Vander Pzypialkowski
<Nickname(s):/> N/A
<Gender:/> Female
<Age:/> 19 yrs, 10 months
<Occupation:/> Ex-student. Part-time dealer, full-time addict.
<District:/> 16
<Height:/> 5'10"
<Weight:/> 116 lbs
<Appearance:/> 
At first glance, Vander is unhealthy. Thin, with bags under her eyes and a tired posture. But look a little closer, and you'll see just how sorry a state she's truly in. An addiction to Lucid has left her as a walking skeleton. Although she's tall, she weighs barely eight stone. She is skin, bone, and quickly-decaying muscle. Lucid has long since burned away any hint of fat on her body. Beneath her clothing, the ridges of her spine and collarbone stick out like mountains. She needs a belt to keep her too-large jeans from sliding off her bony hips.
But despite the sorry state of her body, Vander is young. And hidden in the face of an addict are small details hinting that, under different circumstances, she could have been attractive. She has strong cheekbones, shapely eyebrows, a charming smile and an even more charming laugh. Her eyes are dark, a brown so deep it appears nearly black, with wide pupils.
Vander was born and raised in Zone Beta, and it presents itself in her sense of style. Her clothes are worn-out grunge with a heavy punk flair. Black jeans are held up by a studded belt, and complimented by a small collection of raglan shirts with the logos of varying rock and punk bands. Her face is adorned with several piercings; a silver brow stud, a trail of cartilage piercings through each ear, and heavily gauged ears. She doesn't remember the night that she elected to shave the left side of her hair off. It was sometime around the formation of her Lucid habit, but she's chosen to maintain the style.
<Personality:/>Despite a hardcore and edgy appearance, Vander is typically one of the sweetest people you'll come across. She's quiet and reserved, and avoids confrontation. She was homeschooled, and is still tremendously intelligent. She was sixteen when she took her graduate tests, and could have been accepted to any Zone Alpha university she chose. During her days as a dealer, she complimented her academic knowledge with a wealth of street smarts to get her through every negotiation she made. People liked Vander, and Vander liked people. Never once did she have a deal go sour.
In prior years, Vander has dabbled in a handful of street drugs. Cocaine gave her a bad high. Emotion tea was all right, but she never really got a feel for it. But Lucid. Lucid, she was hooked a week in, and the addiction has only intensified over time. She knows the drug will kill her, but she tries not to think about it. Because a Lucid addict dies one of two ways - overdose or withdrawal. And neither sounds pleasant.
<Biography:/>Zone Beta has never been a great place to hail from. District 16, in particular, contains every variety of scum-of-the-Earth. But for Vander, it's home. It's always been home. She was born there, and raised by her father; Dominic Pzypialkowski. A Zone Beta resident who'd settled for a small trade school after failing acceptance to the engineering program at his school of choice. She never learned her mother's name. The woman vanished from her life a week after Vander was born, leaving custody to her father.
For her childhood, home was a corner-apartment on the seventh floor. For the price of rent, it was a nice place. Vander's bedroom window gave her a view straight down one of the busier intersections in Sixteen. At night, the street was bright with neon signage and alive with people. But Vander was far more likely to be found staring at the pages of one of her books than looking at the city's nightlife. From a young age, she was academically gifted. Her father, Dominic, wasn't an unintelligent man. He encouraged her, and homeschooled her himself for many years. But by the time she turned twelve, her knowledge far surpassed what he was capable of teaching, and he turned to private tutors from Zone Alpha.
The Pzypialkowskis never had a nice apartment. They never went out to the movies or sit-down restaurants. Vander's clothes, and her father's, came from thrift stores. But when it came to Vander's education, no expense was spared. And she loved every moment of it. Maths came easily to her. Science even more so. At the age of sixteen, she took her graduate tests and received her high school diploma. In chemistry and biology, her grades put her in the 99th percentile of all New Ancora residents. Overall, she was in the 97th.
The next step should have been obvious. A degree in biochemistry and a lucrative career in Zone Alpha. But Vander wanted the best school, and even if she applied for every scholarship available and drained the college fund her father had set up, the tuition was miles out of reach. So she took a gap year to earn some money.
Vander was seventeen when she entered the drug trade.
She started simple. Easy things. Common things. The kind that anyone
could make, but no one wanted to get
caught making. She kept it secret from her father, not that he would have suspected. To him, it would have been merely another random science project. It only took a few months for Vander to establish the connections she needed. She snuck into nightclubs, met people, sold a little, and made small money. Then she made more, and her income increased. Enough that she was able to move out and still be able to put money away for school. She took up residency in a small apartment only a few blocks from her home.
One year after she first dipped her toes in the water, she met her business partner. Grey was twenty-five. He was charismatic, he knew the business, and he had a well-established clientele base. And, he liked Vander. Or he said he did, at least. Before too long, they were working together. Vander's chemical knowledge and easygoing personality made her an ideal asset for him. She helped him refine his lab technique, producing higher and purer yields, and worked as a middleman for him. When they weren't doing business, they were lovers.
The relationship was short-lived, but undoubtedly passionate. Grey was the first and only man Vander ever became involved with. Two months after they met, he introduced her to Lucid. The following week was filled with plenty of drugs, incredible highs, and even more incredible sex. And then he was gone, and Vander was left alone to cope with an addiction to one of the deadliest substances in the city.
In the past year, Vander has lost everything. Her savings account, previously full of hope for a college education, instead dwindled faster and faster as her habit became more and more difficult to sustain. She traded in her small apartment for an even smaller studio flat. She is now nineteen years old, and her body is wasting away. Her organs are slowly shutting down. When she isn't on the drug, the stomach cramps and migraine are unbearable. The rent hasn't been paid in two months, and an eviction notice will likely go up soon. She hasn't spoken to her father in a year. But the state of her apartment, her relation with her dad, none of it matters. The only thing Vander is immediately worried about is the fact that her stash of Lucid is dangerously low, and she has no money to replenish it.
<Other:/>More on Lucid:
Unquestionably, Lucid is considered one of the most dangerous recreational drugs in New Ancora. It is highly addictive, and withdrawals are frequently fatal. Once an addiction is established, the human body metabolizes the drug on a 48 hour cycle. The longer the drug habit is sustained, the more frequently injections are required. Eventually, most deaths come in one of two ways. A miscalculation results in an overdose, or an inability to financially sustain the addiction leads to fatal withdrawal.
Lucid is a mind-altering drug, capable of profoundly increasing sensory perception and mental capacities. Physical symptoms of withdrawal include body aches, tremors, perspiration, and migraines. Psychologically, withdrawal results in the world appearing 'dull' or 'fuzzy', and concentrating on a given task becomes difficult. Long-term usage results in increased metabolism, muscle atrophy, and eventual total organ failure. The prognosis for a casual user is four to five years, on the outside.
Vander's addiction is far from casual. She first encountered the drug a little over a year ago, and hit it hard. Today, her body craves the drug roughly every six hours. Sleeping through the night without a dose is impossible. The drug's effects are less potent, and the withdrawals far worse, than when she first started. At best guess, she has roughly a month before her body shuts down.
Lord Wyron