Human Lightning Artificer - Jacquie Sparkes

[Medium Sized Model - 25mm Base]

[Presupported with LYS files in 32mm & 75mm Scale]

One of the most brilliant minds of the separatist artificers and Lumens’ right hand. Jacquie was the daughter of a noble merchant who was a patron of the BIS and heavily invested within it. Though when her father saw the fruitful opportunity of Tomas Lumen’s Simulacrums, he attempted to pull his funds into that venture instead. This would ultimately lead to his death, and Jacquie taking up his mantle and joining with Tomas Lumens in a bid for revolution.

Coming from a fortunate background as the daughter of an esteemed merchant in Edimir, Jacquline Sparks had a rather sheltered early life. Her schooling prepared her for the prim and proper lady-like duties and responsibilities of one in her family’s standing, the noble merchant class of Baldur were only one rung on the ladder below the lords and ladies that ruled the realm. It was Jacquie’s family and those like it that owned the factories, slave conglomerates, logistics companies and everything else of the brave new age that was propped up by the labour of the poor for the benefit of the rich. For a time she thought little of this, and neither did her family. Their portfolio of investments of businesses was lucrative to say the least, owning a considerable number of businesses in the city of Edimir, and more spread across the rest of the kingdom’s port cities, as well as a sizable stake in the Baldurian Inventor’s Society.

Yet trouble came when Jacquie’s father was approached by a young half-orc inventor with no association to the society, claiming to have an invention that would render slave labour useless overnight. Jacquie accompanied her father to the inventor’s hideout, nestled in the Battlescar Mountains north of Arvere, an old abandoned fort being used as a makeshift production and testing facility. They were both astounded at the marvels of creation that Tomas Lumens had concocted: simulacrums of man, miniature men whose bodies were metal and oil rather than flesh and blood, able to conduct menial labour or even battles without tiring, needing rest or breaks for food. Jacquie’s father returned to Edimir post-haste to withdraw funds to pour into Lumens’ ventures, trying to gather more support for him through the Baldurian Inventor’s Society, though he was met with indifference or scorn by all of them. A day before he was due to depart for Lumens’ home once again, he was killed. Stabbed a dozen times in a mugging gone wrong, though Jacquie knew better than that. His personal guard were all sheepish about the matter, some dying soon after as well, others simply disappearing. Rather than risk her own neck to avenge her father by delving into his death, she would instead carry on his legacy.

An hour after his funeral proceeding, she stowed away on a carriage bound for Arvere, a trunk of gold brought with her. She dragged the heavy chest all the way to Lumen’s hideout outside the city, telling him what transpired with her father. She assured him that she would see her father’s will carried out, purchasing the stake in Lumens’ Simulacrums that her father had originally negotiated, and staying on to oversee the development of the project. She became Lumens’ protege and right hand for years, learning all the ropes and finding her own rhythm in the field of engineering, inventing an arc thrower which could conjure and unleash lightning on their foes, though its primary purpose was to jolt some extra power and speed into the simulacrums. She would come to use it for defensive purposes for the first time when the hideout was attacked by a band of mercenaries from the Golden Griffins, paid off by the same men who had her father killed.

They fled, barely escaping with their lives, Tomas faking his own death through illusions. In the grimy sewers of Grimgate they found themselves, living beneath the feet of those who hunted them. Jacquie pushed Tomas to realise that it was no longer the time for peaceful negotiations and fishing for investors: it was a time for action, even if bloodshed would be its consequence. Thus Jacquie stoked the fires of rebellion in Lumens’ heart, as they worked together on remaking their simulacrums to instead act as their soldiers in this rebellion and construct their greatest work yet: the Venatoris. Jacquie often reflected that her desire for vengeance had long since blinded her from Lumens’ true cause, and that perhaps it was always what she wished when she undertook her place as his protege and apprentice.