Ex-Prostitutes

I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.

– The Bible, Luke 15:7

Prostitution is common in the urban areas of Mythic Europe. Many prostitutes have other professions, and supplement their income on fair days, or by soliciting business from traveling merchants when the harvest is poor. In cities, however, there are some women who work solely as prostitutes, and the Church continually exhorts them to stop their sinning. Some do.

When a prostitute repents, she poses a problem for the Church. Her trade may have been sinful, but it provided an income. Lacking other skills, and not a likely prospect for marriage, an ex-prostitute often falls back into her old ways, begins begging, or becomes a petty criminal. Some sections of the Church have had success in resettling fallen women, using funds provided by noblewomen. There are two common schemes which may affect a covenant.

Some noblewomen found new nunneries with ex-prostitutes as the nuns. This sometimes works perfectly, sometimes fails due to recidivism, and in some scandalous cases, leads to well-disguised brothels. To improve the chance of the nunnery succeeding, it is often placed far from towns, in the wild places that attract spring covenants. The leader of a new nunnery for fallen women is usually a noblewoman retiring from the world. In time, ex-prostitutes may rise to senior roles in such nunneries, but rarely to governance.

A less expensive alternative is to give the fallen woman a little money, and passage to a town so distant from her previous home that she has no reputation. This is thought to allow her to find a husband, and so fade into society. This seldom works perfectly, because few medieval people move towns, so the women seem suspicious, and a woman failing to rapidly catch a husband still has few skills and needs an income. Resettlement is, however, the cheaper method, and does give women a fresh start away from old acquaintances.

Joining a young covenant is a good option for women who want to leave the sex trade. Many of the people who work for spring covenants are already socially marginalized. In many spring covenants, people do not discuss their pasts. If they do, many have done things worse than sex work.

Magi ruling spring covenants are often concerned by a lack of gender balance in their servants. This occurs because the initial turb of grogs, taken to found a covenant in the wilderness, is comprised of experienced soldiers, usually male. To move from a military camp to a community, wives are needed. Women who are penitent petty criminals, including ex-prostitutes, can often be convinced to leave mundane society for a guaranteed job and a fresh start.

Magi may also accept fallen women into their community to seek favor with the Church and local noblewomen. Several older covenants have populations descended from an initial group of fallen women, brought to the site while the covenant was still in spring. These places are more welcoming to women who have recently left the sex trade than mundane communities.

Covenants that allow prostitutes to retire to them can develop poor Reputations in surrounding communities, if the members are not careful. Many have formal structures to smooth social integration. In one covenant, for example, each new arrival is

treated as the niece of a woman from the previous generation of adoptees, gaining a new extended family and place in the community.

The following notes will assist in the creation of characters who worked previously as prostitutes.

Characters who have worked as prostitutes, and seek employment with covenants, usually come from the lower classes of Mythic European society. Women of higher social standing tend to act as mistresses to a single powerful lord, and are supported by his arrangements, or by their own families. Choose Social Status Virtues appropriately.

Many of the other Virtues and Flaws appropriate for characters working in the sex trade — Gossip, Protection, Social Contacts are lost before play begins, when the character leaves her hometown. Players should only select Virtues and Flaws that the character will use in play.

Most prostitutes are from the lower classes of urban areas, and have Abilities suiting this background. There are so many prostitutes, however, that characters from a wide variety of backgrounds, with a broad array of skills, are possible.

If an Ex-Prostitute joins a nunnery, she may be a Lay Sister. If she has traveled to a different town, she might pick up any career: Laborer, Craftswoman, and Servant are the most common, but

Ex-Prostitutes can stir up many kinds of stories.

The magi learn from local farmers that a noblewoman has sent surveyors to a site near the covenant. Their companions investigate, and meet the architect. He has been commissioned to design a nunnery. Few covenants want religious establishments nearby, so they send a party to investigate the noblewoman, and see if she can be convinced to halt or move her foundation.

The noblewoman is elderly and wishes to retire from the world, leaving her lands in the hands of her son. She will accept a portion of her lands as abbess of a new foundation for fallen women. She is motivated by a desire for a contemplative life, a need of something useful to do in her retirement, and a spirit of charity.

The characters can alter her plans in several ways. The simplest is to offer her financial assistance in exchange for selecting a distant site. This would allow her to create a larger nunnery, and aid more fallen women. Player characters might, instead, recruit the noblewoman as an administrator, and her fallen women as covenfolk. If handled carefully, this could earn the covenant the gratitude of the nobleman, whose revenues would not be diminished by land grants, while still appearing as an act of charity, and so gaining the approval of the Church.

Recidivism in ex-prostitutes has many causes, but one is that there are demons of lust who prefer they resume their role as snares for the souls of men. A covenant full of contrite women may attract the attention of many Tempters (see Realms of Power: The Infernal, page 42). Rules for designing succubus and incubi, a type of demon that often hides among sex workers, are found on page 55, with an example on page 52. They may also attract the attention of a more powerful sexual demon, who seeks to harm the covenant by acting as mistress to a local nobleman and seeding hatred against the magi.

The magi may be able to protect their covenfolk, but the women have a second patron Penitent prostitutes are guarded by Saint Mary Magdalene. Mary uses many of the tricks of medieval saints, like sending visions and nightmares, but is also particularly interventionist, and may cause shackles to fail, wounds to close, and faithful people to be mystically transported to safety.

Fairies are attracted to people who are moving from one life stage to another, and this includes penitents. The possibility of repeated recidivism, where women cross and recross the boundary of what is socially acceptable, is attractive to some types of faeries. A community of penitent prostitutes may draw in sexual faeries like satyrs, who, unable to cross the Aegis, trouble nearby villages. Centaurs, representing the division between the bestial and cerebral natures of men, may be attracted to the community to redefine their roles into fully anthropomorphic shapes.

many professions are open to a young woman with a clean start and good luck.

SAMPLE ABILITY SCORES

ABILITIES AT AGE 16: Area Lore 2 (seedy districts), Athletics 2 (running), Awareness 1 (when alone with someone), Bargain 3 (sexual services), Brawl 2 (grappling), Carouse 3 (intimacy), Charm 3 (licentious), Etiquette 1 (getting past guards), Folk Ken 3 (clients), Guile 2 (protesting innocence), Intrigue 1 (romantic), Native Language 5 (cursing), Profession: Prostitute 2 (collecting payment)

ABILITIES AT AGE 30: Area Lore 3 (seedy districts), Athletics 2 (running), Awareness 1 (when alone with someone), Bargain 4 (sexual services), Brawl 2 (grappling), Carouse 5 (intimacy), Charm 4 (licentious), Etiquette 1 (getting past guards), Folk Ken 4 (clients), Guile 3 (protesting innocence), Intrigue 1 (romantic), Legerdemain 2 (coins), Native Language 5 (cursing), Profession: Prostitute 5 (collecting payment)

Ex-Prostitutes who become companion characters differ from their sisters not so much in background or Ability, but in their fortune in their later career, and their influence in the troupe's stories. Characters who rise to a station that they could lose if their past were revealed may select the Dark Secret Flaw. Characters without this Flaw may instead have another Story Flaw, fleshing out the character's background further.

Discussing religious figures is always awkward. Troupes are encouraged to discuss their level of comfort both with the portrayal of ex-prostitutes in their game, and their relationship with Saint Mary Magdalene.

Saint Mary Magdalene is interesting, in that she appears so differently to the two halves of medieval Christianity. In the Catholic west in 1220, she is believed to have been an exprostitute, the "sinful woman" in Luke who anoints the feet of Jesus, and, on a separate occasion, anoints Jesus' head. This is not the belief of the modern Catholic Church, who sees these three as separate women. In medieval literature, she is the patron of penitent sex workers and grants miracles to aid them. She is also the patron of contemplatives, apothecaries, perfumers, hairdressers, reformed sinners, and women in general. In addition, she is also credited with the invention of Easter eggs.

In Mythic Europe, a cult in her service is spreading through Burgundy, but her cult in Provence has not yet reached its historical heights. She is seen as the Apostle to the Apostles, and the first Christian to accept and announce the Resurrection.

In the Orthodox east, Mary is believed to have been a woman of such great piety that Satan misidentified her as the Mary who would bear Jesus, and sent seven demons to trouble her. She is seen as an equal to the apostles. She is a patron of women, but not of prostitutes in particular.

Her relics are found in Vézelay in Burgundy, and in Constantinople.