#i have more to say but this is already so so long ajdfkkgkgh

[thedeafprophet]

Character Summary: The Percipient Scientist

Josephine Ashwood

Pronouns: She/her

Ambition: Nemesis

Profession: Correspondent

Main Skills: Watchful, Shadowy, Artisan Of The Red Science

Main Quirks: Melancholy, Steadfast, Subtle

They say…

“A determined and studious woman, leading many studies at the university. Though often quiet, with luck you'll get to hear the thoughts within her mind”

Further Writeup under the cut:

(warnings for very parental death, sibling death, illness, and spoilers for Nemesis)

Backstory

Josephine was born in April 1876, to Dorothy and William Ashwood, in a dockside community in Liverpool. Her brother, Gabriel, had been born 7 years before her. Her father was a dockworker, and her mother worked part time in service, and did piano in the rest of her time. For the first 8 years of Josephines life, things were as simple and as happy as they could ever be.

It was the summer of 1884 that things took their first turn to the worst, as an illness swept through the community. Many fell victim to it, and among the casualties, Josephine's parents were lost to the sickness as well. Following their parents deaths, 15 year old Gabriel was left to care for both himself and his little sister, pushing through jobs to try and keep their home and his sister safe from the world that had little care for them.

It was 2 years after this that the event that would shake Josephines world and set her path would occur. Even now, Gabriel's murder is an event Josephine can't understand; a level of cruelty so uneeded and so severe.

All that Josephine has left of her birth family is her father's silver pocket watch which she had taken off of her brother. Inside, a picture of the two of them as children, the only physical reminder of what once was. And all that Josephine had in that moment was an envelope and a name, and above all else a question; why?

It would be many years later before Josephine would embark on her quest for vengeance. Many years before she was able to. But the seeds of the future all began far back within her past.

It was perhaps as fortunate that it could be that Josephine ended up being sent to the industrial school, or unfortunate for how she was moved from the only home she had ever known. Perhaps, it simply was. Josephine's initial arrival at the school was poor. Following her brothers death, Josephine didn't talk for almost 1 year following, which made it difficult for her to accommodate to the new location. With peers and staff who cared little for her, most paid her no mind, and she simply drifted into the background. From the sidelines, Josephine watched, and observed.

It wasn't too long however, that Josephine met Jamie, two years her elder and outcasted just as she was. Jamie was pestering and talkative and didnt mind much at all that Josephine didn't talk. It was through this friendship that Josephine was able to find a semblence of herself again, and find her words. The late nights where Jamie would whisper endless tales they'd made up in their head warded off nightmares, and the books they brought her encourgaed her to learn. A year later, the two of them would meet Alex, and when Josephine was 13, the three of them would depart the school together.

During her teen years, Josephine's thoughts began to fester. She continued to self educate, to learn through books everything that she could. She dreamed of possible futures; of the places she could learn and study, if only she had the aims. But beyond all of that one thing remained; rage and confusion over the loss of her brother. By her late teens Josephine was enaged fully in trying to track down any information she could.

Meanwhile, her relationship with Jamie and Alex became strained. Josephine couldnt understand Jamie's aim to join in with society when she saw it for all the scam that it was. Furthermore resenment grew as she knew oppurtunities that would be availible for them would never be an option for her. Meanwhile, Alex seem almost partonizing towards her continued search into her brothers death, warning her against how all consuming this seemed of her, questioning her inability to move on.

Regardless all of this, when Josephine's search for her brothers killer led her towards the neath, the other two joined in her descent.

It was 1898 when Josephine came to the Neath, at 22 years old.

Game Timeline Events

The neath provided oppurtunities to Josephine that the surface never did. In her initial aim to track down information, Josephine became swept up in some minor matters of detective work, which eventually lead her down a further path of understanding of the neath.

Her discovery of the correspondence stones and the learning of it in general presented something uptmost appealing to Josephine; something inbetween a puzzle and a mystery, something she could learn about.

Though she would later face their scrunity for revealing of a truth, Josephine found her place within the university. Even without a typical academic background, Josephine's publishings had proved her worth, and she found herself among her staff. Had she not had other pressing matters to attend to (and temporary banishment on her hand) she would have been more then happy to spend her days within her lab, researching as much as she could on this strange, mysterious world she found herself within.

However even with all these new oppurtunities, Josephines path stayed firm. She would find answers, even if she didnt like the answers she found. The iron republic left a heavy mark upon her psych, and the further she dove into this mystery the more it consumed her. Little else entered her mind as she tracked down her nemesis, as she schemed to find her way to end Cups once and for all.

Of course, that confrontation did not go as she initially planned. In that moment, with her enemy at her feet, her emotions at all time high... well, perhaps the choice was more an impulse then it was a rational descion. But suddenly it was like she was 10 years old again, and all she wanted was the hope of seeing her big brother once more.

It was not, of course, a deal well thought through. Even without the memory loss, Gabriel stood now 6 years younger then her, the dynamic of their ages now fully swapped. He was left confused and scared at the world around him, and Josephine was left heavy with the level of descion that she had made for him.

The ending of her quest had done nothing to soothe Josephine's emotions, and she found herself all the more anxious and confused. So when Jamie came to her with the concept of the railway, for science of course, Josephine jumped at the oppurtunity to have something new for her mind to focus on.

It would be here where she would meet September, whom she would grow close and later marry. It would sometime after the start of the railway when london would face its first yearly summer disaster, and it would be after she would dream of much colder month.

It would be here she would learn her enemy was much grander then she could have realised

And the railway would not lead her to learning anything new; there was Nothing for her to learn.

A couple exceptional stories are also canon to Josephine's timeline:

Lost In Reflections

The beginning of Josephine's friendship with July and inclination further into her revolutionary ties. In the end, Josephine chose to smash the mirror.

The Shallows

Josephine learned further on the information behind October; and most important, learned of who exactly was behind the death of mirrors

This was the beginning of Josephine's dynamic with October, made all the more awkward with Josephine's secret fact that she released the shade of Mirrors from it imprisonment in parabola.

#i tried to not make this write up so long..... i failed #i have more to say but this is already so so long ajdfkkgkgh #anyway: Her #fallen london #fallen london oc #oc: josephine #my writing