(Backstory of Ha'Penny Annie AKA Madame Veruca)
Once they almost stayed an entire year, but, no matter how long they stayed, invariably her mother would pull up stakes and together, just the two of them, would move under the cover of night to a new village. Usually, it followed the same pattern. Her mother would set up shop as a traveling occultist whose "gift" was being able to contact the spirit world. She called herself Madame Veruca and by invoking the spirits of the dead in seances or having the clientele peform nightly rituals in graveyards she would provide the answers sought. Her marks always walked away a bit lighter, both in spirit and in their pockets. During these residencies, Annie was told to stay indoors and only appeared to the customers in a heavy black veil or in the guise of the recently dead evoked through judicious amounts of greasepaint and well-practiced mummery. That was how it started. That was not how it ended. Over time, her mother would have sleepless nights, starting upright shaking and sweat covered and calling out to unseen presences as if they were right beside her. Presences that Annie never saw. Her mother's health declined precipitously, eyes hollow and skin drawn beneath her make up. On the eve of each departure, her mother would exclaim, "Too many have found me! Too many! So so many!" So it began again on the next night in a new bed, in a new town.
One final evening, Annie was awakened by the sound of shutters slamming shut from a ferocious storm outside their hovel. She looked about and her mother was nowhere to be seen. Instead a note was pinned to the summoning board by the point of the divining planchette driven deep into the wood.
It read:
"My dearest,
I can avoid them no longer! They have begun to follow me from town to town where they had not before! They even wait for me when I arrive! Always their voices pleading... Always their eyes staring... Looking for answers I do not have. I cannot escape them to a new life and we know no afterlife waits for us, my darling, just the mists that are our prison. I am weak. Forgive me I pray! But I have found a way! The Devourer can grant me the blackness! The nothingness! I will not be!
Do not seek me out!
And if the boy knocks, do not answer the door!"
Annie cried until she could cry no more. In the morning, she gathered their remaining belongings and began the journey to a new town. This time she traveled at dawn and that evening in a new place she wore the face of Madame Veruca.
For years, she plied the trade her mother had taught her so well. She traded hope for comforting lies and the few coins the villagers could spare. While it was not a good life, it was still a life. Until the night it became less than that.
On that night shortly after Annie had sent the rubes on their way, back into chill night and back to their undistinguished lives, a small knock was heard at the door. Exasperated, Annie hastily threw back on the face of Madame Veruca and swung wide the door expecting to see one of the townsfolk inquiring about a forgotten question. Instead only the blackness of the night greeted her, but when she turned back to the comfort of her small fire she saw a child-like figure was sitting before the hearth. It's rag-covered legs swinging back and forth beneath the stool. It's bare feet uninjured but bloody. Dripping blood, drop by drop on to the flagstones. And upon its head a stove pipe hat of ridiculous proportions for a child so small sat askew upon its pate like a sad crown.
With a shudder, Annie recognized this figure, because while she had never seen him before, she recalled the description told by her mother so long ago. This was Bonnie Pete, her mother's spirit guide! During each seance she would reach out to the ether and beg the aid of Bonnie Pete to to bring her to the spirits she sought. Until this very moment, Annie believed that the personage of Bonnie Pete was a creature woven out of whole cloth. A charade for the sheep who they sought to fleece and not something truly of this world or the next.
With shaking voice Annie inquired, "Bonnie Pete? If that you be... Have you come to guide me to the spirits as you have guided my mother before me?"
The child's grin remained motionless and fixed and yet the child laughed.
"No. I have come to keep them from you."
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(Ha'Penny Annie is a travelling fortune teller who has picked up some skills in bardcraft to weave her illusions. She is of Vistani blood and was raised among them as a small child until her mother parted from the tribe to travel through the mists plying her trade. After her mother left, Annie took up with The Carnival as one of their mediums on the midway. While she is young, she travels clad as an old crone decked with the peasant finery and trinkets of one touched by the spiritworld. She seeks a way to grant peace or passage to the spirits that assail her as she has the Dark Gift: Gathered Whispers.)
