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Name: Verin
Nickname(s): Vera.... if you're trying to piss her off.
Age (Appearance Wise): 22
Age (Actual): 185. She's been around the block a few times but it hasn't made her very wise.
Personality:

Assertive
Never one to let her needs go unattended, Verin has few qualms about doing what needs to be done to obtain her goals. For the most part Verin is a law-abiding citizen, but short of things that sully her sense of personal dignity Verin is rather ruthless in getting what she wants. In the worst of times this assertiveness becomes a need to control the things around her. She meets obstacles by attempting to subdue them, whether it's a problem or a person. Her own willingness to assert her influence and pursue her desires make her rather impatient with those who don't prove to be quite as aggressive. Verin is prone to being cold and curt towards those of the meeker persuasion. She thinks it's for their own good. After all, who can you count on to look out for you but yourself? On the other end of the spectrum she's rather impressed by those who are willing to shove back and will give them their due respect.

Independent
A great source of pride for Verin is her claim to unwavering self-sufficiency wherever she can afford it. Verin doesn't take on debts if she can avoid them, be they monetary or emotionally. She is certainly savvy and good enough with numbers to make sure the former is easily done and her remoteness makes the latter not hard either. Asking others for favors is taboo. She has an aversion to charity even from acquaintances - if she can do it by herself then that is what she is most certainly going to do. Doing favors or fulfilling the needs of others doesn't bother her quite as much (especially if there's something in it for her!) but she can become impatient with people she perceives as being needy, which is an accusation she can level against others a little wantonly considering her standards. At least her advice comes free - giving it is pretty easy, after all. But the result is that she is rather unpracticed in building relationships because she has little experience with the give-and-take nature of friendships and similar bonds. Coupled with her assertiveness she can seem at times a little thorny.

Distant
The most easily noticeable of her personality traits - she does, after all, literally wear a mask. Where her remoteness is strongest is in matters that reveal her inner self. Verin is rather private about such things. She dislikes discussing herself immensely, shying away from topics deeper than her professional life. She is far more comfortable turning a conversation around so that it dissects the other participant. It belies a perhaps painfully obvious and terribly common insecurity - a fear of being scrutinized and found lacking. Verin initially treats everyone she meets with the same sort of distant, perhaps slightly unfriendly manner. This is not to say she cannot be polite or tact. Far from it! Cold, mirthless politeness is a perfect way of keeping unwanted familiarity at bay. She uses a sort of painfully curt speaking manner which - peppered with the occasional underhanded compliment or subtle insult - goes a long way towards keeping her unapproachable. Verin tries to be less distant with anyone she has a soft spot for - she even tries to say nice things! Compliments, even! - but it's such a habit that often she's still a little hard to talk to even when she likes you. Still, she tries.

Selfish
Verin is very used to putting her well being, her wants, and her goals before anything else. To be honest it's mostly out of habit rather than a deliberate decision. Verin hasn't had to maintain many friendships during the course of her life, so she's unused to thinking empathetically. It causes her to act somewhat thoughtlessly towards others since they are only her second or third priority. She doesn't actively think of herself as selfish, she thinks of herself as a realist. Nor will she appreciate you telling her you think she's selfish; It's one of the more easily picked-at raw spots she has. For all her self-assurances that she's only being practical Verin has a hidden fear of her own potential greed and cruelty. It is the chip in the armor of her confidence, she doesn't like to think about it and she'll get outright angry with anyone who calls her on it.

Dependable
When Verin does commit to doing something for someone else she takes her promise to them very seriously. Verin is a creature of nearly unfailing self-motivation and though she knows she's more gray than white when it comes to her morals, she has a rather cultivated sense of personal dignity. And there's nothing dignified about being a weak-willed cop out who can't keep a promise. If she makes a deal she'll be sure to keep her end of it, and if she makes a vow her loyalty to the cause or person it pertains to will be very strong. Verin thinks of promises as business exchanges. She'll do what you ask of her and she'll do it well, so Verin thinks you better remember it and make it worth her time. The seriousness with which she treats her obligations is one of the reasons she tries not to do favors very often. It's also what keeps her from becoming intimate with most acquaintances. She fears finding herself torn between her feelings of obligation to a friend and her own inherently selfish nature. Inner conflict is really not one of Verin's favorite things.

Fairly Innocuous
All in all, let it be said that Verin has no deliberately hurtful intentions. She likes to mind her own business and where she does get involved with others she likes to believe her interactions are based on fairness, if not friendliness. Verin puts herself and her needs before others but she does not do so with the intention of being deliberately cruel, merely with the aim of being practical. Most of Verin's decisions are rooted in her attempts to keep her life in a comfortable place, which includes doing what she can to avoid emotional conflicts and inner struggles. She believes her way of life is right for the most part and for those in need of some guidance, well, the best way to teach is by example. She has enough moral fiber in her to choose not to be deliberately destructive to those around her and enough righteousness to be indignant of those who do.


Thoughts on the Forest: An eerie place she can hardly recall, having left it so long ago. Verin doesn't like to talk about the forest much.

Thoughts of Book Children: Her people, but not necessarily a people she cares about. Though Verin would rather be too cool to care, she can't help but pity those Book Children who depend heavily on City People - especially new, naive Book Children. Having lived just long enough to see City People be born and die around her she knows the emotional price of relying so much on them can be steep indeed.

Thoughts on City People: A sensible bunch with good heads on their shoulders. She admires the way they live their (from her view) short lives. Born with nothing, they can either make sometimes of themselves with their own ambition or choose to live miserably.

Physical Appearance: Being fairly ambiguous in figure and with her face hidden at all times, one wouldn't necessarily be able to tell what gender Verin actually was when passing her on the street. Unfortunately for her Verin's face has been seen plenty of times by plenty of people. There's no way to live one's entire life in a mask, after all. If one were to ask about her a witness to her face might be able to recall (on the off-chance that they really gave a crap) the following: that she is distinctively feminine in her features, having a fair amount of plump to her lips, a long nose and a misleading meekness to her eyes. Such eyes may or may not have been blue and her hair was most definitely some kind of very pale blond under that hood.


History:
Verin came in from the forest as scared and delicate as any other Book Child. She was naive and a little uppity at times, but Book Children were still somewhat novel at the time and she quickly found herself a home with an accountant in the middle layer. Verin stayed in his home for far longer than either had expected, until calling him "father" seemed less like an affectionate joke and more like a genuine bond between them. So it was for quite some time. What happens next is a little less saccharine. It is known that she became enamored with a certain young and upcoming scholar, already quite respected in Fin Magna. It was not a mutual affair. Verin fruitlessly chased after glamor and romance, supported and sheltered by her long-suffering guardian who grew older and more neglected as her obsession persisted. He eventually made his journey into the forest. Returning to an empty house was her wake up call.

Verin inherited the business affairs of her late guardian and gave herself the gift of an attitude adjustment. She had to, given the weight of responsibility now placed on her delicate shoulders, shoulders which had never born the slightest amount of it in the past. The resolutions she made in those years immediately after her guardian's death have held fast in the century and a half since.

The strange thing about Verin is that for all the experiences of her past and all her current admiration for self-help and hard work, Verin herself as very few ambitions. Her desires lie primarily in the collection of material goods and comforts - a well made pair of gloves, a just-spacious-enough room to live in, etc. Professionally Verin has tended to drift between careers. The most constant thing in her working life has been that she holds the kind of boring invisible jobs that one doesn't tend to think about until actually being required to interact with someone like her. She has worked as a buyer of supplies for businesses ranging from clothing manufacturers to clockwork automaton workshops. She has, once or twice, dabbled in being a "manservant" to those who have gained just enough property that it takes more than one person to manage it all, but her tendency to be thorny and overbearing doesn't make her well suited to the position. She is at the moment doing odd jobs here and there.

Hobbies: Reading, naturally. Surprisingly enough she also likes to sew. It started out as mere thriftiness and became something genuinely enjoyable.
Birthday: April 24th
Favorite Things: Pressed flowers. A new pair of boots. Real silver silverware. The smell of wet dirt.
Hated Things: Books with worn-out spines. Rusty things. That exhausted feeling you get after taking a bath that's too hot for too long.

Story: The History of Hell, by Alice K Turner. Early in life she took it upon herself to write it down and was frustrated by the references in the text to pictures she could not reproduce.
Favorite type of Ending: An unambiguous one.
Favorite Illustration: Alphonse Mucha's Medea poster.
Dreams: To do almost exactly what she's already been doing: live her somewhat reclusive life without interruption or complication.

You gave an excellent critique! It's better than the one I gave you, lol.

In the case of taking oaths/making promises - She definitely can be depended on for holding up her end of any sort of deal/oath she makes precisely because she is selfish. She's most inclined to do things for other people if she thinks it's going to come back around and be beneficial to her in the long run. Like doing favors for really rich people lol. It's more a business transaction if you think of it that way. "I'll do this for you and I'll do it GOOD, so you better remember this when I need something." When it comes to oaths or promises that aren't based on materialism and business matters it's primarily her own personal sense of pride that makes her stay true and unwavering. It's her own personal sense of dignity that she's trying to uphold, it's not really about being kind to the other person. The motive is still self-centered.

She doesn't absolutely LOATHE doing favors, since she's looking for ways that they can benefit her in the long run. She doesn't want people to rely on her for things they can do themselves, but if it's a mutually beneficial agreement she's not going to mind people trusting her.


Being selfish and self-righteous while also law abiding is a little strange, but then again most of the Bible Belt seems to be just that (OOOOHHHH BUUUUURRRRNNNNNNNN, no I'm only kidding) so I figure it can be done lol. Anyway, Verin agrees to follow the law of the land ("for the most part"), but that doesn't mean she always agrees with it or finds it morally correct. It just means she usually avoids doing things that will get her thrown in jail. RL example: 18 year olds in high school who think it's stupid they can't legally sleep with their younger high school boy/girlfriends, but agree to wait until they turn 18 anyway. But anyway, I know tons of people who technically never break any laws but they're still self-centered little shits (like young children) so you know lol

I think Well Meaning isn't exactly the best header to express her motives, but I can't really think of a better one. I'm trying to express basically that Verin isn't some intentionally malevolent being - she's not going about her day just waiting for the chance to use and abuse anyone who crosses her path. She thinks she acts in a fair and rational manner. Her intentions are to take care of herself and not purposefully cause anyone suffering. I guess those aren't really "good" intentions when you think about it, just neutral ones lol.

Oh, the first sentence is just a quip that independent and distant are closely related personality traits. She's so focused on being independent that she's distant and unapproachable. It's just saying the mask is like a physical manifestation of that personality trait. She wears a mask because masks hide our faces, they separate us from other people and make us unreadable. Distant. Anyway, when I say politeness I don't mean the good kind that goes hand in hand with common courtesy. I mean the kind where the etiquette is proper, but there's no underlying sentiment of friendliness or even respect for the other person. I am thinking mostly of those snotty baristas who technically get you your coffee and say "thank you" when you pay them, exactly as they should, but still manage to piss you off while they do it. It's the kind of politeness where someone is only being that formal because they don't want to encourage you to make casual conversation - or any conversation at all! - with them.

Anyway, thank you so much for the crit! I am going to reword and add in the things that are missing and make her clearer.