Vera Greensborough
From Changeling Venue
| Seeming | Elemental Waterborn |
|---|---|
| Court | Spring Court •••• |
| Freehold | Freehold of the Seven Hills - Seattle, WA |
| Player | Bobbi R |
Contents |
Overview
ALL OF THE BELOW IS SUBJECT TO STORYTELLER APPROVAL AND MAY CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE.
Alias(es): Sister Heroin/e, Mother Mercy (or Mother Merciless as it was sometimes said), Cruel April, Morphine Mary, Tiger-Pit Tess to name a few. The imagination of the soldier is nearly boundless and the names they gave her were many and varied. You may have heard a few more yourself.
Real Name: Emily Bonham-Yard
Age: ?? (Apparent: mid 20's)
Court: Spring
Seeming: Elemental
Kith: Waterborn
Known History
I've washed my face in the rivers of Empire -- Calexico "Sunken Waltz"
Basic Timeline:
Born: Long Island, NY 1899
Taken: In the North Atlantic, October 29th, 1929 "Black Tuesday"
Returned New York, NY Sept. 11th, 2001
Arrived in Seattle, WA 2003
Current Activities:
Currently employed for Dr. Fouyr as a nurse at his clinic. While her formal training is paltry having no fancy framed degrees on her wall, even the most trained doctors will marvel at her skill as an emergency medical technician and field surgeon. She spends a great deal of time as a volunteer at the local veteran's hospital.
Background:
"And I thought Verdun was bad."
Going to war was a patriotic duty. There were no military nurses, so all were encouraged to go as civilians. Being too young to go, they overlooked her little fib about her age, desperate as they were for bodies, at seventeen she went to war with the boys. What happened on the Western Front is well documented now. The misery was overwhelming. She was junior in her role and not nearly as well trained as the other nurses, but when the Spanish Flu took most of the medical staff with no waning in casualties, and no relief coming, she was recruited into grimer detail. She doesn't speak much of the war, but if pressed she will recount her leave in Paris.
"It wasn't really leave. It was just a break from the mud. *chuckle* There was still a lot of work to be done in the hospitals there. Training, and rounds with the doctors and suddenly a lot of paperwork. We worked from 5:30 am until 9pm at night most of the time. They would let us girls off early some Saturday nights to go to the veteran dances. It was lovely, some of the girls had beautiful french perfume they would share. And the boys were all so sharp looking in their uniforms. They looked like flocks of exotic tropical birds out on the dance floor with the girls, swirling and laughing as they did. There were always the boys who hung back, stood along the wall. You knew they were there just to watch. I always asked them to dance with me. They were shy, and would often take a lot of coaxing. But I always insisted. They didn't come to dance--they didn't expect to dance because they had no arms."
After the war she received a nursing degree, but her real passion was veterans issues. She lobbyed the government and was heavily involved in various groups to remind the government of its promise to its soldiers during that time. All the benefits, and particularly the occupational retraining they promised were paltry concessions in the face of the mass mutilation of that generation. She was on her first voyage back to France since the war when the wire came in of the stock market crash. Even out in the Atlantic, staring out at the black sea she knew her fight was over. The government could never keep their promise now. It was Oct. 29, 1929--Black Tuesday.
Cold, crisp air was replaced with cloying, fecund humidity.
"I don't know how I came to be in that place, hacking through a jungle so thick it blotted out the sun. There were so many others with me. It was tough to tell how many for sure, because there wasn't really any clearing in that jungle big enough to fit so many. At the center of it was the Tree. World Tree, Tree of Life, you know the stories, whatever it was, it was everything to us. What meagre succour could be had in that place, came directly from that tree--not that anyone ever got to really enjoy it. We were at a sustenance level, if you could even call it that. I cut tiger trails and dug pits and tunnels with the rest of them. I don't know how long I labored blindly like that. It wasn't until the first time I saw the jungle catch fire (who thought it could?) that I realized it was a war. The Burners would burn down the tree! Wounded came tumbling back blackened, maimed and blind and I jumped out of pit to catch one of the soldiers. I was tending to him, when a guard snatched me back by my hair and brought me to what must have been a field hosptial where I saw such a wreck of misery as I had theretofore thought unimaginable. My task was clear, and putting what little training I had to task, it quickly improved as there was a never ending stream of wounded on which to practice. Others stories are much like my own, it may be that I just outlived any senior officer but eventually I was out on the field with the soldiers setting the traps, organizing patrols and eventually planning full scale assaults on the Burners, the Witherers, and those that would chill our teeth out of our heads. They called me the Spring Commander. All of it to protect the tree. All of it for nothing.
"The heroic Battle of the Mountain is for others to tell. Suffice to say, I "heroically" crawled out of the lake in Central Park--not that I recognized it properly then. I could see the glorious blue sky for the first time, even if it was obsured by plumes of smoke, I thought for sure it was just another war and well, I guess it was."
(For more information on the Battle of the Mountain, see the dossiers on Harrison Rhys and Field Marshall Desert Wind.)
Whatever Vera lost when she was taken, she's playing it close to the vest. She had no husband or much in the way of family ties when she was taken. She had a few friends from her various volunteer efforts and a small apartment she shared with a roommate. They are all dead now.
Motley
A known member of 89 Days.
Allies and Friends
Harrison Rhys -- Motley mate, and one of the three people known to her, who knows where she came from better than she does anymore.
Field Marshall Desert Wind -- The other brother "Darryl". A member of 89 Days.
Aliathar the Ghost -- Thus far the only person in her motley she even comes close to liking as a person.
Dr. Fouyr -- For whom she works at the clinic
Quinn Denton -- Likeminded about how free time is best spent.
Soundtrack
Rusted Wheel -- Silversun Pickups
One -- Metallica
Rite of Spring -- Stravinsky
Hope -- The Dirty Three
True Happiness This Way Lies -- The The
Never Going Back Again -- Lindsey Buckingham
Lili Marleen Author's Note: This video is intensely f**ked up. Please don't send me hate mail. I know.
Inspirations
The letters of a WWI nurse I read while processing her private papers left to the SDSU Special Collections Library while I worked there. Sadly, her name is lost to my memory.
Johnny Got His Gun -- Dalton Trumbo
Quotes
Feel free to add your own here
"Suck it, hippie!" -- Field Marshall Desert Wind
Rumors and Scuttlebutt
It is whispered by some that Vera actively reduced her Wyrd upon returning after such a long stay in Faerie for fear of becoming an even greater target to her former Keeper. Their suspicions were first raised by her alleged reactions to personages with very high Wyrd.
Her stainless steel hypodermic needle, if it is even the original, may be nothing more than a grim souvenir as most believe, or one of the deadliest instruments to ever come out of Arcadia. It is unknown if it is special in any way or even fae in origin; it would be an odd fae instrument at that. Suspicion was first aroused when it was noted she kept it with her always when the tales of literally countless "mercy killings" of supposedly wounded soldiers on all sides of the war began to spread. Some even go so far as to say it's not used for injection, but rather for extraction.
It is rumored that Vera's durance was not continuous, but rather that she has been in and out of Arcadia. For how long, when, where, and why is pure speculation.
