Name: Loretta Minuet (real name: Nassi Coors)

Appearance:

Tan-skinned and hearty, she has a happy gleam in her eyes...but underneath lies the dark circles of sleepless nights. Her heavily muscled body shows a bit of translucency and obvious wear/tear.

Gender: F

Age: 24

Equipment: Small bag of simple mechanic tools, retracted pickaxe, leather case, overcoat, bedroll, bitten iron ore samples, canteen, suspicious jerky, suspicious leather-bound journal.

Abilities:

True Neutral - Loretta's seeming lack of brains and inability to contain obnoxious good will to her fellow man leads to a misconception that she never takes a side and is relatively harmless.
Weakness: Not taking a side and being friendly to everyone can lead to just as much distrust as trust. Thickheadness isn't exactly smiled upon when you need someone for a job.

Coyote Claws - There's a reason she's never felt the need to learn the art of firearms beyond a cursory glance. Her hand to hand skills are about as brutal and reflexive as they come. It's rumored "That girl will gouge out yer eyes if you ain't careful."
Weakness: Poor firearm skill. Hands and melee weapons aren't effective against bullets or sharp objects at long range or if dealt a poor hand.

Fading Scars - Appears to have an uncanny rate of healing, things that would knock others out for weeks take about half the time to heal. Doesn't seem to stay sick long. It could be supernatural, it could be that she pushes her body to the limit regularly regardless of whether it's good for her or not.
Weakness: Still an easy target for someone who knows how to kill effectively.

Miner - Knowledge of the skills needed to mine ore. Custodial maintenance of base camps and basic machinery.
Weakness: These skills are average at best, and provide no upper hand competing against a more experienced miner, let alone competing against a mechanic with knowledge of the train system.

The Story:
Loretta's story begins working the iron mines as a child laborer. Born into this small settlement known as Beamport, she entered the mines at 14 to become another breadwinner to the families in Beamport's shantytown, same as many others. One night she decided to work late in an effort to bring back more ore for more pay. At some point she got the feeling something was watching her.

Watching her it was. Before she had time to react in the darkness of the cave, she was pounced by a coyote at least twice as large as any she'd seen, and with more muscle and fire in its eyes to boot. It got a decent bite in on her shoulder before she repeatedly laid her pickaxe into its skull.

That night was the start of everything turning upside down. She returned home, got patched up, and headed back to work the next day. But she was hungry. So hungry. The usual gruel was like sawdust, unable to be swallowed. Loretta stayed late again, with a friend this time.

The friend never came home to their parents. Mental insanity of a child forced to work in the depths, an disease born of a tainted bite? The story in some circles of Beamport goes that this friend of hers was killed and his parts laid out in the sun the next day to dry.

Needless to say, other deaths at her hands, including those of her own family, followed and Loretta went on the run into the wastes amid this suspicion. She followed the tracks at a distance for some time before falling into a pattern of working for various mines for a few years. Until her past caught up, leaving behind jobs amid the controversy of missing persons and ore. Eventually, she earned herself the nickname "Cave Specter" and any mines that heard of her appearance grew weary to hire. In fact, rumors came of a more formal investigation underway to remove her menace from the world.

Regardless, she earned enough from the years in mines to buy herself a seat on the train and has avoided just barely enough legal action to not be banned from every station she enters. Searching for jobs that will have her, a home to call her own, the perfect ore, an escape from the law? She's not entirely sure herself why she keeps going, further and further into the wastes.

Quirks: Subsists on a diet of weird looking jerky and small bites of iron. Delicious. Feels an annoying need to interject with too many questions. Doesn't seem to sleep much. Collects novels, lost her last one to fire damage in the wastes.

Name: Sloane



Gender: Female

Equipment:
.577 Lancaster 4 barrel pistol
Crossbow (lever action, simple integrated 5 bolt magazine, 105 lb draw weight, optical scope)
Kukri
Hatchet
Waterskin

Abilities:
1. Pridemistress: While not restricted to lions, this ability seems to be drawn from a natural affinity for and with social carnivores. If she spends time with the animal, she can establish a rapport, thus she can essentially form a hunting group of her own. The most unusual aspect of this affinity is that she can even form a group from a mixed grouping of species. Her affinity with social carnivores also allows her an uncanny ability to register their emotional state, needs, and wants. It is almost as if she can speak with them as both she and they can understand each other almost seamlessly.
2. Huntress: She is trained in both stealth and survival.
3. Weapon Engineering: Whether it is guns or some other odd weapon that uses mechanics to fire, she can probably fix, make, and modify it.
4. High accuracy with ranged weapons

The Story: Sloane's parents were moderately high status people in their desert station. Due to odd religious strictures, they could not quietly abandon her once they realized she had leucism and thus could be demonically possessed. To get rid of her, they decided to venture into the desert on an "expedition" when she was old enough to walk and talk. This was to make it more plausible that she wandered off and also was worth taking along. They "lost" their seven year old daughter in the desert, returning home to act like they lost something precious.

Despite being abandoned, Sloane managed to keep surviving out of sheer luck and stubbornness. She eventually encountered a small group of cheetah males resting in some shade. Despite knowing nearly nothing about them, she discovered her natural affinity due to being able to convince them to take her in somehow. They helped her survive and learn to hunt. She helped them avoid humans. This symbiosis and family structure lasted until she turned 18. She set out and claimed her own territory, gathering her current pride. She then entered the town with her pride and quietly boarded the train, giving a parting glare to the town that abandoned her.

Since then, she has been a Rider, amassing some useful tools and developing her mechanical skills through a library's worth of books combined with tinkering to obtain and modify her current crossbow. In the process of her mechanical learning, she developed better speaking skills and generally learned social behavior. Now 20, she can function in society but still can't, or maybe won't, shake her primal teachings.

Quirks: Sloane stands at an impressive 6'6". She keeps her hair long and loose at all times, even in formal occasions. She tends to bare her teeth and crouch low to the ground when feeling threatened, mimicking the motions of other carnivores. She can and does purr when happy. Yes, she was, in fact, raised by cheetahs following her abandonment. She does not remember or care about a last name. Her pride consists of two cheetahs and one lion.