Valerie Fox

Valerie Fox

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Valerie was born in the city of Wyndevale to a dirt poor single mother who was involved in criminal activity and substance abuse. Her mother’s interest in caring for a newborn was minimal at best, and she was soon abandoned on the streets. Luckily, before long, Valerie was found by a passerby who noticed the infant from a distance in an alleyway. The stranger, sure the mother was nowhere to be found, or at the very least incapable of caring for this baby, took Valerie to an orphanage. While this was a far superior situation to her previous caretaker, it was still a poor and uninviting place to grow up.
As Valerie grew into a toddler, it became apparent that she had health problems and may not make it into adulthood. She was weak, and sick very often. In contrast however, her mental facilities seemed to be working far better than one would expect of her age. She learned to speak far sooner than other children, and despite her fragile appearance and worrying condition, she was quite sharp. As she reached the middle years of childhood, she became aware of her situation and attempted to strengthen herself through what little exercise she could muster. Due to the poverty of her caretakers, her provisions were lacking at times, and thus her attempted rehab had almost the opposite effect. She was scolded for her risky behavior and warned not to get out of bed lest she push her fragile body to the brink of death.
Seeing the other kids out and about and able to do so much more than her only bolstered her determination. However, she knew she would need to take a different approach to the problem, and so she decided to sneak away from the orphanage and befriend people of better economic capacity. She hobbled and crawled through the streets of the market district until she met a middle class merchant that was moved by her story and impressed by her wits and determination. The merchant, a single woman in her late 20’s by the name of Laura Wood, took Valerie in and helped to provide her with better medical care. As the years passed, Valerie was finally able to begin recovering from her health problems and strengthen her fragile body. She was also able to attend regular schooling, which was very complimentary to her natural wits.
Valerie was in her early teens when Laura married Elias Fox, a man of the Weigriff military, and an archer in particular. Valerie got along very well with Elias, and was captivated by his skills with a bow and arrow. She insisted that he teach her everything about the art of archery. Every evening after Valerie was out of school and Elias off duty, he would take both her and Laura to the archery range to practice. This continued on for about a year until Elias was promoted to a special operations division that dealt with investigation and information gathering and had wildly inconsistent hours. Nevertheless, Valerie continued practicing on her own in her spare time, and made every effort to bring Elias on the rare occasion he was available.
As Valerie approached her late teens, she grew quite tall for a person of her previous physical condition. This was in no doubt thanks to the additional training and physical therapy she was exposed to by practicing with Elias. However, as she aged, her interest in the classroom environment dwindled, and her interest in her foster father’s work grew. This was alarming to both of her foster parents, as she had previously shown much promise and initiative when it came to her education. Her attitude had declined as well, and it was discovered that she was skipping out of school to work at a popular tavern where she could hear tales from passing travelers and gather more information about the world outside of Wyndevale. Upon being discovered, she confessed that she wasn’t interested in furthered education and wished to either travel or join the military like Elias. To Valerie’s surprise, Laura and Elias offered to support her in this venture. But there was a catch.
Since she was interested in the work of her foster father, he offered to help her get into the field given she could prove herself capable of finding at least one of her biological parents. Successfully doing so would assure him that she was right for the job as well as help her tie up any emotional loose ends her foster parents had suspected since her strange, progressive change in attitude and lifestyle. Valerie agreed to this, admitting that despite her silence on the issue, it was something that had been on her mind quite often. Elias would give her small amounts of assistance and protection during the investigation due to his suspicion of her biological parents’ delinquency.
Valerie began her investigation by returning to the orphanage she grew up in (very much to the orphanage's surprise). Fortunately, one of the older caretakers had remembered the story of the man who had brought her there. This gave her a location to start with, but little else to go on. She and Elias proceeded to the location of the alleyway, and upon arriving, followed it back to a somewhat shady pub. The patrons of the pub paid little attention to the newcomers as they made their way through. The barkeeper however, a tall man with fading red hair, remained intensely fixated on Valerie the moment he noticed her approaching the bar. His expression carried a bit of shock, as if he had seen a ghost, which eventually turned into relief as Valerie came closer and could be clearly seen in the lamplight. His expression of shock returned later however, as through long conversation both he and Valerie discovered that he was her biological father.
As they continued their conversation, Valerie learned that her mother had died only a few years after her birth due to a drug overdose. Her father was never aware of the fact that she had beared a child however, and so this was an enormous surprise to him. He also shamefully confessed that he had used to be a drug dealer, and her death was as much his doing as it was hers. Valerie was disheartened to learn that this was her origin story, but she was at least content with getting a bit of closure. Their conversation ended with him offering his hospitality if she ever really needed it, but that it would be for the best if she didn’t have someone in her life that was involved in the things he did (while he was no longer a drug dealer, he still dealt in and assisted with criminal activity).
With Valerie having successfully completed her task, Elias said he would do what he could to help her get into his field in the military. She decided against this however, stating that she’d like to stick with schooling for a few more years until she could be more confident about making life decisions. So she continued on with her education, quitting her job at the tavern and beginning to take school more seriously. After a few more years passed, Elias returned late from work one day with news that he was being assigned on a long term mission in another region, and that he had no reliable timeframe on when he would be back, other than it would be longer than a year. Valerie told him before he left that she would likely be continuing with her original plan to join the military, and that she hoped to have made it into his line of work by the time he got back. However, Elias would not return before the dead began to rise another couple of years later.
Laura and Valerie were no longer safe in Wyndevale. Necromancers and cultists hiding amongst the people would use dark mind control magic to boost their ranks and raise the dead. There was often chaos in the streets. Sickness became more rampant and trust between civilians was at an all time low. The military could not contain the cultist threat. Like many others around them, Laura and Valerie decided to flee the city in search of a less populated area that would be less likely to be targeted by cultists. At first, they attempted to find the whereabouts of Elias by confronting the military, but were denied any knowledge of his location. So for the meantime, they went north, hopping from town to town until they ended up in the small town of Ashford in Greenwood Forest. Valerie took a job at the Ashford Inn, biding her time until the cultist threat had died down so that she could set out to look for Elias again.

Current Location

Ashford

Species

Human

Ethnicity

Weigriffian

Year of Birth

15015 P.T. 26 Years old

Birthplace

Wyndevale

Current Residence

Ashford

Eyes

Green

Hair

Long, wavy, red

Height

5' 9"

Weight

138