Beka's Bio
Name: Amy
Livejournal: hawkwolf
Contact: AIM: Aewaller04 plurk: otokoyakudream
Other Characters Played: assassinskeeper & capuletguarddog
Are you 18 or over? Yes, unless I've spontaneously de-aged.
Canon: Provost's Guard series by Tamora Pierce
Character: Rebekah 'Beka' Cooper
Timeline: A week or so post Bloodhound
Personality: Beka is very much a young woman who defines herself via her job. She is one of the Provost's Dogs, and she never forgets that. This is not to say she can not relax and enjoy herself, but she believes very strongly in the ideas of fairness and law the Dogs aspire to. She is, however, a realist, and law enforcement in Tortall is still in its infancy. Bribes are part and parcel of her work, up to and including the quasi-official "Happy Bags" the Dogs collect from business owners and the Court of the Rogue. These sorts of things she has no problem with - it's only when bribes let truly dangerous criminals go free, or Dogs want more bribes from citizens than those citizens can pay that she takes offense. She's also not blind, she knows the city's justice system has serious problems, but she's also a realist enough to know she can't fix them all. So she tries to do her best, and focuses her efforts on trying to make the city safer for the poorest folk, those who are often forgotten.
For all that she's confident and competent in her professional life, Beka is remarkable shy in her personal life. When she doesn't have the security of her job to fall back on, Beka is very quiet, and a touch insecure. She also has absolutely no skill at public speaking, something that is only aggravated the higher-class her audience is. This is the one time where her being a Dog isn't a help - she has a lot of problems making official reports to the knights who run her district.
This is not to say she can't stand up for herself or even get snippy with people who annoy her. She can give back as good as she gets from anyone, she's just not likely to make the first attack. Still, even with her friends, she's far more likely to sit back and listen, throwing in a comment or two and letting other take the lead in conversation. Her favorite social pastime is dancing, mostly because she doesn't have to talk.
In general, she's a very practical young woman, not easily excited or upset. She's also very able to be friends with people who she might have to one day arrest. In fact, most of her friends and housemates are members of the Court of the Rogue, including the Rogue himself. But as long as she has no hard evidence of them being involved in illegal activity, she is perfectly happy to befriend them. But if she ever did have that evidence, she wouldn't hesitate to turn them in. She even turns in one of her Dog partners for having accepted a bribe to overlook murder.
Background: Beka was born into abject poverty in the Cesspool area of the Lower City in Corus. Though it's mentioned that her father bet a silver noble coin that she would be a boy, there's no mention of him in her life, and it's implied he either died or ran off, both common occurrences in the Lower City. Her mother, Ilony scraped together a living for Beka and her four other siblings by working as an herbalist, but Beka mentions she spent much of her early childhood hungry. When she was eight, her mother contracted a chronic lung rotting disease, which affected her ability to work. Her lover at the time beat her for not bringing in money, which incensed young Beka, who then tracked the man through the city, only to discover he was a member of the Bold Brass gang, a gang of toughs who'd been terrorizing the wealthy districts of the city for over a year. She first tried going to her local kennel (guard station), but no one there believed an eight-year old girl. So instead she essentially threw herself in front of the first noble-looking person she saw, who luckily for her was the Lord Provost, who did listen to her, and believe her. Her information helped lead to the gang's arrest, which saved his reputation. In gratitude he moved Beka and her entire family out of the Cesspool and into his household.
At age ten, Beka started showing some very odd quirks that her mother originally feared meant Beka was going mad. But after consultation with Beka's paternal grandmother, it was discovered that she just had very minor magical talent, related to things of the air, and that her father had had similar talent. Her grandmother helped her control her talent, which was limited to being able to communicate with 'dust spinners' - swirls of wind and dust that collect on street corners - and hear the ghosts of the dead that are carried on the backs of living pigeons. Beka eventually uses both sources of information to help her with her work as a Dog, since magic is an accepted part of her world.
Her mother died when she was fourteen, but the Lord Provost and his wife made sure to continue providing for Beka and her siblings, going as far as to train them for professions they would not have otherwise been able to get. Beka was the only one who shared the Lord Provost's love for law enforcement work, much to his wife's displeasure, and he encouraged her to train as a Dog.
Sometime while she was living with the Lord Provost, before she started Dog training, Beka made the acquaintance of a black cat with purple eyes she called Pounce. Pounce was no ordinary cat - he is in fact a constellation taking physical form. He can talk, or at least make himself understood to anyone he wishes, but he still has a very cat-like personality, so he's never quite as much help as Beka might like.
Beka moved out of the Lord Provost's house when she started training as a Dog at age fifteen. For the year of training she lived in the Puppy (trainee Dogs) barracks, and then rented an apartment on Nipcopper Close in the Lower City near where she works. She chose to be assigned to the Lower City, wanting to help make a difference for Corus's poorest folk. Once she finished schooling, she still had a year as a Puppy, working the streets under the mentorship of two of the best Dogs in the local kennel, Goodwin and Tunstall. In that year she more than proved herself, not only learning quickly and assisting her partners, but she was also instrumental in uncovering illegal mining of fire opals and tracking down the serial child-stealer/killer called the Shadow Snake.
After finishing her Puppy training and becoming a full Dog, Beka went through several partners, for a variety of reasons. She ended up getting partnered back with Goodwin and Tunstall until Tunstall got his legs broken while attempting to help control a riot. She also turned up evidence that someone was filtering 'coles' (counterfeit coins) into the money system. This got her and Goodwin assigned to investigate, which sent them to the port city of Port Caynn to investigate.
Before they left however, Beka intervened when she saw a senior Dog beating a scent hound, as she has a soft spot for animals and hates to see them mistreated. The senior Dog decided to shove responsibility for said scent hound, named Achoo, off on Beka, and she found herself having to quickly learn a whole new set of skills on how to handle a scent hound. However, in the end, Achoo proved her usefulness when she and Beka tracked down the counterfeiter in Port Caynn.
Abilities/Additional Notes: Beka has two 'powers', though both are very minor in scope. First, she can communicate with 'dust spinners', swirls of dust that collect on some street corners. If she's polite, and especially if she donates a handful or so of dirt and dust from somewhere else, the dust spinner will 'release' the conversations that have recently taken place near it. She rarely gets full conversations, but on more than one occasion she's picked up hints that have helped point her investigations in the right direction, or hinted at new things she needs to investigate.
Second, she can hear and sometimes talk to the ghosts of the dead, which are carried on the backs of living pigeons. In Tortall, pigeons are sacred to the Black God of death, and thus ghosts that aren't quite ready to accept that they're dead yet are carried by pigeons, though except for Beka, people can't hear them. She can sometimes ask questions of them, but the ghosts aren't always able to answer. But as with the dust spinners, she has gotten several good clues and hints in the past.
As Adstrigendum doesn't really have people staying dead (or pigeons?), I figure her talking-to-ghosts thing would be essentially useless. The dust spinners though I think she might be able to find. I would put up a permission post for her finding out anything of course.
She would also be arriving with Achoo, who is an unremarkable mixed breed dog except for being highly trained to respond to certain commands Beka knows (mostly focused on getting and following scents and some minor guarding commands).
Pounce will not be coming with her.
Sample Journal Post: [Video comes on, quite accidentally, showing an extreme close-up of a dog's nose sniffing the PCD. Then the dog sneezes, three times, liberally covering the screen in dog-snot]
Achoo? What'cha you find?
[The dog whines and noses at the PCD. Beka comes into view, and leans over to pick up the device with a handkerchief, wiping it off before she turns it over and over in her hands.]
What's this now? [She looks up and around, mostly ignoring the PCD, though she doesn't drop it.]
What sorta fen-sucked place is this? Someone musta cracked my nob somethin' fierce to drag me all the way out here without me wakin' up.
[The dog whines a bit and she shakes her head]
Ain't no part of Corus I know. Tumit Achoo, ain't no use standing 'round here. If we've been nabbed, best t'figure where we be afore whomever nabbed us comes looking.
[She starts walking, and slips the PCD in her pocket]
Sample RP: "Down here" Pounce meowed, and Beka sighed and quickened her pace with an apologetic look at Turstall. Such warning usually led to discovering important crimes, yes, but were also the reason Beka had one of the highest healer bills of any of the Dogs at Jane Street Kennel. Sure enough, she rounded the corner and there were two Rats beating a young man.
"Stop in the name of the Lord Provost!" she called out, taking a firm hold on Achoo's leash as she tried to stand so she looked more authoritative than she felt. Both rushers looked up, and their victim took the moment of inattention to scramble to his feet.
"Looks like the little mot wants to play with the big coves," one of the rushers said, but the other shook his head.
"That'un's Cooper. I ain't no looby gonna mess with the Terrier"
Both of them tried to bolt, but Turstall had already positioned himself at the other end of the alley, effectively blocking the rushers' retreat.
"Come now gentlemen" Turstall said in his usual hillman drawl, "Just come along to the kennel quiet-like and we'll have no trouble."
Beka snorted. She recognized the second one who'd spoken from the last time she and Turstall had collected the Happy Bag from the Court of the Rouge, and she'd lay silver that the Rouge would get at least that one out of the Cages before the night was out. But that was just how these things worked. She knelt and unclipped Achoo's leash. "Jaga, Achoo got it? jaga." The scent hound shifted into a guarding position, and Beka stood, still eying both rushers as she wrapped Achoo's leash around her hand. "Now you coves gonna come peaceful-like or not?"
She could see the two men sizing both her and Turstall up and braced herself. Sure enough, the first man broke, charging towards her, thinking to shove past her. But she was no first year Puppy to get caught by something so obvious. She sidestepped his charge and brought her baton up, driving it into the man's stomach. He doubled over, coughing, and she brought the baton down on the back of his head, dropping him to the ground. Turstall was already hobbling the other rusher, and the man they'd saved was babbling his thanks. This was the part of any hobbling she hated. Why couldn't folk just be thankful quietly without making a big production of it? Hobbling Rats was just what Dogs did. They didn't get all blubbery over a baker making a loaf of bread, so why'd they get so crazy about Dogs doing their job?