Juli
Juli
Also known as The Crimson Puppeteer Pronouns she/her Race Dendulra Age Over 230 Profession Court jester Status Alive
Juli is a Dendulra court jester of Clairnia who, behind the bells and the laughter, has spent centuries pulling the strings of noble houses and seeding chaos for the sheer joy of it.
Biography
Juli was the daughter of a court jester in a minor Clairnian barony; her father was a Dendulra, and she never met her mother, of whom he never spoke. From a young age he taught her the true craft of the court jester - to know everything about one’s house, and to pull its strings: to make trouble here, a crisis there, and never let the mess be traced back. Juli loved the lessons and excelled at them. When a rival house attacked and killed her father, she drew a lesson from it: never aim too low. Had he meddled in the affairs of the other houses too, she reasoned, he would not have died.
She took his place, then plotted to kill the lord who had killed him - and was discovered too soon. At thirty she was thrown into a dungeon, tortured day and night for thirty years, then left in silence and darkness for far longer. She went mad after a hundred years and was finally released only after two hundred, at the age of two hundred and thirty. What came out of that cell was little more than rage and a hunger for chaos.
Three years later she became court jester to Lord von Rittenhaus Delani, and over the next two hundred and twenty years she climbed the ladder of intrigue, claiming to her own satisfaction the toppling of houses such as Welfsore and Montchello, a three-duchy war among rebellious Tabaxi tribes, and even a hand in dragging the whole kingdom into the War of Horrors. She rose to be court jester of the Duchess of Bechdel, dreaming of one day serving the king himself and, perhaps, toppling the realm entirely.
Then everything went wrong. The king’s daughter vanished, and months later the king and queen were murdered by his exiled brother, returned - by her sources’ account - from the dead. The realm fell into a chaos she did not control; a whole city of carnival rose; the balance of power broke, and she felt her dream of chaos and influence slipping through her fingers. And she will do anything to get it back.
Personality
Two centuries of isolation left Juli more than a little mad - paranoid, emotionally numb, prone to violent mood-swings, and cruel. Yet her already-keen mind was honed sharper still, and her centuries running noble courts from the shadows sharpened her instincts further. She is sadistic and delights in sowing as much chaos as she can - not entirely sure why, only that something in her insists it is right and that it brings her joy. She is manipulative and careful, and despite her swings of mood she keeps her true intentions and her cruelty hidden from every suspecting eye.