Jason’s Fallen London Characters
INTRODUCING THE OCS I TALK ABOUT
© Paranetics-Jason N.W. All rights reserved.
WHAT IS FALLEN LONDON: Fallen London is a text-based RPG available online. It's set in dystopian Victorian London, and answers the age-old question: What would life have been like if the entire city of London was stolen by bats?
I've been pretty obsessed with it and have been playing the game with my characters. There's a larger Carrd in progress which details my OC's relationships with some of my friend's OCs, but as of now, I have this hyper-specific Carrd that goes into extreme detail for my characters and their families.
Yaslen Ettics
AGE: 19
APPEARANCE:
Long, wild red hair tangled in 3b texture. She usually keeps it in a braid, tucked under her forest green pageboy hat. Her face is round, and freckled. Her freckles are dark, almost black, and cover every inch of her body. Her eyes are brown and thin, and her skin is olive, but has gone yellow-green during her time in the Neath without any true sun. She has a crescent scar under her left eye.
She layers her clothes. A black turtleneck and trousers, then a grey frock, then a brown vest. She has a long, black, wool overcoat and a red scarf. On her chest she bears St Brigid, her Irish Catholic father’s gift.
PERSONALITY OVERVIEW:
Yaslen is mischievous, daring, ill-mannered and selfless. She’s not trained in social ques and often misspeaks, offending everyone she’s ever come in contact with. As a result, only a few people can tolerate her. She’s been known to forcibly insert herself into someone’s life if she finds them interesting and sometimes gains the affection of especially kind people because she is - genuinely - kind of pathetic. Despite this, she’s very intelligent and capable of pulling off quite the heist. She’s talkative, and can be almost charming in the right moments. She’s deceptively dangerous - her 5’3 height makes people underestimate her - and she’s been known to take down assailants three times her size. Oftentimes mistaken for a man, Yaslen is desensitized to how people treat her/refer to her based on her assumed identity, and uses it to her advantage sometimes. Occasionally, it’s discovered that she can’t read, and she’ll get defensive, believing she’s being mocked.
BACKSTORY:
Yaslen’s mother, a woman who was kidnapped as a child from her native Philippines, speaks no English when she arrives in Europe as a slave. Only Seamus Ettics, estranged older brother of Dowan, makes an effort to communicate with her. Eventually, the two fall in love and escape together, running away to build a family. Seamus works in a coal mine, Yaslen’s mother a seamstress, and they’re barely able to make ends meet with five children. As soon as she’s old enough, Yaslen resorts to petty theft, street tricks and anything that could possibly help her family eat. Despite this, she retains a sunny deposition and allows her siblings to call her “Lennie.” When one of Yaslen’s siblings falls deathly sick, Yaslen’s mother takes her on a false errand and leaves her in London. Even though she understands why she was abandoned, Yaslen feels like she is unwelcome back home until she has enough money to support her entire family. She’s embarked on a quest to steal a diamond the size of a cow so she can go home, finally.
Faceclaim: Andrea Kevichüsa
Archibald Vincent Rosenblatt-Ettics
AGE: 19
APPEARANCE:
Conventionally attractive. Straw-blond hair which he keeps short, steel grey eyes. He has black freckles spattered across his nose and cheeks. His nose is long and straight.
He typically wears black or charcoal grey suits and shiny shoes. He's vain and keeps his clothes clean. He owns an extensive wardrobe and throws away anything that would even hint at a destute upbringing, save for Yaslen's tatty handkerchief, embroidered with her name.
PERSONALITY OVERVIEW:
Archipelago is charming, logical, manipulative and petty. He lies often and almost compulsively. He has narcissistic tendencies and believes he’s more important than everyone he meets. He will do anything to achieve his goal, tear down anyone and everyone if he thinks it will gain him renown with powerful people. He eventually grows to love a few people, but his upbringing ensures that he’s closed off and apathetic for the first two decades of his life. He doesn’t connect emotionally and rarely ever has genuine moments of vulnerability.
BACKSTORY:
Born Archibald Vincent Rosenblatt-Ettics, his name doomed him to a life perpetually half-full. His mother, Elisabeth Rosenblatt, was born an heiress to a very powerful and influential family on the surface. When she fell in love with Dowan Ettics, a poor Irishman of low means, she was disowned and effectively cut herself off from her family, her fortune, and her name. Dowan Ettics had done the same, marrying a supposedly rich woman and “abandoning” the rest of his incredibly destitute family. When Archie was eight years old, his mother died of scarlet fever. Heartbroken and horrified, Dowan Ettics packed Archie’s bags and sent him to his grandparents’, begging them to take him in, otherwise Dowan feared they’d both die on the streets. Reluctantly, his grandparents took him in and began to raise him, slowly trying to erase his old life on the streets. He spent years traipsing on the outskirts of the surface’s high society, never fully accepted by his grandparents or their contacts. He spent all this time wanting badly to have his mother’s status restored to himself. When he and a housemaid fell in “love” when he was 18, his grandparents had finally found a good enough excuse to disown him other than simply disliking their daughter’s husband. Archie’s lover’s father - the head butler - severed their relationship shortly after Archie was cast out. Heartbroken and adrift, Archie nearly went back to his father’s, burdening a poor man with another mouth to feed. On the road home he stopped at a pub and heard rumors that down below, in London, there was a card game you could play to win your Heart’s Desire. He descended to win what was his, taking on the alias Archipelago.
Faceclaim: Dane Dehaan
PIERRE LI HIGHTOWER
AGE: 38
APPEARANCE:
Pierre's eyes are thin and slanted, her face round with sharp cheekbones. Her lips are full and delicate. She has a scar extending from the left side of her mouth up toward her ear, a souvenir from her battles with sailors on the sea. Pierre is missing an eye from the same fight where she got her scar, and often pops random objects in her socket to replace the eye. Occasionally, she barters her prosthetic eye away and wears an eyepatch. She broke her leg, which didn’t heal right on the sea, so she has a noticeable limp.
Her hair texture is 4a, and done in braids, which have been palm-rolled into dreadlocks. She keeps her hair tied up with rope for battle and sometimes wears a tricorn hat, stolen from a British naval officer.
She wears lots of bangles and rings and has ear piercings. She has an eye tattooed on her forehead and a spiraling abstract pattern that starts on her right shoulder, curls down her chest and almost completely covers her back. She insists it's unfinished.
PERSONALITY OVERVIEW:
Pierre is roguish, charming, witty, and captivating. She’s intelligent and doesn’t care about hiding it, and often alienates men due to this. She’s almost completely forgotten her posh upbringing and has wholeheartedly embraced her feral life, although the nickname "Princess" has stuck with her all her life. She speaks several languages and has seen so much of the world.
She struggles with self-acceptance and hates herself to an astonishing degree. She’s self destructive and aware of it and always makes half-baked promises to get better. Pierre isn't afraid to die, and can even selfishly disregard the feelings of those who love her due to this.
BACKSTORY:
Her father, Asim Wadood Hightower, was an enslaved person from Sudan who ran away to France upon gaining his freedom in his early twenties. Hightower, the name he took from his enslavers, stayed with him on his legal documents. He was a brilliant man who loved France whole-heartedly. Once gaining status through his intelligent business strategies, he married Hirate Leiko after a years-long courtship.
Her family has ties to the last Shogunate and was comprised of several famous Samurai. They have several businesses in France, where Hirate Leiko was overseeing operations, given she's set to inherit the entire fortune.
Pierre was born in France, and grew up on the streets of Paris. She was fairly wild growing up, as she was treated like a little boy, frequently allowed to play with the servants and get messy. As she grew older and those things became more frowned upon in her high-status and rich family, she’d sneak out to play with the servant children, eventually escaping the confines of her home altogether. At 13/14, she was regularly walking the streets of Paris alone at night, much to her family's chagrin and scandal. By 17 everyone on the street knew her as Princess, because of how prissy she acted when she first started going to bars/illicit shows/etc.
Pierre is a trans woman but she looks very feminine and has no trouble presenting as such, so much so people think she’s a girl wearing boy’s clothing. Her parents (mostly her mother and her grandfather) are very offended at that (having become westernized from colonialism/living in France). She tries to come out to them when she’s 18 but it goes very badly, and her mother threatens to disown and hire someone to kill her.
She ends up running away. From ages 18 to 22, she lives on the road, joining Romani performers and learning to perform with them. They go all over Europe, and she comes to love these people like her family. Tragically, after a particularly good performance, a crowd of drunken, angry, racist men try to break into the inn housing the performers to specifically hurt Pierre. Fearing for her life, she sneaks out the back window, only managing a tearful and brief farewell.
Alone again, Pierre strikes out towards the coast and joins a crew of sailors. Barely two years into her contract with the sailing company, her ship gets captured by pirates. Instead of murdering her, the captain is fairly amused by her spitfire nature and allows her to join his crew. She quickly gains rank and eventually serves as First Mate. For years, she stays on that pirate ship, feeling like there's nowhere on Earth better to be.
But then her captain is murdered, and her crew falls, and she’s captured by the British army. They take her to the Neath and leave her there.
She wakes up in prison with Edgar von Tilton, a fellow pirate, and constant companion as she travels the Neath.
Faceclaim:
Edgar von Tilton
AGE: 54
APPEARANCE:
Silver, shoulder-length hair he typically has tied up. Several tattoos of mythical sea beasts he swears he's encountered during his three decades on the sea.
PERSONALITY OVERVIEW:
Edgar von Tilton is Pierre's NPC companion. He's deeply, deeply loyal, and cares about Pierre as a sister. Frightened, and otherwise alone, Pierre and Edgar often take refuge in each other.
BACKSTORY:
An old Russian traitor, Edgar's anglicized name is likely not the name he was given at birth. He has told no one, not even Pierre, what made Russia brand him as a traitor.
Yaslen’s and Archibald’s Family
THE ETTICSES
DOWAN ETTICS: The younger brother of Seamus Ettics, Dowan frequently makes mistakes he won't take responsibility for. He has an underlying, cruel nature that he usually controls well. He's stubborn and unkind, and doesn't accept help from anyone.
When he marries Elisabeth, he alienates Seamus on the basis of her assumed wealth and they stop speaking, even though Dowan sends a card celebrating Archie's birth.
After his wife's death, Dowan descends into a deep depression and becomes a chronic alcoholic. He dies on the streets on the surface, never reunited with his triumphant son.
SEAMUS ETTICS: As the eldest son of an incredibly destitute and poor Irish family, Seamus grew up to resent his parents for forcing him into a position of caretaker to his three younger brothers. Not having money is an incredible sore spot with his parents, and he inherits that mindset.
Fionn and Tadgh, the twins two years younger than Seamus, and Dowan, the baby of their family, were all raised by Seamus while their parents worked hard, difficult jobs under imperial rule. At eighteen, Fionn and Tadgh are executed by British soldiers for being suspected of stealing bread. Seamus carries the guilt of his brother's murders heavy on his shoulders for his entire life.
Seamus also has significant and bloodthirsty patriotism for Ireland, and leaves his family in (what remains of) London for long stretches of time to fight British imperialists.
Like Dowan, Seamus has the capacity to be incredibly cruel and has a violent, reactive temper. The only person he reserves kindness for is his wife, whom he adores whole-heartedly.
YASLEN'S MOTHER: Most indigenous Filipino cultures require that once a woman gives birth, she's referred to as (child's name's) mother, an honorific. As such, Yaslen's mother has never taken on an English name.
Because her indigenous language is unknown outside her island, when she arrived in England at 14 (intended to become either a sex slave or labor slave), she had absolutely no way to communicate. She worked as a slave in a textile workshop until a portly man noticed her significant skill and bought her to work at his tailor's shop. From ages sixteen to seventeen she worked there, until Seamus Ettics came from Ireland to apprentice in the shop.
Immediately infatuated with each other, Seamus and Yaslen's mother wanted nothing more than to communicate. Seamus, fluent in Gaeilge and English, was doubly frustrated by their language block, as she was purposely handicapped from learning any English by her kidnappers.
Eventually, a year into their acquantance, Seamus invented a pseudo-sign language that he taught her, and they used to speak to each other.
Five years later, he at 25 and Yaslen's mother at 23, Seamus had saved enough money to buy Yaslen's mother and set her free. He did so tearfully, offering to ensure her safe passage back home as she often spoke of how much she missed the Phillippines.
Heart aching, Yaslen's mother was torn between her home and the love of her life. After traveling to the docks, and preparing to leave, Yaslen's mother changed her mind and stayed in England with Seamus.
He calls her "Wenda", a pet name based on a female character in a Gaelic story Seamus tells her. She will not translate her original name or tell anyone what it is. It's hers to die with.
Dowan Ettics - Seamus Ettics - Yaslen’s Mother
THE ROSENBLATTS
GEORGE FREDERICH ROSENBLATT: A cold, unimpressed man who was born into English high society. He married Miram Rosenblatt, nee Forger, a woman of an equally important family from Wales.
MIRAM ROSENBLATT: Never given an opportunity to develop hobbies or much of herself, Miram was resentful and very strict.
ELISABETH ROSENBLATT: A willful, wonderful person born to two disinterested, cold people, Elisabeth was a cloud of warmth and light. She was always singing and happy. She met Dowan by chance, on a family trip to the Isle of Man, where they were stranded in his home town for weeks. They secretly kept in contact and were married, despite George and Miram's fury at the scandal she caused. She was never fully diswoned - so George and Miram were forced into taking Archibald in upon her untimely death.
George Rosenblatt - Miram Rosenblatt - Elisabeth Rosenblatt
Canon
There are currently two screenplays in progress depicting Yaslen and Archie's journey through the Neath.
Yaslen's: A Guide to Crime and Passion
Archipelago's: Wishbones to Break
Upon their completion, they will be posted and linked here and on my twitter.
Modern!AU
Modern Yaslen: 🛠
Modern Archipelago: 🛠
Modern Pierre: 🛠
Mafia!AU
🛠🛠🛠🛠🛠
Occult!AU
Occult Yaslen: 🛠
Occult Archipelago: 🛠
Occult Pierre:🛠
There is also a trilogy in progress that tells the story of this particular AU, and upon its completion will be linked here and on my twitter.
