Though not as impoverished as they could be, Penelope and her single mother Rhys were by no means well off. Growing up in a poor district of the Vesperlands capital, Stedelak, there was at least always a roof over her head, and occasionally, a meal waiting at home. But more often than not, there were strange men waiting there too.
Rhys, incredibly superstitious and traditional as she was, saw it as shameful that she was not wed. At first, most of her lovers had left due to her inability to bear them a child. After conceiving Penelope with a man she had fallen madly for (and who subsequently left her as well), she found that men were disinterested in her due to her new daughter's existence. As it was, she resorted to inviting unsavory figures into her life, desperate for someone who would take her under their wing.
Penelope never had much of an attachment to Rhys. While her mother engaged in promiscuous activity, Penelope was top of her class in school and determined to find a better life for herself. In her late teens, this dream was exacerbated by a harrowing experience in her own home. A man Rhys had been with lately attempted to sexually assault her while her mother was at work. Unwilling to let that happen, Penelope fought back with a kitchen knife, which prompted the man to try and subdue her with a weapon of his own. When it became clear she had no other choice, Penelope killed the man, suffering several injuries of her own in the process. Rhys would return home to find her daughter nursing her wounds next to a dead body. Yet instead of being concerned for Penelope, Rhys worried about the impact such a crime would have on their future family if it were discovered.
The body was eventually disposed of, time would pass, and life would return to the sullen state it had been in before. Yet Penelope's hatred for the world as she knew it would burn brighter than ever. This, however, was only a precursor of what was to come. Once of age, Penelope immediately set out on her own, leaving Rhys behind and using her academic skills to seek out a job as an accountant for a wealthy ore merchant.
All was well until Penelope was required to accompany a shipment of ore to another major city. During the trip, a lone necromancer would stop the small caravan. Using his skeleton minions, he quickly dispatched the guards who accompanied the shipment. Penelope, who had been inside one of the canopied wagons, would pick up the lance of a fallen guard and make a stand here, knowing there was no escape. She fought the necromancer's minions with everything she had, yet without any combat experience, she too was quickly subdued.
Suffering grievous injuries, Penelope could barely move as she was dragged in front of the necromancer, who looked upon her struggle with amusement. With a silky smooth voice, he offered to spare her life if she would agree to become his bride, offering her "a life of pleasure and leisure, filled with more jewels than any lady of Stedelak could wear." Penelope's sole response was to spit in his face and glare at him with bitter defiance and hatred.
Impressed at her resolve, the necromancer revealed himself as the god of the Vesper, Kara, and Penelope's true father. He then gave her another offer: he could teach her the means to become the master of her own life and give her the power and opportunities to do so, if she would take her rightful place among his warriors. Kara then gifted her the winged helm, Fasutei, telling her that if she wanted to find him again after she had made her choice, she would need it to reach him in the bell tower.
Fasutei, as it turned out, was a piece of enchanted armor that allowed its wearer to fly without shapeshifting or using magic of their own. After several days of consideration, Penelope used it to reach Stedelak's great bell tower in the dead of night. Seeing the helm as a sign of their god, the tower keeper allowed her to enter Kara's personal plane of existence, Chalenopol. There, Kara was already waiting for her in his citadel, knowing full well the answer she had brought. Yet it's said by observers that when Penelope walked into the throne room and agreed to Kara's offer, the Vesper god's crimson eyes glinted with a bemused light.
From her excellence in basic training to how quickly she mastered the more complicated matters of magic and strategy, Penelope would prove to be an unstoppable force as she rose through the ranks. Within a hundred years, she would become a general in Kara's army. And there she remained, fervently believing in the Vesper cause to annihilate the Lumen opposition and determined to service her country the way her destiny dictated.