OOC: Is this still going? I realized how long ago it had been made, so I'm not sure if I should post this here. If I need to remove I will.
Claire Fraedindell.
There was nothing more beautiful to Claire than to hear the turning of a well adjusted gear, the soft sound a spring makes at it is sprung or the clink of metal against metal. No sight more beautiful than a piece of machinery fit together in a complex series of nuts and bolts. She spent hours examining every facet of the clocks her father would make, diligently watching him craft masterpiece after masterpiece. Her father welcomed the interest she took in the craft, the worthy profession of horology. However, Claire's unsatiable curiousity flew higher and greater than one person could contain...
Far above in the indigo sky were grand iron and metal ships set to flying, and on them lived the nobility and the royals who refused to join the world below. From their castles in the sky they ruled the land with a harsh doctrine, bombing any who opposed them with fire and acid. Wars, plagues, nothing stirred the mercy of the people above. The rulers set their men against eachother like pawns, their invisible hands moving the fate of life around the world like a game of chess. Claire's father was called to be a pawn for the Archduchess Magdelena during the Plague War when Claire was in her early teenage years. Claire chose to keep her father's work going, to attend the clocks in fervor. To ignore the rage building within her at the injusitice she saw, that she felt, and that she would soon experience.
The dust settled during Claire's seventeenth year of living. Her father was coming home, and Claire could wish for nothing more. During his time gone her mother had died from the grief and worry set upon her. Claire held strong, even when the couriers brought nothing for the Fraedindell family. This time very few men came home and those that did were oddly ashen, as if the life had been sapped from them. It took a few months before he came back to her. His body was bone thin, the skin ashen and when she went to embrace him she saw that he had been relieved of both of his hands. Before she could speak, the head of the retinue who had been with her father pulled a long scroll from a satchel on his back and began to read from it, "Frederick Fraedindell was charged for unsatisfactory war conduct. He disobeyed direct orders from his betters and has had his livelihood Relinquished." The armored man's voice boomed across the town square. Everyone listened to the announcement solemnly. None would berate or belittle. He was Relinquished. "You should have obeyed, Frederick. Your hands were worth more than your pride. The work you did... it was beautiful." The guard clapped Frederick on the shoulder and he and his men escorted more ashen looking troops missing body parts to their homes to announce the grave news.
Her father spent his time staring out the window of their home. With no hands to build, to create, or to provide he was a shell of a man. He never spoke and begrudingly accepted the food Claire fed to him. Claire's indignation swelled in the years that followed as she cared for her now old and dying father. He lost all the will to live, and Claire would not blame him. Could not blame him. Claire had to close shop in order to care for him around the clock, this cost them reputation and business but even so she would never abandon him. On a particularly chilly day Claire heard a low murmur as she sat attending to a project she had been working on. Looking over she saw her father motioning with a stub of an arm and murmuring under his breath. Claire pushed up from her desk and rushed over to him, placing her ear close to his whispering lips. "You need to know... why I became invalid." He gasped, his voice raspy from disuse, "I was... set to work on the sky ships. I was not a warrior. I was an engineer." When he stopped to take a few breaths, Claire felt her heart constricting in her chest. Thoughts bounced around in her mind, dangerous and dark. She felt a pressure on her arm as her father placed his own upon it. "Claire... I obeyed them in all their orders. They wanted me Relinquished to stop the secret from escaping. I lied to them, I told them I had no living family capable of the craft when I suspected they would Relinquish me. Claire... I will tell you how to produce a sky ship." After that conversation her father tutored her for the next two months on the secrets of sky ship building. Claire was always a fast learner and this was their saving grace. Frederick passed away soon after, but she was ready.
Master horologist, expert mechanical weapon smith, and sky ship builder for the masses - Claire vowed to correct the tyranny of the fortunate, and to stop the practice of Relinquishing. All she had to do was start a revolution.
