It's the first click of her heel on the polished marble of the grand lobby that sticks most in my memory—like a hammer cocked at the normal day I was having, blowing it away and leaving what my life was after that first time I saw her.In spite of my best efforts my noggin wasn't yet too embalmed with drink and woe to notice. It swiveled on its own to track those slow, confident heel clicks, and what I saw addled me the rest of the way before my heart could finish its first pound. Style and elegance that punch the air out of your lungs like a bomb going off nearby. Figure thick in all the right places, hugged tight by a burgundy evening dress. Plunging neckline like a V-shaped dam straining not to burst. Waves of mahogany spilling to her shoulders, falling down over one of a pair of eyes grey as a tempest at sea.A dish in every sense, the kind you're not allowed to eat off of unless you get invited to the best party of your life.Those heels carried the dame to the bar and she had a whisper with the gal tending it. Seconds later she was dealt a glass of wine the same black cherry color as the lips she raised it to, poured from a bottle I probably couldn't have traded my grandma for.I sure as Hells wasn't the only sucker. Damn near every other broad and mug with a line of sight had their peepers fixed, alighting like hungry birds on those hips with each swing or that rosebud grin, brains dizzy with the same confusingly instant lust mine was. Weren't no petting zoo in that place, neither—it was a class joint full of pretty dolls and chiseled jaws. But even in a field of fine lilies that dame stood out like a solitary red rose, flawless, more perfect than the one in the botanical handbooks. Would do anywhere, I reckon.She turned and planted one of those plush hips against the bar, and that single unhidden tempest-grey eye scanned the room over the rim of her glass of six-figure sauce, shrewd as a qiqirn, hunting for marks.Even now I'm not sure if the letdown of that eye never fixing on me would've been worse than how dangerous it was that it did. But that rose beckoned and I reached out my hand, not knowing if I'd get the flower or the thorn, but knowing the bloom of stark crimson that waited for me either way was my fate, from that first hammer-cock click of her damned heel.

Diminutive creatures unmarked for aeons by any intelligent eye scuttled away from the blasphemous torchlight advancing flickeringly along ancient stone slabs, quenching their blessed dark. It was a phenomenon wholly outside their imaginations or those of the thousand thousand generations of blind, nameless things before them.The Trespasser drew in a lungful of stagnant air and released it. Lithe and silent as distant dawn, wrapped in leather, a thin sheen of sweat, and the glow of her lantern, she prowled alert and focused along the passageway. Notice was taken of the semitranslucent creatures skittering from her light only insofar as to watch for any that looked hungry and daring.This quivering bubble of Undark and she who stalked within bobbed deliberately along, here pausing to illuminate a significant bas-relief or consult a sheaf of yellowed notes, there leaping a yawning fissure and coiling upon the far flank with tawny grace. The corridors at times opened in either direction to still other corridors, some of which she deviated into, while others led to chambers that held no fortune but a dusty skeleton for the next Trespasser to find.Orderly, ornately carved catacombs descended into rocky rough-hewn shafts. The ancient opened into the even more ancient. At length the cramped gave way to the cavernous and the passage emptied into a massive vaulted chamber... this one far more advanced than the newer, simpler crypts above.At its center, upon a plinth of smooth metallic stone engraved in curious pictograms, awaited a dusty tome. Slumbering there since an age before even ancient Allag was dreamt of, its leaves somehow unmouldered, it was known by her to hold within knowledge of incalculable value and dread.Tempest-grey eyes studied the chamber nook by cranny. Its seemingly innocuous decorative accents bore tells of the agonizing death cunningly prepared for would-be thieves, tells few but her were versed enough to decipher. But she knew Death and its tricks all too well. Calculating her delicate creeping, hopping, climbing, and leaping path through this gauntlet of doom, she could practically feel the ancient binding of that old tome beneath her fingers already.The Trespasser drew in a lungful of stagnant air and held it.

Well into the darkest bells of night, the amber glow of lanterns from within a seaside shack glowed in rhythm to the raucous, drunken laughter and cruel, snarling jeers within.It was the sort of establishment your respectable drunken reprobate avoided: a place for those who reveled fiercely and with disdain for the laws that held check outside its shabby walls. Society's underbelly sucked in its gut while creeping by so as not to stir the surface of what pooled in such a place.At a table tucked into the shadows of a corner two figures faced each other amid a cluster of babbling onlookers, the table between them littered with empty glasses, bottles, cards, gil, spills of whatever was in the bottles, and various valuables. In the exact center of the table between them rested a small oblong sculpture with curious geometry that frustrated the logical eye: a priceless magiform artifact.The larger of the two figures, his vision of his own fingers trebled before his eyes, played a frayed card from his hand and then lifted a filled glass to smirking lips. A brief cheer went up from half of the sneering faces clustered around them. The game was a negotiation over the heirloom on the table. His confidence in his cards was low, however, and the flintlock pistol he held secretly under the table had other plans for how this negotiation would end.But its intended target, the young woman seated opposite, knew Death and its tricks all too well, and the eyes of this brute, too, had tells.She sprang from her seat, uncoiling like a serpent, her rapier flashing. Its tip swished, dancing a dizzy waltz across the man's gut in one second flat, spilling his entrails out atop the hidden firearm. Just enough time had he to gape down at both of the secrets his opponent had exposed, then back up at her in a twisted crag of livid shock, before his time, and the game, ended decisively.The gnarled faces surrounding them fell into what passed for a hush in that place, at least the ones close enough to bear witness and the ones near enough behind them to be curious what had caused the sudden quiet.The woman gave the morbid remains a smirk that mirrored the one she'd been favored with before flicking the gore from her blade. Turning then to face the onlookers her tempest-grey eyes darted quickly side to side, taking the crowd's measure— ready to carve a path to the door for herself and the artifact she'd successfully "bartered" for. For a long moment they stared back, each attempting to judge if he or she was about to be forced to fight, flee, or flop.Instead she ventured one more wily gambit. Scooping her glass from the rough tabletop she shot the golden liquid in a single gulp. With a pop of finality she tossed her hand of cards face up onto the table—a losing hand, as it would've turned out—and lifted the glass over her head in triumph, proclaiming that the gil on the table would be used to buy them all a round.In such a place free drink is the ultimate amnesty. Glasses were emptied, backs were clapped or stabbed, and the dive reawakened quickly to its sinful merriment.The victor, meanwhile, slipped out the door into what remained of the night. She stripped out of most of the soiled and sodden clothing she'd been wearing, casting it upon the bonfire near the exit. Secreting her prize inside a small duffel and slinging it over her shoulder she then dove into the surf, churning out to where a low-slung craft waited offshore.When the little craft made port the following evening, the woman emerged from the cabin and out onto the dock shimmering and resplendent in a rich burgundy evening dress. She strode, turning heads as if by witchery, toward the posh regency inn which was to be the next stop on her lucrative little enterprise. The little duffel tucked behind her elbow went completely unnoticed.Her heel clicked on the polished marble of the grand lobby.

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Name: Victoria Sinclair
Age: 31
Occupation: Rarities Dealer
Place of Origin: Ishgard
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Relationship Attachments: Fluid
Orientation: Pansexual
DC/Server: Crystal/Balmung
Time Zone: Eastern USA, available most evenings and weekends

Thanks for visiting! I’m open to most forms of RP, but what I'm most drawn to are storylines, with arcs, conflict, growth, and consequences for the characters involved. Victoria is a treasure hunter and adrenaline junkie, so she will be most drawn to characters who can offer her these. Contracts to recover priceless artifacts, tavern banter, or general adventuring are some good hooks to get her attention with.I'm a literate writer but I try to be concise, and to keep my writing as colorful and lively as I can. I appreciate witty banter, creativity, and cleverness, but I’ll interact with just about anyone. I flex between naturally flowing conversations with short to medium sentences, and longer-form paragraphs when appropriate, because some scenes just call for different styles. Writing skills really don't matter much to me as long as you have passion!Feel free to approach, because a lot of times I’m too shy to swoop in on others. If I’ve got my RP tag on, the door's open.I'm also looking for friends to run content with. I have done everything in the game up to Savage level content and I enjoy anything from roulettes to treasure maps to raiding, so I'm pretty handy to have around!Please note that I maintain strict IC/OOC separation. I’m definitely not averse to chatting OOC and making new IRL friends with those I RP with, but Victoria is not my avatar. That means that her feelings are not necessarily my own feelings and vice versa. I treat her as a separate person, and so should you! I don’t project or metagame. I’m paying to play this game for fun, imagination and escapism, much like I hope you are. Anything permanently life-altering or injurious to either party should always be discussed in an OOC manner beforehand.See you out in the world!

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