History
Leela Bricker was born to a troubled couple in Richmond, Virginia. Her mother was an interior designer, her father was in the army. Angelica's unpreparedness to have a child, Rick's work and time away from home, as well as the constant moves that the family had to undertake from base to base, put a strain on Rick and his Angelica's relationship, and they divorced when Leela was 9. After being shuffled back and force between parents for a while, Leela decided to permanently live with her father, a decision her somewhat distant and neglectful mother didn't protest.
Their relationship was both loving and strained as Rick made it clear he loved his daughter, but was rather strict and occasionally controlling--ultimately because he believed that it was in Leela's best interest. Leela therefore developed something of a rebellious streak to go along with her natural temper, and as she grew older, she and her father both had difficulty understanding each other. Leela doesn't understand her father's rigid demeanor and respect for authority, Richard doesn't understand his daughter's temper, lack of respect for authority, and tendency to rebel.
While her father no longer actively served after the divorce (partly due to his age) and started serving in a desk job, he and Leela still moved a few more times, before finally settling in Miami, FL, where Rick is an army recruiter. Having moved around from base to base and state to state her whole life, Leela is a typical army brat, and used to living in a constant state of adjustment (even if she doesn't particularly like it).
While going to school at Miami Senior High School (Home of the Stingarees!), she met Irene Hadley, a somewhat non-confrontational but bright and cheerful girl in her English class. The two soon became fast friends and stuck to one another like glue. Leela often pushed the more timid Irene into being brave, adventurous, and not being afraid to make waves, and Irene, in turn, was a calming influence on the more impulsive, cantankerous, and confrontational Leela.
The two got a job working together at a nearby technologies company, Zippy Technologies, as file clerks, where they often looked at the accounting paper work to see which projects had the most ridiculous names (which they made fun of), and which projects required the most funding.
The found it unusual when what they looked for coincided, as they found a project whose cost didn't seem to fit its description, T.P.R.T.E. (or "Teepee, Right?" as Leela called it). Curious, and believing that there was possibly some embezzling of funds going on, Leela prodded Irene into snooping around with her, to figure what the project really was, if it indeed existed, and if it deserved the millions in funding it was receiving.
The answer was yes, yes, and yes, as it turned out to be the pet project of one of the scientists at the facility--an experimental device to cut open portals into alternate universes. The Trans-planer Research and Tracking Endeavor.
The two were caught snooping, however, and the less than ethical scientist in charge of the project, Dr. Regina Crippen, wanted to advance quickly to human trials--to see if people could survive the jump through. So she had Irene and Leela tossed through the gateway, figuring that if they died, she'd know the portal wasn't stable enough for herself to cross, but if they lived, it was, and she could step through and just kill them both, eliminating them as witnesses to what she had created.
Luckily for them, they made it through in one piece, and the portal shut down before they could be shot.
Unluckily for them, they were trapped in another world with no way home, and even if they did make it back, Crippen would likely kill them to keep them silent about her secret project.
Fortunately, they were found in the wilderness by the knight of a nearby kingdom of Marbrook, Fitzy, and his somewhat lascivious but good natured squire, man-at-arms, and portable brain, Harper Vale, a roguish but decent young man that had greased his way into the knight's good graces. The two deemed the girls damsels, and decided they seemed quite distressed and thus after providing a Imp of Tongues to each of them to get past the language problem, asked them to accompany them on their journeys until they could help them find their way to safety. The two acted as personal guides to the strange new world the girls found themselves in, which seemed to be one somewhat similar to their own in development, only with an abundance of magic, steam technology, and severely altered history, so much so that this long after several key divergence points in human history, it seemed almost unrecognizable.
Accompanying the two on a quest for treasure to bring back as tribute to their king, they navigated a dangerous temple full of traps and puzzles to a treasure cache. Unfortunately, they didn't understand that the treasure itself held its own traps. While Leela picked up and put on a necklace, Irene touched a small glowing jewel, and both girls found themselves in a world of trouble. The necklace bonded to Leela's neck, and Irene, idly wishing that she could be someplace warmer--as the area they were in had necessitated the both of them acquiring fur cloaks--found herself in the middle of the desert, the gem dull and dead in her hand, the last of its magic spent.
Leela, who had no idea what had just happened to her friend, and no idea what had just happened to herself, panicked, and set off one of the temple's traps. A quick-thinking Harper tripped another trap to interfere with the first and triggered a chain reaction that started causing all the trap mechanisms to tear themselves apart, and ushered her and Fitzy out as the temple broke down around them. (After grabbing quite a bit of the treasure, of course).
With no way of knowing where Irene had gone, and feeling rather ill, presumably from the necklace that had bonded itself to her flesh, Leela went on with Harper and Fitzy back to their kingdom's capital, heartbroken over the loss of her friend and worried sick about her well-being. It was on the way there that she was struck by the first vision.
A massacre, someplace far off, happening to innocent people with darker skin (more like her own than the seemingly European people in the area she was in). It seemed at first to be a horrible, head ache inducing dream, but she had the vision in her dreams several more times, with even more clarity. Another vision came to pass right before her eyes as Harper fell off the unstable bridge they were crossing and into the rushing river ten feet below. Thanks to her foresight, Leela was able to grab him before he went into the drink, and with Fitzy's help, pull him back up, but it was then she realized that she'd somehow--most likely though the amulet that had melded with her body--gotten a gift of prophetic visions.
Which meant the massacre she kept seeing over and over again was going to happen.
When the trio reached the capital and stayed in the king's castle, she tried to implore the two to go with her, explaining the visions and they she thought many--perhaps even thousands were going to die--and that she kept seeing flashes of them being murdered at the hands of ceramic monsters with fire burning in their eyes.
Unknown to her, the wily, old king (who most of the world thought was quite senile because of how he acted) had all the rooms of the castle bugged with magical "bugs," recording devices the bugs whispered to him about the the knight and Harper figuring out where the place in her vision might be, the colonial city of Matihafa in the Kingdom of Baht Wahid. The king heard her trying to implore his knight to go stop the massacre, but Fitzy and Harper refused, as they couldn't just go without the king's blessing.
Therefore, the next day, whacky, senile King Yann randomly decided that a tribute must be sent as a gift, some of the treasure from the temple (which turned out to be Wahidian artifacts) to his neighboring ally, Baht Wahid.
Wondering if there was more to the "senile" old king than what met the eye, Leela took her leave of Marbrook with Fitzy and Harper, to make the perilous trek over the mountains to the coast city of Matihafa. Adventures were had, bandits were beaten down, and giants were fought along the way, but eventually they made it, and we welcomed by the city Magistrates.
There were two major ethnic groups in the city and while both were now treated fairly, they had, at turns, persecuted one another through the history of the colonized kingdom, ever since the original invasion of the Agti by the Laktu. With some snooping, the three revealed a plot by a some of the Agti Magistrates and Under-Ministers to usurp the Laktu in power and release giant golems from the first war (that ran on human souls and thus would get stronger as the genocide went on) to help their soldiers and mercenaries murder all the Laktu, and any Agti that were seen as "sympathetic" to them.
With Fitzy fighting the Agti Coup's very powerful right-hand man and destroying the golems before activation, Harper setting up a Thaumiphone to broadcast the leader's words, and Leela getting the leader of the coup to confess his plans (without knowing they were being broadcasted across the marketplace for everyone to hear and thinking she would be silenced when he killed her) they were able to stop the plan from going under way. Leela barely escaped with her life, but the genocidal coup was ruined thanks to the three's efforts and the people of the city--both Agti and Laktu--rising up and taking down the treasonous group to preserve the peace of their city. Leela's nightmarish vision was averted.
Fitzy and Harper were given lavish rewards and the alliance between the two kingdoms was stronger than ever. Leela was asked what reward she wanted, and knowing that if she were to find Irene, it would be a long journey and she needed to be able to survive this world and defend herself, so she asked to be trained in the manner the palace guards were.
Because the ones who trained them were monks, this was a most offensive request--and she knew it--especially since the monks would have to live for however long in isolation as part of a purification ritual as they came into physical contact with her on a regular basis. She was obliged on the condition that she only stay for a year, and after which, she would not longer be allowed in the city, for requesting something so offensive to their cultural practices and taking advantage of their generosity.
Monk Sunan was the one that taught her. He hated her guts and kicked her ass. 17 hours of training a day, two fifteen minute eating breaks, two fifteen minute bathroom breaks, six hours a sleep a night. Every day. Without rest or respite. She was trained in Muahlavani Varzrit, a quick, graceful martial art that puts emphasis on hard strikes at pressure points and other weak points, and in the use of an Hibis Janzir--a handheld scythe and chain.
Towards the end of her training, she had a vision of Irene in a desert city.
By the end of their time together, they hated one another marginally less, Leela accepted her banishment, bid farewell to her teacher--who then had to go live in seclusion for a year--and went out into the wilderness, to try to find Irene. She ran into Fitzy and Harper one last time--they knew when she'd leave the city when her year was up and were waiting for her in a border city on the other side of the mountains (pretending they were there on unrelated busines), and they helped send her on her way with some gold, a spook-light (a will o' the wisp trapped in a lantern--going in the opposite direction it tells you sends you along in the right direction), and other supplies, as well as advice on where to go because they had a good guess of what city she'd seen in her vision due to a landmark in the background.
She then started the long journey to find Irene, one made even more desperate due to another vision--one of Irene's head on an executioner's block, and an ax-blade falling.
After several small adventures, involving werewolves, ridiculous witch hunts in small towns, and other such distractions, Leela was abducted into Stacy.
And she's fuckin' pissed.
Their relationship was both loving and strained as Rick made it clear he loved his daughter, but was rather strict and occasionally controlling--ultimately because he believed that it was in Leela's best interest. Leela therefore developed something of a rebellious streak to go along with her natural temper, and as she grew older, she and her father both had difficulty understanding each other. Leela doesn't understand her father's rigid demeanor and respect for authority, Richard doesn't understand his daughter's temper, lack of respect for authority, and tendency to rebel.
While her father no longer actively served after the divorce (partly due to his age) and started serving in a desk job, he and Leela still moved a few more times, before finally settling in Miami, FL, where Rick is an army recruiter. Having moved around from base to base and state to state her whole life, Leela is a typical army brat, and used to living in a constant state of adjustment (even if she doesn't particularly like it).
While going to school at Miami Senior High School (Home of the Stingarees!), she met Irene Hadley, a somewhat non-confrontational but bright and cheerful girl in her English class. The two soon became fast friends and stuck to one another like glue. Leela often pushed the more timid Irene into being brave, adventurous, and not being afraid to make waves, and Irene, in turn, was a calming influence on the more impulsive, cantankerous, and confrontational Leela.
The two got a job working together at a nearby technologies company, Zippy Technologies, as file clerks, where they often looked at the accounting paper work to see which projects had the most ridiculous names (which they made fun of), and which projects required the most funding.
The found it unusual when what they looked for coincided, as they found a project whose cost didn't seem to fit its description, T.P.R.T.E. (or "Teepee, Right?" as Leela called it). Curious, and believing that there was possibly some embezzling of funds going on, Leela prodded Irene into snooping around with her, to figure what the project really was, if it indeed existed, and if it deserved the millions in funding it was receiving.
The answer was yes, yes, and yes, as it turned out to be the pet project of one of the scientists at the facility--an experimental device to cut open portals into alternate universes. The Trans-planer Research and Tracking Endeavor.
The two were caught snooping, however, and the less than ethical scientist in charge of the project, Dr. Regina Crippen, wanted to advance quickly to human trials--to see if people could survive the jump through. So she had Irene and Leela tossed through the gateway, figuring that if they died, she'd know the portal wasn't stable enough for herself to cross, but if they lived, it was, and she could step through and just kill them both, eliminating them as witnesses to what she had created.
Luckily for them, they made it through in one piece, and the portal shut down before they could be shot.
Unluckily for them, they were trapped in another world with no way home, and even if they did make it back, Crippen would likely kill them to keep them silent about her secret project.
Fortunately, they were found in the wilderness by the knight of a nearby kingdom of Marbrook, Fitzy, and his somewhat lascivious but good natured squire, man-at-arms, and portable brain, Harper Vale, a roguish but decent young man that had greased his way into the knight's good graces. The two deemed the girls damsels, and decided they seemed quite distressed and thus after providing a Imp of Tongues to each of them to get past the language problem, asked them to accompany them on their journeys until they could help them find their way to safety. The two acted as personal guides to the strange new world the girls found themselves in, which seemed to be one somewhat similar to their own in development, only with an abundance of magic, steam technology, and severely altered history, so much so that this long after several key divergence points in human history, it seemed almost unrecognizable.
Accompanying the two on a quest for treasure to bring back as tribute to their king, they navigated a dangerous temple full of traps and puzzles to a treasure cache. Unfortunately, they didn't understand that the treasure itself held its own traps. While Leela picked up and put on a necklace, Irene touched a small glowing jewel, and both girls found themselves in a world of trouble. The necklace bonded to Leela's neck, and Irene, idly wishing that she could be someplace warmer--as the area they were in had necessitated the both of them acquiring fur cloaks--found herself in the middle of the desert, the gem dull and dead in her hand, the last of its magic spent.
Leela, who had no idea what had just happened to her friend, and no idea what had just happened to herself, panicked, and set off one of the temple's traps. A quick-thinking Harper tripped another trap to interfere with the first and triggered a chain reaction that started causing all the trap mechanisms to tear themselves apart, and ushered her and Fitzy out as the temple broke down around them. (After grabbing quite a bit of the treasure, of course).
With no way of knowing where Irene had gone, and feeling rather ill, presumably from the necklace that had bonded itself to her flesh, Leela went on with Harper and Fitzy back to their kingdom's capital, heartbroken over the loss of her friend and worried sick about her well-being. It was on the way there that she was struck by the first vision.
A massacre, someplace far off, happening to innocent people with darker skin (more like her own than the seemingly European people in the area she was in). It seemed at first to be a horrible, head ache inducing dream, but she had the vision in her dreams several more times, with even more clarity. Another vision came to pass right before her eyes as Harper fell off the unstable bridge they were crossing and into the rushing river ten feet below. Thanks to her foresight, Leela was able to grab him before he went into the drink, and with Fitzy's help, pull him back up, but it was then she realized that she'd somehow--most likely though the amulet that had melded with her body--gotten a gift of prophetic visions.
Which meant the massacre she kept seeing over and over again was going to happen.
When the trio reached the capital and stayed in the king's castle, she tried to implore the two to go with her, explaining the visions and they she thought many--perhaps even thousands were going to die--and that she kept seeing flashes of them being murdered at the hands of ceramic monsters with fire burning in their eyes.
Unknown to her, the wily, old king (who most of the world thought was quite senile because of how he acted) had all the rooms of the castle bugged with magical "bugs," recording devices the bugs whispered to him about the the knight and Harper figuring out where the place in her vision might be, the colonial city of Matihafa in the Kingdom of Baht Wahid. The king heard her trying to implore his knight to go stop the massacre, but Fitzy and Harper refused, as they couldn't just go without the king's blessing.
Therefore, the next day, whacky, senile King Yann randomly decided that a tribute must be sent as a gift, some of the treasure from the temple (which turned out to be Wahidian artifacts) to his neighboring ally, Baht Wahid.
Wondering if there was more to the "senile" old king than what met the eye, Leela took her leave of Marbrook with Fitzy and Harper, to make the perilous trek over the mountains to the coast city of Matihafa. Adventures were had, bandits were beaten down, and giants were fought along the way, but eventually they made it, and we welcomed by the city Magistrates.
There were two major ethnic groups in the city and while both were now treated fairly, they had, at turns, persecuted one another through the history of the colonized kingdom, ever since the original invasion of the Agti by the Laktu. With some snooping, the three revealed a plot by a some of the Agti Magistrates and Under-Ministers to usurp the Laktu in power and release giant golems from the first war (that ran on human souls and thus would get stronger as the genocide went on) to help their soldiers and mercenaries murder all the Laktu, and any Agti that were seen as "sympathetic" to them.
With Fitzy fighting the Agti Coup's very powerful right-hand man and destroying the golems before activation, Harper setting up a Thaumiphone to broadcast the leader's words, and Leela getting the leader of the coup to confess his plans (without knowing they were being broadcasted across the marketplace for everyone to hear and thinking she would be silenced when he killed her) they were able to stop the plan from going under way. Leela barely escaped with her life, but the genocidal coup was ruined thanks to the three's efforts and the people of the city--both Agti and Laktu--rising up and taking down the treasonous group to preserve the peace of their city. Leela's nightmarish vision was averted.
Fitzy and Harper were given lavish rewards and the alliance between the two kingdoms was stronger than ever. Leela was asked what reward she wanted, and knowing that if she were to find Irene, it would be a long journey and she needed to be able to survive this world and defend herself, so she asked to be trained in the manner the palace guards were.
Because the ones who trained them were monks, this was a most offensive request--and she knew it--especially since the monks would have to live for however long in isolation as part of a purification ritual as they came into physical contact with her on a regular basis. She was obliged on the condition that she only stay for a year, and after which, she would not longer be allowed in the city, for requesting something so offensive to their cultural practices and taking advantage of their generosity.
Monk Sunan was the one that taught her. He hated her guts and kicked her ass. 17 hours of training a day, two fifteen minute eating breaks, two fifteen minute bathroom breaks, six hours a sleep a night. Every day. Without rest or respite. She was trained in Muahlavani Varzrit, a quick, graceful martial art that puts emphasis on hard strikes at pressure points and other weak points, and in the use of an Hibis Janzir--a handheld scythe and chain.
Towards the end of her training, she had a vision of Irene in a desert city.
By the end of their time together, they hated one another marginally less, Leela accepted her banishment, bid farewell to her teacher--who then had to go live in seclusion for a year--and went out into the wilderness, to try to find Irene. She ran into Fitzy and Harper one last time--they knew when she'd leave the city when her year was up and were waiting for her in a border city on the other side of the mountains (pretending they were there on unrelated busines), and they helped send her on her way with some gold, a spook-light (a will o' the wisp trapped in a lantern--going in the opposite direction it tells you sends you along in the right direction), and other supplies, as well as advice on where to go because they had a good guess of what city she'd seen in her vision due to a landmark in the background.
She then started the long journey to find Irene, one made even more desperate due to another vision--one of Irene's head on an executioner's block, and an ax-blade falling.
After several small adventures, involving werewolves, ridiculous witch hunts in small towns, and other such distractions, Leela was abducted into Stacy.
And she's fuckin' pissed.