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Your character's name: Lady Sybil Deirdre Olgivanna Ramkin-Vimes
Your character's canon: Discworld
What type of canon is it (Book series, film, etc.): Books series
Your character's LJ: iwhinny4dragons
Is your character living or dead at their time of entry?: Very much alive.
Does your character have any pre-existing disabilities of a medical, physical, or psychiatric nature?: None whatsoever.
Your character's personality: Sybil's personality works in chronic consistencies: She is steadfast, kind, shrewd, wry, remarkably self confident or at least understanding of who she is, open to experiences and people, unfailingly practical* and extremely, extremely noble. Sybil is so much of an aristocrat that she doesn't need to try and act like one; her lineage and wealth are so indisputable that she may instead go about being herself, sometimes loud and always straightforward, and usually covered in dragon muck and wearing armor of varying thicknesses. Sybil knows how to focus herself and her energies, and it very good at prioritizing and juggling obligations. Some might question the things she chooses to prioritize, but she manages never to neglect any aspect of her life that she deems important. At one time fervently devoted to her swamp dragons and only her swamp dragons, in the recent years she has become a wife and a mother and put these things at the forefront, though without sacrificing her attention to the swamp dragon cause. She is wholly devoted to her husband and son, and loves them the way only a woman who's been saving up all her love without realizing it can. Sybil is resourceful and smart and very observant. She's very much like her husband, except where Sam is completely lacking in all manners, Sybil has been inundated with them. Despite her husband's regrettable hours and devotion to his city, she supports his career and endeavors, because she knows that he has the same devotion to her and their son that she does, only he's spread himself a bit more thinly, the dear man. Sybil's got breeding, and part of this breeding enables her to like pretty much anyone, which is quite a feat, particularly when one spends a good deal of time around insufferable aristocrats or Watchmen.
*In some ways, mostly the ones not pertaining to swamp dragons, which are wholly impractical in and of themselves. This does not stop her from devoting much of herself to their well being, however, which is a flawed pursuit seeing as they've the unfortunate tendency of blowing themselves up at the slightest provocation.
Why do you want to play this character?: Sybil is impossibly refreshing. She has no dangerous edge (though she can Duchess like nobody's business, and indeed, can make Duchess a verb), no ulterior motives and no especially scarring experiences, or at least would never perceive them as such. She is grateful or the experiences of her life because they've gotten her the life she has. She has a lot of love in her and a great willingness to be friends, and know people. The more hopeless a case, the more of an affiliation she will feel, not out of an arrogant cultivation of sympathy for those less fortunate, but out of a feeling of obligation, that all people deserve to be treated well, at least up until the point where they prove they do not, at which point you continue to do so because just because someone else is unpleasant doesn't mean you have to be, too. Sybil would want to be involved in the examination of the smaller herbivore or omnivore dinosaurs, would do well with children, and would possibly find a way to create junky 'fast food' food. This is not easy, but Sybil is a determined woman, and she knows what her husband likes. She would also be VERY into 'society', seeing as everyone's much more pleasant than the people she's used to. I think she and Jane Bennett would get organization-crazy together.
Tell us about your character's background:
Growing up, Sybil was well educated and overlooked. In adulthood, she was well connected and not overly thought of. This didn't bother her, and she dedicated herself wholly to the breeding and care of swamp dragons, letting her estates fall into disarray and dropping out of high society. She did not miss it. Then she met Sam Vimes of the Night Watch. Rather unexpectedly, and without so precise a vocabulary, she fell in love with him. It involved a dragon being made king and herself nearly being sacrificed to it and quite a lot of running around, but the end result was, Sam Vimes came, also unexpectedly, to love her also and they married. Sybil knew Sam would be actively against being integrated into Society, so she made an effort for the both of them. She donated one of her family homes to the Watch, fixed up the Ramkin mansion, and began arranging the life she felt her husband deserved- the best one possible. As Sam was continually awarded new rank- first made Commander of the Ankh Morpork City Watch, and then Duke- Sybil found herself faced with a higher profile (impressive for a woman already of the oldest of the Old Families and by far the wealthiest in the city), as well as a more dangerous lifestyle. Then, in the way married women often do, she found herself pregnant. And past the age of 45. The pregnancy was difficult and she nearly died, but Vimes knew the right doctor to call, and with the compensation received for saving her founded a free hospital in Sybil's name. In her wifedom, she has taken to darning socks (poorly) and cooking for her husband (also not well, but Sam likes it that way) not because she needs to but because she firmly believes that it is her duty. Similarly, she only leaves their son Sam in the care of his nursemaid when she has pressing business related to her dragons, or an important function to attend. The rest of the time she's with him because she believes taking care of one's own child is what a mother does. It is at this point in her life, happily (if sometimes stressfully, and sometimes a bit lonely because Sam is never not busy fighting crime, except at 6 o'clock) wed and a mother that she arrives on Tabula Rasa.
Your character's initial personal inventory:
When Sybil arrives on the island, she has with her:
A blue and yellow full length dress, slightly singed and a bit mucky around the hem
One pair giant rubber galoshes with steel toes and thick heels, green (or at least, they used to be)
One pair thick fire-proof gloves, brown
Appropriate Undergarments
One voluminously curled auburn wig
A chain mail, file-retardant vest
A leather and ceramic, fire-retardant armor plate that goes over the vest
A heavy, leather, fire-retardant apron
A toddler, named Samuel, who has on his person:
A one piece blue footed pajama suit
A cloth diaper
A swamp dragon
Your character's entrance post:
Lady Sybil Ramkin-Vimes was not a connoisseur of dragons as much as she was a lover of dragons. She had experienced all manner of temperament and digestive stability, and loved the poor benighted creatures for their personalities and the affection they offered and way they did try ever so hard, despite their rather unfortunate predilection for stupidity, to get along from day to day. All they really wanted was to eat things and have a family, and sometimes mate or flame a bit, and who could blame them?
This one, though. This one was a different kind of beast, very young and from the rescue home, and for some reason, extremely inclined towards the indoors, which was traditionally a bad place for a swamp dragon to be. She had abandoned her headgear because it made tracking the blue devil difficult, and anyway he had no flame to speak of. He was intensely excitable, however, and liked to claw his way up vertical surfaces snorting out little plumes of smoke and waggling his useless little wings in the air. He reminded her, in many ways, of Errol. And he had scrabbled up the stairs for the baby's room. Sybil trudged up the staircase after his excited little whines and sputters, and was greeted, once in the nursery, by the sight of Young Sam standing, having pulled himself up against the railing of the cot, and trying to see beneath his crib as the young as of yet unnamed dragon was scrabbling all over Dribble, who couldn't have been bothered for all the still burning coal in the world. His response to the young, enthusiastic newcomer was, basically, to dribble a little on the carpet and roll over. Young Sam reached up his hands, fingers curling and uncurling, and said "Ma" which would, she firmly believed, in another month be Mam. She smiled, shaking some of the mass of curls of her wig away from her face, pulled her gloves off and hooked them on the heavy apron that dropped to about mid-shin. She lifted her son out of his crib and cradle him close.
"One hour til Daddy's back home," she said, and Young Sam squealed with delight and cried, "Da!" Sybil smiled more and kissed her son's head, and bounced him a little.
"Let's get our newest young man out of here before he upsets poor old Dribble too much, shall we?" she proposed, even as the lumpy blue creature flung itself up, talons lodging in the protective thickness of the apron and tried to ingest her gloves with positively no success. Young Sam laughed something nonsensical.
"Will you help mommy name him? I'm sure you will. Let's call for Purity to bring you something small while I wrestle this one back to its pen," she said, and walked, the dragon's legs and tail dragging against the carpet, for the hallway. She pushed the door open further and stepped out to the landing, opening her mouth to call for Young Sam's nursemaid- which was almost a shame, because before she had been such, Purity had been rather one of her best girls for the dragons- and stopped.
She blinked at the sandy ground dappled with sunlight that was filtering through the canopy of quite exotic looking trees arched over head. She looked at Young Sam, whose eyebrows were raised up and was taking in everything with a very round gaze that she could have sworn was, in fact, a bit suspicious. Her own look was similar. She looked down at the dragon huffing confusedly around the gloves in its mouth, eyes rolling at the queer surroundings, but not daring to let go.
"I hope daddy isn't bringing his work home with him again," she murmured.