Regalia Stromstatt // District Ten

Name: Regalia Vasser Stromstatt
Age: 18
Gender: Female
District/Area: District 10
Appearance:

Reggie has one of those faces best seen under soft light. It's not that she's ugly, strickly speaking, but those flaws don't stand up well under the florescents. Then you can see the strange twist of her elfin ears, the way the severity of her cheekbones make the rest of her face look sunken and ashy, and that gap in her teeth... it can be charming, and it certainly was as a small child. But now it just speaks to her life of poverty.

It's the rest of Reggie that make her attractive. Her blonde hair knows no limits and in the last several years she'd refused to trim off more than a few centimeters. Now it falls around her waist in soft waves. Her pleasing petiteness is not a feat of genetics but rather neglect; all those years of undernourishment as a baby and toddler stunted her growth. At all of five feet tall, she'll never see another inch. She's not complaining though; when you've got a face that requires makeup and care to be attractive, you're grateful for the tiny body a few years of starving bought you.

Like the other children at the northern community home, Reggie dresses primarily in threadbare hand-me-downs. She tends towards flirty pastels when she can get them, beige and tan if not. You'll rarely see her in denim or any of the rougher materials that tend to chafe her delicate skin. For having grown up on a ranch, Regalia is surprisingly fragile, prone to burning if she's in the sun too long and fits of allergies.

Personality:

Being one of about twenty kids in the community home never quite suited Reggie. The experience has defined her, much more so than the neglect she suffered for her first few years. She has become outspoken, gregarious, petulant, rambunctious, gossipy and hedonistic. In short, Reggie is a hand full. The lack of individual attention as a child no doubt contributed to her spun-out personality, but her siblings are also now her saving grace; certainly few other people beyond the community home want to be friends with Reggie.

Being close to Reggie can be exhausting, ask any of her sisters. She demands much from her relationships, and though she's willing to return the time by listening (gossiping) and doing favors (in turn for others) it's not the easiest of relationships. As she edges closer and closer to her twenties, Reggie is becoming more aware of the limitations of her personality. She is still energetic, sleeping only a handful of hours a night, but she's learning that blunting some of her attitude makes life a little easier, and holding secrets closer to her heart makes giving them away even more worthwhile.

And if it's been easy for Reggie to have friends - specifically her sisters, for better or worse - it has been difficult for her to find any kind of love. Most of the boys in the home get carted off at twelve to the other ranches in the district, and the Emberstatts were too close to blood. Still, she's flirted with that line, made more of a pest of herself than usual when she was thirteen and flowering. Now, though, she's ready for something more - and she knows that to get it, she's got to move somewhere where the boys aren't quasi-related to her.

History:

Regalia Vasser was born to Winter and Ebony, a couple from the city center who got married at the age of eighteen when they found out Ebony was pregnant. It was entirely too young. The relationship faltered under the stress of preparing for a child and trying to eek out a living in a hostile district. Winter worked in the butcher's shop while Ebony, always a bit lazy and foolish, sewed and mended clothing, when she wasn't out getting high. She managed to birth Regalia, nurse her for all of three weeks before overdosing and leaving her infant daughter in the hands of someone wholly ill equipped to be a parent.

Despite working with and around meat all, Winter barely made enough money to feed himself - a priority. If he had enough left over he would mix it down with water and force it into Reggie. To this day she has a host of food allergies. Reggie remembers very little of this, just the long gnawing days of living with an empty stomach.

Sometime around her fourth birthday fate intervened. Winter got into a fight with the butcher which ended with a knife in his chest. A Peacekeeper cleaned Regalia up, gave her the first bread she'd ever had, and took her to the northern community home, where she was immediately given the name of Stromstatt and quarantined for a week until they could properly rid her of lice and a cold she'd had for the last year. That week she remembers better than all the other years put together: the endless waiting to finally be a part of a family.

When she emerged, all stringy blonde hair and scabbed over sores, she came into her name which she shared with four sisters. It was sink or swim, and she decided the only way to survive was to push. Gone was the little quiet girl who spent her days sprawled on the carpet, eating whatever she could find. Now everyone would know Reggie by her tantrums and her voice. She picked up curses from her oldest sisters and used them frequently even as a young child. This got her booted from class more often than not, which suited Reggie just fine.

Around the house she helped primarily with the knitting, the cleaning, and sometimes she went outside with the pigs, particularly when she was banished from the classroom. Nothing made her so happy as the time she had to socialize, though. Reggie is only truly alive when she's with other people, making their lives miserable.

In a traditional school Reggie would have already failed several grades. But at the community home, no one cares as long as you contribute in other ways. And Reggie does her part. At seventeen she is considering her meager options in life, wondering if she live off of a stipend from her brother, and hoping that some day she might have a romance of her own. Preferably one that doesn't end with her drug-addled and nursing.

Codeword: Odair
Comments/Other:

Need another character in Ten now ^^