Character Sheet: Jessamine Blake

[Jessamine Blake]

Name: Jessamine Blake
Gender: Female
Age: 28
Occupation: brothel proprietress, a.k.a. madam

Description: Once considered a great beauty, time and rambunctious living have not been kind to Jessamine. At 28 her skin is already somewhat weathered, and she is unfashionably tanned and freckled for a woman of this time. Her eyes are a shadowed grey and wide-set, with faint laugh-lines fanning out from their corners. Her hair is a deep, unnatural auburn that does as much to advertise her profession as the rouge she wears to redden her cheeks and lips. At 5’8’’, Jessamine is tall for a woman, and still shapely and strong despite her waning youth.

She speaks with a soft, husky tone designed to draw in customers and bribe lawmen. However, she has no trouble being sharp with her girls or any members of the clientele that get out of order. She prides herself on running a “clean” house, with none of what she considers to be perverse fetish services. Jessamine only occasionally takes customers herself, always extremely wealthy clients whom she hand-picks. She is known for her ability to drink most men under the table, and her inability to abide cigars. She is respected for her excellent business sense and her honest, matter-of-fact attitude, and is often visited not for ordinary business, but for simple advice. To those who frequent her house, she is known as “Miss Jessa.”

Though she is relatively wealthy for a woman of her time, she usually downplays her wealth through her dress. She favors functionality over pointless decoration, wearing sharply tailored, conservatively cut garments made of luxurious materials in deep browns, greys, and blacks.

Bio: Jessamine was born in the Arizona territory in 1846 to a professional whore who called herself Marie Blake. Like many girls of similar birth, she was raised by the women of the house. The biggest influence in her life was Abigail Johnson, the house’s proprietress at the time. Johnson took a special interest in Jessamine early on, teaching her to read, write, keep the books, and generally run the house. Jessamine also learned whoring early, and began turning tricks at the age of 11. She remained at Abigail Johnson’s house until 1863, after an argument between the two resulted in Abigail’s ordering her out. She had learned well, however, and had by that point saved enough money to relocate to the New Mexico territory, where she opened her own combination bar and brothel. At first, the establishment was ill-received, especially by area’s respectable womenfolk. Eventually, though, Jessamine’s skill at negotiating with lawmen—as well as the general dearth of such lawmen—won her house a permanent place in the area’s seedier business sector.

Combat Ability: Generally, she is non-violent and peaceable, only occasionally becoming sharp-tongued with a rowdy client or disobedient house-girl. She is a decent shot, however, and keeps one gun on a small shelf under the bar and another tucked away on her person, for emergencies. It’s a long-standing rumor that when she first established her brothel, she ran off a group of temperance ladies who were singing hymns outside her door by sticking the barrel of her gun through a crack in the wall and giving them to the count of ten before she “put holes in their proper little bonnets.”

Affinity: Magic. She has always been good at reading people, which is perhaps why she has been so successful in her work. However, this ability has recently begun to develop beyond a normal human capacity for understanding. Sudden flashes of intuition that reveal the motives and wishes of others will occasionally come to Jessamine. This power will eventually lead to her ability to predict the actions of others based on what she reads.

[Mr. Pearse]

I guess I'll be the first to break the silence as far as commenting on each others' character sheets. I (not too surprisingly) am a big fan of your smart, self-assured, pretty bangin madam. The mention of crude hair coloring is great and instantly puts me into the time period.

I'm also most intrigued by Jessamine's (growing) powers of divination. Not only is there endless potential here, but it dovetails sharply with Mr. Pearse's own abilities. Jessamine spends a lot of time around people, and hence will learn how to read them. Mr. Pearse has spent a lot of time around people, too, but he is ultimately driven by the impulse to control - never to understand.

Awesome stuff!

[Ethan Ramey]

Indeed, this character was brought to me before it was officially published, and we discussed her magic affinity. While she kind of wanted to stray away from abilities similar in nature to Mr. Pearse's, I offered that the similarity (and, more importantly, the very specific distinction) would make for some interesting character interaction between the two. I'm looking forward to seeing those two on the playing field.

[Jessamine Blake]

Thanks for the props, you guys!

I generally find I work better and write more realistic characters if they have ties to things in the world they're created in. I also tend to over-explain things with characters, and I tried not to do that this time. I'd like to give a general outline of who she is, and then develop that through the story. I still explained a little more than I wanted to, but what can be done about it now? Nothin'.

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