"This is Mina Balik, pilot of PARAGON-12. How can I help?"

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"You guys make me cold just looking at you..."

Mina is a wolflike Hellion, possessing lupine features (though her tail is not as long as it appears in the image) and standing a little on the short and wiry side in terms of her size. She mostly dresses in neutral colored winter clothes, turtlenecks, trousers, and high-topped combat boots.

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"Everyone has a light in their soul. I've never believed otherwise."

It would be safe to say that Mina has a very cuddly personality; despite the nature of what she does Mina is quite kind and humble, never one to start a fight or bask in the limelight. She tries to see the best in everyone and although she is an avowed pacifist, she understands that what she does is a necessary evil to protect those she cares about and doesn't relish in harming or killing her enemies. While she is an exceptional pilot and fighter, she does have an issue with self-confidence stemming from her background and relative inexperience and can sometimes get emotionally overwhelmed in a tense situation, but when the chips are down her incredible capacity for hope in the face of insurmountable odds can weather any storm and power her forward.

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"I fight for the day when we'll never have to fight again."

Mina was born in a Deus Imperium labor camp on an icy planet, the conditions of which ensured that neither of her parents would survive to see her reach her first birthday. Orphaned and alone from the start, Mina was raised by older children and adults who survived the brutal conditions until the Ebott Alliance arrived and liberated the prisoners of the labor camp when Mina was eight. In the course of caring for the sick and starved prisoners, many of the orphans of the camp were adopted by the soldiers and freedom fighters who liberated them, and Mina was no exception, being adopted by the shark-like Hellion Meeko Balik. Gifted with a family and a new lease on life, Mina happily went to her new home, catching up on her education and the joys she missed in the internment camp as best she could and dreaming about what her future would hold for her now. Of course the future did have an answer for her when the routine testing given to all Ebott citizens on turning thirteen revealed that Mina possessed an unusually high amount of Vigor for her age.

Mina had heard of the PARAGONs before, regarded almost as legends by her friends and family, and she was rightfully floored when the government testing revealed that she was an excellent candidate for PARAGON piloting. Initially reluctant thanks to her pacifist tendencies, Mina was convinced to give the Ebott Alliances PARAGON training program a shot. Her success in the program surprised even herself, and the other pilots in the program, equal parts impressed and jealous, often commented on her prodigious talent as a PARAGON pilot. Assigned to the newly rebuilt PARAGON-12, Mina hadn't even officially finished her training before a surprise Deus assault forced Ebott to deploy every available soldier to the front. Fighting off the onslaught of Deus Imperium soldiers, Mina had already proven her mettle before she was separated and ambushed by the CRUSADER Emicho, a butcher whose skill as a pilot was matched only by his endless cruelty. Mina had already proven herself in the defense of Ebott but she became famous when the other pilots arrived to her rescue and found her still standing and fighting the more experienced and brutal Emicho to a standstill, allowing the Alliance to finally take down the war criminal once and for all. The duel against Emicho earned her the respect of her peers and the admiration of Ebott, and it gave her the right to name and customize her PARAGON to her liking.

Thus began the story of PARAGON-12, Rude Buster.

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"Rude Buster online!"



Mina is the pilot of the PARAGON-12 Rude Buster, a bipedal weapons platform equipped with an arsenal of weaponry and able to go toe to toe with even the most deadly of threats. Rude Buster is equipped with wrist-mounted Gatling cannons and an arsenal of rocket pods by default, and the Rude Buster can carry an arsenal of photon-powered Paragon-sized handheld weaponry, such as battle rifles and high-powered railguns. Defensively, PARAGONs are equipped with hardened armor plating and point defense systems, but the primary defense for PARAGONs is the Vigor Field, a metaphysical barrier that can protect a PARAGON from damage or harm fueled by the power of the pilot's Vigor. Rude Buster itself is a specialized PARAGON built as a bruiser, additionally hardened against close-range attacks and equipped with a PARAGON-sized warhammer for melee engagements.

Outside of the PARAGON Mina is no slouch as a combatant, having received standard combat and weapons training by the Ebott Alliance, and all pilots are equipped with a retractable combat dagger and the RLS-I percussive blaster as a sidearm. Like most pilots however, Mina is learning the nuances of utilizing her Vigor outside of the PARAGON suit, and can use it to perform bursts of superhuman feats, such as superhuman defenses and athleticism.

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"W-when did it get so dark..."

While Mina's Vigor can allow her to perform some impressive physical feats, her inexperience using it outside of the PARAGON doesn't make this a reliable ability for her, and without the benefits of that Vigor she's no less vulnerable then anyone else in a combat situation. When she is emotionally compromised her Vigor is effectively neutralized as well, making her ineffective inside and out of the PARAGON.

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"Nothing can stand against us if we have hope."

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"I’d better be getting paid for this shit."

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"Disappointed? Get used to it."

Standing at 5 feet and ten inches, Raven’s appearance hints at an indistinct lineage, with staight, jet-black hair, pale skin, and green eyes with a particular glare to them. She can typically be found wearing her black pilot’s suit, though she almost always wears a jacket and boots over it, because what kind of loser would be proud of wearing that skintight bullshit? Her dark gray Wolfhound jacket, made from synthetic leather, bears a white silhouette of the iconic canine logo on the back, and bears a small raven silhouette patched onto the left shoulder.

Her Shell, Crow-II, stands at about 20 feet tall. Humanoid in shape, heavily armed, and painted almost entirely black, its visor glows an eerie blue. Similar to Raven’s jacket, the mech has a silhouette of a raven painted onto its left shoulder.

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"Just don’t piss me off."

Raven is, at her best, tolerably abrasive. She never smiles, rarely laughs, and often glares at any attention directed her way. When working with others, she is cooperative, but by no means friendly. When she isn’t, she’s liable to snipe and vent depending on her mood.

Despite being a mercenary, she despises authority, the wealthy, and the privileged, working for them through clenched teeth. She holds some sympathy for the downtrodden, but has often been paid to stand against them, and can be counted on to look out for herself above all else.

She sees her personality and outlook as necessary in both her world and her line of work, but one might be led to believe that under years of hardship and morally questionable decisions lies a more considerate, compassionate soul. How much of that is left (or how much of it ever existed in the first place) is anyone’s guess.

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”Another day, another problem."

The Grand Union doesn’t have much data on Raven’s family or upbringing. Which is probably because she came from an underclass of laborers so low on the totem pole that they were considered completely worthless. As a driven idealist at this point in her life, Raven was determined to rise beyond her station even in a world where that seemed impossible.

Joining the Grand Union army at 15, Raven participated in a number of “peacekeeping” operations, mutant exterminations, and territorial skirmishes before being approved for pilot testing. Demonstrating an aptitude for Shells, Raven passed her tests and joined the mercenary organization WOLFHOUND, acquiring a Shell of her own via loan. She managed to build up an incredible record since then, taking on missions and upgrading her Shell to the point that she became well-known amongst her fellow mercenaries.

Of course, even she knows that it’s only a matter of time before the next big Shell pilot get shot down.

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"Let’s get this show on the road."

Shell Expertise

As a talented Shell pilot, Raven is comfortable behind the controls of almost all manners of mech, as well as with much of the maintenance associated with keeping them in working order.

Dragonshell: Crow-II

Formerly a standard Dragonshell model, its loan has since been repaid and many of its parts have been exchanged to create a quality, well-rounded Shell with few glaring weaknesses, featuring a plasma rifle, laser blade, missile launcher and grenade launcher as its’ armaments. It is a midweight bipedal model equipped with boosters that both aid movement on land and allow for limited flight.



Human +
Raven has received several internal implants designed to increase her efficiency as a shell pilot. Their main functions are to improve a pilot’s reaction time and manual dexterity as well as help guard against the strain of moving in a Shell. These implants are difficult to see, though the scars left behind from their surgery are not.

Manual Gear
A special cybernetic implant that allows a pilot to interface directly with their Shell, controlling it as if it were their own bodies. Doing this allows pilots to operate outside of the constraints of their Shells’ programmed movements and allows far more versatile movement, attack, and targeting, but as extended, use of this implant has been known to literally melt pilots’ brains, it isn’t used for more than a few seconds at a time.

Weapons
Raven carries a simple yet effective Grand Union plasma pistol as well as a knife, in case conflict arises outside her Shell.

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"I live in a fucking garage."

While Crow-II is a versatile and well-balanced Shell, it’s a jack of all trades, master of none affair. It can be easily outsped, outgunned, or outwalled by Shells built to capitalize on those abilities. Specifically, due to its minimalist cooling systems, it is rather vulnerable to extreme temperatures. It is also poorly suited to taking out smaller human targets, having been built to destroy other war machines.

Raven herself is a highly accomplished Shell pilot, but outside of her minor augments, her abilities outside a Shell are nothing impressive.

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"I'll do what what the contract says I do. No more, no less."

"Any squawk who ran was an apostate. Any squawk who stood still... was a well disciplined apostate."

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"I don't do eye for an eye. You take my eye, I'm taking off your entire head."

Miroslava Chára is a Caucasian human, standing at about 5'6'' and with a lean, muscular build evident of the time she has spent as a member of the Imperium Army. Due to the intense conditions of the jungle warfare on New Hanoi, the garrison of that planet eschew the standard Imperium uniform, instead wearing light, sleeveless armor painted with a woodland camo. It helps with both the searing heat and humidity of the planet, along with not sticking out like a sore thumb in case of a Resistance ambush.

Miroslava is a redhead, although she keeps her hair shortly cut, and hidden underneath her (New Hanoi) standard issue helmet. Likewise, she covers her ice blue eyes underneath a pair of aviator sunglasses, a coveted luxury item among the soldiers of the New Hanoi Garrison. However, Miroslava's most distinctive feature is the litany of burn marks that cover her entire body, but most prominently her face. These burn marks brought the attention of the chaplains of the Imperium Army, who exornated her as an example of someone going through a literal baptism of fire. Mirsoslava, meanwhile, actively despises that sort of attention, and has tried to dissuade the attempt to make her into some propaganda figure.

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"I don't need to fight to prove I'm right. I just enjoy it."

Both the experiences in the slums of Earth and the jungles of New Hanoi have caused Miroslava to turn inward away from people, as times has shown that getting too close to anyone will only cause emotional grief down the road when something eventually gets them killed. Resultantly, while she is a team player in her platoon (because being a rogue lone wolf is a one way ticket of being killed, or even fragged if you're that obnoxious!), she tries to keep her distance from other people, as a general policy.

Miroslava is a very vengeful person; although she isn't nessecairly quick to anger, she can hold that anger for an unhealthily long time. If she feels she has been slighted by someone, she will definitely try to seek out revenge for it. Depending on what the slight was, it could just be a minor payback, up to learning to use a whole new weapon in response to having been on the receiving side of it once.

Additionally, Miroslava has often used the jungles of New Hanoi as a way to solve her pent up anger issues in the past. When fighting, she can get into a bloodtrance, where the only thing that matters is killing every last enemy that is in front of her. And that definition of enemy can become... disturbingly broad, depending on the situation. While this trait was more than encouraged in the Imperium Army, this could serve to be more of a liability within the Initiative.

However, despite all of this, Miroslava has refused to buy into a lot of the Imperium propaganda. She's actually an atheist, and human supremacy doesn't really tickle her fantasy either. In fact, her experiences on Earth, and their naked hypocrisy related to the extreme wealth inequality on the planet, has turned her off from their ideals completely. No, she just fights on New Hanoi because, initially, she was forced to, and eventually, because she realized she felt the most free and alive out in the patrols. There's no ideological hatred, she just actually enjoys the fighting in a warped sense.

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"It's a holiday in New Hanoi compared to back home."

New Hanoi. A planet on the edge of the Deus Imperium. It was once the homeworld of a industrial-era, junglefowl-esque species known as the Minh (derisively called "squawks" by the occupying humans), who called the planet Sarvy. However, when humanity came to stop by for a visit, the Minh found themselves easily overwhelmed by their alien invaders, and Incorporated as yet another species in the ever growing category of Hellion.

However, many Minh refused to give up so easily, and fled from their cities into the thick jungles that permeate the entire planet. There, they formed what was known as Sarvy Liberation Front (or the Resistance, as Imperium intelligence calls them, or even apostates if they're being very cheeky.), and engaged in a guerrilla campaign to bleed the humans dry. There was debates on Earth whether or not to just glass the planet from space and call it a day, but discovery of rare flora that could prove to be useful for the treatment of diseases spared the planet's ecology from a gruesome fate. Instead, a colonial garrison was called up to suppress the rebellion, by any means necessary.

Miroslava Chára was born on Earth, in the slums of Bratislava. While many who live on the birthplace of humanity live in affluence unmatched by the rest of the Deus Imperium, many more live in an underclass which allows the rich and influential to live in their towers of ivory. In order to make ends meet as a youth, Miroslava ended up joining a street gang, engaging in bulgaries and extortion rackets to bring home an income. By 18, Miroslava had gotten herself involved in a shootout with the police, and was arrested after getting shot down. There, she was given an option: try to fight the charges and most likely get executed for her troubles, or quietly go "enlist" in the Imperium Army to serve as cannon fodder for god knows what conflict out of space. Given her prospects, Miroslava decided to go with the latter.

After a stressful time at boot camp, Miroslava found herself being shipped off to New Hanoi. With the high rate of attrition in the unforgiving jungles, it almost seemed like a death sentence in itself. But the Earthling took her punishment in stride, and boarded the transport to the planet. When she arrived, Miroslava was almost instantly shoved a rifle in a hand and told to board a gunship to go on a patrol.

That first patrol changed Miroslava's life. When her platoon saw a ramshack village, Miroslava's CO ordered the platoon to wipe it out. Without hesitation or even thinking, Miroslava's rifle spewed a hail of lead, killing anything that moved. And she enjoyed it. All the pent up rage that was in her body, finally came loose in the jungle, where it was expected for the infantry to shoot first and ask questions later. It didn't matter what was exactly in front of her; a squawk was a squawk, and they were the enemy.

During her three years on New Hanoi, Miroslava let the planet claim her humanity, and mold her into a new image. One time, she fragged an officer for issuing a stupid order that almost got her squad killed. Another time out, she was almost obliterated by a nasty case of friendly fire by Imperium artillery. However, probably the most important incident came from when Miroslava was spearheading an assault into a tunnel network used by the Resistance. Carelessly, she stepped into a wire, causing a firebomb to ignite. She'd survive, but her face was permanently disfigured by the ordeal. Scarred from the pain she went through, she immediately requested for training in flamethrower use. Miroslava was determined to return everything tenfold to the squawks for what they did.

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"This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine."

Z64 Assault Rifle - The standard issue assault rifle of Imperium forces on New Hanoi, it is a railgun with as many unnecessary electronic parts stripped away as possible in order to make it more reliable in the humid conditions of New Hanoi. The end result is a very reliable rifle that is still able to pack quite a punch due to the high velocity of discharged rounds. Its main drawback is a relatively low rate of fire, as the railgun has to both dissipate heat and charge between shots.

Mark 7 Flamethrower - The underlying technology behind a flamethrower has not changed since the First World War; it is simply a canister of flammable gas and liquid mixed together, and spewed from a special purpose gun which ignites the mixture. The Mark 7 is the design used by the Imperium Army, with it being quite the common sight in New Hanoi due to its ability to quickly burn away the foilage, and any squawks in the way. With an effective range of about 60 meters, the Mark 7 has one of the longest ranges employed by any human military, and it has a burn time of about fifteen seconds.

Fragmentation Grenade - Pull the pin, release the handle, toss it at the enemy, and watch it go boom. Useful for clearing out entrenched enemies.

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"I ain't no fortunate one."

Miroslava is, ultimately, just a random grunt in the Imperium Army. She has no vigor, she has no special magic or technology that makes her any special to the project. That is not to say that she is useless in a fight; far from it in fact. However, if an enemy can't be killed through shooting or burning it to death, Miroslava is probably going to have to sit on the sidelines of that fight.

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"Might as well have some fun before I die."

That isn't Nicotine she's smoking