Job Title: Research Associate in Bioengineering and Pysker studies.
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 120 pounds give or take
Hair Color: Redish brown
Eye Color: Blue
Skin Color: Needs a tan.
Scars:n/a
Tattoos:n/a
Modifications: n/a
Cybernetics: n/a
Other:
Adley is obsessively clean. Most scientists who work with shards have an above average level of cleanliness to avoid shard sickness but Adley tends to takes it to an extreme.
Adley doesn't put a terrible amount of effort into her appearance sticking to jeans or shorts and t-shirts or white button up shirts, topped off with an old brown jacket. Often it won't matter what she's wearing because it will be covered by a long white lab coat which has become a bit of a statement piece to her, adorned with pens, syringes, clips and whatever else she might find in the lab. Despite her state of dress she is a pretty girl, not that she knows or particularly cares. Her hair is kept back most of the time in a messy ponytail and her build is lanky, to put it kindly. Days and nights in the lab without much thought to sustaining your self will eat away at a person's muscle and weight.
Adley works as a research associate under the primary investigator (one Dr Fairfield) in a bioengineering laboratory which is funded to work on augmenting humans with core shards without developing "shard sickness". Scientific research is expensive but, due to the nature of the work, funding comes in millions from Syndustries and DigiCorp in cooperation with the governmnt who hope to develop powerful shard-soldiers. However, Adley, and everyone else in Fairfield's lab, are not truly interested in developing what would only be a destructive and dangerous force. It is fortunate then that the Liberata also provide illicit funding towards curing Haematesta and removing the abilities of Pyskers altogether. The lab see this as a just cause, especially when helping the miners who develop the disease seems of little interest to the government and industry. Of course, to satisfy their official benefactors, the original goal must also be worked towards.
In the control centre of Sector Two, Nubbikham, life is pleasant enough. No one is particularly rich, middle managers and labourers, but most are comfortable. Aldos Underwood was a simple but happy kind of man with a pretty young wife, May Underwood, and two children; a daughter called Adley and a Son called Aldos Jr. (Aldos Sr. had an odd sense of humour and his children's names were part of that, he'd freely admit). That eldest girl, their neighbors said, was a bit of an odd one, nervous and restless as she was but all-in-all, they seemed like the perfect, hardworking, Ark family.
Aldos laboured in Nubbikham's small mines, freeing shards. The work was not easy but the miners were compensated handsomely for their effort allowing May to stay at home with the children. However, the shard-mines hold much greater danger than simply collapse. The shard sickness was an uncommon but ever present threat to the hardworking men of the mines. A creeping sickness that would start something like the flu, with fatigue and nausea and progress to something all together more horrific. Of course, most never saw a miner get to that stage before they mysteriously vanished. One day, when Adley was 15 and Aldos Jr was 13, that's exactly what their father did. For weeks now he had come home more weary and ill than the day before, unable to eat or sleep. And then, one evening he simply did not come home at all. They didn't question it, no one ever did. To question it surely meant they'd also go missing themselves.
May, now the soul provider of her family, had to take what little work she could and soon became a Seeder, sowing fields for very little pay. Life became hard for the Underwood's but they persevered. Aldos Jr.'s playful youth was lost to a serious young man who felt the burden of his family's safety well being fell to him. Adley, ever a bright girl, threw herself deeper into her studies where she was soon scouted by Nubbikham's minor laboratories for an apprenticeship where she learnt more about the genetically modified seeds which kept Sector Two's plains fertile and designing new "seeding guns" to more efficiently distribute them.
Much to May and Aldey's dismay, as soon as he was 18 years old, Aldos Jr was recruited to the shard mines, feeling it was the only way to provide for his struggling family. The mines had been recruiting more and more frequently as the shard sickness became more prevalent, a consequence of the mines becoming deeper and the demand from the Core becoming greater. It seemed Nubbikham's population shrunk by the day. But any concern from Sector Two was brushed aside by the central government, safe and content in The Core. Adley could see only one thing for it, to cure the sickness herself. It was a bold, unrealistic dream but, well, Adley was an unrealistic kind of person.
At 20, she sat the Scientific Aptitude Test and passed with ease. She was soon sent to Sector Five to intern under the remarkable weapons engineers at the King Institute due to her knowledge of seed distribution machinery (and, she suspected, that there were very few openings available at the time). She learnt a lot in her year there and made excellent connections but it was not her goal to design weaponry for the government- in fact she could think of few things more distasteful. Thankfully, her request to be moved to the bioengineering laboratories at the Queen Institute was soon fulfilled and she was sent on with recommendations attesting to her keen, inquisitive and imaginative mind if her somewhat colourful character. For the past four years she has worked under the ageing Dr Fairfield, earning her doctorate and becoming part of illicit, "rogue" science in an attempt to cure shard sickness and Psykers (see Job Description).
It should be noted that, although most in Fairfield's lab felt uneasy about the work they were carrying out, it was not until Adley's arrival and her passion for the cause that pushed Fairfield to work directly with the Liberata.
Weapons:
Sweet delicious science
Adley, by nature, is fairly passive and would rather not harm anyone.
Armor: n/a Gadgets:
Prototype #356: Originally designed as a method of riot control, this dual action prototype shield and directed energy weapon is powered by black shards and worn on the forearm of the user. When stationary it can produce a dome shaped kinetic particle shield which can fit the user and, on average, one other (height: 3 feet, diameter: 4 feet ). It can sustain most impact from armaments for approximately two minutes. The second feature is a "Blackout Wave" which produces a shockwave that can disturb and shut down all shard energy dependent devices (including "living" beings) for a short amount of time within an adjustable area. This can be for 10 seconds at 50 yards, for 4 uses, or for 40 seconds at 200 yards for one (or any adjustment between) before the shard is used up, rendering the device unusable. However, as the shield is also powered by the same shard the uses of the blackout wave become reduced depending on the amount and duration of shield use.
Key Items:
Basically special quest items you get from me, and I won't always tell you what they do. - Please give me special things Eso.
Miscellaneous: Cigarettes, a stopwatch, a lot of pens that don't seem to work, a Gilson pipette, a pair of calipers, a whole bunch of falcon tubes in different sizes and at least 5 pairs of new and used gloves that definitely shouldn't be in there.
Proficiencies:
Is anyone here a doctor?!: Due to the nature of her work Adley has an excellent understanding of human anatomy and disease. Whilst not a medical professional, she could act in the place of one.
Part time weapon smith: Whilst she would never claim to be any sort of expert, her time at the King Institute means Adley has a decent understanding of handling and fixing weaponry.
Shrewd: Adley has a discerning eye for the workings of people (ironic, considering she can scarcely behave like one herself), their wants and desires, their lies and truths.
Active imagination: It's important that scientists can look at things in new ways and come up with innovative solutions. Adley's vibrant imagination helps her think on her feet. This may just extend to survival situations.
Limitations:
Cowardly Lion: In a physical fight, Adley would scarcely hold her own, both too frightened and too untrained to try.
Overstimulated: Adley is a jittery, nervous mess. She startles easily, paces constantly and puts people on edge. She claims this is why she smokes.
No filter: Now, she's not deliberately rude or unkind but Adley will often simply say what is in front of her, the things that other people tiptoe around. It's gotten her into trouble more than once.
Wicked imagination: When you're already a highly strung individual, it's not helpful to have the world fill with colour and images you can't seem to control. Adley can become distracted, nervous, or even frightened by what her mind conjures.
Likes:
Beekeeping: some people believe the key to eternal life is in the Royal Jelly made to create Queen bees. Adley just likes bees. Unsurprisingly, it is difficult to keep bees in a frozen wasteland but the botanists at the Queen institute allow her to keep a small hive in one of their greenhouses.
Smoking: Yes, she see's the irony. No, she won't stop. She believes it calms her slightly.
Dislikes:
Disorder i.e. mess, crowded places, excessively colourful places, loud places
Big, faceless industry and the government.
Important People:
Mother: May Underwood (a Seeder)
Brother: Aldos Underwood Jr (a shard miner)
Dr Harold Fairfield, Adley's boss and friend.
Adley and Anne met during Adley's first year at the King Institute when Anne was called in to run maintenance on essential machinery at the weapon's manufacturer facility. Outside, in the biting wind and snow, the two young women smoked together for the first time. Adley appreciated Anne's candid, unreserved nature and, during the time Anne was there, it became clear to Adley that they shared similar values concerning the corrupt Arkheaus government. It was Anne who first connected Adley and her laboratory at the Queen Institute to the Liberata and helps to maintain communication between the two groups to this day, delivering messages too risky to send via electronic communications and packages containing things such as blood from shard infected miners. Anne is frequently sent to Sector 4 to set up equipment in Adley's lab such as cryo-preservation tanks, flow cytometers and automated pipette machines and if things mysteriously break on occasion, Anne is sent to repair them. Over the past few years, what started as a common interest and cause grew into a genuine friendship between the two.
Symptoms: Early symptoms include fatigue and weariness, dizziness or nausea. As the disease progresses symptoms include bleeding from the eyes, nose, mouth, ears, intense migraines, hematidrosis (bleeding from the pores), etc. Throughout the course of the disease shards will grow from the sufferers body, small and often unnoticeable at first (like cancerous moles), growing into obvious and irritating/painful shards.
Life expectancy: 1-2 years. This is reduced to 6-8 months for Pyskers; the disease course progresses more aggressively as they "use" the shards in their body.
Cause: Similar to lead poising, results from a chronic exposure to shards in the air/water/food etc.
Physiological/molecular cause: The shards, once infecting the body, being to release a large molecular weight protein known as Testran which enters red blood cells and binds to hemoglobin, preventing the binding of oxygen and causing the red blood cells to become an abnormal shape (this is due to lipid reassembly in the cell membrane, the reasons this occurs are currently unknown). Oxygen has a higher affinity for hemoglobin than Testran so it is only at very high concentrations that oxygen will no longer be carried. Early in the disease course, when concentrations are lower, only slightly less oxygen is carried causing headaches and dizziness as the brain receives less oxygen. There is also a gradual increase in blood pressure as the heart becomes more active to try and meet the oxygen demand.
The abnormally shaped red blood cells will eventually lead to a vaso-occlusive crisis in which red blood cells occlude capillaries and prevent blood flow. Initially this will lead to a reduced blood flow, further preventing the delivery of oxygen to tissues - increasing migraines and blood pressure. As the disease progresses and more abnormally shaped red blood cells occur, weaker capillaries and arteries can rupture leading to the later symptoms observed (blood from the nose and ears). This can include an intracerebral hemorrhage (blood vessel rupturing within the cerebral cortex) which could cause vomiting, seizures, loss of consciousness and muscle weakness. Death will ultimately result from either a serious intracerebral hemorrhage or brain/myocardial infarction (lack of blood/oxygen reaching the tissue and causing cell death).
Notes:
The shard itself is not actually known to seriously harm the body, it simply uses the host to grow, making use of waste products such as ammonia and CO2 in the blood. It is the shard's own waste produce, "Testran" that causes the problem. Without Testran you might just expect to see a shard infected individual to have minor kidney problems as ammonia is part of the complicated balance of ion exchange in the kidneys.
You can cause "acute" Hematestra by injecting molecules from shards directly into blood stream. So far only done in mice and fish. Unknown to public. Syndustries and DigiCorp see potential in this but the government (correctly, for once) has refused to allow them access.
Most of this information is unknown to the general public besides symptoms and cause.
The cure so far:
Surgical intervention: Surgical removal of shards has been shown to slow the progress of the disease in mice but the procedure is often riskier than the time afforded to the animal. Similar metastatic cancer, it is impossible to remove all of the small remaining shard fragments through surgery alone.
Immunotherapy: One of the major issues which face the body infected with shards is that, for unknown reasons, it does not recognise it as a foreign entity and so does not launch an immune response. Artificial immune responses launched against the shards have seen some success in breaking down the shards completely but the trials are still in early days.
Negating the effect of Testran: In theory, a drug that could destroy Testra or remove it from the blood would prevent the sequence of events leading to sickness. However, it would also leave the shards in the body to be used at will by the infected- i.e. a shard-soilder. The Fairfield lab is working on this, as they are contractually obliged to do, but they are also being deliberately slow in the process. As it happens, although there are several drugs which have been found to remove Testran in highthroughput screenings on zebrfish, these drugs are toxic/harmful in different ways to mammals and ultimately lead to the death of the subject anyway.
