Beet-Red Mother
Beet-Red Mother (a.k.a. Beet-Red)
Quartermastery is a fine trade. It blends accounting and providence into one position. The Beet-Red Mother filled this position exceptionally. The others kinda hated her for it, though. She was almost as much of a hardass as Slate, to the point where she'd infiltrate departments while none were inside just for the sake of confiscating anything she felt was either being misused or not being put to enough use. She was also something of a repressed hoarder.
Well, she wasn't getting any psychiatric help no more once she crashed onto Inom. What she did get, however, was a dead world whose vaults brimmed with loot and a loyal team of stock-girls she could retrain into tomb raiders so as to deliver said loot unto her possession. What she did get was a myriad of opposing blockhead tribes and weird, alien species to raid, whose arms and armor would equip her marauders. What she did get was her legs unceremoniously smashed by a pulverizing stone trap, such that one had to be amputated below the knee and the other sure as hell could no longer support her, healing bent as it did.
Of course, raiding was fun and all, but as she saw the other species' power, she knew she'd need to get in their good graces someday. So when one of her Redspawn discovered the unbirth splice, that little hybridization trick, she had her ticket to social living. Today she lives comfortably in Thriving, operating the finest mercenary organization money can buy and maintaining a small library of records and memories. She barely resembles the woman she was on the FIEBE; this world has brought something glorious out of her.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Her legs got smashed by a huge stone pulverizer trap, to the point her left leg had to be amputated below the knee. The right was deemed salvageable but it was set irreversibly poorly, healing such that it bowed inwards and preventing her from standing on it. Still, she exercises the intact portions of her body on a daily basis to prevent atrophy.
Identifying Characteristics
Her busted and missing legs, for one. She's also got some old scar tissue here and there from back when she still led the charge in tribal skirmishes.
Physical quirks
Beet-Red crosses what's left of her legs when she sits on the ground.
If she needs to move and her sedan chair isn't available, she can ambulate on her palms surprisingly swiftly.
Apparel & Accessories
Though she can easily afford any attire she likes from Thriving's high-end tailors, Beet-Red doesn't play around with style very much. The clothes she wears in the comfort and comparative privacy of her own home tend to be the same clothes she wears to audiences with her descendants and all she really changes in meetings with important business partners and to any formal events she dares attend is that she tucks a lightly-armored vest beneath her clothes.
This does not mean her clothes are not opulent as fuck. The standard look contains:
A short, silken skirt, usually black or gold. The skirt is seldom plain, usually ornamented iwth some combination of pleats, tassels, or beads/Bits on tassel-like strings.
A very fine blouse, usually sleeveless or short-sleeved. The shirt can be any color, though white, gold, and vertically-striped blouses tend to take up the most blouse-space in her wardrobe. Every blouse bears both the insignia of the Redspawn and the logo of Beet-Red's Mercenaries in the same red as her skin.
A stocking or thigh-high sock and the thigh of another, when it's cold inside and/or wet out. When leaving her office, it's paired with a leather sandal designed for blockhead feet-- obviously never actually walked on, but it falls in line with the etiquette of Thriving's high-society to wear something shoe-like.
A small shawl, only covering the tops, and a sliver of the sides, of her shoulders. Often matches her skirt, sometimes dropped from the outfit if it would obscure some fancy part of the blouse.
A vast collection of lingerie.
Her preferred mode of travel is a sedan chair carried by four of her most elite Redspawn guards.
Specialized Equipment
She keeps a hand-cannon of a revolver in the storage box of her sedan chair or under her pillow, always in reach. This revolver is finely-engraved and Beet-Red keeps a scope and mountable flashlight in her sedan chair's storage compartment, as well as a couple little boxes of ammo. The thing packs a punch, though, and Beet-Red doesn't get out to the shooting range very often.
She also has a custom-fitted set of armor, complete with a prosthetic shin for support. It's theoretically capable of shielding her, but it's mostly for display as it would only get in the way of fleeing to safety.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Beet-Red doesn't keep many secrets, but her memoirs surrounding the pre-FIEBE era are not oft perused.
But that might be just as much because there isn't much to say as it is because her older history holds no real practical value. She was born rich and sent to fancy schools. She got into the single most prestigious Accounting School in the entire Blockhead Empire without sacrificing a single bit of currency. She got into the FIEBE easily enough. The crashing of the FIEBE was the first thing in her life that seemed to go wrong, and even that turned out to be such a boon.
She doesn't leave her office much.
Sexuality
Though she fucked like a champ to start the Redspawn up, Beet-Red doesn't feel comfortable with having relations with her descendant attendants and she's too paranoid to invite visitors to bed with her. She's been feeling quite repressed.
Education
She attended the most prestigious blockhead Accounting School on the homeworld, and passed the fuck out of her classes.
Employment
While working on the space agency's logistics branch, she volunteered and was accepted onto the FIEBE leadership.
Accomplishments & Achievements
Really, her whole life has been one, as far as she sees it. Highlights are founding the Redspawn tribe and earning a place in Thriving's society. It's worth noting that, essentially, everything she's proudest of happened on Inom.
Failures & Embarrassments
Well, she's not happy her legs got crushed, but that's in the past.
Mental Trauma
She came to Inom with repressed hoarding issues, which obviously no longer receives psychiatric treatment.
As one of Thriving's most conflict-enabling VIPs, she's become very paranoid about assassination attempts. Her paranoia isn't unfounded though. A seed had to be planted somewhere. So now her sedan chair is plated with steel, her quarters have an escape route, she has just-in-case plans to kill everyone she knows, and she rarely leaves her office.
And because she almost never leaves the house, interacts exclusively with the same two handfuls of people every day, and gets far less privacy than she would like, she's going a little bit neurotic and a little bit lonely. At times, she even feels like her life has stagnated, but since she's insanely rich, her coping method of filling the void with demonstrations of wealth has ceased to work so well.
Morality & Philosophy
She just likes to live lavishly and to have a lot of stuff. It's not even to flaunt it to anyone; mostly just as a personal metric of achievement. And she doesn't care if her kids do evil, especially if that evil makes her money.
One thing (the only thing) that definitely and always takes priority over profit, however, is family-- or more accurately, Tribe. Sister will not turn against sister in the name of money, nor mother against daughter. And close friends of Beet-Red might find themselves subject to the same cameraderie as well.
Taboos
No roughhousing in her office.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
She wants to live like a queen and do good for her family. Luckily, these are not incompatible goals. Though many suspect she intends to establish her own tribe-state, possibly by overthrowing Idony Blaine's setup, she really isn't interested in that more than as a passing fancy.
Of course, that doesn't mean she doesn't have any personal projects she'd like to get done.
Savvies & Ineptitudes
Knows how to barter and deal. Clear and stylish handwriting and hand-signing, as well as a unique voice when writing in English.
Likes & Dislikes
As said multiple times in this article, she loves being rich. This incidentally extends to a mild interest in numismatics; she has a rather comprehensive collection in which she's set aside a coin and/or note from every denomination of every known currency in Anicoja.
Another part of being rich is, of course, being bad at charity. She likes the idea of it, but she just doesn't do it. She doesn't really consider investing in bettering Thriving's living situations for those poorer than her. She'll toss handfuls of Bits on the rare occasion she passes a beggar and feel good about herself, but that's the extent of it.
She's very fond of visitors and making new acquaintances, despite how shut-in and guarded she is and despite how much trepidation she bears in her heart about leaving the office.
Out of her descendants and her business associates, she appreciates loyalty and efficiency and obviously disdains their opposites-- betrayers and wasters of time.
Also she hates traps like the ruins are full of. For obvious reasons.
Virtues & Personality perks
Remarkable memory, strong composure, social grace
Vices & Personality flaws
A little bit cowardly, apathetic towards tragedy
Hygiene
Despite her assorted attendants' offerings and concerns, she insists on cleaning herself in private, which she does at the start and end of every day, as well as before attending events or meeting her descendants.
Social
Contacts & Relations
She doesn't maintain contact with any of the other four surviving original leaders, and often sends her girls to fight in engagements with theirs if they get in the way of any of Thriving's citizens' schemes.
Few of those who employ her mercenaries' services actually meet with her in person. Only the most influential or loyal can expect to even be theoretically able to gain an audience.
Family Ties
Ancestor of all Redspawn born on Inom.
Religious Views
She doesn't follow the blockhead faith anymore, but she didn't follow it too closely back before the crash. She doesn't believe in any higher power, but she doesn't believe against any either.
Social Aptitude
She maintains a friendly enough demeanor, patient with outsiders, as comes with the increased solitude of no longer dealing with clients. She's adapted well to the etiquette of the ex-con merfolk she deals with.
Hobbies & Pets
She reads English-texted works and writes memoirs and records of the homeworld. Her body of work is the foundation for the study of blockheads on Inom, at least within merfolk society. No prospective xenoscholar who takes this subfield seriously goes without reading her accounts. It's accepted that she's very biased, however.
Relationships
History
Beet-Red campaigned for quite some time for custody of Cinder once word got to her that the hybrid had been brought into this world. This is standard practice for the Redspawn: doesn't matter who the kid was with; if she's red, she's Redspawn. And Cinder's very red. Eventually the two sides fighting over Cinder settled on sharing her for five months at a time, and though Cinder never met Beet-Red during her youth, she happily attended the monthly audience with Beet-Red that all mature Redspawn are compelled to attend the moment she was fifteen (18.75 in Earthly years) and one was available. Cinder found Beet-Red to be fascinating and Beet-Red likewise liked Cinder. Unfortunately, hybrid or not, Beet-Red wishes not to play favorites amongst her descendants, and so Cinder was told the only way she was gonna meet Beet-Red again was if Inom's Cradles were doing bad things to her or something similar critically needed the matriarch's attention.
Relationship Reasoning
They liked each other when they met in person, and Cinder can credit Beet-Red with providing her resources and at least some sense of who she was instead of leaving her to forever question to her blockhead heritage under Inom's Cradles' care.
Commonalities & Shared Interests
They're both Redspawn with an interest in history.
Legal Status
Cinder is kept away from the Redspawn for either five or ten months of the year.
History
When Cinder Tosi was born, a rule of biology was broken. Two planetarily different species had borne a hybrid. Beet-Red didn't care about that much, though. This kiddo was Redspawn, and thus she deserved a Redspawn upbringing. Mother Tosi, meanwhile, did not want her fucking daughter stolen from her. Normally, when arguing over custody, her opponents had been quick to cave. Not so with Tosi. Tosi was unyielding and Beet-Red could sense there was more to the cultist mother than a mutation-enfeebled Wildcard addict. Though Inom's Cradles wouldn't be too much of a threat as an enemy, they wouldn't be worth bothering with. They eventually settled on passing Cindy between them every five months, though Mother Tosi has expressed that she still thinks this arrangement has been too generous to the Redspawn. Cinder's now an adult and can technically do as she pleases. However, paralyzed by indecision, she continues to abide by the five month plan.
Relationship Reasoning
If they'd gone to war, there'd be lots of blood and wasted womanpower, which neither party wanted. Neither side could cave, as that would be cruel to their daughter. This was probably the best solution possible.
Shared Secrets
Beet-Red senses that, despite Mother Tosi's miracle muff, Tosi isn't as divine as she says she is and could easily dredge up something more substantial if she cared to. Tosi knows that Beet-Red is suspicious of her.
Legal Status
The custody terms are not bound by law, only by mutual agreement. Since Cinder's an adult now, they have less power over Cindy too.
Wealth & Financial state
Beet-Red is among Inom's richest-of-the-rich, undoubtedly. Her coffers are ever-filling and she keeps her tribe afloat down to the laziest great-granddaughter of whatever the current generation is. She owes no debts to anyone, but many of Thriving's elite owe debts to her.
Aside from keeping her tribe and business booming, and investing occasionally in local research, she sits on her money like many rich people. Sure, she tosses handfuls of Bits in the direction of the poor she passes on the street, but she thinks this is all she needs to do in order to be charitable. She does not invest in Thriving's infrastructure or social programs at all.
Current Location
Species
Ethnicity
Honorary & Occupational Titles
Beet-Red Mother (current), CEO of Beet-Red's Mercenaries (current), FIEBE Quartermaster (former)
Year of Birth
259 BMF
291 Years old
Birthplace
Blockhead Homeworld
Spouses
Siblings
Children
Current Residence
Gender
Bearer
Owned Vehicles
Aligned Organization
Ruled Locations
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