Doctor Penny is not a doctor. This is usually the first thing she has to clarify.

Penny is a museum collections and restoration technician with a particular interest in historical textiles, leatherwork, and medical artifacts. The name came later, after she assembled an unusually elaborate plague-doctor costume for Halloween and discovered something unexpected: she liked being Doctor Penny considerably more than she'd expected. What began as a costume became a recurring persona, then a familiar part of her wardrobe, and eventually something close to a second skin.

Penny has always been reserved and somewhat uncomfortable being the center of attention. Behind the mask, strangely, much of that disappears. Doctor Penny can walk into a crowded room without wondering what to do with her face, make dry jokes to strangers, give an enthusiastic twenty-minute explanation of seventeenth-century medical practices, and generally behave like the version of herself that Penny sometimes has trouble accessing unaided. She doesn't consider Doctor Penny a different person. If anything, the costume makes it easier to be herself.

Her work suits her perfectly. Penny loves old objects and the small traces of ordinary people they preserve: repaired seams, worn handles, handwritten labels, improvised tools, and all the evidence that history was populated by actual human beings rather than solemn figures standing around waiting to become portraits. Historical medicine is a particular fascination, although she has absolutely no desire to practice it. If you're experiencing unexplained bleeding, Doctor Penny will happily explain how someone in 1650 might have treated you, then strongly recommend you speak to an actual doctor.

The mask, hood, and long gloves have become sufficiently associated with Penny that seeing her without them can feel oddly intimate. She'll occasionally remove the mask around close friends, but the gloves are another matter. Nobody seems entirely certain why. Penny responds to questions about them with a different explanation every time, ranging from eczema to fingerprints to an ancient family curse, and appears to be enjoying the speculation far too much to ever provide a definitive answer.

Beneath the ominous silhouette, Penny is easygoing, observant, and quietly funny, with the peculiar gift of looking like she's arrived to announce a medieval pestilence while actually asking whether anyone wants coffee. She's perfectly happy being Penny.

Doctor Penny just makes introductions easier.