IVY CHELTENHAM-LECLAIR

a.k.a. THE MAGPIE

Ivy's journal entries, stories, etc. can be found at Strands of Ivy.

Ivy Cheltenham-Leclair is, to most people's knowledge, a young heiress from a mostly respectable upper-class family, albeit one with a faint whiff of scandal about it in recent years. Her father died, several years ago, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, and is thought to have possibly been murdered or committed suicide. Her mother did not cope well with the stress of her husband's death or the gossip and speculation that followed, and had a nervous breakdown. She was able to return home after a brief stay in a sanatorium, to be attended by a private nurse, but really hasn't been quite the same since. As Ivy is an only child, she was largely left with the responsibility for her family's estate, albeit with the assistance of the board of trustees her parents had originally established to look after her in the event that anything should happen to them.

What Ivy found upon assuming this responsibility was that her family was not nearly as well-off as they had allowed everyone to think. They weren't precisely impoverished, but they had accumulated the sort of epic level of debt that only the rich can generally manage. This appeared to have begun with the fact that they left England relatively late, after most of the upper class had already fled, and transportation had become more difficult to obtain. There were bribes that had to be paid, resources that couldn't be transferred, and all in all they arrived in America rather less wealthy than they'd started out.

Her father attempted to remedy this through a variety of means, few of them well-thought-out and none of them successful; a combination of bad business investments and a prodigious gambling habit resulted in running the family's fortunes even further into the ground than the flight from the UK had. As the downward spiral progressed, he borrowed money from a variety of sources, some relatively legitimate and some decidedly shady. However, they had for the most part been able to keep up appearances, and even Ivy did not realize the extent of the family's financial woes until she assumed control of the estate upon her father's death and her mother's incapacity.

Unlike her father, though, Ivy has a rather good head for business and a sizable streak of cold practicality – and a few unconventional talents and interests that she has found innovative ways of putting to use in dealing with the situation. She had always been extremely nimble and agile, and as a child used to fantasize about running away with the circus and becoming an acrobat. Her parents attempted to channel this talent into more proper directions by committing her to an endless series of dance lessons, but while she enjoyed those, she always found ways of sneaking out and practising her beloved acrobatics, climbing trees and walls, and frequently getting into places she shouldn't. She also had a certain fascination with various sorts of reading material unsuitable to a young lady of good breeding (i.e. pulp fiction) and frequently daydreamed about being a pirate or outlaw of some sort.

So perhaps it is not *entirely* surprising that, faced with an unsurmountable debt load and a strong desire to keep her family from the disgrace of bankruptcy, coupled with a newfound freedom of action given her lack of parental supervision, Ivy turned some of those childhood dreams into a reality, beginning a covert career as a professional thief under the alias of “The Magpie”. Jewels, technology, data – whatever a client may be willing to pay her for. And she's turned out to be good enough at it to have established a bit of a reputation in the local underworld.

She's been careful to keep her two identities very, very separate – no one knows that Ivy and the Magpie are one and the same. Relatively few even know that the Magpie is female – it's not exactly a usual occupation for a woman, and she avoids meeting contacts in person where possible. But she does have to deal face-to-face with a few contacts, so there are some who at least know her gender. But she alters her appearance and affects more of a lower-class accent when dealing with them, and when she's actively on the job, her outfit conceals her face and alters her voice to sound more male, or at least gender-neutral.

Motivation: Ivy's most immediate motivation is to bail her family out of debt and take care of her mother. However, she's also found that she enjoys her secret life rather more than her “official” life, and the challenge and excitement of it are beginning to be a motivation in themselves. She tells herself that once the family finances are stabilized, she'll give up thieving… but will she?

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