• Character you have created: Maria Terloeva (Мария Терлоева)
• Alias: Mara
• Speech Colour: N/A (yet)
• Character Alignment: Walking the line
• Identity: Secret
• Personality:
Maria Terloeva is an unassuming, quiet, aloof, European, living a moderate and humble life in downtown Lost Haven. She lives alone with her Border Collie, Summer. Enjoys caring for her bonsai tree and each Friday her life is interrupted by her neighbours, Amy and Samuel, followed by the familiar struggle of their attempt to drag her out to whatever niche restaurant they've found this week.
Mara, her
nom de plume, is intelligent, forward thinking, calculated, persistent and utterly dangerous. Which speaks volumes for a relatively normal woman in a world filled with superheroes who could punch through a brick wall without breaking skin.
Maria, or Mara, whomever she is to you and whoever you are to her, is not an inherent bad person. She is not driven by rage or a desire for vengeance; nor does she act in vindictiveness or spite. A nihilist and an anarchist, Maria simply does what she does because she can.
Even so, she does have a code of ethics – When a target is marked for death, only the target is forfeiting their life. No other. However, if she is confronted with force via third parties, she will resort to deadly means of defence, but will not seek to provoke an engagement. Assassinations are to be made swift and painless as possible, no matter the background or crime of the person, each death is an efficient one.
And of course, there is her personal motto.
“Be polite, be efficient, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”Ideology aside. Maria and Mara are calm individuals; she speaks with tact that few possess. Her thoughtfulness and diplomatic baring, shining through in her words, posture and contemplation. Every thought, word, action and feeling, a premeditated force made several minutes and seconds before. Not one for hasty words or rash actions.
When hired, Mara won’t be stopped, no matter the attempt to coerce her. Alternative payment from the party in question, the possibility of intervention via the more significant powerful meta-humans or otherwise, she has maintained a perfect record of accomplishment. A factoid not merely attributed to her dedication to finishing the job, but her intricate, almost fanatical religious planning of each mission.
As such, her rates are exuberantly high but, of course, you can have the job done, or you can have the job done right.
• Uniform / Costume:
Her uniform• Origin Info / Details:
Born amidst smoke and fire, Maria grew up no stranger to the concept of loss and death. Amira Assad Kadyr was born in Grozny, Chechnya and was four years old at the start of the First Chechen War. Her father was a Chechen nationalist, a Sufi Muslim and prominent commander and abrek fighting against the Russian Federation. She saw very little of him in the year of fighting, a year spent hiding and escaping. Her mother was the only focal point in her life during the traumatic war. Amira, of what she remembers of her mother, remembers a kindly woman, timid and often awkward at times, but regularly left her comfort zone to provide for her daughter. Who had proven to be a bright child, inquisitive with a thirst to read and learn. Her mother sought out to help her daughter in whatever way possible. It was, as she remembers in an ironic twisted way, the most normal period of her life.
At the end of the first war, Chechnya emerged as a sovereign state, but a state steeped in troubles. Organised crime, kidnappings, ravaged landscapes and a poor economy, feuding militia units that refused to stand down. Her family, despite being reunited, felt divided. Her father had always been a stern and quite man who seemed to have little time for children, but felt even more distant upon his return. Without exaggerating, Amira could count on both hands the amount of words he spoke to her upon his return.
It was a mere two years before the Second Chechen War would begin. And with it, the emergence of Mara.
As the war soon shifted from actual warfare to guerilla and insurgence tactics, Maria’s father became taking more interest in his growing daughter. Taking note of her intelligence and adaptability, and with no sons he ideally wanted to had taking up the fight after his demise, he began to groom her to take up the role of the foot soldier. An education that became accelerated with the disappearance of her mother.
Her mother, the grounded aspect of her life, disappeared one night, two months to the day before her thirteen birthday. The general census being that she had been a target of a Spetsnaz raid, a fairly common tactic that Russian Special Forces would target high profile insurgents via relatives or close connections. There were also some whispers that her father had been the cause of her mother’s disappearance, as some voices claimed, in hushed tones, that if he was to make his daughter into the perfect weapon. A poster child for the insurgence cause. Amira, who was a gentle and soft child at this point, who wanted nothing than to just be that, a child, to do what was necessary, he had to take measures to remove whatever traces of humanity there was.
Whatever the reason, it worked.
The adolescent grew under the tutelage of the now doting father and in time, Amira became proficient in weaponry, explosives and strategy. The loss of her mother had driven a primal hate in her, buried in the belief that men who claimed that her lands was theirs, carried off her mother. Making what should be an average sixteen-year-old girl into something cold and calculating, who had already killed more men than what most would had kissed and if she were to die the next day, she would be a martyr. At seventeen years of age, she was one of Russia’s most wanted terrorists.
Then came the advent of the super-human.
Amira found this discovery of humans that were beyond mere mortal constraints to be unfathomable. Her narrow and small world, which for so long had seemed to be the only thing in this universe to matter, seemed to be an utterly pointless exercise of futility. Where all the planning in the world, the months of preparation, and the most flawless of executions. Could be thwarted by one of these, “superheroes”, as if it a game cobbled together by boys with sticks.
The world was larger than her, larger than her war.
She decided to change that.
She left Chechnya behind. Quietly and suddenly, wondering if her mother had left for the same reason she had. That in the grand scheme it was pointless.
Slipping through into Georgia, and then onto Turkey, she eventually found her way to Munich, Germany. Where Maria Terloeva – Born Kursk, Russia – studied philosophy and psychology at the Ludwig Maximilian University, whilst also attending programs in regards to political science and sociology.
Then from Munich, she left for Paris, leaving Paris for China, then China for Japan. Japan for Brazil, so on, so forth. A patterned developed. A pattern of learning and progression.
Maria studied hard, learned quick, driven by a similar primal desire that had driven her in the past. Mara, a named derived from the Hindu goddess of Death, built an impressive portfolio. Her travels, mostly dedicated to business rather than pleasure, funded by the lucrative monopoly of selective killings – she entered the world’s stage as one of the finest assassins in the world. And while anyone could kill, Mara was clearly the notch above the rest and Maria, as far as anyone was considered, she is just a European with a penance for language and culture.
• Hero type: Normal
• Power Level: City Level
• Powers:
Maria is a woman of peak physical conditioning. Maintaining a rigorous regime to keep herself in such condition. She has proven to be an expert athlete, gymnast, acrobat, a master of stealth, possesses exceptional stamina, strength, agility, reflexes and coordination that would put an Olympic athlete to shame.
Being well versed in several martial arts, she is being a master of Sambo, Judo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Ninjutsu, Muay Thai, and Greco-Roman Wrestling, among other forms of fighting schools that she is knowledgeable in.
With a gifted intellect, she displays cunning and strategy, with a keen curiosity and forethought that allows her to map out the situation to know how to react perfectly; she knows and employs her intelligence well. She is also an adept liar, her background in physiological studies allowed her to develop the skill of physiological manipulation. One of her more milder intellect abilities is in computing and electronics, though she is no doubt outmatched by more seasoned veterans, she displays some affinity in hacking and the rigging of electronics. However, all electronic equipment she possess is of third-party make, though, she uses old outdated models she previously owned to keep herself educated.
Her most esteemed skillset however is her unrivalled affinity with weaponry. An unparalleled sharpshooter, Maria rarely misses, with perfect 20/20 vision; all bets are often down on a 10 out of 10 mark. She also has an extensive background catalogue with melee weapons, firearms and explosives. Her personal weapon is a highly self-modified SVD that has the capability to punch through all but the most resistant of materials.
She also enjoys the art of plant cultivation, vegetarian cooking, dog walking and reading of several topics and genres, of late her interest has led to space conquest and the universe…
However, those aren’t powers... Unless you consider the ability to maintain beautiful bonsai trees anything less than magical.
• Attributes
• Strength Level: Maria’s strength is built for combat situations and survivability. One wouldn’t expect her to go lifting a car or a bus, however, nor should one doubt her blow to not carry weight.
• Speed / Reaction: Her speed and reaction times are honed and crafted to compliment her strength and fighting prowess. Fluid and graceful, she would appear almost meta-human to the average person. However, she isn’t willing to grace someone the opportunity to prove the theory that she could dodge a bullet at point blank.
• Endurance: A background in guerrilla warfare provides one the endurance needed to survive desperate situations. Maria retains these teaching and displays uncanny endurance. With hyperventilation beforehand, Maria could potentially hold her breath underwater for up to twenty minutes. However, the longest she has gone is just under three.
• Agility: Maria’s flexibility, balance, co-ordination, matched with her speed and reflexes, is so great she could outdo an entire football team in an agility drill and not break a sweat.
• Intelligence: While she wouldn’t call herself a genius, she is certainly bright. She takes to topics that match her taste with a dedicated interest and seeks to learn as much as possible within the respective field.
What about her could be consider genius is that she is an expert deceiver and incomparable strategist. Mastering the concept of hiding in plain sight. She has forged over a dozen documents in her life, lived under several names and has numerous bank accounts open that store her substantial earnings. She lives under a mantra of, “Be everyone, be no-one.” A creed that has no doubt allowed her to survive unnoticed for so long, working and maintaining an intricate web that needs daily attention.
She is also a speaker of multiple languages, Chechen (Her native tongue), several Caucasian tongues, English, German, Russian, Arabic, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
• Fighting Skill: Maria is a peerless master of martial arts that prove she could even stand against the strongest of meta-humans for a duration. However, she is not one to seek out a confrontation. Her adaptability to situations, she allows someone to draw in close and make the first moves, throwing in some hits for good measure. She uses this probing phase to gather information before deciding on the next course of action. While she is certainly not one of the strongest around in this brave new world of heroes, she is the certainly one of the smartest.
• Resources: Maria, with her substantial earnings over the years, has managed to gain access to a spectrum of hardware and equipment. She maintains a broad area of caches located around the city of Lost Haven. These range from warehouse storage units, freight containers, to abandoned houses and rented apartments. She rotates her storage system regularly, usually monthly, clearing out her supplies, before ensuring any evidence is destroyed thoroughly. This ensures that tracking her down somewhat difficult task; however, this is not the most ideal of solutions. Of late, she’s been contemplating a location to set up a more established settlement for shop.
• Weakness: For all of her strengths, when the sun sets, Maria is ultimately human. And humans have limits.
She can be shot, she can bleed, she won’t heal at a miraculous rate and nor can she shoot thunder out of her fingertips.
And one day, she will die.
Maria’s dedication to crafting herself to the best possible form she can be seems to stem from her discovery of meta-humans. With that discovery, a sub-conscious obsession developed. Even if she may not display outright disdain for superheroes or creatures that display extraordinary talents, there might be a feeling of inadequacy within. Where she had been fighting a war since a young age with insurmountable odds and was, for a duration, Russia’s most wanted criminal, anyone of these meta-humans could have ended such conflicts within hours. Where she struggled to achieve the same objective in years.
This discovery was ultimately a trigger that led to who she is today, a vagabond assassin with a twisted moral code. And while she has never had the opportunity to meet one of these meta-humans. She has definitely paid close attention to their developments.
Supporting Characters:
Samuel Thompson; Maria's neighbour to her left, a minor annoyance, she is fully aware of his affections for her.
Amy Kirkpatrick; Maria's neighbour to her right, a slightly less annoyance than her neighbour on her right.
Tawara Assad Kadyr; Maria's father; still fighting his war back home, Maria does not know – nor does she care to know – if he is still alive or has perished yet.
Kheda Assad Kadyr; Maria's mother. Her location, fate, etc, are all unknown. Not that Maria has attempted to discover her mother's fate.
Summer; Maria's dog, a Bordie Collie. She's a good dog.
