Lili Parsens

Mayor Lili Mari Kek-Pensh- Parsens

Lili Parsens was a major figure in history of Steel Mill Corners on Lepidos. A rancher's daughter who grew into a tough-as-nails leader in the aftermath of The Midnight, Lili and her husband, Kedri Kek-Pensh went on to fortify and expand the tiny rail town to the extent that it would grow to become the geopolitical powerhouse it eventually came to be.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Early Life

Lili was the one and only daughter of the Persens family, an old and respected Northern Lepidosian family that had been working the unforgiving Great Ilmenite Desert aroud Steel Mill Corners since times immemorial. Though they were followers of Raikep - and thus open to sacrifice or enslavement by the ascendant Magocracy of Lepidos - the Parsens leveraged their wealth and stocks of beef and grain to convince the emmissaries of the government to look the other way whenever they came calling at Steel Mill Corners. Mr. Anders Parsens was the most prominent citizen of the town at the time, acting as a civic leader for the region even before his formal election as mayor.

Loss & Ascendancy

Lili's mother died of exposure when Lili was 16. Three years later, Wurth Harkin and his Harkinite Expedition arrived over Lepidos. After a series of failed negotiations to persuade the Magocracy to give up their slaving, occult practices, Wurth and Shank Moswen intervened, fomenting the Northern Lepidosian revolution while bombarding the Magocracy's great equatorial cities with nuclear weapons from orbit. Two years after the bombs fell, when the weather had grown colder and most every Lepidosian had at least some exposure to fallout, Mr. Parsens succumbed to an aggressive thoracic cancer. Lili assumed, then, that the stress of everything that had happened to their world had driven him, more than ever, to go be with her mother in the afterlife.
This left Lili as the sole remaining member of the family, and the citizens of Steel Mill Corner subsequently looked to her for protection and guidance in the troubling times after the Midnight. Crop yields were low, the once-lucrative trade with the capitol region was severed, and roving bands of highwaymen and other raiders sought to plunder what was left of the sleepy farming community. Lili demonstrated considerable resolve during this time, stepping into the civic responsibilities left her by her father as though she had been born to fill that role. She showed herself to be firm, cunning, and straight-talking, all traits that endeared her to the townsfolk and made her a hard target for the various forces seeking to exploit her or her town in those chaotic post-apocalyptic times.

The Waste Wanderers

Steel Mill Corners by BCGR_Wurth

After a long period of time roaming the Great Ilmenite Desert, fighting loyalist stragglers and putting down bands of raiders in an attempt to restore order in the aftermath of the Midnight, the band of adventurers calling themselves the Waste Wanderers arrived in Steel Mill Corners. These individuals, including Kedri Kek-Pensh, Sgt. Bil Pries, Anita Beikr, Jay Fisherel, and Dr. Reed Vangard, were looking to settle down and put down roots in a town they could defend as their own. Steel Mill Corners, with its high iron perimeter walls and ready access to mineral and agricultural resources, fit the Waste Wanderers' needs nicely.
Lili and Kedri became fast friends and, with time, lovers. They were married in the spring after it became apparent that Lili was with child; Wurth visited the town in one of his platforms around this time and ascertained that she would soon bear twins. It was also during this time that Wurth began the lengthy process of recording the brain waves of his friends in the Wanderers and the people to which they were attached - including Lili - for a certain special project: a planned matrioshka brain in which uploads of these individuals would live on as HLAI. Lili would never become aware of this fact during her biological lifespan.

Mental Trauma

Over the course of their lifelong marriage, Lili and Kedri would go on to have four daughters and a son together. Their familial bliss would be shattered when the two youngest daughters, Mari and Lana, were kidnapped from the family home. Kedri, an experienced scout from his days in the rebellion, tracked them to the lair of the dreaded serial killer known as Madhook Jonny. Unfortunately, while Kedri and Reed were able to kill the killer, this came too late for the Kek-Pensh's daughters. Lili was devastated by this revelation and, while still of child-bearing age, consistently miscarried after this event.
Kedri, who had long held his more vengeful and sadistic urges in check for the sake of the the town and his growing family, had had his resolve broken by this turn of events. He couldn't allow another member of his family or citizen of his adoptive home town to die in the way he had seen in the Madhook's house of horrors. Kedri, when not working his day job as a teacher, began to moonlight as a volunteer scout for the Bil's sheriff deparment. He would take risks and had become visibly more brusque with visitors from other settlements, even those allied with Steel Mill Corners. Lili privately suspected Kedri of causing what was becoming a large number of disappearances of suspected criminals in and around the town. However, as Kedri was so good at stalking and taking down opponents from years of prior experience in the war, Lili knew that he would leave no hard evidence of his involvement if he was actually responsible.
On top of grieving her lost daughters, Lili was now faced with the prospect of having to have Bil place her own husband under arrest for what she suspected was his string of increasingly brutal extrajudicial killings in the surrounding countryside. It was a morally fraught decision for her as mayor, because, while she couldn't allow someone to keep secretly massacring suspects, the crime rate in Steel Mill Corners was lower than it had ever been before the frightful reign of the "South Desert Mauler." One night, as the couple lay in bed, Lili could not contain herself any longer. She begged Kedri at length to stop what he was doing if he really was the South Desert Mauler and tostop going out at night to chase dangers that might never come. Kedri vigorously denied his involvement, but promised to stop working with Bil because he didn't want to see his beloved wife fretting over the matter.
Kedri was true to his word, but, from that day forward, it sometimes troubled Lili to know that the killings in the desert stopped around this time. The connection between Kedri and the South Desert Mauler was real, but Lili never found out just how real it was.

Intellectual Characteristics

Lili was unusually well-read for a farm girl. Her knack for chemistry made her useful on the ranch, as she could whip up batches of fertilizer, insecticide, and gunpowder, among other useful chemicals, as needed for the task at hand. As she grew older, she dabbled in pharmacology, sharing notes with Dr. Vangard and his wife who were both formally educated on the topic.

Personality Characteristics

Virtues & Personality perks

Lili was better read than most Rustlungs and had a courageous spirit that made her a natural leader among her people. She had a knack for reading people's true intentions. Importantly, no matter how she felt on the inside, Lili was always firmly in control of her emotions, as she considered it important to set a good example for those under her governance. She knew that people depended on her and kept that at the forefront of her mind at all times.
Lili would break down complex problems into their atomic, most important parts and set about solving them in the most direct manner possible, a quality that made her extraordinarily difficult to push around for the roving bands of raiders that would sometimes come through the town in search of easy targets. Toughs would get in her face and get her shotgun barrel pointed in their face in return. Threats and bribes were similarly useless, as Lili knew what the long-term results would be if she wavered in her commitment.

Relationships

Lili Parsens

Wife (Vital)

Towards Kedri Kek-Pensh

5

5

Frank

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Kedri Kek-Pensh

Husband (Vital)

Towards Lili Parsens

5

5

Honest

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Alignment

Lawful Good

Current Status

Deceased; replica present in the Matrioshka Multiverse

Species

Lepidosian

Conditions

• Arcopel Gene Drive

Ethnicity

Northern Lepidosian

Age

86

Circumstances of Death

Advanced age

Birthplace

Steel Mill Corners, Great Ilmenite Desert

Place of Death

Steel Mill Corners

Spouses

Kedri Kek-Pensh (Husband)

Siblings

Gender

Female

Eyes

Brown

Hair

Light Brown

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Khaki

Height

5'0"

Weight

101 lbs

Belief/Deity

Lepi Monotheism