Post by Yves on Mar 10, 2009 20:59:25 GMT -5
Name: Fieuline Tabby [Pron. fyu-LEEN] (Nickname: “Elly” or “F'line”)
Gender: Female
Age: 25
Species: Mouse
Occupation: Self-proclaimed PR representative for vermin, president of the “Mice for Vulpine Rights Group,” sole journalist, editor and publisher of the “Rat's Nest” newspaper, self-employed spy, unpaid mercenary, thief, seamstress, professional moocher, and whatever else is convenient to her.
Physical Appearance:
Fieuline looks young, even for her age. Her fur is mostly a silky, golden brown, although it is white velvet at her chest and jaw-area. Her tail is short, and fur-covered, while her ears are unusually tall, but thin. Everything about her body breathes a certain petite elegance, while maintaining a lithe vigor. Her eyes sum it up. They are not merely blue, but a deep azure, like the farthest piece of sky—but like the skies, they are prone to drizzles, lightning, fire, and every subtle mixture of cloud and light. Her whole body is a mirror to her emotions. When she cries, her every particle quakes; her tail curls, her fur cringes and wanes, her ears droop. When she's angry, there's not a whisker on her face that doesn't quiver with the emotion. As for her laughter, her body is a delicate, celestial instrument, that only humor can play.
As for clothes, Fieuline tends to err toward the pretentious. She wears a long, silver-blue coat, with two tails which reach nearly to her ankles, like old-fashioned riding coats of our world. The material is sewn around strong pieces of leather, giving the costume an extremely stiff appearance. At the shoulders and elbows, the pieces are connected by thin strips of thinner, white cloth, to allow for easier movement. The coat buttons at her neck down, and ends with a long, loose collar, which lies on her shoulders, almost like a shawl. Underneath it all, she wears a white blouse, ruffled where it shows over the coat. She also wears a black belt with a silver buckle, in which she holds her sword.
Like all creatures, Elly's appearance is not perfect. When the mouse was very young, she cut herself just above her right thigh on a piece of scrap metal. The wound immediately began to swell, and before the day was out, she had a fever, and the next morning, she couldn't get out of bed. Although she eventually recovered, certain muscles in her back were permanently paralyzed. She was still able to walk, but the disaster left a portion of her back where the muscles never grew, which is now an unsightly, almost debilitating hollow. This forces her to stand with an extremely erect posture, and to walk with a slight limp.
Possessions
Elly was born a researcher, and she has never quite forgotten it. Wherever she is, she always manages to come into possession of the latest scripts about that place. Whether the report is stolen from the local recorder's cabinets, or taken from the very walls of some library, she is almost always in possession of some scroll or book or newspaper. She is rarely ignorant of the history, people, and events of the townships she travels through.
Besides this, Elly is a master tailor. She made her coat herself, and she never goes anywhere without the materials necessary to repair any damage she manages to do. She sometimes sells basic outer-wear for profit, if she ever finds herself going hungry, or simply needs the money for one purpose or other. Of course, she's usually too lazy for much of this.
However, these are only side-professions to Elly, mere distractions and tools for achieving her ultimate end—the furtherance of vermin rights everywhere, which necessarily involves a weapon. Her blade comes from her home-village, now unique in all the world for its design. It is, in essence, a modified hand-scythe. The weapon is longer than its agrarian counterpart, and the hilt has a cage to it, added for arm-length dueling. The most notable difference between the sword and the reap, however, has to do with the position of the blade. On the farm-tool, the sharp end lines the inside of the crescent. On the weapon, the blade is on the outer-edge, and the whole apparatus ends in a hook. This design creates an arc-like construct for the blade when it hits another, increasing its self-dependent strength. The real advantage to the swordsman, however, comes through in the unique methods of handling the blade, which calls for an entirely different style than the average swordsman will be ready for. The weapon acts like an enormous hook for the parry and disarm, but still functions as a blade for offense.
Personality:
There are some people who are simply born with passion. They come into the world kicking and screaming, pissed off about the whole injustice of child-birth, and from then on life is a crusade against the reality of the universe. In several ways, Elly is one such crusader, but in most, she merely pretends. She is a flighty grumbler, someone who's full of emotion (mostly for herself) but not alot of action. She writes, she badgers, she heckles, she travels and preaches, but when push comes to shove, she's perfectly happy to live dependent on some caretaker, who facilitates her laziness, and her whining.
To make this tendency worse, her “passions” are short-lived and inconsistent. She almost follows a predictable monthly pattern of passion, irritation, rage, exasperation, followed by slowly growing apathy, at which point she generally comes on some new idea to champion. It doesn't matter if the new idea is diametrically opposed to her old ideas; she doesn't think hard enough to recognize such contradictions.
Despite all this, there are some notable exceptions to her inconsistency. First and foremost, she has been and continues to be deeply involved with a variety of vermin, and she has made it her life's mission to achieve a better life for vermin everywhere. She is fully of the opinion that any evil associated with the infamous creatures is the responsibility of their “oppressors,” those animals which have historically kept them from achieving any sort of stability or greatness by killing their leaders and smashing their societies—namely, the woodlanders, particularly the denizens of Redwall and Salamandastron. She hates these creatures, and treats them with self-righteous spite.
Self-righteousness is one of the other absolutes to Fieuline's character. She believes, frankly and honestly, that she is the best of living creatures. Any fault she has is not only present in every other creature, but it is necessarily worse in them. This is true for both vermin and woodlanders; the difference is merely that vermin have been forced into this kind of life and she can “cure” them, while woodlanders choose it, and are lost forever. This has two side-effects: First, if ever self-pity has manifested itself on Earth, it was in this frail mouse's frame. If she has the cold, then it is the Plague. Any misfortune that befalls Elly befalls the best among mice, and that misfortune is therefore the most unfair, unjust tragedy of misfortunes. Second, she is neurotically paranoid. After all, she is the most honest of all creatures, and yet she lies. She is the most loving, most learned, most enlightened of all living things, and yet she is a murderer. This being the case, can she trust anyone? In her mind, the world is either evil or weak, and all that is evil not only opposes her, but does so through the most under-handed and wicked means possible.
Of course, this is all taken from the perspective of one who knows Fieuline deeply. Most do not, and one of Fieuline's greatest talents is her ability to manipulate people who don't know her. Whether it's the right way to limp through the mud to get invited into a house, or the right way to wail and complain to stir guilt in her hosts, she knows the strings to pull. She lays traps for people. When someone, seeing her sitting pitifully in some dank street, invites her to spend the night, she complains about her aching hunger. When they offer food, she is “offended,” and informs them that she is quite capable of providing for herself, and that if they think they're any better than her, she'll just travel on. When they apologize, she simply sticks up her nose, and tells them not to worry about it, that they're simply used to their wealth, and it isn't their fault if they haven't experienced enough to know the pride of the poor. Then, with a severely humbled host, she proceeds to live off her new hosts more shamefully than any mere beggar should ever be allowed to.
This is not to say that Fieuline has a strong sense of self-control, or that she has any mastery of her emotions and impulses whatever. Exactly the opposite is true—she is so masterful at giving full, unabashed, honest hyperbole of her feelings, that no one would ever doubt her words or her self-espoused good intentions.
So, in brief, Fieuline is a hateful, self-righteous, lazy fiend at heart, but she is more than capable of pretending to be otherwise, and her personality aside, she is an extremely capable beast. Among vermin, she is a veritable mother, a sighing, upset, but ultimately hopeful priest, who sees the evil in her children but knows that it is temporary and that, with her guidance, they will see the light. Among woodlanders, she is the epitomization of the loud-mouthed preacher, the mouse who hates mice, the woodlander who sees nothing but incorrigible evil in her own institutions, the very societies which brought her into being.
Strengths:
1. Masterful Propagandist—Fieuline is a trained journalist and has native talent for propaganda. She can stir the middle class to oust their rulers, and then call upon the supposed “workers and down trodden of society,” to upend the new “woodland society,” and then set herself up as a veritable aristocrat, all without ever seeming in contradiction. Although this ability is generally composed of little more than mere sophistry, and does not work well among the well-educated, most in Redwall's world are not well educated, and most cannot see through her self-absorbed lies.
2. A Genuine Believer—Fieuline is not given to lies or to expressing herself lightly. Because of this, when she says that she is a friend to rats, or that she hasn't had food in three days, or that her sister was killed by a marauding pack of hares, people believe her. She seems simply too passionate to lie.
3. Multifaceted Abilities—Fieuline is a quick learner, and she is already well-learned. Her home taught her basic sword technique, while she taught herself journalism and scholarly writing, while Maximillian taught her the art of alchemy and herbalism. Her accumulated skills, garnered from remarkably talented sources, are vast, and they demonstrate an ability to take in and hold knowledge for long periods of time.
Weaknesses:
1. Short Sighted—Because Fieuline is so over-the-top passionate, she often has a hard time seeing what is immediately in front of her nose. For all her analytical ability, it has never once occurred to her that vermin have, perhaps, always been “smashed” by woodlanders because of their nasty habit of starting such fights. She bends information for what she wants to believe, rather than for what is objectively true. Although everyone does this to a certain degree, she is so grotesque in the habit, that she often follow obviously murderous vermin simply to titillate some conviction, or ignore obvious truth which offends her. This can be dangerous at times and, in capable hands, it makes her easy to manipulate.
2. Head-strong Frailty—Fieuline is not a fighter, whatever she might like to pretend. Although she has always fancied herself a warrior of “toned reflexes and enormous strength,” the simply fact of the matter is that she is weak, slow, and clumsy. Where Maximillian is above average, even mediocre in all areas, she is terrible in all. She knows intellectually how to handle a sword, but she lacks intuition, and physical aptitude. In every physical area, she falls short. She is slow. She is weak. Her back is missing a chunk. She is almost like an old lady.
3. Inflammatory--Fieuline is absolutely devoid of courtesy. She says what's on her mind when it's on her mind, how it's on her mind, and her personality is such that this is going to get her killed 7 times out of 10.
History:
Excerpt from Fieuline's autobiographical journal, date unknown:
“If there is currently a town more backwards, containing stupider people than what Jetsuy once held, then the nearest vermin lord should sack it. He should then round up every living creature that ever called the town home, every speck of dust that might bear witness to the city, put them in a giant pile with all their belongings, and make a bonfire out of the festering mass.
"Jetsuy was nothing short of archaic, as far as its social and technological achievements went. It did not even have a historical calender, and as a result, all I know about my birth-date is that it happened... Supposedly. Once I'm dead, there will be no documentation to prove the fact, thanks to the blighted bastards.
“My earliest memories come from when I was a very little Dibbun. For some strange reason I have never understood, the townsfolk had gotten it into their heads that the family was an inadequate system for raising children. So, instead, they simply took about one fifth of the citizens, and trained them in education, so that all they would do, all their lives, was raise children. The rest worked, had kids, gave said kids to the “Educational System,” as they liked to call it, and then went back to work without ever knowing what their offspring grew into.
“So, I never knew either my father or my mother—Just Bill, my, shall we say, disgruntled keeper. He was not a father, as the enlightened among vermin choose to define father, but more of a machine, and a machine in grave need of repair at that. My earliest memories of him involve excuses for late dinners, for why he couldn't teach me to hunt as the other keepers taught their dibbuns, and a load of other rubbish. The fact of the matter was that he never really wanted to be a keeper, and when the Council forced it on him, he did his job as poorly and as lazily as anyone can expect a warrior-wannabe to perform what amounts to full-time babysitting. He wasn't abusive, or anything like that, and he didn't even neglect me to any huge degree. He, like most of life's victims, was merely the unhappy victim of the Woodland system.
“It was just another example of narrow-minded stupidity on the part of those imbeciles. 'Society needs keepers,' they said, 'so who gives a rip if anyone wants to be a keeper? They'll do it, like it or no, for everyone's good!' They were always full of half-intellectualized paff like that.
“Ironically enough, I actually benefit enormously from this out-dated system of theirs. Thanks to Bill's absolute incompetence, I was totally free. If I wanted to take up a sword, march ten miles straight north to Salamandastron, and slit the Badger Lord's fat, aristocratic triple throat, I probably could have done it without anyone ever missing me, or wondering what I was up to. If I had ever come back, they probably would never have found out. Whatever Bob might have taught, whatever I might have gained from a true father, it pales in relation to the lessons I learned on my own. There were scars, yes. The hollow in my back bears witness to where certain blunders led me, but on balance, independence was and is among my greatest strengths.
“Ah, but Jetsuy could not stand for it if any of their programs even inadvertently led to the success of one of their citizens. When I was a physically mature, but still very young mouse (again, I even to this day don't know my true age), I was suddenly assigned my position—journalist. I had never even heard the word. While I grew up learning how to use a sword, imagining, in my then deluded mind, mired in the tradition and racism of my peers, the armies of vermin I would slay, while I spent every day swimming, running and fighting until every one of my muscles was lean and practiced, those morons thought they would make a writer out of me. Not just any writer, either, but one of the most useless writers out there—the kind that sits in the shadows of diplomats and generals, so that the people at home could read the stories and imagine that their lives were composed of something more than menial, pointless, routine drudgery.
“So, after all those years of independence, of total freedom, the elders suddenly expected me to just adapt to some sort of transcribed purpose I was neither prepared for nor passionate about. Well, at first I tried to fulfill my “duty,” as they insisted on calling it—as though anyone bears any duty to anyone or anything but itself. I learned to keep the people entertained, and I may well have conformed to their bloody system, had it not been for their immutable desire to control everything. They wouldn't let me write about what I waned to write about. 'No!' they said, “You must support the war effort!” or 'No! You must undermine that priests credibility! You must learn to think of the city first and yourself second!' and a load of other statist rubbish.
“Well, I did what they suggested. The city, clearly, needed to be rid of this breed of hyper-controlling authoritarians, and so that's precisely what I wrote about—their idiocy. When they tried to stop me, I set up my own printing house. It wasn't difficult, and I even began to run what one might call a private business.
“Well, in retrospect, I realize what a terrible risk I had taken, defying the Powers like that, and it probably would have killed me if He had not come along. Maximillian, a rat of all creatures, was rescued off a pirating boat off the shore. We took him into our society, and raised him as one of our own. Naturally, as a young, self-employed journalist, this grabbed my attenttion, and, fortuitously enough, the attention of my oppressors. The mice were not at all willing to accept this creature into their society, and at first, I was of the same mind.
“However, I was about to enter into a rebirth of the mind and spirit. I was on the precipice of an entirely different life, stuck in the darkness of our collective Woodland past, but about to step out into the light of enlightened equality, into that light which condemns the old squirrel for his crimes but shines mercifully down on the young, and innocent rat, that light which does not discriminate for race.
“When I met Maximillian, all my previously concieved ideas of vermin were shattered. Here was someone entirely different from my society. Here was someone who had lived his own life, had fought his own battles, and who was, on the whole, utterly likable. He was courteous, kind, eccentric but not condescending. I was captivated, and in that sudden interest, I lost all remembrance of my former crusade against my society. This rat was my new topic. I devoted my writing to detailing his life, to documenting his history and to keeping the people informed on his day-to-day activities. This kept the people pleased, for they are always hungry for gossip on some strange new person, and it kept the Powers at bay, for they wanted society to accept this rat.
“Thus, I lived as a perfectly ordinary private-interest journalist while Maximillian stayed peacefully in our city. Nevertheless, the day came when he was sent out, when he left on his journey northward. I had wanted to accompany him, but the Elders did not allow it, and when I tried to go despite this, they physically restrained me.
“Well, that did excite the old bitterness. Once again I was on the war-path, and this time, I wouldn't win. Although I carried my campaign out for a good couple of years, the people of the town had begun to suspect my word, no doubt due to the campaigning of the Elders in their own little newspapers. In the end, they found some excuse to punish me. They banished me for some trifling cause I can't even remember at this point, for no more than three days. Idiots. They never had quite understood the concept of banishment. Apparently, they believed that living outside the life-giving bonds of organized society was enough torture to rectify any behavioral problem.
“Well, to make a long story short, the first thing I managed to do was to end up in the hands of a band of vermin, of all things. They might have killed me, mistaking me for an ordinary, much abusive woodlander, but, lo and behold, Maximillian was the chief servant of the warlord—the now infamous Charonne. He immediately recognized me, and although I never quite understood why or how, my life was spared. From that day forward, I acted as a companion to Maximillian, and a light to the party of vermin. During that time, I learned the lessons I still hold as true today on the nature of woodlanders and vermin. Although I lost my home, my friends, such as they were, and my... well, I suppose you could call that group a family, the experience grew me into the mouse I am today, and for that, I am always grateful to Max.”
~End of Entry~
The reality of the situation was thus: Maximillian had recognized Fieuline as a citizen of Jetsuy, and once he heard about her proposed banishment, he saw opportunity. Fieuline was obviously no friend to her town, and Charonne intended to conquer that town. Having the gates opened for them, with all the advantages of surprise, would render that conquest only too easy. So, with manipulation and feigned friendship, he and Charonne convinced the little mouse-maid that in the end, the best service she could do to her town was to end it, to blot out the hell-hole forever.
And she did it. The night after she was accepted into the town, she opened the gates, and, after the fight was over and what survivors there were had been captured, she displayed a passion for revenge and a willingness to kill that impressed even Maximillian. That is why he held the maid under his wing for the entirely of the horde's time, and it is why, when Charonne met her death, he went on to serve her. Under her direction, for the supposed benefit of “all living beings everywhere,” he commit more and bloodier murders than even he was used to. Yes, these were strategic targets, her philosophical opponents, and the “tyrants of woodlandome,” but that didn't slow her down. She killed more idealistically than Charonne, but she was more private, more secretive, more manipulative and subtle, and that made her all the more dangerous. To this day, besides Max and her, few know anything about how many she has ordered dead.
Relationships:
Although Max eventually did leave her for a greater horde, largely because she had decided to settle down as a journalist for Salamandastron, (reasoning that this bastion would be brought down by words, and not by blades), they have always maintained a certain servant-servant relationship.
Gender: Female
Age: 25
Species: Mouse
Occupation: Self-proclaimed PR representative for vermin, president of the “Mice for Vulpine Rights Group,” sole journalist, editor and publisher of the “Rat's Nest” newspaper, self-employed spy, unpaid mercenary, thief, seamstress, professional moocher, and whatever else is convenient to her.
Physical Appearance:
Fieuline looks young, even for her age. Her fur is mostly a silky, golden brown, although it is white velvet at her chest and jaw-area. Her tail is short, and fur-covered, while her ears are unusually tall, but thin. Everything about her body breathes a certain petite elegance, while maintaining a lithe vigor. Her eyes sum it up. They are not merely blue, but a deep azure, like the farthest piece of sky—but like the skies, they are prone to drizzles, lightning, fire, and every subtle mixture of cloud and light. Her whole body is a mirror to her emotions. When she cries, her every particle quakes; her tail curls, her fur cringes and wanes, her ears droop. When she's angry, there's not a whisker on her face that doesn't quiver with the emotion. As for her laughter, her body is a delicate, celestial instrument, that only humor can play.
As for clothes, Fieuline tends to err toward the pretentious. She wears a long, silver-blue coat, with two tails which reach nearly to her ankles, like old-fashioned riding coats of our world. The material is sewn around strong pieces of leather, giving the costume an extremely stiff appearance. At the shoulders and elbows, the pieces are connected by thin strips of thinner, white cloth, to allow for easier movement. The coat buttons at her neck down, and ends with a long, loose collar, which lies on her shoulders, almost like a shawl. Underneath it all, she wears a white blouse, ruffled where it shows over the coat. She also wears a black belt with a silver buckle, in which she holds her sword.
Like all creatures, Elly's appearance is not perfect. When the mouse was very young, she cut herself just above her right thigh on a piece of scrap metal. The wound immediately began to swell, and before the day was out, she had a fever, and the next morning, she couldn't get out of bed. Although she eventually recovered, certain muscles in her back were permanently paralyzed. She was still able to walk, but the disaster left a portion of her back where the muscles never grew, which is now an unsightly, almost debilitating hollow. This forces her to stand with an extremely erect posture, and to walk with a slight limp.
Possessions
Elly was born a researcher, and she has never quite forgotten it. Wherever she is, she always manages to come into possession of the latest scripts about that place. Whether the report is stolen from the local recorder's cabinets, or taken from the very walls of some library, she is almost always in possession of some scroll or book or newspaper. She is rarely ignorant of the history, people, and events of the townships she travels through.
Besides this, Elly is a master tailor. She made her coat herself, and she never goes anywhere without the materials necessary to repair any damage she manages to do. She sometimes sells basic outer-wear for profit, if she ever finds herself going hungry, or simply needs the money for one purpose or other. Of course, she's usually too lazy for much of this.
However, these are only side-professions to Elly, mere distractions and tools for achieving her ultimate end—the furtherance of vermin rights everywhere, which necessarily involves a weapon. Her blade comes from her home-village, now unique in all the world for its design. It is, in essence, a modified hand-scythe. The weapon is longer than its agrarian counterpart, and the hilt has a cage to it, added for arm-length dueling. The most notable difference between the sword and the reap, however, has to do with the position of the blade. On the farm-tool, the sharp end lines the inside of the crescent. On the weapon, the blade is on the outer-edge, and the whole apparatus ends in a hook. This design creates an arc-like construct for the blade when it hits another, increasing its self-dependent strength. The real advantage to the swordsman, however, comes through in the unique methods of handling the blade, which calls for an entirely different style than the average swordsman will be ready for. The weapon acts like an enormous hook for the parry and disarm, but still functions as a blade for offense.
Personality:
There are some people who are simply born with passion. They come into the world kicking and screaming, pissed off about the whole injustice of child-birth, and from then on life is a crusade against the reality of the universe. In several ways, Elly is one such crusader, but in most, she merely pretends. She is a flighty grumbler, someone who's full of emotion (mostly for herself) but not alot of action. She writes, she badgers, she heckles, she travels and preaches, but when push comes to shove, she's perfectly happy to live dependent on some caretaker, who facilitates her laziness, and her whining.
To make this tendency worse, her “passions” are short-lived and inconsistent. She almost follows a predictable monthly pattern of passion, irritation, rage, exasperation, followed by slowly growing apathy, at which point she generally comes on some new idea to champion. It doesn't matter if the new idea is diametrically opposed to her old ideas; she doesn't think hard enough to recognize such contradictions.
Despite all this, there are some notable exceptions to her inconsistency. First and foremost, she has been and continues to be deeply involved with a variety of vermin, and she has made it her life's mission to achieve a better life for vermin everywhere. She is fully of the opinion that any evil associated with the infamous creatures is the responsibility of their “oppressors,” those animals which have historically kept them from achieving any sort of stability or greatness by killing their leaders and smashing their societies—namely, the woodlanders, particularly the denizens of Redwall and Salamandastron. She hates these creatures, and treats them with self-righteous spite.
Self-righteousness is one of the other absolutes to Fieuline's character. She believes, frankly and honestly, that she is the best of living creatures. Any fault she has is not only present in every other creature, but it is necessarily worse in them. This is true for both vermin and woodlanders; the difference is merely that vermin have been forced into this kind of life and she can “cure” them, while woodlanders choose it, and are lost forever. This has two side-effects: First, if ever self-pity has manifested itself on Earth, it was in this frail mouse's frame. If she has the cold, then it is the Plague. Any misfortune that befalls Elly befalls the best among mice, and that misfortune is therefore the most unfair, unjust tragedy of misfortunes. Second, she is neurotically paranoid. After all, she is the most honest of all creatures, and yet she lies. She is the most loving, most learned, most enlightened of all living things, and yet she is a murderer. This being the case, can she trust anyone? In her mind, the world is either evil or weak, and all that is evil not only opposes her, but does so through the most under-handed and wicked means possible.
Of course, this is all taken from the perspective of one who knows Fieuline deeply. Most do not, and one of Fieuline's greatest talents is her ability to manipulate people who don't know her. Whether it's the right way to limp through the mud to get invited into a house, or the right way to wail and complain to stir guilt in her hosts, she knows the strings to pull. She lays traps for people. When someone, seeing her sitting pitifully in some dank street, invites her to spend the night, she complains about her aching hunger. When they offer food, she is “offended,” and informs them that she is quite capable of providing for herself, and that if they think they're any better than her, she'll just travel on. When they apologize, she simply sticks up her nose, and tells them not to worry about it, that they're simply used to their wealth, and it isn't their fault if they haven't experienced enough to know the pride of the poor. Then, with a severely humbled host, she proceeds to live off her new hosts more shamefully than any mere beggar should ever be allowed to.
This is not to say that Fieuline has a strong sense of self-control, or that she has any mastery of her emotions and impulses whatever. Exactly the opposite is true—she is so masterful at giving full, unabashed, honest hyperbole of her feelings, that no one would ever doubt her words or her self-espoused good intentions.
So, in brief, Fieuline is a hateful, self-righteous, lazy fiend at heart, but she is more than capable of pretending to be otherwise, and her personality aside, she is an extremely capable beast. Among vermin, she is a veritable mother, a sighing, upset, but ultimately hopeful priest, who sees the evil in her children but knows that it is temporary and that, with her guidance, they will see the light. Among woodlanders, she is the epitomization of the loud-mouthed preacher, the mouse who hates mice, the woodlander who sees nothing but incorrigible evil in her own institutions, the very societies which brought her into being.
Strengths:
1. Masterful Propagandist—Fieuline is a trained journalist and has native talent for propaganda. She can stir the middle class to oust their rulers, and then call upon the supposed “workers and down trodden of society,” to upend the new “woodland society,” and then set herself up as a veritable aristocrat, all without ever seeming in contradiction. Although this ability is generally composed of little more than mere sophistry, and does not work well among the well-educated, most in Redwall's world are not well educated, and most cannot see through her self-absorbed lies.
2. A Genuine Believer—Fieuline is not given to lies or to expressing herself lightly. Because of this, when she says that she is a friend to rats, or that she hasn't had food in three days, or that her sister was killed by a marauding pack of hares, people believe her. She seems simply too passionate to lie.
3. Multifaceted Abilities—Fieuline is a quick learner, and she is already well-learned. Her home taught her basic sword technique, while she taught herself journalism and scholarly writing, while Maximillian taught her the art of alchemy and herbalism. Her accumulated skills, garnered from remarkably talented sources, are vast, and they demonstrate an ability to take in and hold knowledge for long periods of time.
Weaknesses:
1. Short Sighted—Because Fieuline is so over-the-top passionate, she often has a hard time seeing what is immediately in front of her nose. For all her analytical ability, it has never once occurred to her that vermin have, perhaps, always been “smashed” by woodlanders because of their nasty habit of starting such fights. She bends information for what she wants to believe, rather than for what is objectively true. Although everyone does this to a certain degree, she is so grotesque in the habit, that she often follow obviously murderous vermin simply to titillate some conviction, or ignore obvious truth which offends her. This can be dangerous at times and, in capable hands, it makes her easy to manipulate.
2. Head-strong Frailty—Fieuline is not a fighter, whatever she might like to pretend. Although she has always fancied herself a warrior of “toned reflexes and enormous strength,” the simply fact of the matter is that she is weak, slow, and clumsy. Where Maximillian is above average, even mediocre in all areas, she is terrible in all. She knows intellectually how to handle a sword, but she lacks intuition, and physical aptitude. In every physical area, she falls short. She is slow. She is weak. Her back is missing a chunk. She is almost like an old lady.
3. Inflammatory--Fieuline is absolutely devoid of courtesy. She says what's on her mind when it's on her mind, how it's on her mind, and her personality is such that this is going to get her killed 7 times out of 10.
History:
Excerpt from Fieuline's autobiographical journal, date unknown:
“If there is currently a town more backwards, containing stupider people than what Jetsuy once held, then the nearest vermin lord should sack it. He should then round up every living creature that ever called the town home, every speck of dust that might bear witness to the city, put them in a giant pile with all their belongings, and make a bonfire out of the festering mass.
"Jetsuy was nothing short of archaic, as far as its social and technological achievements went. It did not even have a historical calender, and as a result, all I know about my birth-date is that it happened... Supposedly. Once I'm dead, there will be no documentation to prove the fact, thanks to the blighted bastards.
“My earliest memories come from when I was a very little Dibbun. For some strange reason I have never understood, the townsfolk had gotten it into their heads that the family was an inadequate system for raising children. So, instead, they simply took about one fifth of the citizens, and trained them in education, so that all they would do, all their lives, was raise children. The rest worked, had kids, gave said kids to the “Educational System,” as they liked to call it, and then went back to work without ever knowing what their offspring grew into.
“So, I never knew either my father or my mother—Just Bill, my, shall we say, disgruntled keeper. He was not a father, as the enlightened among vermin choose to define father, but more of a machine, and a machine in grave need of repair at that. My earliest memories of him involve excuses for late dinners, for why he couldn't teach me to hunt as the other keepers taught their dibbuns, and a load of other rubbish. The fact of the matter was that he never really wanted to be a keeper, and when the Council forced it on him, he did his job as poorly and as lazily as anyone can expect a warrior-wannabe to perform what amounts to full-time babysitting. He wasn't abusive, or anything like that, and he didn't even neglect me to any huge degree. He, like most of life's victims, was merely the unhappy victim of the Woodland system.
“It was just another example of narrow-minded stupidity on the part of those imbeciles. 'Society needs keepers,' they said, 'so who gives a rip if anyone wants to be a keeper? They'll do it, like it or no, for everyone's good!' They were always full of half-intellectualized paff like that.
“Ironically enough, I actually benefit enormously from this out-dated system of theirs. Thanks to Bill's absolute incompetence, I was totally free. If I wanted to take up a sword, march ten miles straight north to Salamandastron, and slit the Badger Lord's fat, aristocratic triple throat, I probably could have done it without anyone ever missing me, or wondering what I was up to. If I had ever come back, they probably would never have found out. Whatever Bob might have taught, whatever I might have gained from a true father, it pales in relation to the lessons I learned on my own. There were scars, yes. The hollow in my back bears witness to where certain blunders led me, but on balance, independence was and is among my greatest strengths.
“Ah, but Jetsuy could not stand for it if any of their programs even inadvertently led to the success of one of their citizens. When I was a physically mature, but still very young mouse (again, I even to this day don't know my true age), I was suddenly assigned my position—journalist. I had never even heard the word. While I grew up learning how to use a sword, imagining, in my then deluded mind, mired in the tradition and racism of my peers, the armies of vermin I would slay, while I spent every day swimming, running and fighting until every one of my muscles was lean and practiced, those morons thought they would make a writer out of me. Not just any writer, either, but one of the most useless writers out there—the kind that sits in the shadows of diplomats and generals, so that the people at home could read the stories and imagine that their lives were composed of something more than menial, pointless, routine drudgery.
“So, after all those years of independence, of total freedom, the elders suddenly expected me to just adapt to some sort of transcribed purpose I was neither prepared for nor passionate about. Well, at first I tried to fulfill my “duty,” as they insisted on calling it—as though anyone bears any duty to anyone or anything but itself. I learned to keep the people entertained, and I may well have conformed to their bloody system, had it not been for their immutable desire to control everything. They wouldn't let me write about what I waned to write about. 'No!' they said, “You must support the war effort!” or 'No! You must undermine that priests credibility! You must learn to think of the city first and yourself second!' and a load of other statist rubbish.
“Well, I did what they suggested. The city, clearly, needed to be rid of this breed of hyper-controlling authoritarians, and so that's precisely what I wrote about—their idiocy. When they tried to stop me, I set up my own printing house. It wasn't difficult, and I even began to run what one might call a private business.
“Well, in retrospect, I realize what a terrible risk I had taken, defying the Powers like that, and it probably would have killed me if He had not come along. Maximillian, a rat of all creatures, was rescued off a pirating boat off the shore. We took him into our society, and raised him as one of our own. Naturally, as a young, self-employed journalist, this grabbed my attenttion, and, fortuitously enough, the attention of my oppressors. The mice were not at all willing to accept this creature into their society, and at first, I was of the same mind.
“However, I was about to enter into a rebirth of the mind and spirit. I was on the precipice of an entirely different life, stuck in the darkness of our collective Woodland past, but about to step out into the light of enlightened equality, into that light which condemns the old squirrel for his crimes but shines mercifully down on the young, and innocent rat, that light which does not discriminate for race.
“When I met Maximillian, all my previously concieved ideas of vermin were shattered. Here was someone entirely different from my society. Here was someone who had lived his own life, had fought his own battles, and who was, on the whole, utterly likable. He was courteous, kind, eccentric but not condescending. I was captivated, and in that sudden interest, I lost all remembrance of my former crusade against my society. This rat was my new topic. I devoted my writing to detailing his life, to documenting his history and to keeping the people informed on his day-to-day activities. This kept the people pleased, for they are always hungry for gossip on some strange new person, and it kept the Powers at bay, for they wanted society to accept this rat.
“Thus, I lived as a perfectly ordinary private-interest journalist while Maximillian stayed peacefully in our city. Nevertheless, the day came when he was sent out, when he left on his journey northward. I had wanted to accompany him, but the Elders did not allow it, and when I tried to go despite this, they physically restrained me.
“Well, that did excite the old bitterness. Once again I was on the war-path, and this time, I wouldn't win. Although I carried my campaign out for a good couple of years, the people of the town had begun to suspect my word, no doubt due to the campaigning of the Elders in their own little newspapers. In the end, they found some excuse to punish me. They banished me for some trifling cause I can't even remember at this point, for no more than three days. Idiots. They never had quite understood the concept of banishment. Apparently, they believed that living outside the life-giving bonds of organized society was enough torture to rectify any behavioral problem.
“Well, to make a long story short, the first thing I managed to do was to end up in the hands of a band of vermin, of all things. They might have killed me, mistaking me for an ordinary, much abusive woodlander, but, lo and behold, Maximillian was the chief servant of the warlord—the now infamous Charonne. He immediately recognized me, and although I never quite understood why or how, my life was spared. From that day forward, I acted as a companion to Maximillian, and a light to the party of vermin. During that time, I learned the lessons I still hold as true today on the nature of woodlanders and vermin. Although I lost my home, my friends, such as they were, and my... well, I suppose you could call that group a family, the experience grew me into the mouse I am today, and for that, I am always grateful to Max.”
~End of Entry~
The reality of the situation was thus: Maximillian had recognized Fieuline as a citizen of Jetsuy, and once he heard about her proposed banishment, he saw opportunity. Fieuline was obviously no friend to her town, and Charonne intended to conquer that town. Having the gates opened for them, with all the advantages of surprise, would render that conquest only too easy. So, with manipulation and feigned friendship, he and Charonne convinced the little mouse-maid that in the end, the best service she could do to her town was to end it, to blot out the hell-hole forever.
And she did it. The night after she was accepted into the town, she opened the gates, and, after the fight was over and what survivors there were had been captured, she displayed a passion for revenge and a willingness to kill that impressed even Maximillian. That is why he held the maid under his wing for the entirely of the horde's time, and it is why, when Charonne met her death, he went on to serve her. Under her direction, for the supposed benefit of “all living beings everywhere,” he commit more and bloodier murders than even he was used to. Yes, these were strategic targets, her philosophical opponents, and the “tyrants of woodlandome,” but that didn't slow her down. She killed more idealistically than Charonne, but she was more private, more secretive, more manipulative and subtle, and that made her all the more dangerous. To this day, besides Max and her, few know anything about how many she has ordered dead.
Relationships:
Although Max eventually did leave her for a greater horde, largely because she had decided to settle down as a journalist for Salamandastron, (reasoning that this bastion would be brought down by words, and not by blades), they have always maintained a certain servant-servant relationship.
