Tabitha Hendrickson
Synopsis/Timeline of the life of Tabitha Hendrickson
1350 Tabitha Sable Hendrickson born in Baldur's Gate. Father: Samuel Fabian Hendrickson, Merchant ship captain. Mother: Sable Greta Rothgen-Hendrickson, socialite daughter of a textile merchant.
1351 Birth of brother Benjamin Samuel Hendrickson
1358 - 1362 Tabby and Benjamin spend summers traveling with father aboard ship, learning saling, navigation, log-keeping, and spherical geometry (as well as some "colourful" language from sailors in father's employ) and spend winters, when seas are rougher, on shore with mother attending dinners and balls designed to further the family's social and business connections while her father sails the hazardous winter seas without his children. Tabby also learns dress design and the seamstress's art from her mother.
1363 Father lost at sea. Father's business partners disappear with the majority of the wealth of the shipping business. Then Tabby causes an accident that kills Benjamin. The shock of these events combined causes mother to become catatonic and be sent to an insane asylum. Tabby sent to orphanage.
1363-1364 Tabby suffers frequent sexual abuse at the hands of the orphanage's director, only ending when her body starts to mature into womanhood somewhat early, at which time he turns to younger girls in his charge, much to Tabby's great relief.
1367 After the abuse of the orphanage's director causes an emotionally fragile 14 year old girl Tabby had become friends with to commit suicide, Tabby poisons the director's tea with rat poison. He dies. Tabby remains at orphanage a further two months knowing that to run away immediately would be to draw suspicion and pursuit. When a new director finally arrives she lies about her age in order to leave.
1367-1368 Shares a small apartment with two prostitutes who were also former residents of the orphanage. Unable to bear the thought of letting people touch her, though, she does not pursue the same trade. Instead, she uses her intimate knowledge of the houses of her family's former merchant class friends to become a successful sneak thief; breaking in and stealing from homes she had visited as a guest many years before.
1368 Meets and falls in love with a young scribe who works as a book-keeper in a mercantile warehouse. He gets her a job in the same warehouse taking dictation and doing book-keeping.
1368-1370 Lives and works with her beau, visiting her mother as often as she can. Her mother continues to remain completely catatonic, unable to recognize her daughter or know anything about the world around her.
1371 Promoted to personal assistant to the warehouse manager, now making nearly twice as much money as her boyfriend. This wounds his pride and causes jealousy. Frequent arguments occur, baseless accusations of her infidelity, insinuations that her greater pay is a result of sexual favours rather than strong math and writing skills, et cetera. All hurtful and untrue. Tabby leaves him, then also leaves her job rather than continue to work in the same place as he. She takes her now substantial savings, pays one final visit to her still-vegatative mother, then leaves Baldur's Gate.
1371-1372 Travels with a merchant caravan group as a book-keeper, also using her good looks and natural charm to help the caravan master negotiate for goods and supplies. Likes and is liked by the group, but doesn't become particularly close to anyone during this year.
1373 Arrives in Arabel in the country of Cormyr. Excited by the political intrigue and upheaval of a city just recently ending a civil war, she takes her leave of the caravan and stays.
1373-1374 Proceeds to become acquainted with the various factions within the city, begins plans to infiltrate as many as possible in order to write a master thesis on the power struggles of a newly rebelled city. During this time she meets a female elf who prefers the company of women. Tabby is, over the course of a year, ardently pursued by this elf. Eventually, she is finally won over and engages in her first same-sex relationship. Very little progress is made towards infiltrating the factions in power in the city. Her face is too memorable to allow her to be much of a "spy".
1374 Persuaded by friends to help them investigate a haunted painting, she and they are transported inside a painting of a frozen landscape. After battling a legion of undead, Tabby survives by use of an invisibility potion. The others fall. Tabby escapes into the ice-encrusted plains, leaving the bodies of her friends behind to be devoured by ghouls. She thinks she hears one of her friends screaming, but she runs on anyway instead of turning back. A fog-bank rises around her as she runs, and she finds herself in the land of Barovia.
Present Psychological Profile
[edit: Updated to reflect changes in her personality that have occurred since her arrival through the mists]
She is highly intelligent, but often somewhat naive in that the opinions of others matter too much to her, she often exibits a nearly neurotic desire for the approval of the two most important women in her life (see last paragraph). Recently, though, she has grown more confident in her intellectual abilities as an event coordinator and manager, perhaps even over-confident. This is due to her recent successes in accomplishing tasks for Les Chats Noir and the praise she has gotten from her employer as a result. However, this confidence does not extend to other fields; she still believes herself to be 'absolute, bloody rubbish' in any kind of violent confrontation and generally feels completely useless in any kind of heroic endeavour. Because of this, combined with a bit of just plain cowardice, she avoids them unless she is trying to impress one of the two women she admires (again, see last paragraph).
Although very physically attractive, she has a very low opinion of her own appearance. She usually thinks of other women as automatically being more attractive than herself.
The romantic attentions of males makes her feel threatened and uncomfortable, though she tries not to show it, and in general she doesn't feel very comfortable around men; except for men who are happily married, or of very advanced age, of another race, or who are by reason of physical weakness and lack of guile "harmless". This is most certainly a result of her abuse at the orphanage. Confident, strong men frighten her (unless, as stated, they're old enough not to be a threat, or not human). Weak, insecure ones are endearing to her.
Her early duality of lifestyle persists to this day: when she's in Barovia, the rough-hewn wood of the structures and gruff nature of the natives reminds her of life at sea and so she tends to behave in a more free and liberal manner: often wearing trousers and occasionally using rough language. When she is in Port-a-Lucine she tends to behave like a lady: wearing long dresses almost all the time, being polite and diplomatic.
She is haunted to this day by frequent nightmares of the accident she caused that cost her brother's life and shattered her mother's sanity. She believes herself to be guilty of murdering her brother's body and her mother's mind, though she technically isn't. She feels no remorse whatsoever for her actual murder of the orphanage director.
She hates most native Barovians, seeing them as all being bigoted, illiterate, boorish, knuckle-dragging, superstitious morons that the world would be better off without. The fact that this technically makes her a bigot as well is something she lacks the insight to realize.
She loves art, fashion, and music, even plays guitar (though not very well), but her main passion is books. An aspiring writer, she dreams of becoming the most successful novelist in the realm. She doesn't try to hide this ambition, but she doesn't volunteer the information freely, either. She thinks most of her writing isn't good enough to show other people. Yet.
At the time of this writing, she is deeply and faithfully in love with Alana, the tiefling, who is the only person to whom she has confessed the whole truth of her history, although two others have heard the tale with the bits they wouldnt have approved of carefully left out. She has bonded to Caterina Fumosa, head of Les Chats Noirs, as a mother-figure (despite the fact that Caterina is two years younger than herself) that she eagerly strives to impress, seeing in Caterina a woman who is strong, wise, and outrageously financially successful. She is fiercely loyal to Caterina, but even more loyal to Alana who is also strong and successful in addition to being her lover.