Abigail Kirkbride

Abigail Kirkbride is the sole female member of Unit 1 of the Century Club Junior Squad, as conceived by Winston Churchill and commanded by Simon Laffey. She had adventured with him and Robert Elliott previously, but not with Lin Tsao. Symbolically representing Ireland in her unit, it perhaps rather significant what part of Ireland she comes from: she hails from a family of 17th century Scottish Presbytarian colonists, and has wholly inherited their hardcore Calvinist, Tory and Unionist views, wholly disdaining the Catholic Irishmen and British Liberals alike. Despite this, her relationship with Simon (who embodies the latter) is more that of relentless friendly bickering than of outright animosity. Her weapon of choice is a family heirloom designed in accordance with an idiosyncratic understanding of Calvinist theology and worldly physics and known reverentially as the Gunne, a ridiculously intricate 17th century musket that is attuned to the ineffable workings of Divine Providence: while it takes a long time to properly callibrate, by adjusting various levers, gears and wheels and consulting a small almanac, Abigail has had a lot of practice with it and when it is arranged its shots are nearly-unavoidable, no matter how unlikely they might appear. However, as seen during the Dardanelles operation, this mechanism can pose problems when dealing with magical anomalies and/or those not destined to die at the time of its use. Centurions might be less vulnerable to it as well, given their own supposed connection to fate.

While her bigoted views, overbearing personality and vicious, sadistic tendencies can create something of a conflict with others, she is, at the end of the day, a good team member and a British patriot, and hard-nosed and practical-minded enough to appreciate the contributions of others, eventually coming to quietly accept Lin. Due to her overall carefully trained dourness and pessimism, she has proved a decent counterbalance to Simon's optimism on some occassions, and better prepared for bad turns of events. She is rather skeptical of Dr. Isaac Solomon, probably on account of him being Jewish but possibly also because of him being creepy and cryptic, and of noted rat Winston Churchill, probably because he defected from the right party to the wrong one, but possibly also because his judgement in recent years seems rather questionable, as seen in Gallipoli.

Having grudgingly come to terms with her uselessness for the assassination attempt on the destiny-shielded Mustafa Kemal, she helped Simon map the approach and took part in the diversion elsewhere on the battlefield with the rest of Unit 1 while Lin sneaked towards his target. When Simon collapsed, she helped Robert protect him and fight off the emerging monsters, later returning to Britain.

She is also the pupil of the unfortunate Horace Wailor, though if he taught her much it does not generally show.

May or may not be very distantly related to the legendary Sir Ironside.