Ruie Montaro

Spirit of the Undertow, Roo

Protagonist 2

She's dead, but she died when she was 22.

She was female when she died, and spirits technically don't have genders, but everyone still typically refers to themselves by the gender they had when they died.

She liked to keep her hair parted in the center and then pulled back into a plait that she would circle into a bun, often with the help of many pins, irritating though they may be. Now, she has no hair, because she's a spirit built entirely of shadows.

Nearly black with reddish brownish undertones.

5'9"

118 lbs

She had a subtle limp from a burn accident when she was young that couldn't be seen unless you really paid attention, as well as a birth mark above her left knee in the vague shape of a bunny rabbit.

Used to be tall and slender, like a reed, but a slightly crooked one.

A cool brown, with a lot of green and blue undertones, but a purple cheek and pink nose.

She was a common elf, a race found mostly in cities and towns, unlike their woodland cousins, now she is a spirit. Have I hammered that home enough yet?

They used to be a dull olive color before she died and they disintegrated into two pulsing golden points in a ball of shadows.

None

She likes to mess with people. Very mature. Always has, always will. Once when she was a kid, she faked her own death and sat at the top of the gargoyle tower for 3 hours before she finally revealed herself, watching everyone scramble around trying to find her before the lord of the house came home. She's also always been quick to judge, making her life as a thief more difficult and easier at the same time. Earned her many smacks and many avoided brushes with death. She also becomes the hugest asshole flirt when she's drunk. It's gotten her in trouble with some nobles and high up criminals before. Landed her in jail once.

She speaks quicker when she's nervous, often just in a rush to get things out of her brain without people interrupting her. She also fidgets quite a bit and often shakes her leg that was disfigured.

Externally, she is motivated by the quest to get a clockwork fish trapped in a glass ball filled with purplish smoke, requested for by spirit overlord Girdov. She also works to protect Bel, a close friend and maybe something a bit more. Internally, she is motivated by a need to do good. Thieving wasn't the best way to do good, so she feels, as a spirit, that she needs to fix the wrongs she's done, even though everyone she has ever wronged is long dead. It's a moral dilemma, and her solution is to be as nice to the one friend she has right now and maybe one day encounter the spirits of those innocents she's wronged. She's working at it.

She used to think that lower class people were dirty and ugly and mean, since she never really ventured beyond the main area of town outside the manor, but when she began living with them, she found that most lower class people are dirty, but their souls are pure and kind. Only a few are rude and shady, and she dealt entirely with those, so now she appreciates kindness even more. Now, as a spirit, she thinks humans are just the pettiest things ever, but again, as she spends more time with them, she begins to feel for their pain. It's a work in progress.

She can touch her nose with her tongue. She can also sing fairly well and rubs it in Bel's face every chance she can. As well as being a master thief, persuasive and herbalism skills and all, she can also cook really well and does most of the dinners, while Bel cleans up. She also is a monster with a quarterstaff, but only a quarterstaff, oddly enough.

She likes to ride horses, though she doesn't have the opportunity to as much anymore. She bird watches and picks flowers to make daisy chains for her and Bel. She secretly also likes to collect buttons, but no one else knows that except for Bel. She runs and duels and sometimes tries to get better at archery, to no avail. She also likes to sketch, especially outside.

ENFJ-A

The Protagonist-
https://www.16personalities.com/enfj-personality

She's extremely good at reading people and persuading people to her point of view, both in stressful situations and not stressful ones. She's a natural born leader and often pushes people to not only do better, but also to rally around her. She trusts easily, and this can be good, in that her charisma can inspire others to do better, or it can backfire on her quite badly. She is reliable, but gullible, compassionate, but misguided, charismatic, but worried about the true impact of what she does. Truly an odd bird.

Light green, the color of spring and budding flowers. Such a sweet color. It reminds her of when she was young and played in the fresh grass beyond the manor walls.

Besides her sheep dog, she loves lizards and snakes, not because she's a thief, but because she thinks they're cute.

Her quarterstaff she got from a passing duelist a long time ago. She was able to retrieve it from her cell before she was removed to the spirit world and has kept it with her since. It often frightens the villagers she deals with even more. She's named it Draughtbane, melodramatic as that is.

A miniature snow globe with two sheep on a grassy hill overlooking a small cottage inside: a wintry scene.

Pasta, especially her mother's pasta that she made when Ruie was sick. The spices cleared her nose and always made her feel warm. It's one of the only things she misses from being alive.

She used to be thief, which is mainly why Girdov brought her on as a Receiver in the afterlife. She's just so good at acquiring items.

She only passingly kept up with politics when she was alive, only as much as was necessary in order to plan her heists. She found that she was tired of politics after having spent the first 14 years of her life immersed in it. Of course, all of her political knowledge is borderline useless now as she's been dead for so long. She has found that she thinks human political systems are weird and petty now, having been a spirit for so long, and she has no desire to get back into them again.

Her and her parents worshiped the God Oelmak, one of seven gods in the religion of Orenvo, the land she grew up in, obviously. Oelmak, in particular, was the god of fertility and fortune, and they would worship him to bring good fortune to their family, as was the custom for all nobles to do in that time. Except for the Greenwoods. They worshiped Ahromal, the goddess of knowledge, like weirdos.

The 6th Tuesday of Leafblossom (Mid-April).

Ruie was a noble. Or the daughter of a distant and minor one. It seems fitting that she would be employed by one in the afterlife. She wasn't involved with nobles for long though. She ran off after finding out that was to be married at 14 to a more prominent lord's horrendous spawn, who was 28 at the time. Moving up in the world, as always. Of course, she only ran off after trying to kill him. And of course they sent guards after her. If she was caught, she'd be brought back to the castle and punished even more harshly. Not a reality she wanted to examine too long, but now she had the conundrum of finding work, something to do. She was still young, so her hands were nimble and good at slipping into pockets and running off. She's quite good at that, running. When she was 17 and had several close run-ins with the guard, she found an underground thieves' guild. She quickly joined and by the age of 20, had become one of the top thieves in the land. They called her the Two-headed Fish, a silly name, but fitting. She was on top of her game, quicker than the guards, and her hands even quicker than that. While she worked, she became proficient in potion-making and poison-making. She can identify herbs and flowers that could be used for both good and evil, and when she was alive, she used that to her full advantage. When she was 22, she was tipped off about a huge hoard of gold and jewels that could secure her lifestyle until retirement, which would be soon, depending on the haul. The stash was at a lord's manor, but it wasn't anything she hadn't seen before. She quickly snuck through the halls and eventually found the room she'd been told about, but waiting inside was the lord!! What a shocker! How predictable, and she had predicted it. She had a dart in his neck before he could say anything and he fell to the ground, but she was quickly overtaken by a group of guards, even though she managed to take out several before she was tackled and wrestled to the ground, she'll have you know. They took her in chains to the king. She was executed in front of the entire land of lords and several hundred bystanders in the throne room of the king. Not too shabby, if she says so herself. She learned afterwards that a few of her companions had tried to come to her rescue, but it was too late and they were also arrested and sentenced to death. Only one managed to escape. Where he is now, no one knows.

All her skills are completely useless though once she dies, as she works for that pesky spirit overlord and cannot legally steal items from humans. She has to bargain for them. Thank god she's always been a little persuasive, and knows her way around a charismatic question.

She got the most advanced education money could buy for girls when she was young, although she didn't finish her schooling, so some of her more advanced knowledge is patchy or underdeveloped. She can do complex equations and read and write higher level pieces, which helps a lot when she's trying to blackmail someone or trick someone with a fake letter or something along those lines. She values her practical or thieving education, as it's served her far better in the long run. She knows what to say and not to say on the streets, she knows how to tell if something has been poisoned or how much money a purse holds or how to pick most any lock. She knows quite a bit and is quite proud of it. Those skills didn't do much for her in the spirit world where everyone is almost equal when it comes to opportunities, but now that she's started on this quest with Bel, she's been able to utilize those skills again, much to her delight.

She had a big, old sheep dog when she still lived at the manor, and she befriended an alley cat when she was still an apprentice at the thieves' guild. And before she was executed, she put down some money for a Guga Lizard, a lizard from the southern countries known for being especially cuddly with elves, but she died before she was able to get it.