[quote=@Hank]
At last, I have done the thing. 

[hider=Delilah Reed][center][color=dadada][sub][color=BABABA]DELILAH REED[/color]
 33 [color=BABABA]⟁[/color] FEMALE [color=BABABA]⟁[/color] HUMAN [color=BABABA]⟁[/color] ADEPT [/sub][/color][/center]


[color=BABABA][sub]A P P E A R A N C E[/sub][/color][hr]
[center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/97/10/06/971006f66917349a9f037916c3d4ec12.jpg[/img][/center]

[indent]Fairly typical for a human female in the 22nd millennium, Delilah Reed measures 5’7” (170cm). Less typical is that she clocks in at only 110 pounds (50kg). She lacks both the toned athleticism of hard living or the healthy fat of good living because of her chronic health problems, which sees her perpetually thin and mildly underweight. If one were to get the chance, they would be able to count each of her ribs individually. Delilah’s elbows and knees jut out of their respective limbs as hard nubs of bone and the tendons on the back of her hands stand out like the wireframe on a dismantled mech. She never had much in the way of curves, but she knows that there are plenty of people who are attracted to such slim figures and isn’t uncomfortable with her body. Aside from her weight, the only other remarkable thing about Delilah’s body was that she was born with significant internal birth defects as a result of in-utero exposure to dust-form element zero, and received a series of surgeries and gene-therapies to fix her organs and arteries. The drastic and invasive interventions she required have left her with faded but still visible scars on her abdomen, chest and back. She learned to live with these a long time ago and they don’t bother her.

It was her face that was always the prettiest and most pristine part of Delilah’s body, the part she cherished the most. A grievous and traumatic injury suffered in combat with batarian pirates put an end to that, and meant that the Alliance Navy’s surgeons had to stitch it back together. They did a remarkable job, restoring beauty to her piercing pale blue eyes, elegantly arched brows, full, rosy lips and high cheekbones, with only some surface-level scarring across her skin to betray their handiwork… but they got some of the details wrong. The shape of her eyes, the height of her eyebrows, the prominence of her chin. Even her hair, worn swept back out of her face with the sides shaved in a popular Terminus Systems style, didn’t grow back the way it was, and one of her locks of hair is white instead of black. It’s a face that Delilah no longer recognizes as entirely her own. A familiar stranger stares back at her in the mirror.[/indent]

[color=BABABA][sub]H I S T O R Y[/sub][/color][hr][indent]Delilah’s birth on Earth in 2151 was preceded by a series of starship accidents in LEO that scattered dust-form element zero across large areas of the planet. Unfortunately for Delilah, her mother was one of the pregnant women that were exposed to the strange material. She was born suffering from multiple organ failure as a result, and given only hours to live. But her father, even if he was only a small-time businessman with modest means, was determined to give her a real chance. He refused to let his daughter die without putting up a fight. Their entire live savings were spent and a crack team of surgeons and specialists was flown in to attempt to save the infant. They worked tirelessly around the clock for days and ultimately succeeded: Delilah’s condition was stabilized and her organs were kickstarted back to life, but her health remained delicate for reasons that even this team of experts could not explain. They found strange growths in her body, embedded deep within her tissue, that the surgeons had not seen before, but since the masses appeared to be stable and inert it was decided to leave them there. Surgically removing them all would be too much of a strain on the young infant’s body.

Over the course of her entire youth Delilah was kept away from other children, sequestered away in the safety of sterile hospital rooms and long-term care facilities, with nothing but her mother, an assortment of nurses and an endless stream of holonet shows to keep her company. When nobody was watching, driven by her curiosity and boredom, Delilah would experiment with her extranet terminal and over time learned how to tap into other data streams and holonet frequencies, listening in on random communications and dreaming about a life outside the confines of her room. Her father worked day and night to fund his daughter’s extensive medical care and to pay for the medications she needed to keep her organs going, but as she approached puberty the money began to run dry. That was when Conatix Industries knocked on their door.

Founded specifically to track down those children that were exposed to element zero in-utero, the company representatives explained that they wished to test Delilah for biotic potential. Her parents, ever-protective, were difficult to convince of the necessity and refused to believe the argument that biotic children were dangerous. When Conatix offered to pay for all of Delilah’s medical care, however, it became an offer they couldn’t refuse. She was examined and the strange growths were finally identified as element zero nodules. Delilah was one of the rare few who developed both birth defects [i]and[/i] eezo nodules during her time in the womb. In fact, it was almost as if her body had sacrificed her health to grow more and more nodules, for she had more of them than almost any other child examined and tested in the upper 95% percentile for potential biotic power. Eager to see what such an aberration could do, Conatix Industries not only took over the financial responsibility for Delilah’s care, but also promised her parents that the biotic implants they were developing should help with her health problems, which they blamed on the unregulated interference of the eezo nodules. 

And so Delilah Reed was officially selected her for the BAaT (Biotic Acclimation and Temperance Training) program. Suddenly she was shipped off to Gagarin Station at the arse-end of the solar system, ripped away from the comfort and familiarity that had been her whole life…. but also from all of its boredom. On one hand she was eager for the new experiences the program would undoubtedly bring but on the other hand she was terrified. That the station was cut off from the extranet and contact with the homefront was forbidden didn’t help. For the first time Delilah was surrounded by her peers and she found it difficult to communicate with them. They were all so brash and loud and reckless in her eyes and she was afraid of some of them almost as much as she was afraid of the instructors. 

The less said about her time in the BAaT program, or ‘Brain Camp’ as the children called it, the better. It was a horrific, grueling slog that frequently pushed her weak body to its limits. The L2 implant she was fitted with partially did what had been promised -- it helped to control the effects of the eezo nodules on the rest of her body and she felt better than she ever had before. Additionally, her biotic powers proved to be formidable as Delilah, used to meditation and focus to deal with the pain she was constantly in, took to the neuro-control training quickly and to her own astonishment became able to manipulate the world around her with nothing but her mind. But L2 implant turned out to be unstable, and actually activating the eezo nodules in her body to use her powers brought back all of her previously subdued health problems with a vengeance. This would induce nosebleeds, pain, fatigue and even mess with her mind, provoking aggressive outbursts from the normally timid girl. When pushed to the limit, as the turian instructors were wont to do, it even caused her organs to shut down. As she remained one of the most powerful biotics in the program, the human scientists who acted as overseers refused to remove her, even when she required emergency surgery to restart her once-more failing organs. She was too ‘promising’ to call it quits, she was told. But other children who struggled, whose biotic powers were not as powerful as hers, were left to die when they succumbed to the strain. Every time Delilah was put on oxygen or taken out of an exercise to spare her, the resentment of the others grew and she became even more of an outcast. More than once, Delilah wished she was dead.

Slowly but surely her proficiency increased and she was able to utilize her powers for longer and longer without succumbing to pain and fatigue, and on a good day Delilah was one of the most powerful biotics in the facility, the turians included. The program was unceremoniously shut down after one of the students killed one of the instructors in a violent altercation and Delilah, by then 18 years old, was shipped back to Earth. Overjoyed to see her parents again, Delilah was shocked to find that Conatix Industries had instilled a fear of her in her parents that never really went away. They treated her differently now, distant and wary, where they had always been full of love and warmth before. It broke Delilah’s heart. Meanwhile, Conatix Industries folded, only ever a front for the Alliance, and Delilah was approached after a few months by an Alliance recruiter -- they were interested in recruiting the survivors of the BAaT program for the military. Not thinking clearly and desperate to get out of her family home, Delilah accepted.

Receiving a waiver for the physical fitness requirements and bootcamp, Delilah was processed at breakneck speeds and deployed to an Alliance frigate patrolling the Skyllian Verge as soon as possible. As eager as the recruiter had been, so hesitant and distrustful was her new commanding officer. Human biotics were still new and ignorance and superstition abounded, and he had no patience for her chronic health problems. Instead, she was attached to a unit of marines. During the handful of instances when she saw action, Delilah’s biotic powers probed strong enough to crush enemy soldiers against the dirt and grind their bones to splinters, but it required energy that her body simply did not possess. She would become extremely irritable and insubordinate in the state of exhaustion, pain and disorientation that followed. A whole cabinet full of expensive medications and supplements were necessary to keep the biotic warrior functional and she failed to integrate with her fellow soldiers just as much as she had failed to integrate with the other children at Brain Camp. Using her powers too much would also trigger the mental instability of the L2 implant and Delilah became prone to bizarre and frightening outbursts, fugue states and episodes of self-harm. Where she had once believed that her biotic powers were a blessing that would free her from her sheltered life, she finally realized once and for all that they were nothing more than a curse. Just like everything else about her body.

These problems came to a head during one of mankind’s first notable skirmishes with the batarian pirates that roamed the Verge, and Delilah’s body and powers failed her at a critical moment during the protracted firefight. She and her unit of marines had been close to being overwhelmed while protecting a remote settlement on one of the colonies and Delilah had been instrumental in holding the line, throwing enemy soldiers away and crushing them against the ground, when exhaustion got the better of her. Her biotic barrier flickered away seconds before a frag grenade exploded practically in her face. While her body was mostly protected by her armor, her face was shredded by the shrapnel and her eyes blinded in the process. Defeat seemed inevitable and the marines withdrew, dragging the unconscious Delilah with her. Back aboard the frigate, the medics and surgeons of the fleet painstakingly put her face back together while she was held in an artificial coma. After five days of surgery the work was finished and Delilah was gently coaxed out of her coma. Or at least, that was the idea. 

She shot out of the coma like the bullet from a gun and threw the surrounding nurses and attending doctor against the walls of her room with a biotic scream that shattered glass and ruptured eardrums. But when the navy armsmen stormed the room, expecting to find a rogue biotic, all they found was bewildered girl sobbing and crying apologetically while the medical staff picked themselves back up from the floor. Nobody was killed but some were seriously injured, requiring surgery of their own to restore their hearing and their sense of balance. Alliance higher-ups descended on the incident and it was swiftly covered up and swept under the rug as an equipment malfunction. It was in nobody’s best interests to paint a picture of biotic soldiers as unstable and dangerous. But it was also in nobody’s best interests to keep Delilah in active service. 

She was ultimately medically discharged, after just six months of service and three months of paid administrative leave. The Alliance promised to help her find gainful employment in the civilian world but Delilah quickly found that those were empty words, and like so many other biotics she was left out in the cold. Alone in the world -- the relationship with her parents could not be repaired and she was an unwanted pariah even among her fellow Brain Camp biotics -- Delilah came close to ending it all a few times, staring in the mirror and not even recognizing her own face anymore after the surgeons had put it back together. However, she found motivation and determination in the strangest of places; her extranet shows. If the heroes and heroines of the programs she watched could overcome the odds, why couldn’t she? Biotic powers be damned, she had other talents too. Delilah used the remnants of her signup bonus and back pay to afford transport to the Terminus Systems and disappeared from the grid for good, turning her back on the Systems Alliance entirely. 

Her childhood experimentation with communication systems and data streams came in handy and after weeks of desperate soliciting with ship captains at the docks of Omega, the drell master of a transport freighter took pity on her and gave her a job as a junior comms specialist on his ship. Overjoyed with this first personal victory, something she had achieved all on her own for once, Delilah took her work and the training she received from the more experienced senior comms specialist aboard very seriously. She kept her true nature as a biotic hidden from everyone except the ship’s doctor -- there was no getting around that, but the kindly older woman agreed to keep Delilah’s secret for her -- and diligently worked every waking hour to master her new craft. She learned how to socialize and made friends for the first time in her life, at last free from all the suffering caused by her biotic powers. As long as the L2 implant was left dormant, it did a good job at suppressing her health problems and the horrifying episodes of disassociation remained a thing of the past. 

And so the years went by. Delilah found inner peace and self-confidence and when the drell captain eventually retired, she was ready to tackle the galaxy by herself. Delilah hopped from ship to ship, having become a fully-fledged comms specialist in her own right, and served with distinction on every crew she was ever a part of. She even worked as a vessel traffic controller for Omega’s spaceport for a few years. More recently, Delilah has found employment with a certain asari captain on a certain ship, functioning as her yeoman and comms specialist, and the deep dark of the galaxy awaits...

[/indent]

[color=BABABA][sub]P E R S O N A L I T Y[/sub][/color][hr][indent]

Delilah’s personality has been shaped by the trials and traumas she has had to overcome during her life and a complicated soul lurks behind her pretty blue eyes. By nature, Delilah is a kind-hearted, daydreaming romantic, but the little girl she once was has clad herself in hammer-forged armor of cold steel. Delilah’s history of abuse and abandonment suffered at the hands of family and institutions has instilled a deep sense of wariness, almost to the point of paranoia, and a powerful desire for independence. She is slow to place her trust in people and quick to dismiss them as unreliable. She appreciates friendships, but her idea of friendship is a lot more casual than most people’s. An intensely private person, Delilah no longer shares the secrets of her past with anyone and keeps everyone at arm’s length, content with a few drinking buddies to shoot the shit with and a partner or two to share her bed with. 

Her complicated relationship with her nature as a biotic has given her a great deal of self-loathing to work through, especially after the incident when she awoke from her coma, and Delilah is deathly afraid of the danger she can be. She’s not shy about standing up for herself but she diligently avoids situations that could lead to violent confrontation, lest she be tempted or forced to utilize her biotic powers again. Taking lives in military combat didn’t bother her, but losing her mind afterwards did. She still has nightmares about the near-psychotic breaks she went through and spends a large part of her free time immersed in the fictional lives of characters in the extranet shows that she watches. Keeping up with them is almost a religious activity for her as she believes that it helps her stay out of trouble, and every day without trouble is another day without having to face the monster in the mirror -- the biotic killer that grins back at her with a face she doesn’t recognize. 

Like so many people who have gone through deep suffering, Delilah’s wit has taken on a dry and caustic tone and she frequently engages in gallows humor. She can be sweet on occasion, but most of Delilah’s informal interactions with others are drenched in sarcasm and good-natured ribbing. Of course when she needs to be professional, she is, and Delilah is a diligent worker that’s always at her station when she needs to be and takes pride in a job well done. 

[/indent]

[color=BABABA][sub]A B I L I T I E S [/sub][/color][hr][indent]
[list][*] Slam
[*] Pull
[*] Throw
[*] Warp
[*] Barrier[/list][/indent]

[color=BABABA][sub]E Q U I P M E N T[/sub][/color][hr][indent]
[list][*] Omni-tool customized with signal-boosting and decryption-enhancing modules that improve its ability to send, receive and break into digital communications.
[*] Light armor suit for hostile environments and emergencies. Every spacer has one.
[*] A simple M-3 Predator pistol that she’s never fired before. Currently taking up space in her locker. 
[*] Her [i]mind.[/i] Don’t underestimate it. Don’t provoke it, either.
 [/list][/indent]


[color=BABABA][sub]S T R E N G T H S  &  W E A K N E S S E S[/sub][/color][hr][indent]
[list][*]Delilah is a capable biotic, powerful enough to kill a man without firing a single shot. She can throw people across rooms, slam them into the ground, shred their bodies with raw biotic power and shield herself against bullets. That she has no extensive combat experience and no skill with conventional weaponry doesn’t make her any less dangerous. 
[*] In addition, she’s smart and resourceful, and takes to new skills and knowledge quickly. She enjoys problem-solving and analysis; a remnant of her childhood spent indoors and without friends to play with. You need to stimulate your mind somehow.
[*] Her most obvious weakness is her physical condition. Delilah has chronic health problems that, while mostly suppressed by the L2 implant in its dormant state, still require some medications to deal with and she remains perpetually underweight. Her constitution and endurance suffer significantly as a result.
[*] For all of Delilah’s biotic power, she is extremely reluctant to actually use it. Doing so weakens her physical condition even further and induces all kinds of psychological problems. She cannot maintain biotic strength for very long and needs time to recover between each use, or she runs the risk of falling seriously ill and/or losing her mind. 
 [/list][/indent]

[color=BABABA][sub]G O A L S  &  R E G R E T S[/sub][/color][hr][indent]
[list][*] The holy grail of Delilah’s life would be earning enough credits to find some salarian or asari genius neuro-biologist who can cure her of her physical ailments and safely upgrade her biotic implant to something more stable, but that is a pipe dream for the time being. Her real goal of finding somewhere to belong like a completely normal person is even further away from being realized.
[*] Most of Delilah’s regrets are centered on things that were outside of her control -- she wishes she was never exposed to element zero, never been subjected to Conatix Industries’ tests, never sent to Gagarin Station, never been blown up in combat. She has been fixing the consequences of these events for years now, but most of her bitterness is focused on the actions of other people that ruined her life before she had any agency over it in the first place.
 [/list]
[/indent]
[/hider]
[/quote]

Hi [@Hank]

Delilah is a very interesting character that I can see you've put a lot of time and effort into. She feels very fleshed out, and I like this almost duality of her character - how she's living as she is, with who she was. I think that's too interesting of a concept to pass up on in a role play that will be dealing with a lot of horror themes, in scary situations.  

I like that much of her story is grounded in just her, which adds a nice human element in a massively rich sci-fi world.

I'm.... concerned for her wellbeing throughout this roleplay.

She is accepted and can be moved to the character tab.