The Heathen

Female

26

somewhere between 170 to 185lbs idk

5'11

Dark Brown-Black

Short cropped, longer bangs, buzzed in the back; straight

none

Dark Brown

Human

White, freckled all over

Muscular ref. Colleen Fotsch

Tattoos on neck/chest, back, forearms and hands. Motifs of bones, thorns, dissipating flowers, trees, dust, blood and stars.

Easygoing by default. Likes to party and make friends, knows everyone. Curious about new things. Outgoing and communicative. Hard worker. Doesn't like taking help from people.

Just trying to keep her own peace. After an upheaved life, Jo's trying to reestablish a comfortable home and keep it safe. She's of the mind that she can never leave so she's desperate to make the most of her own circumstances.

Confident to a fault. Hides her insecurities and fears by acting in anger. No qualms with being brutally violent if she thinks it'll end in her favor. Disdainful of others' ideas if she thinks her plans are better (and she usually thinks so).

Generally pessimistic about people's intentions. Definitely mistrusts most men and figures most of them will treat her like she's stupid or useless and this colors most of her interactions with them.

She's rather strong and can do a lot of hard labor by herself. Excellent stamina. Fantastic and powerful singing voice (definitely going for a Natalie Maines sort of twang and strength). Conjurer of her own Cunning.

Playing guitar, gardening, singing (she'll actually do live performances in town some nights)

Friendly. Loyal to those she's connected with (not many). Dedicated and resourceful. Will do random acts of kindness on a whim. Usually open to help neighbors with things they need if she's in town. Ruthless, though. Will argue you to dust. Will criticize any argumentative weakpoint she can find if she thinks she's got the upper hand. Won't admit being wrong.

Jo is haunted. It's not super clear whether this is just the figurative haunting of trauma from the murder of her family and all the deaths that precipitated from that tragedy or whether there are actual ghosts that reach her. Jo definitely believes that the Farmhouse is haunted, that the memory of her mother and sister is stuck there in time, eternally frozen in pain and rage. Jo believes that's her burden but is terrified of it.

It's not really a religion, but there are folk practices of her territory that she was raised on which she then "twisted" into her own Cunning. It has no name but there have been outsiders who merely call it 'Cursing'

Jo is pretty far detached from big-scheme politics since she lives somewhere that's commonly described as 'the middle of nowhere'. But she has more inset political ties with the local town of Bartley since she kinda overthrew its 'government' by systematically cursing and murdering the gang that used to run it and then supported the installation of the power figures who took their place. Officially, she says she's washed her hands of it, but still manages to hold some pretty particular sway because of that past.

Jo is a corpse composter. She owns what is essentially a 'body farm' where mortuaries from the nearby counties bring her their dead and she puts them in the ground for a year until their matter makes the soil incredibly fertile. This is a highly lucrative business as growing crops is hard going due to the earth being nearly barren.

Red

Chicken and dumplings, Southern Style

Do her dogs count? She has too many favorites. Her dogs, Delilah's hunting knife, her record player, her guitar....

Her favorite is a metal baseball bat that has barbed wire wrapped around it. But she's also fond of her sister's hunting knife.

definitely dogs, she loves dogs.

June 19th

Gemini Sun / Scorpio Moon / Aries Rising

Went to school until age 16 and then dropped out. Never bothered to finish and has no want or need to.

Jo was raised by her mother, father and older sister on the Shallow Rest corpse farm. She went to school in the town of Bartley nearby and when the war started, she wasn't too affected by it, the conscription bypassing her family and the battles far, far away. She was happy, rambunctious and dreaming loudly of being a music star. She'd throw impromptu concerts in her own house and demand a stage for her birthday every year.

When Jo was 14, Delilah became pregnant by a guy named Keith, who was then more or less coerced into a shotgun wedding by the Turner parents. So Keith and Delilah got married and Delilah gave birth to a little boy; Keith was set up to inherit the farm alongside Delilah when the time came. Jo didn't much care about any of it because she was going to travel to the bigger cities and become famous with her guitar and her singing.

She shot up to an amazing height rather young and was ridiculed for it for a long while, made fun of because she apparently 'smelled like rotten meat' but that also didn't impede Jo much because she would just punch anyone who bullied her. When the teachers would come to scold her, she would climb trees or rooftops until they left her alone.

At the age of 16, one morning, she climbed up a tree to watch the sunrise (avoiding her chores) and at the sound of a terrible outcry, she peered down to find her father lying dead near the northern fields, gushing blood from a huge hole in his throat, and Keith walking away, towards the farmhouse. Jo was stunned. Terrified and frozen in that tree, knowing that Keith was going to hurt the rest of her family. She couldn't make herself come down. Jo stayed in that tree for hours, including the long search that Keith took to try and find Jo. He never bothered to look up, though. And she remained safe.

It wasn't until evening, when Jo was starving and dehydrated and out of energy that she finally managed to slowly get herself down. She took her sister's hunting knife from the garage, found Keith, and stabbed him through the back of his neck. Then, driven by her sudden catharsis of fear, just butchered him, screaming and crying and eventually making herself sick.

She collected the bodies of her family - her mother and sister had been murdered in their beds, the baby had been drowned and was still in the bathtub - and buried them with her own hands. It took the rest of the night and she was so exhausted by the end of it, Jo passed out on their graves.

It would take more time alone to find out the truth about this tragedy, that Keith was offered a different, 'better' life by the town's local mafia, The Parish, in exchange for eliminating the Turner family and signing the property over to them after staging an 'accident'. It took years for Jo to uncover this and once she did, she plotted revenge, turning the blood and bones of her family into weapons in her Cunning work, learning to hone the anguish and misery of their tragedy into something that could be wielded.

Jo eventually eliminated The Parish and installed a few of her helpers as the local government including Eva Mae St. James as the leader of the local militia and Rosetta Ansia as the Matriarch. She stayed at Shallow Rest and continues to tend to the loam and the dead, wishing that she could have her life back but trying to accept that she never will.

Riley - 6 year old gray female pitbull
Jewel - 4 year old male german shepherd

Fears: Being alone forever. That she'll be stuck in Shallow Rest forever and the ghosts will kill her. That she'll die and she won't even be cared for like all the other bodies are. Also heights. She can't stand being up high anymore.

Physical desires: Prefers to touch rather than be touched but definitely misses good, platonic physical affection. Somewhere on the ace/demi spectrum. Most people assume she's a lesbian (she's bi)

Style of self expression: full of those Deep South aphorisms: if not literally, then she just exudes the feeling. Sings to herself all the time. Hums. Reads aloud when she's reading. Long silences before she answers if she needs to consider sincerely. Promises are to be kept so she won't make them often. Friendly but has very clear boundaries. Dresses frequently in the flavor of biker/goth/cowgirl when she's out and about. Works out by running and lifting and doing situps on a regular basis: feels comforted by her visible strength.

Weakness: trusts herself the most and is slow to let anyone in. They'll all leave anyway so she won't connect too deeply. Easily addicted to substances. Partygoer but not a lot of comittments. She's got a temper and gets angry when she's scared.