Character 100-ish 065: Flannel Flower

[annarti.livejournal.com]

Considered making her part of the top eight and dropping Shizaaqa from it but I just really, really wanted to draw her. She and Thiras both could make a case for turning the top eight to a top ten, though.


Pictured as she is in SH: Tarnish though really she's not much different in Bouquet, just less sickly pale, about 20 years younger and still with her Colours.

NAME Many and varied. Her real name is Golden Kris. She made it up herself. Flannel Flower is the alias she's worn the longest and the one most people know her by, those who DO know her. In the past she's also been Isai the Wasp, Sheena, Rensali and Suza's Saviour.
WHO IS THIS PERSON One of the assassins in Shizaaqa's Bouquet about 20 years ago
GENDER Female
AGE 47

BRIEF BIO The Golden Kris was born at 24 years old. A girl was born and raised 24 years earlier in Suza, one of Kazin's outlying provinces, but Golden Kris doesn't associate herself at all with that child. She threw away whatever Family Colours she may have had at the time, threw away the name her parents gave her and gave herself a new name and Colours both. Whether she eliminated her former family or they disowned her, or she just ran from them, I'll keep that a mystery. It's just the way I like to play her, so there. Speculate all you like, it's fun.
So, suddenly Suza had a new assassin in town. Sometimes she chose to kill her clients because she didn't like their reasons for hiring her, or because they were rude or disrespectful. A few months later she took on the cover of Sheena, a diplomat in the Suzan palace and her middle-woman, but she found people weren't opening up enough to Sheena and so, the next year, invented Rensali the fisherman instead. He was a more relaxed individual, supplying the best fish to the Suzan palace and with just the sort of smile people were willing to trust.
Over the next year or so, while working as a diplomat, Golden Kris started to realise just how corrupt her own people were. She saw just how much her clients were destroying her home, whether she would take on their hire or not. She started leaving notes of this corruption with many of her victims, signing them as the Empress of Suza. (Kazin only has one empress; the individual provinces have queens. To declare herself Empress of the province meant she wanted to split from the rest of Kazin.) She also signed up as a spy, called Kiranais, in the neighbouring province of Haysyd to get hold of their gadgets so she could find out more about the corruption in Suza.
For a good year or so Golden Kris worked her way through the corruption in the Suzan government and really felt like she was making progress, but then Haysyd declared war on Suza. Golden Kris was forced to take on yet another identity when the Haysyd spymasters told Kiranais that they wanted army intelligence, so she signed up for the Suzan army as Isai. Along with her favoured krises, Golden Kris was also good enough with a bow to be given a black horse in Suza's army. Because of Isai's penchant for poison-tipping his arrows, he earned the nickname of the Wasp. Golden Kris played up his cowardice, though, so she wouldn't have to waste her time actually fighting the war. She was an assassin of the shadows, not a warrior, and war didn't interest her in the slightest.
AND THEN BOUQUET HAPPENED oh god how long is this thing going to be. (Also spoilers for Bouquet start here, just fyi.) All that happened in four years, btw, so she's only 28 by this point. So while she was hiding in the closet of her army general's office, listening in and taking notes on corruption in the army, she was discovered, captured and thrown to the Suzan dungeons as a Haysyd spy. The longer she was down there, the more they learned about just how many people she was, most notably the Golden Kris. Word of her assassination career made it back to Assiraz, and Golden Kris was shipped off to the capital to meet Empress Shizaaqa. Shizaaqa gave her the standard 'death or money' speech, with the added bonus that she'd end the war between Suza and Haysyd. That was eventually the clincher, and Golden Kris gained her last alias of Flannel Flower to work as Shizaaqa's assassin in Sirrona.
Various missions happened, including one that put her out of favour when she was sent to kill King Mithé and Prince Nolryn on the royal meet-and-greet when Nol was 7 and Flannel Flower didn't fire a shot. She was given the opportunity to redeem herself the next year by killing Hibiscus, another of the Bouquet who had gone rogue. Flannel Flower decided she wanted Shizaaqa, told her plan to Hibiscus, but Hibiscus works alooone~ so FF killed her. Shizaaqa soon found out about this plot and sent her to the Imperial Dungeons with nooooo chance of escape this time. This was at age 33, so she's been down there for nearly 15 years. Suckage.
AND THEN SH: TARNISH HAPPENED during which more spoilers happen for that story. FF is busted out of the dungeons, rescues a local princess and a foreign prince, legs it from Assiraz through the jungle, kills a different prince and is subsequently shot dead for it. THE END.

CHARACTER Completely batshit. She was slightly nuts when she was thrown to the dungeons for the final time (and the first two times, if we're honest) but the decade and a half down there didn't do her well. She's an absolute perfectionist and has to be the best at everything she does, hence getting a black horse as Isai the Wasp when all she needed to do was to fart around unnoticed and gather information. She's arrogant, which has ultimately led to her two captures and inevitable death. Incredibly parochial and patriotic to her native Suza, even though she hasn't been back there since she was first captured at 28. Mostly she's insane, though.
As to her aliases, Sheena the diploamt is worried that she might lose her job, or be forced to join the war in a more useful way. Rensali the fisherman loves the lake and his easy, relaxed lifestyle. He's friends with everyone. Kiranais the spy is a bit of a sleaze. Isai the Wasp is an exceptional marksman but does everything he can to avoid actual battle. He has a brilliant battle mind so he can never be tricked into anything that might kill him.

POINTS OF INTEREST

She took the name of the Golden Kris because of the lore surrounding it: the kris is a symbol as much as a weapon, bringing luck both good and bad to its wielder.

She has long, bony fingers that I've always likened to spider's legs, curling around her kris hilt. Also she bites her nails.

She's been well-behaved enough in the Imperial Dungeons that she hasn't been subjected to the torture typical down there, hence the clean face above. She got it when she first went down there but that was well over a decade ago. She's healed and learned.

She owns two krises, both with a kingfisher engraved into the silver hilts. She replaced them with two similar ones when she was made Flannel Flower, these even more expensive with emeralds set into the kingfishers and with better detailing.

Flannel Flower has a brusque, harsh voice, almost masculine.

Flannel Flower is ruled by her religion. She's terrified of dying dishonourably, which is all she can see in front of her in the dungeons, but it's still a better death than suicide. Her unwavering belief in the gods, and their retribution should she die dishonourably, is the only thing that keeps her going.

Comments

[drazzi.livejournal.com]

Awwwesome picture of her. I love the ginger eyelashes! The are both awesome and creepy.

I love FF. She has so much depth and interestingness.

[annarti.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed at how long her brief bio went for when I skipped the first 24 years of her life and she was in the dungeons for the last 15 years. Yeah she definitely makes a case for top-ten status even though she was only there for a handful of chapters. Ah well.