Cassaline “Cobra Cash” Nagini
Name/Character Sheet: Cassaline “Cobra Cash” Nagini
Race: Human
Class: Ranger (5)
[sblock= Appearance![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
At a glance, few people see beyond the ten coloured leather duster or the wide brimmed hat pulled low. Even then their abiding memory would be of long unkempt hair, angular features, and hard eyes blue as a mountain lake. But that suited Cash. The road was ingrained in her bones, stained into her simple tunic, breeches and boots, replacing any vestige of the arranged marriage her parents had chosen for her. Crossbows rested in holsters at her hips, hidden by her coat as much as her too tall, too thin frame. She was no beauty, but out here in the wild that mattered a hell of a lot less than how deadly you were.
[/sblock]
[sblock= Background
Background: Folk Hero
Personality Trait: If someone is in trouble, I’m always ready to lend a hand.
Ideal: Tyrants must not be allowed to oppress the people.
Bond: I protect those who cannot protect themselves.
Flaw: The people who knew me when I was young know my shameful secret, so I can never go home again.
[/sblock]
[sblock= Backstory
Cash could never identify the precise moment she stopped running.
She started at 16, the day after her parents stuffed her in a dress and dragged her to meet some minor lordling she was to be sold off to under the guise of marriage. He was short, ten years her senior and had been widowed in suspicious circumstances. It was a prison, one without bars but no less terrible than the tyranny she lived in at home. So she ran, the rising sun at her back, one week’s food and a bedroll in her saddlebags, and the too-small stableboy’s clothes chafing. It was the greatest she’d felt in her life.
Though the next ten years were filled with hunger more often than a hot bath, Cassaline Nagini never once thought of turning back. The first few months taught her the most: she’d never be able to swing a sword; there were advantages in being boyslim and long-limbed on the road; freshwater could be found almost anywhere there were trees; and a horse was as much a friend as it was a pet. She moved constantly, working for food and a bed in a hayloft, only staying in any one place long enough to gather provisions to reach the next settlement. Often she had to leave before even then, running before any local criminal turned the cold, predatory looks in their eyes into actions.
It was routine, dangerous, but it was hers. When she found somewhere that didn’t see her as a walking victim for robbery, or worse, she managed to earn enough money to buy protection - a simple hand crossbow. A year later she added another. Aside from defense, the weapons meant Cash could hunt on the road, limiting her time in towns. She learned to forage, track, build shelters and fires, but she never quite abandoned society all together. Instead she turned her new skills into money, helping out folks with problems in the wilderness they were ill-equipped to deal with. And so it went, year after year, season after season….
Until Frenslenn….
At twenty-six, Cash had grown into her physique, and found a perfect disguise in a long leather coat, wide brimmed hat, and the natural grime of the road. Frenslenn was just another small village of humans and half elves hunkering under the shadow of the High Forest. She planned to spend no more than a night or two, but within an hour of stabling her horse, a local farmer came sprinting into town with news of an Orc Raiding party on his lips.
Cash couldn’t say why she didn’t just mount up and leave. Maybe it was the senseless violence of it all, so unnatural compared to the ecological necessity of the wildlife she’d become so accustomed to. Maybe the confidence in her skills finally outweighed her fear. Maybe it was the way the townsfolk refused to leave, taking up pitiful arms in what would have been a great gravestone for communal bravery. Instead she sprinted to the treeline, and caught them in the forest, a terrain she’d lived and hunted in for years. The advantage was all hers, and she thinned out the orcs numbers significantly before they could fall on Frenslenn. She’d fought shoulder to shoulder with the townsfolk, and her crossbows made the difference. The Orcs were repelled, and Cash became a hero.
She demanded payment, of course, and a bed for a couple of nights. And yet there always seemed to be something the townsfolk asked her aid for. A child had been lured into the woods by the fey, and could she - please! - find them? Wolves were killing sheep and goats, and maybe she could thin their numbers to keep the town from starving? Known hoodlums were reported heading into town, and for a few coins would she stay until they passed through? They’d nicknamed her Cobra Cash because of her quick hands, and they seemed to have an endless list of tasks she, and only she, could do.
But when did she actually stop there? At some point they stopped paying her, and charging her for food and lodgings - just a tacit agreement that anything was hers, and her help was theirs. Was it then? She started looking for work rather than waiting for the next problem to materialise, often going days just patrolling the area around Frenlenn checking up on all the things she’d fixed already. There were Orcs to manage, Gnolls to chase away from the village, wild animals to keep from establishing hunting grounds nearby, the strange fey denizens to remind that their playground was the forest, not the villages bordering it.
When did she stop running? She didn’t know, but Cassaline Nagini had found Cobra Cash in the village of Frenslann after ten years of nothing but road.
[/sblock]
[sblock= Roleplay Sample
Carston’s was Frenslenn’s second tavern and hardly worthy of the name. A few rough planks nailed together made a bar against one wall, and a half dozen crude tables were scattered about a room perhaps fractionally larger than a hunter’s lodge. The chairs were all mismatched and wobbled. Most of it sat in darkness; a single lantern hung on the wall, making a puddle of light around Carston as he polished the bar. Grey haired but spry, he took methodical strokes with a stained rag, occasionally spitting onto the wood to bring out the shine.
The door eased open, and the wet, warm air or a humid summer’s night swept in around the brutish figure filling the doorway. There was almost no sound; the figure waited a moment, then stepped inside.
“We’re closed,” Carston said without looking up. His voice was dry, flat, crackling with age but hard enough to hear how the years had weathered rather than eroded him. The figure didn’t answer, approaching with heavy, deliberate steps. “We’ve no rooms either. Got two, and they’re both taken.” When the man stepped into the light, Carston looked up and realised what was happening.
The man was bald, huge, and unshaven. He stank, as though the casual malice of his sneer and the road dust sticking to his face effervesced off of him. “Not staying Old Man.” He croaked. At some point someone had tried to hang him; the broken voice and livid scar across his throat said it all. “I’ll be leaving as soon as you hand over your cash.”
Carston raised an eyebrow, then spat on the bar and went back to work. “Don’t think so.” He said simply. The larger man’s face contorted, and he pulled a spike slub from his belt, raising it high overhead.
In the dark of the common room there was a tiny click. Something whistled by, nicking the thumb holding the club and it rattled to the floor. The man cried out, spun, and there was another soft click. The second bolt went clean through the robber’s hand and pinned it to the bar with a solid thunk. Wailing in pain and trying to pull the bolt loose, he looked up as Cash stepped out of the shadows.
A bottle of whiskey dangled from one hand, perhaps a third empty. She lowered the crossbow to the complicated holster at her hip, and with smooth deliberate actions another bolt slipped into the firing groove, followed by the soft click of the mechanism clicking into place. She wore mens clothes - tunic, breeches, boots and a long coat that drifted to her shins - worn and dull with use. She raised the crossbow and used the bolt to push up the brim of her hat.
“Deaf as well as ugly and stupid,” she said. “You know I distinctly heard you say you were closed, Carston.” The old man scowled up at her, still polishing.
“I am. I wish you’d realise that and go to bed so I can too.” She took a swig from the bottle.
“I’ll be alright, don’t need you watching over me like I’m one of those.” She used the crossbow to gesture to the man who was panting with pain as though he’d just done a lap of High Forest.
“And leave you alone with my whiskey?”
“Call this whiskey,” she said, but smiled to draw the sting from the words. “I won’t drink it all.”
“Said that before.”
She looked at the bottle, grimaced, then slid it across the mirrored bar top into Carston’s waiting hand. Then turned to the thug on the floor. “Now, what to do with you. See there’s no real prison here, or garrison. Which means dealing with criminals is generally down to Frenslann’s village elders. And they don’t take kindly to - “
Both the thug and Carston suddenly glanced over Cash’s left shoulder and on instinct she darted to the right. A huge bladed sword carved downwards where she’d been standing, burying itself into the wooden floor. Cash fired downwards, bolt spearing through the second thug’s boot, pinning him. He howled and she darted behind him, planting a boot into the side of his knee with a awful crunch, dropping him to one knee. Not that falling any further was an option with a foot nailed to the floor. Cash reloaded using the holster she’d meticulously made, and grabbed the thugs hair, hauling his head back. The cries turning into a gurgling retch and she pressed the tip of her crossbow bolt to the base of his neck. He went quiet.
“That wasn’t nice, or smart.” She hissed. No answer from either of them, which wasn’t surprising as they probably expect to die in the next few seconds. “I really ought to do the Elders a favour and carry out their sentence here and now. But it’s late, and me and Carston are already annoyed that we’re going to have to clean the mess you’ve already made. Don’t think neither of us want to clean up a couple of corpses.”
“Nope.” Carston said, spitting on the bar. The thug she held stopped breathing, not really believing he was not about to die. His friend’s eyes were wide, almost comical when you considered his pinned arm.
“So here’s what’s going to happen. You leave, and in the morning I’ll come looking for you. I find you by noon, I kill you. I don’t, you live.” She gave the man’s head a violent push and he fell forward, growling in agony. “Well, you live as long as I don’t see either of you again within ten miles of Frenslann.”
“Cash? The one pinned to the bar stammered. “Cobra Cash?” She gave him a crooked smile.
“You know me. Good.” Stepping to one side she took a long swing with her boot and kicked the fletching of the bolt sticking out from the thugs foot. It snapped in half and he screamed as though she’d just run him through with a sword.With a wet sucking nose he fell and the foot came loose, spilling liquid almost black in the dim lantern light. “If you know who I am, you know I ain’t lying.” She took another step and smashed her boot into the man’s hand. The bolt splintered, snapped, and another scream filled the tiny tavern. He cradled it close, curled around it, sobbing.
“Now grab your friend and get running,” she said. “Because if you’re still in this place by the time I count to three, I use your eyes for target practice. One….” She didn’t even finish saying two before they tumbled outside, groaning and wailing, like some shadowy, burbling aberration of four arms, four legs and two heads. Silence settled like fresh snow.
“Wise letting them go?” Carston finally said. Cash tugged the brim of her hat back down and reholster her crossbow, a new bolt sliding into place.
“If I don’t find them tomorrow, they’ll talk. More word gets out I’m in Frenslann, it might make some of their ilk think twice before looking to make trouble here. That’s good for everyone.” There was another long pause, then Carston sighed and came out from behind the bar with a bucket of sand and a brush.
“You really going to help me clean up?” He asked. Cash turned and smiled.
“Cost you about half a bottle, Old Man.”
Carston rolled his eyes. “What in the hells did I ever do to deserve this?” he grumbled, then started tossing sand onto the bloody patches leading out the door. Cash laughed and swiped the whiskey from the bar.
“Cheers!”
[/sblock]
Name/Character Sheet: Cassaline “Cobra Cash” Nagini
Race: Human
Class: Ranger (5)
[sblock= Appearance
At a glance, few people see beyond the ten coloured leather duster or the wide brimmed hat pulled low. Even then their abiding memory would be of long unkempt hair, angular features, and hard eyes blue as a mountain lake. But that suited Cash. The road was ingrained in her bones, stained into her simple tunic, breeches and boots, replacing any vestige of the arranged marriage her parents had chosen for her. Crossbows rested in holsters at her hips, hidden by her coat as much as her too tall, too thin frame. She was no beauty, but out here in the wild that mattered a hell of a lot less than how deadly you were.[/sblock]
[sblock= Background
Background: Folk Hero
Personality Trait: If someone is in trouble, I’m always ready to lend a hand.
Ideal: Tyrants must not be allowed to oppress the people.
Bond: I protect those who cannot protect themselves.
Flaw: The people who knew me when I was young know my shameful secret, so I can never go home again.
[/sblock]
[sblock= Backstory
Cash could never identify the precise moment she stopped running.
She started at 16, the day after her parents stuffed her in a dress and dragged her to meet some minor lordling she was to be sold off to under the guise of marriage. He was short, ten years her senior and had been widowed in suspicious circumstances. It was a prison, one without bars but no less terrible than the tyranny she lived in at home. So she ran, the rising sun at her back, one week’s food and a bedroll in her saddlebags, and the too-small stableboy’s clothes chafing. It was the greatest she’d felt in her life.
Though the next ten years were filled with hunger more often than a hot bath, Cassaline Nagini never once thought of turning back. The first few months taught her the most: she’d never be able to swing a sword; there were advantages in being boyslim and long-limbed on the road; freshwater could be found almost anywhere there were trees; and a horse was as much a friend as it was a pet. She moved constantly, working for food and a bed in a hayloft, only staying in any one place long enough to gather provisions to reach the next settlement. Often she had to leave before even then, running before any local criminal turned the cold, predatory looks in their eyes into actions.
It was routine, dangerous, but it was hers. When she found somewhere that didn’t see her as a walking victim for robbery, or worse, she managed to earn enough money to buy protection - a simple hand crossbow. A year later she added another. Aside from defense, the weapons meant Cash could hunt on the road, limiting her time in towns. She learned to forage, track, build shelters and fires, but she never quite abandoned society all together. Instead she turned her new skills into money, helping out folks with problems in the wilderness they were ill-equipped to deal with. And so it went, year after year, season after season….
Until Frenslenn….
At twenty-six, Cash had grown into her physique, and found a perfect disguise in a long leather coat, wide brimmed hat, and the natural grime of the road. Frenslenn was just another small village of humans and half elves hunkering under the shadow of the High Forest. She planned to spend no more than a night or two, but within an hour of stabling her horse, a local farmer came sprinting into town with news of an Orc Raiding party on his lips.
Cash couldn’t say why she didn’t just mount up and leave. Maybe it was the senseless violence of it all, so unnatural compared to the ecological necessity of the wildlife she’d become so accustomed to. Maybe the confidence in her skills finally outweighed her fear. Maybe it was the way the townsfolk refused to leave, taking up pitiful arms in what would have been a great gravestone for communal bravery. Instead she sprinted to the treeline, and caught them in the forest, a terrain she’d lived and hunted in for years. The advantage was all hers, and she thinned out the orcs numbers significantly before they could fall on Frenslenn. She’d fought shoulder to shoulder with the townsfolk, and her crossbows made the difference. The Orcs were repelled, and Cash became a hero.
She demanded payment, of course, and a bed for a couple of nights. And yet there always seemed to be something the townsfolk asked her aid for. A child had been lured into the woods by the fey, and could she - please! - find them? Wolves were killing sheep and goats, and maybe she could thin their numbers to keep the town from starving? Known hoodlums were reported heading into town, and for a few coins would she stay until they passed through? They’d nicknamed her Cobra Cash because of her quick hands, and they seemed to have an endless list of tasks she, and only she, could do.
But when did she actually stop there? At some point they stopped paying her, and charging her for food and lodgings - just a tacit agreement that anything was hers, and her help was theirs. Was it then? She started looking for work rather than waiting for the next problem to materialise, often going days just patrolling the area around Frenlenn checking up on all the things she’d fixed already. There were Orcs to manage, Gnolls to chase away from the village, wild animals to keep from establishing hunting grounds nearby, the strange fey denizens to remind that their playground was the forest, not the villages bordering it.
When did she stop running? She didn’t know, but Cassaline Nagini had found Cobra Cash in the village of Frenslann after ten years of nothing but road.
[/sblock]
[sblock= Roleplay Sample
Carston’s was Frenslenn’s second tavern and hardly worthy of the name. A few rough planks nailed together made a bar against one wall, and a half dozen crude tables were scattered about a room perhaps fractionally larger than a hunter’s lodge. The chairs were all mismatched and wobbled. Most of it sat in darkness; a single lantern hung on the wall, making a puddle of light around Carston as he polished the bar. Grey haired but spry, he took methodical strokes with a stained rag, occasionally spitting onto the wood to bring out the shine.
The door eased open, and the wet, warm air or a humid summer’s night swept in around the brutish figure filling the doorway. There was almost no sound; the figure waited a moment, then stepped inside.
“We’re closed,” Carston said without looking up. His voice was dry, flat, crackling with age but hard enough to hear how the years had weathered rather than eroded him. The figure didn’t answer, approaching with heavy, deliberate steps. “We’ve no rooms either. Got two, and they’re both taken.” When the man stepped into the light, Carston looked up and realised what was happening.
The man was bald, huge, and unshaven. He stank, as though the casual malice of his sneer and the road dust sticking to his face effervesced off of him. “Not staying Old Man.” He croaked. At some point someone had tried to hang him; the broken voice and livid scar across his throat said it all. “I’ll be leaving as soon as you hand over your cash.”
Carston raised an eyebrow, then spat on the bar and went back to work. “Don’t think so.” He said simply. The larger man’s face contorted, and he pulled a spike slub from his belt, raising it high overhead.
In the dark of the common room there was a tiny click. Something whistled by, nicking the thumb holding the club and it rattled to the floor. The man cried out, spun, and there was another soft click. The second bolt went clean through the robber’s hand and pinned it to the bar with a solid thunk. Wailing in pain and trying to pull the bolt loose, he looked up as Cash stepped out of the shadows.
A bottle of whiskey dangled from one hand, perhaps a third empty. She lowered the crossbow to the complicated holster at her hip, and with smooth deliberate actions another bolt slipped into the firing groove, followed by the soft click of the mechanism clicking into place. She wore mens clothes - tunic, breeches, boots and a long coat that drifted to her shins - worn and dull with use. She raised the crossbow and used the bolt to push up the brim of her hat.
“Deaf as well as ugly and stupid,” she said. “You know I distinctly heard you say you were closed, Carston.” The old man scowled up at her, still polishing.
“I am. I wish you’d realise that and go to bed so I can too.” She took a swig from the bottle.
“I’ll be alright, don’t need you watching over me like I’m one of those.” She used the crossbow to gesture to the man who was panting with pain as though he’d just done a lap of High Forest.
“And leave you alone with my whiskey?”
“Call this whiskey,” she said, but smiled to draw the sting from the words. “I won’t drink it all.”
“Said that before.”
She looked at the bottle, grimaced, then slid it across the mirrored bar top into Carston’s waiting hand. Then turned to the thug on the floor. “Now, what to do with you. See there’s no real prison here, or garrison. Which means dealing with criminals is generally down to Frenslann’s village elders. And they don’t take kindly to - “
Both the thug and Carston suddenly glanced over Cash’s left shoulder and on instinct she darted to the right. A huge bladed sword carved downwards where she’d been standing, burying itself into the wooden floor. Cash fired downwards, bolt spearing through the second thug’s boot, pinning him. He howled and she darted behind him, planting a boot into the side of his knee with a awful crunch, dropping him to one knee. Not that falling any further was an option with a foot nailed to the floor. Cash reloaded using the holster she’d meticulously made, and grabbed the thugs hair, hauling his head back. The cries turning into a gurgling retch and she pressed the tip of her crossbow bolt to the base of his neck. He went quiet.
“That wasn’t nice, or smart.” She hissed. No answer from either of them, which wasn’t surprising as they probably expect to die in the next few seconds. “I really ought to do the Elders a favour and carry out their sentence here and now. But it’s late, and me and Carston are already annoyed that we’re going to have to clean the mess you’ve already made. Don’t think neither of us want to clean up a couple of corpses.”
“Nope.” Carston said, spitting on the bar. The thug she held stopped breathing, not really believing he was not about to die. His friend’s eyes were wide, almost comical when you considered his pinned arm.
“So here’s what’s going to happen. You leave, and in the morning I’ll come looking for you. I find you by noon, I kill you. I don’t, you live.” She gave the man’s head a violent push and he fell forward, growling in agony. “Well, you live as long as I don’t see either of you again within ten miles of Frenslann.”
“Cash? The one pinned to the bar stammered. “Cobra Cash?” She gave him a crooked smile.
“You know me. Good.” Stepping to one side she took a long swing with her boot and kicked the fletching of the bolt sticking out from the thugs foot. It snapped in half and he screamed as though she’d just run him through with a sword.With a wet sucking nose he fell and the foot came loose, spilling liquid almost black in the dim lantern light. “If you know who I am, you know I ain’t lying.” She took another step and smashed her boot into the man’s hand. The bolt splintered, snapped, and another scream filled the tiny tavern. He cradled it close, curled around it, sobbing.
“Now grab your friend and get running,” she said. “Because if you’re still in this place by the time I count to three, I use your eyes for target practice. One….” She didn’t even finish saying two before they tumbled outside, groaning and wailing, like some shadowy, burbling aberration of four arms, four legs and two heads. Silence settled like fresh snow.
“Wise letting them go?” Carston finally said. Cash tugged the brim of her hat back down and reholster her crossbow, a new bolt sliding into place.
“If I don’t find them tomorrow, they’ll talk. More word gets out I’m in Frenslann, it might make some of their ilk think twice before looking to make trouble here. That’s good for everyone.” There was another long pause, then Carston sighed and came out from behind the bar with a bucket of sand and a brush.
“You really going to help me clean up?” He asked. Cash turned and smiled.
“Cost you about half a bottle, Old Man.”
Carston rolled his eyes. “What in the hells did I ever do to deserve this?” he grumbled, then started tossing sand onto the bloody patches leading out the door. Cash laughed and swiped the whiskey from the bar.
“Cheers!”
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