fine vintage. Of course, now that she’s disowned, the food she craves the most is that made by the Penderyn family chef, Vaurin Helles². She will risk anything to sneak back into her old home and eat it. Apart from that, she particularly likes meat and fish from unusual sources.

While wandering the streets looking for a place to sleep, she happened to meet the Keys(?) and was drawn to their ambition.