Iron Maiden is the nickname of Jaennice Wellington. Jaennice is the product of the marriage of an Anglic first mate and a female Marilick customs officer. She was orphaned at a young age, but with enough inheritance to provide for a proper education. After her education, she joined with a shipping cartel, but quickly left them for a smuggling operation.
Throughout her life, Jaennice has never bothered with entertainment or fun. While all work and no play does make Jaennice a dull girl, it also focuses her attention on business. As the chief financial advisor for the smugglers, she kept all of their business in her head. She knew who had been bribed and which goods would provide the best income without affecting the Brinston underworld economy. With Jaennice handling their finances, the business began doing extremely well, but the captains became greedy and started taking too many chances. Expecting a problem, Jaennice stopped going into the office about three days before the customs guards raided it. Luckily for her, she had arranged all of the business’ accounts with the High Order to be accessible only by her. This meant that when all of her smuggler clients went to prison, or the gallows, she had access to their money.
Jaennice used her underworld contacts to meet with various assassins and burglars. What she offered appealed to some. She offered to become their manager. Those who refused claimed she was trying to be their pimp. For about 25% of the fee, she serves as the contact point for a number of killers for hire. Anyone who wants to hire an assassin can come to her and deal in a relatively safe and professional setting. She is difficult to contact, but not so difficult so as to affect business. She has not committed any murders or thefts herself, frustrating law enforcement to some degree. They do not have laws to affect her, especially since she is not directly an accomplice. Furthermore, even if the guards know she has been contacted to schedule the murder of a specific person, they do not know which of her many clients she will use for the job, making the prevention of the murder that much more difficult. She also has a smaller number of burglars and pick pockets who can work on specific jobs when the need arises.
Jaennice does not exclusively control the work of her people, and only gets her cut when she arranges the jobs. Of course, those out freelancing will not be the first she thinks of when the time comes for her to place work. Furthermore, she invests as much money as they care to leave with her. She finances loan sharking, smuggling and other underworld activities. She also invests in some more legitimate businesses, but this is often a smaller percentage. Not surprisingly, she keeps 25% of the investment profits as well.
Jaennice is a severe woman. She is incredibly focused on her work and is extremely intelligent. She lacks social grace and seems to enjoy making others feel uncomfortable. When faced with a truly dangerous person, she simply remains logical. She has no combat or magical skills with which to threaten them and uses her lack of ability to prove that she is no threat and simply a useful service. Her money is extremely well protected by others, and robbing her will gain a person almost nothing. She lives a rather Spartan life, and plans to retire to splendor when she begins to age. Unfortunately, she would not know what to do with herself were she to retire, so it will probably never happen.