Though not as impoverished as they could be, Penelope and her mother Herda had always scraped by. Growing up in a poor district of the Veseroluun capital, Sirtalak, there was at least always a roof over her head, and occasionally, a meal waiting at home. But more often than not, there were unsettling strangers waiting there too.
Herda, incredibly superstitious and traditional as she was, saw it as shameful that she was not wed. At first, most of her lovers had left due to her inability to bear them a child. After conceiving Penelope with a man she had madly fallen for (and who subsequently left her as well), she found that men were now disinterested in her simply due to her new daughter's existence. As it was, she resorted to inviting unsavory figures into her life, desperate for someone who would take her under their wing.
Penelope never had much of an attachment to Herda. While her mother engaged in promiscuous activity, Penelope was top of her class in school and determined to find a better life for herself. In her teenage years, a man that had been staying in their home attempted to take advantage of her while Herda was absent. Unwilling to let the stranger lay his hands on her, Penelope fought back with a kitchen knife, which prompted the man to try and subdue her with a weapon of his own. When it became clear she had no other choice, Penelope killed the man, suffering several injuries of her own in the process. Herda would return home to find her daughter nursing her wounds next to a dead body. Yet instead of being concerned for Penelope, Herda worried about the impact such a crime would have on their future family if it were discovered.
The body was eventually disposed of, time would pass, and life would return to the sullen state it had been in before. Yet Penelope's hatred for the world as she knew it would run deeper than ever. Once of age, Penelope immediately set out on her own, leaving Herda behind and using her skills to obtain work as a bookkeeper for a wealthy ore merchant. She wanted to leave behind the desperation, the detestable dream of being saved that Herda and every other fenva, held onto. She wanted to live on her own terms, without the need for others.
Fate, however, seemed to have other plans when Penelope was tasked to accompany a shipment of ore to another major city. During the trip, a lone necromancer would stop the small caravan. Using his skeletal servants, he quickly dispatched the guards who accompanied the shipment. Penelope, who had been inside one of the canopied wagons, would pick up the lance of a fallen guard and make her stand here, despite knowing there was no escape. She fought the necromancer's minions with everything she had, yet without any combat experience, she too was quickly defeated.
Suffering grievous injuries, Penelope could barely move as she was dragged in front of the necromancer, who looked upon her struggle with amusement. With a silky smooth voice, he offered to spare her life if she would agree to become his bride, dangling in front of her a life of pleasure and leisure. Unwilling to speak to this abomination, Penelope's sole response was glare at him with pure hatred and defiance. This world, full of avarice, hedonism, grime, and sorrow, was one that disgusted her. She had spent her life thus far scouring for the answer as to why she, alongside everyone else in the muddied streets, had been forsaken by the powers that were to guide them. If the answer she sought truly was to give in to that which she hated most, she would much rather die.
Entertained by the extent of her bitterness, the necromancer smiled wide, an uncanny expression that resembled a monster rather than a fenva. He made it known then that he was Karas, her blood father, and that she should carefully consider his next offer: if she would take her rightful place among his fenvasi, he would provide her the means to live a life with great purpose. He could see what lay within her soul, Karas remarked; she hated those who simply prayed for salvation to come not because of their complacent helplessness, but because she always had the ambition to save herself, yet lacked the means to do so. And with that, Karas gifted her a winged helm, telling her that if she wished to find him again, she would need to reach the top of the bell tower overlooking Sirtalak.
After several days of consideration, Penelope used the helm to reach Sirtalak's great bell tower in the dead of night, unsure of what to expect. A tower keeper was waiting there, and seeing the helm as a sign of their god, opened passage to Karas' realm, Kalovanopos. There, Karas was already waiting for her in his citadel, knowing full well the answer she had brought to his home. Yet it's said by observers that when Penelope walked into his halls and agreed to take up his offer, the vesera god's eyes glinted with genuine amusement, something that few had seen before.
From her excellence in basic training to the speed at which she mastered matters of sorcery and strategy, Penelope would prove to be an unstoppable force as she rose through the ranks. Through her time as a fenvasi soldier, she at last found the answer that had eluded her for so long: the conflicts that plagued the Veseroluun, the everlooming wars that took their children and turned their people to desperation, it was the lumena gods who were responsible for perpetuating this endless cycle of battle and bloodshed. Thus, to order to correct their mistakes, they would have to be eliminated entirely. And to those ends, Penelope would singlemindedly devote her life, knowing full well there was no one more convicted to fight for this cause. There was no one she could ever trust to cleanse this putrid world, no one but herself.
To fulfill her role as a soldier and bend the unrelenting world to Kara's vision, she had no choice but to become the strongest. This was evident to her from the start. And when the Court of Research and Innovation began working on a program to enhance fenvasi combatants, she volunteered, determined to use any means necessary to achieve her goals. Out of the eighty soldiers who were subject to the experimentation, Penelope became the sole survivor of that confidential program. Through it, her entire being was revised. Her body, though no longer able to be destroyed by conventional means and much more conducive to keirsi before, became enveloped in a constant, unending pain. But that was a small price to pay. The idealism and wishes for a better world that lingered in her heart as a child soon faded from sight as she settled into her role as the Prayer of the Paragon, one of two joint leaders to oversee the vesera fenvasi. Desire had finally stopped burning within her. The only thing left was a blueprint of reality that she would build by hand. And that was how she was meant to live, unwaveringly committed in the vesera cause so she may bring about a new era in this flawed world that yielded to no one.