Character development | NPC Trader

Research and brainstorming – Miro Board (downloadable PDF)

Character sheet

Archetype/Inspiration Character[s]:
Lady Sybil Branson (Downton Abbey): idealistic, intelligent, sweet and daring, but Marcia hasnt come quite as far politically
Margaery Tyrell (Game of Thrones): socialite, dauntless, tough, insightful, excellent at appearances, close to her (grand)mother, but Marcia has way less ambition for herself
Lady Rose MacClare, (Downton Abbey): socially endearing, easily bored, fun, will meddle with people from any social rank (partly out of genuine interest, partly to annoy her less favorite parent), immature at times
Miriam Maisel (The Marvelous Mrs Maisel): popular, haggler, storyteller, crude at times

Quotes:

Trigger	Line	Comment
First appearance	You found me! Nice to formally meet you, Marcus Africanus. You seem a decent enough man, but I’m still going to disappoint you: no way in Tartarus am I going to set foot on that villa while my dad is there. You don’t know what happened last time.	Laid back, estranged, maybe a bit flirtatious (out of habit, for she comes from court)
Quest success	You made it! And in an entertaining way, which doesn’t spoil anything.	Cheerful, glad to be relieved of boredom
Quest Failure	Maybe I asked too much of you… But it would have been so nice!	Playfully sulky
Proposing trade	I hear you brought some interesting things back from Britannia… Would you like to know about what I‘ve got?	Enthusiastic

Story Role

Marcia is the 16-year-old daughter of Emperor Lucius and his beloved wife Julia, whom he hopes to install as the first Roman Empress after his death. She has a loving relationship with her mother but is estranged from her father, who thinks her both too inquisitive and too full of the same libertine tendencies that he possessed as a young man. Lucius himself was way too strict and controlling with her, but that’s not all there is to Marcia’s dislike of him.

At the beginning of the game, Marcia spends all her time in the capital, attending fancy parties, mischieving with her group of friends, finding the best luxury goods at the best prices even though she can afford otherwise, and occasionally paying for an especially rare good in intel rather than coin. She finds her parent’s pastoral paradise dull and boring but will take any opportunity of her father’s absence to go and visit her mother, who accepts she pisses her father off quite often. In return, Marcia turns a blind eye to her mother’s dedication to her husband.

She grew up in a house where she witnessed a loving relationship between her parents who respected each other, which gave her a solid ground to build her sense of the world and her place in it. But in that house, she also witnessed a lot of violence and mistreatment from Lucius toward his slaves. Witnessing this violence gave her trauma, and in that sense, she could resonate with the character of the imperial slave Ben-Baalion – it’s way easier to deal with trauma when you’re free and wealthy. Still, she responds to this trauma with fawning when triggered, but it has also left her quite impulsive for a noble girl. What’s more, as a child she grew up in the shadow of dead older siblings, who Lucius made no effort to conceal the fact he’d rather see (especially the boys) live instead of her, and seeing babies come and go and never survive. It made her feel lonely at times and certainly contributed to her free-spirited yet wise-for-her-age personality.

Even though she’s closer to her mother, both emotionally and physically, she’s very curious about her father and the way he manages the empire from his little country house, prying all the information about his corruption, and she really disliked what she found. Not enough, though, that she tries to hide it; part of her father’s dislike for her is her habit of saying too much, not always to the right people…

Upon her father’s death, Marcia learns he left a will forbidding her to stay in any of his residencies other than the Heartlands villa. Even though the Heartlands used to be a place of depravation and decadence, he now hopes this pastoral environment will help tame her – and make her more willing to serve as Julia’s political pawn, through marriage for instance.

She spends the rest of the game in her parent’s villa, still occupying her personal aisle, facilitating luxury goods trade through there… and paying off the blackmailer with precious goods. She organizes lavish parties there, but as popular as she is in the capital, this island is just too far from everything for her friends to come there and she gets lonely and depressed.

She will be very friendly towards the main playable character: this shy, unthreatening guy with a non-existing relationship with his own father could make a nice friend until she finally gets a way out of the situation.

She is one of the most privileged teenagers in the world even though she’s estranged from her father the Emperor, which means her sweet, cheerful character still holds some prejudices that will express themselves through blunt clumsiness and attempts to improve other people’s situation in a sometimes very misguided way. For instance, she thinks slavery should be banned but her thinking doesn’t go as far as ensuring the freed slaves would not fall immediately into extreme poverty. Plus, she’s really nice to them but sometimes would ask them for information about her father’s affairs, which put them in a somewhat difficult position. This could be an angle for a potential evolution.

Her character resonates with Marcus, the main playable character, in that both are more than what their fathers saw in them and both are aiming toward more independence and a more accurate sense of self.

Personality traits:

Social, Cheerful, Popular, used to the light.
Being alone is a source of anxiety (cf. trauma response).
Excellent memory, Honest, Forward, Inquisitive (secrets are weird to her).
Gentle but still prejudiced (she grew up surrounded by her parent’s prejudices and privileges)
Forward, definitely not shy, Clever, Excellent haggler, takes pride in her ability to master this commoner’s skill.
Impulsive, Immature (she’s still a teenager and spends a lot of time misbehaving with her noble teenage friends and gossiping).
Her love for banquets and parties doesn’t stem from decadence: she likes to be surrounded by friendly people all the time.
Tendency to fawn if put in stressful situations (cf. trauma response) and to then overcompensate by taking risky endeavors.
In no way interested in becoming the perfect Roman lady or wife.
Romantically involved with multiple people, more out of a love for drama and gossip than out of real romantic attachment. But really honest about it, all her partners know about the other ones and she does care about them.
Completely unaware of her own trauma, bit of a savior complex.
To her, mischief is an art form at the intersection of entertainment and rebellion.

Biography/Background:

Since all her siblings died as infants, Marcia gets the disadvantages of being the surviving child – her father low-key resenting her because he could have gotten along better with another one of his children, both her parents a little disconnected from their emotions – and those of being an only child: everything seems to be about her somehow, and the way she built her sense of empathy is a little off.

Since several of her older siblings had already died young when Marcia was born, her parents chose to protect themselves and their feelings by taking little interest in her at first. So Marcia was brought up in Rome by a wet nurse, and then by tutors. Though it’s not unusual in Roman society to have parents trying to not get too attached to their children before they reach a certain age threshold, for Marcia this period lasted longer than most – while also being punctuated by Lucius’ annoyance at this child not being a boy and somehow taking a really long time to die and be done with. She grew to resemble her mother a lot, in physical traits and spirit – and the two developed a loving, warm relationship. In the meantime, several new siblings of Marcia’s were born and died – some of them boys, each of them increasing Lucius’ resentment at Marcia for not being a lawful heir. When Marcia started to show signs that she might be as dissolute as he used to be, he abandoned that part of his resentment to go on disliking the girl altogether.

She’s one of the most privileged kids in the world, and despite being a woman in ancient Rome, has no reason to believe otherwise: if you put your mind to it, you can do it.

She’s completely unaware of her trauma responses being so, and she sees them as charming parts of her personality. She was, however, very affected by the mistreatments she witnessed at her father’s house, and developed a savior complex the way rich folks do. She believes slavery is unnatural but lacks theoretical grounds to actually address the issue. As a child, she would ask to be given slaves in order to set them free like birds, missing the necessity for them to actually have somewhere to go after that.

Teenager Marcia hasn’t given up on her slavery abolition plans. Nowadays she sometimes urges slaves to free themselves despite being legally unable to protect them should they listen to her, seduces her flings into making servants into freedmen and freedwomen, and strongly advocates for the end of slavery at the end of parties, when everyone is too drunk to mind. Her heart is in the right place, but the way she’s setting its plans in motion is misguided at the least.

She’s still Lucius’ only hope to a bloodline and maybe he trusts that Julia’s good influence will set his hypothetical grand-children on a better path than Marcia’s. So he can’t have her banned from high society forever: the girl has to marry at some point – or so he hopes. Making her a Vestal would be a huge mistake, for she would still be part of said society, and she’d be freer than ever after her 30 years of service.

Surely Lucius doesn’t tell everybody that he and his only daughter hate each other, and Julia would certainly smoothen the edges in public if questions were asked. But there have to be at least rumors. Lucius’ close allies would not confide in his daughter while his adversaries could pretend to consider her his representative in Rome. They wouldn’t make it such a big deal, for Marcia’s not naïve, but they would make introductions, shake hands on deals regarding luxury goods, and exchange information (receiving and giving) with her in a seemingly casual conversational stream.

Marcia is a good listener, with a knack for storytelling: gossiping is one of her main occupations when she’s in Rome. From love affairs to her father’s scheme – she’s loose-tongued on a number of subjects.

Hanging with her noble friends, she gets dragged into a number of dissolute activities – and gladly so, for she likes the thrill of a gambling night as much as a prank played to a senator. There’s also been a couple of nocturnal escapades in poorer neighborhoods that almost resulted in accidentally burning those down, and of course, there are the brothels. Marcia doesn’t actually do a lot here, she’s reading a book in the next room while her more sexually active friends are busy and tips generously, which gives her an excellent reputation downtown. As for her, she hides behind curtains and kisses boys and girls from her entourage – and feels like she’s transgressing a lot already.

Daily life

In Rome

In her parent’s villa

– Wakes up short before noon – Designs new styles of togas with dressmakers and tries to get them to understand what she wants – Meets with trader contacts, acquires rare materials – Hangs out with her friends, gossips a lot – Visits the baths in the evening – Banquets – Occasional nocturnal mischiefs – Goes to bed

– She has an entire aisle of the villa that is her, with her own staff. Even after Lucius’ death, she sticks to this aisle because she doesn’t want her exile to feel permanent. – Wakes up in the middle of the morning – Asks a servant to describe the dawn she missed again – Reluctantly takes care of her accounting books – Meets with traders – Tries to have conversations with servants but ends up frustrated because they have very different lives – Looks at the ocean, sighing with nostalgia – she misses her friends and the city’s busy life – Arranges parties that no one will come to attend because she’s too far away from Rome

Opinions on:

Own work	Sees trading as a challenge – it makes her proud to be good at a task that’s not meant for noble girls
Economy	Words and information were her weapons. Now it’s economy and information – and those are often the same thing.
Politics	Anyone would do a better job than her late dad. Otherwise, she doesn’t have ambition for herself.
Military	Not really her thing. One of her blind spots: she doesn’t think about it.
Slavery	Slavery is unnatural. All slaves should be freed right now!
Foreigners	Very interesting. What exciting news do they bring? What rare goods?
Innovations	Very curious about anything new – would do anything to avoid being stuck in the past.
Public entertainment	Loves theater and public poetry declaiming. Genuinely interested in culture and educated, but prefers culture that can also act as a social gathering.
Hierarchy	It can be so unfair! Look at her bigot of a father who became EMPEROR for instance. And what about all the skillless senators she dined with over the years? The system is broken.
Friendship	Doesn’t quite see the value of true friendship yet. More interested in romance for its storytelling innate qualities.
Fate	Something to fight with all you have.