HILDA VON BLUTENSTEIN
Ever since we set out on the path of creating this game, we were blessed by our test players, who gave us priceless feedback not only regarding the playing mechanisms and other features but also regarding the PCs. That said, it turned out that Hilda von Blütenstein is among the most popular characters in Arcadia Tenebra. Must be something to do with her notoriousness… or the fact that Hilda believes life is but a game.
Anyway, Hilda has a penchant for boys and firearms.
She’s also not a stranger to exotic intoxicants, as absinthe is her drug of choice. Despite being trigger-happy, this Austrian baroness and adventurer is not exactly your next-door Calamity Jane. She moves around the European courts with the same ease and same cool she cruises in and out of the darkest, most remote corners of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. A somewhat rogue aristocrat who loves hanging around gypsy camps as much as she appreciates any fine Viennese brothel or salon.
In many ways, Hilda von Blütenstein is the embodiment of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. She is polite and diplomatic only if it serves her purpose. Otherwise, she’s deadly. Her virtues are the Empire’s virtues, and the same goes for her demons. She seamlessly internalizes all of the Empire’s decadence, seizing and grabbing every hedonistic opportunity coming her way, without any regard for the conformist morality. No wonder, as she was born for the role: proven by her body mark in a form of the “K und K “Empire.
Before you grab Hilda’s Player Board, you might want to have a look at a few less-known facts about the infamous Baroness. Hilda von Blütenstein was born 37 years ago in Vienna to Marquise Charlotte Von Trapp, who died at childbirth. Her father, stern and dignified Baron Maximillian Blütenstein, made sure Hilda was sent to a boarding school for girls when she was barely 6. There, at Stiftsschule Engelberg in Obwalden, Switzerland, little Hilda excelled in every subject and broke every school rule. The school’s headmistress wrote in her file: “Von Blütenstein shows no signs of remorse and no effort towards the betterment of her behavior, regardless of the harshness of penalty she is forced to endure. When asked about her motifs, her answer is always the same: I broke the rule because it was boring. And this penalty of yours is boring as well.” During her final year at the Stiftsschule – in what she once described as the most important event in her life – she met her future mentor, Lt Drucker, at the time Master of Arms at Schonbrun Castle, and later on the director of Imperial Intelligence. Her training with Lt. Drucker took her around Europe. Despite being the frequent subject of Viennese gossip and several high-profile scandals, most notorious of which includes the disappearance of famed Dodge’s jewel in Venice, she remained showered with social invitations of all kinds. Apparently, she once confided with the Spanish ambassador to Vienna: “My first lover was a florist. He always said I remind him of stone, rather than a living being. Strange, but I liked it.” As a witness during a closed-to-public trial of an anarchist revolutionary, she dropped the following casual remark which was later on deleted from the archives of Imperial Intelligence Service: “Security is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. “
As recorded by renowned author and journalist Francesco Szupilo, this is not the first time Baroness von Blütenstein has ventured to Arcadia Tenebra. A lover of outdoor activities and physical challenges, she often visited this province and even led a few climbing schools for ladies at the foothills of Mt Bedem. She was also spotted in Gypsy Caravan camp, more than once. Whether outdoor sports and tourism are all she was doing in Arcadia remains a matter of speculation.
