04-26-2014, 01:44 AM
Natalie Northbrook-Grey
Granddaughter of DVII's Patron, Edward Northbrook, and daughter to well-known philanthropist Eleanor Northbrook-Grey. Natalie's upbringing was one of privilege and splendour, the benefits of a private education and the obscene luxury afforded by living in the heart of London. Her earliest memories of childhood blur with activity, of caressed hair and kissed foreheads; an endless string of goodbyes framed by the soft glow of nostalgia. Her parents were often absent, but she has clear memories of their familial togetherness back then. The bonds that tied them might stretch the vastness of the globe, but they were unbreakable.
A staunch champion and benefactor of the Red Cross, her mother travelled often, leaving her three little girls to the care of extravagant wealth and the secure legacy of the Northbrook name. Their eccentric father, billionaire Alistair Grey, never tried to fill the gaping hole her absence left; he was distant, preoccupied, and always working. Natalie loved him anyway. She remembers stretching out in the plush carpet of his office with a picture book, or huddled by his feet under the desk while he worked. Though stern and unsmiling, he never questioned her silent company, and her sisters were usually too afraid of his piercing stare and clipped words to dare follow. Occasionally, when he noticed she was there, he would speak. Often she would just listen to the rumble of his voice, whether he spoke to her or to others via the network. Sometimes she fell asleep there.
She was always her father's daughter.
As she grew older, Natalie's sense of independence flourished. Though hardly shy she at least gave the impression of being reserved; unlike her siblings, she was uninterested in the limelight afforded by their family's name and standing within the CCD. Her face began to slip from public Northbrook photographs, and sometimes articles forgot her name. Since she was both studious and sensible, it was never an issue, if perhaps something her mother did not favour. Natalie was was content to spend time alone, and had plenty of preoccupations to fill it. Eleanor Northbrook insisted on the highest calibre of education for her children; Natalie and her sisters had learned French almost alongside English, and later Russian. Music centred her foremost hobby, in particular the piano. She read voraciously, studied hard, and occasionally stole away from their private mansion to taste the life of anonymity.
At seventeen, the balance of her world shifted. It never returned back to kilter.
Her mother had left for a charity gala in memorial of the Tower Bridge disaster, a function she had unsuccessfully cajoled Natalie into attending. Her father's study, which she still sometimes visited, was locked. He was out also. It was not unusual in the expansive lay of rooms and floors for the comings and goings of her family to pass like ghosts. Shadows chased open doorways, and in the echoing vastness of the huge house Natalie retreated to the piano. Annotated sheet music spread in an arc on the wood floor, untouched from the last time she had been in here. The curtains were flung wide, which in the daylight streamed in a flood of light. Now drizzle flecked the windows, and the sky was striated with red and purple.
At the majestic height of La Campanella, the room's acoustics flattened and a wall-light flashed an incoming call connected to her Wallet. It was full dark, the piano's ivory keys aglow in slanted moonlight as her fingers drifted from their placement. The cadence of the last chord hung like a vibration in the air.
"Yes?"
"Where are you? Are you home?" Her mother's voice. The words were calm, but something tight clipped their edges. The tick of the metronome counted the silence before Natalie answered. "Yeah."
Then. "What's happened?"
"Your father--" There was a hint of question, a breath of uncertainty, but it righted itself. "Stay there, Natalie. Don't answer the door. I'll be home soon."
The call disconnected.
She padded on bare feet back through the house, and on whim she tried her father's door again to see if he were home. The lock clicked open at the loose grip of her hand, and she toed the door. It gaped to pitch black before a bloom of soft lighting responded to her presence. It felt cold. Not like the sanctuary of her youth. And he wasn't in here; the room was not so large she could not see that at a glance. The door had been locked.
Natalie felt the trespass of crossing the threshold, but ignored the thud of her heart. The desk was scattered with paper - paper. She cast her eye over a set of freshly printed financial documents, then fanned them aside to pluck something underneath. She'd barely begun reading when the paper in her hand wisped with smoke, then began to curl under the lick of an orange flame. She dropped it reflexively, as a whoomf from behind blazed heat against her back. She spun, knocked backwards into the desk. Smoke pooled thick, and quickly, coiling like barbs in her lungs. The office burned. Vaguely, she heard thuds slamming against the door, but they echoed watery. She felt strangely euphoric as her eyes seared and filled up with red and black, and nothing.
She woke up in hospital, hooked up to oxygen. Her chest scorched every breath of air in, and scratched it out painfully. One painful breath after the other. She had no burns. None. But the nurses' soothing voices exalting her fortune as they tinkered with her monitors swam blurrily beneath the slick of fever. One blink, her mother was there. Another, gone. Angry voices raged outside the door. Silence muffled her ears. Sunlight streamed in long golden beams, but when it brushed her skin she screamed. Tried to. The coughing spewed out her insides and the world started beeping.
When she was finally allowed home, it was to a new house.
----*----
Her father was arrested in the summer of 2040, though it was eighteen months before the case finally saw a court hearing. The media was rife with rumours. The word terrorist stamped headlines alongside blurry photographs of her father, his security detail fanned out in frozen fury, outstretched arms thrusting away cameras and urging her father to shield his face. In every single shot, he refused to hide. Pale eyes sought the lens and glared it down. His lips were a thin pressed him. They called him proud. They called him a traitor. They called him monster.
Someone set filters on the newsfeed into their new residence - her mother, perhaps, or her grandfather. She saw the other stories anyway. The ones about the blaze that had taken half their old house, and scoured every inch of evidence with it. Conspiracy theorists painted devilry from the ashes, darkening the honourable Northbrook name with the smoke of Grey. In the articles, Natalie's own expressionlessly calm features stared back from the court stands; that same haughty stare, diamond hard as her father's. The journalists saw a father's daughter. A few bayed for blood. But she was a minor in the eyes of the law, and Edward Northbrook fielded the disaster with his daughter at his side. Together they coaxed the angelic from Natalie's icy façade, sculpted the doting and naive daughter from the emotionless accomplice. She was a Northbrook, like her sisters. Not a Grey.
They did no such thing for Alistair.
He was charged with embezzlement, accused of facilitating funds to anti-CCD terrorist groups in America. No defence passed his tight-lipped mouth. No explanation. Afterwards her family lay fractured, and Natalie's loyalties spun. Father became a black word, which only curled it tighter into the fist of her heart. They imprisoned Alistair in DI, a world away from London; at the very soul of the empire he had betrayed. His memory was a blighted mark, and though she remembered the way her parents fingers had used to absently touch in the brief memories she had of them together, her mother now refused to speak his name.
Edward Northbrook's status rocked in the wake of Alistair's betrayal, and scandal nipped at the heels of the Northbrook-Greys. Eleanor gathered her family protectively close, rallying them to a united front, but the bonds which had once felt unshakable seemed suddenly loose to Natalie. How quickly one of them could be cast free, forgotten. Exiled. Though her grandfather held on to his power and, eventually, equilibrium of a sort returned, Natalie drifted away.
At nineteen she abandoned home, shunning the golden education her mother had laid out for a beautiful and secure future. Her grandfather frowned upon this new rebelliousness, but ultimately advised Eleanor to let her go. She would come back, he said, when this silliness had run its course. After all, she was still a Northbrook. Indeed, loyalty never has sent her too far from the family she cannot forgive - though in what way they have even betrayed her she can't begin to define. It feels like the cinch of razors in her chest when she thinks on it, so she doesn't.
She used her mother's connections to push as much distance as she could between herself and London, which ultimately sent her to aid work overseas. Her mother, humanitarian so she purported to be, was both furious and fearful, but there was precious little she could do about it. She was the most diligent and high profile of the Red Cross's supporters; she could hardly deny her daughter's pledge to working on the ground. If Natalie had intended it as calculated punishment for her mother's lack of emotion concerning her husband, it certainly cut to the bone.
----*----
Pale blonde hair, light green-blue eyes. Fair skin, average tall and of petite frame. She has the grace and poise afforded by her privileged upbringing, and her accent is enunciated and crisp, advertising clearly where she is from. The intensity of her pale stare is sometimes mistaken for haughtiness, though Natalie is not usually concerned by what others think. She's independent minded and cool of demeanour. Having grown up under media glare, she's learnt how to keep her emotions close. Little ruffles her - or appears to anyway.
She values honesty and can be pretty blunt herself, but upholds a tradition of manners. Passion cores her cold exterior; when her temper flares, it is white hot. Recompense is often calculated (and more likely to be on behalf of others). She's perceptive of those around her, if her interests in looking out for them are usually veiled in apathy.
Quick minded, a deep thinker, and a keen musician. Though partial to dry humour, she's not usually unkind. She has the smirk of a cynic, and many would believe it of her; she guards her privacy, and trusts grudgingly - though once given she can overlook almost any fault. Any but the sting of rejection, and the knife of betrayal.
Her presence ghosts in and out of the media, but she refuses to speak for herself - and has never spoken of her father. She is only really known as the wayward middle daughter of Eleanor Northbrook, haunted by the lingering accusations placed after the fire. It is speculated that her work overseas is exile, either self-inflicted out of guilt or imposed by her family. Despite the efforts of the Northbrooks at the time of trial, the whisper of her involvement - or at the least her knowledge of - Alistair Grey's transgressions has never truly died. She is the chink in the Northbrook's fastidious reputation.
Past Lives, 3rd Age: Nythadri Vanditera
RP History
Granddaughter of DVII's Patron, Edward Northbrook, and daughter to well-known philanthropist Eleanor Northbrook-Grey. Natalie's upbringing was one of privilege and splendour, the benefits of a private education and the obscene luxury afforded by living in the heart of London. Her earliest memories of childhood blur with activity, of caressed hair and kissed foreheads; an endless string of goodbyes framed by the soft glow of nostalgia. Her parents were often absent, but she has clear memories of their familial togetherness back then. The bonds that tied them might stretch the vastness of the globe, but they were unbreakable.
A staunch champion and benefactor of the Red Cross, her mother travelled often, leaving her three little girls to the care of extravagant wealth and the secure legacy of the Northbrook name. Their eccentric father, billionaire Alistair Grey, never tried to fill the gaping hole her absence left; he was distant, preoccupied, and always working. Natalie loved him anyway. She remembers stretching out in the plush carpet of his office with a picture book, or huddled by his feet under the desk while he worked. Though stern and unsmiling, he never questioned her silent company, and her sisters were usually too afraid of his piercing stare and clipped words to dare follow. Occasionally, when he noticed she was there, he would speak. Often she would just listen to the rumble of his voice, whether he spoke to her or to others via the network. Sometimes she fell asleep there.
She was always her father's daughter.
As she grew older, Natalie's sense of independence flourished. Though hardly shy she at least gave the impression of being reserved; unlike her siblings, she was uninterested in the limelight afforded by their family's name and standing within the CCD. Her face began to slip from public Northbrook photographs, and sometimes articles forgot her name. Since she was both studious and sensible, it was never an issue, if perhaps something her mother did not favour. Natalie was was content to spend time alone, and had plenty of preoccupations to fill it. Eleanor Northbrook insisted on the highest calibre of education for her children; Natalie and her sisters had learned French almost alongside English, and later Russian. Music centred her foremost hobby, in particular the piano. She read voraciously, studied hard, and occasionally stole away from their private mansion to taste the life of anonymity.
At seventeen, the balance of her world shifted. It never returned back to kilter.
Her mother had left for a charity gala in memorial of the Tower Bridge disaster, a function she had unsuccessfully cajoled Natalie into attending. Her father's study, which she still sometimes visited, was locked. He was out also. It was not unusual in the expansive lay of rooms and floors for the comings and goings of her family to pass like ghosts. Shadows chased open doorways, and in the echoing vastness of the huge house Natalie retreated to the piano. Annotated sheet music spread in an arc on the wood floor, untouched from the last time she had been in here. The curtains were flung wide, which in the daylight streamed in a flood of light. Now drizzle flecked the windows, and the sky was striated with red and purple.
At the majestic height of La Campanella, the room's acoustics flattened and a wall-light flashed an incoming call connected to her Wallet. It was full dark, the piano's ivory keys aglow in slanted moonlight as her fingers drifted from their placement. The cadence of the last chord hung like a vibration in the air.
"Yes?"
"Where are you? Are you home?" Her mother's voice. The words were calm, but something tight clipped their edges. The tick of the metronome counted the silence before Natalie answered. "Yeah."
Then. "What's happened?"
"Your father--" There was a hint of question, a breath of uncertainty, but it righted itself. "Stay there, Natalie. Don't answer the door. I'll be home soon."
The call disconnected.
She padded on bare feet back through the house, and on whim she tried her father's door again to see if he were home. The lock clicked open at the loose grip of her hand, and she toed the door. It gaped to pitch black before a bloom of soft lighting responded to her presence. It felt cold. Not like the sanctuary of her youth. And he wasn't in here; the room was not so large she could not see that at a glance. The door had been locked.
Natalie felt the trespass of crossing the threshold, but ignored the thud of her heart. The desk was scattered with paper - paper. She cast her eye over a set of freshly printed financial documents, then fanned them aside to pluck something underneath. She'd barely begun reading when the paper in her hand wisped with smoke, then began to curl under the lick of an orange flame. She dropped it reflexively, as a whoomf from behind blazed heat against her back. She spun, knocked backwards into the desk. Smoke pooled thick, and quickly, coiling like barbs in her lungs. The office burned. Vaguely, she heard thuds slamming against the door, but they echoed watery. She felt strangely euphoric as her eyes seared and filled up with red and black, and nothing.
She woke up in hospital, hooked up to oxygen. Her chest scorched every breath of air in, and scratched it out painfully. One painful breath after the other. She had no burns. None. But the nurses' soothing voices exalting her fortune as they tinkered with her monitors swam blurrily beneath the slick of fever. One blink, her mother was there. Another, gone. Angry voices raged outside the door. Silence muffled her ears. Sunlight streamed in long golden beams, but when it brushed her skin she screamed. Tried to. The coughing spewed out her insides and the world started beeping.
When she was finally allowed home, it was to a new house.
----*----
Her father was arrested in the summer of 2040, though it was eighteen months before the case finally saw a court hearing. The media was rife with rumours. The word terrorist stamped headlines alongside blurry photographs of her father, his security detail fanned out in frozen fury, outstretched arms thrusting away cameras and urging her father to shield his face. In every single shot, he refused to hide. Pale eyes sought the lens and glared it down. His lips were a thin pressed him. They called him proud. They called him a traitor. They called him monster.
Someone set filters on the newsfeed into their new residence - her mother, perhaps, or her grandfather. She saw the other stories anyway. The ones about the blaze that had taken half their old house, and scoured every inch of evidence with it. Conspiracy theorists painted devilry from the ashes, darkening the honourable Northbrook name with the smoke of Grey. In the articles, Natalie's own expressionlessly calm features stared back from the court stands; that same haughty stare, diamond hard as her father's. The journalists saw a father's daughter. A few bayed for blood. But she was a minor in the eyes of the law, and Edward Northbrook fielded the disaster with his daughter at his side. Together they coaxed the angelic from Natalie's icy façade, sculpted the doting and naive daughter from the emotionless accomplice. She was a Northbrook, like her sisters. Not a Grey.
They did no such thing for Alistair.
He was charged with embezzlement, accused of facilitating funds to anti-CCD terrorist groups in America. No defence passed his tight-lipped mouth. No explanation. Afterwards her family lay fractured, and Natalie's loyalties spun. Father became a black word, which only curled it tighter into the fist of her heart. They imprisoned Alistair in DI, a world away from London; at the very soul of the empire he had betrayed. His memory was a blighted mark, and though she remembered the way her parents fingers had used to absently touch in the brief memories she had of them together, her mother now refused to speak his name.
Edward Northbrook's status rocked in the wake of Alistair's betrayal, and scandal nipped at the heels of the Northbrook-Greys. Eleanor gathered her family protectively close, rallying them to a united front, but the bonds which had once felt unshakable seemed suddenly loose to Natalie. How quickly one of them could be cast free, forgotten. Exiled. Though her grandfather held on to his power and, eventually, equilibrium of a sort returned, Natalie drifted away.
At nineteen she abandoned home, shunning the golden education her mother had laid out for a beautiful and secure future. Her grandfather frowned upon this new rebelliousness, but ultimately advised Eleanor to let her go. She would come back, he said, when this silliness had run its course. After all, she was still a Northbrook. Indeed, loyalty never has sent her too far from the family she cannot forgive - though in what way they have even betrayed her she can't begin to define. It feels like the cinch of razors in her chest when she thinks on it, so she doesn't.
She used her mother's connections to push as much distance as she could between herself and London, which ultimately sent her to aid work overseas. Her mother, humanitarian so she purported to be, was both furious and fearful, but there was precious little she could do about it. She was the most diligent and high profile of the Red Cross's supporters; she could hardly deny her daughter's pledge to working on the ground. If Natalie had intended it as calculated punishment for her mother's lack of emotion concerning her husband, it certainly cut to the bone.
----*----
Pale blonde hair, light green-blue eyes. Fair skin, average tall and of petite frame. She has the grace and poise afforded by her privileged upbringing, and her accent is enunciated and crisp, advertising clearly where she is from. The intensity of her pale stare is sometimes mistaken for haughtiness, though Natalie is not usually concerned by what others think. She's independent minded and cool of demeanour. Having grown up under media glare, she's learnt how to keep her emotions close. Little ruffles her - or appears to anyway.
She values honesty and can be pretty blunt herself, but upholds a tradition of manners. Passion cores her cold exterior; when her temper flares, it is white hot. Recompense is often calculated (and more likely to be on behalf of others). She's perceptive of those around her, if her interests in looking out for them are usually veiled in apathy.
Quick minded, a deep thinker, and a keen musician. Though partial to dry humour, she's not usually unkind. She has the smirk of a cynic, and many would believe it of her; she guards her privacy, and trusts grudgingly - though once given she can overlook almost any fault. Any but the sting of rejection, and the knife of betrayal.
Her presence ghosts in and out of the media, but she refuses to speak for herself - and has never spoken of her father. She is only really known as the wayward middle daughter of Eleanor Northbrook, haunted by the lingering accusations placed after the fire. It is speculated that her work overseas is exile, either self-inflicted out of guilt or imposed by her family. Despite the efforts of the Northbrooks at the time of trial, the whisper of her involvement - or at the least her knowledge of - Alistair Grey's transgressions has never truly died. She is the chink in the Northbrook's fastidious reputation.
Past Lives, 3rd Age: Nythadri Vanditera
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- Collecting on a Wager
- The Hunt
- The gift & the pledge
- Loose Ends
- War Games
RP History
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<li style="display:none">
- Coup D'etat (Azubuike NPC, Ekene NPC, Jay, Jacques, various NPCs)
- The Dust Settles (Jacques, Jay, Ekene NPC)
- Understandings (Jacques, Jay, Ekene NPC)
- The Road to Masiaka (Jacques, Jay, Azuibuike NPC, Jared, various other NPCs)
- Operation Rien N'Empêche (No interaction)
- The Search (Jay, Jared, Ekene & other NPCs)
- Full Circle (Alone/Olabisi)
- The Long Road Forward (Jay, Jared, Jacques)
- A Quiet Arrival
- A Night to Forget (Aria, NPCs)
- Experiments (NPC Alistair Pavlo)
- Spilled Drinks (Jay, Jared, Soren, Nox, Dorian, Emily)
- Through the Storm (alone)
- A Day to Remember (Ascendancy, Evelyn)
- Caesura
Edited by Natalie Grey, Feb 21 2018, 07:30 AM.