Where I guess I post CS's.
OP
Antediluvixen Kemonomimi Dystopia Creator
Member
Seen
7 mos ago
Basics
Name: Vladimira Kovalik
Age: 22
Apparent Age: Early 20s
Height: 1.65 meters (5’ 4”)
Weight: 77 kilograms (170 pounds)
Eye Color: A pulsing red, like molten steel, her eyes have whites but no visible pupils. They glow, and the pulsing is in sync with her own heartbeat, and speeds up or slows down to match it. The glow dims if she weakens.
Hair Color: Her hair looks as if it is made of ultra thin steel wires, though it behaves just like normal hair.
Physical Disabilities: A noticeable limp in her right leg- an old injury, broken leg that just didn't heal quite right.
Physical Identifiers:
Eyes and hair
A large burn covers her lower right abdomen and upper thigh.
Her arms are pockmarked with scars of varying sizes.
Appearance: Vladimira is no otherworldly beauty, but still looks more than simply half decent. At some point she'd changed her hairstyle, cutting it shorter and leaving it in a smaller ponytail that could be tucked under a hat or something else. Her face has something of a hardened edge to it, tempered by the heat of molten metal and welding arcs. Her eyes are striking with their pulsing red glow, as is her hair, gleaming in whatever light there is. Her features are Slavic, with relatively thin lips and surprisingly white teeth. She has full, high cheeks with smooth and almost unblemished skin.
Despite her modest height, she has a rather burly upper body for a woman, with defined muscles evident on her arms and shoulders. Her welding goggles, fused to a gas mask, never seem to leave her face, though the glow of her eyes can be seen if one gets close enough and she doesn’t have the filters at their fullest.
Were she to remove her armor and mask, there is little that's particularly triking about her appearance. Arms and upper body pockmarked with scars, burns, and ample muscle. A large bust (think ~38DD/38DDD Approximate bust size. Image contains boobs.) doesn't hurt her looks. Her hips defined more by the degree of muscle packed around them from carrying heavy loads than by any curve.
Background
Residence: Stinger.
Profession: Formerly a metalworker/welder/mechanic/gunsmith, now some sort of high ranking official in Wintergold, currently in Stinger killing people and trying to establish infrastructure.
Aligned Faction: Wintergold.
Relatives:
Andronikov Kovalik- (Father, Alive, Accepting of his daughter’s powers)
Galina Kovalik- (Mother, Deceased)
Andrei Kovalik- (Brother, The bastard’s alive!
Vladimira Kovalik’s parents met each other in the sweltering heat of a manufactory, covered in protective leather that did nothing to shield them from the heat. Odd that two people could almost instinctively tell they liked each other while swapping jokes over grinding wheels and bandsaws.
After two years, they’d moved into their own welded together house and continued to turn scrap metal into something valuable, only now they always worked together.
Vladimira Kovalik was born roughly three years later, two years after her brother. Raised in the industrial town of Arclight, she took to metalworking like a duck to water as soon as she could walk, surprising both of her parents with her raw enthusiasm for the work, as well as the mechanical genius she seemed to have. She would stay up late at night, tinkering away at whatever her latest project was, be it an expanded magazine for some wandering scavenger’s rifle or a turbocharger fan. She loved to use her hands, refining parts to turn an old beat up scrap rifle into a borderline work of art, or operating ammunition presses, or welding a piece of steel to another piece of steel.
Her brother however, was just the opposite. He had no desire to stay indoors making guns and ammunition, he preferred to simply wander around, exchanging idle conversation with anyone and everyone. Whereas his sister’s obsession with machines limited her human contact to almost zero, only sometimes speaking with her family while eating, Andrei lived for meeting new people and longed to leave Arclight and do… anything.
Which is what he did.
One morning, only a week after her eighteenth birthday, Vladimira was woken to a strange sound… it was almost as if her mother was crying, and her father trying to comfort her.
It had been apparent to her that something was very wrong, and -her leg freshly broken due to her own foolishness with one of her hammers- she hobbled towards the direction of their voices to find a piece of ragged paper on a table, as well as her parents.
She had tentatively walked to the table and read the paper. The note was short and succinct, briefly covering his boredom with Arclight and desire to see the world. She’d put the note down then, and gone to inspect the small room he had called his own. It seemed as though all he’d taken had been some clothing, food, and water.
While his departure had little to no effect on her, she’d probably spoken fewer than a hundred words to him in her whole life, it shook her parents badly, especially her mother.
While Vladimira continued on like normal, perhaps a stray thought entering her mind now and then about how Andrei was doing, wherever he was, and her father seemed agitated whenever someone mentioned Andrei’s name to him, and he seemed to blame himself for not noticing his son’s wanderlust, her mother was the one truly hit hard.
Galina Kovalik would constantly fret about her son’s condition, it drove her to distraction, such that her attention would constantly drift away from what she was doing. For two years she lived like that.
One day, while working an ordnairy shift in the factories, Galina’s attention lapsed once more as she operated a ladle handling steel to be dumped in a crucible. Her husband and daughter were elsewhere, but they both heard the explosion, as well as everybody else in the factory. Sprinting as fast they could, they found five burned bodies thrown like ragdolls against various machinery covered in cooling steel, among them Galina, only indentifiable by the necklace clutched in an unburned hand.
Her father was devastated, becoming almost a shell of his former self, only seeming human around the only family he had left; and while her brother’s departure hadn’t affected Vladimira too much, her mother’s death did. She was continuously haunted at night by images of burned flesh and a hand clutching a necklace. She’d been withdrawn before, but afterwards she would spend entire days cooped up in a workshop working ferverishly on various things to keep her mind occupied. Her minimal human contact dropped even further, and enthusiasm for her work petered off too. If she stayed in the workshop she could pretend it hadn't happened. Close the door on reality, even if just for a little while.
Vladimira also couldn’t help but think on how close she’d come to death herself that day. She’d come down with a bad cold, or something like it, and had left the area around the crucible that would explode not soon after to clear her mask, as it had been dangerously fogging up and a small part of the visor was even covered in mucus. A simple cold was responsible for her not becoming a sixth body, but she’d also been there keeping her mother’s mind focused and helping her operate the machinery. The same cold might’ve also been responsible. She knew her mother’s mind had wandered, Galina would always hold the little necklace in her hands and pray for her son when her mind wandered…
It shook her to the core to think her mother might be dead because she had left to clean her visor. She felt like everybody she saw, not that she saw many people, were all silently judging her, accusing her of being responsible for the explosion, especially the families of the other dead.
A few days after her cold seemed to peak and then retreat she lay in her bed in the pitch darkness, hands idly fumbling with some wires to keep her mind occupied- but for some reason it wasn’t, not completely. A pulsing red glow illuminated a small area in front of her eyes, much to her confusion.
She’d sat up, looking for the source of the light, but didn’t see any. Laying back down, the glow returned, right in front of her eyes, almost like they themselves were glowing.
She’d bolted upright then, staring at her hands as she brought them to her eyes and brought them away again.
Stumbling from the bed she’d grabbed the only mirror they owned, more of a shard of an old one, but it still worked. Her eyes, those were the first things she noticed. They looked like small discs of red hot metal, almost glowing white in the center, the whites were still there, but her pupils and irises were gone, replaced by… And her hair, she didn’t recall her hair looking like fine steel wires.
She didn’t know what to do, a single word had drifted across her mind, Immortal…
She was an Immortal. That cold hadn’t been a cold.
She dropped the mirror, stumbling back as it landed on an old shirt. She fell into a sitting position on her bed. I can’t stay here. She realized, They’ll do… something, I don’t know what and I don’t want to know.
__________
She’d woken up the next morning to her father sitting across from her, conflicted emotions on his face.
“I know.” He said simply, holding up the shattered fragments of mirror and tapping his eyes, though he’d still looked slightly stunned when she opened hers to look at him.
She’d felt paralyzed with fear as he sat there for what seemed like an eternity, but was closer to fifteen seconds. Then he’d stood up, and walked out of the room, returning with an old military rucksack filled with what looked like food, water, and other essentials…
“You’re going to need these. They won’t let you stay here.” He’d managed to choke out to her, pulling out the rifle she’d tweaked over the years into a finely tuned piece of rugged art, and affectionately dubbed “Comrade”, from behind the chair, along with the two old pistols he’d inherited and kept around, hoping to never use them. Vladimira had worked on those too, giving them new barrels to replace the old and worn ones.
That didn’t change the fact that she was being handed a backpack and weapons and told she needed to leave.
She’d taken the weapons and backpack without further eye contact, wanting to just leave and get it over with.
“I love you, you know that right?” Her father’s words had caught her and she’d looked back for the last time, dropping the bag and weapons and rushing back to hug him tightly. Just as quickly, she’d run for the door, scooping up the rucksack and weapons and running from the house.
__________________________________
Four months later…
She was living in a small hole she’d carved into the desert ground and covered with a metal sheet she’d forced into the proper shape -fitting that she could manipulate iron and steel, having spent her life working with tjhem- and sand, all of it concealed by a cluster of boulders. She’d acquired a gas mask somewhere along the way and had made the decision to melt her welding goggles to it, which kept the sun out of her eyes and the harsh winds and sand from her face and lungs. The cloak had been taken off the corpse of a bandit who looked to have acquired it from a scavenger or traveler.
Still haunted by nightmares of burned flesh, often with herself taking her mothers place, screaming as the molten steel splashed onto her. Still haboring guilt. Whenever she spoke with people her mind would conjure images of what they might look like dead, bleeding out on the ground, burned beyond recognition, filled with bullet holes… she’d almost gone beyond caring at that point, her heart hardening further as she sank into an apathetic slump.
She wasn’t comfortable, or content, but she was surviving, and that was something. She sold her skills as a mechanic, and sold what she scavenged too, managing to subsist on the relatively meager income, but she wanted more, there was always room for more of the ammunitition used as currency in her pockets.
________________________________
One year after the fall of Motum Diversum
________________________________
Tired of the politicking on the mainland -it was nothing but sheer boredom punctuated by brief moments when it seemed a single wrong word could plunge the entire landmass into war- Vladimira set out to the nearby island of Ash, taking up residence in the town of Stinger. Something about it appealed to her, whether it was the profound lack of politics beyond shouting obscenities prior to shooting raiding parties from New Syracuse or- actually it was just the lack of politics. The town wasn't exactly a booming center of development, and when she wasn't otherwise occupied, her main priority was bringing electricity into the town. Being the highest ranking individual from Wintergold on the island helped, even if she hadn't actually been given people to command, for which she was thankful. She wasn't really the type to lead soldiers in a battle, but it was certainly a welcome change to not be challenged at every corner by some guard with an attitude.
The only priority larger than electricity was clearing the trade routes between Stinger, Tombstone, and Sentinel from raids by both New Syracuse and Fort Spire. In fact, keeping the thugs from New Syracuse away itself is a task, and she'd had to personally intervene in various skirmishes several times. Her tactics for trade route clearing tend to be simple- kill anyone from New Syracuse or Fort Spire who might be intending to raid;00 and if that doesn't work, give a caravan carrying something particularly valuable a minimal armed guard and trail it until it's attacked, then exterminate with extreme prejudice.
Someone's a mole in the system, somewhere, she's sure of it. Without fail, almost any caravan carrying something valuable was attacked, and lesser ones were ignored. Just another priority, among many others. She'd just exchanged one kind of boredom punctuated by terror for another- and this one didn't even have electricity.
She still dreads sleeping every day, as nothing but nightmares await her.
After two years, they’d moved into their own welded together house and continued to turn scrap metal into something valuable, only now they always worked together.
Vladimira Kovalik was born roughly three years later, two years after her brother. Raised in the industrial town of Arclight, she took to metalworking like a duck to water as soon as she could walk, surprising both of her parents with her raw enthusiasm for the work, as well as the mechanical genius she seemed to have. She would stay up late at night, tinkering away at whatever her latest project was, be it an expanded magazine for some wandering scavenger’s rifle or a turbocharger fan. She loved to use her hands, refining parts to turn an old beat up scrap rifle into a borderline work of art, or operating ammunition presses, or welding a piece of steel to another piece of steel.
Her brother however, was just the opposite. He had no desire to stay indoors making guns and ammunition, he preferred to simply wander around, exchanging idle conversation with anyone and everyone. Whereas his sister’s obsession with machines limited her human contact to almost zero, only sometimes speaking with her family while eating, Andrei lived for meeting new people and longed to leave Arclight and do… anything.
Which is what he did.
One morning, only a week after her eighteenth birthday, Vladimira was woken to a strange sound… it was almost as if her mother was crying, and her father trying to comfort her.
It had been apparent to her that something was very wrong, and -her leg freshly broken due to her own foolishness with one of her hammers- she hobbled towards the direction of their voices to find a piece of ragged paper on a table, as well as her parents.
She had tentatively walked to the table and read the paper. The note was short and succinct, briefly covering his boredom with Arclight and desire to see the world. She’d put the note down then, and gone to inspect the small room he had called his own. It seemed as though all he’d taken had been some clothing, food, and water.
While his departure had little to no effect on her, she’d probably spoken fewer than a hundred words to him in her whole life, it shook her parents badly, especially her mother.
While Vladimira continued on like normal, perhaps a stray thought entering her mind now and then about how Andrei was doing, wherever he was, and her father seemed agitated whenever someone mentioned Andrei’s name to him, and he seemed to blame himself for not noticing his son’s wanderlust, her mother was the one truly hit hard.
Galina Kovalik would constantly fret about her son’s condition, it drove her to distraction, such that her attention would constantly drift away from what she was doing. For two years she lived like that.
One day, while working an ordnairy shift in the factories, Galina’s attention lapsed once more as she operated a ladle handling steel to be dumped in a crucible. Her husband and daughter were elsewhere, but they both heard the explosion, as well as everybody else in the factory. Sprinting as fast they could, they found five burned bodies thrown like ragdolls against various machinery covered in cooling steel, among them Galina, only indentifiable by the necklace clutched in an unburned hand.
Her father was devastated, becoming almost a shell of his former self, only seeming human around the only family he had left; and while her brother’s departure hadn’t affected Vladimira too much, her mother’s death did. She was continuously haunted at night by images of burned flesh and a hand clutching a necklace. She’d been withdrawn before, but afterwards she would spend entire days cooped up in a workshop working ferverishly on various things to keep her mind occupied. Her minimal human contact dropped even further, and enthusiasm for her work petered off too. If she stayed in the workshop she could pretend it hadn't happened. Close the door on reality, even if just for a little while.
Vladimira also couldn’t help but think on how close she’d come to death herself that day. She’d come down with a bad cold, or something like it, and had left the area around the crucible that would explode not soon after to clear her mask, as it had been dangerously fogging up and a small part of the visor was even covered in mucus. A simple cold was responsible for her not becoming a sixth body, but she’d also been there keeping her mother’s mind focused and helping her operate the machinery. The same cold might’ve also been responsible. She knew her mother’s mind had wandered, Galina would always hold the little necklace in her hands and pray for her son when her mind wandered…
It shook her to the core to think her mother might be dead because she had left to clean her visor. She felt like everybody she saw, not that she saw many people, were all silently judging her, accusing her of being responsible for the explosion, especially the families of the other dead.
A few days after her cold seemed to peak and then retreat she lay in her bed in the pitch darkness, hands idly fumbling with some wires to keep her mind occupied- but for some reason it wasn’t, not completely. A pulsing red glow illuminated a small area in front of her eyes, much to her confusion.
She’d sat up, looking for the source of the light, but didn’t see any. Laying back down, the glow returned, right in front of her eyes, almost like they themselves were glowing.
She’d bolted upright then, staring at her hands as she brought them to her eyes and brought them away again.
Stumbling from the bed she’d grabbed the only mirror they owned, more of a shard of an old one, but it still worked. Her eyes, those were the first things she noticed. They looked like small discs of red hot metal, almost glowing white in the center, the whites were still there, but her pupils and irises were gone, replaced by… And her hair, she didn’t recall her hair looking like fine steel wires.
She didn’t know what to do, a single word had drifted across her mind, Immortal…
She was an Immortal. That cold hadn’t been a cold.
She dropped the mirror, stumbling back as it landed on an old shirt. She fell into a sitting position on her bed. I can’t stay here. She realized, They’ll do… something, I don’t know what and I don’t want to know.
__________
She’d woken up the next morning to her father sitting across from her, conflicted emotions on his face.
“I know.” He said simply, holding up the shattered fragments of mirror and tapping his eyes, though he’d still looked slightly stunned when she opened hers to look at him.
She’d felt paralyzed with fear as he sat there for what seemed like an eternity, but was closer to fifteen seconds. Then he’d stood up, and walked out of the room, returning with an old military rucksack filled with what looked like food, water, and other essentials…
“You’re going to need these. They won’t let you stay here.” He’d managed to choke out to her, pulling out the rifle she’d tweaked over the years into a finely tuned piece of rugged art, and affectionately dubbed “Comrade”, from behind the chair, along with the two old pistols he’d inherited and kept around, hoping to never use them. Vladimira had worked on those too, giving them new barrels to replace the old and worn ones.
That didn’t change the fact that she was being handed a backpack and weapons and told she needed to leave.
She’d taken the weapons and backpack without further eye contact, wanting to just leave and get it over with.
“I love you, you know that right?” Her father’s words had caught her and she’d looked back for the last time, dropping the bag and weapons and rushing back to hug him tightly. Just as quickly, she’d run for the door, scooping up the rucksack and weapons and running from the house.
__________________________________
Four months later…
She was living in a small hole she’d carved into the desert ground and covered with a metal sheet she’d forced into the proper shape -fitting that she could manipulate iron and steel, having spent her life working with tjhem- and sand, all of it concealed by a cluster of boulders. She’d acquired a gas mask somewhere along the way and had made the decision to melt her welding goggles to it, which kept the sun out of her eyes and the harsh winds and sand from her face and lungs. The cloak had been taken off the corpse of a bandit who looked to have acquired it from a scavenger or traveler.
Still haunted by nightmares of burned flesh, often with herself taking her mothers place, screaming as the molten steel splashed onto her. Still haboring guilt. Whenever she spoke with people her mind would conjure images of what they might look like dead, bleeding out on the ground, burned beyond recognition, filled with bullet holes… she’d almost gone beyond caring at that point, her heart hardening further as she sank into an apathetic slump.
She wasn’t comfortable, or content, but she was surviving, and that was something. She sold her skills as a mechanic, and sold what she scavenged too, managing to subsist on the relatively meager income, but she wanted more, there was always room for more of the ammunitition used as currency in her pockets.
________________________________
One year after the fall of Motum Diversum
________________________________
Tired of the politicking on the mainland -it was nothing but sheer boredom punctuated by brief moments when it seemed a single wrong word could plunge the entire landmass into war- Vladimira set out to the nearby island of Ash, taking up residence in the town of Stinger. Something about it appealed to her, whether it was the profound lack of politics beyond shouting obscenities prior to shooting raiding parties from New Syracuse or- actually it was just the lack of politics. The town wasn't exactly a booming center of development, and when she wasn't otherwise occupied, her main priority was bringing electricity into the town. Being the highest ranking individual from Wintergold on the island helped, even if she hadn't actually been given people to command, for which she was thankful. She wasn't really the type to lead soldiers in a battle, but it was certainly a welcome change to not be challenged at every corner by some guard with an attitude.
The only priority larger than electricity was clearing the trade routes between Stinger, Tombstone, and Sentinel from raids by both New Syracuse and Fort Spire. In fact, keeping the thugs from New Syracuse away itself is a task, and she'd had to personally intervene in various skirmishes several times. Her tactics for trade route clearing tend to be simple- kill anyone from New Syracuse or Fort Spire who might be intending to raid;00 and if that doesn't work, give a caravan carrying something particularly valuable a minimal armed guard and trail it until it's attacked, then exterminate with extreme prejudice.
Someone's a mole in the system, somewhere, she's sure of it. Without fail, almost any caravan carrying something valuable was attacked, and lesser ones were ignored. Just another priority, among many others. She'd just exchanged one kind of boredom punctuated by terror for another- and this one didn't even have electricity.
She still dreads sleeping every day, as nothing but nightmares await her.
Gear
Weapons:
“Comrade”: An old Mosin-Nagant 91/30, has twenty one notches on the stock, presumably from the Russian soldier who last had the rifle, has a folding bayonet and a carry strap.
Two TT-33 Tokarev pistols: More old Russian weapons, Vladimira carries them in two paddle holsters strapped to her thighs and is somewhat capable of using them simultaneously, though she generally will simply pull out Comrade if she actually needs to shoot somebody at any range.
“Thunder (From the East)”: A PTRS-41, somehow survived the apocalypse, she has no idea how, but she’s never gonna give it up, never gonna let it down (never gonna run around and desert it…)
Armor:
Vladimira has a pair of welding goggles fused with a gas mask fitted with particulate filters to keep out the dust of… Dust… after previous incidents, she decided to plate this new mask in steel. She wears a hooded grey cloak with baggy, overly long sleeves expertly sewn on the inside by someone else to shield the arms from sunlight, blocking out the sun from her body and effectively concealing what she has underneath it. Concealed under the cloak is a headlamp, more than capable of providing enough light to see by at night. She wears urban camoflauge cargo pants with an obscene number of pockets filled with various pieces of scrap metal and other random junk. Her shirt is gray and rather unremarkable. She has two plates of tool steel secured firmly on her front and back, able to stop shots from most firearms up to and including medium power rifle cartridges, but against something like a .30-06 AP the armor will almost never stop it. Four similar but smaller plates protect her elbows and knees, all plates have padding underneath them for comfort and to soften the impact of a bullet or anything else. She wears thick metal plated gloves of her own making, and has a pair of tank like combat boots that reach to about her knees, also plated with metal.
Ammunition:
Dirty Rounds: The remnants of several spam cans full of old Soviet milsurp ammunition.
~250 rounds of steel cased 7.62x54R ammunition on five round stripper clips.
~200 rounds of 7.62x25mm Tokarev.
~20 rounds of 14.5x114mm ammunition, custom made for the PTRS.
High Grade Rounds: N/A
Heavy Ammunition: N/A
Backpack A:
An old military rucksack, khaki colored:
Items Within: A basic first aid kit; a spare shirt and pair of pants; extra water; some spare scrap metal for emergencies; food; spare batteries; small blowtorch; water purification tablets; a small wad of plastic bags for… something, she has no idea why she keeps them around; small tent for shelter from the sun folded up and tied to the bottom, a sleeping bag is tied to the top.
Miscellaneous: A rope tied at her belt; bandolier of pouches containing the ammunition loaded onto clips or magazines; a two liter canteen sits on a strap around her shoulder; a compass in a small pouch on her belt, in other pouches on the belt are more small pieces of scrap metal for various uses.
Immortalis Information
Manifested Phenomena: Ferrous Metals (anything with a significant amount of iron, so iron and steel).
Unique Abilities:
Artisan Engineer: Like clay, but shinier and a hell of a lot tougher. Vladimira molds the steel she controls almost as easily as a sculptor working clay into the desired shape. She can mold the steel she controls into almost any shape imaginable, mainly limited by her imagination and the material itself.
Strengths:
Intelligence: Vladimira is smart. She may not have a rigorous higher education in mechanical engineering, but she can reverse engineer the internal workings of a diesel engine with little to no prior knowledge and figure out how to repair it to at least working order.
RUSSIA STRONK: Spend as long as she has lugging about welding equipment and hammering things and one builds up some muscle. She has prodigious physical strength and can carry heavy loads without too much difficulty, as well as having a brutal punch.
Weaknesses:
Mighty Glacier: Vladimira is relatively slow and not exactly agile, and while able make a short few meters sprint in decent time, is not able to attain any real speed, even when unarmored.
Do you feel lucky, punk?: Despite her intellect (and common sense) telling her such things are ill advised, she’s likely to charge into a situation in the spur of the moment, and has no issue with extreme violence to get what she wants.
Ya’ gotta make do with what ya’ got: Vladimira can only manipulate metal in her environment, she cannot produce it herself.
Dark and Troubled (recent) Past: The nature of her mother’s death and its effect on her father has had a profound effect on her as well, in addition to nightmares about being covered in molten steel that she has no control over, certain things will overwhelm her with paranoia/fear/anger/or any mixture thereof.
OP
Antediluvixen Kemonomimi Dystopia Creator
Member
Seen
7 mos ago
I do love my psychologically damaged amoral cyborgs.
[hider= Roberta Lee S. Jackson]
Name: Roberta Lee S. Jackson
Age: 24
Appeared Age: Early 20s
Height: 2 meters (6’ 7”)
Weight: 98kg (217 pounds)
Eye Color: Heterochromatic eyes, one is a sickly acid green that seems to fizzle and pop like a pool of acid eating away at something, the other is a dead, chalky white, like a crystal of sodium hydroxide.
Hair Color: Crimson.
Physical Disabilities:
Physical Identifiers: Eyes, Cybernetics, massive chemical burn
Appearance:
The first thing that is readily apparent about Roberta is her height. She is tall, not just kind of tall, or above average height, she readily towers over anyone she meets, and ceilings are the bane of her existence. She’s lean, the result of a life spent reading and experimenting instead of getting exercise coupled with a fast metabolism. She a smooth jawline and full lips that seem to settle naturally into a faint smirk. Her hair is a brilliant maroon and cascades down her back in in waves. Her skin is fair and almost entirely unblemished, except right where it meets cybernetics, where it becomes oddly distorted and… simply looks wrong. Her cybernetics are extensive, replacing a full half of her face, her right arm and leg, much of her skeleton and reinforcing the remainder, and a considerable amount of the skin on her right side is patched together and interspersed with the odd bit of carbon fiber or metal visible.
(I can’t find anything that accurately represents how I imagined her face, so nothing there.)
Residence: Sentinel.
Profession: Weapon designer, builder, and… user. Also willing to do pretty much anything for money.
Aligned Faction: None thus far
Relatives:
“Bobby Joe”- Father, deceased
Mary Lee Jackson- Mother, deceased
[hider=Backstory:] Roberta never really knew her parents, and they never really had any effect on her life beyond bringing her into the world. Her mother died in childbirth, and her father drank himself to death shortly after. She was born into the town of Dresden and was luckily a perfect fit, gravitating straight towards the weapons that the town researched and developed. She was taken under the wing of one of Dresden’s top engineers by the name of Thomas, just Thomas, along with a few other promising children, to learn all about the various weapons the town was known for. On her fifth birthday she was given a small journal to write in, the idea of which she scoffed at for a few years, but eventually relented and began to write in the book, if only to keep Thomas off her back.
Entry #1
What even is the point of writing in a journal?
Entry #2
Am I really writing in this? Ugh. Fine. Fiiiiiiiiiiiiine. Writing all those i’s made my wrist hurt. Writing is boring. Though today wasn’t. Today was a lot of fun actually. I got to make something burn, then explode, then we saw a demontration of a plasma rifle. It was so awesome to see the plasma melt the steel like it was nothing! They told us that whe we’re bigger we can build plasma rifles too and that we might even make better ones!
I mean, that’s pretty cool, I guess.
Entry #3 (The entry seems to have come significantly after the last one, maybe even years after.)
Finally got to take apart a laser rifle today, don’t know why they would let us mess around with one, but I’m not complaining. A lot of the parts were damaged, reaction chamber was dangerously so actually, good thing nobody shot it or who knows what could’ve happened, probably would’ve been cool to watch though. Focusing array was out of alignment too, if the diagrams are right. Why did they give us, or at least me -who knows what weird stuff they did with the others- something that’d be about as useful as a rifle as a stick with a tube tied to the top? Is it some kind of test?
Entry #4
Tests. So. Many. Tests. Oh they don’t tell us if they’re tests but why else would we be getting so many weapons to tinker with that have ju-ust one little capacitor not connected or a teeny tiny bit of exposed connection right next to the reaction chamber? Sometimes I see people get marched out after the senior engineers see something they don’t like. Most of us here now weren’t here when we started, it’s just me, Sam, and Becky.
Sam’s shy, I still don’t know anything about him, every time I say hi he just ducks his head and looks at whatever project he’s working on for the seniors. Maybe one day he’ll actually look up, that’d be nice.
Becky is his polar opposite. Sam’s all dark skinned and really thin, and has this kinda cute short hair, Becky isn’t plump (I hope she doesn’t read this) but she’s… she has a… a figure. Yeah. A figure. With like, curves and stuff.
Oh also she’s really bubbly and excitable and gets really passionate about whatever project she’s working on. She likes to invite me to eat with her and talk about projects and… stuff. I think she likes me.
Oh God, I just wrote that didn’t I?
Entry #5
So… she and I… did… stuff… why am I even writing this she said she’d be here in an hour I need to get ready. Hopefully I don’t make something explode unintentionally.
Entry #6
So I did make something explode unintentionally, but it looked awesome, and it wasn’t anything important, so all in all I’d say it went amazingly!
Entry #7
[i]She askd me out to dinner tonight, but it felt like she was just going through the motions, it was almost like she was reluctant to talk to me or something. There’s a big test coming up, I think I overheard them talking about sending another third home or something. I can’t tell if it’s a contest to be the last one left or if it’s some weird way of finding the best engineers. Everyone seems to think it’s the former. I keep getting these vicious looks from, well, everyone.
Except Sam and Becky though. They’re still nice. I don’t think Sam is physically capable of being mean, and Becky… well, she’s getting a bit distant, but she’s still my friend. I hope.
Anyway, yeah, she asked if I wanted to go for dinner and I declined, we’re all busy after all and she seemed really on edge. She looked confused. I feel kinda bad…
Entry #8
(This entry is clearly written in a distressed mindset, judging from the smudges on the paper, and probably with the weak hand judging by the quality of the writing) I i cant i dont know what hopend she just it hurts so much wy did she (the entry shows several words and sentences furiously scribbled out)
it hurts so much i cant breath right an i barely hav a rigt arm or leg and they wont show me my fac but it hurts so much
why did she do it
they wont tell me
she just
lye
everywhere
it hurts so much all of it hurts theyre telling me i shold talk to them but
(The entry shows several more smudged and crossed out lines)
they also wont tell me where she is i think theyre afraid of what id do to her
i jsut wanna know whv
why wont anyon tell me anythnin
sam does actually
sam is only one who actually talsk to me funny really he never did before
apparently she was drunk
apparently she was scared
apparently i woke up in hell becasue theres no way this
HOW DID THIS HAPPEN
(Excerpt from the journal of Sam)
My god.
It's been a month, and I still can't believe what happened. Roberta's sleeping now, not willingly of course, they had to sedate her. Don't think anyone could sleep through that pain, or after what happened to her.
I don't know what happened, as I've written several times before, all I or anyone knows is that Rebecca must've gotten drunk and snapped under the pressure. Next thing we know Roberta's being rushed to a doctor with half of her face, and, well, body in general missing. They still don't know how she's alive. Right arm, right leg, the right half of her face, most of the flesh on the right side of her chest and hips, all just basically... gone.
She looks like a mummy with red hair under all those bandages right now.
I haven't been told much, but from what I know Rebecca must've had a bunch of lye laying around, because that's what she used. Apparently ran right in there, screamed a lot, threw some of the lye and when Roberta collapsed poured the rest of it on her. I think she kicked her too, not that there’s a lot left on her right side to look for a bruise on.
They haven't told her what she did to Rebecca before half her face melted off. They're hoping she'll stop asking.
I'm hoping she won't find out on her own.
I've spent every hour I could here. I mean I wanted to talk with her more beforehand but I could never figure out how to approach her. Now it seems I'm the only one who says anything to her beyond, "You need to eat." or something like that. It's like I'm her only human interaction now. The doctors may as well be robots.
Thomas still hasn't stopped by, I don't know if he will.
I overheard them talking about cybernetics, and asking her soon. It'd be nice if she got to walk again.
I wish there was something I could've done to stop all of this. I think that question's going to haunt me for the rest of my life- was there something I could've done?
(The entry shows a list of pros and cons for 'telling her what happened', the pros seem to have been fully listed, but the cons seem to have been abandoned right in the middle of a word.)
She's waking up.
Entry #9
(This entry is markedly different from the others. For one thing, it’s audio, another is that the person speaking seems almost tired, definitely not the same person who wrote the bubbly and happy messages previously. Additionally, her voice seems… off, as if there’s something not quite human about it now.)
“So. I’m alive, that’s something.” The recording goes almost silent for a few seconds, save for a faint whirring sound and electric whine “I’m not sure how to feel about all this. On the one hand, I won’t be a vegetable, and cybernetics are undeniably fascinating. On the other- it would’ve been nice to actually go to someone and ask for them instead of getting them as a, ‘please don’t die please don’t die’ thing. That tends to put a damper on something that’s otherwise pretty amazing, I mean, I can crush a rock to powder with ease now, but my hand -my hand- is gone. What do you even do?” A sigh, followed by a soft grunt and a small burst of static, the speaker has presumably just sat down. “Why am I even talking into this thing at this point? It’s not like anyone will ever hear this. It’ll just go into some chip in my head or something. S’where everything else I’ve ever written is now too. Amazing what technology the world had before it died. Simply amazing.”
Recording ends.
Entry #10
“Immortal. An interesting word. Old one too. The concept stretches back, it’s as old as civilization. Immortality, eternal life.”
Silence reigns for a full minute.
“Of course in today’s world, it has a much different meaning. Immortals are ‘those freaks’, the people who contracted The Sickness and survived, staying themselves and not becoming Hollow. Some people call them abominations, some say they’re forsaken by God, some might believe they’re here to kill us all.”
Silence reigns once more for several seconds before it’s broken by a brief, humorless laugh,
“Well, I don’t feel like killing anyone. It makes sense I suppose. I was on death’s door for a month, sniffles were the least of their concerns. But it figures though, those sniffles weren’t just sniffles.”
She goes silent again.
“I can control pH. Cruel irony really, the same thing that almost surely affected the phenomena is what I’m now also resistant to. If I’d had this earlier I’d still have my face. Honestly I sometimes wonder if the reason they went to the lengths they did to keep me alive and augment me, so to speak, was just to see if their tech actually worked on an extreme case- if they could turn it around. Otherwise I don’t doubt there wouldn’t have been much ‘help’ past the pinch of a needle and death.”
Once more the recording goes silent, except now there are rustling sounds in the background and the sound of metal clanking, “I’m leaving. They won’t let me stay here, I know that much, honestly I don’t want to stay here anyway. Sam’s gone, he went traveling to Russel, what’s it called now? Russelgrad? Maybe I’ll go to that island, Ash, nobody’ll know me there. Maybe I can get away from… from this.”
Recording ends. [/hider]
Weapons:
Deathstick Boom Thing: A railgun she created on her own, it has a power setting with five positions. Minimum power is roughly equal to a 7.62x39mm round in velocity and projectile weight and can milk about ten shots out of each battery, maximum power can accelerate a 125 grain projectile at nearly five times the speed of a 7.62x39mm, generating about 54,232 joules of kinetic energy. Needless to say, firing at maximum power -especially when the weapon isn’t braced against something other than her- is beyond painful and she can only do so thanks to her cybernetic right arm and reinforced skeleton. It also superheats the projectile and its flight path due to air friction.
10mm Pistol: A Steiner-Bisley Zenith 10mm (Deus Ex ftw), futuristic and potent.
Remington 870 A 12 gauge pump action shotgun, not much else to say about it.
Armor/Apparel: Roberta wears a khaki trench coat with black accents and highlighting, the base of which sits somewhat awkwardly high on her, due to her height. Under it, she wears a sleeveless shirt that hugs her body tightly, since she couldn’t find a bigger one. She has a black and white keffiyeh wrapped around her head and covering her face, leaving only a thin strip of her face where her eyes are visible, she keeps her hair pulled up inside the garment. She sports a pair of too-short cargo pants that nonetheless hang loosely on her. Combat boots and fingerless leather gloves cover her hands and feet. She wears a dilatant treated kevlar vest under the trench coat but over her shirt.
Ammunition:
Dirty Rounds:
200 Full Power 10mm Rounds.
50 12 Gauge Shells, Slugs
45 12 Gauge Shells, Buckshot
High Grade Rounds:
30 rechargable batteries for the Deathstick.
50 125 grain projectiles for the Deathstick.
Heavy Ammunition:
Backpack A: A large backpack brought with her from Dresden.
Items Within: Water, lots of food, flashlight, batteries, first aid kit, bottle of sulfuric acid, spare shirt and pants, bedroll, tools and spare parts, lighter, blowtorch, rope, duct tape, journal, and wire.
Miscellaneous: Nothing here yet
Manifested Phenomena: pH
Unique Abilities:
Antacid/This is Too Basic: Roberta can change the pH of almost any liquid.
Manipulation: Roberta can control any liquid she has interacted with and changed the pH of, out to a range of 100 meters.
Strengths:
I Totally Asked For This: Roberta’s cybernetic parts are incredibly strong, and the sheer number of gadgets, addons, tools, and general stuff she has installed on them have turned her into a self contained, ridiculously strong, toolbox. She also has an eye that allows her to see in low light conditions, infrared, and ultraviolet.
To Arms in Dixie!: With an intimate knowledge of weaponry born of a lifetime building, destroying, improving them, and designing entirely new ones, Roberta can recognize almost any weapon simply on sight, can fix just about any of them, and also knows just the right area to punch the thing to make it stop working. She also has a seemingly endless supply of weapon schematics to sell to various well off groups or individuals.
Reinforced Skeleton: In order for her not to tear her arm off whenever she uses it, her skeleton has been reinforced to a point where it can withstand impacts and stress that would pulverize a regular skeleton.
Cruel Twist of Fate: Roberta, thanks to her Immortal abilities, is resistant to pH extremes and the effects of their substances. She could bathe in sulfuric acid and drink bleach like water and be none the worse for wear.
Weaknesses:
Shit, it’s Sherman: Roberta’s cybernetics take a lot of food, a lot. If she doesn’t meet her minimum food intake, really bad things will happen. Cybernetics-eating-her-own-body-for-energy kind of bad. This can be counteracted if she inserts the batteries used in her rail gun into a power feed slot on her sternum, but they don’t grow on trees.
Brains Over Brawn: Roberta may have a superhumanly strong cybnetic arm, leg, and an eye with nightvision, and an incredible intelligence, but the rest of her body…? Exercise? What’s that? A lifetime hunched over schematics and wires hasn’t done much for her physique, in bursts she can do incredible damage with her cybernetics, but sustained intense activity will tire her non-cybernetic parts out. The non-cybernetic parts aren’t particularly strong either since she never bothered to build any muscle on them, so if for some reason she can’t use her two cybernetic limbs, she’s almost helpless, even more so than she would be if she simply had two normal limbs out of action due to a habit relying on them.
A Southern Lady Doesn’t Retreat, She Just Reloads: When faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, Roberta Will. Not. Retreat. She can never back down from a challenge, even if that challenge is impossible.
But I Didn’t Ask for This: Roberta may like her cybernetics, but the conditions that necessitated them she doesn’t. To say she has trust issues would be more than a mild understatement, and underneath the somewhat cheerful exterior is a seething mass of pain and hurt.
[/hider]
[hider= Roberta Lee S. Jackson]
Basics
Name: Roberta Lee S. Jackson
Age: 24
Appeared Age: Early 20s
Height: 2 meters (6’ 7”)
Weight: 98kg (217 pounds)
Eye Color: Heterochromatic eyes, one is a sickly acid green that seems to fizzle and pop like a pool of acid eating away at something, the other is a dead, chalky white, like a crystal of sodium hydroxide.
Hair Color: Crimson.
Physical Disabilities:
Physical Identifiers: Eyes, Cybernetics, massive chemical burn
Appearance:
The first thing that is readily apparent about Roberta is her height. She is tall, not just kind of tall, or above average height, she readily towers over anyone she meets, and ceilings are the bane of her existence. She’s lean, the result of a life spent reading and experimenting instead of getting exercise coupled with a fast metabolism. She a smooth jawline and full lips that seem to settle naturally into a faint smirk. Her hair is a brilliant maroon and cascades down her back in in waves. Her skin is fair and almost entirely unblemished, except right where it meets cybernetics, where it becomes oddly distorted and… simply looks wrong. Her cybernetics are extensive, replacing a full half of her face, her right arm and leg, much of her skeleton and reinforcing the remainder, and a considerable amount of the skin on her right side is patched together and interspersed with the odd bit of carbon fiber or metal visible.
(I can’t find anything that accurately represents how I imagined her face, so nothing there.)
Background
Residence: Sentinel.
Profession: Weapon designer, builder, and… user. Also willing to do pretty much anything for money.
Aligned Faction: None thus far
Relatives:
“Bobby Joe”- Father, deceased
Mary Lee Jackson- Mother, deceased
[hider=Backstory:] Roberta never really knew her parents, and they never really had any effect on her life beyond bringing her into the world. Her mother died in childbirth, and her father drank himself to death shortly after. She was born into the town of Dresden and was luckily a perfect fit, gravitating straight towards the weapons that the town researched and developed. She was taken under the wing of one of Dresden’s top engineers by the name of Thomas, just Thomas, along with a few other promising children, to learn all about the various weapons the town was known for. On her fifth birthday she was given a small journal to write in, the idea of which she scoffed at for a few years, but eventually relented and began to write in the book, if only to keep Thomas off her back.
Entry #1
What even is the point of writing in a journal?
Entry #2
Am I really writing in this? Ugh. Fine. Fiiiiiiiiiiiiine. Writing all those i’s made my wrist hurt. Writing is boring. Though today wasn’t. Today was a lot of fun actually. I got to make something burn, then explode, then we saw a demontration of a plasma rifle. It was so awesome to see the plasma melt the steel like it was nothing! They told us that whe we’re bigger we can build plasma rifles too and that we might even make better ones!
I mean, that’s pretty cool, I guess.
Entry #3 (The entry seems to have come significantly after the last one, maybe even years after.)
Finally got to take apart a laser rifle today, don’t know why they would let us mess around with one, but I’m not complaining. A lot of the parts were damaged, reaction chamber was dangerously so actually, good thing nobody shot it or who knows what could’ve happened, probably would’ve been cool to watch though. Focusing array was out of alignment too, if the diagrams are right. Why did they give us, or at least me -who knows what weird stuff they did with the others- something that’d be about as useful as a rifle as a stick with a tube tied to the top? Is it some kind of test?
Entry #4
Tests. So. Many. Tests. Oh they don’t tell us if they’re tests but why else would we be getting so many weapons to tinker with that have ju-ust one little capacitor not connected or a teeny tiny bit of exposed connection right next to the reaction chamber? Sometimes I see people get marched out after the senior engineers see something they don’t like. Most of us here now weren’t here when we started, it’s just me, Sam, and Becky.
Sam’s shy, I still don’t know anything about him, every time I say hi he just ducks his head and looks at whatever project he’s working on for the seniors. Maybe one day he’ll actually look up, that’d be nice.
Becky is his polar opposite. Sam’s all dark skinned and really thin, and has this kinda cute short hair, Becky isn’t plump (I hope she doesn’t read this) but she’s… she has a… a figure. Yeah. A figure. With like, curves and stuff.
Oh also she’s really bubbly and excitable and gets really passionate about whatever project she’s working on. She likes to invite me to eat with her and talk about projects and… stuff. I think she likes me.
Oh God, I just wrote that didn’t I?
Entry #5
So… she and I… did… stuff… why am I even writing this she said she’d be here in an hour I need to get ready. Hopefully I don’t make something explode unintentionally.
Entry #6
So I did make something explode unintentionally, but it looked awesome, and it wasn’t anything important, so all in all I’d say it went amazingly!
Entry #7
[i]She askd me out to dinner tonight, but it felt like she was just going through the motions, it was almost like she was reluctant to talk to me or something. There’s a big test coming up, I think I overheard them talking about sending another third home or something. I can’t tell if it’s a contest to be the last one left or if it’s some weird way of finding the best engineers. Everyone seems to think it’s the former. I keep getting these vicious looks from, well, everyone.
Except Sam and Becky though. They’re still nice. I don’t think Sam is physically capable of being mean, and Becky… well, she’s getting a bit distant, but she’s still my friend. I hope.
Anyway, yeah, she asked if I wanted to go for dinner and I declined, we’re all busy after all and she seemed really on edge. She looked confused. I feel kinda bad…
Entry #8
(This entry is clearly written in a distressed mindset, judging from the smudges on the paper, and probably with the weak hand judging by the quality of the writing) I i cant i dont know what hopend she just it hurts so much wy did she (the entry shows several words and sentences furiously scribbled out)
it hurts so much i cant breath right an i barely hav a rigt arm or leg and they wont show me my fac but it hurts so much
why did she do it
they wont tell me
she just
lye
everywhere
it hurts so much all of it hurts theyre telling me i shold talk to them but
(The entry shows several more smudged and crossed out lines)
they also wont tell me where she is i think theyre afraid of what id do to her
i jsut wanna know whv
why wont anyon tell me anythnin
sam does actually
sam is only one who actually talsk to me funny really he never did before
apparently she was drunk
apparently she was scared
apparently i woke up in hell becasue theres no way this
HOW DID THIS HAPPEN
(Excerpt from the journal of Sam)
My god.
It's been a month, and I still can't believe what happened. Roberta's sleeping now, not willingly of course, they had to sedate her. Don't think anyone could sleep through that pain, or after what happened to her.
I don't know what happened, as I've written several times before, all I or anyone knows is that Rebecca must've gotten drunk and snapped under the pressure. Next thing we know Roberta's being rushed to a doctor with half of her face, and, well, body in general missing. They still don't know how she's alive. Right arm, right leg, the right half of her face, most of the flesh on the right side of her chest and hips, all just basically... gone.
She looks like a mummy with red hair under all those bandages right now.
I haven't been told much, but from what I know Rebecca must've had a bunch of lye laying around, because that's what she used. Apparently ran right in there, screamed a lot, threw some of the lye and when Roberta collapsed poured the rest of it on her. I think she kicked her too, not that there’s a lot left on her right side to look for a bruise on.
They haven't told her what she did to Rebecca before half her face melted off. They're hoping she'll stop asking.
I'm hoping she won't find out on her own.
I've spent every hour I could here. I mean I wanted to talk with her more beforehand but I could never figure out how to approach her. Now it seems I'm the only one who says anything to her beyond, "You need to eat." or something like that. It's like I'm her only human interaction now. The doctors may as well be robots.
Thomas still hasn't stopped by, I don't know if he will.
I overheard them talking about cybernetics, and asking her soon. It'd be nice if she got to walk again.
I wish there was something I could've done to stop all of this. I think that question's going to haunt me for the rest of my life- was there something I could've done?
(The entry shows a list of pros and cons for 'telling her what happened', the pros seem to have been fully listed, but the cons seem to have been abandoned right in the middle of a word.)
She's waking up.
Entry #9
(This entry is markedly different from the others. For one thing, it’s audio, another is that the person speaking seems almost tired, definitely not the same person who wrote the bubbly and happy messages previously. Additionally, her voice seems… off, as if there’s something not quite human about it now.)
“So. I’m alive, that’s something.” The recording goes almost silent for a few seconds, save for a faint whirring sound and electric whine “I’m not sure how to feel about all this. On the one hand, I won’t be a vegetable, and cybernetics are undeniably fascinating. On the other- it would’ve been nice to actually go to someone and ask for them instead of getting them as a, ‘please don’t die please don’t die’ thing. That tends to put a damper on something that’s otherwise pretty amazing, I mean, I can crush a rock to powder with ease now, but my hand -my hand- is gone. What do you even do?” A sigh, followed by a soft grunt and a small burst of static, the speaker has presumably just sat down. “Why am I even talking into this thing at this point? It’s not like anyone will ever hear this. It’ll just go into some chip in my head or something. S’where everything else I’ve ever written is now too. Amazing what technology the world had before it died. Simply amazing.”
Recording ends.
Entry #10
“Immortal. An interesting word. Old one too. The concept stretches back, it’s as old as civilization. Immortality, eternal life.”
Silence reigns for a full minute.
“Of course in today’s world, it has a much different meaning. Immortals are ‘those freaks’, the people who contracted The Sickness and survived, staying themselves and not becoming Hollow. Some people call them abominations, some say they’re forsaken by God, some might believe they’re here to kill us all.”
Silence reigns once more for several seconds before it’s broken by a brief, humorless laugh,
“Well, I don’t feel like killing anyone. It makes sense I suppose. I was on death’s door for a month, sniffles were the least of their concerns. But it figures though, those sniffles weren’t just sniffles.”
She goes silent again.
“I can control pH. Cruel irony really, the same thing that almost surely affected the phenomena is what I’m now also resistant to. If I’d had this earlier I’d still have my face. Honestly I sometimes wonder if the reason they went to the lengths they did to keep me alive and augment me, so to speak, was just to see if their tech actually worked on an extreme case- if they could turn it around. Otherwise I don’t doubt there wouldn’t have been much ‘help’ past the pinch of a needle and death.”
Once more the recording goes silent, except now there are rustling sounds in the background and the sound of metal clanking, “I’m leaving. They won’t let me stay here, I know that much, honestly I don’t want to stay here anyway. Sam’s gone, he went traveling to Russel, what’s it called now? Russelgrad? Maybe I’ll go to that island, Ash, nobody’ll know me there. Maybe I can get away from… from this.”
Recording ends. [/hider]
Gear
Weapons:
Deathstick Boom Thing: A railgun she created on her own, it has a power setting with five positions. Minimum power is roughly equal to a 7.62x39mm round in velocity and projectile weight and can milk about ten shots out of each battery, maximum power can accelerate a 125 grain projectile at nearly five times the speed of a 7.62x39mm, generating about 54,232 joules of kinetic energy. Needless to say, firing at maximum power -especially when the weapon isn’t braced against something other than her- is beyond painful and she can only do so thanks to her cybernetic right arm and reinforced skeleton. It also superheats the projectile and its flight path due to air friction.
10mm Pistol: A Steiner-Bisley Zenith 10mm (Deus Ex ftw), futuristic and potent.
Remington 870 A 12 gauge pump action shotgun, not much else to say about it.
Armor/Apparel: Roberta wears a khaki trench coat with black accents and highlighting, the base of which sits somewhat awkwardly high on her, due to her height. Under it, she wears a sleeveless shirt that hugs her body tightly, since she couldn’t find a bigger one. She has a black and white keffiyeh wrapped around her head and covering her face, leaving only a thin strip of her face where her eyes are visible, she keeps her hair pulled up inside the garment. She sports a pair of too-short cargo pants that nonetheless hang loosely on her. Combat boots and fingerless leather gloves cover her hands and feet. She wears a dilatant treated kevlar vest under the trench coat but over her shirt.
Ammunition:
Dirty Rounds:
200 Full Power 10mm Rounds.
50 12 Gauge Shells, Slugs
45 12 Gauge Shells, Buckshot
High Grade Rounds:
30 rechargable batteries for the Deathstick.
50 125 grain projectiles for the Deathstick.
Heavy Ammunition:
Backpack A: A large backpack brought with her from Dresden.
Items Within: Water, lots of food, flashlight, batteries, first aid kit, bottle of sulfuric acid, spare shirt and pants, bedroll, tools and spare parts, lighter, blowtorch, rope, duct tape, journal, and wire.
Miscellaneous: Nothing here yet
Immortalis Information
Manifested Phenomena: pH
Unique Abilities:
Antacid/This is Too Basic: Roberta can change the pH of almost any liquid.
Manipulation: Roberta can control any liquid she has interacted with and changed the pH of, out to a range of 100 meters.
Strengths:
I Totally Asked For This: Roberta’s cybernetic parts are incredibly strong, and the sheer number of gadgets, addons, tools, and general stuff she has installed on them have turned her into a self contained, ridiculously strong, toolbox. She also has an eye that allows her to see in low light conditions, infrared, and ultraviolet.
To Arms in Dixie!: With an intimate knowledge of weaponry born of a lifetime building, destroying, improving them, and designing entirely new ones, Roberta can recognize almost any weapon simply on sight, can fix just about any of them, and also knows just the right area to punch the thing to make it stop working. She also has a seemingly endless supply of weapon schematics to sell to various well off groups or individuals.
Reinforced Skeleton: In order for her not to tear her arm off whenever she uses it, her skeleton has been reinforced to a point where it can withstand impacts and stress that would pulverize a regular skeleton.
Cruel Twist of Fate: Roberta, thanks to her Immortal abilities, is resistant to pH extremes and the effects of their substances. She could bathe in sulfuric acid and drink bleach like water and be none the worse for wear.
Weaknesses:
Shit, it’s Sherman: Roberta’s cybernetics take a lot of food, a lot. If she doesn’t meet her minimum food intake, really bad things will happen. Cybernetics-eating-her-own-body-for-energy kind of bad. This can be counteracted if she inserts the batteries used in her rail gun into a power feed slot on her sternum, but they don’t grow on trees.
Brains Over Brawn: Roberta may have a superhumanly strong cybnetic arm, leg, and an eye with nightvision, and an incredible intelligence, but the rest of her body…? Exercise? What’s that? A lifetime hunched over schematics and wires hasn’t done much for her physique, in bursts she can do incredible damage with her cybernetics, but sustained intense activity will tire her non-cybernetic parts out. The non-cybernetic parts aren’t particularly strong either since she never bothered to build any muscle on them, so if for some reason she can’t use her two cybernetic limbs, she’s almost helpless, even more so than she would be if she simply had two normal limbs out of action due to a habit relying on them.
A Southern Lady Doesn’t Retreat, She Just Reloads: When faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, Roberta Will. Not. Retreat. She can never back down from a challenge, even if that challenge is impossible.
But I Didn’t Ask for This: Roberta may like her cybernetics, but the conditions that necessitated them she doesn’t. To say she has trust issues would be more than a mild understatement, and underneath the somewhat cheerful exterior is a seething mass of pain and hurt.
[/hider]
OP
Antediluvixen Kemonomimi Dystopia Creator
Member
Seen
7 mos ago
Name: Sonya Gear-Head
Race: Tiefling
Age: 163
Appearance:
Sonya has a deceivingly feminine build, with seemingly slight arms that in fact are incredibly strong and often smudged with grease as well as an ample chest and hips. Her eyes burn with intelligence and curiosity and a small manic streak. Two horns protrude from her head and curl around slightly. Her hair is a silvery gray and reaches about midway down her back when left free, though it's usually kept in a tight braid or messy bun. Lips that naturally smile and a nose with a small but noticeable crook -the result of not being fast enough out of the way of a flying lever- accentuate her face and compliment her fair skin. She has a toolbelt that seems to have an infinite number of pockets and pouches, and sports a duster coat that only adds to the pocket count.
Reason for joining the Outcasts: Born before the Calamity, Sonya had a natural inclination to tinker and to learn. Her thirst for knowledge lead her to delve ever deeper into tomes and texts, some of them forbidden. The Calamity however, interrupted that. Priceless tomes were lost to the sands, and all she had left of her life was a wrench, a bow, and two pistols.
She wandered for years, decades, centuries? Time lost meaning to her. It was a miracle she survived as long as she did, unaccustomed to desert life as she was. Why she lived as long as she did regardless of her survival skills is an even greater mystery, and one she has nothing approaching a satisfactory answer to. A tribe found her and "adopted" her, but soon took displeasure with her reckless pursuit of any knowledge or machinery from the old world. This continued for years and resentment between herself and the tribe grew boiling hot until one day -after smacking one tribal in the head with a wrench to stop him destroying a gadget she'd never seen before- they snapped. Barely escaping with her life, Sonya found her way to the Outcasts, where her natural inclination to head straight into dangerous technological ruins in search of salvage, ammunition, or simply adventure made her a natural candidate to become a Dweller.
Weapons:
Skills:
Motto/Catchphrase: "Hey y'all, watch this!"
Race: Tiefling
Age: 163
Appearance:
Sonya has a deceivingly feminine build, with seemingly slight arms that in fact are incredibly strong and often smudged with grease as well as an ample chest and hips. Her eyes burn with intelligence and curiosity and a small manic streak. Two horns protrude from her head and curl around slightly. Her hair is a silvery gray and reaches about midway down her back when left free, though it's usually kept in a tight braid or messy bun. Lips that naturally smile and a nose with a small but noticeable crook -the result of not being fast enough out of the way of a flying lever- accentuate her face and compliment her fair skin. She has a toolbelt that seems to have an infinite number of pockets and pouches, and sports a duster coat that only adds to the pocket count.
Reason for joining the Outcasts: Born before the Calamity, Sonya had a natural inclination to tinker and to learn. Her thirst for knowledge lead her to delve ever deeper into tomes and texts, some of them forbidden. The Calamity however, interrupted that. Priceless tomes were lost to the sands, and all she had left of her life was a wrench, a bow, and two pistols.
She wandered for years, decades, centuries? Time lost meaning to her. It was a miracle she survived as long as she did, unaccustomed to desert life as she was. Why she lived as long as she did regardless of her survival skills is an even greater mystery, and one she has nothing approaching a satisfactory answer to. A tribe found her and "adopted" her, but soon took displeasure with her reckless pursuit of any knowledge or machinery from the old world. This continued for years and resentment between herself and the tribe grew boiling hot until one day -after smacking one tribal in the head with a wrench to stop him destroying a gadget she'd never seen before- they snapped. Barely escaping with her life, Sonya found her way to the Outcasts, where her natural inclination to head straight into dangerous technological ruins in search of salvage, ammunition, or simply adventure made her a natural candidate to become a Dweller.
Weapons:
- Two five shot pistols that have been hers since before the collapse. Tried and true, they've never failed her.
- A powerful compound bow, also from before the collapse, can send an arrow cleanly through a shield and the person behind it, with velocity to spare when it comes out the other side.
- Combat wrench- while still useful for adjusting bolts, this monkey wrench has a decidedly more martial purpose as well, as evidenced by the large skull-crushing spike that juts from one end.
Skills:
- Mechanical aptitude, she could assemble an engine blindfolded.
- Marksmanship, be it with her crossbow, or the two pistols she's held on to for as long as she can remember, Sonya is a deadly shot.
- Seduction, because sometimes a flash of cleavage is what's needed to win someone over to her side.
Motto/Catchphrase: "Hey y'all, watch this!"
OP
Antediluvixen Kemonomimi Dystopia Creator
Member
Seen
7 mos ago
Name: Tzofia Meier
Age: 26
Appearance:
Short raven black hair is pulled tightly into a short ponytail, hidden under a dirtied scarlet beret. Her hardened brown eyes are hidden under a pair of sunglasses. Whipcord hard muscles coil tightly under skin marred by a life of fighting, and not having showered in... weeks? months? Her facial features are typical for a Hebrew woman, but are concealed under a black shemagh with only her nose poking out.
Weapons:
Gear:
Personality: Tzofia is clearly an intelligent individual, able to formulate plans of action on the fly to adapt to any situation as well as perform advanced mathematics in her head. She has a confident demeanor that more than explains her history of bold actions- albeit successful ones. She's definitely approachable, but not what one might term amiable, with a past full of violence leaving its mark.
She speaks in a forceful and direct manner, used to shouting over the din of combat and arguments over where to eat, which is louder is still up for debate. Other people -or at least non hostile ones- are a rarity these days, and she has been on constant lookout for other survivors, what for she's not sure- maybe to find a way out of this godforsaken city, maybe just so she doesn't die alone, but preferably finding a way out.
Age: 26
Appearance:
Short raven black hair is pulled tightly into a short ponytail, hidden under a dirtied scarlet beret. Her hardened brown eyes are hidden under a pair of sunglasses. Whipcord hard muscles coil tightly under skin marred by a life of fighting, and not having showered in... weeks? months? Her facial features are typical for a Hebrew woman, but are concealed under a black shemagh with only her nose poking out.
Weapons:
- Glock 21 and .45 ACP ammunition.
- S&W M&P R8 and .357 Magnum ammunition
- Military grade tomahawk, razor sharp.
Gear:
- Two full 2 liter canteens.
- Lighter
- Swiss army knife
- Crowbar
- Gerber tool
- Mission directives, a map, phone numbers, addresses, and the suicide note of the last of her unit.
- Gas mask
- MREs, food and water salvaged from various stores
- First aid kit, an extra roll of gauze, and an extra bottle of isopropyl alcohol
- Handheld radio
- Rucksack to carry it all in
Personality: Tzofia is clearly an intelligent individual, able to formulate plans of action on the fly to adapt to any situation as well as perform advanced mathematics in her head. She has a confident demeanor that more than explains her history of bold actions- albeit successful ones. She's definitely approachable, but not what one might term amiable, with a past full of violence leaving its mark.
She speaks in a forceful and direct manner, used to shouting over the din of combat and arguments over where to eat, which is louder is still up for debate. Other people -or at least non hostile ones- are a rarity these days, and she has been on constant lookout for other survivors, what for she's not sure- maybe to find a way out of this godforsaken city, maybe just so she doesn't die alone, but preferably finding a way out.
Intelligent and confident, Tzofia could've been an engineer or a scientist, maybe even a doctor. Her life had been on track to receive a degree in mechanical engineering- one which took a sudden turn as Israel came under concerted attack from its neighboring countries once more. Tzofia wasted no time in abandoning her university career and enlisting in the IDF, quickly rising the the position of Rav Seren -or Major- and commanding the unit she was assigned with courage that earned her several commendations. Her most notable achievement was also the one that lead to her medical discharge- comandeering a tank and leading a suicide charge that somehow managed to break the enemy line. Maybe it was the tank thundering towards them, maybe it was the woman in the tank screaming bloody murder, or maybe it was simply the sudden volume of fire, but the enemy line retreated. Rav Seren Tzofia Meier was seriously wounded in the action and had to be medevaced for internal bleeding and shock.
She received her medical discharge on the same day she received her Medal of Valor. She was only twenty five.
Bitter over being discharged and her injuries, Tzofia made her way to the United States to seek medical care her own government hadn't been willing to provide, managing a rapid recovery despite her doctor's hesitance about her ever being in fighting condition again.
Strapped for money but once more in prime fighting condition, Tzofia approached various private military contractors, seeking employment. Most turned her down for various reasons. One accepted her application, a relatively new company by the name of Magnum Security Corp, and she began the second chapter of her life as a private soldier. It was a... different experience from the actual military, what with being legally bound to primarily support and defensive roles, but it was one she excelled in.
Then the infection happened.
Magnum Security was contracted by the military to provide logistical support and reinforce defensive positions against the undead, which went somewhat well for a short time before almost an entire city's worth of infected simply overwhelmed them. She watched as, one by one, her unit was killed and/or turned, often having to put them down herself. The last survivor aside from herself committed suicide not long after the preceding death that had left them alone, leaving her alone in a boarded up building with a corpse, his suicide note, and a city of infected all on all sides.
She received her medical discharge on the same day she received her Medal of Valor. She was only twenty five.
Bitter over being discharged and her injuries, Tzofia made her way to the United States to seek medical care her own government hadn't been willing to provide, managing a rapid recovery despite her doctor's hesitance about her ever being in fighting condition again.
Strapped for money but once more in prime fighting condition, Tzofia approached various private military contractors, seeking employment. Most turned her down for various reasons. One accepted her application, a relatively new company by the name of Magnum Security Corp, and she began the second chapter of her life as a private soldier. It was a... different experience from the actual military, what with being legally bound to primarily support and defensive roles, but it was one she excelled in.
Then the infection happened.
Magnum Security was contracted by the military to provide logistical support and reinforce defensive positions against the undead, which went somewhat well for a short time before almost an entire city's worth of infected simply overwhelmed them. She watched as, one by one, her unit was killed and/or turned, often having to put them down herself. The last survivor aside from herself committed suicide not long after the preceding death that had left them alone, leaving her alone in a boarded up building with a corpse, his suicide note, and a city of infected all on all sides.
OP
Antediluvixen Kemonomimi Dystopia Creator
Member
Seen
7 mos ago
Name: Alice Blackwood
Gender: Female
Age: 21
Shifter Form: Valkyrie
Appearance: Alice is a somewhat short, heavyset, muscular 1.6m and 86 kilos, to be exact. Her skin is somewhat pale, mainly due to spending most of her daylight hours indoors. Her muscles, while not grotesquely large, are big and as hard as whipcords. Her hair is jet black, and about midway down her back when left alone, though she ties it in a ponytail to keep it out of her eyes, which are a steely grey. It's impossible to tell what her legs look like, as they're covered 24-7 with a pair of heavy, black, military cargo pants completely covered in pockets and other things. Under one of those pant legs is a sleek and shiny prosthetic, top of the line and if anything better than the organic limb it replaced. Her face eyes appear to be locked in a semi-scowl. Due to her less than feminine form, many people would and will frequently mistake her for a man with long hair, mainly when her figure was obscured by something, either a jacket, or weapons and armor (armor, weapons, etc-cetera).
Shifter Appearance:
Use the image as a reference, not as an accurate representation of her appearance.
Her hair shifts along its length from black at the top to pure silver at the bottom, but remains the same length. She gains several inches in height, and her already muscular build only becomes more so, with the muscles visible standing out like steel cables rather than whipcords. The prosthetic disappears, replaced by a "regular" leg that's just as muscular and powerful as the other. Any change in "Feminine assets", if any, is small. A pair of glossy, jet black wings spreads from her back, with two small holes in her armor permitting their use in battle. When she shifts, she gains a set of elegant but futuristically angular armor, also in varying shades of black and silver. The breastplate juts out slightly in a single point, with several overlapping plates angling downwards to deflect blows, and similarly in the back. A helmet in similarly angular but deflective style rests on her head, and more armor of the same style covers her arms and legs. Her face, while not exactly loving by any stretch of the imagination, nonetheless softens noticeably.
Abilities:
Has extensive training in both armed and unarmed combat- (Unarmed: Kapap and Tai Chi. Armed: Kapap, some dabbling in HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts), and training at The Academy)
Even while unshifted, she’s strong. While she wouldn't be able to beat a steroid guzzling power-lifter, she’s no slouch in the strength department.
Fast, in the sense of a sprinter. Excels at quick bursts of speed
Basic knowledge of field medicine,
Strong self discipline. It takes an awful lot to set her off, and by contrast she’s excellent at masking her feelings and essentially isolating herself in a personal fortress. (Not to say she does so all the time.)
Speaks Russian, more or less.
Powers:
Greatly increased physical abilities (Faster, stronger… tougher)
Can use a powerful short range offensive blast with her magic, mainly to let her catch a breath or exploit an opening
As she’s a Valkyrie, she does have the ability to bolster her allies’ strength and fortitude, and can heal wounds to an extent
Can fly
Can further augment her abilities and those of her weapon with magic, the more magic she pours into it, the more her abilities are strengthened.
Background:
Alice Blackwood was born to a militant family. Not military, militant.
From a young age, her highly competitive single father (her mother died shortly after her birth from an accidental overdose of pain medication) pushed his also competitive, but not pathologically so, daughter to her limits. While one might've expected her to resent it, she saw it as a competition against her father- one she was determined to win. Occasionally however, he broke those limits so much that she actually wound up with a prosthetic leg and a policy for a discounted upgrade to a top-tier version upon adulthood. She didn't mind too much, well, she didn't mind the prosthetic as it fascinated her to no end; the fact that her father was the reason she needed it severely damaged their relationship. The prosthetic was paid for of course, by her father’s company, or at least the company he worked for, a private military company which stipulated that she work for the company upon her reaching 21, circumstances permitting.
And so, her already intense training increased even more so, with her learning things at the age of thirteen that no normal young teenage girl would've really wanted to know- things such as small unit tactics, where to stab or shoot to kill an opponent hopped up on drugs, and first aid. As the company was in fact Russian based, another part of her training was Russian with a native speaker, also from the PMC, though this was more of a formality, she still took it seriously. Her school began to take notice, especially after she walked in one morning after a prolonged absence with a whirring prosthetic limb. They took umbrage with her father’s practices and how they rubbed off on his daughter, her impressive knowledge of ways to kill people or occasional remarks about how “That position would be untenable in [Insert a situation here]”.
This extensive training left little or no room for a social life, and though she tried on multiple occasions, the closest she ever came to real friends were other students of HEMA. She chose to go into HEMA because it was one of the few things that her father would approve of, and his controlling nature lead to her slowly developing an intense dislike for him.
After much arguing and many letters of pure vitriol, she was pulled from public school and was enrolled at a private institution for aspiring military officers- where she mastered the art of keeping a straight face and hiding emotion behind an impenetrable mask.
The public school was thrilled to be rid of her truthfully- having brought up several other issues with her father. Incidents such as the time she’d “accidentally” forgot to return to classes after lunch, and released hazardous materials into the building after managing to trip over several valves and crash an electrical line into flammable material. While she had had some inkling they were hazardous, she hadn't been as aware of where exactly they would go. While there were no fatalities, her voice never recovered from her brief exposure and remains horribly raspy to this day.
When she was seventeen a large legal battle commenced with child protective services and her father, and her father lost. It wasn't the government that took custody of her, but rather the company her father worked for, and they took over the training role. In fact, she enjoyed her time there more than with her father, largely because they weren't technically able to subject her to anywhere near the same regimen as her father, and partially because the director of the American branch of the company had in fact been shocked when he learned of what she’d been trained to do from a young age and had essentially reduced her training to a classroom.
At age 18, with a brand-new, top-of-the-line, bleeding edge prosthetic limb she made a spur-of-the-moment decision to see if she was mythically compatible. It was either fight against superior forces as just another soldier, and likely join a list of statistics, or fight superior soldiers as a shifter and maybe stand a chance of not dying horribly- there wasn't really any decision.
At a facility run by the CDC in Atlanta, flurries of people- humans, shifters, and mythics alike poked her, stabbed her with needles, et-cetera. Suddenly it was the next day, and lo and behold, she was compatible with the Demon class, a Valkyrie. So she got to stab things and mess stuff up, make everyone else feel like they could stab things and mess them up, and help them do so a little.
Well that didn’t seem too hard.
She’d left herself on a sort of autopilot for the next bit, the actual transformation itself more of a blur than anything. Her mind was primarily occupied with how to make things work with the company and her contract (which she had technically agreed to anyway).
She does remember appraising herself after the transformation with approval. Prominent muscles more so, impressive wings that would… well, she wasn't sure what exactly to do with them. Oh, and the armor, she had no idea at all where that had come from, but she certainly liked it.
She’d not really done much experimentation with what powers she’d been granted as a Valkyrie, and didn’t do so until she arrived at the Academy later. Her primary concern had been potential issues with the company, though surprisingly they proved fairly reasonable, though she suspected her new status had something to do with it. Not many PMCs could brag that they technically had a shifter working for them.
She progressed through The Academy much like she had prior, though this time there was the new variable of socializing, that she’d actually be able to participate in, maybe even make a real friend!
Or not, she progressed through The Academy exactly like she had previously, and was completely baffled by all the social niceties she encountered.
While she’d been fully expecting to have her ass kicked when she arrived, and was not disappointed, it happened a lot less than she’d been expecting. Her familiarity with strict physical training and regimens certainly helped.
She learned many things over the next three years. She made a runic blade, and learned how to use it better than any amount of HEMA could’ve done. She learned to augment her abilities and those of her blade and other with magic, and while not as blisteringly fast or agile as other Demon classes, she far exceeded them in strength and endurance. She learned to apply the wings she gained when shifted to their fullest extent, able to quickly cover ground or rapidly brake. She also learned to apply her magic in a more active manner, with varying results.
Perhaps the biggest glaring error in her training was her disdain for the healing and support capabilities of a Valkyrie, her logic always being “If the enemy is dead fast enough I don’t need to heal them, now do I?”
Something she’s well aware of is the fact that she’s theoretically still going to be fighting as an employee of a private military company, and not of one of the different governments of the world.
Personality:
Alice predominantly has a cold, almost distant disposition to most people, though that will change depending on whether the person she’s speaking to is someone she likes (not a whole lot of people on that list) or someone she dislikes (lot more people on that list). To someone she likes, she can still seem distant, though it’s more a confusion with how to interact with them rather than an intentional barrier, nonetheless she will at the very least greet with a smile as opposed to the half-scowl. With someone she dislikes her attitude also changes considerably, the best term being “Bitchy”, though luckily it actually isn't easy to get oneself on the list of dislikes.
She can be very patient, up until a point when everything will explode, though if this does happen one must consider themselves supremely unlucky; she once waited four hours while standing to wait for a store to find something, only to discover they had in fact forgotten she was there after something happened, and they were able to bring it out shortly after.
Privately, she has an almost poetic way of looking at things, and can be very romantic in the 18th century Romanticism sense, and were someone to catch her in the middle of well, not being the hardass military chick, it’d be hard to gauge her reaction beyond “Flustered”.
Other:
She has a heavy revolver, extensively modified by herself, which she refers to as Охота Пистолет, or, "Hunting Gun." She is currently working on modifying this revolver to use ammunition made from the same runic material as her sword and armor- which, needless to say, would be far more effective against a dragon than lead and copper.
Jackets were mentioned earlier, she wears a military styled one wherever she goes when not shifted, like this. This jacket also has excessive pockets, but most of them are located on the inside. It may or may not be impossible to tell just what she is carrying in her clothes.
If I think of anything else later I’ll put it here.
Gender: Female
Age: 21
Shifter Form: Valkyrie
Appearance: Alice is a somewhat short, heavyset, muscular 1.6m and 86 kilos, to be exact. Her skin is somewhat pale, mainly due to spending most of her daylight hours indoors. Her muscles, while not grotesquely large, are big and as hard as whipcords. Her hair is jet black, and about midway down her back when left alone, though she ties it in a ponytail to keep it out of her eyes, which are a steely grey. It's impossible to tell what her legs look like, as they're covered 24-7 with a pair of heavy, black, military cargo pants completely covered in pockets and other things. Under one of those pant legs is a sleek and shiny prosthetic, top of the line and if anything better than the organic limb it replaced. Her face eyes appear to be locked in a semi-scowl. Due to her less than feminine form, many people would and will frequently mistake her for a man with long hair, mainly when her figure was obscured by something, either a jacket, or weapons and armor (armor, weapons, etc-cetera).
Shifter Appearance:
Use the image as a reference, not as an accurate representation of her appearance.
Her hair shifts along its length from black at the top to pure silver at the bottom, but remains the same length. She gains several inches in height, and her already muscular build only becomes more so, with the muscles visible standing out like steel cables rather than whipcords. The prosthetic disappears, replaced by a "regular" leg that's just as muscular and powerful as the other. Any change in "Feminine assets", if any, is small. A pair of glossy, jet black wings spreads from her back, with two small holes in her armor permitting their use in battle. When she shifts, she gains a set of elegant but futuristically angular armor, also in varying shades of black and silver. The breastplate juts out slightly in a single point, with several overlapping plates angling downwards to deflect blows, and similarly in the back. A helmet in similarly angular but deflective style rests on her head, and more armor of the same style covers her arms and legs. Her face, while not exactly loving by any stretch of the imagination, nonetheless softens noticeably.
Abilities:
Has extensive training in both armed and unarmed combat- (Unarmed: Kapap and Tai Chi. Armed: Kapap, some dabbling in HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts), and training at The Academy)
Even while unshifted, she’s strong. While she wouldn't be able to beat a steroid guzzling power-lifter, she’s no slouch in the strength department.
Fast, in the sense of a sprinter. Excels at quick bursts of speed
Basic knowledge of field medicine,
Strong self discipline. It takes an awful lot to set her off, and by contrast she’s excellent at masking her feelings and essentially isolating herself in a personal fortress. (Not to say she does so all the time.)
Speaks Russian, more or less.
Powers:
Greatly increased physical abilities (Faster, stronger… tougher)
Can use a powerful short range offensive blast with her magic, mainly to let her catch a breath or exploit an opening
As she’s a Valkyrie, she does have the ability to bolster her allies’ strength and fortitude, and can heal wounds to an extent
Can fly
Can further augment her abilities and those of her weapon with magic, the more magic she pours into it, the more her abilities are strengthened.
Background:
Alice Blackwood was born to a militant family. Not military, militant.
From a young age, her highly competitive single father (her mother died shortly after her birth from an accidental overdose of pain medication) pushed his also competitive, but not pathologically so, daughter to her limits. While one might've expected her to resent it, she saw it as a competition against her father- one she was determined to win. Occasionally however, he broke those limits so much that she actually wound up with a prosthetic leg and a policy for a discounted upgrade to a top-tier version upon adulthood. She didn't mind too much, well, she didn't mind the prosthetic as it fascinated her to no end; the fact that her father was the reason she needed it severely damaged their relationship. The prosthetic was paid for of course, by her father’s company, or at least the company he worked for, a private military company which stipulated that she work for the company upon her reaching 21, circumstances permitting.
And so, her already intense training increased even more so, with her learning things at the age of thirteen that no normal young teenage girl would've really wanted to know- things such as small unit tactics, where to stab or shoot to kill an opponent hopped up on drugs, and first aid. As the company was in fact Russian based, another part of her training was Russian with a native speaker, also from the PMC, though this was more of a formality, she still took it seriously. Her school began to take notice, especially after she walked in one morning after a prolonged absence with a whirring prosthetic limb. They took umbrage with her father’s practices and how they rubbed off on his daughter, her impressive knowledge of ways to kill people or occasional remarks about how “That position would be untenable in [Insert a situation here]”.
This extensive training left little or no room for a social life, and though she tried on multiple occasions, the closest she ever came to real friends were other students of HEMA. She chose to go into HEMA because it was one of the few things that her father would approve of, and his controlling nature lead to her slowly developing an intense dislike for him.
After much arguing and many letters of pure vitriol, she was pulled from public school and was enrolled at a private institution for aspiring military officers- where she mastered the art of keeping a straight face and hiding emotion behind an impenetrable mask.
The public school was thrilled to be rid of her truthfully- having brought up several other issues with her father. Incidents such as the time she’d “accidentally” forgot to return to classes after lunch, and released hazardous materials into the building after managing to trip over several valves and crash an electrical line into flammable material. While she had had some inkling they were hazardous, she hadn't been as aware of where exactly they would go. While there were no fatalities, her voice never recovered from her brief exposure and remains horribly raspy to this day.
When she was seventeen a large legal battle commenced with child protective services and her father, and her father lost. It wasn't the government that took custody of her, but rather the company her father worked for, and they took over the training role. In fact, she enjoyed her time there more than with her father, largely because they weren't technically able to subject her to anywhere near the same regimen as her father, and partially because the director of the American branch of the company had in fact been shocked when he learned of what she’d been trained to do from a young age and had essentially reduced her training to a classroom.
At age 18, with a brand-new, top-of-the-line, bleeding edge prosthetic limb she made a spur-of-the-moment decision to see if she was mythically compatible. It was either fight against superior forces as just another soldier, and likely join a list of statistics, or fight superior soldiers as a shifter and maybe stand a chance of not dying horribly- there wasn't really any decision.
At a facility run by the CDC in Atlanta, flurries of people- humans, shifters, and mythics alike poked her, stabbed her with needles, et-cetera. Suddenly it was the next day, and lo and behold, she was compatible with the Demon class, a Valkyrie. So she got to stab things and mess stuff up, make everyone else feel like they could stab things and mess them up, and help them do so a little.
Well that didn’t seem too hard.
She’d left herself on a sort of autopilot for the next bit, the actual transformation itself more of a blur than anything. Her mind was primarily occupied with how to make things work with the company and her contract (which she had technically agreed to anyway).
She does remember appraising herself after the transformation with approval. Prominent muscles more so, impressive wings that would… well, she wasn't sure what exactly to do with them. Oh, and the armor, she had no idea at all where that had come from, but she certainly liked it.
She’d not really done much experimentation with what powers she’d been granted as a Valkyrie, and didn’t do so until she arrived at the Academy later. Her primary concern had been potential issues with the company, though surprisingly they proved fairly reasonable, though she suspected her new status had something to do with it. Not many PMCs could brag that they technically had a shifter working for them.
She progressed through The Academy much like she had prior, though this time there was the new variable of socializing, that she’d actually be able to participate in, maybe even make a real friend!
Or not, she progressed through The Academy exactly like she had previously, and was completely baffled by all the social niceties she encountered.
While she’d been fully expecting to have her ass kicked when she arrived, and was not disappointed, it happened a lot less than she’d been expecting. Her familiarity with strict physical training and regimens certainly helped.
She learned many things over the next three years. She made a runic blade, and learned how to use it better than any amount of HEMA could’ve done. She learned to augment her abilities and those of her blade and other with magic, and while not as blisteringly fast or agile as other Demon classes, she far exceeded them in strength and endurance. She learned to apply the wings she gained when shifted to their fullest extent, able to quickly cover ground or rapidly brake. She also learned to apply her magic in a more active manner, with varying results.
Perhaps the biggest glaring error in her training was her disdain for the healing and support capabilities of a Valkyrie, her logic always being “If the enemy is dead fast enough I don’t need to heal them, now do I?”
Something she’s well aware of is the fact that she’s theoretically still going to be fighting as an employee of a private military company, and not of one of the different governments of the world.
Personality:
Alice predominantly has a cold, almost distant disposition to most people, though that will change depending on whether the person she’s speaking to is someone she likes (not a whole lot of people on that list) or someone she dislikes (lot more people on that list). To someone she likes, she can still seem distant, though it’s more a confusion with how to interact with them rather than an intentional barrier, nonetheless she will at the very least greet with a smile as opposed to the half-scowl. With someone she dislikes her attitude also changes considerably, the best term being “Bitchy”, though luckily it actually isn't easy to get oneself on the list of dislikes.
She can be very patient, up until a point when everything will explode, though if this does happen one must consider themselves supremely unlucky; she once waited four hours while standing to wait for a store to find something, only to discover they had in fact forgotten she was there after something happened, and they were able to bring it out shortly after.
Privately, she has an almost poetic way of looking at things, and can be very romantic in the 18th century Romanticism sense, and were someone to catch her in the middle of well, not being the hardass military chick, it’d be hard to gauge her reaction beyond “Flustered”.
Other:
She has a heavy revolver, extensively modified by herself, which she refers to as Охота Пистолет, or, "Hunting Gun." She is currently working on modifying this revolver to use ammunition made from the same runic material as her sword and armor- which, needless to say, would be far more effective against a dragon than lead and copper.
Jackets were mentioned earlier, she wears a military styled one wherever she goes when not shifted, like this. This jacket also has excessive pockets, but most of them are located on the inside. It may or may not be impossible to tell just what she is carrying in her clothes.
If I think of anything else later I’ll put it here.
OP
Antediluvixen Kemonomimi Dystopia Creator
Member
Seen
7 mos ago
Name: Twenty One of Fifty (Note: Subject prefers to go by “Blackjack”, anomaly pending further investigation. Of Project Vanguard, subject is the only one of 33 successful to show this trait, all other subjects show no signs of discontent with numerical naming system.)
Sex:Female
Age: 10 (physical and mental age appear to be early twenties.)
Appearance: Subject is of average stature, roughly 5’ 7” and about 160 pounds, not including the weight of cybernetics. Subject possesses dark auburn hair, which is kept in a ponytail. Subject has brown eyes and a pale complexion. Subject possesses a cybernetic optical prosthesis in her right eye, and both arms have been replaced with cybernetic prostheses.
(If anybody’s wondering, her arms look like the cybernetic arms you see on Adam Jensen in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The cybernetic eye just looks more or less like a normal eye.)
Skills: Subject shows remarkable skill in the use of small arms, even accounting for training and conditioning, primarily semi automatic rifles and heavy hitting sidearms. Subject has been seen to fire all eight rounds of a full Sturm, Ruger Silverhawk Combat Revolver in under four seconds, with all rounds hitting their mark. Subject is also proficient in the maintenance of her firearms and other gear, and possesses knowledge of jury rigging electronics, where this latter knowledge originated from is still under debate and investigation. Subject has received basic field medicine and trauma training, and is also more than able at setting up temporary safe zones with standard issue Enviro-Tents.
Traits: Subject has been augmented with a Model 220 Optical Prosthesis, granting multiple modes of vision in one eye as well as other capabilities such as recording high definition video for playback later. Subject has also been augmented with a Series 26 Spinal Reinforcement and two Series 60 Military Grade Prosthetics in place of arms. Subject’s internal organs are largely intact save for the heart, which has been replaced with a high performance electrically receptive organic polymer cardiovascular organ, as well as a metabolic energy converter, also of organic polymer. While combat efficiency and overall situational effectiveness are greatly improved, subject is vulnerable to EMP weaponry (exposure to which requires at least an hour for autorecovery systems to repair damage to circuits) and requires far more nutrient intake than normal. Subject’s standard gear has been modified to accommodate this.
Personality: (Excerpt from the notes of Dr. Francine Ken Stein, PhD): Subject is most unusual, other surviving subjects of Project Vanguard appear to be functioning exactly as expected, autonomous but with little independant wants, not so with Twenty One, or, Blackjack.
Subject appears to have deduced downtimes in daily training schedule, and is often found in such downtimes either sleeping in a corner or otherwise occupied, usually at an information terminal. When asked about this behavior, subject responded with, “Because I’m bored. What do you expect us to do when we’re not shooting at steel plates, stand in a line?” This behavior is most peculiar, and the previous response is unique among Project Vanguard subjects, with others merely stating their occupation in a dull monotone, with no reference to first person. The stints at a terminal are also responsible for subject’s choice of a nickname, subject having discovered the card game blackjack at some point, and drawn the connection between her assigned number and the fact that she is an anomaly among the subjects.
Subject has been observed to idly poke other subjects on downtime, and ask researchers if there is some activity she might partake in. Subject is overall inquisitive and precocious, and appears to be highly suspicious of unknown people. This suspicion also shows itself in that the subject appears to have severe hindrances in socializing and human interaction, likely the result of mainly having no true peers to speak with. Several researchers are reluctant to deal with the subject after several practical jokes and other pranks were pulled, in one case causing a researcher to lose bowel control in surprise. Further psychological investigation after initial mission is pending, nonetheless, subject displays behavioural maturity in line with her physical age.
Backstory: Project Vanguard was initiated six years after the apocalypse, as it is now termed, using genetic material from a detachment of United States Marines stationed in Dallas at the time. The goal of Project Vanguard was to develop individuals with the skills and physiology needed to survive in the wasteland for extended periods of time and conduct field operations in the reclamation of salvage from the wasteland as well as research. Of Project Vanguard, numbers 1-10 were designated as research personnel and noncombatants, numbers 11-35 were designated as soldiers and escorts, while numbers 36-50 were designated as mechanics, engineers, and to provide other utility services.
Project Vanguard appeared to go well initially, with embryonic development proceeding normally. The project called for an accelerated initial growth rate, aging supplied zygotes to a physical age of roughly 20 in half the time, then the artificial growth hormones would be removed, and the subjects would ideally be ready for field work shortly after, with the culmination of training in chosen fields as well as physical and mental conditioning hopefully rendering the subjects prime candidates for extended trips in the wasteland. Unfortunately, several of the subject’s systems could not handle the strain of the regimen, and many expired even before leaving the growth tubes. The survivors all show diminished mental faculties and independent decision making, save for the anomaly Twenty One of Fifty. While the other subjects can operate independently, they lack any higher reasoning skills that would suit them for extended operations, showing only basic initiative in tasks other than those assigned to them. This is where Twenty One differs.
Roughly one month after being removed from the growth tanks, 21 displayed remarkable cognitive development, unlike the other subjects. Within a year, 21 had to be provided with additional activities to occupy her mind, and Dr. Stein, whose notes have been utilized in a prior segment, took it upon herself to provide the subject with a computer for personal use in downtimes, and to speak with the subject on a one to one level. Dr. Francine was the first to notice the subject’s preference for the nickname Blackjack as opposed to her assigned number, and to push other researchers into using this nickname also.
Unfortunately, Dr. Stein suffered an accident where she was exposed to lethal doses of hazardous chemicals, and died 12 hours later. Upon hearing this news, the assistant researcher described the subject’s reaction as, “devastated”, and subject was observed to confine herself to the small cell assigned to her and obsessively use the computer provided to her by Dr. Stein, only leaving for designated training and conditioning, and continued to do so up until being told of her first outside assignment. As subject is the only one of 33 to be viable for outside duty, having performed above expectations, the funding of Project Vanguard’s second generation depends on her performance in the field.
Equipment: Subject is to be equipped with a standard issue environmentally sealed armored suit, and 4/2 filter gas mask, with twelve extra primary filters and two extra secondary filters. Subject is equipped with a customized Sturm, Ruger Silverhawk Combat Revolver, with an extra twelve full 8 round cylinders. Subject is also armed with a FNH M39 BBR, modified for the heavier hitting 6.5mm cartridge, and twelve extra twenty five round magazines. Subject is also equipped with a breakdown Enviro-Tent, and spare parts for maintenance of the tent and her weapons. Subject has also been given an under-suit three gallon canteen, as well as purification tablets designed to break down or kill exterior toxins and other contaminants in small amounts of water. Subject carries two weeks worth of energy dense nutrient tablets, designed to provide enough energy for full function of cybernetics and biological processes.
(Again using DX:HR, the revolver looks and functions not unlike the one in the game, the main difference being that this revolver can use semi AP ammunition as opposed to HE ammunition. The rifle looks like a combination of the combat rifle and sniper rifle from the same game, with the magazine being located behind the trigger like other bullpups, and the barrel longer and similar in appearance to the one on the sniper.)
Other:
Subject is under orders to allow another member of the team she will be joining assume the leadership position, unless no other team members can adequately fill that role.
Sex:Female
Age: 10 (physical and mental age appear to be early twenties.)
Appearance: Subject is of average stature, roughly 5’ 7” and about 160 pounds, not including the weight of cybernetics. Subject possesses dark auburn hair, which is kept in a ponytail. Subject has brown eyes and a pale complexion. Subject possesses a cybernetic optical prosthesis in her right eye, and both arms have been replaced with cybernetic prostheses.
(If anybody’s wondering, her arms look like the cybernetic arms you see on Adam Jensen in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The cybernetic eye just looks more or less like a normal eye.)
Skills: Subject shows remarkable skill in the use of small arms, even accounting for training and conditioning, primarily semi automatic rifles and heavy hitting sidearms. Subject has been seen to fire all eight rounds of a full Sturm, Ruger Silverhawk Combat Revolver in under four seconds, with all rounds hitting their mark. Subject is also proficient in the maintenance of her firearms and other gear, and possesses knowledge of jury rigging electronics, where this latter knowledge originated from is still under debate and investigation. Subject has received basic field medicine and trauma training, and is also more than able at setting up temporary safe zones with standard issue Enviro-Tents.
Traits: Subject has been augmented with a Model 220 Optical Prosthesis, granting multiple modes of vision in one eye as well as other capabilities such as recording high definition video for playback later. Subject has also been augmented with a Series 26 Spinal Reinforcement and two Series 60 Military Grade Prosthetics in place of arms. Subject’s internal organs are largely intact save for the heart, which has been replaced with a high performance electrically receptive organic polymer cardiovascular organ, as well as a metabolic energy converter, also of organic polymer. While combat efficiency and overall situational effectiveness are greatly improved, subject is vulnerable to EMP weaponry (exposure to which requires at least an hour for autorecovery systems to repair damage to circuits) and requires far more nutrient intake than normal. Subject’s standard gear has been modified to accommodate this.
Personality: (Excerpt from the notes of Dr. Francine Ken Stein, PhD): Subject is most unusual, other surviving subjects of Project Vanguard appear to be functioning exactly as expected, autonomous but with little independant wants, not so with Twenty One, or, Blackjack.
Subject appears to have deduced downtimes in daily training schedule, and is often found in such downtimes either sleeping in a corner or otherwise occupied, usually at an information terminal. When asked about this behavior, subject responded with, “Because I’m bored. What do you expect us to do when we’re not shooting at steel plates, stand in a line?” This behavior is most peculiar, and the previous response is unique among Project Vanguard subjects, with others merely stating their occupation in a dull monotone, with no reference to first person. The stints at a terminal are also responsible for subject’s choice of a nickname, subject having discovered the card game blackjack at some point, and drawn the connection between her assigned number and the fact that she is an anomaly among the subjects.
Subject has been observed to idly poke other subjects on downtime, and ask researchers if there is some activity she might partake in. Subject is overall inquisitive and precocious, and appears to be highly suspicious of unknown people. This suspicion also shows itself in that the subject appears to have severe hindrances in socializing and human interaction, likely the result of mainly having no true peers to speak with. Several researchers are reluctant to deal with the subject after several practical jokes and other pranks were pulled, in one case causing a researcher to lose bowel control in surprise. Further psychological investigation after initial mission is pending, nonetheless, subject displays behavioural maturity in line with her physical age.
Backstory: Project Vanguard was initiated six years after the apocalypse, as it is now termed, using genetic material from a detachment of United States Marines stationed in Dallas at the time. The goal of Project Vanguard was to develop individuals with the skills and physiology needed to survive in the wasteland for extended periods of time and conduct field operations in the reclamation of salvage from the wasteland as well as research. Of Project Vanguard, numbers 1-10 were designated as research personnel and noncombatants, numbers 11-35 were designated as soldiers and escorts, while numbers 36-50 were designated as mechanics, engineers, and to provide other utility services.
Project Vanguard appeared to go well initially, with embryonic development proceeding normally. The project called for an accelerated initial growth rate, aging supplied zygotes to a physical age of roughly 20 in half the time, then the artificial growth hormones would be removed, and the subjects would ideally be ready for field work shortly after, with the culmination of training in chosen fields as well as physical and mental conditioning hopefully rendering the subjects prime candidates for extended trips in the wasteland. Unfortunately, several of the subject’s systems could not handle the strain of the regimen, and many expired even before leaving the growth tubes. The survivors all show diminished mental faculties and independent decision making, save for the anomaly Twenty One of Fifty. While the other subjects can operate independently, they lack any higher reasoning skills that would suit them for extended operations, showing only basic initiative in tasks other than those assigned to them. This is where Twenty One differs.
Roughly one month after being removed from the growth tanks, 21 displayed remarkable cognitive development, unlike the other subjects. Within a year, 21 had to be provided with additional activities to occupy her mind, and Dr. Stein, whose notes have been utilized in a prior segment, took it upon herself to provide the subject with a computer for personal use in downtimes, and to speak with the subject on a one to one level. Dr. Francine was the first to notice the subject’s preference for the nickname Blackjack as opposed to her assigned number, and to push other researchers into using this nickname also.
Unfortunately, Dr. Stein suffered an accident where she was exposed to lethal doses of hazardous chemicals, and died 12 hours later. Upon hearing this news, the assistant researcher described the subject’s reaction as, “devastated”, and subject was observed to confine herself to the small cell assigned to her and obsessively use the computer provided to her by Dr. Stein, only leaving for designated training and conditioning, and continued to do so up until being told of her first outside assignment. As subject is the only one of 33 to be viable for outside duty, having performed above expectations, the funding of Project Vanguard’s second generation depends on her performance in the field.
Equipment: Subject is to be equipped with a standard issue environmentally sealed armored suit, and 4/2 filter gas mask, with twelve extra primary filters and two extra secondary filters. Subject is equipped with a customized Sturm, Ruger Silverhawk Combat Revolver, with an extra twelve full 8 round cylinders. Subject is also armed with a FNH M39 BBR, modified for the heavier hitting 6.5mm cartridge, and twelve extra twenty five round magazines. Subject is also equipped with a breakdown Enviro-Tent, and spare parts for maintenance of the tent and her weapons. Subject has also been given an under-suit three gallon canteen, as well as purification tablets designed to break down or kill exterior toxins and other contaminants in small amounts of water. Subject carries two weeks worth of energy dense nutrient tablets, designed to provide enough energy for full function of cybernetics and biological processes.
(Again using DX:HR, the revolver looks and functions not unlike the one in the game, the main difference being that this revolver can use semi AP ammunition as opposed to HE ammunition. The rifle looks like a combination of the combat rifle and sniper rifle from the same game, with the magazine being located behind the trigger like other bullpups, and the barrel longer and similar in appearance to the one on the sniper.)
Other:
Subject is under orders to allow another member of the team she will be joining assume the leadership position, unless no other team members can adequately fill that role.
OP
Antediluvixen Kemonomimi Dystopia Creator
Member
Seen
7 mos ago
Basics
Name: Fadilah Fikriyah Akilah Mu'azzaz Algafari
Age: 27
Appeared Age: Early 20s
Height: 5' 11" (180cm)
Weight: 80kg
Eye Color: Hazel
Hair Color: Jet black
Physical Disabilities: Pffft hahaha no
Physical Identifiers:
- Stature
- Physique
- The fact that she carries a small arsenal wherever she goes
- Wolfwater Rangers badge
Appearance:
Background
Residence: Wherever the fuck she feels like.
Profession: Wolfwater Ranger
Aligned Faction: Wolfwater. In theory that includes Wintergold, but Wolfwater.
Relatives:
Nothing here yet.
Gear
Weapons:
- Medicine Stick: A big, heavy, and powerful Winchester 1886, customized by herself and capable of handing the massively powerful magnum loads she prepares for the rifle. Favored for use with big angry things.
- Pride and Prejudice: A pair of ornate masterwork revolvers of the old world, cut for moon clips and kept solely for more special occasions. Rarely fired in anger, but certainly carried openly in a more formal setting.
- Grunge: An old S&W Model 29 with which she can never seem to remember whether or not she's fired six shots or only five in all the excitement.
- Tomahawk: A Ruger Redhawk in .44 Magnum, powerful and more rugged than the Smith & Wesson, this gun has seen its fair share of pistol whippings and rough use.
- Rogue: An M-14 modified to be a compact bullpup battle rifle, her standard go-to weapon in a basic gunfight or a battle against a pack of wolves.
- Petite Mort: Her "Little Death" - a small .357 magnum snub nosed revolver kept expressly for the purpose of concealment. Also cut for moon clips.
- Modified Springfield XDm: Used as a general purpose pistol when a .44 magnum revolver just won't fit the situation, usually because of magazine capacity, and a .44 for a regular person is almost always overkill. She can also conceal the weapon if she's careful and can convince guards not to pat her down too closely.
- Gerber Axe: An axe. For breaching things, including skulls.
- Bowie Knife: James Bowie would be proud.
- KA-BAR: Ooh Rah!
Armor:
Ammunition:
- Dirty Rounds:
- High Grade Rounds:
- Heavy Ammunition:
Backpack A:
- Items Within
Miscellaneous:
Skills and Stuff Information
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
OP
Antediluvixen Kemonomimi Dystopia Creator
Member
Seen
7 mos ago
Name: Captain Lydia Rosemarie Irene Genevalisse Sanchez
Sex: Female
Age: 287
Appearance: So... is that color natural? Or do you dye it? Describe what you look like, that scar on your lip, the way your eyes look like they could scratch diamonds, or how you have giant boobs, if you really want (that'll cost ya btw, trying to fit in the SCRAPS suit or your armor if you go to the surface).
Skills: What’cha good at? Maybe you can just about perform open heart surgery with household items? Or perhaps you can kill a target from a mile with a single shot from that big rifle of yours? Perhaps you’re so damn nimble and athletic that you don’t need a ladder, all you need is a bale of hay and a high place to take a leap of faith?
Traits: Perhaps you’re freakishly strong, but fine manipulation of objects comes a bit difficult for you? Maybe you’re cybernetically augmented, sure, but that comes at a price, those things require maintenance and you need to eat more, after all.
Mutations: Taint is a potent mutagen, and while it usually results in grisly death, it’s not uncommon that those exposed to low doses or born to survivors of low to medium doses have Taint-induced mutations. These aren’t pretty, and range basically anything physical you can think of. Bear in mind significant mutations can “go critical” and result in Akira-like transformation horror shows.
Backstory: Regale us with your backstory, tragic element optional. You should be able to point to your backstory and say “Larry does X because of Y in his past.”
Equipment: What kind of gear are you packing? You want some weapons unless you’re a pacifist, and mentioning that you have a suit of armor that can stop a full magazine from a submachine gun is kind of important too. You don’t need to painstakingly list the exact amount of nutrients contained in your food or write a biography of the cow that donated the leather for your aviator jacket, but please include some detail.
Other: Theme song, favorite food, why your armpits smell like strawberry jam, anything that doesn’t fit in with the main categories.
Sex: Female
Age: 287
Appearance: So... is that color natural? Or do you dye it? Describe what you look like, that scar on your lip, the way your eyes look like they could scratch diamonds, or how you have giant boobs, if you really want (that'll cost ya btw, trying to fit in the SCRAPS suit or your armor if you go to the surface).
Skills: What’cha good at? Maybe you can just about perform open heart surgery with household items? Or perhaps you can kill a target from a mile with a single shot from that big rifle of yours? Perhaps you’re so damn nimble and athletic that you don’t need a ladder, all you need is a bale of hay and a high place to take a leap of faith?
Traits: Perhaps you’re freakishly strong, but fine manipulation of objects comes a bit difficult for you? Maybe you’re cybernetically augmented, sure, but that comes at a price, those things require maintenance and you need to eat more, after all.
Mutations: Taint is a potent mutagen, and while it usually results in grisly death, it’s not uncommon that those exposed to low doses or born to survivors of low to medium doses have Taint-induced mutations. These aren’t pretty, and range basically anything physical you can think of. Bear in mind significant mutations can “go critical” and result in Akira-like transformation horror shows.
Backstory: Regale us with your backstory, tragic element optional. You should be able to point to your backstory and say “Larry does X because of Y in his past.”
Equipment: What kind of gear are you packing? You want some weapons unless you’re a pacifist, and mentioning that you have a suit of armor that can stop a full magazine from a submachine gun is kind of important too. You don’t need to painstakingly list the exact amount of nutrients contained in your food or write a biography of the cow that donated the leather for your aviator jacket, but please include some detail.
Other: Theme song, favorite food, why your armpits smell like strawberry jam, anything that doesn’t fit in with the main categories.
OP
Antediluvixen Kemonomimi Dystopia Creator
Member
Seen
7 mos ago
"The Lieutenant" Azade Nahai
Appearance: She stands at 180cm or 5’ 11” and sports a heavy frame accustomed to life on the battlefield or simply physical exertion in general. Short raven black hair is pulled tightly into a mid length ponytail, hidden under a pristine scarlet beret. Her hardened hazel eyes are hidden under a pair of mirrored aviators. Whipcord hard muscles coil tightly under skin marred by a life of fighting and physical action. Her facial features are typical for a Kurdish woman, but have an unusual hard edge to them that seems to be tempered with a softer rounding in some areas. She has strapped to her thigh inside her pants a large fighting knife. She tends to dress in a manner that belies her wealth, sticking to practical clothing such as cargo pants and a simple non sleeved shirt, usually form fitting and black.
Full Name Azade “Damn the Torpedoes!” Nahai. Also known by her former callsign Juggernaut.
Age 24
Sex Female
Sexuality Pansexual
Characteristics Azade is clearly an extremely intelligent individual, able to formulate plans of action on the fly to adapt to any situation as well as perform advanced mathematics in her head and has the entire contents of MCDP 1.3 memorized. She has a confident demeanor that more than explains her history of bold actions- albeit successful ones. She's definitely approachable, but not what one might term amiable, with a past full of violence leaving its mark.
She speaks in a forceful and direct manner, used to shouting over the din of combat and arguments over where to eat, which is louder is still up for debate. While she might have been an officer in the military she’s not overbearing.
Intelligent and confident, Azade could've been an engineer or a scientist, maybe even a doctor. Born outside the United States in Israel to Kurdish parents, she was brought into the country at the age of fourteen. She grew like most any other child, though she never quite lost her accent. Sucessful in school, her life had been on track to receive a degree in mechanical engineering- one which took a sudden turn as Israel came under concerted attack from its neighboring countries once more. Azade wasted no time in abandoning her university career and enlisting in the USMC, quickly rising the the position of 1st Lieutenant and commanding the unit she was assigned with courage that earned her several commendations.
Her most notable achievement in the USMC was also the one that lead to her medical discharge- comandeering a tank and leading a suicide charge that somehow managed to break the enemy line. Maybe it was the tank thundering towards them, maybe it was the woman in the tank screaming bloody murder, or maybe it was simply the sudden volume of fire, but the enemy line retreated. 1st Lieutenant Azade Nahai was seriously wounded in the action and had to be medevaced for internal bleeding and shock.
She received an honorable discharge for medical reasons on her twenty first birthday.
Bitter over her injuries, Azade nonetheless managed a rapid recovery despite her doctor's hesitance about her ever being in fighting condition again. Scraping together some money to leave the state she lived in, she made for the Southeastern Seaboard, landing there with some fascinating stories to tell and not a lot else.
Azade drifted about afterwards, managing to stay afloat doing odd jobs and taking vacations in the wilderness, honing her survival skills until they were razor edged. She even found a significant other during this point in her life, spending much of her time with her new girlfriend and at one point even traveling with her on volunteer work in South America. Returning to her new home after four months with a new outlook on some things, Azade went to work with a new vigor.
At one point this landed her a television show of her own, wherein she was dropped with almost nothing but her clothes, a backpack, and a small tool of some sort into various hostile conditions such as the Amazon rainforest or the Atacama desert, with an emphasis on how to survive with minimal supplies in an SHTF scenario. The show (When Stuff Hits The Fan) ran for two years and four whole seasons, and raised her to, if not fame, at least public awareness. Using the money she gained from the series, she attended university and earned a degree in environmental science. Around this same time she and her girlfriend separated on good terms, albeit still strained.
She wasn’t too fond of fame, and only spoke on things she considered vitally important to society. This somehow landed her even more fame, despite only being some woman who’d had a survival TV show, and she was eventually approached with an offer of a second gig, which she accepted. At this time she was branching into other things, and saw the television gig as merely a way to make money, instead beginning to turn her attention to writing and finally taking the time to relax.
She also became a big gamer.
The series she had been approached to star in, known as Carbon Footprint, was part survival series, part multi-episode documentary on human environmental impact and the best ways to balance it. It was still in the works when the apocalypse struck, and Azade herself was on a connecting flight, intending to then fly to Atlanta for business reasons. She as usual had disdained notions of what someone with money would dress like, instead opting for similar garb to what she might've worn on an episode of WSHTF.
Her most notable achievement in the USMC was also the one that lead to her medical discharge- comandeering a tank and leading a suicide charge that somehow managed to break the enemy line. Maybe it was the tank thundering towards them, maybe it was the woman in the tank screaming bloody murder, or maybe it was simply the sudden volume of fire, but the enemy line retreated. 1st Lieutenant Azade Nahai was seriously wounded in the action and had to be medevaced for internal bleeding and shock.
She received an honorable discharge for medical reasons on her twenty first birthday.
Bitter over her injuries, Azade nonetheless managed a rapid recovery despite her doctor's hesitance about her ever being in fighting condition again. Scraping together some money to leave the state she lived in, she made for the Southeastern Seaboard, landing there with some fascinating stories to tell and not a lot else.
Azade drifted about afterwards, managing to stay afloat doing odd jobs and taking vacations in the wilderness, honing her survival skills until they were razor edged. She even found a significant other during this point in her life, spending much of her time with her new girlfriend and at one point even traveling with her on volunteer work in South America. Returning to her new home after four months with a new outlook on some things, Azade went to work with a new vigor.
At one point this landed her a television show of her own, wherein she was dropped with almost nothing but her clothes, a backpack, and a small tool of some sort into various hostile conditions such as the Amazon rainforest or the Atacama desert, with an emphasis on how to survive with minimal supplies in an SHTF scenario. The show (When Stuff Hits The Fan) ran for two years and four whole seasons, and raised her to, if not fame, at least public awareness. Using the money she gained from the series, she attended university and earned a degree in environmental science. Around this same time she and her girlfriend separated on good terms, albeit still strained.
She wasn’t too fond of fame, and only spoke on things she considered vitally important to society. This somehow landed her even more fame, despite only being some woman who’d had a survival TV show, and she was eventually approached with an offer of a second gig, which she accepted. At this time she was branching into other things, and saw the television gig as merely a way to make money, instead beginning to turn her attention to writing and finally taking the time to relax.
She also became a big gamer.
The series she had been approached to star in, known as Carbon Footprint, was part survival series, part multi-episode documentary on human environmental impact and the best ways to balance it. It was still in the works when the apocalypse struck, and Azade herself was on a connecting flight, intending to then fly to Atlanta for business reasons. She as usual had disdained notions of what someone with money would dress like, instead opting for similar garb to what she might've worn on an episode of WSHTF.
Skills & Abilities
- Strength - Azade is strong, a lifetime of military training and experience tempering her physique in the fires of combat. There’s strong, then there’s Army strong, and then there’s USMC strong.
- Pride - A weakness of hers, Azade is proud and reluctant to admit defeat or that someone else might be right while she is wrong. While she’s perfectly capable of realizing somebody might know about something more than she does, it pains her to do so and she tends to subconciously resent that person, at least until they’ve proven they genuinely know their stuff, even then resentment may linger.
- Survival Skills- Azade has recieved actual training in how to survive in the wilderness. She then honed these skills in various parts of the world, albeit on camera. She has survived being dropped into the Amazon rainforest with nothing but the clothes on her back, a backpack, a small knife, and a camera crew.
- Military Experience- Azade has recieved training in the USMC in hand to hand combat using a variety of tools, including her hands, as well as actual hand to hand engagements honing her skills further.
- Honey, I burned down the kitchen - Azade can’t cook. At all. She can however, eat almost anything.
- Damn the Torpedoes! - Azade is not averse to seemingly reckless attacks and other actions, and this can either succeed spectacularly or fail specactularly.
- TV Star - Azade is a celebrity, and well known throughout the western world, especially among upper-middle class people. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on present company.
Other: A large fighting knife.
OP
Antediluvixen Kemonomimi Dystopia Creator
Member
Seen
7 mos ago
Name: Adéla Láska
Alias/Nickname: Revenant
Appearance:
Adéla wears the dilatant armored base of her armor fairly often, though just as commonly she walks around fully armored or clad in simple daytime clothing without much in the way of protective value. Her eyes are a deep crimson and she wears a faint hint of similarly colored eyeliner to compliment them. Her body is well toned and muscle is evident througought and gives the impression of power, which shows through in the way she strides briskly when she walks.
Age: 76
Race: Chaos Scarred Human
Personality: Classified.
Reason for recruitment: Money mainly, perhaps a chance to get revenge on her former “Friends”.
Strength of Will: Potent
Magic: (General categorizes of magic the character is good at, specific spells, and where the magic comes from)
God relations: None. Who needs a god when technology is just as good?
Possessions/items/property: Very little. All she had acquired when she worked for the Stygian Blade was lost in the months it took for her to simply walk away from the field of battle.
Skills:
Misc: (Anything else the character sheet doesn’t seem to include that you think is important to the character)
Alias/Nickname: Revenant
Appearance:
Adéla wears the dilatant armored base of her armor fairly often, though just as commonly she walks around fully armored or clad in simple daytime clothing without much in the way of protective value. Her eyes are a deep crimson and she wears a faint hint of similarly colored eyeliner to compliment them. Her body is well toned and muscle is evident througought and gives the impression of power, which shows through in the way she strides briskly when she walks.
Age: 76
Race: Chaos Scarred Human
Personality: Classified.
WIP
Reason for recruitment: Money mainly, perhaps a chance to get revenge on her former “Friends”.
Strength of Will: Potent
Magic: (General categorizes of magic the character is good at, specific spells, and where the magic comes from)
God relations: None. Who needs a god when technology is just as good?
- Carapace Model 40 Modular Graphene Armor System - Graphene, the wonder material that never stops giving. This armor is composed of several interlocking 8mm thick plates of graphene composed of almost eight million layers of the material bound with sealing agents and other structural integrity boosting additions - shockingly strong for their size. The armor incorporates a shear-thickening dilatant base and self-repairing nanotube weave over which the nigh indestructible plates are placed. Underneath this base is a gel padding designed to negate as much energy transfer as possible from a hit on the armor, minimizing damage to the wearer. The armor is incredibly protective and augments her skill at resisting incredible damage.
- Machina Model 52 Nanoblade - A brutal weapon roughly a meter in overall length, with about 30 centimeters devoted to the handle and its components. The nanoblade operates on a principle far different from a typical vibroblade - instead of microvibrations increasing cutting power, the cutting edge of the weapon is in fact moving back and forth at the molecular level. The weapon will shear through most materials with enough force behind it. And if the power pack somehow runs out it can still be used as a good old fashioned sharp stick - albeit infinitely more complex than a regular steel sword.
- Mars IV Pattern Railgun Revolver - Savagery in the palm of your hand! The Mars IV is what some might call overkill, and others might call a broken wrist. Designed with relatively compact rugged firepower in mind, the Mars IV answers the call. Eight shots of pure carnage and a kick like a mule. The weapon operates using a standard railgun principle, using the Lorentz force to accelerate a projectile to incredible speeds. Unlike many energy based weapons in this era, the weapon does not have an internal power pack, and gains its fearsome raw power and kick from its used of self contained capacitor-projectile charges. 10mm in diameter, these charges provide one shot per projectile, and consequentially an increase in energy delivered to the target that can be at times measured in orders of magnitude. The weapon is reloaded by breaking open the action and inserting the self contained eight shot capacitor-projectile revolving “magazine”. Excess energy from the shot is also used to cycle the next round and to activate kinetic dampeners to prevent the weapon’s recoil from tearing its user’s arm off. Capable of firing several varieties of rounds from standard anti-personell tungsten slugs to fragmenting “Carnage” rounds to electromagnetically charged capacitor shots designed to damage or disable powered armor and similar systems.
- Mars XII Pattern Hybrid Plasma Rail Rifle - The Mars XII Pattern is an interesting hybrid of plasma and rail weapon merged into a rugged and heavy duty frame to form a reliable and terrifying all-purpose battle rifle. Operating on a modified version of the railgun mechanism, the weapon still uses the Lorentz force to propel a projectile along magnetically conductive rails at extreme velocities. Where the Mars XII differs from the norm is in its use of a hybrid superheated liquid metal projectile and superheated plasma to deliver a one-two kinetic/directed energy punch. The weapon operates by arcing a powerful volt of electricity through an aluminum slug and various inert gases surrounding it, melting the aluminum and actually vaporizing a small portion of it, as well as superheating the gases and converting them into electrically conductive plasmas. Things proceed relatively normally from there, as the weapon as the weapon contains the projectile via electromagnetism and then uses the Lorentz force to accelerate the plasma/molten metal projectile along a pre-ionized flight path (pre-ionized by a laser fired nanoseconds before the projectile leaves the weapon. Without it the plasma would conflict with the atmosphere and essentially turn the weapon into a suicidal flamethrower.) to its intended target. The weapon is notorious for being able to punch straight through armors designed to halt kinetic weaponry or plasma weaponry, and delivering the devastating twin effects to the squishy bits inside.
- Nanobionic Strength and Enduance Enhancements - We can make her faster, stronger, better, we have the technology. Except this technology leaves few if any traces visible to the naked eye. Muscles are enhanced by the presence of nanites which work themselves into the myofibral tissue, working with the body and boosting strength enormously as well as drastically increasing the ability of the muscles to function at high intensity for long durations of time, a vital ability in combat. The nanites are also capable of actual physical modification of the muscle itself with nanotube augmentation of the myofibrils and sacromeres themselves, and modifying the tissue to supply the augmentations with the proper energy to operate. The end result is muscle tissue capable of feats of superhuman strength for superhuman durations of time. It also enables her to easily fire the Mars IV Revolver. Unfortunately as with all augmentation, metabolism skyrockets and the user must consume far more food.
- Nanobionic Regeneration - You don’t need to be made better, faster, and stronger if your body is capable of bringing itself back from the brink of total annihilation with no outside assistance. While total reconstruction is energy intensive and lengthy, it is possible. But the nanobionic regeneration nanites’ main purpose is not to salvage someone from the brink of death, their purpose is mainly to heal more minor injuries on the battlefield, such as lacerations, gashes, and other flesh wounds. Even some gunshot wounds can be relatively quickly healed compared to recovery without, though those still take considerably longer. The regenerative nanites work by, as well as stimulating fibrin production and platelet relocation, actively aiding in the healing of various injuries. They’re even capable of independantly diagnosing internal bleeding and working quickly to repair damage to prevent situations from going critical.
- Smartphone - Because even when wading through the blood of your foes, sometimes you want to take a break and look at funny pictures when there’s no Wi-Fi around.
- Laptop - A laptop. Not as slim as the laptops others might carry around, this laptop is far bulkier, but also far tougher and packs just a bit of excessive computing power.
Possessions/items/property: Very little. All she had acquired when she worked for the Stygian Blade was lost in the months it took for her to simply walk away from the field of battle.
Skills:
- Combat Marksmanship - Adéla may not be a laser precise instrument of long range death, but she can reliably hit her targets in the heat of battle with plasma and lasers whizzing overhead.
- Endurance - Where part of the “Revenant” aspect comes in, Adéla can endure incredible punishment before going down.
- Engineer - While Adéla lacks impressive hacking skills she more than makes up for it with her skill at modifying the physical world. All of her weapons have been refined and tweaked by hand and she is quite capable of learning the internal workings of something on the fly.
- Intelligence - Adéla may be a frontline armored heavy, but she also sports a razor keen mind.
- Manipulative - Adéla didn’t get to where she got in the Stygian Blade through pure merit, just as much backroom intimidation and backstabbing went on to elevate her to a lofty position within. Almost high enough to find out what she wanted.
- Heavyweight - She can drink a lot.
Misc: (Anything else the character sheet doesn’t seem to include that you think is important to the character)
OP
Antediluvixen Kemonomimi Dystopia Creator
Member
Seen
7 mos ago
Name: Dahteste ("Warrior Woman") Grey Nascha ("Owl") Warden
Alias: Red Sun
Age: 24
Gender: Female
Origin: Half Apache, half Scottish. Former Confederate sniper.
Current Occupation: Gun for hire.
Appearance: Not what most would consider a classical Hellenic beauty, Dahteste is powerfully built, an upbringing with an unconventional father and a martial mother assured that. She stands at five feet seven inches, with strong shoulders and clearly defined muscles evident along most of her body. Rough, calloused hands are if anything more muscled, used to handling the kick of a rifle, the snap of a pistol, the impact of a knife with its target, and before that - the thud of a pickaxe against soil, and the reins of an ill tempered horse.
Her features are an interesting mix of Scottish and Apache, but they still share the same eyes and high cheekbones that come from a life living out among sand storms and scorching desert sun. Her hair is thick and black, cascading in waves down her back like a stygian waterfall. Skin tone is also a midway point between the Scottish fair skin, and tanned Apache color.
She dresses for trouble, with two heavy leather belts crossing each other, and physically sewn together where they meet in the middle. They also have the holsters for her pistols, and plenty of premeasured paper cartridges sitting in pouches along the length of the belts, and still more stashed in a larger pouch, with several extra large ones in loops on her belt for her rifle. The belt also has a sturdy sheath for her short broadsword knife. She wears a heavy matte brown leather duster, cut short to just above her knees and bristling with interior pouches, pockets, and holes from myriad fights.
Dahteste is heavily armed by any metric, carrying the deadly accurate Sharps rifle with a scope, and two customized third model Colt 1851 Dragoons lovingly inlaid with simple yet elegant designs and the names of her parents; and a wickedly large Bowie knife -more of a short sword- strapped to her thigh.
Personality: Redacted.
Skills/Abilities: Dahteste is above all, known for her skill with a gun. Rifle, pistol, shotgun, if it goes boom, she has an almost supernatural skill in connecting it with her targets. That is not to say she can’t miss, but she rarely does.
Dahteste is passable when it comes to melee combat, relying more on physical strength than skill, and if she wasn’t able to pick them off from a distance, something is wrong.
Survival skills that come from growing up in the desert, especially with a native mother.
Skilled rider.
Fluent in English and the Navajo/Apache language, basic working knowledge of Spanish.
Miscellaneous: Bisexual, but not openly. She doesn’t beat around the bush about not being a proper lady though.
Has a deep and abiding hatred of the Union and its soldiers, one that will almost certainly never cease.
Is racist towards black people (yes, I’m playing this realistically for the character, no, there will be no n-word usage. Yes, it makes me personally uncomfortable too.).
Backstory: Dahteste was born in 1844 to a Scottish immigrant father and an Apache mother. Originally born in the then independent Republic of Texas, she grew up very atypically, at one point moving to California with her father and mother during the California Gold Rush, even though at the time she was only four. Where other girls might’ve been taught to sew and cook, her mother was an Apache, and her father seemed to have never heard of the concept of femininity.
From an early age, she was taught to read and write, and then to ride and start a fire, and then how to shoot and survive in the wilds of the desert. She showed skill at all of them, like her two brothers, and her parents. However, it was shooting at which she excelled the most, and almost as soon as she had shot her first rifle she seemed to have some innate connection with any firearm she held, and an unerring aim. Her father was delighted at this, and not only encouraged it, he bought her a rifle of her own with money earned when he struck it rich during the gold rush in California, which the family had moved to all the way across the country for, helping to pan for gold while her parents and older brother swung a pick, and were she older, would’ve done that too. Her father and mother showed good business sense, which they passed on to their children, not relying on gold to make their fortune, and investing a good sized chunk of their profits in the stores that made a killing selling tools to prospectors.
Even though the gold had long ago dried up, Dahteste built her strength and endurance swinging a pick for long hours. She continued to shoot as well, and could handily outshoot any of the men in the camp by the time she was fourteen.
Her mother too played a role in her upbringing, in addition to knowledge for the western world, which her father also taught her, she taught her all the customs of her people, and their language, and learned the music of the Apache as well. She taught her everything there was to know about survival and hunting, how to find food, how to get water. And then how to deal with white men, and women, how to not simply be dismissed as an ignorant savage.
Eventually her mother wished to return to her homeland and a compromise was struck, for a few years the family would return to Georgia where her father had first arrived and lived in the United States, where he could gather what he had left and sell his property before moving back west to Texas, which by now had joined the Union. This plan was all well and good, but not a few months after they had returned to the state, the American Civil War had broken out. While normally they would’ve left straight away, they were kept in Georgia by extenuating circumstances, waiting out the years until everything blew over and the Confederacy was either conquered or succeeded in its independence attempt. While Dahteste thought it hypocritical that a country that only existed because it had seceded was now invading one that was trying to do the same, she and her family avoided taking sides.
That all changed in 1864, when, during Sherman’s invasion of Georgia, when both of her brothers were executed by Union scouts for being suspected rebels. At one point, searching for them, she saw across their corpses hanging from trees on the road, guarded by a lone soldier. Her first impulse was to scream, not in grief, but rage, but she quickly conquered that instinct, instead hefting the rifle she had brought with her and creeping to within a stone’s throw of the soldier, putting a single minie ball between his shoulder blades and, when he didn’t immediately die but lay feebly calling for help, slit his throat with a knife. She dragged her brother’s bodies back home, and from that point on her side in the war was decided, and both her father and mother immediately began sheltering as many Confederate injured as possible, and donated much of their fortune to the war effort, saving some for retirement and their only child left alive - a child who immediately set off to war under cover of darkness.
With the same rifle she carries today she arrived in Virginia on the eve of the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House disguised as a man, marching straight up to the nearest officer she could find and insisting that she be allowed to serve as a sniper in the army, giving a quick demonstration of her shooting skill. The officer even provided her with a scope, the need for warm bodies to man rifles was pressing enough that he didn’t particularly care about anything other than that.
The next day, during the battle, she shot and killed at least twenty if not more Union soldiers, including as far as she could tell, General Sedgwick himself. Her rifle had gone off, and not long after the man had crumpled with a bullet hole in his face.
Her vengeance would be short lived however, as within the year, Sherman’s army had marched to the sea.
She watched Atlanta burn, powerless to do anything.
She ran the whole way home, arriving at a scene of carnage and a charred ruin. Judging by the bullet holes in what parts of the walls remained and the bodies, the occupants had not gone down without a hell of a fight. Within the burned out walls, she found the bodies of at least twenty Confederates, many still with the charred remnants of bandages and splints on them - and no sign of her parents.
However, when she opened their hidden safe in the basement, she found a note, a small fortune in gold, and the two Dragoon pistols with their names etched on either one. The note left things ambiguous, and to this day she has no idea whether her parents made it out in time, went down fighting and were lying amongst the bodies in the house, or were taken prisoner. She’s still keeping an ear open, and her gut tells her they’re still alive somewhere, but the world indicates otherwise.
She knew the war was over, no point in fighting it anymore. Immediately she set out west, taking everything she could, and not looking back, helping what Confederate refugees she could, and killing any Union soldiers that were unlucky enough to be alone or with only one other person. Eventually she arrived in Texas, and invested much of the gold and money she had in various companies and stores, making a tidy profit. However she grew bored, and unholstered her guns in ‘67, adding to her income by killing people who needed killing. Her latest bounty has led her straight to Laredo.
Secrets: If she told you, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore!
Relations: If anybody wants to have prior relations with her just lemme know.
Alias: Red Sun
Age: 24
Gender: Female
Origin: Half Apache, half Scottish. Former Confederate sniper.
Current Occupation: Gun for hire.
Appearance: Not what most would consider a classical Hellenic beauty, Dahteste is powerfully built, an upbringing with an unconventional father and a martial mother assured that. She stands at five feet seven inches, with strong shoulders and clearly defined muscles evident along most of her body. Rough, calloused hands are if anything more muscled, used to handling the kick of a rifle, the snap of a pistol, the impact of a knife with its target, and before that - the thud of a pickaxe against soil, and the reins of an ill tempered horse.
Her features are an interesting mix of Scottish and Apache, but they still share the same eyes and high cheekbones that come from a life living out among sand storms and scorching desert sun. Her hair is thick and black, cascading in waves down her back like a stygian waterfall. Skin tone is also a midway point between the Scottish fair skin, and tanned Apache color.
She dresses for trouble, with two heavy leather belts crossing each other, and physically sewn together where they meet in the middle. They also have the holsters for her pistols, and plenty of premeasured paper cartridges sitting in pouches along the length of the belts, and still more stashed in a larger pouch, with several extra large ones in loops on her belt for her rifle. The belt also has a sturdy sheath for her short broadsword knife. She wears a heavy matte brown leather duster, cut short to just above her knees and bristling with interior pouches, pockets, and holes from myriad fights.
Dahteste is heavily armed by any metric, carrying the deadly accurate Sharps rifle with a scope, and two customized third model Colt 1851 Dragoons lovingly inlaid with simple yet elegant designs and the names of her parents; and a wickedly large Bowie knife -more of a short sword- strapped to her thigh.
Personality: Redacted.
Skills/Abilities: Dahteste is above all, known for her skill with a gun. Rifle, pistol, shotgun, if it goes boom, she has an almost supernatural skill in connecting it with her targets. That is not to say she can’t miss, but she rarely does.
Dahteste is passable when it comes to melee combat, relying more on physical strength than skill, and if she wasn’t able to pick them off from a distance, something is wrong.
Survival skills that come from growing up in the desert, especially with a native mother.
Skilled rider.
Fluent in English and the Navajo/Apache language, basic working knowledge of Spanish.
Miscellaneous: Bisexual, but not openly. She doesn’t beat around the bush about not being a proper lady though.
Has a deep and abiding hatred of the Union and its soldiers, one that will almost certainly never cease.
Is racist towards black people (yes, I’m playing this realistically for the character, no, there will be no n-word usage. Yes, it makes me personally uncomfortable too.).
Backstory: Dahteste was born in 1844 to a Scottish immigrant father and an Apache mother. Originally born in the then independent Republic of Texas, she grew up very atypically, at one point moving to California with her father and mother during the California Gold Rush, even though at the time she was only four. Where other girls might’ve been taught to sew and cook, her mother was an Apache, and her father seemed to have never heard of the concept of femininity.
From an early age, she was taught to read and write, and then to ride and start a fire, and then how to shoot and survive in the wilds of the desert. She showed skill at all of them, like her two brothers, and her parents. However, it was shooting at which she excelled the most, and almost as soon as she had shot her first rifle she seemed to have some innate connection with any firearm she held, and an unerring aim. Her father was delighted at this, and not only encouraged it, he bought her a rifle of her own with money earned when he struck it rich during the gold rush in California, which the family had moved to all the way across the country for, helping to pan for gold while her parents and older brother swung a pick, and were she older, would’ve done that too. Her father and mother showed good business sense, which they passed on to their children, not relying on gold to make their fortune, and investing a good sized chunk of their profits in the stores that made a killing selling tools to prospectors.
Even though the gold had long ago dried up, Dahteste built her strength and endurance swinging a pick for long hours. She continued to shoot as well, and could handily outshoot any of the men in the camp by the time she was fourteen.
Her mother too played a role in her upbringing, in addition to knowledge for the western world, which her father also taught her, she taught her all the customs of her people, and their language, and learned the music of the Apache as well. She taught her everything there was to know about survival and hunting, how to find food, how to get water. And then how to deal with white men, and women, how to not simply be dismissed as an ignorant savage.
Eventually her mother wished to return to her homeland and a compromise was struck, for a few years the family would return to Georgia where her father had first arrived and lived in the United States, where he could gather what he had left and sell his property before moving back west to Texas, which by now had joined the Union. This plan was all well and good, but not a few months after they had returned to the state, the American Civil War had broken out. While normally they would’ve left straight away, they were kept in Georgia by extenuating circumstances, waiting out the years until everything blew over and the Confederacy was either conquered or succeeded in its independence attempt. While Dahteste thought it hypocritical that a country that only existed because it had seceded was now invading one that was trying to do the same, she and her family avoided taking sides.
That all changed in 1864, when, during Sherman’s invasion of Georgia, when both of her brothers were executed by Union scouts for being suspected rebels. At one point, searching for them, she saw across their corpses hanging from trees on the road, guarded by a lone soldier. Her first impulse was to scream, not in grief, but rage, but she quickly conquered that instinct, instead hefting the rifle she had brought with her and creeping to within a stone’s throw of the soldier, putting a single minie ball between his shoulder blades and, when he didn’t immediately die but lay feebly calling for help, slit his throat with a knife. She dragged her brother’s bodies back home, and from that point on her side in the war was decided, and both her father and mother immediately began sheltering as many Confederate injured as possible, and donated much of their fortune to the war effort, saving some for retirement and their only child left alive - a child who immediately set off to war under cover of darkness.
With the same rifle she carries today she arrived in Virginia on the eve of the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House disguised as a man, marching straight up to the nearest officer she could find and insisting that she be allowed to serve as a sniper in the army, giving a quick demonstration of her shooting skill. The officer even provided her with a scope, the need for warm bodies to man rifles was pressing enough that he didn’t particularly care about anything other than that.
The next day, during the battle, she shot and killed at least twenty if not more Union soldiers, including as far as she could tell, General Sedgwick himself. Her rifle had gone off, and not long after the man had crumpled with a bullet hole in his face.
Her vengeance would be short lived however, as within the year, Sherman’s army had marched to the sea.
She watched Atlanta burn, powerless to do anything.
She ran the whole way home, arriving at a scene of carnage and a charred ruin. Judging by the bullet holes in what parts of the walls remained and the bodies, the occupants had not gone down without a hell of a fight. Within the burned out walls, she found the bodies of at least twenty Confederates, many still with the charred remnants of bandages and splints on them - and no sign of her parents.
However, when she opened their hidden safe in the basement, she found a note, a small fortune in gold, and the two Dragoon pistols with their names etched on either one. The note left things ambiguous, and to this day she has no idea whether her parents made it out in time, went down fighting and were lying amongst the bodies in the house, or were taken prisoner. She’s still keeping an ear open, and her gut tells her they’re still alive somewhere, but the world indicates otherwise.
She knew the war was over, no point in fighting it anymore. Immediately she set out west, taking everything she could, and not looking back, helping what Confederate refugees she could, and killing any Union soldiers that were unlucky enough to be alone or with only one other person. Eventually she arrived in Texas, and invested much of the gold and money she had in various companies and stores, making a tidy profit. However she grew bored, and unholstered her guns in ‘67, adding to her income by killing people who needed killing. Her latest bounty has led her straight to Laredo.
Secrets: If she told you, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore!
Relations: If anybody wants to have prior relations with her just lemme know.
OP
Antediluvixen Kemonomimi Dystopia Creator
Member
Seen
7 mos ago
Birth Name: Aleksandra Alexeyevna Volkov
Other Names: The Wolf of Novgorod
Gender: Female
Age: 26
Rank/Titles/Social Class: Countess, currently living on Prague on her own but heiress to her family’s estate.
Appearance: Standing at an impressive 5’ 10” Aleksandra can easily literally look down on most others she meets, be they male or female, and takes great pleasure in doing so whenever possible. Her body is an unusual combination of lean corded muscle from many hours of intense exercise and combat training, and a softer figure owing to her ability to afford as much food as she needs. Her prematurely white hair is held behind her ears and allowed to fall into a mess of wavy locks down her back, the front bangs being permitted to hang free for the most part. Her face is smooth, with slight cheekbones and tawny eyes that burn with a fierce intelligence. She disdains dresses, instead preferring the coats men tend to wear, and has become adept at concealing firearms underneath them, and has many coats tailored to her figure in various weights so that they may be worn year round.
Personality: Aleksandra doesn’t just go against the grain for what is “good and normal” for a woman in 1890s society, she completely and utterly ignores it, and happily flaunts this and her opinions favoring women living in society with the exact same power and responsibilities as their male counterparts. While clearly a woman of high birth, she has a tendency to not keep her nose stuck up, preferring to see where she’s stepping. A brilliant scientist, she has a tendency to become completely and utterly fixated on one particular subject, be it scientific or not, to the point that she might forget to eat, drink, sleep, or relieve herself, instead working for literally days on a project before simply collapsing from exhaustion. Despite this, she is not unapproachable, especially if one has some matter of interest to discuss. An experienced fighter as well, she takes care to be armed every moment of the day, shashka worn openly on her hip and pistols concealed under her coat, and she has over time come to be constantly on guard and rarely relaxed. Even so, there is a reason for her reputation as a sexually free spirited woman, regardless of the sex of the other (idk where else to put this).
Psychic Talent: Aleksandra does not have a psychic power in the sense that some might think of it. Instead, her psychic ability allows her to detect the use of other psychic abilities, be they speech suggestion, someone reading an aura, detecting the history of an object, she simply knows it’s happening and more often than not, who’s doing it. In addition, she finds herself able to shrug off such things as suggestion or what-have-you, seeing straight through other types of psychic deception as well.
Skills: Aleksandra, whilst born into high society and expected by most to be groomed for such, has little if any skills required to function in such society, instead finding herself most at ease with soldiers and fellow scholars. While she speaks two languages, neither of them (English and Russian) are particularly useful in the city of Prague, and she struggles to learn Czech as well, her mind being attuned to different things. Where she truly shines is her skill at arms, and her prowess as a metallurgist and materials scientist in the burgeoning field that is genuine science. Enrolled in Moscow’s State University by her father at her continued insistence, Aleksandra quickly rose to the top of her field, demonstrating a blinding intellect and remarkable skill in the field, with a seemingly innate knowledge of mathematics, inorganic chemistry, and most particularly, anything involving metallurgy. Having trained her mind from a young age with strenous mental conditioning, she has developed an adamantine will and mental discipline. She also developed a rather nasty reputation as a woman unrestrained by the social norms of her time, and… tales, of her skills beneath the covers became a mythos uttered in muted whispers whenever the older population was not around.
Weapons/Fighting: Aleksandra is an excellent shot with both rifle and pistol, disdaining the more ornate versions reserved for dueling in favor of rugged and chunky models intended for genuine combat, and has two revolvers in particular based on the Colt 1889, these however are custom ordered models in .45 Colt, with an extra two shots per cylinder due to the extraordinarily strong materials she provided them with to make the guns and are consequently capable of withstanding immensely powerful smokeless powder loads. She carries both of these revolvers and on a leather belt beneath her coat, along with huge amount of ammunition for it. She has practiced extensively with the pistols and used them in actual combat and has never been failed by them. She also carries a well used Cossack shashka, having been taught anything and everything in the use of the savage weapon, and garnered plenty of firsthand experience in training bouts and genuine fights to the death.
Random:
Other Names: The Wolf of Novgorod
Gender: Female
Age: 26
Rank/Titles/Social Class: Countess, currently living on Prague on her own but heiress to her family’s estate.
Appearance: Standing at an impressive 5’ 10” Aleksandra can easily literally look down on most others she meets, be they male or female, and takes great pleasure in doing so whenever possible. Her body is an unusual combination of lean corded muscle from many hours of intense exercise and combat training, and a softer figure owing to her ability to afford as much food as she needs. Her prematurely white hair is held behind her ears and allowed to fall into a mess of wavy locks down her back, the front bangs being permitted to hang free for the most part. Her face is smooth, with slight cheekbones and tawny eyes that burn with a fierce intelligence. She disdains dresses, instead preferring the coats men tend to wear, and has become adept at concealing firearms underneath them, and has many coats tailored to her figure in various weights so that they may be worn year round.
Excellent for concealing pistols, ammunition, and looking like a goddamn badass.
Personality: Aleksandra doesn’t just go against the grain for what is “good and normal” for a woman in 1890s society, she completely and utterly ignores it, and happily flaunts this and her opinions favoring women living in society with the exact same power and responsibilities as their male counterparts. While clearly a woman of high birth, she has a tendency to not keep her nose stuck up, preferring to see where she’s stepping. A brilliant scientist, she has a tendency to become completely and utterly fixated on one particular subject, be it scientific or not, to the point that she might forget to eat, drink, sleep, or relieve herself, instead working for literally days on a project before simply collapsing from exhaustion. Despite this, she is not unapproachable, especially if one has some matter of interest to discuss. An experienced fighter as well, she takes care to be armed every moment of the day, shashka worn openly on her hip and pistols concealed under her coat, and she has over time come to be constantly on guard and rarely relaxed. Even so, there is a reason for her reputation as a sexually free spirited woman, regardless of the sex of the other (idk where else to put this).
Psychic Talent: Aleksandra does not have a psychic power in the sense that some might think of it. Instead, her psychic ability allows her to detect the use of other psychic abilities, be they speech suggestion, someone reading an aura, detecting the history of an object, she simply knows it’s happening and more often than not, who’s doing it. In addition, she finds herself able to shrug off such things as suggestion or what-have-you, seeing straight through other types of psychic deception as well.
Skills: Aleksandra, whilst born into high society and expected by most to be groomed for such, has little if any skills required to function in such society, instead finding herself most at ease with soldiers and fellow scholars. While she speaks two languages, neither of them (English and Russian) are particularly useful in the city of Prague, and she struggles to learn Czech as well, her mind being attuned to different things. Where she truly shines is her skill at arms, and her prowess as a metallurgist and materials scientist in the burgeoning field that is genuine science. Enrolled in Moscow’s State University by her father at her continued insistence, Aleksandra quickly rose to the top of her field, demonstrating a blinding intellect and remarkable skill in the field, with a seemingly innate knowledge of mathematics, inorganic chemistry, and most particularly, anything involving metallurgy. Having trained her mind from a young age with strenous mental conditioning, she has developed an adamantine will and mental discipline. She also developed a rather nasty reputation as a woman unrestrained by the social norms of her time, and… tales, of her skills beneath the covers became a mythos uttered in muted whispers whenever the older population was not around.
Weapons/Fighting: Aleksandra is an excellent shot with both rifle and pistol, disdaining the more ornate versions reserved for dueling in favor of rugged and chunky models intended for genuine combat, and has two revolvers in particular based on the Colt 1889, these however are custom ordered models in .45 Colt, with an extra two shots per cylinder due to the extraordinarily strong materials she provided them with to make the guns and are consequently capable of withstanding immensely powerful smokeless powder loads. She carries both of these revolvers and on a leather belt beneath her coat, along with huge amount of ammunition for it. She has practiced extensively with the pistols and used them in actual combat and has never been failed by them. She also carries a well used Cossack shashka, having been taught anything and everything in the use of the savage weapon, and garnered plenty of firsthand experience in training bouts and genuine fights to the death.
Born into a very wealthy and eccentric if somewhat obscure on the political stage noble family, Aleksandra never knew her mother, who died a few days after childbirth from an infection. From day one, her upbringing starkly contrasted with the norm for noble girls, instead of being taught to be unquestioningly obediant and to do housework, Aleksandra was instead taught to read, write, do mathematics, and speak English from a young age. In addition she was given rigorous training to hone her mind to a razor keen edge and strengthen her will into wolfram, the exact reasons were never given, but her father always provided the answer, “You’ll know some day.”
She also developed tastes in literature, enjoying the short stories and poems of Edgar Allen Poe, The Vampyre, Dracula, In A Glass Darkly, The Picture of Dorian Grey, The Devil’s Elixirs, The Turn of the Screw, Frankenstein, and a special place in her heart for Wuthering Heights. A fascination with the dark and the macabre developed early on in her life, and stayed with her throughought and to the present day, as shown by the silver memento mori-esque necklace she wears.
Her father was the very definition of absent minded scholar, rarely leaving his study except in the evening when he and his daughter would discuss various matters, increasing in relevance as she grew older until they were having intense sociopolitical debates nightly, or arguing over the proper method for the synthesis of sodium barbiturates by the time she was fourteen. Her father was delighted at this and needed little in the way of encouragement to browbeat his way into securing an education in Moscow’s State University for her at the age of eighteen.
During this time she was not idle, and practiced extensively in less refined forms of martial art. Pulling strings with her father’s influence she secured for herself a set of revolvers which she practiced with daily, soon becoming remarkably adept with the weapons. While her father initially disapproved of this, he eventually relented and retreated back to his studies, giving his daughter a hand wave of defeat. From that point on little if anything could stop her, and she found her way into the tutelage of one of the Imperial Russian Army’s Cossack warriors, who, after much pushing and exchange of coin, agreed to teach her everything he knew in the use of the traditional and lethal shashka. She grew to be a formidable opponent with the blade, almost matching the old Cossack himself and easily exceeding him in agility by the time she reached twenty two. While such activities as becoming a deadly shot with the pistol or a master of a less… refined blade such as the shashka were intensely frowned upon by almost everybody else, she developed her trademark unconcerned air during this time, content in ignoring such things.
In Moscow, she discovered both her remarkable affinity for metallurgy, eagerly forging ahead in the field of metallurgical science, and her own psychic talent. One day a man accosted her in a hallway, a not unusual occurence, but something was… different. She felt an unusual presence in her mind, and mentally poked at it, finding it somehow linked back to the man in front of her. Further investigation revealed the purpose behind this intrusion into her mental space, and she hurriedly threw whatever the mental equivalent of a brick wall was in its way. She all too clearly saw his intent to influence her thoughts and the direction of the conversation towards… stereotypically male ends. While she was used to such attempts at this point, what struck her was the probe in her mind she had felt, and she entered into a studying spree, entrenching herself in the library of the university in an attempt to glean what she could from the multitude of dusty tomes.
Gradually she came to know all the contents the library had on the matter of psychic powers, and the notion intrigued her to no end. She would set out at night through the streets of Moscow, sword at the ready in case of trouble as she sought out the various “psychics” that proclaimed themselves in the streets, finding the vast majority to be frauds and scam artists, and the genuine few to be disreputable sorts who also attempted to scam, charm, or simply psychically influence her out of her money, time, or clothes. She quickly grew disgusted with such people, and began to seek out like minded individuals who studied and investigated these psychic powers. In this time she returned to Novgorod, living in the family manor and conducting her own research, psychic alongside metallurgical, and while the latter yielded wonderful results, the former remained infuriatingly mired in mystery.
She acquired the anonymous nickname “The Wolf of Novgorod” among some circles during one of her nighttime expeditions, which never ceased even when she returned home, when she stumbled across unusual markings on an old dilapidated house some distance from the city center. Slowly pushing her way inside, she came to realize that she had stumbled across a cult of some sort, and as she soon realized, a cult headed by a psychic with powerful abilities of suggestion. Had she been a more foolhardy type she might’ve attacked then and there, but instead waited and listened, learning their plans as well as some names and information she tucked away for later investigation. Over the next month she systematically tore the cult to shreds, tripping a cultist on his way to an assassination, a small dart with a small amount of sodium pentathol in the neck of a cultist making a speech, and then watching as he lost any and all ability to lie, and soon, simply killing them in one on one duels in a back alley or wherever. By the end of the month she was able to walk straight into their now much emptier headquarters and gun the remainder down in a quick but brutal gunfight. In doing so she too was shot, giving her a noticeable limp and a bloody hole right through her side. She survived thankfully, and abstained from further cultbusting antics, instead devoting herself to researching such things even further.
One day she recieved a letter addressed to her in English, inviting her to a manor in Prague, a certain House Ianus, in order to discuss matters of import, matters she knew instinctively the topic of. Of course she was very familiar with the House and knew some of its doings, but not nearly as much as she would’ve liked. Jumping at such an opportunity she packed her bags and set out for Bohemia, arriving in relativelty short order. At this point her father had given up all hope of keeping her in Novgorod or Moscow to study, and simply sent his blessings.
After a couple months she was fully settled in and becoming restless, instead of prowling the streets like she was accustomed to, she took to the various mysteries the Society dealt with, and delved into the wealth of knowledge on psychic phenomena the Society had amassed.
She also developed tastes in literature, enjoying the short stories and poems of Edgar Allen Poe, The Vampyre, Dracula, In A Glass Darkly, The Picture of Dorian Grey, The Devil’s Elixirs, The Turn of the Screw, Frankenstein, and a special place in her heart for Wuthering Heights. A fascination with the dark and the macabre developed early on in her life, and stayed with her throughought and to the present day, as shown by the silver memento mori-esque necklace she wears.
Her father was the very definition of absent minded scholar, rarely leaving his study except in the evening when he and his daughter would discuss various matters, increasing in relevance as she grew older until they were having intense sociopolitical debates nightly, or arguing over the proper method for the synthesis of sodium barbiturates by the time she was fourteen. Her father was delighted at this and needed little in the way of encouragement to browbeat his way into securing an education in Moscow’s State University for her at the age of eighteen.
During this time she was not idle, and practiced extensively in less refined forms of martial art. Pulling strings with her father’s influence she secured for herself a set of revolvers which she practiced with daily, soon becoming remarkably adept with the weapons. While her father initially disapproved of this, he eventually relented and retreated back to his studies, giving his daughter a hand wave of defeat. From that point on little if anything could stop her, and she found her way into the tutelage of one of the Imperial Russian Army’s Cossack warriors, who, after much pushing and exchange of coin, agreed to teach her everything he knew in the use of the traditional and lethal shashka. She grew to be a formidable opponent with the blade, almost matching the old Cossack himself and easily exceeding him in agility by the time she reached twenty two. While such activities as becoming a deadly shot with the pistol or a master of a less… refined blade such as the shashka were intensely frowned upon by almost everybody else, she developed her trademark unconcerned air during this time, content in ignoring such things.
In Moscow, she discovered both her remarkable affinity for metallurgy, eagerly forging ahead in the field of metallurgical science, and her own psychic talent. One day a man accosted her in a hallway, a not unusual occurence, but something was… different. She felt an unusual presence in her mind, and mentally poked at it, finding it somehow linked back to the man in front of her. Further investigation revealed the purpose behind this intrusion into her mental space, and she hurriedly threw whatever the mental equivalent of a brick wall was in its way. She all too clearly saw his intent to influence her thoughts and the direction of the conversation towards… stereotypically male ends. While she was used to such attempts at this point, what struck her was the probe in her mind she had felt, and she entered into a studying spree, entrenching herself in the library of the university in an attempt to glean what she could from the multitude of dusty tomes.
Gradually she came to know all the contents the library had on the matter of psychic powers, and the notion intrigued her to no end. She would set out at night through the streets of Moscow, sword at the ready in case of trouble as she sought out the various “psychics” that proclaimed themselves in the streets, finding the vast majority to be frauds and scam artists, and the genuine few to be disreputable sorts who also attempted to scam, charm, or simply psychically influence her out of her money, time, or clothes. She quickly grew disgusted with such people, and began to seek out like minded individuals who studied and investigated these psychic powers. In this time she returned to Novgorod, living in the family manor and conducting her own research, psychic alongside metallurgical, and while the latter yielded wonderful results, the former remained infuriatingly mired in mystery.
She acquired the anonymous nickname “The Wolf of Novgorod” among some circles during one of her nighttime expeditions, which never ceased even when she returned home, when she stumbled across unusual markings on an old dilapidated house some distance from the city center. Slowly pushing her way inside, she came to realize that she had stumbled across a cult of some sort, and as she soon realized, a cult headed by a psychic with powerful abilities of suggestion. Had she been a more foolhardy type she might’ve attacked then and there, but instead waited and listened, learning their plans as well as some names and information she tucked away for later investigation. Over the next month she systematically tore the cult to shreds, tripping a cultist on his way to an assassination, a small dart with a small amount of sodium pentathol in the neck of a cultist making a speech, and then watching as he lost any and all ability to lie, and soon, simply killing them in one on one duels in a back alley or wherever. By the end of the month she was able to walk straight into their now much emptier headquarters and gun the remainder down in a quick but brutal gunfight. In doing so she too was shot, giving her a noticeable limp and a bloody hole right through her side. She survived thankfully, and abstained from further cultbusting antics, instead devoting herself to researching such things even further.
One day she recieved a letter addressed to her in English, inviting her to a manor in Prague, a certain House Ianus, in order to discuss matters of import, matters she knew instinctively the topic of. Of course she was very familiar with the House and knew some of its doings, but not nearly as much as she would’ve liked. Jumping at such an opportunity she packed her bags and set out for Bohemia, arriving in relativelty short order. At this point her father had given up all hope of keeping her in Novgorod or Moscow to study, and simply sent his blessings.
After a couple months she was fully settled in and becoming restless, instead of prowling the streets like she was accustomed to, she took to the various mysteries the Society dealt with, and delved into the wealth of knowledge on psychic phenomena the Society had amassed.
Random:
- In case it wasn’t obvious, she’s openly bisexual and doesn’t care what anyone thinks.
OP
Antediluvixen Kemonomimi Dystopia Creator
Member
Seen
7 mos ago
Name: Zodiac (Actual name Catherine Romanov)
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Age: 20
Place of Origin: Minor, High Republic
Appearance and Personality:
Much of Zodiac’s, or Catherine Romanov’s, body is obscured by a heavy cloak that only comes off in a battle, and even then only if the battle calls for that extra bit of mobility, but even the heavy cloth can’t conceal the fact that she’s short, standing at exactly 150 centimeters with boots on, or her pale skin, quite literally white. What the cloak does conceal is her actual body. She is solidly built, with several years' mercenary work and traveling hardening her previously somewhat soft muscles. Her arms, legs, and body in general are clearly well muscled, but the muscle is not distinct, and is in fact somewhat difficult to notice, especially next to the ample curve of her figure, however the muscle and curve seem to compliment each other, rather than contrasting like one might expect. She has thick hair the color of dirty snow that stays almost permanently in a shortish ponytail pulled up tight against her head. Her eyes are a soft lavender color and are framed by the few strands of hair that aren’t pulled into the ponytail.
To say she is uncharismatic would be a gross understatement, the most she can usually manage in interaction with other sapient beings is to order a mug of beer and a plate of food. The wall that exists between her intelligent and surprisingly insightful brain and fumbling mouth with a mind of its own frustrates her to no end, and has pushed her away from much interaction, and towards her flutes and thoughts, though she finds speaking with Mechanids and some Djinn to be somewhat easier. She has several odd quirks that pop up from time to time, or at least they may seem that way to others.
Class: Bone Singer/Mercenary
The Bone Singer has managed to make a living off of being absolutely insane in battle. Several years practice cleaving enemies -sometimes far larger than herself- in twain with her kriegsmesser and occasionally taking bones to make into musical instruments has left her skilled in combat, surprisingly strong for her apparent size, durable, and with ample knowledge of how to apply her intelligence in… unorthodox ways. The Bone Singer also carries bone flutes of varying sizes and origins, and is quite happy to play them anytime, anywhere; she may or may not be able to do strange and sometimes horrifying things by playing these flutes.
Stats:
STR: 15
END: 11
INT: 16
WIS: 10
CHR: 6
AGI: 12
LCK: 10
Background:
Catherine Romanova was born to a single mother, who then died in childbirth. She doesn’t know how she survived her infancy, the ugly bastard child of a dead mother almost nobody had liked for reasons unknown to her. The town she was born into didn’t seem to hate her as they had her mother, and more or less took it upon themselves to keep her alive. She was given food and allowed to stay in the small one room house her mother had occupied, and for the most part was left alone to her own devices. Few spoke to her, and though they didn’t necessarily dislike her, there was no source of affection in her life, and she never learned how to truly speak and communicate with other humans. One of her few comforts was the rather impressive amount of books that the house had, and after teaching herself to read and write, she read every single book she had exhaustively.
In the years that followed the house became surrounded by plants, she never bothered pulling saplings out of the ground to keep the way clear, and those plants had some… curious ornaments. Every single animal she’d ever eaten, she’d saved the bones from to make strange instruments, wind chimes, and hollowed tubes that played haunting music whenever the wind blew through them. Visits from townspeople became less and less frequent, and had one gone near the house, the haunting tune of the bones in the trees could be heard, but what sounded like music played by a human could’ve also been heard coming from the building.
One day one of the townspeople took it upon himself to visit the strange building, and, upon finding it empty, examined its interior. It seemed normal, though there was no sight of the items he remembered hearing that the house contained. On a table in the center was a note, covered in dust and telling how the occupant -Catherine- had set out with everything of value to go do… something.
She wandered for a year or so, doing odd jobs and occasionally introducing bandits to the business end of the kriegsmesser she had inherited. Her skill with making and using her bone flutes only grew, and she had on occasion managed a truly terrifying effect, but those were in the minority compared to simply bisecting things with the messer.
But nothing much in the way of fortune came her way, which was the main reason she had set out. Oh there was the occasional bag of gold, but it was never enough. She heard of opportunity in Thanadan, packed her gear, and hit the road, intending to pass through Nifu on the way to the city.
Race: Human
Gender: Female
Age: 20
Place of Origin: Minor, High Republic
Appearance and Personality:
Much of Zodiac’s, or Catherine Romanov’s, body is obscured by a heavy cloak that only comes off in a battle, and even then only if the battle calls for that extra bit of mobility, but even the heavy cloth can’t conceal the fact that she’s short, standing at exactly 150 centimeters with boots on, or her pale skin, quite literally white. What the cloak does conceal is her actual body. She is solidly built, with several years' mercenary work and traveling hardening her previously somewhat soft muscles. Her arms, legs, and body in general are clearly well muscled, but the muscle is not distinct, and is in fact somewhat difficult to notice, especially next to the ample curve of her figure, however the muscle and curve seem to compliment each other, rather than contrasting like one might expect. She has thick hair the color of dirty snow that stays almost permanently in a shortish ponytail pulled up tight against her head. Her eyes are a soft lavender color and are framed by the few strands of hair that aren’t pulled into the ponytail.
To say she is uncharismatic would be a gross understatement, the most she can usually manage in interaction with other sapient beings is to order a mug of beer and a plate of food. The wall that exists between her intelligent and surprisingly insightful brain and fumbling mouth with a mind of its own frustrates her to no end, and has pushed her away from much interaction, and towards her flutes and thoughts, though she finds speaking with Mechanids and some Djinn to be somewhat easier. She has several odd quirks that pop up from time to time, or at least they may seem that way to others.
Class: Bone Singer/Mercenary
The Bone Singer has managed to make a living off of being absolutely insane in battle. Several years practice cleaving enemies -sometimes far larger than herself- in twain with her kriegsmesser and occasionally taking bones to make into musical instruments has left her skilled in combat, surprisingly strong for her apparent size, durable, and with ample knowledge of how to apply her intelligence in… unorthodox ways. The Bone Singer also carries bone flutes of varying sizes and origins, and is quite happy to play them anytime, anywhere; she may or may not be able to do strange and sometimes horrifying things by playing these flutes.
Stats:
STR: 15
END: 11
INT: 16
WIS: 10
CHR: 6
AGI: 12
LCK: 10
Background:
Catherine Romanova was born to a single mother, who then died in childbirth. She doesn’t know how she survived her infancy, the ugly bastard child of a dead mother almost nobody had liked for reasons unknown to her. The town she was born into didn’t seem to hate her as they had her mother, and more or less took it upon themselves to keep her alive. She was given food and allowed to stay in the small one room house her mother had occupied, and for the most part was left alone to her own devices. Few spoke to her, and though they didn’t necessarily dislike her, there was no source of affection in her life, and she never learned how to truly speak and communicate with other humans. One of her few comforts was the rather impressive amount of books that the house had, and after teaching herself to read and write, she read every single book she had exhaustively.
In the years that followed the house became surrounded by plants, she never bothered pulling saplings out of the ground to keep the way clear, and those plants had some… curious ornaments. Every single animal she’d ever eaten, she’d saved the bones from to make strange instruments, wind chimes, and hollowed tubes that played haunting music whenever the wind blew through them. Visits from townspeople became less and less frequent, and had one gone near the house, the haunting tune of the bones in the trees could be heard, but what sounded like music played by a human could’ve also been heard coming from the building.
One day one of the townspeople took it upon himself to visit the strange building, and, upon finding it empty, examined its interior. It seemed normal, though there was no sight of the items he remembered hearing that the house contained. On a table in the center was a note, covered in dust and telling how the occupant -Catherine- had set out with everything of value to go do… something.
She wandered for a year or so, doing odd jobs and occasionally introducing bandits to the business end of the kriegsmesser she had inherited. Her skill with making and using her bone flutes only grew, and she had on occasion managed a truly terrifying effect, but those were in the minority compared to simply bisecting things with the messer.
But nothing much in the way of fortune came her way, which was the main reason she had set out. Oh there was the occasional bag of gold, but it was never enough. She heard of opportunity in Thanadan, packed her gear, and hit the road, intending to pass through Nifu on the way to the city.
OP
Antediluvixen Kemonomimi Dystopia Creator
Member
Seen
7 mos ago
Name of Nation: Etresna, the Enlightened Realm
Government: Enlightened Despotism - ruled by a monarch with great power, the governing principles of the state stretch back for eons, each Raijen or Reijen - the female or male rulers of the nation, is chosen by an elected council of ostensibly the wisest minds in the nation. The system has worked well thus far, the scholarly nature of much of the elite leading to a burgeoning technological paradise. The state pours much of its budget into the sciences and into engineering, determined to maintain its technological lead in the world.
Map of Etresna
Positioned on the eastern coast of the Narrevian continent, the populous nation of Etresna benefits from the significant rainfal brought by the equatorial westerlies and summer monsoons, the northern section of the nation playing host to a significant rainforest, and the heavy rainfall facilitating widespread rice cultivation in the northern regions. Much of the agricultural industry of Etresna is managed by the central state in the interest of maximum efficiency, with the remnants of the Lowlands’ former inhabitants working as tax free, almost independent farmers on vast rice plantations in the north, and even more vast wheat fields on the prairies in the nation’s center. Much of the vast population is situated along the coast, the vast and numerous rivers within the nation, in the massive mountains, or the foothills of those mountains where water pools and collects from mountain runoff. Population is concentrated heavily in the nation’s major urban centers, with much of the countryside either wholly uninhabited or devoted to the vast agricultural plantations that feed the large urban centers. To some extent, the mountains are an exception to this rule, with much of their population distributed widely across the expanse, in mining towns or fortified mountain redoubts. The people of the mountains are responsible for much of the nation’s mining industry, the large and imposing natural defensive barrier doubling as a cornucopia of natural resources. Industrial production is primarily centered in the cities.
Dramatis Personae:
Anukadi “Anu” Firulkh Dashyrr: The current reigning Raijen of the Realm, elected thirty years ago by the grand council. Before her election, Anu was a distinguished civil engineer and public servant, responsible for overseeing the implementation of a modern electrical grid in the Realm’s southern coastal cities. Under her reign, the Realm has seen vast investment in the sciences and in public works, but sometimes at the expense of lower military investment, the Raijen putting faith in the Realm’s naval prowess and land forces to keep the Realm’s borders secure.
Azhis Dahtkah Fyrra: Occupying a position analogous to Commander in Chief of other armies, Azhis represents the strategic mind behind the Realm’s military forces. An enigmatic figure of dubious age, Azhis has nonetheless managed to keep the Realm out of the costly land wars the people wish to avoid. Investment in the navy and defensive capabilities on land has been her primary focus.
Species: Etremaden - ostensibly human, the Etremaden people tend to stand a few inches taller than most, with solid figures and a diverse array of eye colors. Unlike humans, however, they have unusually long lifespans - with the eldest living to over two hundred years, and a life of a hundred and twenty or more not uncommon. Many are more divergent, still humanoid, but with some unquantifiable sense of being ‘off’ to outsiders, this is far more prevalent and pronounced among the mountain dwellers. Unlike other humanoid species, their musculature between the sexes is considerably more equal, with both sexes sporting muscle mass nearly identical to each other.
Population: 223 million, still rapidly growing. The realm is still nowhere near its potential, the vast depopulation of the lowlands in the mid 1400s still has a marked influence on the population size to this day.
Culture: For much of their earlier history a relatively inward looking people after their conquest of the lowlands, and repulsion of the Kratorian Empire’s attempt at annexation, the people of Etresna have cultivated a simultaneously scholarly and militaristic culutre, idealizing the warrior-poet of old. The nation is heavily armed, with around 46% of the population owning rifles and pistols, a holdover from their history of constant warfare and citizen military participation. At the same time, there is a love of the arts, the sciences, engineering, and philosophy, and it is common sight to find a military artistic exhibition, showcasing the works of the local military, sponsored by the general or some affluent individiual, and the small army is frequently seen assisting in public works and engineering projects. There is much distaste for the state militarism prevalent among many other nations - Among their own people, there is a strong sense of egalitarianism among themselves - there are very few or no restrictions upon the rights of fellow Etremaden in regards to sex or characteristics. Other peoples are generally judged on a case by case basis, and will usually be held to be ‘lesser’ until in some way proving themselves.
Economy: A global powerhouse, Etresna’s economy is heavily focused around a major service sector augmented by powerful manufacturing, fueled by vast raw material reserves in their mountainous nation, alongside the agricultural heartlands in the central plains and northern rice paddies. The nation has advanced leaps and bounds in many areas, and produces many excellent doctors, scientists, engineers, mathemeticians, others. This lends the economy a considerable service sector bent. Despite this, there are movements within to increase manufacturing prowess to compete with the global market, rather than merely supplying their own needs.
Despite its large population, Etresna is a net exporter of grains, shipping food abroad in great quantities - primarily rice, with most wheat consumed domestically - the centrally planned and overseen wheat prairies, and vast rice paddies of the northern river deltas providing frequent bumper crops with the advent of modern fertilizers. These agricultural lands are sparsely populated, with the predominant population being the remnants of the erstwhile inhabitants of the coastal lowlands, a people with a unique position within the realm. They live tax free, barely regulated at all beyond baseline codes of conduct, and in turn manage the realm’s agricultural engine, having recently been subsizied in a switch from pack animals and degenerate beasts of burden to an almost wholly mechanized farming system. Even so, engineering works are constantly underway to further expand the nation’s agricultural prowess.
Technology: For much of its history a technological powerhouse, Etresna has continued to lead the world in technological advancement, all of its cities sporting modern electrical grids and transportation hubs, with a sophisticated rail network linking every part of the country together. The military as well benefits from this technological lead, many warships outfitted with advanced targeting aparatuses, though much of their fleet is of older make, and not as modern as their grand fleet would indicate. On land - while their individual equipment is still focused around tried and true technology - the bolt action rifle, the revolver, and so on, these weapons are produced of high grade steel and can sustain higher cartridge pressures than those of most competing nations.
Air Force: The air force of the Realm is a mediocre force, all told. What planes they do have are small in number, but well maintained and are continuously upgraded and updated with the latest technology available. Primarily used in scouting, there have been limited investigations into the use of aircraft for offensive purposes as well, such as machine gunning infantry formations in pursuit operations.
History of the Realm
Rolls:
12 + 6: Territory - Your nation is magnificently sized, a premiere empire of the day. There are vast lands to go around.
20 - Tech: Your nation is the premier technological leader of the day. One of the earliest adopters if not the creator of industrialization and modern scientific research, your nation leads the world in technological advancement.
11 - Army Size: Your army is decently sized, and is maintained year-round.
17 + 3 - Economy: Your economy is world-class, and the nation is in the middle of an economic boom. You are seen as a land of opportunity. The nation can fund anything it wants, almost.
14 - Production: Your nation is somewhat majority industrial, with decent resource exploitation.
17 - Navy Size: Your navy is of respectable size, with a large merchant train and a large military portion.
7 - Airforce Size: You have a few biplanes.
17 - 5 - Magic: Your nation is above average. Nothing exceptional, but you stay ahead of the chaff and other low liers. You may be advanced in theory but lack the means or structure to implement - or you may have ample capacity for production, and limited sophistication in doing so, or anything else.
1 + 1 - Mobilization: It takes the good part of a year to mobilize.
Traits:
A Nation of Learning: Tracing back to its ancient roots, the Realm, its people, culture, and even most of the cultural elite, have embraced science, the arts, and learning in general. Today, as it has been for millenia, the Realm devotes vast sums of money to research and development, to sponsoring the arts, schools of engineering, and more. The Realm is the technological leader of the world, and is determined to maintain their lead at all costs. Etremaden sciences - hard and soft, engineering, arts, and more are renowned. The nation advances technologically faster than its rivals, their prowess with technology a match for the formidable arcane might of the empires of Kratoria and Anvegad.
Masters of Artillery: For centuries the cornerstone of the Realm’s military might, the artillery has continued to play a crucial role in the Realm’s land forces. Much of the military infrastructure on land is devoted to training, supplying, and equipping the nation’s artillery corps, Etremaden engineering producing the finest guns in the world, and their schools producing the finest gunners. However, this comes at the expense of much of the rest of the army, the regular infantry representing a far smaller proportion of the army than their contemporaries, and militias - trained but not professional - make up the bulk of Etresna’s foot soldiers.
Honor Code: The Etremaden are known for almost fanatical fervor in combat, rarely if ever fleeing, surrendering only if all hope is lost and resistance is futile. To surrender when one could have fought on and forced the foe to pay for their victory in blood is a great shame - to surrender without fighting at all is the greatest of shames. The Realm’s soldiers will retreat, given the order, but a foe rushing their trenches will rarely find their forces fleeing, and even more rarely will they surrender. A platoon of soldiers, lost within enemy territory, is expected to fight their way back to friendly lines, or to inflict as much damage as possible - unless such an attempt would result in naught but their own deaths. This culture of honorable surrender and its intricacies are often lost on foreigners, who know only of the terrible treatment often suffered by prisoners taken in what the Etremaden deem dishonorable circumstances, and many foreign soldiers too will fight to the death to avoid capture.
Armed Populace: The people of the realm, the non-uniformed, arms-bearing citizen militia, make up the vast bulk of the Realm’s ground forces. Almost half of the population are well armed, with rifles, pistols, and even machine guns, and do not shy away from using or threatening to use them. An invader of the realm would find a rifle behind every blade of grass, every tree trunk, a hundred million barrels aimed in their direction - but the same is true of the government. Widespread public outcry, opposition to an unpopular government policy, or anything else will almost certainly result in the government backing down. The Raijen is hard pressed to lead her nation into a war it no longer desires, unless the people can be made to seek war once more.
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Foreign Relations:
Government: Enlightened Despotism - ruled by a monarch with great power, the governing principles of the state stretch back for eons, each Raijen or Reijen - the female or male rulers of the nation, is chosen by an elected council of ostensibly the wisest minds in the nation. The system has worked well thus far, the scholarly nature of much of the elite leading to a burgeoning technological paradise. The state pours much of its budget into the sciences and into engineering, determined to maintain its technological lead in the world.
Map of Etresna
Positioned on the eastern coast of the Narrevian continent, the populous nation of Etresna benefits from the significant rainfal brought by the equatorial westerlies and summer monsoons, the northern section of the nation playing host to a significant rainforest, and the heavy rainfall facilitating widespread rice cultivation in the northern regions. Much of the agricultural industry of Etresna is managed by the central state in the interest of maximum efficiency, with the remnants of the Lowlands’ former inhabitants working as tax free, almost independent farmers on vast rice plantations in the north, and even more vast wheat fields on the prairies in the nation’s center. Much of the vast population is situated along the coast, the vast and numerous rivers within the nation, in the massive mountains, or the foothills of those mountains where water pools and collects from mountain runoff. Population is concentrated heavily in the nation’s major urban centers, with much of the countryside either wholly uninhabited or devoted to the vast agricultural plantations that feed the large urban centers. To some extent, the mountains are an exception to this rule, with much of their population distributed widely across the expanse, in mining towns or fortified mountain redoubts. The people of the mountains are responsible for much of the nation’s mining industry, the large and imposing natural defensive barrier doubling as a cornucopia of natural resources. Industrial production is primarily centered in the cities.
Dramatis Personae:
Anukadi “Anu” Firulkh Dashyrr: The current reigning Raijen of the Realm, elected thirty years ago by the grand council. Before her election, Anu was a distinguished civil engineer and public servant, responsible for overseeing the implementation of a modern electrical grid in the Realm’s southern coastal cities. Under her reign, the Realm has seen vast investment in the sciences and in public works, but sometimes at the expense of lower military investment, the Raijen putting faith in the Realm’s naval prowess and land forces to keep the Realm’s borders secure.
Azhis Dahtkah Fyrra: Occupying a position analogous to Commander in Chief of other armies, Azhis represents the strategic mind behind the Realm’s military forces. An enigmatic figure of dubious age, Azhis has nonetheless managed to keep the Realm out of the costly land wars the people wish to avoid. Investment in the navy and defensive capabilities on land has been her primary focus.
Species: Etremaden - ostensibly human, the Etremaden people tend to stand a few inches taller than most, with solid figures and a diverse array of eye colors. Unlike humans, however, they have unusually long lifespans - with the eldest living to over two hundred years, and a life of a hundred and twenty or more not uncommon. Many are more divergent, still humanoid, but with some unquantifiable sense of being ‘off’ to outsiders, this is far more prevalent and pronounced among the mountain dwellers. Unlike other humanoid species, their musculature between the sexes is considerably more equal, with both sexes sporting muscle mass nearly identical to each other.
Population: 223 million, still rapidly growing. The realm is still nowhere near its potential, the vast depopulation of the lowlands in the mid 1400s still has a marked influence on the population size to this day.
Culture: For much of their earlier history a relatively inward looking people after their conquest of the lowlands, and repulsion of the Kratorian Empire’s attempt at annexation, the people of Etresna have cultivated a simultaneously scholarly and militaristic culutre, idealizing the warrior-poet of old. The nation is heavily armed, with around 46% of the population owning rifles and pistols, a holdover from their history of constant warfare and citizen military participation. At the same time, there is a love of the arts, the sciences, engineering, and philosophy, and it is common sight to find a military artistic exhibition, showcasing the works of the local military, sponsored by the general or some affluent individiual, and the small army is frequently seen assisting in public works and engineering projects. There is much distaste for the state militarism prevalent among many other nations - Among their own people, there is a strong sense of egalitarianism among themselves - there are very few or no restrictions upon the rights of fellow Etremaden in regards to sex or characteristics. Other peoples are generally judged on a case by case basis, and will usually be held to be ‘lesser’ until in some way proving themselves.
Economy: A global powerhouse, Etresna’s economy is heavily focused around a major service sector augmented by powerful manufacturing, fueled by vast raw material reserves in their mountainous nation, alongside the agricultural heartlands in the central plains and northern rice paddies. The nation has advanced leaps and bounds in many areas, and produces many excellent doctors, scientists, engineers, mathemeticians, others. This lends the economy a considerable service sector bent. Despite this, there are movements within to increase manufacturing prowess to compete with the global market, rather than merely supplying their own needs.
Despite its large population, Etresna is a net exporter of grains, shipping food abroad in great quantities - primarily rice, with most wheat consumed domestically - the centrally planned and overseen wheat prairies, and vast rice paddies of the northern river deltas providing frequent bumper crops with the advent of modern fertilizers. These agricultural lands are sparsely populated, with the predominant population being the remnants of the erstwhile inhabitants of the coastal lowlands, a people with a unique position within the realm. They live tax free, barely regulated at all beyond baseline codes of conduct, and in turn manage the realm’s agricultural engine, having recently been subsizied in a switch from pack animals and degenerate beasts of burden to an almost wholly mechanized farming system. Even so, engineering works are constantly underway to further expand the nation’s agricultural prowess.
Technology: For much of its history a technological powerhouse, Etresna has continued to lead the world in technological advancement, all of its cities sporting modern electrical grids and transportation hubs, with a sophisticated rail network linking every part of the country together. The military as well benefits from this technological lead, many warships outfitted with advanced targeting aparatuses, though much of their fleet is of older make, and not as modern as their grand fleet would indicate. On land - while their individual equipment is still focused around tried and true technology - the bolt action rifle, the revolver, and so on, these weapons are produced of high grade steel and can sustain higher cartridge pressures than those of most competing nations.
Army: The Matichikyrra Vihhrytt’aten, the Many Children of War, serve as the armed forces of the Realm. Not a vast organization by any means, the army is standing year round and numbers about a hundred and fifty thousand professional, excellently trained and equipped troops, with a further hundred thousand as registered reserve forces. The vast majority of the realm’s standing army is dedicated to their non-infantry roles - artillery and other such engines of war. Much of the realm’s military strength comes from registered militias, organized at the local government level but trained along standards issued by the standing military. These militias, though lacking in any heavy ordnance, carry plentiful small arms and number close to half a million in total. The physiology of the Etremaden is different from normal humanity, with male and female musculature highly similar, and as such their military is roughly 48% female, who serve full responsibility in frontline and support roles. Indeed, one of the youngest but most gifted high level commanders of the army is a woman over sixty years of age, who despite relatively limited Etremaden involvement, distinguished herself in the Kratorian-Rotteburg war.
The army, should it truly be pressed, and the people willing, can draw on the large population of the Realm. However, conscription is a slow process, much of the population and political class keen on avoiding costly land wars abroad - having suffered catastrophe in past attempts, and prefer to exert influence through economy and the powerful navy. However, the laws and structure are in place, and as such, should the nation ever find itself in a true war of attrition in defense of the realm or their allies, there will be no shortage of warm bodies - though gathering them together will take considerable time.
Notable Figures
Firahl Kyni Panarre: The foremost field commander and tactical mind of the Realm’s land forces, Firahl does not hold supreme command, but does hold considerable localized command authority, and more importantly - great influence with the ruling classes and her superior. Considered by many to be an expert in mountain warfare - unsurprising considering the terrain of the nation - she sits at sixty two years of age, with active duty service from the age of twenty.
The Realm’s small army is equipped with excellent, high quality weaponry:
One of their own domestic designs, the Realm’s standard issue service rifle is the Atassidaiir Vyye 1903 - Repeat Firearm Model 1903 - a well crafted weapon tested to high tolerances, manufactured to exacting specifications, and tested by hand. Feeding from a five round internal magazine, the weapon is capable of surprising rates of fire for a bolt action weapon when placed in the hands of the well trained Etremaden army. Chambered for the .338 Kasanfirre round, designed with Orcish soldiers in mind as well as the infantry of other nations, the Realm’s main service rifle fires a potent .338 round capable of propelling a 250 grain projectile at 800 m/s, a round more than capable downing even the orcs who might charge through less powerful ordnance.
In addition, all rank and file soldiers as well as the officers are issued the Suinnadaiir Vyye 1901: A sturdy six shot revolver chambered in a potent and recently developed .357 caliber cartridge. Capable of propelling its 158 grain load at speeds exceeding 1200 feet per second, it is a potent close quarters weapon.
The army is well known for their liberal use of artillery, their original conquest of the lowlands dating back almost half a millenium owed to their early mastery of artillery tactics. Since then, they have remained a foremost player in the field of artillery, fielding a wide array of formidable pieces, including the fearsome 430mm Heriinetaskiatet Vyye 1906 - the Earthshaker Model 1906, among others.
Additionally, centuries of mountain warfare and individualist combat doctrine have lent their infantry a less rigid bent. Even in the black powder era, large swathes of their army fought as loose skirmishers, taking cover behind rocks and trees and aiming independently with accurate rifles. With the advent of modern arms, this tactic has been adopted wholesale, and the full army is organized into small squads and platoons, given a general directive rather than organized and commanded as a single cohesive unit.
Pictured below: Soldier of the 43rd Shock Battalion
The army, should it truly be pressed, and the people willing, can draw on the large population of the Realm. However, conscription is a slow process, much of the population and political class keen on avoiding costly land wars abroad - having suffered catastrophe in past attempts, and prefer to exert influence through economy and the powerful navy. However, the laws and structure are in place, and as such, should the nation ever find itself in a true war of attrition in defense of the realm or their allies, there will be no shortage of warm bodies - though gathering them together will take considerable time.
Notable Figures
Firahl Kyni Panarre: The foremost field commander and tactical mind of the Realm’s land forces, Firahl does not hold supreme command, but does hold considerable localized command authority, and more importantly - great influence with the ruling classes and her superior. Considered by many to be an expert in mountain warfare - unsurprising considering the terrain of the nation - she sits at sixty two years of age, with active duty service from the age of twenty.
The Realm’s small army is equipped with excellent, high quality weaponry:
One of their own domestic designs, the Realm’s standard issue service rifle is the Atassidaiir Vyye 1903 - Repeat Firearm Model 1903 - a well crafted weapon tested to high tolerances, manufactured to exacting specifications, and tested by hand. Feeding from a five round internal magazine, the weapon is capable of surprising rates of fire for a bolt action weapon when placed in the hands of the well trained Etremaden army. Chambered for the .338 Kasanfirre round, designed with Orcish soldiers in mind as well as the infantry of other nations, the Realm’s main service rifle fires a potent .338 round capable of propelling a 250 grain projectile at 800 m/s, a round more than capable downing even the orcs who might charge through less powerful ordnance.
In addition, all rank and file soldiers as well as the officers are issued the Suinnadaiir Vyye 1901: A sturdy six shot revolver chambered in a potent and recently developed .357 caliber cartridge. Capable of propelling its 158 grain load at speeds exceeding 1200 feet per second, it is a potent close quarters weapon.
The army is well known for their liberal use of artillery, their original conquest of the lowlands dating back almost half a millenium owed to their early mastery of artillery tactics. Since then, they have remained a foremost player in the field of artillery, fielding a wide array of formidable pieces, including the fearsome 430mm Heriinetaskiatet Vyye 1906 - the Earthshaker Model 1906, among others.
Additionally, centuries of mountain warfare and individualist combat doctrine have lent their infantry a less rigid bent. Even in the black powder era, large swathes of their army fought as loose skirmishers, taking cover behind rocks and trees and aiming independently with accurate rifles. With the advent of modern arms, this tactic has been adopted wholesale, and the full army is organized into small squads and platoons, given a general directive rather than organized and commanded as a single cohesive unit.
Pictured below: Soldier of the 43rd Shock Battalion
The navy historically has been a major strength of the coastal nation, and their navy and merchant marine are vast and exceedingly modern. While not the largest navy of the world, they are easily one of if not the most modern, each ship kept up to date with state of the art fire suppression systems and hydraulic loaders for the guns.
Adafarry Daruhl Mazatsi: The supreme commander of the Realm’s great naval forces, Adafarry is a man who commands respect. The forces at his disposal are immense, while not the largest fleet in the world, the Realm boasts possibly the most modern, with many warships bearing powerful long range guns and advanced targeting systems - sophistication and accuracy unimaginable even a decade earlier.
The navy’s strength is divided between four main fleets, with numerous other smaller detachments stationed at their larger island territories. The overall fleet size sits at 273 surface vessels, with a submarine fleet some 70 strong.
Manen Matiduniss - Great Fleet: Total strength, 134 vessels
1st Battlegroup:
DME Yavinnd - The name of the flagship of the fleet, the Yavinnd is always a vessel unique in its design, almost always a fearsome warship with no equal on the seas. The current incarnation, weighing in at almost 62,000 long tons and bringing to bear fourteen 15 inch guns, is a monstrous floating behemoth of guns and armor.
DME Raijen Class Super Dreadnought - Anakita
DME Takriss Class Super Dreadnought - Vendavii
DME Aktis Class Dreadnought - Tavul
DME Aktis Class Dreadnought - Yerissi
DME Vassiyll Class Battlecruiser - Kasinn
DME Norii Class Armored Cruiser - Dassir
DME Ovaes Class Armored Cruiser - Frissyl
12 light cruisers, 21 destroyers
2nd Battlegroup:
DME Aktis Class Dreadnought - Yakhille
DME Vassiyll Class Battlecruiser - Vassiyll
DME Asdull Class Battlecruiser - Xavund
DME Vassiyll Class Battlecruiser - Likirri
DME Norii Class Armored Cruiser - Qaliss
DME Norii Class Armored Cruiser - Norii
6 light cruisers, 8 destroyers
3rd Battlegroup:
DME Norii Class Armored Cruiser - Kuvun
DME Valirr Class Armored Cruiser - Rikill
DME Valirr Class Armored Cruiser - Furid
DME Kalin Class Armored Cruiser - Dakuns
DME Kalin Class Armored Cruiser - Kalin
5 light cruisers, 17 destroyers
4th Battlegroup:
DME Davir Class Battlecruiser - Saken
DME Korvil Class Armored Cruiser - Urisi
DME Korvil Class Armored Cruiser - Uzhni
DME Valirr Class Armored Cruiser - Furid
4 light cruisers, 15 destroyers
5th Battlegroup:
DME Vassiyll Class Battlecruiser - Vuursh
DME Vassiyll Class Battlecruiser - Orillir
DME Valirr Class Armored Cruiser - Fasir
DME Valirr Class Armored Cruiser - Yazhif
3 light cruisers, 16 destroyers
Adafarry Daruhl Mazatsi: The supreme commander of the Realm’s great naval forces, Adafarry is a man who commands respect. The forces at his disposal are immense, while not the largest fleet in the world, the Realm boasts possibly the most modern, with many warships bearing powerful long range guns and advanced targeting systems - sophistication and accuracy unimaginable even a decade earlier.
The navy’s strength is divided between four main fleets, with numerous other smaller detachments stationed at their larger island territories. The overall fleet size sits at 273 surface vessels, with a submarine fleet some 70 strong.
Manen Matiduniss - Great Fleet: Total strength, 134 vessels
1st Battlegroup:
DME Yavinnd - The name of the flagship of the fleet, the Yavinnd is always a vessel unique in its design, almost always a fearsome warship with no equal on the seas. The current incarnation, weighing in at almost 62,000 long tons and bringing to bear fourteen 15 inch guns, is a monstrous floating behemoth of guns and armor.
DME Raijen Class Super Dreadnought - Anakita
DME Takriss Class Super Dreadnought - Vendavii
DME Aktis Class Dreadnought - Tavul
DME Aktis Class Dreadnought - Yerissi
DME Vassiyll Class Battlecruiser - Kasinn
DME Norii Class Armored Cruiser - Dassir
DME Ovaes Class Armored Cruiser - Frissyl
12 light cruisers, 21 destroyers
2nd Battlegroup:
DME Aktis Class Dreadnought - Yakhille
DME Vassiyll Class Battlecruiser - Vassiyll
DME Asdull Class Battlecruiser - Xavund
DME Vassiyll Class Battlecruiser - Likirri
DME Norii Class Armored Cruiser - Qaliss
DME Norii Class Armored Cruiser - Norii
6 light cruisers, 8 destroyers
3rd Battlegroup:
DME Norii Class Armored Cruiser - Kuvun
DME Valirr Class Armored Cruiser - Rikill
DME Valirr Class Armored Cruiser - Furid
DME Kalin Class Armored Cruiser - Dakuns
DME Kalin Class Armored Cruiser - Kalin
5 light cruisers, 17 destroyers
4th Battlegroup:
DME Davir Class Battlecruiser - Saken
DME Korvil Class Armored Cruiser - Urisi
DME Korvil Class Armored Cruiser - Uzhni
DME Valirr Class Armored Cruiser - Furid
4 light cruisers, 15 destroyers
5th Battlegroup:
DME Vassiyll Class Battlecruiser - Vuursh
DME Vassiyll Class Battlecruiser - Orillir
DME Valirr Class Armored Cruiser - Fasir
DME Valirr Class Armored Cruiser - Yazhif
3 light cruisers, 16 destroyers
Air Force: The air force of the Realm is a mediocre force, all told. What planes they do have are small in number, but well maintained and are continuously upgraded and updated with the latest technology available. Primarily used in scouting, there have been limited investigations into the use of aircraft for offensive purposes as well, such as machine gunning infantry formations in pursuit operations.
History of the Realm
Rolls:
12 + 6: Territory - Your nation is magnificently sized, a premiere empire of the day. There are vast lands to go around.
20 - Tech: Your nation is the premier technological leader of the day. One of the earliest adopters if not the creator of industrialization and modern scientific research, your nation leads the world in technological advancement.
11 - Army Size: Your army is decently sized, and is maintained year-round.
17 + 3 - Economy: Your economy is world-class, and the nation is in the middle of an economic boom. You are seen as a land of opportunity. The nation can fund anything it wants, almost.
14 - Production: Your nation is somewhat majority industrial, with decent resource exploitation.
17 - Navy Size: Your navy is of respectable size, with a large merchant train and a large military portion.
7 - Airforce Size: You have a few biplanes.
17 - 5 - Magic: Your nation is above average. Nothing exceptional, but you stay ahead of the chaff and other low liers. You may be advanced in theory but lack the means or structure to implement - or you may have ample capacity for production, and limited sophistication in doing so, or anything else.
1 + 1 - Mobilization: It takes the good part of a year to mobilize.
Traits:
A Nation of Learning: Tracing back to its ancient roots, the Realm, its people, culture, and even most of the cultural elite, have embraced science, the arts, and learning in general. Today, as it has been for millenia, the Realm devotes vast sums of money to research and development, to sponsoring the arts, schools of engineering, and more. The Realm is the technological leader of the world, and is determined to maintain their lead at all costs. Etremaden sciences - hard and soft, engineering, arts, and more are renowned. The nation advances technologically faster than its rivals, their prowess with technology a match for the formidable arcane might of the empires of Kratoria and Anvegad.
Masters of Artillery: For centuries the cornerstone of the Realm’s military might, the artillery has continued to play a crucial role in the Realm’s land forces. Much of the military infrastructure on land is devoted to training, supplying, and equipping the nation’s artillery corps, Etremaden engineering producing the finest guns in the world, and their schools producing the finest gunners. However, this comes at the expense of much of the rest of the army, the regular infantry representing a far smaller proportion of the army than their contemporaries, and militias - trained but not professional - make up the bulk of Etresna’s foot soldiers.
Honor Code: The Etremaden are known for almost fanatical fervor in combat, rarely if ever fleeing, surrendering only if all hope is lost and resistance is futile. To surrender when one could have fought on and forced the foe to pay for their victory in blood is a great shame - to surrender without fighting at all is the greatest of shames. The Realm’s soldiers will retreat, given the order, but a foe rushing their trenches will rarely find their forces fleeing, and even more rarely will they surrender. A platoon of soldiers, lost within enemy territory, is expected to fight their way back to friendly lines, or to inflict as much damage as possible - unless such an attempt would result in naught but their own deaths. This culture of honorable surrender and its intricacies are often lost on foreigners, who know only of the terrible treatment often suffered by prisoners taken in what the Etremaden deem dishonorable circumstances, and many foreign soldiers too will fight to the death to avoid capture.
Armed Populace: The people of the realm, the non-uniformed, arms-bearing citizen militia, make up the vast bulk of the Realm’s ground forces. Almost half of the population are well armed, with rifles, pistols, and even machine guns, and do not shy away from using or threatening to use them. An invader of the realm would find a rifle behind every blade of grass, every tree trunk, a hundred million barrels aimed in their direction - but the same is true of the government. Widespread public outcry, opposition to an unpopular government policy, or anything else will almost certainly result in the government backing down. The Raijen is hard pressed to lead her nation into a war it no longer desires, unless the people can be made to seek war once more.
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Foreign Relations:
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