Name: Roadie aka RoadKill

House: Bonehunters

Born from the ill-advised union of an opera dancer and an amateur alchemist, Lyudmila Esmerelda Switchback ran away from home and changed her name at the first possible opportunity.

Hoping to make her mark in showbiz, she joined up with a traveling theatre troupe only to discover women were not permitted onstage.  When she stamped her foot and threatened to cry, the fearful actors offered her the executive position of stage manager/crew chief.  She eagerly accepted before realizing there was no other crew.

It was all very glamorous in a splintery, paint spattered sort of way until one evening, after she had “managed” the stage, sets and props back onto the cart, she just happened to casually remark (for the fifth time that day) that it seemed unfair that she was not allowed onstage as she was both a better actor and singer and prettier than the lot of them.  They said she was not so prettier and proceeded to push her off the cart and run her over, at which point, both parties agreed to part ways.  She was so annoyed by the cartwheel marks on her skirt, it was an hour before she realized she was dead.

Fortunately. she was stumbled over by an undergraduate student from department of Post-Mortem Studies at  Unseen University who was researching his dissertation on the theory of “Vegetative life force transference” out among the cabbage fields of the Sto Lat plains.  Despite University edict specifically prohibiting necromancy, the temptation to test his theory was too great and the life force of 1,000 cabbages and a ground squirrel were sacrificed in the name of Thaumaturgical advancement.

Substantially unchanged but for a mild tendency to wilt under drought conditions, the freshly dubbed Roadkill thanked her reviver nicely then promptly ran off with passing group of minstrels who were headed to Ankh-Morpork to form the tribute band “Got Rocks?”.   They too, would not let her sing and although she had to admit they were prettier than she, they were still just as lazy as actors and their stage equipment (rocks mostly) much harder to move about.  Plus, they were predominantly night creatures and she now tended to yellow spots when not exposed to enough sunlight.

Sadly she was sorely wounded one night while breaking up a knife fight with a rival band using nothing but her wits and an ice pick.   She was oozing quite a bit of sap so the grieving band dropped her off in front of the Lady Sybil Free Hospital on their way out town, generously  leaving her two Ankh-Morpork dollars and half a box of outdated tour fliers to pay her bill.

Always fond of imps and having nothing better to do, she next tried her hand at photojournalism.  She first applied for work at the Times but found their head iconographer, Otto von Chriek, to be highly strung and she suspected, prejudiced against the undead.  Plus, he kept poking her with his umbrella whenever she jumped in front of him to get a good shot.

Tired of the squabbling and getting Otto dust on her shoes whenever he accidentally disintegrated himself, She decided to freelance under the byline “Roadie” and took to following the most  disreputable members of the City Watch about in hopes of capturing images of debauchery (often by the watch members themselves) and snaps of the occasional scene of ‘orrible murder.

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