https://youtu.be/ytIfSuy_mOA?list=RDytIfSuy_mOA<Name:/> Vander Pzypialkowski
<Nickname(s):/> N/A
<Gender:/> Female
<Age:/> 19 yrs, 10 months
<Occupation:/> Former student, former drug dealer.
<District:/> 16
<Height:/> 5'10"
<Weight:/> 116 lbs
<Appearance:/> 
At first glance, Vander is unhealthy. Thin, with bags under her eyes and a tired posture. But look a little closer, and you'll see just how sorry a state she's truly in. Lucid is a hard drug to have an affair with, and her addiction has rendered her into little more than a walking skeleton. Although Vander is tall, she weighs barely eight stone. She is skin, bone, and decaying muscle. Lucid has long since burned away any hint of fat on her body. Beneath her clothing, the ridges of her spine and collarbone stick out like mountains. She needs a belt to keep her oversized jeans from sliding off her bony hips.
Despite the sorry state of her body, there are small details in her face hinting that, under different circumstances, she could have been attractive. Her strong cheekbones are now gaunt, but she has shapely eyebrows, a charming smile and an even more charming laugh. Her eyes are dark, a brown so deep it appears nearly black, with wide pupils.
Vander was born and raised in Zone Beta, and it presents itself in her sense of style. Her clothes are worn-out grunge with a heavy punk flair. A typical outfit consists of ripped black jeans held up with a studded belt, and paired with a raglan tee bearing the logo of any of her favourite bands. She's never seen any of them live yet, and likely will never get the chance to. Her face is adorned with a small collection of piercings; a dark stud through her eyebrow, a trail of hoops in the cartilage of each ear, and gauges in each earlobe. Vander's hair is dark, and wavy in texture. She doesn't remember the night that she shaved the left side off, but has elected to maintain the style.
<Personality:/>Despite her edgy appearance, even the shortest of conversations with her will reveal that it is nothing more than aesthetic. Vander is a gentle soul; soft-spoken and non-confrontational. She has her father to thank for these traits. The only time Dominic Pzypialkowski would ever raise his voice was to laugh boisterously at a joke, and he passed his mild manners on to his daughter.
Vander also got her father's intelligence. She was homeschooled, and is nothing short of brilliant. At the age of sixteen, she earned her high school diploma, with grades that could have guaranteed entry to any Zone Alpha university she chose. In particular, she has always had a passion for biology and chemistry. For her fifteenth birthday, she received a disc loaded with a digital biochemistry textbook. It's several years outdated, and although she keeps it stored away, it remains one of her most prized possessions. During her days as a drug dealer, Vander complimented her academic knowledge and listening disposition with a wealth of street smarts to get her through every negotiation she made. People liked Vander, and Vander liked people. Never once did she have a deal go sour.
In the past years, Vander has dabbled in a handful of street drugs. Cocaine gave her an anxious high, and she never tried it a second time. Emotion tea was all right, but she never really got a feel for it. But Lucid. Lucid, she was hooked a week in, and the addiction has only intensified over time. She knows the drug will kill her, and is still trying to make peace with that fact. She tries not to think about the future, because the future holds nothing good. Her dreams of someday working in a research lab with the finest scientists in the city are long gone. She packed up her textbooks and documentaries months ago, hiding them away in a box in an effort to forget them.
<Biography:/>Zone Beta has never been a great place to hail from. District 16, in particular, contains every variety of scum-of-the-Earth. But for Vander, it's home. It's always been home. She was born there, like her father and mother before her. Dominic Pzypialkowski was a lifelong Beta resident who had settled for a small trade school after failing to be accepted to the engineering program at his school of choice. Vander never learned her mother's name. Dominic's romance was short and sweet. The woman stayed around just long enough to birth his child before vanishing. Probably for the best, too. As a child, Vander appeared to take after her father. They had the same dark hair and eyes, and she inherited his tall build. Years later, it would become apparent that one of the few traits she did inherit from her mother was an addictive personality.
Home was a corner-apartment on the seventh floor. For the price of rent, it was a nice place. Vander's bedroom window gave her a view straight down one of the busier intersections in Sixteen. At night, the street was bright with neon signage and alive with people. But Vander was far more likely to be found staring at the pages of one of her books than looking at the city's nightlife. From a young age, she was academically gifted. Her father had always been smart, but Vander was brilliant. He encouraged her, and homeschooled her himself for many years. But by the time she turned fourteen, her knowledge far surpassed what he was capable of teaching, and he turned to private tutors from Zone Alpha.
The Pzypialkowskis never had a nice apartment. They never went out to the movies or sit-down restaurants. Vander's clothes, and her father's, came from thrift stores. But when it came to her education, no expense was spared. And she loved every moment of it. Maths came easily to her. Science even more so. At the age of sixteen, she took her graduate tests and received her high school diploma. In chemistry and biology, her grades put her in the 99th percentile of all New Ancora residents. Overall, she was in the 97th.
The next step should have been obvious. A degree in biochemistry and a lucrative career in Zone Alpha. But that required schooling, and even if she applied for every scholarship available and drained the college fund her father had set up, the tuition was miles out of reach. So she took a gap year to earn some money.
Vander was seventeen when she entered the drug trade.
She started simple. Easy things. Common things. The kind that anyone
could make, but no one wanted to get
caught making. She kept it secret from her father, not that he would have suspected. To him, it would have been merely another science project. It only took a few months for Vander to establish the connections she needed. She snuck into nightclubs, met people, sold a little, and made small money. The connections grew, she sold more, and her income increased. Enough that she was able to move out and still be able to put money away for school. She took up residency in a small apartment only a few blocks from her home. Her father believed the income was coming from tutoring younger students, and was proud of his daughter's self-sufficiency.
One year after she first dipped her toes in the water, she met her business partner. Grey was twenty-five. He was charismatic, he knew the business, and he had a well-established clientele base. And, he liked Vander. Or he said he did, at least. Before too long, they were working together. Vander's chemical knowledge and easygoing personality made her an ideal asset for him. She helped him refine his lab technique, producing higher and purer yields, and worked as a middleman for him. When they weren't doing business, they were lovers.
The relationship was short-lived, but undoubtedly passionate. Grey was the first and only man Vander ever became involved with. Two months after they met, he introduced her to Lucid. The following week was filled with plenty of drugs, incredible highs, and even more incredible sex. And then he was gone, and Vander was left alone to cope with an addiction to one of the deadliest substances in the city.
In the past year, Vander has lost everything. Her savings account, previously full of hope for a college education, instead dwindled faster and faster as her habit became more and more difficult to sustain. She traded in her small one-bedroom apartment for an even smaller bachelor apartment. She is now nineteen years old, and her body is wasting away. Her organs are slowly shutting down. When she isn't on the drug, the stomach cramps and migraine are unbearable. The rent hasn't been paid in two months, and an eviction notice will likely go up soon. She hasn't spoken to her father in a year. But the state of her apartment, her relation with her dad, none of it matters. The only thing Vander is immediately worried about is the fact that her stash of Lucid is dangerously low, and she has no money to replenish it.
<Other:/>More on Lucid:
Unquestionably, Lucid is considered one of the most dangerous recreational drugs in New Ancora. It is highly addictive, and withdrawals are frequently fatal. Once an addiction is established, the human body metabolizes the drug on a 48 hour cycle. Continued use results in an increased rate of metabolism, and more frequent doses of Lucid are required. Lucid users face one of two outcomes; a miscalculation leads to an overdose, or they become unable to financially sustain the habit and experience a fatal withdrawal.
Lucid is a mind-altering drug, capable of profoundly increasing sensory perception and mental capacities. Physical symptoms of withdrawal include body aches, tremors, stomach pain, and migraines. A loss of perception is also experienced. Many users describe the world as grey and fuzzy, and have difficulty focusing on tasks. Long-term usage results in increased metabolism, muscle atrophy, and eventually total organ failure. The prognosis for a casual user is four to five years, on the outside.
Vander's addiction is far from casual. She first encountered the drug a little over a year ago, and was plunged down the rabbithole. Today, her body craves the drug roughly every six hours. Sleeping through the night without a dose is impossible. The drug's effects are less potent, and the withdrawals far worse, than when she first started. At best guess, she has roughly a month before her body shuts down.
