Adora

Adora is a human who was enslaved by the skaven in a mine but managed to escape, ensuring the death of her captors.^[1]

Appearance

Adora is slim, blonde and blue eyed and although as a slave, her ribs showed she was without permanent scars or disease.^[1]

History

Her father had died when she was a toddler.^[1]

A fellow slave, Jules taught her how to mix fat, dirt and charcoal to make soap, allowing her to become relatively clean and disease free.^[1]

In order to survive she became the favoured pet-slave of Skitteka, the slave overseer in which she worked. She acted as his informer, for which he would reward her with some privileges and most importantly meat, whose provenance she learned to ignore. As a mere human slave, he was able to talk to her of his schemes, plots and fears as he dragged his claws through her hair, she having practised so her replies were in a suitable tone between terror and adulation.^[1]

She was forced to sacrifice other humans from time to time to placate her master or to keep herself safe, when she had to do so with Jules, she risked punishment but offering him comfort even though he had been left as a limbless, tortured example to all other slaves. He died in her arms. Working in the mines, she managed to steal and hide several fragments of warpstone.^[1]

In the slave pit, Adora had a brief sexual relationship with a new worker, Xavier Esteban de Souza, a Estalian swordsman, seeing him as a useful unbroken male that could lead the other slaves if she required.^[1]

When Chief Vass threatened to vist the mine to check on the dropping production, Skitteka feared that the mine overseer, Evasqeek would use him as a scapegoat. Confessing his fears to his pet, he was shocked when she offered to kill him - but seeing her now revealed composure, predatory gaze and porcelain hardness of her features he wondered if she might be able to save him.^[1]

Despite her telling him to wait, Xavier accompanied her to her master’s lair, taking advantage of the distracted guards and finding Skitteka had devoured warpstone and a underling and was unconscious. He decided to kill him, Adora pleaded with Xavier not to as the slumbering skaven was still needed and when he refused to listen, killed him. She cried for a short time and then composed herself to await her masters awakening.^[1]

As Veer probed Evasqeek for the reasons behind the fall in production, Adora came to the audience chamber with her collected warpstone presenting it to Evasqeek as if she did regularly, knowing that all warpstone was to be lodged with the treasurer, sealing the overseers doom. Vass force fed him enough warpstone to turn him into a monster which he chained up as it continued to mutate. Left alone with it, Adora regarded the horror with a calm smile. Skitteka became overseer of the mine and her plan progressed.^[1]

She continued to sow dissension between her master and his guards and when it peaked, she told the guards of what had been Evasqeek that her master required them and then released the huge horror into the tunnels causing chaos. As the skaven fought the mutated beast, she then released the slaves to take vengeance on the survivors and then went to the chamber where her master had hidden himself as the battle raged on.^[1]

As slaves burst in and he tried to flee, she first hamstrung him and then severed his spine, telling the others that they should finish the others, but this one was hers. Skitteka took a long time to die and what she did even horrified the few slaves that had stayed to watch. She then slipped out of the mine into the nearby forest. She cleaned herself in a stream and there was found by a party of knights, retreating from an enemy. Clad only in her damp shift, she asked the apparent leader if he might help her.^[1]

He agreed and swung her up into the saddle behind him and carried her, sweet, smooth and lethal, back into the world of men.^[1]

Status

As a pet, she was mostly unharmed and remained unshackled.^[1]

Quotes

I will do it because I must. Without you I am nothing, my lord. Get me within striking distance of Evasqeek when Vass arrives and I will do for him. ~Adora to Skitteka .[1]

Sources

• 1: Barbed Wire Cat (Short Story), pgs. 295-317