Name: Briar Rose Chadbury
Gender: Female
Age: 10
Physical Description: Briar Rose dresses in an extra-tweedy version of British Schoolgirl Chic. Her hair, clothes, and whatever she's carrying are nearly always in a general state of disarray.
Clothing: Tweed jacket, white dress shirt and tie, pleated wool skirt, white stockings, and black Mary Janes.
Equipment: Canvas and leather hiker's backpack she uses as a book bag. Contains a ruggedized laptop computer, a seemingly random collection of notebooks and papers inscribed with oddly whimsical "technical" drawings of various inventions and ideas in different stages of completion, and notes written in neat feminine handwriting. Drafting tools, measuring tape, handheld microscope, tweezers, a set of sample boxes and small Pyrex vials, litmus paper, a Leatherman multi-tool, hand lens, compass, a textbook on ecology, and a "pocket" field guide to wildlife and plants in New York State.
Transportation: A girl's
bike with a handlebar basket and rear pannier and saddlebags containing a bike repair multi-tool, spare chain and tire tube, foot-powered tire pump, tire patch kit, bike lock, water bottle and lunch box.
Occupation: Schoolgirl (customer)
Personality: Briar Rose is highly intelligent, though she often seems to have the attention span of a gnat. Her mind is constantly leaping from one thing to another. Her notebooks and papers are always in a complete state of disarray, yet somehow she is able to actually find things (unless someone "tidies up" for her!). She quickly loses herself in reading, writing, and tinkering with inventions and research projects in varying stages of partial completion. She is easily intimidated, since most everyone is bigger, stronger, and meaner than she is.
Skills/Education: Technical drawing, mathematics (algebra and geometry, plus a smattering of calculus and trigonometry), general biological investigation (sample collection, basic analysis using the tools she has, i.e., she can do a litmus test, a dissection, examine plant tissue under her microscope, but can't sequence a genome), a broad but not deep "general scientific knowledge." She knows more about biology and general mechanics (low-tech-ish machinery) than physics or astronomy, but she is familiar with an eclectic range of basic concepts. Her education is at a roughly "honors high school freshman" level (somewhat more advanced in areas that interest her most), the result of private tutoring for most of her life, until she was recently admitted into an elite prep high school.
History: Briar Rose was conceived by her mother in an affair, and she does not know who her real father is. Her nominal father hates her, but keeps up appearances in public to protect the family from scandal. Her parents fight constantly, so she retreats into worlds of scholarship and invention. She raced ahead of children her own age in her schoolwork (which she views as an inconvenience to be dispensed with quickly so she can move on to more interesting things). Her "father," Theodoric Chadbury, has started sending her to Marshall Academy, an elitist school filled with privileged rich brats and social climbers, knowing full well that it would make Briar Rose--and by extension her mother--utterly miserable. Since she is constantly used as a reminder of her mother's infidelity, she blames herself for her parents' fighting, and is coming to the conclusion that they'd be happier without her.