Art by ButteredRoses

Name: Grace Delicatesse

Race: Unicorn

Gender: Female

Age: Mid-twenties

Physical Description: Grace possesses a lean, athletic build and carries herself with an air of authority and importance. Her posture is perfect as is most of her manners and casual movements due to careful etiquette training when she was young. Born into a privileged class and taught the importance of taking care of her appearance, Grace is considered attractive by most with a very well kept blonde tail and mane, the latter of which normally being tied into a neat ponytail except for two locks of hair she allows to hang in front of her blue eyes. The clothing Grace wears is often expensive and tailored to suit her figure perfectly with the colors usually consisting of her family crest’s scheme of gold, red and black. Whenever not wearing these colors she opts for whatever compliments her light gray coat the most.

Special Talent: Business. Cutie mark is a scale with coins.

Likes: Successfully sealing a deal where she leaves with an advantage. Taking part in novelty games and activities. Theatre and concerts. Fencing, chess and saber sparring.

Dislikes: Using her wealth to get what she wants when her words fail. Tolerating people whom she has deemed unworthy of her time. Groups or individuals that try to act friendly purely due to her wealth or family. Acting on behalf of her company as opposed to her own interests.

Strengths: Grace is well traveled and is familiar with most locations within Equestria. Her globe-trotting and dealing with many different races has left her fluent in multiple languages.

Grace’s family is in control of an immensely successful trading company primarily focused on spices and exotic goods. While her personal slice of the wealth is nothing compared to the collective whole, she still lives in luxury and has, through years of favors and carefully establishing connections, resources and contacts at her disposal.

Grace has several hobbies in competitive sports. Saber dueling and fencing are her preferred leagues and she has attended numerous tournaments across the country. She displays her interest proudly by keeping her rapier at her side at all times. Grace is highly agile and quick with her preferred means of defense with whatever she can’t avoid being left up to a light vest of chainmail tailored into her clothing to protect her.

Weaknesses: Grace was raised to only ever look out for herself and her family’s interests. As a result, she can be highly selfish and even treacherous when it comes to those she does not care for. While she is convincing and well-practiced in pretending to enjoy the company of those she meets, she is in fact cold, manipulative and near antisocial at times with most ponies she meets being little more than pawns in whatever game she is playing. It is not impossible for her to care for others, but those trying to make friends may find it a challenge should they not prove themselves useful to her.

Grace has issues in controlling her anger. A trait inherited from her father, Grace wishes to see those that have wronged her destroyed be it through financial, emotional or physical means. Depending on the severity of the slight against her and the strength of the guilty, Grace can become increasingly cruel and even reckless in her pursuit of revenge.

While a skilled fencer and duelist, Grace’s mastery of magic is relatively lacking. She knows a few simple spells (Telekinetic control over small to medium sized items, simple light producing magic, etc.) but anything more advanced or requiring serious study is lost on her.

She’s tougher than she looks, but Grace is still a unicorn with a light build and is not suited to slug out brawls.

Fears: Falling in line with her family.

Bio: Grace is the only daughter of a very wealthy and powerful pony named Affluent Enterprise. Affluent is the primary owner of a business focused primarily on importing and trading spices and exotic goods. Grace was raised to be an heiress to this business and was educated and trained to have a strong understanding of both legit and illegitimate business practices including illegal means by which to secure an advantage when dealing with others. Despite her upbringing and personal enjoyment when she succeeds with these tactics, Grace wishes she could help others using her money and resources and has on occasion done so to satisfy her whimsies. She currently day dreams about turning the business around and making it something that can do some good in the world, this being something that often puts her at odds with her family.

To sum her up in one sentence: Grace is a bad person that is trying to be better.

Extra: If involved with more modern technology, Grace’s chainmail is switched with a light stab vest and she carries a concealed custom .38 pistol in addition to her dagger and rapier.

Extended Bio: Grace was born into the upper echelons of Canterlot society as the only daughter of a rather distant and unfeeling pair of ponies. Before her birth, her parents successfully seized control of most major assets being contributed to a supposedly temporary syndicate of several different companies focused on a sudden rush of imported spices and exotic goods from outside of Equestria. The means by which the takeover had come to pass is buried somewhere beneath mountains of paperwork written in legalese with hidden clauses and loopholes plentiful enough to satisfy a circus acrobat team. The soon to follow folding of the victim companies, acquisition of their remaining assets and fates of some involved did little to deflect questions and accusations regarding the overall ethicality of it all. To this day, it continues to be an occasional topic of discussion for old rich ponies with nothing else to do. These events left Grace’s family with a near monopoly over most of Equestria’s spice trade and exotic imports, the crown needing to step in some years later to limit their influence and cut back on their dominance over the market. Regardless, her family was still left as one of the wealthiest in the country and it wasn’t uncommon to see one of her relatives in courts across the land making friends.

“Money can’t buy happiness” is one of the first things Grace learned in her early life, it also being one of the few things she remembered clearly hearing from her mother in the short time she knew her. She doesn’t remember her terribly well due to her dying when Grace was still young from an illness she contracted on a trip abroad. The other memories she has, while brief and sparse, were not ones she considered fond. Days spent being ignored in favor of things deemed more important like meetings and letters scribbled out and addressed to potential buyers. The only times she did earn her mother’s attention was when her overworked live-in nannies quit or were fired forcing her to be brought along to wherever her parents were going next. She doesn’t think about her mother today, but she did however still cry when she passed. She can’t remember if she did this more than once, but she can remember that her father had done the same. It remains the only time she’s ever seen him shed tears.

Affluent Enterprise, Grace’s father, wasn’t known for his softer side. Evidence that it even existed was scarce and considered similar to sightings of alien beings. Strange and not of this world. Normally the only emotions anyone ever saw in him was a subtle simmering anger when displeased or a hungry and almost unsettling joy when things went according to plan. It was in the eyes mostly, those windows Affluent could never fully close allowing a peek behind the mask of professionalism he always wore. Grace was rather annoyed to realize she’d inherited these same eyes when she suffered comments over it during one of her careers earliest accomplishments. Way she saw it, they may as well have compared her to a shark that smelled blood in the water.

No, Affluent wasn’t known for his compassion or empathy, this holding true even when he was forced to be the only remaining guardian of Grace. To call him a parent would be beyond generous as it was clear early on that he desired not a daughter but instead an heiress to what he’d built. Grace grew up with no cherished memories of her father playing with her upon returning home from work, no trips to the fields outside of the city purely for the fun of it and no warm parties where the sole purpose of which was their familial bond. That wasn’t her purpose. Not to him at least. She was meant only to be a continuation of him. A piece that would live on even after his own death. It would be his blood that he would vicariously rule over his fortune and power through when he grew old and it would be his lineage that would be regarded with reverence, his genes the code for success as it carried into the future.

To this end, Grace only became useful to him when she grew old enough to begin her studies in full. Her personal tutors were instructed to work over-time in introducing Grace to every facet of finance and trading as well as making sure that proper etiquette and manners become second nature. She took to this quickly and easily as she displayed a remarkable aptitude for business related subjects with her special talent eventually being revealed to fall in line with that of most of her relatives. The more colorful subjects she was made to master were a bit more tasking however. Acting, wordplay, different languages, personal grooming and fashion, manipulation, lying, cheating, coercing, intimidating, the gamete grew darker the further along she progressed with her training to use weapons in her mid to late teen years.

It didn’t surprise her that things had shifted in such a way. The older she got the less naïve she became as to why her family always seemed to have an upper hand in every situation they were dealing in. It failed to surprise her when she neared adulthood and was being told how to pinpoint the softest part of someone’s back. What did surprise her was just how good at this she became. Working in business came easy to her, but getting what she wanted out of a deal was almost child’s play after a few years of practice. The way she saw it, people are basically a series of emotional responses that can be easily predicted if you can get an early enough read on someone’s personality. The subtle cues, the tells for when they lie, the sweat that builds when their nervous, the momentary hesitation when presented with an altered deal, the crack in their voice when they respond to an ultimatum. It was almost fun finding these. Sort of like a photographer waiting for just the right moment to snap a picture and capture a moment, Grace waited for just the right moment to strike and end a career.

Her skill was indeed impressive, and the moment of victory was pleasant, but it brought no long-term joy for the mare even after proving herself over years of service within Fae Exotiques. Despite a lifetime of being taught differently, Grace still couldn’t help but feel that twinge of guilt, that brief stabbing pain of regret when she allowed herself a moment to assess the damage she’d caused. There are people out there of many races she’d ruined by this point, and what exactly had she gained to show for it? Whatever spoils weren’t strictly monetary were simply absorbed by Fae Exotiques, so what had she really gotten out of it? Money? Grace didn’t care about money. She’d lived with money her entire life, grown up in a large luxurious home, eaten the highest quality of imported delicacies, been treated to the fanciest of parties where she or someone she knew were a VIP and yet she’d always felt so… empty. All Grace could ever truly show for her work was the approval of her surviving parent and the accolades her extended family would shower her with at every get-together. Approval and accolades for taking when she already had so much.

Grace began to find excuses for distancing herself from her family. Primarily she chose to take her self-defense training in using rapiers and cavalry sabers to a more professional level. She turned fencing and dueling into a hobby at which she excelled after many a session practicing against the best. Attending tournaments became a common part of Grace’s life with victories coming more and more frequently as the years rolled on. Travelling went hand in hand with this and served well to build distance between her and her family back home as she spent a couple of years hopping from place to place keeping up with the various circuits she would drop in and out of depending on what she was doing. She still worked of course. Cutting all ties would only work against her desires of isolation and incur the wrath of her relatives, but it became less common for her to be seen in person and more common for her to be known as a name at the bottom of a page. It was only during the most important of occasions that Grace would come back home and deal with things herself, and even then it was only to keep up an appearance of being a part of the company.

When Grace finally did return home for the long term it was with little fanfare. Indeed, most hadn’t even known she’d come back until an employee of their Canterlot headquarters caught sight of her enjoying a meal at one of her favorite cafés. She was then immediately contacted by her family and invited to a party they wanted to organize to welcome her back, this also being a perfect opportunity of course to consult her on Fae Exotiques' most recent actions, but much to their surprise she refused. Grace expressed little interest in such an event and invited them to simply cut to the chase and send her copies of the documents that would have been the real guests of honor for she was far too busy to dance around the issue.

And what was she busy with?

The funding and organizing of a local festival celebrating culture from both within and outside of the country complete with rare examples of genuine artefacts and antiques of which most would be donated to Canterlot’s museum upon the closing of the event.

Her father was furious. Grace was never able to decipher if it had been because of how she had conducted herself professionally, or if it was because the antiques donated were part of his own personal collection. Either way, Grace had never before needed to rely on her acting ability as she had when she kept herself from laughing in his face after his eruption of anger. She defended her actions as a PR stunt intended to warm relations and spark interest with potential buyers as well as bring the company name down from the upper rungs of society. It would allow the common pony to hear the name and see what good Fae Exotiques could do, again improving their image. Really, though, she just wanted to screw with him and the rest of her family. What better way to mess with the greedy than to throw their money at the people they deemed beneath them?

She was put on a tighter leash after the third time she’d done something like this. Grace was restricted from using most of the company’s assets without first going through Affluent and her actions when operating within or in the interest of the company were watched more closely now. However, there was only so much they could do. When all was said and done Grace was proven to be a big earner, her words carried weight and her father’s ego ensured she remained the heiress to the company regardless.

Despite technically still working for Fae Exotiques, Grace manages her own slice of the wealth now by carrying out her own interests and brokering more specialized deals and trades. All in all, she felt it had been worth it to throw a few jabs at the one up top to release some steam that had been whistling for a couple decades now. It was only intended to be a joke after all as it hadn’t truly harmed anyone but herself. Those things lost would be replaced, the money spent had been a mere drop siphoned from the sea, and the slap she was given fell on a numb wrist. She had expected as much.

What Grace hadn’t expected to get out of these three occasions was the simple enjoyment of having spent her time and money on something that didn’t purely benefit her family nor force anyone innocent into a victimized role. For the first time ever she’d done something that had helped others, a huge change of pace for the mare even if the intentions behind it had been antagonistic towards Affluent at first. Since then she’d looked for more excuses to indulge in what felt almost like a guilty pleasure and wondered what the possibilities could be for someone in her position. It made her uncomfortable to think it, but Grace liked what she’d been doing and wanted to do it more.

She is not a good person, however. Once the daydreams fade away and reality returns she knows who she is, what she does, how she does it, and how good she is at it. She knows that no number of bleeding heart pursuits and generous detours will magically change this, that she won’t awake tomorrow a virtuous mare of the people heading a company of honest spice and exotics traders. Maybe someday, but not now, not while Fae Exotiques continues the way that it is and her family keeps in lock step with their mantra of greed being good. A mantra she still felt a disciplined adherence to herself. It would take time to break old habits and find solutions, but Grace isn’t going anywhere, even with the growing disapproval of Affluent and his people. She’d find a way. Someday.