[hider=Private Charlene "Charlie" McDinny][b]Name:[/b] Private Charlene "Charlie" McDinny

[b]Age:[/b] 19

[b]Gender:[/b] Female

[b]Approximate Height & Weight:[/b] 5'2" and 112 lbs / 50 kgs

[B]Former Regiment:[/b] 107th Cadian Line Infantry

[b]Speciality:[/b] Line Infantry. [i]That's right, Charlie's whole job is to die so someone else doesn't. She's bad at it.[/i]

[b]Appearance:[/b] Charlie looks about as much like a soldier as an ork warboss looks like the picture of decorum. That is to say: [i]she doesn't.[/i] She's short, of average build at best, and has a perpetual grin on her face that switches between goofy, nervous, and terrified-but-trying-to-hide-it depending on her mood. She has trouble keeping a straight face, and she can only maintain good posture for a short while before she starts slouching, leaning, or worse.

Frankly, it's a marvel a commissar hasn't put a bullet in the young draftee's head already.

Charlie keeps her wiry brown hair cut fairly short, but any time her helmet comes off it poofs out wildly. She has pale skin, brown eyes, and a spattering of freckles over her body. The young soldier might be called 'mousy' or 'cute' by someone, maybe. Really, though, she's pretty plain and uninteresting to look at... unless someone's yelling at her. People find it pretty funny to watch her then.

[B]Uniform:[/b] Private McDinny's uniform is the same as that of any line infantry's: simple flak armor, a beige uniform underneath that, and a couple kneepads. The young woman has no medals, and her armor was probably made for someone a couple inches taller than her. Her helmet is also oversized.

Charlie's boots, at least, are appropriately sized, and that's probably the most important piece of gear anyway. They look to be worn and discolored but in otherwise good condition.

If there's one thing that stands out as 'odd' about Charlie's uniform, it's that she seems to have extra pouches on her belt for stashing more things. She also has hidden places on her uniform for the same reason, expressly where nobody can find them. Or... at least nobody has found her hidden stuff yet.

[B]Armament[/b]: Charlene's main weapon is her trusty M36 Kantrael Pattern Lasrifle. It's not a special lasgun. In fact, it's not even Charlene's lasgun; she broke her original weapon and took a new one off a dead guardsman's body. That's probably fine.

Charlie does, however, have several grenades on her person. She also keeps extra charge packs inside one of her belt pouches, and she has a bayonet for her lasgun, not that she's ever used it. She also has a Voss Pattern Hellpistol hidden on her person... also looted from the body of someone higher ranking than her with more experience. Hey, that guy wasn't using it!

Finally, Charlie has her, ah, [i]other[/i] pieces of gear from her life before the Imperial Guard. You know: lockpicks, false credit sticks, a few ounces of highly illegal drugs (for barter purposes only, of course), dice, a deck of cards, a hidden flask of amasec... You know, just the basic necessities.

[b]Personality/Demeanour:[/b] If there was a word that is never, ever used to describe Charlie, it's the word 'driven.' If there is a second word like that, it's the word 'brave.' She's neither of those things, and probably never will be.

Now, 'desperate' is a word that has been used to describe Charlie, for sure. She's a lot like a rat: prone to scurry away from danger, but as soon as she's cornered she lashes out wildly and recklessly. So far, both those instincts have kept her alive, and that's something Charlie is happy about. Dying is pretty low on her agenda.

When she's not screaming for help in the middle of a firefight, Charlie is lazy, congenial, and relatively easygoing. She's a sedentary creature that likes sitting around, reading, gambling, drinking, and thanking the Emperor she's survived one more day. Partying and disorderly conduct are in her nature, though nobody would call her a 'rebel' or anything. People [i]would[/i] call Charlie a bloody idiot, though.

Lastly, it's worth noting that Charlie turns very skittish and clams up around authority figures. She can't help it. When a Commissar or officer starts walking by, the young woman will immediately try to hide whatever stupid thing she was doing (because inevitably she IS always doing something stupid) and stand at attention for as long as she can, shivering and sweating like a felon awaiting her execution. Somehow, though, she's never been caught, or at least never been caught by someone that wanted to execute her.

Really, [i]how[/i] is she still alive?

[B]Greatest Ambition:[/b] Desertion. No, really. If Charlie had the perfect opportunity to jump aboard a ship taking her literally [i]anywhere else,[/i] she'd probably do that. She doesn't want to die fighting in some war. She just wants to go home, or... really, anywhere that's not a warzone.

Charlie doesn't think about the future too much, so any bigger ambitions are outside the scope of her thought processes. However, she'd love to be rich, fat, and in a palace somewhere. It won't ever happen, but she'd LIKE that.

[B]Greatest Hatred:[/b] There are three things Charlie truly hates: Chaos, the Inquisition, and debt. Of these, Chaos is the one she hates the most; she won't stand for anything resembling heresy and it's the one thing that's liable to make her run to a commissar instead of running [i]from[/i] a commissar. 

Debt and the inquisition come pretty close behind Chaos, though.

[b]Skills:[/b] The most notable skill that Charlie has isn't even a skill [i]she[/i] knows she has. In fact, very few people even have a [i]hint[/i] that she might have it. Charlie is a psyker.

Oh, but Charlie isn't just any old Psyker. She has a very specific power: the young woman controls luck. It's a latent ability, uncontrolled because she doesn't know she has it, but it's the chief reason she's still alive despite all the stupid things she keeps doing. 

Of course, Charlie's luck doesn't always work out for the better. Yes, it keeps bullets from hitting her usually; and it's led to her getting some lucky hits when firing blindly from behind cover. Yes, her power keeps the officers from finding her illegal stash of drugs, and it did cause a commissar to get shot in the head by a stray bullet that ricocheted off the ceiling, into the wall, and then into his head [i]just[/i] before he pulled the trigger and killed her. Yes, that's all true. But her weird luck is [i]also[/i] why the tiny woman wound up in the Cadian 107th Line Infantry in the first place. She's not even FROM Cadia, dammit!

Other than that, Charlie's skills as a soldier are unremarkable. She's about average with a lasgun. She's gotten decent at chucking grenades. However, her real skills are survival skills: looting, scavenging, breaking into places she shouldn't be in, hiding, spotting secret compartments... and, most importantly, [i]not getting shot.[/i] That's her real advantage, and another reason why she's still alive. Private McDinny picked those skills up over a life of no-goodery.

All-in-all, she makes a rather typical guardsman when you get down to it.

[b]History:[/b] Charlene McDinny was born on a small Hive World called Ilirium VI. Its name makes it sound fancier than it really is: a dingy, dusty planet pockmarked by some large cities. Its colorful scenery included smog, skyscrapers, smog, deserts, smog, sprawling slums, and more smog. The presence of the Astra Militarium was fairly minimal, and no Astartes Chapters touched the planet's foul residents with a ten foot pole. Exterminatus might have been a mercy for its denizens given that their chief pastimes were being robbed. Its governor had a racket going with some smugglers and rogue traders that was very much not legal.

Charlene was just one of many impoverished citizens on the planet. She survived by stealing and scavenging and occasionally doing actual [i]work[/i], but that was a rarity because there was so little work available. She decided pretty quickly that leaving the planet would be a good idea. So, that's exactly what she did: she snuck onto a Rogue Trader's ship and jumped into a box of food rations. She figured she'd jump ship at the next planet and run off to live her life free and... something. The future is [i]hard[/i] to think about, okay?

Chance, of course, reared its ugly head. The Rogue Trader was actually bringing arms and munitions to the 107th Cadian Line Infantry Regiment, and through a series of unlikely events Charlene found herself being drafted. Apparently they thought she was a "Charlie McDinny" from Cadia who had enlisted, which was lucky because if they had realized she was actually a stowaway she'd probably have been shot on the spot. Charlene never found out what happened to the real Charlie.

So, "Charlie" was forced to fight in the grueling war against Warboss Mug Thrakta. That wasn't fun. She almost died several times, but somehow always got out clean. Then she was assigned as a replacement infantryman for the 88th Cadian Mechanized Infantry because of the staggering casualties they had suffered, which meant she was cannon fodder destined to die. Still, she somehow avoided being another body for the pyre, in no way due to any bravery or heroism on her part. No, she mostly was lucky, knew where to hide, and managed to kill several orkz by pure happenstance.

Now there's a parade to happen, and Charlie hopes parade means "party." She's never seen a parade before. The lucky soldier assumes it means there's a festival or something, because she's heard about those, and supposedly they have good food. Yeah, she could go for a proper sandwich...

[b]Miscellaneous:[/b] Feel free to use Charlie's luck manipulation at your whim, either for or against her! Whether it be used to make something unbelievable happen, to give her a sudden spike of consequences, or to just move the story forward by some happenstance is fine with me![/hider]