[hider=Shiah Cuze][b]Name:[/b] Shiah Cuze [shy-ah cue-zuh]. [b]Gender:[/b] Female. [b]Age:[/b] 27. [b]Former Occupation:[/b] Narcotics cook. [b]Former Rank/Position:[/b] Supplier of the Deathrow gang. [b]Mental and Physical Traits:[/b] Cunning, clever, creative and capricious are the four C's that best describe the mind of Shiah. She was raised in the school of hard knocks and is brimming with so-called 'street smarts'. Despite the lack of any formal education she's achieved a high degree of skill in manufacturing the many illegal substances consumed by the Imperial citizenry and its armies for both pleasure and performance and has a talent for creating generally useful stuff from a box of scraps and some duct tape. These abilities weren't exactly conducive to saving her from the life of a hive ganger, of course, and she's used to having to watch her back and dealing with the Imperium's worst scum at every corner -- and she isn't exactly a sweetheart herself. [b]Appearance:[/b] Shiah is of middling height with the characteristic bone-thin, knife-sharp build of a hive ganger. Having partaken of her own produce perhaps once too often, it shows in her gaunt face and sallow skin, detracting from her otherwise good looks. Shiah has an expressive, angular face with large, almond-shaped blue eyes, pursed lips, arched brows and prominent cheekbones. Scars and syringe marks are commonplace on her body, but most are concentrated on her arms and legs. Last but not least is Shiah's hair, which is bleached in an alarming shade of bone white and cropped in a short pixie cut. [b]Wargear:[/b] Lascarbine Explosive Collar 2 Mono Knives 3 Frag Grenades 3 Krak Grenades 1 Flak Vest & Flak Helmet Imperial Guard Penal Legion Prisoner Uniform 1 Inhaler 1 Gas Mask Poor Weather Gear Rucksack Basic Tool Kit Mess Kit & Water Canteen 1 Weeks' Rations Blanket & Sleep Bag Rechargeable Lamp-Pack Micro-Bead Ident Tags ("Dog Tags") Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer [b]History:[/b] Born in the slime-slums of the industrial meatgrinder also known as Kahketton III, Shiah Cuze was doomed to a life of hardship and misery from her very first breaths. Both of her parents were drug-addicts and hive gangers, resorting to all manner of petty crime to survive. The primary gang that was active in their turf was the Deathrow gang, named after an archaic practice on ancient Terra in which convicts sentenced to death were not immediately summarily executed but instead had a lengthy appeal process available to them. As a name, it was a constant reminder of the harsh injustice (in their eyes, anyway) the Imperium of Mankind carried out everywhere in the grim darkness of the far future. Growing up, Shiah was always attracted to the power and value of the narcotics used by her parents and the other hive gangers and slumlords she was surrounded by. The amount of credits and favors the cooks were able to curry with the Deathrow gang and the others in the underhive was alluring, and in a dangerous world it seemed like the easiest way to guarantee her safety. Nobody wants to kill a skilled cook, considering they were few and far between. She was already begging and pleading with the cooks to be allowed to apprentice under them before she even hit puberty. It paid no fruit for a long time and Shiah had almost given up on the idea when she was finally accepted by Old Man Gornar on her sixteenth birthday -- as it turned out, the cooks had all seen her potential from a young age but agreed not to let her make any drugs until she 'turned of age'. Not all morals had eroded away from the fabric of the underhive, apparently. Shiah took to it with enthousiasm. She worked hard to remember the recipes, improve her techniques, understand the use of the chemistry equipment involved, and followed the black market price fluctuations closely. She was the first to predict the rise of Koma's popularity, a new drug that induced a near-comatose state and extremely vivid erotic hallucinations in the user, and urged Gornar on to produce more of it. When the quality of her Koma exceeded that of Gornar's, not long after Shiah's twenty-first birthday, the Old Man realized he had nothing left to teach the clever and creative girl and he set her up with his contacts in the Deathrow gang before retiring into obscurity. What followed were the five best years of Shiah's life. Working as the main supplier for the Deathrow gang gave her status and power within the underhive that her parents -- both dead from overdoses by now -- could never dream of. She grew in confidence and the rough edges of her personality developed into sharp edges; she reacted poorly to criticism, doling out harsh punishment for even the slightest of perceived transgressions, and her simmering greed turned into obsessive avarice fueled by the large and steady influx of credits from her produce. She was at the apex of power when she tried to broker a supply deal with an upperhive death cult known as the Eviscerated Spine that became her undoing. The death cult turned out to be a front for an Inquisitorial investigation that aimed to roll up the Deathrow gang. Shiah was arrested and given a choice; betray her comrades or die. Shiah immediately gave up everything she knew without hesitation, much more concerned about her own life than that of the other gangers. For her cooperation she was sent to a Penal World instead of being executed, where she awaits the next chapter of her life as the regret over her choices grows every day.[/hider]