Xenoverse origins / R-018
Marley VossOrigin story
Queen of a kingdom that washed away
Marley claimed everything the sea returned. The sea regarded this as a temporary arrangement.
Read the origin ↓
Placeholder artworkMarley Voss ruled a stretch of wreck-strewn coast by being the first person willing to sleep there. She marked salvage with her initials, charged newcomers for access, and called a chair taken from a drowned pleasure barge her throne. The title was a joke until she began expecting others to respect it.
Her dark fantasy origin is a story of possession: how finding things became claiming them, how claiming became governing, and how a rising tide reduced a sovereign identity to a woman dragging a chair through filthy water while goblins laughed from a roof.
A throne is still furniture when you are trying to float on it.
From the dossier
Chapter 01
The shore that looked abandoned
The beach was not empty. Fishers dried nets there, scavengers worked the shallows, and goblins used the wrecks as shelter. Marley arrived with a sharp eye for valuable fittings and an even sharper eye for people reluctant to argue. She built a store from planks and began recording what passed through it.
At first the records helped everyone. Lost tools were found. Loads were shared. Buyers paid more when salvage arrived sorted. Marley’s cut seemed reasonable until she started charging for pieces she had neither found nor handled. She explained that organization had value. The scavengers agreed but remained unclear about when the entire coastline had become a service she provided. She nailed a sign above the store declaring her claim. The sign survived three days before a goblin used its lower half to repair a door. Marley fined him. He paid with the upper half, an arrangement neither considered satisfactorily concluded.
Placeholder artworkChapter 02
The crown from the passenger deck
A decorative circlet surfaced among the barge’s fittings. Marley cleaned it, set it above the chair, and began receiving buyers beneath it. The effect was ridiculous enough to attract visitors and effective enough to encourage her. She hired two guards, then discovered that guards expected wages even when nobody brought anything worth guarding.
She raised the access fees. Fishers moved their nets. The best scavengers took their finds elsewhere. Marley described the departure as the removal of unreliable partners, a phrase that made the empty store sound strategic. Meanwhile, she piled unsold salvage higher against its walls. The goblins warned that the spring tide would reach the wreck line. She pointed to last year’s water mark, which was visible on a beam now installed upside down. They tried to explain. She accused them of wanting an excuse to move her goods. It was flattering to imagine that every warning concealed a desire for her property.
Placeholder artworkChapter 03
The sovereign goes swimming
The tide arrived before dawn, pushed by a storm offshore. Water entered beneath the store and lifted the floorboards. Marley ordered the guards to hold the door. They sensibly suggested leaving through it. She insisted on saving the records, the circlet, and the chair, in that order only until the chair began drifting away.
Outside, the shoreline had become a moving inventory. Crates turned, ropes tightened, and a wardrobe sailed past with the solemn dignity of an ambassador. Marley climbed onto her throne and discovered that ornamental furniture was not designed to remain upright without a ballroom beneath it. The chair tipped. She surfaced holding one carved arm while the circlet travelled independently toward the marsh. From a roof, goblins shouted advice that alternated between helpful and profoundly insulting. Her guards hauled her to a ladder. Neither bowed. Salt water had apparently dissolved their understanding of court etiquette, along with several months of unpaid patience.
Placeholder artworkChapter 04
The ledger without a kingdom
When the water fell, the beach looked familiar to everyone except its owner. The fishers returned to their old places. The scavengers collected tools. Marley’s goods were scattered across ground she could no longer afford to control. Her ledger survived, its careful claims blurred into a grey paste.
She tried to charge recovery fees. The resulting silence was educational. One guard handed back his badge, a brass fitting she had insisted resembled a royal seal. The other requested actual wages before discussing any future sovereignty. Marley paid with salvage she had previously declared too valuable to sell cheaply. For several days she worked alone, sorting what the sea had rejected a second time. Nobody prevented her. Nobody asked permission. Her talent remained useful when stripped of the title, an observation she found almost as humiliating as the chair. The goblins returned its remaining leg as a diplomatic gift and requested that relations improve.
Placeholder artworkChapter 05
The claim she can still carry
Marley Voss continued in salvage because she was good at it. She became better at partnerships because the beach had demonstrated the alternative in public. This did not make her generous. She still counted shares closely and remained capable of seeing opportunity in another person’s inconvenient loss.
Her Xenoverse origin leaves a character whose ambition is practical until it starts decorating itself. She can build a useful trade from wreckage, but a grand title will always tempt her to mistake a temporary arrangement for a natural right. The tide has become the recurring critic of that tendency.
She repaired the chair into a low workbench. Visitors who know the story sometimes call it the throne. Marley charges those visitors slightly more. At high water she moves the bench herself, without ordering anyone else to prove their loyalty by getting wet. It is a modest improvement in government. The goblins have so far declined to recognize it formally.
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