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| Name: |
Elise Jarred |
| Genos: |
Manitou |
| Clan: |
Eterah |
| Totem: |
Alligator |
| Theme Song: |
Vital - Marco Argotti |
Despite her French name and heritage,
Elise was always a local girl. She grew up the daughter
of a woman who lost her home shortly after her father
committed suicide. She never found out why as her
mother would never talk about. Bouncing from one cheap
apartment to the next, Elise never had a pile of bricks
and mortar that she could call home. So instead she
hung around on the streets and increasingly around
the wild areas of New London. There was something
primitive and comforting about them, something reassuring
and welcoming. She was well aquatinted with the less
pleasant side of human nature, its destructive and
selfish drives. When she was surrounded by nature,
the city nothing more than a distant hum in the background,
she remembered that mankind was nothing more than
an upstart interloper who would, in time, get what
was coming to it. It was out in the wild swamp lands
that she met Justine Riverfair. Justine, slowly, told
her about the Secret World, the ancient arts he had
leant, and how she wasn’t the some sort of freak
for thinking the way she did. In fact, from a point
of view, she was right. Justine awaken her interest
and piercing intellect, and pointed it in the right
direction. And then, one day, he took her out into
the middle of the swamp and abandoned her. When she
found him again, he told her the whole truth. When
Justine was shot a little over 17 years ago, Elise
was ready to be joined with the alligator spirit Justine
had been joined with.
Since then, Elise has gone through a lot of changes,
quite understandably. Her first remarkable achievement
was continuing Justine’s work of formally establishing
the New London nature reserve, and making it financially
solvent. She over saw its change from wasteland to
protected nature reserve, its establishment as an
official charity, and the formal organisation that
means its now capable of holding guided tours to paying
guests.
Elise would be the first to talk about the unnaturalness
of money, of human power structures and politics.
However, she also understands the necessity of occasionally
playing by the human’s rules. As she tries to
balance her beast side and human side, she also tries
to balance her distaste for the whole artifice of
human society with the necessity of working within
it from time to time. To this end, the reserve employs
a number of volunteers and part-time professionals,
and the board of trustees has at least two members
out of its six who, although sympathetic to the Manitou
cause, do not share their disadvantages.
Recently, Elise has been seen less and less by other
Manitou. Although the closest thing that they have
to a leader in the city – being the oldest and
most respected – she has taken to extended periods
of self-isolation both within the reserve and outside
its bounds. There are numerous pressing matters to
deal with, not least the ICM Chemical plant just across
the river, but Elise seems deeply concerned with another
problem that she has told no one else about. Although
it is not that unusual for an Eterah to become introspective
and preoccupied, the distraction this problem seems
to be having on Elise is beginning to cause some concern.
Nonetheless, the Manitou know what needs to be doing
and know, more or less, who should be doing what,
and so are getting on with it as best they can. And
the reserve has been able to run without her day-to-day
concern for years now.
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