Vinilla's Den

Early life

Toby was born as a black sheep to the Penrose family. His parents and many of his relatives were academics, and worked hard to ensure he could get into a good school so he could follow the same path. However, he had a low tolerance for sitting around in classrooms all day, instead acquiring a taste for mischief and adventure on the streets of Christchurch. He even went on a few voyages as a spare hand on fishing vessels. His parents made many stern attempts to correct this behavior, but that only made him want to do it even more. He started to make plans to run away too, initially planning to escape to another city in New Zealand until...

Adventure by Any Means

When Penrose first learned of the Enlightenment Expedition, he was determined to participate and get a chance to see Antarctica. It did not matter to him that the minimum age required to join was twenty-one; he was taller than the average man and had some rather persuasive smooth-talking skills, making him confident that he could successfully convince the recruiting officer that he was older than he actually was. And unfortunately for him, it worked. He set off on the Enlightenment as a seaman to get a taste of adventure, the first time he had ever left New Zealand waters.

Penrose naturally found himself becoming friends with some of the other seamen that were a similar age to him, Leopold Cadieux and Franklin MacIntyre, though of course both of them were unknowingly older than him by several years. They were amused and a little impressed by his frequent antics and friendly demeanor, with Cadieux in particular enjoying the lavish tall tales of misadventures he spun up. MacIntyre, however, did have his suspicions that there was more to Penrose than he was letting on.

Frustration

After the crew had settled into a regular routine after setting up the base camp, Penrose found himself bored with his tasks. He wasn't doing any daring heroics like he imagined, his duties were the same from day to day, and, despite the surface level danger, Antarctica was a dreadly boring place in his eyes. He gradually lost interest in doing his duties, and spent much of his time slacking and socializing with others instead. This continued even after the mysterious death of the dog handler, Kyrre Mortensen, and the onset of Austral Hypothermia. If anything, it was an excuse to slack off even more; why work hard if he could get killed by a monster or fall ill with a terrible disease at any moment?

But Penrose's flippancy had caught up to him; a few days after Mortensen's death, he received a reprimand from an officer about shirking his duties and received a punishment of reduced rations for the following week. He was rather frustrated with this, and worse yet, he had no idea who ratted him out to the higher-ups. Cadieux, as loyal as he was, was the one responsible of course, and reported anonymously at MacIntyre's suggestion so their friendship could be preserved. Unfortunately, the punishment did not sufficiently move Penrose to change his ways and he stewed in the resulting anger for the next several days.

Penrose and his friends were among those who greeted the party who had left camp in search for the monster. He was very intrigued by the monster's unusual appearance, wanting to get a closer look, but the zoologist in the group, Lawrence Brewer, brusquely shooed him off so he could examine it in private. The trio subsequently attended Brewer's presentation about his findings, revealing that the monster was not what killed Mortensen. Penrose, still angry about his punishment and how Brewer treated him, eagerly joined in on the crowd's heckling of his findings. Many people refused to accept that they had been wrong in their assumption that they were safe and insisted Brewer must have somehow been wrong about his own profession. Penrose could hardly care about the specifics of why the others were upset, but it was the best way for him to release his frustration and so he gladly took the opportunity.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION :-)

TODO