PEW! PEW! | Identity | - Duela Dent | Origin & Backstory | =Early life/High School= The Dent family is a lineage that has existed for as long as anyone can remember, however in the past few decades a great divide has formed, splinting the family into two separate entities. Whilst one adopts very liberal views, believing that all are equal, and taking a very positive outlook on humanity as a whole, the other half are extreme right wing perfectionists; believing in superiority for those who have earned it and taking social inequality to the extreme. Not so long ago, a young Duela Dent was born into the borderline fascist half of the family. Duela’s father was the leader of one of Gothams primary right wing political groups, and given the families perfectionist nature, she was pretty much raised to be a trophy bride; being taught lessons in etiquette and being made to value beauty above all else, whilst her parents tried their best to scrub out any signs of a unique personality that were manifesting within their child. When Duela was diagnosed with dyslexia, and mild autism, her parents did their best to make sure it was hidden from the public eye; viewing her condition as a festering stain on what they believed to be a shining example of the best of the new generation. Another issue occurred for the couple, when it became apparent to them that their daughter engaged in activities that they deemed unacceptable and inappropriate, for example; Trapping spiders inside light bulbs, luring in birds, and then breaking their necks, setting traps for rodents, and then breaking their necks, and sharpening sticks to use as weapons. However, after some –SEVRE- discouragement and scolding, Duela’s parents managed to “dissuade” their daughter from partaking in such activities again, continuing to mould their daughter as they wished, but oppressing some of her inner most emotions in the process. For a while after that, everything seemed to be sailing smoothly, up until the point that Duela begun to dress in a very tomboyish manner, and was constantly getting into vicious scuff ups in the school playground, with both girls and boys up to twice her age. Once again her parents clamped down on her erratic behaviour, forcing their daughter to conduct herself in the way that they wished, and once again Duela begun to develop more problems inwardly, and with no one to turn to, her issues begun to grow and fester, building up inside her. By the time she reached High school, Duela had become painfully aware that she had very few friends, and those that she did have were far more to her parents liking than her own. The young girl attempted to branch out and make more friends by using humour, and becoming the class clown, however not only was she not particularly funny, but her parents quickly found out and put a stop to her apparent mischief. As she started to progress through high school, she started to sway towards depression, and begun to express herself through dramatic arts and creative writing. She tried her hand at painting, but found that it was far from her forte. Her scientific knowledge was lacking, and her mathematical skills were that of someone a good few years below her-which was the cause of most of the bullying she received throughout her school life-, but she did find some solace in the acting and writing she had grown to love so much, finding those skills to be that which she excelled at, grades wise. More problems begun to arise for Duela when she started dating boys in her school, and it became apparent to the young teenager that she was only ever asked out based on her looks, and that no one particularly cared for her short stories, love of poetry, or constant jokes. Deciding that she would never find a boy who loved her for who she was, Duela begun to swing more towards the female persuasion, but once word travelled back to her parents, they had her strictly disciplined; deciding that their daughter possibly having an interest in women could potentially weaken the strong support that traditionalist religious groups in Gotham gave her father’s political party. As she begun to feel more and more isolated from everyone around her, Duela begun to self-harm; finding some sort of relief in cutting herself, as though she could simply forget all of her troubles, and escape from reality. After a particularly unsuccessful string of dates, with boys she’d never even cared for in the first place, Duela started to believe that all of the ideals that her parents had clung to so strongly, were wrong, becoming obsessed with the idea that ugly was beautiful, and that repulsion was the strongest form of attraction. She became anorexic, and through frequenting the more shady parts of Gotham, without her parents knowledge, begun to develop drug addictions, which begun to show on her withering body. When her parents tried to intervene she rebelled to the extreme, taking a box cutter and carving delicate scars into her now porcelain white skin, all the while believing that she was enhancing her beauty. Her parents were horrified; immediately sending Duela to have surgery to fix her scarred face, however whilst she was under local anaesthetic, she struggled violently as the doctors were operating her, twisting her already damaged visage into something far more broken and warped, leaving one side of her face in a state of disrepair. The young girl’s mother and father were driven over the edge by the sight of what their daughter had become. When the family returned home, Duela overheard her parents discussing plans to send her away to a specialist mental institute, and so she fled off into the night. Upon discovering their daughter’s disappearance, her parents announced that she was dead, and to the public eye this was the day Duela Dent died. =Life in the Nethers= After fleeing her parents, Duela eventually made her way to the Nethers; Originally a small cave network that was home to a medium sized community of homeless clans, that lived together in relative peace and cooperated in times of hardship, before falling into a dire state when criminals begun to operate out of them as a way of avoiding detection by the law, before plummeting even further into chaos, when escaped Arkham Asylum inmates decided to build their homes within the Caves. After many years the Nether’s had been dug into a series of twisted underground passages, that ran beneath the entirety of Gotham city, inhabited by a whole mass of uncouth individuals, perverted scum and those who simply had nowhere else to turn to, having hit rock bottom in both the figurative and literal sense. She carved out a life for herself within her new home; scavenging for food, and occasionally trafficking illegal substances to the surface-for some of the criminals who had decided to set up shop in the nethers, in order to avoid detection from the law-, in return for a chance to sample the wares, so that she could occasionally placate her drug addictions. As time went on she began to learn where each and every tunnel led, and how to access them all. She utilized her knowledge well, and used the tunnels to remain hidden from others, so as to not draw unwanted attention to herself. After spending a few months in her newfound place of residence, Duela found a sickly looking cat in an old, long abandoned tunnel, who she instantly felt drawn towards. The cat should similar affection towards the scarred girl, and soon the pair became inseparable; the ugly cat rarely leaving its new mistresses’ side, and always returning when it did. When a small gang of two-bit criminals moved in on Duela’s plot of land and demanded that she start paying tax to them, she responded with extreme prejudice. Using her now considerable knowledge of the tunnel network to her advantage, she begun to disrupt their trade routes, and pick off a few of the bruisers they sent out into the Nethers, to try and intimidate others into working for them. After a week or so of skirmishes, the group was significantly weakened, and so Duela took the opportunity to sneak into their encampment at night-time, and slit their leader’s throat. By the time the gang members had awoken they found their leader dead and quickly fell into disarray. Duela took the opportunity to seize control of the small group, ordering them to resume their previous operations, now enhanced by Duela’s knowledge of the tunnel networks. The next few years were an uphill struggle for Duela; As her gang begun to seize more and more land, they would attract the attention of larger and better equipped groups, who would try and either envelop or obliterate them, but eventually wind up being beaten by the young girls stealthily methods, and end becoming consumed by Duela’s own gang. However every time they bested one threat, another would present itself, and Duela constantly found herself ending up in large and very costly conflicts. It was becoming apparent that Duela’s position in the Nether’s was slipping, and so she devised a plan to ensure her survival. Noticing that each of the clans seemed to work in a patriarchal style, Duela would infiltrate the different group’s encampments before stirring up the female population, causing them to rebel against the oppressive males, and then calling upon what was left of her original tribe to come and bolster the various Coups that she had been the architect of, managing to overthrow the current leaders by force. Duela continued to employ this system where ether she could, steadily starting to win over the Nether’s piece by piece, with her now matriarchal group becoming increasingly more powerful. Through various different methods the young girl eventually ended up in a position where her group had grown into one of the largest and most influential within the Nethers, but rather than decide to try and wage war on the remaining factions, she instead turned her attention to the city above her. Tempting many with promises of food, shelter, and even wealth, Duela managed to start a sort of call-to-arms; rallying as many individuals as she could, before leading a series of stealthily attacks on the world above; raiding supermarkets, gun stores, stock houses and even pharmacists, and gathering enough supplies to make her increasingly growing group sustainable, whilst still keeping her female hierarchy in place. When Duela became a growing issue, the law started to try and crack down on her random attacks, but given the sheer spontaneity of them, and the way in which she utilized the tunnel networks to her advance, she had become near to impossible to detect. The sudden influx of power and authority driving her even further into madness, Duela begun to set her sights on the city above, longing to cease control of Gotham, and to establish herself as the ruler of an empire that extend beyond underground caves and sewage tunnels. Striking deals with everybody from the Falcone’s to private arms dealers-whilst keeping her motives a closely guarded secret-, the psychotic teenager manager to acquire a large quantity of high-powered weaponry, readying her cabal for an all-out siege on the surface world. Unbenounced to the self-proclaimed empress of the Nether’s, an anonymous snitch had informed the authorities of the planned attack, prompting them to dispatch an anti-terrorist squad into the network of tunnels beneath Gotham, tasked with purging, or at the very least dispersing, Duela’s war band. As soon as the first few shots were fired, the only recently established matriarchal society began to collapse into riotous disarray, forcing Duela’s fractured mind to realize how ultimately flawed her grand plan had been. Using the ensuing confusion to slip away unnoticed, the scarred young girl fled the scene of her crumbling dystopia, cambering away into the darkness. | Character Notes | - | Powers & Abilities | - Duela possesses no powers, meta-human or otherwise, however she is apt at manipulating both people and situations to better suit her, using a large variety of different methods. While not intelligent perhaps in the traditional sense, her years in the nethers beneath Gotham have given her considerable street smarts. She is rather guile, and while she might not have any martial arts training she has learnt how to defend herself over the years. | How is this character different? | -. I think the primary flaw with The Dark Knight #23.4 was that it had to try and tell a very complex origin story in a £2 comic, and so there wasn’t very much room for character building. I have tried to rectify that, by giving Duela’s backstory a bit more flavour, as well as perhaps making her easier to sympathise with as a character. I’ve also added a few twists and turns, to try and make the character my own. | What is your goal with this character? | - To stir up abit of anarchy (ICly of course), and to try and build a villain from the bottom up, instead of starting the game with a miniature criminal empire. | Sample Post | The mass of scars that criss-crossed the surface of her wounded face throbbed with an un-yielding pain, not at all helped by the fact that she had managed to draw blood whilst trying to cull the agony that was infesting her likeness, by raking her own skin with her bestial nails, in a similar fashion to which an infant might scratch at their chicken pox, yet with the fiery strength and vigour of an enraged jungle cat. Running her serpentine tongue over her fang-like teeth, Duela surveyed the situation before her with a hawk-like gaze. There was an air of silence lingering throughout the establishment, yet the atmosphere was the farthest thing from calm; an unspoken hostility ever-present, visible in the patrons hunched body language, and the burning electricity in their squinting eyes. Her long fingers scrapping over the blemished glass of her cup, Duela pulled back the woollen scarf that was covering her deformed visage, taking a lingering sip of bourbon, hoping that it would in some way contribute to numbing the blistering pain in her face. Pulling the scarf back into place, she gently placed the glass back on her booths table, letting her posture slip as she reclined backwards. There were no more than a handful of people in the bar, which made it the perfect place for Duela to lay low, at least until the heat died down. Unfortunately for the young fugitive, a sudden gust of cold air from the world outside, blown in as the bars front door swung violently open, followed by the entrance of a rugged looking figure in a trench coat and weather beaten fedora, soon indicated that she was perhaps not as well hidden as she had previously believed. She recognised him. She’d seen him before somewhere. She’d first caught sight of him a few days after she’d hauled her ass out of the Nethers, catching a brief glimpse of a faint silhouette in an un-stylish hat, as he trailed her in his worn out hatchback, and he’d been tailing her ever since, never more than a few steps behind. She wasn’t sure if he’d been hired privately or if he was ununiformed GCPD, but she was certain that he hadn’t been in the exact same place as her for the past week by sheer coincidence. Duela watched as she slowly made his way over to the counter, presumably to question the barkeeper as to if he’d seen her, his eyes darting from place to place, taking in everything around him. At this point in time Duela was particularly thankful that her booth was shrouded by the flickering shadow that was cast by the bars dimly glowing lights. Her pulse was quickening, and her breathing was becoming increasingly rapid. Steadying her nerves, Duela downed was little of her bourbon remained, before cautiously making her way across the bar, setting her sights on the front door, all the while making sure to try and keep herself out of sight. Her rudimentary combination of scarf and hoodie might work well enough against strangers, but she doubted it would do much to fool the prying eyes of someone who knew what they were looking, almost certain that her coat-wearing pursuer would be able to see right through her masquerade, should he catch sight of her. She was contemplating making a mad dash for the door, but didn’t fancy running the risk of drawing any more unwanted attention and potentially ending up with her own personal stalker for the rest of God-knows-how-long, and so she took one careful step after the other, drawing ever closer to the door, and to freedom. Reaching the foot of the bar, Duela made a special effort to shuffle past her trench-coat clad friend, watching cautiously from the shadows as he spoke to the barkeeper, whilst attempting to look as inconspicuous as possible. A mere few steps from salvation, Duela could practically feel the outside breeze against her wound-ridden flesh, the beat of her black heart quickening tenfold inside her. Duela took a confident stride forwards, only to have her hopes suddenly and brutally crushed as she felt a firm hand clamp down on her lean shoulder. Cursing under her breath, Duela reluctantly turned around, now face-to-face with her pursuer, catching a brief glimpse of the barkeeper out of the corner of her eye, noticing as he watched both of them from his station behind the counter, one eyebrow arched with curiosity. The trench coat wearing man grinned through broken yellow teeth, dark stubble clinging to his beefy chin. Flaring his nostrils, the broad man recoiled slightly, even going so far as to make a slight gagging sound. “You don’t ‘alf stink love…” He observed bluntly. She hadn’t had the chance to wash the stench of the sewers off of her. She wondered if that had tipped him off, or if he’d always know she was here. “Mind taking off that pretty lil’ scarf and showin’ us what’s unda’neath?” He asked in a manner that clearly indicated his query was a demand and not a request. By this point in time they were starting to draw the interest of more than a few of the bars patrons, and she could feel their iniquitous eyes bearing down on her, even without looking. It reminded her of her time back at Gotham High, when those pricks had intruded on her personal space with their indiscreet staring, thriving off of her humiliation. The resurfacing of old memories made her skin crawl, and she suddenly felt like vomiting. Steadily raising one hand to her mouth, Duela slowly begun to unravel her scarf, her eyes franticly searching for a means of escape, her heart beating faster and faster. Trench coat man gawked at her with his piggy little eyes, an obnoxious smile that glowed unbearably with self-infatuation plastered across his pudgy face. He thought he’d won. She’d show him otherwise. Spying an empty beer bottle on the counter, Duela’s one free hand shot forwards, snatching the bottle up off of the counter, before smashing it into the side of trench coat man’s smug face. He let out a startled gasp as the brittle glass shattered on his ugly mug, causing him to stumble and lose his footing, momentarily losing his hold on her as he fell to the floor. Tearing herself away from the scene that was unfolding, Duela bolted towards the door, hearing the sugar sweet sound of her stalker loudly swear as he noticed the steady trail of blood that was oozing from a brand new hole in his stupid head, followed by the fairly amusing awkward yelp from the barkeeper as he instructed the pair of them to “take it outside”, stammering in a broken voice. At this point in time most of the other patrons were up and out of their seats, transfixed by the sight of the injured man scrambling uneasily to his feet, and of the young girl who was making a speedy escape. During the ruckus Duela’s scarf had come loose, and as she burst out of the establishment, dashing forth into the streets beyond, her warped face was exposed for all to see, her miss-matched eyes glistening in the pale moonlight, a mischievous grin gracing her plump lips.