Background

Élise Verdier grew up in a cultivair family, glasshouse chemists whose work could soothe or subdue. On a routine run with a clinic physician, Dr. Marcel Roux, her carriage was boxed in by men from the Cinder Lane Syndicate. Their patron’s son was dying from a Verdier-derived toxin; no guild could cure him. They hauled Élise and the doctor to a shuttered distillery and “motivated” her, by dosing her with the same compound.

She worked through pain and tremors, counting breaths, refining ratios with Roux until a stabilizing dose kept the boy, and Élise, upright. It wasn’t a cure. It bought clarity and hours. The Syndicate demanded permanence. Once the doses steadied her hands, Élise realized the truth: a true cure would take months she’d never be allowed to survive.

She made the room work for her and let the old Verdier magic do the rest. The smog was coal and lime, but it moved where her shadow told it. The sickening spray was chemistry, but it bit because she willed it. With an injector to keep her steady and Roux at her shoulder, she walked the boy’s mother through her breathing, lit the ledgers, and left with a satchel of ampoules that now hum when she touches them. She also left with a reminder, the ache that flares when a dose runs thin, proof of what she once helped sell. The pain keeps her honest and moving: mend what can be mended, and make the poisoners learn exactly what their poisons do. And if poison must be used, she’ll be the one to use it, because she knows its taste, and she’s already paid its price.

Appearance

• Look: late-20s; olive-pale skin; dark hair tied back for work.
• Wardrobe: tailored work blues and charcoal riding trousers, Verdier green ribbon, leather field gloves. one plain ear stud.
• Kit: wrist-mounted sprayer on the left forearm (covered vial + short nozzle), slim injector in the satchel, a single corked vial in the thigh holster, respirator scarf folded in a pocket.
• Tells: when her magic stirs, a cool haze pools at her boots and faint veins kindle at the wrist/temple. She smells of crushed herbs and clean linen.

Personality

Core read: calculating, purposeful, not cold. She values calm because it keeps people alive. Savors small comforts as much as possible knowing they don’t last. When she speaks or shows feeling it is honest & meant, which adds value to it.