Verlia Bilavio

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The daughter of a natural physicist, William Bilavio, and a woman born into old money, Helen Bilavio (née Drachovsky), Verlia always felt the pressure for greatness, in one form or another. Even so, Verlia Bilavio’s life before her father’s disappearance was quite ordinary, so ordinary that she figured a thousand other young ladies were doing the same daily tasks as her, under the same watchful eyes of their mothers.

Indeed, Verlia did not wish to be an ‘accomplished’ young lady, but it was a task she was forced into nonetheless with minimal protest. Out of the many ‘important’ skills Verlia was taught, there was one good thing that came out of it all and that was painting. After being introduced to a variety of techniques and styles at an early age, Verlia came to love this daily task. It also happened to be a wonderful compromise between the dancing and piano lessons and sitting through hours of stiff luncheons with her mother and sister, Olivia, chatting about the weather, the state of their extensive garden, styles of dress, and of course the town gossip. All of which Verlia was not very interested in.

Instead, Verlia (whom we shall now call Lia as she does not prefer the formality of her full name), was much more interested in the books in her father’s library. In between the lessons and tea, she would sneak down to her father’s library and pick a book from the shelves. She was particularly interested in the large maps her father had stored and was sit for hours tracing the shorelines of countries where she had never been and probably would never be. However, Helen made herself specifically clear when Lia was a young child that she was not to step foot behind those library doors, stating, “Those kinds of books are not for girls like you. There will never come a time when you will want or need to know what they contain.” Being a semi-rebellious young lady, Lia swore to prove her mother wrong.

When she was only seventeen, Lia managed to acquire a patron devoted to perfecting her painting and giving it just recognition. That is, until two years later when the funds started disappearing and Lia found out her ‘noble’ patron had been gambling away all of his money. In the end, Lia had to give up on her dream of becoming noticed for her art and having a reason to finally escape her city. Her mother was overjoyed upon hearing this, as Helen had begun to fear the success and recognition her daughter was getting and later refused any further work in painting.

This was all around the same time Lia’s father left on his journey to the Arctic. Lia was so distraught over losing her only passion in life and her father leaving hastily without saying goodbye that she failed to notice her mother’s declining health. It was only months later when she rushed over to her father’s lab after a rather irritating day out on the town with Olivia and her mother that Lia began to notice the signs. Her father’s lab had been broken into, with glass and scattered notes lying all over the floor of his work study. Thankfully, Lia had remembered to salvage what she could of her father’s notes not long after he left, coincidentally after another frustrating day of socializing.

It was after that day that she started to notice the shakes in her mother’s hands and the sickly paleness of her skin. After giving her mother many hints as to her visible lack of health, Lia finally confronted her mother about her illness. Helen admitted that her health was failing and that she had already been to several doctors, all of which could not diagnose or help her. They were baffled as to what could be causing her declining health. Helen was sure that it was her nerves finally getting to her and confessed to Lia that she had not received word from William since he left. Of course, Lia begged her mother to let her search for him and, of course, her mother refused. Lia was sure that her constant nagging about letting her travel to find her father was what set her mother over the edge. Only a few weeks after Lia had confronted Helen, she was informed that her mother had passed.

As Olivia and Lia prepared to lay their mother in the ground, Lia was unsure if she had any parents left. It was this terrifying thought that drove her to pack her things, settle the last of her mother’s arrangements, and finally set foot out of her city, Aranka, on the way to find her father. It was on the beginnings of this journey that she stumbled upon New Babbage.

==The Scientist’s Daughter==

Our weltanschauung: that the entire universe operates with machine like regularity. It is a precision bored into the stars, into the sea, into the framework of our world. It is something that none of us can escape, not even those who feign ignorance to science and it’s methods.

Despite her knowledge, or lack thereof, Lia Bilavio would always be tied to her father, not only by his reputation as a respected scientist, but because she possessed a secret vital to Professor Bilavio’s research. She heard it mentioned, even when she eavesdropped outside of her father’s office at an early age, the whispers, the hushed tones, all speaking: “She is the key.” Never knowing what it meant, or how it could pertain to her, the words lingered at the back of her mind, a faint voice calling her as if it was something important but she had forgotten what.

Little did she know the key lay deep within her mind, dormant for years. It was the safest place that the professor could find for this startling bit of powerful research. Yet, when this secret chose to find it’s way our of her mind and into the world, Lia began to understand the precise clockwork of the universe. Everything was connected. Every moving part had it’s place and purpose, and every part of her life had a significance that drew it’s place from protecting her father’s secret.

==Adventures==