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Player Name: Corsair
Character You Wish To Play: Natasha Romanova, Black Widow
Moral Alignment (Hero, Villain, Walking the Line): Hero
Affiliation: S.H.I.E.L.D.

Character Origin & Backstory: Who is the Black Widow? Well, if you asked the average person on the street they'd give you a look like you'd grown a second head, and ask "Who?" Ask someone in the right place, say, an analyst for the NSA or an old operator for Mossad (and actually get them to talk) and you'd get an interesting story.

Black Widow is an urban legend of the intelligence community. A Russian operative that predates the formation of the KGB, supposedly going all the way back to the Red Revolution, the most feared agent Russia had, a shadow that swept across the world, foiling Western plots in Moscow, confounding pursuers in Paris, and delivering defeat after defeat to agencies from the OSS to Shin Bet, a single terrifying figure over an impossibly long lifetime.

If you asked one person, and by some miracle she was honest, she'd tell a subtly different story. She was born in '28, lost her family in '42, and was recruited by the NKVD in '43. The particulars of these stories she glosses over, dismissing them as irrelevant at this point, eighty years hence. Her memories are a bit hazy of this period, she knows she spent most of the late '40s being trained, but she can't remember much of the details, just this image of a room lit by a single dim, red bulb. She knows that they did something to her body, did tests on her - she still has scars from the needles.

She spent most of the Cold War alternately chasing and being chased by agents of various spy agencies, and occasionally having her skills as an assassin put to use against the enemies of the state. She isn't proud of it, but she terminated dozens of potentially dangerous individuals during those years - a mixture of rebellious nationals of various Warsaw Pact states, problem members of the Communist Party, and Western operatives.

Nothing much seemed to change after the fall of the Soviet Union, Black Widow's masters continued their activities, but in the political fallout surrounding the collapse of the Warsaw Pact it became clearer to her that her activities were not serving to shore up the system, only sowing more chaos. To what ends she was never sure, but it was certainly nothing good. Over time their activities grew to more closely resemble terrorism than intelligence work. Her memories are spotty around this point, and she is reasonably certain that her masters were using some technique to wipe her recent memories, or possibly dosing her on some form of mind control drug - perhaps both.

In 2003, during an operation to stir up trouble in northern Afghanistan, Widow witnessed a British soldier rush into a blazing house to rescue a girl. The sight triggered a memory she had buried, of her own orphaning during the Battle of Stalingrad over sixty years before, and the heroic Red Army soldier who had selflessly rescued her from that blaze despite the danger. The conditioning that had ruled Widow's mind for decades cracked, and instead of continuing her mission she lowered her weapons and walked away, eventually finding her way to Hong Kong.

With the drugs the KGB had used to control her breaking down and leaving her system and the conditioning they had laid crumbling by years of doubt and one surging, emotional memory, she found herself confronting all the terrible acts she had done, the ones she could remember and the ones they had wiped away. For a time, Natasha Romanova tried to live a life as a normal person, but the guilt gnawed at her and would not let her rest.

In early 2005, about sixteen months since her departure from the KGB she turned herself into CIA custody - a fairly simple matter, appearing in the Director's office and revealing yourself to be The Black Widow is pretty convincing - and shortly thereafter being transferred into the holding facility for a secret organization who seemed more interested in what she knew and what she was than who she was - another example of the then-fledgling Superhumans, an artificial one in this case, but Superhuman nonetheless, and the first sign of an organized, hostile group with access to Superhumans.

Despite the suspicion she bore when Black Widow offered her services to that secret group it was accepted, and she has served with them since. Five years after her joining they revealed themselves to the world, becoming a publically known group, but Black Widow's role within S.H.I.E.L.D. remained as secret as the woman herself.

Powers and Abilities: Black Widow has over fifty years of experience in the world of espionage, and as far as she's concerned her tradecraft is second to none. She's a flawless liar, easily able to perfectly mask and fake any emotion the human mind can process and display, knows a library's worth of interrogation strategies - ranging from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s western-favored techniques to the KGB's more direct approach, and is ready and willing to use either at any time. Widow's a master of disguise, able to bury herself into a cover identity and change her voice, her stance, her walk, even the subtle way she holds her face to make identifying her more difficult. With access to cosmetic tools and various gadgets she can do far more.

She has training in martial arts ranging from Judo and Aikido to Sambo and Savate. In addition she is a master athlete, with remarkable speed and endurance, incredible flexibility and gymnastic skill, and is a master marksman with all styles of firearms, as well as training with a number of melee weapons - mostly knives and bayonets, but with a firm grounding in how to turn any object in her environment into a weapon, ranging from beating an opponent with a lead pipe to flinging them into hot pipes or live stovetops. 

During her time with the Red Room Natasha endured a great deal of experimentation to enhance her capabilities, most notably a Russian knockoff of Captain America's Super-Serum. As a result her aging process has been slowed to 1/20th of the Human norm - despite being in her eighties her body remains the same as it was in her mid twenties. The serum has also granted her a supercharged immune system, she is effectively immune to infection and disease. Her other systems are similarly resistant to attack, protecting her from poison and intoxication from most sources, although weapons like sarin gas are still lethal to her, just slower. The serum grants her a strength more expected on a muscular man twice her size, stronger bones and tissues, and contributes greatly to her exceptional speed, endurance, dexterity, and reflexes. 

She has a keen intellect, although she's not about to start poking holes in relativity - that's not her expertise, and she's nothing compared to someone like Stark or Richards. Her intelligence is better suited to the moment, the eminently practical and visible rather than the theoretical. She's a skillful tactician, easily capable of keeping track of numerous variables in a chaotic situation. 

Sample Story Arcs: The Avengers: Widow's expertise would be invaluable to the Avengers, particularly if they were a S.H.I.E.L.D. backed organization as in the comics - in which case she would be an instrumental part in gathering the team. If they are not, it leaves potential for a story regarding Widow's conflict of loyalties, torn between her fellow heroes and her S.H.I.E.L.D. employers.

The Red Room: The secret branch of the KGB, still active even after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the ones who created the Black Widow. They have an investment and they aren't about to just let it go, it's likely they've spent the intervening years trying to find her. The Red Room could potentially be tied to HYDRA, certainly their methods are ghastly enough.

Price of Redemption: Black Widow has done some awful things in her past, some of which even she can't remember thanks to the tampering of the Red Room. Any number of people, organizations, and causes have been harmed by her activities during her decades with the KGB, and any number may want justice or revenge.

Sample Post: The interrogation room wasn't much to speak of. Widow was used to that, she felt like there were only two types of interrogation rooms - dirty ratholes, the kind you see in insurgent camps and North Korea, where the roof is cracked and the walls are mildewed and it hasn't so much as been hosed out since it was built, and the sterile, gray concrete kind with the drain in the floor. There was a narrow table in the middle of the room, and two chairs bolted to the floor. Her wrists were chained to the table, and even her prodigious strength couldn't budge it. There was a similar restraint binding her ankles to the chair, and the chair was pretty well secured into the floor, certainly tougher than the meager strength she could put into it from this position.

They'd let her stew in here for a few hours. Familiar turf, everyone did that. She'd taken the time to get a little sleep - that had also served to test the waters. If someone had come in, slammed the table, played a few blasts of loud music, and so on, they intended to make this unpleasant. But nothing, just an hour of blissful if uncomfortable silence.

When she opened her eyes she wasn't alone. A man in a cheap suit sat across from her. He looked like an accountant - receding brown hair with some gray creeping in, a face that had no real noticeable features, a cheap dark suit with a blue and gray striped tie. He was the kind of person your eyes just pass over, not even really registering they were there. Forty or so, she'd guess. Closer examination showed more to him - the slight bulge of a shoulder holster, a neck that showed defined muscle, and eyes that were as cold as ice and as focused as a laser.

"You say you're the Black Widow." 

A sarcastic quip came to mind, but she suppressed it. That was really not the tack she wanted to take here. "I am. My name - at least, I think my name is Natasha Romanova."

He picked up a binder about a foot thick and dropped it on the table. She could read the front of it - BLACK WIDOW, in big bold characters. "We've been tracking your movements since the 1950s. Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Iran, Libya, Afghanistan, the list goes on. I have a man who put an arrow in your chest two years ago. How are you still alive?"

An arrow? She winced at the memory, remembering the operation in Budapest, that damn archer. She still had the scar from that arrow.

"The KGB gave me a serum, a long time ago. Something they stole, something like what the Americans used to make Captain America."

If that surprised The Accountant he didn't show it. He nodded. "That's very interesting, Miss Romanova." He reached down to his side and picked up a small metal briefcase, setting it on the table and opening it, withdrawing a syringe. "We'll need to have your blood analyzed. Please don't resist." His voice was as even as if he was telling her about the soup special, then he stood, walked around to her, and slid the needle into her forearm, easily finding the vein without any assistance from a tourniquet. A moment later he withdrew it, removed the vial from the syringe, and headed for the door, handing it to someone outside before returning to his seat.

"Let's talk about Korea."

It was a very, very long interrogation.

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