Fortuna Frira, The Investigator

Fortuna was born to a Selia in Delfontae. A Selia is someone who is hired by a company to have a kid and give them that kid. Usually, this is so they can raise someone to fit whatever specifications they need. Blaze Frira had given one of her kids to the mining company she gave Fortuna to 5 years before she was born, Eliza ended up being trained to work in the same mine that Fortuna was trained to work in. Blaze was given a decent amount of money in exchange for her kids so she was willing to have and sell them off. They were kept away from the ocean or large bodies of water for most of their life which left them with an ache in their chest. Fortuna and Eliza were in different groups but they worked in the same mine.

The company they worked for, Rostara Mining, had the starting age for mining was 13 years old. Being disruptive or getting into trouble was punished by lashes. Eliza was a good kid and survivor so she usually did what was asked of her and kept her head down but Fortuna couldn’t and wouldn’t. This is where she got the layers and layers of lashing scars on her back from. During one of these lashings when she was 16 she summoned Vapki who killed the person who was lashing her. His appearance scared off the rest of her group and he flew her out of the mine and into the wilds of Delfontae.

He didn’t know how to heal her so he just sat with her as long as he could before he was sent back to his realm. She had slept through all of his watches but she woke up next to a lake that she just stared at for a long time. She eventually dipped her toes in and nothing happened which confused her because Eliza and Fortuna’s id card always labeled her as a mermaid. She was afraid to go in now because she didn’t know how to swim. The showers in the Rostara Dorms were protected by antimagic which prevented people from manipulating the water or in her case (she assumed) shifting into mermaids. Little did she know it was simply a case of her believing so strongly that she wouldn’t be able to turn that she just never did.

Injured and unsure of where to go or how she even got to where she was she decided to walk to the nearest village she could find. Fidiri was the first village she came across and thankfully they had no connections to the mining community which gave her some breathing room. She went to the village healer but since she didn’t have the money she did a deal with the healer. She would offer her services as an assistant or worker in exchange for healing. This passed and she was fully healed. The healer, Kira, was also a proficient magic-user who helped Fortuna figure out her abilities for the next ten years including getting in touch and breaking down the mental barriers that prevented her from believing she could shift.

By the time she was 26 she had mastered being able to summon 4 of her creatures/beings, Vapki, Zephyr, Jayla, and Todd & Brick. She was still learning about her abilities in luck manipulation but she had a hard time summoning it at the right time. She decides to go back to the capital and try to clear her debt to Rostara and free her sister. She went back to the building and they tried to capture her but she summoned Todd & Brick to defend her from them or at least distract their forces long enough that she could make her case to the head of Rostara’s employment branch. She wasn’t able to get them to agree with her on her plan but she was able to get a meeting with the head. She talked it out with him for the next few days and agreed that she would do a job with him in exchange for her sister and her own contract.

He wanted her to kill someone for him. The person he wanted dead was a corrupt member of Rostara who was cutting side deals for mining products with criminal organizations. She sent Vapki to go kill him once she found out where he lived. He killed the man then went back to the under realms. She delivered his body to the Head of the Employment Branch and was given her contracts. She knew her and her sister would need to leave Delfontae to avoid prosecution from the government so he brought them a boat which would take them to Amescier Haven Island. They ended up docking at a random beach on the island which made it so they walked around the island for days before coming across civilization in the form of the capital city Drasmore.

They went to the high council and explained the situation. It was decided that for fairness Fortuna would have to spend 30 years in prison to compensate for killing someone but that when she was let out she would be properly trained and given a job as a catcher. A catcher is like a bounty hunter who works only for the high council. She would be in charge of tracking criminals down and delivering them to the High Council or the respective court depending on the situation. Her sister would be given a place to stay in public housing while she sorted out her job. Fortuna didn’t like the idea of being in prison but she didn’t feel like pushing her luck any more than she had already.

Fortuna was taken to prison and while it was hard and taxing on the mind and soul she learned a lot. She learned how to talk to people from all walks of life and got very good at different types of bodily combat. She spent time reading, learning languages, painting, training, and fighting. She got to know people from many different criminal organizations which would turn out to benefit her later in life.

While she was in prison she also got good at working under pressure which became something she would need to know and be very good at as time went on. When she was let out she felt like a completely different person. She was a more confident person who felt like she could take care of herself with or without her powers. Yes, some of the shit that went down in prison has scarred her but she had gained a lot too and she had no desire to ignore that.

She spent a year recovering from her time in prison and hanging out with her sister before she felt like she needed to do something. She couldn’t just kick back and relax. She went to the high council and signed up for training which was an interesting experience of learning about different types of weapons, laws in different courts, regions, environments, poisons, animals, ships, reading the stars, the arts, disguises, and a lot more.

She was instated as a catcher with a partner while she was still learning about what to do. Her partner was a werewolf named Matthias who had been a catcher for 50 years. He had been asked more than a few times to become an investigator but he wanted to stay a catcher. It was more up his alley and less pressure. They were quite the good team after a few months even though initially there were some issues in their difference in communications styles.

She was able to use her connections in the underworld to get people’s guards down, get information, convince people, and track them down. A few hundred years passed and Matthias retired shortly after she took the job as an investigator as well as a catcher. As an investigator, she got to deal a bit more with individual cases and figuring out who was the culprit of what and make sure that the crimes someone committed were properly detailed. She was well-liked in the criminal communities to some extent due to her focus on getting the right person for whatever crime.

Fortuna was feared just as much as she was liked because of how good she was at her job. Few things remained hidden when she dug into them and she was exceptionally good at tracking people down with or without magic.

She has citizenship in all five courts due to her work in the high council and for personal reasons which gave her a backup in case, she quit her job in the high council. Part of her job was investigating cases that involved multiple courts to prevent any court from thinking that the investigator was biased against or for a certain party.

During one of her investigations in Nytellian, she met a noblewoman, Countess Thea who she eventually started to date once she had solved the case that implicated Thea for being involved in the murder of a Delfontae noble. She and Thea dated for a long time before getting married. They were together for 300 hundred years with the normal ups and downs of a relationship. Perhaps some more extreme and passionate ups and downs but still nothing that was completely out of the ordinary. During this time her and Thea decided to have a kid and used magic to have one together. They had a son, Rowan who was a beautiful young boy.

Thea was one of her greatest loves and when she died her heart was broken completly. It took a hundred years for her to heal and feel like a normal person but during all of this she had her bright lights in her work, her sister, and her son. She doubted she would ever be back to the way she was before but she was better than she was before. She inherited Thea’s properties, money, and belongings. She spent a few hundred years doing her normal job and getting raises and also casually dating people here and there but nothing too serious. It’s been a while since then but she is now open to serious relationships. Her reputation precedes her in many circles and she is both respected and feared by people.