Raven Penrod, despite her profession, is a beautiful woman. Sleek black tattoos in the traditional styling of the Canton of Orthodoxy cover her eyelids, and expand up forming the additions of rank in the styling of the Canton of Finance.
The tattoos serve to cause her auburn eyes to seem brighter in contrast to the blackness that creeps over her brow and forehead.
She is physically small and petite. Standing only a meager five foot and three inches in height. Slender frame not doing a great deal to aid her in defense or intimidation. However, everyone knows that the obligators and inquisitors are often represented as Ravens in their imagery, and she makes no excuse for those who fail to meet every regulation set forth by God, himself.
She performs her work, aided by a fastidious nature. She unappologetically digs into trade deals that have even the slightest whiff of embezzlement or evasion.
Having been raised far from local politics, she has a sort of disarming sincerity in her charm, but she has learned in her years serving as Obligator, that a smile can be just as crucial as a sharp blade. She much prefers them, too. She has not the strength or training to truly fight, but she surely can beguile those that would hide secrets from her.
Raven Penrod was not born an important person. Well, she was, but she didn't feel like she was. She wasn't a -skaa-, at least. The truth of the matter was there was people who were far worse off than her. She was the fourth in line to be the head of the Penrod House, after her cousins. She was the only child of her parents Marik and Leaulier. She had every opportunity to just be. Something that not very many in her position got, as a matter of fact.
Her mother and father were both extremely lax about her duties. She was schooled, of course, and taught the arts of fine manipulation. She was taught to feel the pull of allomancy on her emotions. All the things that a fine courtly woman was meant to know, but she had far more fire in her than her station was really able to fuel. She grew bored. Just coming to a reasonable age of womanhood, old enough to be married off, but still very much a child...she really paid attention to the embodiment of power. An Obligator. It intrigued her. It challenged her perception, because she had always thought her father, as the leader of this piece of the lands, to be the most powerful thing within. However, the Obligator did not try to seem commanding. He did not try to intimidate. He simply was. And that being put -everyone- on their best behaviors.
Her mother explained the purpose of Obligators. Their role in society. Their value to the lord ruler and to the noble families. That was when she decided that was what she wanted to be. She was ten years old. She became obsessed. Pursuing the desire with insatiable appetite. She wanted to be that embodiment of power. So, the spoiled noblegirl...got what she wanted. She was put forth towards the Canton of the Ministry at age thirteen. She would spend nine years within.
Raven Penrod, niece of the Lord of House Penrod, was a devote follower of the Ministry from her youth. Her father, Marik, served as a seneschal to his brother managing part of the Lord's plantations under the Ashmount, Kalling, in the province of the same name. Growing up beneath the shadow of the ashmount she was absolutely assured of the Lord Ruler's power. Her parents had encouraged her faith, but both of them thought that having a daughter in the Steel Ministry would provide esteem to their family, and as a benefit have someone who would assure their bribe funds could be reduced for the boon of blood. This was not to be the case, of course.
Unlike those recruited in their adulthood, she was brought into the fold, and brought to the nearby temple for her initiation and training, initiate the 'psuedo-rank' giving to the acolytes who studied there. Those who underwent the tutelage of initiation so young, were provided schooling as they might have been schooled or tutored in their noble homes. The schooling would allow for perfunctory tasks in any of the vast array of Cantons of the Steel Ministry. Adults who were brought in, would be trained only to serve as Obligators in their appropriate fields, this would serve to give her and those like her an edge in their training. So very few students were there being trained by elder Prelan who had progressed too far in age to be of real use to the Ministry.
In truth, these Prelan had been chosen as those on the cusp of greatness who could not grasp it. Most likely, internal advancement politics had sent them here, rendered obsolete by powerful rivals who moved just that much further ahead of them in their progression through the ranks of the Ministry. Raven could see the bitterness in them, but paid it no heed. She was there to learn, and if she had to learn at the hands of the ungrateful, it would only show her how to best deal with the noblemen with which she was accustomed.
She was exceptionally bright, and could have made vast strides in politics had she not chosen this particular course for her life. She was fifteen when she submitted herself to the Ministry, and life was wonderful. She had trials, of course. Consternation was no small part of her life, but her schooling passed her by leaving her ready and expectant of such things.
Nine years training under the best the Steel Ministry had to offer in the very limited temples housing the "Canton of the Ministry" a branch that had fallen into obscurity which had once been responsible for mediation between the Cantons, which had fallen out of use. Now they existed simply to perform their function of training young initiates into Obligators. They were an obscure branch, and only existed in any fashion in the fringe dominances. The autonomous nature of the Cantons had become commonplace, and rendered the once respected Canton of the Ministry all but obsolete.
She could have been sent to any Canton after those nine years of training, but, due to their current political positioning within the Steel Ministry, the vast majority of Initiates were made Obligators within the Canton of Orthodoxy. She was no exception to this. At the age of twenty she received her tattoos with glee, and no small amount of pain. Once finished, a black crescent covered the lower bone of her eye socket...a solitary dot placed upon the upper lid, and stretching spikes coming from the outside of her cheek, above her cheekbone, to finish in small points on the lower lid of her eye. She had become an Obligator. She had stayed to learn all that she could. Her peers that had been accepted for initiation had been assigned long before she had decided to test out. She wanted the full knowledge of their responsibilities and procedures. She wanted to know every nuance of God's law, and the practice for his disciples. This was not something to be lax about, even if the faithful had grown complacent within the realm of the Final Empire. She was to be of the Canton of Orthodoxy, and heresy did not only come from neglecting ritual. It was more commonly noted by subversion of the law. Law which was given to man by God, and had she left any sooner...she would have been ignorant of the full scope of her duties. Not now.
Due to the current internals of the Steel Ministry, her position as Obligator of the Canton of Orthodoxy allowed her no small amount of political clout when confronted with Obligators of other Cantons. Even though she had been returned to the Western Dominance due to a favor the Penrod family had called in unwisely. She still found herself interacting with those from the Canton of Livestock, Canton of Agriculture, and Canton of Finance on a regular basis.
She had been given a modest home on her father's land. It was from there that she conducted her purposes. She spoke at the local alter to the Lord Ruler every day, when the sun was highest in the sky at the height of it's reign...the same station as the Lord Ruler. She drew in those who did not think they could pull favor for their blood...which was very few. Skaa workers attended these speeches far more readily than those of her family. It sickened her. Skaa barely deserved to hear of the Lord Ruler's glory, but it should inspire them to work all the harder for their betters, and it was not against the rules of the Orthodoxy to allow them to hear her sermons, so, she endured.
Raven had not though of her family since the first year of her initiation. She had given up her last name, for she was Obligator Raven. What use did she have for the Penrod. It chaffed at her that the family would have called her back to their lands, and it hinted at something far more troubling than their expectation of familial bond. It spoke of corruption. They expected a break due to nepotism. This would imply to her, that they must be getting some manner of break somewhere else in their dealings with Obligators. The Penrods were not a powerful house, in fact, they were vassals of vassals. There was an implication here that stretched from her dominance across the Final Empire. Corruption. She had not been informed of how widespread it was. She had not been privy how prolific bribery had become. She did not expect it in the Empire, at large. So, she started where she first suspected it. House Penrod.
She had been trained in politics, of course. It was the typical means of interaction with and between Noble Houses. She knew that she could not alert her house to her suspicions, lest they cover their heretical backsides. So, she played the game. Raven had some small amount of contact with Mesca, the representative of the Canton of Finance. She played her cards there. Befriending him, speaking of his jobs, and even flirting a little. Obligators could only be married to other Obligators, to prevent conflicts of interest. So, her charms could be applied in an unique way. He gushed. He was a tall, strong man, and she made it clear throughout the evening that she knew it. The right amount of nervous anxiety allowed to show through her practiced stoic expression. This was not done in a single night, but over the course of months, and when she was fully convinced that he was living beyond the means of his stipends, she would complain of running short of funds.
He, fulfilling the new tradition of the Obligators, then told her how to extort a bribe. It was heart-wrenching. This man was a good man, and she knew him well. However, he was living off of blasphemous double dealing. The funds belonged to Kredik Shaw. Funds he was allowing to stay in the pockets of the Penrods and taking a trivial amount in return. It was undercutting the word of God. It was...unthinkable. He was stealing from God!
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The first Steel Inquisitor she had ever seen in person had come to Kalling, and before him her father knelt before the statue of the Lord Ruler. On his left, the brawny Obligator, Mesca had also been placed. She watched with numbness curling within her. She had not intended for men to die. She found herself not caring that they were dying. It was a strange admission to herself. She wanted them to die, now. They were stealing from the Sliver of Infinity. There was no other option. She could mourn, however. Tears even collected above the point of the crescent that ended in her corner of her eye. The droplet squeezed free. A droplet that contained any future concern about the lives of those who would stand in the path of the laws of God.
That moisture had been the last speck within her heart, and now with it having coalesced and fled her the organ hardened to steel. She had a duty that could not be subverted by petty emotion. She had no time for compassion... It was not until that day, that even though the metal would not bend beneath a hammer blow, that it still could ache.
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Her tattoos grew due to her action. She was considered an exemplary agent of the Ministry, showing that she would give up her own blood for her larger purpose. Not only that, but she had eliminated an Obligator from a Canton that was attempting to compete with her own for the larger power that was to be gained.
The single crescent below, was now joined by a swooping symbol to round out her brow. The spikes of the tattoo flared in near symmetry to the lower that would end surrounding her temples. The black marks would warn all those before her of her import and her duty. It was not her fault that other specimens that bore the marks were lax in their duty. She would be sure that proper respect would be given to these markings.
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The death of her father had been spoken of discreetly, and only those with a great deal of connections could trace the investigations back to herself. It was proper procedure when another Obligator had been condemned, so that petty squabbles or vengeance would not be sought upon the ranks of another Canton. So, it had very little meaning when she was assigned to ensure the piety of House Vangon of the Southern Dominance.
Her work began in a very similar way, but rather than using her charms to obtain a confession of guilt from her quarry. She, instead, appeared present for each meeting with the House Obligators. She oversaw the finances, the trade deals, the bartering for skaa labor, and all manners of other such things.
She had found them satisfactory. That is until she saw the lady that the Lord's son was courting. She had came unexpectedly the night after she had taken account of the House. They were younger than her now, barely. The man had a pet skaa that traveled around with him, next to him. She could see that he loved her. His affection flared in his eyes...and in his partner's belly. Filled with Confidence of the heresy at hand, she walked up, furiously. She gripped the man by the arm, and screamed in his face.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING, SON?" She could not begin to understand how a man of any station or self-respect was allowed to flaunt such a relationship within the confines of the plantation.
The man was confused, at first, that was until he observed those tattoos, and realized that his love was by his side. He did not hesitate. Fear claimed his features, and a right hook was sent spiraling into the face of the much smaller woman.
The world went black. She awoke to the taste of copper in her mouth, warm rivulets had formed and flowed from her nose down her reclined cheek, pooling beneath her form on the ground. They diverted as she moved to sit up. Pain pounded in her face. Swollen. She blinked a few times, to look up, and the boy was running away, the pregnant skaa hauled behind him.
The guards that had been her chaperones stood, dumbfounded.
"CATCH HIM!"
The did not have time to do so, though. The taskmaster had observed the punching of the Obligator, and came on horseback, striking the young heir across the back with his whip...causing the man to drop his beloved. He stopped, stooping down to shield her with his body. Stupidity.
That act was the single act that saved House Vangon from wholesale slaughter. She could only authorize execution in a true emergency, and since the man and the woman had been subdued and immobilized in a small cell..she found herself satisfied. Inquisitors always came to investigate the betrayal of the Noblemen. She did not know why they would send these killing machines to perform such a trivial task, but it was always the case. She suspected it had no small part to do with the way in which the executions were performed...the rage of the Lord Ruler was delivered with those deadly blow of spikes, the spike being placed into a small container in which the killed drained their blood into.
The skaa was simply beheaded and her corpse was burned. Much more simple to kill a skaa.
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Perhaps due to her continued success, or for fear of being discovered for corruption himself the High Prelan of the Southern Dominance then sent her to Luthadel. Her tattoos had grown all the more...a line of flesh colored skin was left bare where her hairline would begin, but on either side much smaller symbols had been scrawled epithets of the Proclamations which professed the divinity of the Lord Ruler himself. Black covered her face as a masquerade mask might, coating over her slender nose, and up across her forehead.
It then began again, taking the form of what might be misconstrued as hair as it followed the curve of her head, and fell to line behind either ear. She had been promoted to High Prelan of Orthodoxy, and sent to Luthadel itself. She was considered above reproach, and as High Prelan was entitled to visit wherever she pleased, and with a grand amount of authority. She only hoped that Luthadel would be the bastion of God's will that she had hoped it would be.
