Andromeda Dulaque

QUICK FACTS
Andromeda Dulaque

Birth Name	Andromeda Dulaque
Pronounced	An-drah-meh-dah Do-lock
Nickname(s)/Alias	Andy, Rommie
Born	6AE 1556
Nameday	32nd Sun of the 4th Umbral Moon
Race	Hyur
Clan	Midlander
Citizenship	Ishgard
Guardian	Azeyma
APPEARANCE
Height	5 fulms 5 ilms.
Weight	119 ponze
Physique	Athletic
Hair	Grape
Eyes	Green
Skin	Pale
PERSONALITY
Hobbies	Theft, singing, bartending
Fears	Becoming irrelevant
IC SKILLS
IC Profession	Courtesan and Madame
IC Soulstone	None
Physical Advantages	Dexterous, agile
Physical limitations	Vain, magically weak
Non-combat	Flirtation, Courtesany
EQUIPMENT
Primary Weapon	Vicar's Daggers
Secondary Weapon	An old blunderbuss
Armor	Star Velvet light chain
ABOUT THE PLAYER
Username	Andromeda
Time Zone	Eastern
Server	Balmung
Tumblr	kisskissrommie
Adittional Characters	Iris Blanchimont Illua Corcavo Rixia
Free Companies	Bandee Pakshee
Linkshells	Bandee Pakshee Acronycal Bard Rock Cafe
FOOTNOTES
Side bar template adapted from: Infobox-roe by [MoenMoen] "The TMI Character Template for the Hopelessly Detail Oriented" created by [MoenMoen]

Appearance

A lithe and light-on-her-feet Hyur, Andromeda "Rommie" Dulaque often colors her mid-back length grape hair a black-and-red combination. She has a little more height than average and has green eyes that sparkle with gentleness and kindness. She's both elegant and dashing; her outfits range from revealing shirts to formal suikan.

Tastes

Hobbies

Dancing is something she picked up on her 'dates' with the refined classes in Ishgard. She isn't great, but she enjoys practicing it.
Chocobo Riding is something she really enjoys. It feels liberating to have that connection with a beast and to feel the wind in her hair. The speed is also thrilling.
Songwriting is a new hobby for Rommie following her success with a serenade about Iris Blanchimont at a Keeper's Kiss cabaret. She's no bard, but she's got a decent flair with a quill.

Likes

Cabaret nights around Eorzea are one of her favorite bits of nightlife. Especially the cabaret nights her company hosts.
Sylphs are just so damn cute. Even if she mercilessly teases Rixia.

Dislikes

The Ishgardian Orthodoxy is just a means for the powerful in Ishgard to consolidate power and oppress the commonfolk. The Dragonsong War the Orthodoxy prosecutes is merely a distraction from this systemic oppression.
Thaumaturgy creeps Rommie out. It's all spooky and dark and intimidating and those brothers at the Arrzaneth Ossuary are unnerving.
Ul'dahn Monetarists remind her too much of the worst of Ishgardian nobles, especially with their xenophobic attitudes toward refugees.

Favorites

Color: Dark Red
Food: Pineapples
Drinks: Rum
Scent: Lavender
Place: Bronze Lake
Festival: Starlight

Personality

Flaws

Recklessness - She is impulsive and rushes into situations too quickly. She also is not the kind to want cooler heads to prevail, preferring to handle things herself.
Vanity - Although she tries to explain it away as being a career trait, she has an absolute need to remain beautiful, dapper, elegant or whatever word she decided to fixate on today.
Overconfidence - If you ask her, she could steal the Saltana's necklace off her throat. Rommie has very little understanding of her own limitations.
Doman - Her grasp of the language has improved, but still isn't great.
Emotionally-Driven Rommie's strength with emotional matters is also a grave flaw, as she tends to react with her heart long before her head catches up. This leaves her not just reckless, but open to misinterpreting people's meanings.

Fears

The Inquisition - Ishgardian Inquisitors took more than a few of her friends, and she's been left with a debilitating fear of them. She flees at the mere suspicion that they might come round.
Her Past - She's stolen so much from so many people in Ishgard, and caused her fair share of unrest. She fears deeply that one day those dodos will come home to roost.
Serious Injury - She's always made her living on being agile, dexterous and beautiful. She has nightmares about disability and disfigurement, knowing all too well how clse she's come in the past to losing her way of life.

Talents

Flirtation and Intimacy - The two daggers with which she stole gil and goods back in Ishgard were the ability to seduce and make satisfied men and women of many walks of life.
Musical Performance - Rommie's debut as a performer at cabaret was very well-received and she now considers it one of her foremost 'blossoming' talents.
Memory - A good memory served her well as a thief, helping her avoid hitting a mark more than she could afford to and evade capture when she overstayed her welcome.

Abilities and Skills

Weapons

Daggers - Her weapon of choice is anything short, pointy and easily concealed. To that end, she usually carries a pair of daggers on her if she ventures out of the Lavender Beds.

Swords - She also has been working on longer, pointy weapons based on a rather ludicrous notion that she might one day be a knight.

Magic

Astromancy - Although she is fairly weak magically, she is being taught the principles of Astromancy by her former colleague Quenzal Tahnjuyn.

Crafting

Rommie has no meaningful crafting abilities.

Family and Relationships

Positive

Rheya Tayuun met Rommie at a summer festival, being a huge fan of Rommie's perfomance work. They bonded more, although when Rheya confessed she loved Rommie, the courtesan at first responded with hesitance. Rheya said that Rommie had only ever seen a candle flame or a house fire, and that she was a bonfire. After Rheya helped Rommie through some of the darkest times she'd ever faced, Rommie realized how valuable and real the bonfire was.
Beile Kagon works the bar at the Kiss and has become a confidant and friend of Rommie's. She looks to Kagon like a brother, and is willing to taunt and torment him thusly.
Quenzal Tahnjuyn is a former coworker at Keeper's Kiss and is Rommie's tutor in the study of Astromancy. Despite Rommie's utter failure to learn magic, Quenzy is an older-sister figure for her.
Paradyme Capellago is responsible for Rommie's modeling career, using her as the face of his company's apparel line and 'intimate jewelry'. She takes great pride in taunting him for his crush on her.
Xauko Momoui frequents the Respite and has a powerful shyness that Rommie is one of the few people able to reach past. She tries to use a very tender hand to help Xau with some of her issues with interpersonal relationships.
Anhe Doina was a chance encounter for Rommie that developed into a fast friendship over mutual circumstances of pain and anguish, and Rommie's perspective on the issues facing Anhe. Rommie's been something of a mentor-figure to Anhe on terms of emotion, romance and intimacy.
Iris Blanchimont is one of very few Ishgardian nobles that Rommie liked and didn't seduce and rob. She has a great deal of affection for the scandalous noble. She even wrote her first original song about Iris.

Neutral

Ken'thal Tayuun is someone Rommie has very powerfully mixed feelings about. While she thinks that his relationship with Quenzal is unkind to Quenzy, he also was very kind to Rommie following her melon-crushing victory. Balancing the kind and thoughtful image of him and the image of him as a domineering partner is difficult.
Marcellain Chevallier is an annoying bard suffering disillusion of grandeur. That said, he also thumbs his nose at authoritarian regimes despite their brutality, which Rommie admires. She attempted to contribute to his legal fund when he was arrested for sedition, despite her thinking that he owes a lot of people apologies and a general disapproval of his reliance on 'fans' for his bail.
Y'mheena Pahsj was the former leader of the Pakshee that Rommie replaced. While Rommie saw a lot of potential for leadership in Mheena that she wanted to help foster, she also saw an unwillingness to grow and feels deeply disappointed by that.
Kotone Shimayasu is Andromeda's ex-girlfriend. Rommie remains proud of the career and potential she saw and helped Kotone cultivate, but in general would rather not think of her at all. If they did interact, Rommie would be guarded and distant, but she has managed to avoid such interactions.
Illua Corcavo is easily manipulated by Rommie, despite seeming quite resentful of the manipulation. Rommie respects her abilities with magitek and harbors no ill will against the former Frumentarii, but does think her a little too naive for life outside the Garlean military.

Negative

Kasumi Gakunin is someone Rommie once admired, who she has over time turned into a bitter rival of. Feeling scorned and disrespected by the woman, Rommie went from seeking her approval to actively dismissing her and outright ignoring her.
Ignera Arbell is the absolute worst of Isgard's self-entitled aristocracy. She's racist, zealous, egocentric and mean in the most casual of ways. Rommie fights the urge to rob her on a regular basis.

Affiliations

The Bandee Pakshee is where Andromeda works and spends most of her free time.
Bard Rock Cafe is the group that hosts the Night at the Cliffs concert series, which Rommie has taken part in.
Rommie was involved with House Blanchimont as a 'special consultant' and courtesan in the past, and has been dragged into to Iris Blanchimont's political machinations again from time to time.

Rumors

Note: This section is editable by anyone. Just keep in mind that the rumors here may be both true or false.

General Rumors

"I think I saw her around the time I lost my coinpurse in Ishgard a couple summers ago." - Elezen trader
"The woman has the Greenwrath upon her for sure after throwing so her dagger into that tree so many times." - Wood Wailer
"Someone told me that she told Ruri Valeth that she's got a thing for tails. That Andromeda does, not that Ruri does... but Ruri does." - Au Ra woman

First-Hand Accounts

"Her grasp of Doman is... unique. I wonder if her instructor in the language isn't something of a charlatan?" - Doman Refugee
"She cut a rather dashing figure in that shiny red suit." - Spring Masquerade guest.
"She has the strongest thighs in all the realm! I think they've been declared weapons by the Adventurer's Guild." - Melon Crushing Contest attendee.
"She had some big, secret falling out with the... one whorehouse. Now she's running... another whorehouse. She's tried to hire me to work at both of them." - Quicksand Prostitute

PC Rumors

"I've heard her skulking around my kitchen. T'would be a day if I find a fine garment in my soup." -- Gaidedee Foileux
"She pick pocketed me once, which I thought was pretty stylish of her. I hope she bought something less revealing cloth with that coin... you know how I worry!" -- Ignera Arbell
"Rommie... she's hot. Definitely a respectable figure of the Wanderer's Elysium. Her performances are amazing too." -- Teirra Lihzeh
"Rommie? Lovely lady. Charming, funny, gorgeous, and drop-dead sexy. And she's even MORE wonderful once you see beneath the Madame Andromeda mask she wears so much..." -- Rheya Tayuun
"Madame Dulaque is a scoundrel by any other name... and the kind with a heart of gold what's rare to find. Could not ask for a better friend and confidante, and, well- if you get the chance, spend some time with her and you'll know what I mean. Bring a quarter million gil with you, though!" -- Wu'rexa Norh

History

Name and Lifestyle

Dulaque is a corruption of "du Lac", Ishgardian for "of the Lake", specifically referring to Clearwater Lake in the Coerthas Eastern Lowlands.

Nicknames, Aliases and Titles

Rommie was named "Melonsbane" by her colleagues at the Kiss after the spring Melon Crushing competition where she took first place. She has a litany of criminal aliases, including 'Camille Elmdore', a roaming teacher of a minor noble house.

Current Residence

Rommie lives in the eighth ward of Lavender Beds, at the Lily Hills apartments. She also maintains a suite in the Goblet at the Bandee Pakshee.

Pets

Lorne is her Onion Prince, whom she won at Kindred's Wine Festival in a cake-decorating contest. He's kind of arrogant, but Rommie scolds him when he looks down on other vegetables.

Calcy is her youngling Bomb that followed her home after an event hosted by Thaliak's Embrace. He lives in her fireplace and eats honey muffins, and she occasionally uses him to heat tea or make small meals as if he was a stovetop. He's careful when he plays around and likes to stare at fishtanks, contemplatively.

Valkyria is her chocobo, which she stole shortly before leaving Coerthas. The chocobo warmed up to her quickly, and based on it's reactions to loud noises she was concerned that her previous owners abused her. Valkyria is capable of channeling healing magic, making the chocobo officially a better mage than Rommie.

Birth and Childhood

Andromeda Gloria Dulaque was born in Eastern Coerthas in the lowland settlement of Owl's Nest to her mother, Constance Dulaque, and an unknown father. Though she never knew her father, he was a guard at Camp Glory who, quite purposfully, got himself reassigned to the Dravanian front when Constance got pregnant. Constance took Rommie back to Ishgard shortly after she was born to raise her in a safer environment. Constance worked at the Forgotten Knight for a few years serving drinks, but the pay wasn't enough to keep them afloat and they wound up living in the Brume.

It was just after her fifth nameday when Rommie's mother 'disappeared'. Some people thought she just abandoned Rommie, others thought the died under mysterious circumstances. Unable to really fend for herself, she fell in with a young Brume hooker named Pacifica Roux, but Rommie called her Pax. Pax shared gil and food with the young Andromeda. She even gave her the nickname Rommie, which she still uses today. Pax taught Rommie how to use knives to defend herself, how to run when the Inquisition or the Temple Knights came round, and - albeit unintentionally - how to seduce. Pax was an older sister to Rommie and gave a damn when no one else did, and until recently was probably the only real family Rommie ever had.

Pax and Rommie fell in with a few more Brume rats after a few years together. Together with brothers Hector and Gabriel and a woman named Doyle. The five of them became something of a band of lovable misfits. It was Doyle who taught Rommie to steal what she needed from the nobles, and it was Gabriel who taught her to question why the faith of Halone justified the oppression of commoners. Hector, on the other hand, taught her to fight. Though he liked to use his fists, Rommie liked knives, the weapons she learned from Pax.

Teen Years

She was indelicately young when she started using intimacy to get gil. Although Pax hadn't been much older when she started, she had wanted a better life for her little sister and took a very negative view toward Rommie's appeasing certain immoral appetites. Unlike Pax, who charged upfront for such activities, Rommie offered herself freely, and took what she liked after. She thought of it as penance, at first for what the partners had done to a girl Andromeda's age and later for more abstract sins - the oppression of the poor, the unkindness toward others.

She became exceptionally talented at drawing out a 'mark' and then punishing them for whatever perceived sin they carried. She didn't care for the sins against orthodoxy or Halonic nonsense; she punished people for sins against what she considered human decency. For laughing at starving orphans, for kicking the helpless, and in some particularly bitter cases for the crime of just being a noble. Listening to Gabriel's 'sermons', Hector's rage and Doyle's acclaim of theft as a means of life made Rommie's moral compass a bit off-balanced, but focused on bringing some measure of pain to those who relished in the unjust system of Ishgard.

After a particularly bad run at a mark, Rommie was tailed back to their Drifter's Den by a member of the Heavens Ward. The five scattered and managed to lose the knight in what confusion they could rouse, but the victory was short-lived. An investigation allegedly found a Draconian rosary in their hovel. Soon, Inquisitors marched down on them. Rommie, being the thief that started the whole mess, was about to be taken away by the Inquisitors when Pax claimed ownership of the Rosary. She claimed that she was part of a growing movement, one that soon would make the Dragonsong War end.

Rommie believed absolutely none of it - not the rosary, not the heretics, and not the fate that Pax was willing to take for her. After that night, she rarely saw Hector, Gabriel and Doyle again.

The Calamity

Just prior to the fall of Dalamud, Rommie was on her own again. She traveled to Camp Glory to see the lake her last name referenced with what little gil she could scrape together and a pair of iron daggers she had bought with a bit of honest gil made giving decent folk massages. She had no idea about the battle of Carteneau or the plans for Dalamud's destruction, but she's always been glad she got to see the lake a final time as it was, before the Calamity.

After the moon fell, weather got harsher in Ishgard and chances to leave the city were even fewer. This raised the ante on desperation, and, therefore, on thefts. Rommie got to know a reliable fence who was a disgraced member of House Valentione, which allowed her to steal objects instead of gil. She became fond of art and jewelry, but in her more daring days stole a chocobo from an owner thought to abuse her. She kept Valkyria stabled far from the city and tended to her when time permitted, but knew her days were numbered.

The climate had changed in more ways than one. Suddenly, the enforcers of the regieme started coming down like hammers on an anvil - striking randomly and tossing sparks. It was hard to tell without much in the way of friends anymore, but it seemed like they were zeroing in on her.

Rommie handled this by taking her only real job before leaving the Holy See, as a courtesan and advisor to the embattled lesser noble house Blanchimont and their new matriarch Iris Blanchimont, with whom she is still close friends and who did not seem to mind all that much Rommie continually seducing and robbing other nobility.

In fact, it was Iris who encouraged Rommie to flee southward.So she pulled together gil to get herself a nice suit of armor and a helmet to hide her identity, and rode Valkyria south some five years after the Calamity.

The Keeper's Kiss

Her goal when she got to Ul'dah was to become a knight for a High House. That, surely, would give her clemency for old, forgotten crimes and would afford her a place to draw benefit from the system for once. This plan, she knew, ill suited her because the idea of becoming a knight required far too much moral adherence and the idea of what she wanted to use knighthood for violated her own moral compass.

So, while she responded to a guard posting at Menphira's Respite, she instead opted to interview to become a courtesan. She wanted to be honest, more than anything else, and that seemed like the right way to do it. She was good at sex and good at charming people, and the Kiss promised her better pay with less of a chance of being executed in the morning. Being a knight was running from who she was, but being a Courtesan was embracing it.

When Marcellain Chevallier went and got himself kidnapped by Brass Baldes following an anti-government demonstration, Rommie was left with some pretty horrifying flashbacks to losing Pax to the Inquisition. She tried to tail the Brass Blades who abducted Marcy, but was called back to the estate by Quenzal, prompting a powerful argument over just who Andromeda even was anymore and what kind of 'better life' was it if she still abandoned people who needed her. Although she's settled back into life at the Kiss, that argument still simmers inside her.

That argument was awoken several moons later when she was exposed to the Dark Knight soulstone of her friend, Kiss' barkeeper Beile Kagon. She found her anger issues and impulsiveness harder to control and her feelings of her current life and her past were magnified after her brief exposure to this unseemly artifact.

Following this exposure, Rommie spent two weeks in Ishgard and Dravania with Iris, in an effort to learn what had happened to her and how to control it. This included almost a week camping on Sohm Al with Rixy Sylwest, who taught her the finer points of resisting the darker temptations life presents. After this excursion, Rommie had Rixy hired on as sous chef for Kiss' new restaurant.

After becoming a model for the fashion designs of Paradyme Capellago, Rommie grew a bit more ambitious with her career aspirations. She began publicly singing and playing the lute at Keeper's Kiss cabarets where she found a small following of fans and ample adulation from her closer companions. As she fell into a dry spell with her courtesan work, she decided to devote more time and energy to music. This culminated at another Nanawa Mines concert with Marcellain and Savo where Rommie was one of the performers.

After Keeper's Kiss moved to the Mists, Rommie also was promoted to Madame, in charge of the company's courtesans as a refocus on more broad entertainment services required the owners to no longer directly oversee courtesan operations. This has been seen as a glamorous promotion by many and has given her an extra air of importance and elegance around prospective 'fans'.

Camille Elmdore

As her personal life began to unravel in a complicated and hard-to-explain way, Rommie took moons off of her work and life both. Her relationship with her then-romantic partner was fracturing and her work no longer felt a place of refuge. She disappeared altogether, hiding in Aleport under the guise of a roaming schoolteacher named Lady Camille du Elmdore.

Here she tended to a girl of no more than ten years named Andy, after a resemblance to Rommie herself, who had been rescued by her former girlfriend from servitude among a pirate crew. Andy was sickly and struck with poor vision, but Rommie learned to emboss Eorzean lettering for her to feel instead of see and helped her learn of adventure and life outside of Aleport's walls.

Andy was the only person at Aleport who was aware of Rommie's actual identity, and helped her keep the secret. Multiple attempts by Wu'rexa Norh and Rheya Tayuun to find Rommie had failed until, near Starlight, she chose to be found after being called upon for a mission to save her girlfriend.

For the next moon, Rommie tried to reconcile this life with her old one and reclaim both her work and relationship. But when her now ex-girlfriend helped Andy in a ceremonial suicide before her illness claimed her, Rommie viciously cast off her entire life as it existed both under the name Camille and at the Keeper's Kiss, choosing instead to strike a dangerous, reckless path for herself.

Manager of the Bandee Pakshee

It was the help of Rheya, now Rommie's significant other, that prompted a calming of a long storm of self-destruction and misdirected rage. Having well and truly burned the bridges she hat at the Kiss, Rommie set out to find a new place to practice her trade. As a result of her considerable experience both in social influence and some as a successful madame, the owner of the start-up Ul'dahn pillowhouse Bandee Pakshee, Z'zhumii Umi, hired Rommie on.

Rommie quickly established herself as an asset to the company both with her connections and her attitude toward mentoring and nurturing courtesans. When Z'zhumii left on what was either sabbatical or retirement, a conflict between the company's new manager, Y'mheena Pahsj, and it's madame A'sharah Rahz reached a critical point. Shortly after the company's Grand Opening, Z'zhumii found herself needing to replace Y'mheena, and again calling on Rommie's experience, she was chosen to manage the company.

In the time since her appointment as proprietress, Rommie has attempted to integrate the company into the mainstream of Eorzean entertainment while keeping Z'zhumii's vision at the core of the company's identity.

Plot Hooks

General Hooks

Andromeda used to use her skills in flirtation to gain access to people's belongings and liberate them. She has concerns this past will catch up with her. She also has several friends from her early life who haven't been in contact since the Calamity.
Rommie works as the Proprietor and a courtesan at the Bandee Pakshee, selling her time and affections for the right price.
Since becoming a courtesan, Rommie has become something of a general entertainer as well, performing song and dance numbers at cabarets and concerts.
Her old friends from the Brume are still out there, actively supporting the Brume and reformist politics.

Current Projects

Rommie is a model, at present working with the company Pearl Appeal.
Rommie was exposed to a Dark Knight soulstone. Although her exposure was brief, it has had some impact on her psychological state; her temper has become harder to control as a result.

Gallery

Dusting off her daggers to chase after a captured friend.
Rommie and friends after Club Crescent.
A "Night at the Cliffs" concert featuring Rommie.
Rommie promoting the Bandee Pakshee.
Rommie and her girlfriend, Rheya Tayuun, at the Pakshee.
On business in Limsa Lominsa, in her casual attire.

OOC Notes

I am game for pretty much anything in terms of RP. I don't use Skype too often, but I am willing to upon request. I write paragraph responses, though due to the nature of in-game RP these often lean on the short side in the interest of time. Feel free to ask me for pick-up scenes or the like any time. The template used here is of my own design, borrowing elements from several other formats and adding a few of my own.