Natt Gatley

Lady Natt Gatley

Natt Gatley is the head of River's Fork's most prominent inventor family and lady of the city, having inherited the city from Gill Gatley before she came of age. She started life as most members of inventor families do; learning the tricks of the trade from her father. While Lord Gill Gatley wanted a son, when his wife, Mira Stagg, barely survived having Natt, he accepted that pregnancy was dangerous for his wife and groomed young Natt to be his heir.
He gave her access to the blueprints of their signature machine, the Gatley Drill Machine, when she turned ten, and taught her how to safely prepare explosives to her mother's constant fretting. In the meantime, she also befriended Robb Stagg, her cousin-once-removed on her mother's side, and Mottlar Gatling, her bastard cousin on her father's side. The former had a stutter, but upon being validated by an older girl, came into his own. Mottlar, meanwhile, despite being four years her senior, was cripplingly afraid of anything beyond Castle Gatley due to his mother's vengeful murder of his father, so Natt made sure to be patient and stay in the castle with him whenever he felt lonely. She would also be introduced to Taze Pittson's eligible bachelor of a son, Mulder, and through open discussion with her father, agreed to a betrothal when she came of age.
Her life was full of interesting devices and engineering knowledge, but throughout her childhood she never left the mostly-underground city of River's Fork, and therefore never knew fear or tragedy. Mottlar, to her, seemed to be an overly vigilant young man who was seeing danger in the shadows. His insistence on sleeping with several knives by his side was also something that disturbed Natt.
One fateful day, however, she would come to appreciate Mottlar's paranoia; the day her parents died. Within Castle Gatley, an umbromantic human assassin wearing the blues and blacks of the Godswater Moon Men left the shadows and cut Gill Gatley and Mira Stagg before they could properly awaken. Natt woke to her parents' screams, and rushed to their room to find the assassin preparing to slip into the shadows again. He opted instead to silence Natt despite her being a girl of fourteen, looming over the much smaller girl before briefly hesitating.
Natt didn't know if he was experiencing guilt over his apparently inevitable child murder, or if he was simply distracted, but this pause was enough for an eighteen-year-old, considerably bulkier Mottlar to tackle the umbromancer's legs and stab him in the shoulder. The umbromancer, in anger, slashed Mottlar's face and shoved him away, before taking another stab to the femoral artery. Mottlar would quickly pass out from blood loss, believing he'd failed to save Natt, however before the umbromancer could finish the job, he bled out himself.
The paralysed-with-fear girl Natt became ceased to be, and she took Mottlar's dagger up herself and stabbed the umbromancer in the heart while he was still unconscious. The guards were called, the healers confirmed Gill and Mira's deaths, and Natt was placed as the head of House Gatley, with one condition; as a fourteen-year-old surrounded by eligible regents, she would need to take advice from an older relative or associate of her choice until she became sixteen.
Elric Stagg, Robb's overreaching father, practically leapt over his aunt's still-warm corpse to attempt to convince her to make him his regent. Her future father-in-law, Taze Pittson, similarly offered his sage guidance, but Natt looked to Mottlar, the young man who'd become disfigured just to save his trueborn cousin, despite being a bastard with every reason to resent her. All her life, she viewed him as a coward leaping at shadows, yet in danger, when nobody was looking, he'd proven to be brave, caring, and strong. And despite being young, he was technically an adult.
And so, she declared two decrees as Lady of River's Fork; that her cousin would be legitimised to Mottlar Gatley, and that he would be her regent until she came of age. When Mottlar came to, he didn't hear their first attempts to inform him of these changes; he was too busy frantically crying and hugging the girl he thought he'd let die. Once he was successfully informed, he would attempt to make the king condemn the actions of Apostle Petyr Godswater, who Mottlar insisted was responsible for the assassin, however, whenever investigators arrived at Godswater, the apostle would somehow convince them he was innocent of wrongdoing.
Natt was as outraged as her regent, but if the Royal Electorate was impotent, she figured there was no point in pushing the matter further. Instead, Natt told Mottlar to focus on militarising the formerly peaceful population of River's Fork, using taxes to fund grants for military inventors. Mottlar would, upon Natt coming of age, focus on personally inventing military hardware, and has since constructed the most advanced magitech combat suit in Arkhera, acting as Natt's human-height, metallic bodyguard now that his days of governing on her behalf were over.
In addition, when she came of age she married Mulder Pirttson, not having any particular fondness for him besides his looks and massive... ballistic missiles developed by his family. Natt's close ties to the Pittsons would aid in River's Fork's continuing militarisation, and before long, blueprints for the Gatley Drill Machine, a tool for expanding the undercity, were adapted and made to incorporate missile launchers and magitech firearms, leading to the first true Arkheran tanks (whose designs are naturally fiercely-guarded and made to specifications that only fit gnomish pilots).
While he was milquetoast, Natt would come to appreciate her new husband, settling into her marriage as River's Fork continued to militarise, expecting a war with Godswater every passing moment. Though a war never came, Mulder and Mottlar's persistent encouragement that she did the right thing allowed her to mellow back into the content, joyful person she was before her parents' murder. Nowadays, she's recognised by the Great Vale as the southern protector of the province by Kiran Adderwood, noted as equally valuable as a military asset to the historically warlike Kanmaraki, despite being heavily pregnant with her first child and far from physically imposing as an individual.

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

Natt, like most gnomes, is short and stocky, a state currently added to by her late-stage pregnancy. She's got chubby cheeks and mousy features, along with brown hair she prefers to tie in short twintails. She prefers to wear overalls and chromium-lined goggles, but in her pregnancy she's taken to wearing loose-fitting dresses. Behind her goggles are small blue eyes. Her wedding pendant is a rose quartz with an inverted shakefork of sapphire laid upon it.

Social

Contacts & Relations

Robb Stagg (best friend)
Elric Stagg (competing fellow River's Fork inventor)
Taze Pittson (competing fellow River's Fork inventor, father-in-law)
Kanmarak XVII (fellow vassal)
Apostle Serena Godspeak (overlady and apostle)
Apostle Kiran Adderwood (de facto overlord)
Gad Burdock (vassal)

Family Ties

Religious Views

Natt Gatley doesn't have any particular religiosity, but like most in the Great Vale, she's an Arkheran Pantheist. She doesn't regularly visit her local temples or pray, however, instead merely participating in annual festivals and little else. She does, however, have a healthy respect for Apostles Serena and Kiran's authority.

Relationships

Alignment

Lawful Good

Current Location

River's Fork

Species

Gnome

Ethnicity

Arkheran

Honorary & Occupational Titles

Lady Inventor of River's Fork
Lady of the House of Gatley
Gatley Holder of Blueprints

Year of Birth

525 AGA 26 Years old

Circumstances of Birth

Upper Class (uplifted inventor family)

Birthplace

River's Fork

Parents

Gill Gatley

Mira Stagg

Spouses

Siblings

Current Residence

River's Fort

Gender

Female

Eyes

Blue

Hair

Brown

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Pale white

Height

3'4''

Aligned Organization

House of Gatley

Other Affiliations

• House of Adderwood
• House of Godspeak
• House of Pittson
• House of Stagg

Known Languages

Common Tongue
Old Orcish
Old Galdusian (basic)