[center][h2][u]Mobility Impairment, Femininity, and Strength[/u][/h2][/center]
Another theme that I'm drawn to in terms of RP is that of mobility impairment. While I haven't lived with one myself, I have known and been close to multiple people who have and it has been an eye-opening experience. We create such dynamic worlds when roleplaying, and these are often coupled with physically dynamic characters who move about them constrained only by the rules and practicalities of the games. What if there were more to consider, however? What if there were extra challenges? I also find myself thinking about female characters when I consider our notions of 'capability', 'independence', and 'strength'. I'm struck by the importance placed on a very traditional, martial, masculine definition of these things. How about characters who'd realistically struggle to access that? Is telling [i]their [/i]stories worthwhile? I strongly believe so. 

Not only are characters with significant, visible disabilities underrepresented, when they are, it's almost always in the background, in (unintentionally) condescending ways that sometimes make the disability the entire focus of the character, or in ways that minimize the role of their disabilities and make those largely irrelevant. A disability is a meaningful part of a person's story but it is not their entire story. This is a monkey and it's on my back. Hence, it's such a recurring theme. I also just find the problem-solving and social dynamics involved in storytelling disability to be interesting and rewarding to play through. Someday, maybe, I'll have grown tired of this theme. I hope not, though.

[hr]Lysandra is one of three potential characters that I've made for [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/187554-code-vein/ooc]Code Vein[/url], inspired by the game of the same name. She's also my third try at making a 'disabled STEM girl' after the first two were 'meh' and part of RPGs that died early (if I have to make another, it'll probably be a dude). She's perhaps a bit more angsty than I'd like, so she may receive some tweaks, but you can hardly blame her, living in the sad-sack world that she does. 

[hider=Lysandra Tran][hr][hr][center][color=Khaki][h1][b]L Y S A N D R A  T R A N[/b][/h1][/color][/center][hr][hr]

[color=Khaki][B]|  AGE  |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT]Lysandra is 32 years old.[/INDENT][/color]

[color=Khaki][B]|  APPEARANCE  |[/B][/color]
[hider=A Squishy Human][center][img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/4e/ce/b4/4eceb4372bd004fd1a8e5202021e0881.jpg[/img][/center][/hider]
[color=darkgray][INDENT]The first (and often only) thing that people remember about Lysandra is her wheelchair. It's a simple, sturdy, lightweight manual chair and, as a paraplegic of four years, she uses it from dawn to dusk in order get around. Otherwise, she's a fairly baseline human: a vaguely pretty Asian woman in her early thirties with tanned skin, dark hair and eyes, and a businesslike bearing. She is not and never has been much for dressing up and would rather dress for functionality and comfort. Layering is a rule to live by. It's easier to take something off than to put it on. To that end, her usual attire consists of a light t-shirt over a sports bra, jeans or leggings, and knee or thigh high socks. She'll usually toss on some flats even though shoes are irrelevant. Sturdy gloves - usually fingerless to allow her to work with touch screens - are more important, as they protect her hands from blisters. On colder days, She'll complete the outfit with a jacket. She has two and both have a striped patch in mint, seafoam green, and white sewn onto them: the flag of the settlement that she used to live in and where her brother still resides. Finally, though she rarely actually [i]wears[/i] it as intended (because that'd be both inconvenient and goofy), is the supergirl medallion that she received from her mother as a girl. It's usually tucked into her bag or a jacket pocket as a kind of good luck charm. She tells herself that she doesn't believe in 'luck'; everything is probability. Yet, on the day when she broke her back, she didn't have it on her. 

As a human, Lysandra doesn't require a mask, and this gives her one less thing to worry about, especially when she goes into the field. Of course, that doesn't happen often anymore. Much to her chagrin, the post-apocalypse isn't very wheelchair accessible. When fieldwork is necessary for research or intel, though, she brings along some sturdy cycling gloves, trades her handbag for a large backpack with seemingly endless pockets, and usually swaps out her indoor wheels for some with thicker, grippier treads, as well as larger front casters. In the past, she'd often wear motorcycle armour, hiking shoes, and athletic leggings with elbow and knee pads. It was all about getting as deep into trouble spots as possible and quickness and durability were paramount. Nowadays, Lysandra usually forgoes anything that could hamper her already-limited mobility unless it clearly and directly helps her get more fieldwork done. Her primary goal is maximizing her returns on those brief outdoor sojourns and minimizing the physical liability that she represents. If enemies ever succeed in actually reaching her, she knows that the jig is pretty much up. Still, she's held onto her body armour, just in case. It's sturdy, lightweight, and can go under her jacket. She still has the knee pads too. Maybe she can't actually [i]feel[/i] a knock to the knee, but it's also not like they'll hamper her movement. Besides, she kind of slips things in behind them. Why oh why do women not get usable pockets in most of their clothing!? [/INDENT][/color]

[color=Khaki][B]|  PERSONALITY  |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT][i]Daring ~ Unsentimental ~ Hyper-aware ~ Bitter ~ Clever ~ Assertive[/i]

At her worst, Lysandra can come across as a 'bossy know-it-all science lady'. She can seem cutting, acerbic, and pushy. A lot of this, however, is just frustration and barely-suppressed insecurity. The significant gulf between what she knows needs to be done and what she can accomplish on her own is an open wound, regularly picked at by circumstance. The other major factor is simply that she is used to being the smartest person in the room and it grates upon her to entertain other people's stupid ideas when they could be making progress towards their (read: her) goals instead. 

That said, she's a genuinely decent human being beneath it all. Lysandra is an absolute encyclopedia of both general and esoteric knowledge. She is a human calculator, a problem solver, has an amazing eye for detail, and is a natural-born storyteller. She is genuinely one of the most interesting people who you will ever talk to and, on her better days, her cutting wit, self-deprecating humor, and straight-faced delivery can have you - instead of [i]her [/i]- rolling with laughter.[/INDENT][/color]

[color=Khaki][B]|  BACKGROUND  |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT]Lysandra's mother was an engineer. Her father was a biologist. Both were born before the Great Collapse and were not young parents (forty one and forty, respectively). Her childhood was full of diligent work and research. It was full of movement and stories while on the move. She learned about the world that was: the great open green fields and forests, the safe, cozy homes, and the shining universities: beacons of learning and opportunity. Most of all, however, she accrued skills: she studied the nature of living and unliving things with her father. She learned the wonders of robotics, sensors, computers, and mechanics from her mother. Instead of playing with lego, she handbuilt her first drone when she was seven. The family settled in the midsized and fiercely independent outpost of Fresh Haven. Lysandra and her slightly older brother, Daniel, grew up and their parents aged, so they took on increasingly important roles as scouts, field researchers, and even fighters. In particular, she was stealthy and an excellent scout and climber, with a natural aptitude for surveying and understanding her surroundings, using them to her advantage. 

For all of the world's dangers, her father fell prey to a flu in his 61st year. Daniel, who'd become more of a soldier than his sister, was gone for long periods of time and their mother increasingly withdrew into tinkering with her dwindling supplies. Lysandra, telling herself that her mother's work was valuable in more ways than one, began roving ever further afield in search of parts. She conducted her own research while out there. It was frightening, but challenging. In some ways, it was invigorating, and better than just sitting in some hole waiting to die. She begun to feel as if she could get to the bottom of how and why mistle worked, the role of the Sidhe, and how the Earth might be healed. She begun to feel as if she had some agency in her life. Further she went, scouting ahead with her drones, infrared sensors, and binoculars. She saw and found things that most humans couldn't. She knew a little bit of martial arts and learned more. She taught herself how to shoot. There were close calls - hairbreadth escapes from death - and tense moments. She hid out, she climbed, leapt, and scampered from one safe place to another, and then plunged back into the lab after days or weeks out in the world. Her parents' stories of the years before she was born had instilled in her a wariness towards revenants. Their kind had feasted on humans, once. The only thing needed for them to return to it and become Lost was a short period of time without consuming human blood.

Her mother was in ill health when Lysandra went out that day, but she tried to put aside her worries. At a steady jog, she made quick progress through the well-mapped regions near Fresh Haven, fists clenched around the straps of her backpack and breath wispy and white in the cool air. Perhaps she was preoccupied with thoughts of her family. Perhaps she was just careless, but she ran smack into a pack of Lost. She took one out of the fight with a well-aimed shot to the head, but then there was no option but to do what she did best: run, climb, and hide. She dropped her backpack and took off, through the labyrinth of a ruined city. After what seemed like forever, two more fell off the pace. This was a bad situation - worse than the usual 'bad situations' - but she had escaped many times before and would again. Thirst clawed at her parched throat but one final Lost - a monster of a man - stayed doggedly on her tail. Further up a crumbling building she went, leaping nimbly from sagging staircase to rotting floor to support beam, and he started to falter. The jump is still burned into her memory: over a gap in a staircase. It was the type that you dismiss in your head as a 'ninety percent chance I'll land it'. She'd made ones like it plenty of times before and she doubted her pursuer would be able to follow. She'd be safe. The thing is, if you roll the dice enough times, the odds will catch up to you eventually. The floor had looked solid on the other side but it wasn't. It gave way instantly and Lysandra can still recall with absolute clarity those two seconds where her stomach just folded in on itself in terror. Then she hit.

She was told that a handful of revenants who'd been surveying the area had heard her gunshots. As a gesture of goodwill, they'd rescued her and brought her back to Fresh Haven but, in the weeks and months following that fateful fall, as people kept telling her that she was a 'warrior' and would surely walk again, as she had to relearn how to do basically [i]everything[/i], and as her elderly mother cared for her as if she were still a child, Lysandra began to wish that they hadn't. Mother passed away eight months after the accident and, officially, the strain of having to care for her grown daughter hadn't been a contributing cause. Daniel stepped away from his duties temporarily and she moved into his unit with his family, but it wasn't much more accessible than hers. The entire settlement was built in what had once been a vertical farm crisscrossed with staircases, scaffolds, and prefab walls that had once been her playground but that now meant that she couldn't go much of anywhere without assistance. Wracked with guilt and regret, Lysandra threw herself into her engineering pursuits, sitting in front of a work table for hours each day, hammering away at her mother's machines, digging through the endless piles of scrap that she had accumulated on her sojourns, and constructing drones to map, guard, and scout, water filters to help grow food and provide drink, and devices to supplement her broken body and make her remaining family's lives easier. 

Soon, Daniel could not afford any more time away from his duties and so her nephew, niece, and sister-in-law became her protectors. This, Lysandra could not permit any longer. As she had hoped, she'd rediscovered a sense of purpose - an imperfect one, for it still hurt so much to not be whole - but enough to push her forward once more. This place, however, was holding her back. [i]She [/i]was holding her family back. The revenants had saved her. She had judged them too harshly, she decided, on the basis of childhood fears and stories from people who were no longer alive. She [i]was[/i], though, and saw little point to living for herself alone. There were vanishingly few people with skillsets like hers and, even if she couldn't conduct much of her own fieldwork anymore, her skills were valuable - [i]key[/i], even. With the sort of bold decisiveness that had defined much of her life and a new unsentimentality that she had developed more recently, she bid farewell to Fresh Haven and joined civilization proper. She has been here for three years since, in an uneasy sort of alliance that allows her to shed some of her grating dependency while saddling her with more of a different nature. This arrangement may yet allow her to reach her goals, however: an end which justifies any means.[/INDENT][/color]

[color=Khaki][B]|  SKILLS / EQUIPMENT |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT]💡[b]Bigbrain:[/b] Lysandra is just honest-to-goodness [i]smart[/i]. She seems to regularly be a couple of (figurative) steps ahead of everybody else in most situations. She has a wealth of scientific and practical knowledge that can benefit her allies.
💡[b]Mechanically Inclined:[/b] If there's a macguffin needed and anything that could possibly count as a tool, you can count on Lysandra to provide said macguffin, one way or another.
💡[b]Tools of the Trade:[/b] The 'bossy know-it-all science lady' caries a backpack of wonders. It contains a first-aid kit, multipurpose mask, dehydrated food, flashlights, thermal packs, wiring, glue, screwdrivers, pliers, and a dozen other travel-adapted, lightweight, well-machined tools that used to be her mother's. If you need something, chances are that she has it. She can also patch you up pretty well, though she definitely doesn't give much thought to pain management.
💡[b]Crack Shot:[/b] Lysandra knows how to shoot - by [i]God [/i]does she know how to shoot. She can usually calculate things like bullet drop, wind effects, and ricochet angle too. If forced out into the field, she carries one pistol in her bag (or on her lap if - God forbid - she finds herself in a hot zone), and a spare duct-taped to the underside of her wheelchair close to one of her wheels. She can pull it out or fire it unexpectedly with a quick sleight-of-hand when it looks like she's just reaching down to wheel herself.
💡[b]Human Shopping Cart:[/b] It seems like a small thing but, as long as someone's willing to help push her, Lysandra can easily carry a couple hundred pounds worth of equipment, specimens, a bound and gagged prisoner, or even a lazy or injured ally. Revenants don't recover [i]immediately[/i], after all.   
💡[b]The Immortals:[/b] Four robotic helpers serve as Lysandra's agents both when she stays behind and in the uncommon instances when she goes into the field. They can operate either autonomously with limited AI capabilities (results may... vary when used this way) or be controlled one at a time via joystick and VR headset. She's working on a neural interface, but 'working on' is very much the operative term here. Loosely themed after the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Immortals]Four Immortals[/url] from Vietnamese legend, her agents are:[hider=The Immortals][list][*]Mountain Man: A multilegged tumbling and walking robot with a flexible body about the size of a small cat, Mountain Man is able to traverse almost any terrain, slip into small spaces, climb, dig, and perform basic scouting, rescue, delivery, and sample return operations. He has a taser, tranquilizer, and scissors too. 
[*]Marsh Sage: Primarily defensive in nature, Marsh Sage is a blindingly quick, maneuverable, and quiet coaxial quadcopter drone that can lay smokescreens, strobe blinding lights, and dispense nerve, mustard, and other poisonous gases. It is also quite handy for spying and scouting.
[*]Iron Horse: A series of wheels on articulated arms, this is Lysandra's supplementary mobility aid and latches onto her wheelchair. It can propel her, hands-free, at high speeds, stabilize and protect her from recoil or being pushed against her will, clamp itself magnetically to metallic surfaces, and boost her over curbs or flights of one to three steps. It can also act as a bridge, platform, or supply carrier on its own.
[*]Sky Princess: Lysandra's main offensive tool, Sky Princess is a large purple hexacopter drone that can lay down smokescreens, fire paralytic poison darts, release high-frequency sonic blasts that are extremely painful and induce headaches, dizziness, and nausea, and launch micro-rockets similar to the 'Whistling Birds' from Lucasfilm's [i]The Mandalorian[/i].
[*]Unless they don't have to go far, she cannot bring all of these with her at once. For extended missions, the maximum is three or sometimes two. Only Mountain Man and Marsh Sage are small enough to be carried comfortably on her person. Sky Princess can be too, in a pinch.[/list][/hider] [/INDENT][/color]

[color=Khaki][B]|  LIMITATIONS AND WEAKNESSES  |[/B][/color]
[color=darkgray][INDENT]👩‍🦽[b]Headset:[/b] When directly piloting one of the Immortals or her other creations beyond her sightline, Lysandra wears a VR headset linked to the drone's on-board camera. This leaves her detached from her immediate surroundings and vulnerable to attack unless she is safely away from a hot zone (where she knows that she should stay) or has an ally to watch her back.
👩‍🦽[b]No Signal:[/b] Ninety percent of her utility is linked to her Four Immortals. If they stray out of signal range (about 3 miles or 5 kilometers) or their signal is jammed somehow and they're forced to operate autonomously, she is much less effective and - if she is brave/foolish enough to be in a dangerous area - much more vulnerable.
👩‍🦽[b]Limited Charge:[/b] While she carries extra battery packs and a solar panel charger, these can only do so much. Once her Immortals are out of power, they're deadweight until they can get more. The same goes for the offensive ones' ammunition. She has a few refills, but extended missions can be...challenging.
👩‍🦽[b]Obstinate:[/b] Lysandra is used to knowing better. She will often dig in and insist upon the rightness of her opinions and preferred courses of action. She tends to aggressively prioritize her projects and ideas unless yours align with them.
👩‍🦽[b]Fragile:[/b] At the end of the day, for all of the tech that she carries, the 'bossy know-it-all science lady' is human. She is not as physically capable as revenants and sidhe, which is compounded even further by her disability. Lysandra is painfully reminded every time that she watches a revenant recover from either fatal or crippling wounds that she is unable to do so herself. She gets one body to play the game of life with. Whatever happens to it (including death) sticks.
👩‍🦽[b]Paraplegic:[/b] As a paraplegic, Lysandra has no feeling or movement below her waistline. This has the following effects:
[hider=This is Wheel Life][list][*]She needs to use a wheelchair for mobility and, even with its assistance, is severely limited in this regard compared to able-bodied people.
[*]While quite quick over flat ground and in open space, and with excellent stamina on flats or downhills, she is [i]very[/i] terrain dependent. 
[*]Things that we would not even think to consider, such as sand, gravel, curbs, cobblestones, and warped or cracked pavement cause Lysandra significant difficulty. 
[*]Routes have to be carefully planned: shallow downhills maximized, extended or steep uphills and downhills minimized, and obstacles, rough terrain, and climbing avoided.
[*]She is incapable of strafing to the side or jumping. The closest that she can manage to the latter is to pop a wheelie. 
[*]While pushing herself, her hands are occupied, making her unable to move and shoot or move and pilot any of the Immortals.
[*]She has a lower sightline than other people, takes up a larger footprint, and cannot squeeze through small spaces. 
[*]If somehow separated from her wheelchair, Lysandra isn't realistically going much of anywhere on her own.[/list][/hider] [/INDENT][/color]

[color=Khaki][b]|  NOTES  |[/b][/color]
[color=darkgray][indent][list][*]Lysandra is, low key, a huge science fiction nerd, particularly with regards to Star Trek. She gets that from both of her parents. They had a flash drive with old recordings and she used to watch them as a kid. She has, with only slight self-consciousness, told people to 'Live long and prosper'. She also has a soft spot for comics, even though most of them are kind of low brow. She read them as a kid and those were happy times.
[*]She appreciates some good Pho. Seriously, ethnic foods are a dying thing. She's trying to learn how to cook, but... revenants don't really appreciate human food all that much.
[*]She still strongly dislikes having to give her blood up for revenants. For pragmatic reasons, she'll do it, but it's just a reminder of her (and other humans') helplessness compared to them and it rankles. She sees it for what it is: an increasingly unsustainable practice. 
[*]Lysandra's had romance in her life before. She had a couple of boyfriends, years ago in Fresh Haven, but they bored her before long. One, in particular, wanted to settle down, but she has always made it clear that she does not want to have children. Not only would it take time away from her responsibilities as a researcher, she worries that she'd be unable to properly care for them and that bringing a child into a world like this, just to live in constant fear and be food for others, would be grossly irresponsible. She tells herself that she doesn't like children anyways: they're loud, disruptive, and annoying. She'd be lying, though. Secretly, she's a big kid at heart. That was half the reason she used to go gallivanting around the ruined cities, running, jumping, and climbing. 
[*]She loves the animals that nobody else does... except for frogs. She cut far too many of those open as a girl in the name of science to not be unnerved by them now.
[*]I'd love to find a more anime-like reference pic, but... resources are scarce on that front.
[*]Four years on from her accident, Lysandra has more or less adjusted to her altered reality and reached an understanding of what her abilities and limitations are. However, twenty-eight years of life experience before then have hardwired into her an approach of bold, independent action, a boundless curiosity best satiated firsthand, and the self-image of someone who can handle herself and get out of tough scrapes. Rationally, she knows that much of that is no longer practical, but hanging back, being cautious, and letting others do the work still causes occasional moments of dissonance.[/list][/indent][/color][/hider]

Penny Pellegrin is an NPC in [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/187336-the-hourglass-order/ooc]The Hourglass Order[/url], a fantasy magic school/mystery RPG that I'm GMing set in an original world with its own extensive lore. She has a fairly important role to play in the story along with her three fellow NPC students, Marlijn, Jomurr, and Manfred. In a lot of ways, she's an evolution of my much earlier Simona Ricci: sneaky one-legged chick with a saucy mouth, hidden pain, and her own agenda. Second crack at this type and I feel like I've gotten her mostly right so far.

[hider=Penny Pellegrin][center][h2][u] Penelope 'Penny' Pellegrin [/u][/h2]
[img]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/75/34/d1/7534d1c01e2381c58d68b9e9b60d178b.jpg[/img][/center]
[b][center] "I admit to being more than a little distracted by the...wit and depth of the conversation at this table."

"It seems [i]mother[/i] wishes to turn me into some sort of lifelong penitent for sins I've not committed."[/center][/b]

[center][h3][b] 17 | Female | Perrench | Royalty | 8.11 [/b] [/h3][/center]

[h3][u]P E R S O N A L I T Y            [/u][/h3]
[indent]❖ Sardonic
❖ Pessimistic
❖ Good-hearted
❖ Pampered
❖ Insecure[/indent]
Most of Penny's life has been defined by being the family disgrace. She was born without a left leg and with a moderate form of ectrodactyly in her left hand and this was cause enough for her superstitious mother to see her birth as divine punishment for the sins of her and her husband. This would be quite a bad state of affairs in most families, but is only magnified due to the fact that Penelope's parents are King Rouis XI of Perrence and his wife, Queen Mathilde. Unallowed to attend balls, public functions, or even to venture past the palace gardens, Penny is a young woman stifled. She reads, she paces (crutch in hand), she grows things and draws and writes. She pretends to hate those formal family dinners when both father and mother are home, but secretly, she loves them. She is a forgotten middle child in many ways, with no prospects for marriage despite her station and no hope of amounting to much, so she is not one to hold back on pithy observations and cutting commentary and it is oh so amusing (often not only to her). The Gift is sometimes her plaything. When she's bored or sucky, she uses it to play tricks on her siblings, particularly if they're being obnoxious (at least [i]one [/i]always is). A laugh at someone else's expense is still a laugh. Besides, they deserve it.

However, deep down, beneath many layers of snark and resigned cynicism, there's a curious, big-hearted girl who has dreams of seeing the world, meeting new people, and being valued instead of either pitied, stared at, or avoided with whispers, stolen glances, and sad shakes of the head. Because you place your right hand on your left hip, pointing to your left leg when you honour Oraff (the creator) while making the sign of the Pentad, religious superstition holds that Penny's missing limb is a mark of that God's disfavour. She does not believe it. She refuses to. She has a private tutor and she practices Binding Magic for hours on end, quietly determined to prove that she isn't what they say she is. On some warm Dorrad nights, though, as she lies awake in bend, staring at the swirling patterns on her ceiling and wishing for sleep, she worries that they're right and that she'll fail. She wonders why she couldn't just be whole and normal. She tries to dream that she is, but even in her dreams, she remains stubbornly the same person who she knows and does not love.

[h3][u]C H A R A C T E R    A P P E A R A N C E            [/u][/h3]
Were it not for her birth differences and their prejudices, most people would consider Penelope quite pretty. Tall and statuesque, with bright green eyes perhaps just a bit too large for her face and a resting smirk, she is the spitting image of her mother. Her hair is a rich chestnut brown and, when not styled in the fashion of the courts (even though she does not attend them), can usually be found pulled back in a Perrench braid. Since she was young, it has displayed a remarkable resistance to maintaining any sort of cohesive style or form for long and appears almost preternaturally tousled.

Penny wears long, light dresses. They vary in colour and she has many - some, hand-me-downs from her older sisters. She likes things that are lacy but feel solid and protective, so lacy hems and collars abound but not much else. She enjoys buttons, for whatever reason, and will often fiddle with those running down her sleeves. She also wears gloves. The left one is modified to fill in the gap in her palm and it has a dummy finger attached by a thin string to the one beside it. Out of habit, she does not take her gloves off unless sleeping or bathing. She has a pair of crutches (a handful of pairs, actually), but doesn't like how they fill her hands. As a result, she often gets around with only one. She's rarely in a hurry anyway. There's nowhere to go and not all that much to do. 

[h3][u]L A N G U A G E S            [/u][/h3]
For a noble lady of Penelope's station, languages are a must. For her, they're also something to do, and she has numerous correspondents all across the twin continents who she writes to. She is fully fluent in Perrench, Avincian, Revidian, and her mother's native tongue of Kerreman, and at least conversant in Eskandish, Torragonese, Joruban, and Belzaggic. Once you learn one language from a family, the others come easily. She sometimes practices her calligraphy and is looking to correspond with someone in Oiyac or Mycormi, but yasoi are so much more reticent in real life than they are in all of her old books.

[h3][u]T H E    G I F T            [/u][/h3]
Penny approaches prodigious levels in her use of the Gift - unsurprising for a blueblood of her pedigree. With little else to do but read, write, and learn, she also trains all day, memorizing focus words and inventing little spells of her own that she gives funny names to. While she's practiced with all five canonical schools, it is Binding that she puts most of her effort towards. She spends a considerable amount of time on Arcane as well, mostly the illusory branch, works with Kinetic to help ease the difficulty of walking long distances, and with Magnetic because it's her tutor's favourite and there's something peacefully destructive about watching fingers of electricity writhe and snap. Guiltily, she dabbles in internal Chemical spells and tells herself it isn't so that she can make people like her. That's what a madwoman would think. Penny isn't mad and will not let herself go mad. She simply [i]won't[/i]. Besides, Binding Magic is her preferred school. If she can't heal herself, she reasons, she can at least heal other people. Then, she cringes at the thought of how melodramatic and self-indulgent such a statement would sound aloud.

[h3][u]B A C K G R O U N D            [/u][/h3]
Penny remembers the looks most of all: the first looks when people see her or the second ones when they  make [i]sense [/i]of her. It first really registered when she was around four years old. Until then, she was blissfully unaware of her differences and what they would mean. She grew up playing with her siblings - there were many and they were close in age. There were servants' daughters and cousins too. They always told the most wonderful stories and she used to like to hear them until she realized that those were stories of a world that was being kept from her. They're now a weird, resentful kind of addiction. She still needs to hear them, but they no longer bring her joy. 

When she was seven, her parents attempted to arrange for her a marriage with the second son of a Torragonese lord, but instead of making arrangements by proxy, he decided to visit. Penny played with the boy and they laughed and smiled and she teased him that they'd be married someday and that he should listen to his wife. Then, he and his father left. 

One time, when she was ten, there was a ceremony at the Catherdal de Ste. Defrois. She rode in a carriage through the streets of Relouse, listening to the clatter of the horses' hooves and the church bells ringing. She remembers leaning out with her little tiara and waving with her right hand at the commonfolk. They were loud and dirty and shouted, and she was a bit scared, but they waved back, and there were kids her own age in there too. 

She hasn't traveled since. She hasn't done much of [i]anything[/i] since and wasn't going to be allowed to. That is, until her brother Arcel intervened. She is to attend Ersand'Enise under an assumed name, as the invented daughter of an unremarkable merchant paid a sum by her brother. She is to be his agent there. She is to meet with people and exchange letters with them. She knows Arcel: he is not vile, but he is ambitious and underhanded. Penelope - Penny Pellegrin now - doesn't much care. It's a species of freedom, at least, and she'll take it, even with all of the risk and the fears.

[h3][u]M O T I V A T I O N            [/u][/h3]
More than anything, Penny wants to spread her figurative wings. She wants to live an actual life. She wants to prove to herself, at least, that her mother is wrong about her. There is a deep well of bitterness there, though she shakes her head to clear it and simply tries to appreciate that she has never hungered nor wanted for any physical need a day in her life.

Penny is eager to be at Ersand'Enise and to make something of herself, but she is deathly afraid of the real, actual, [i]wild [/i]people out here. How will they react to her? Will they laugh at her jokes? Will they just see her: Penny - a girl from Perrence, or will it be pity, awkwardness, or avoidance? She [i]knows [/i]it will. It'll [i]have [/i]to be, like it [i]always [/i]is. What if anybody finds her out - or learns of whatever her brother is up to? Will she be able to play a merchant's daughter convincingly? She feels like a fraud when it comes to life. She hasn't lived very much and knows it. Still, sometimes she takes a deep breath and counsels herself that she can do this. She is a princess of Perrence. Her forebears [i]earned [/i]the crown at some point. They were capable people. So is she... she hopes - she really, [i]really [/i]hopes.

[h3][u]I N V E N T O R Y            [/u][/h3]
Penny almost always carries a satchel slung across one shoulder, with some basic jewellery, a small journal, letters and wax, and a comb (partly as a joke) inside. She uses one crutch the majority of the time, to keep a hand free, and two when she knows that she'll have to do a lot of walking that day. They're made of light, lacquered wood with soft pads on top for her armpits. She'll never be found using a wand or staff as a focus object, having practiced freecasting from a  young age. For spells absolutely requiring one, a crutch is very much like a staff when held a certain way. Penny's recently taken to wearing a spare garter even though she already has one to hold up her stocking. She uses it as a strap to tuck secret correspondence for her brother into and spends the next while paranoid that it'll slip out and Black Rezaindians will come for her in the night. 

[h3][u]S T R E N G T H S  &  S K I L L S           [/u][/h3]
[indent]❖ funny and clever
❖ grudgingly kind-hearted
❖ excellent courtly manners
❖ good memory
❖ skilled in language and literacy [/indent]

At the end of the day, Penny falls on the side of being a good person. Her acerbic comments are more than just a cover, but also not her entire story. She's well-heeled and it shows. She can wield etiquette like a weapon if need be and generally has very good recall for obscure trivia and details. This carries over into languages and the written word, where she can speak seven languages, at least to a degree...at least usually. 

[h3][u]W E A K N E S S E S  &  F L A W S            [/u][/h3]
[indent]❖ anxious and insecure
❖ not very worldly at all
❖ proud and paradoxically judgemental
❖ tires quickly when walking
❖ questionable self-awareness and victim complex[/indent]

Penny's upbringing and the constant feeling of being unwanted has done a number on her mental health. She's not a wreck or a basket case, but she struggles with intense flashes of anxiety and self-doubt. She worries about how people will perceive her and tends to assume the worst, though she actively counsels herself not to. She can be a bit of a stepford smiler at times.

[h3][u]M I S C E L L A N E O U S            [/u][/h3]
Penelope of Perrence is here incognito, as a lowly merchant's daughter named Penny Pellegrin. It would be unusual for anyone but the high-ups in the school establishment to know who she really is. Also, see [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRyQIg7elJU]here[/url] for a demonstration of how she walks on one crutch. Beware that I may have had to go into the weird part of YouTube to dig this up.
Colour Code: [color=F7976A]F7976A[/color][/hider]

This CS was developed for a fantasy RPG called [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/164177-end-sleep/ic]End + Sleep[/url] that sadly died out before it could really get going. In retrospect, I feel like playing the 'eccentric tinker' type could've been fun, but the character also sparkled a bit too much for her supposed race and background. She was my second try at a 'disabled tinkerer' and I still didn't quite have the formula right.

[hider=Kaeli Aldavere][center][h2][u] Kaeli Aldavere [/u][/h2][/center]
[b][center] Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety percent...[i]OUCH![/i] Argh!! Goddammit that hurt... [/center][/b]
[hr][hr]
[center][h3][b] 27 | Elf | No Mage-Eyes [/b] [/h3][/center]

[h3][u]P E R S O N A L I T Y            [/u][/h3]
[indent]❖ Inquisitive
❖ Ballsy
❖ A bit odd
❖ Meticulous planner
❖ Brilliant
❖ Enthusiastic
❖ Flighty and easily distracted
❖ Occasionally academically haughty[/indent]
Kaeli is an oddball and eccentric to the very core, especially by Elven standards. Sometimes stereotypes are exaggerated and sometimes they fit to a tee. Put simply, she's one of those people who wants to know how everything works, can usually give you an educated guess right off the bat, and - given enough time - can usually replicate it. In general, she is obsessed with technology, preserving it, repairing it, and improving it, a passion which goes far beyond her people's rather practical and uninspiring relationship with things mechanical. On projects of great import or that have struck a particular chord with her, Kaeli will work tirelessly, with near-boundless enthusiasm, an eye for detail, and a need for perfection that borders on the insane. Social interaction, sleep, and most anything else be damned. 

If a given goal is not a project but an endeavour, then she will go to great lengths, often at not-inconsiderable personal danger, in order to see it through. Otherwise, she is curious and inquisitive but flighty, branching off tangentially at once in terms of ideas, conversation, and projects. She enjoys meticulously planning more than she does following through, and collects and keeps things that most people would consider junk simply because she sees them as works in progress, interesting, or simply because she wants to be prepared for any eventuality. In particular, she enjoys solving the problem of her own strange body and finding ways to do things that would seem to be beyond her physical capabilities.

Just as Kaeli can lose herself for hours in a project, she can lose herself for hours when talking about a subject or with with a person whom she finds genuinely interesting. This tendency, alarmingly aberrant among elves, has only grown more pronounced since she left her homeland. When engaged in these fits of passionate gabbing, she has been accused of talking 'at' people as opposed to talking 'with' them. Her standards in terms of 'interesting', however, are higher than she probably realizes. People are usually just surroundings as opposed to being genuine 'company'. They're an audience for her genius, a sounding board for her ideas, and the source of interesting problems and opportunities to be solved or seized. Some also make great guinea pigs. 

In terms of romance, Kaeli thinks about it from time to time just as any red-blooded woman might. Then she shuts it out of her mind. She is keenly aware that society at large does not consider her attractive. Like most elves, she also can't 'do' smalltalk and flirting, and she isn't even any good at the social rituals expected of her own people, let alone the more elaborate and frighteningly involved ones so beloved of humans. She often ends up simply lurking and dreaming. In many ways, she's a dreamer. In many ways she holds delusions of grandeur and achievement on an epic scale. However, she's self-aware enough to see some of these for what they are. There's a thin streak of bitterness that runs through her thinking and it's a product of the subtle but ever-present discrimination that she has faced growing up with a very visible deformity. Elves are not a warm, fuzzy, communal people by any stretch of the imagination, but her upbringing was marked by complete disinterest from even close family, often tipping over into utter neglect.

[h3][u]A P P E A R A N C E            [/u][/h3]
The first thing that stands out about Kaeli is the fact that she looks like half a person. The result of a rare birth defect, she was born completely without legs, not dissimilar to [url=https://www.google.ca/search?q=kanya+sesser&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=w41WWd3nG4bT-QGt-4eQDw]Kanya Sesser[/url] or [url=https://www.google.ca/search?q=jen+bricker&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=PY5WWbv3O4Xd-QHgqJKoDA]Jen Bricker[/url]. Beyond that, she's rather unremarkable: petite and pale, with white, wavy, shoulder length hair often pulled back into a sloppy ponytail. It's all-but preternaturally unruly, though sometimes she can fuss it into place. Kaeli's facial features tend towards 'mousy' but actually somewhat attractive, though she doesn't put much effort into her appearance. Indeed, the closest thing to makeup that she's known to wear is the series of oil stains and smudges that can be found on her hands, cheeks, and clothes. These compete with a number of small nicks, burns, and scars from too much tinkering. She's also considered quite stocky and muscular by Elven standards due to the upper body strength that she needs in order to get around. 

Kaeli's clothing reflects both necessity and her eccentricity. Both of her pointed upper ears are pierced in multiple places, and she's not averse to self-adornment, though it's rarely with the shiny jewellery common to her race. Rather, she owns a necklace made from a very light silver chain, some old screws, a handful of bolts, and a couple of washers. She can also always be found wearing either a pair of round-rimmed tinted shades or goggles that she uses to protect her eyes from the harsh sunlight or hold back her unruly hair. Kaeli wears a custom-made garment on her truncated lower body made of a rough, sandy-coloured fabric, with a thick, cushioned leather pad at the bottom that she uses to sit and 'walk' on. Generally, she dresses in a form-fitting shirt in either purple, forest green, or crimson with a row of buttons running up the middle. Its sleeves are invariably rolled up. A brown leather belt with a prodigious number of pouches, clips, and various doodads rests snugly upon her hips, and a second, thinner belt encircles her upper waist. Filling out the ensemble is a bandolier with several pockets running from her left shoulder to her right hip, where it's clipped into her belt. A pair of elbow pads adorns her arms, and tough, worn out fingerless gloves with protective mitts that flip over complete the outfit. Kaeli usually carries a backpack that seems slightly too large for her, and when it's cooler, she bundles up in a sandy-coloured hooded hip cloak that effectively covers her whole body.  

[h3][u]H I S T O R Y            [/u][/h3]
Kaeli Kinseld was the second girl as well as the third and final child born to parents of high standing. Her father was the town recordkeeper and brother of the thane while her mother was a jeweler of some repute. Due to her startling deformity, her birth was a bitter disappointment and it was hoped that she would die quietly in infancy, lest she grow up to be a burden. In the event, she not only survived, but grew into a curious, lively, and (with the exception of her missing legs) healthy child. Unlike her older siblings, Kaeli was not groomed for an advantageous marriage or a lofty position, either political or professional. As a result, her education was sparse and was piggybacked upon that of her slightly older brother, Heddenrad, who was privately tutored in - aside from instruction on recordkeeping - what were considered the classical Magdalenese subjects: linguistics, smithing, hunting, mathematics, natural philosophy (science), and jewellery-making. 

In the event, while her brother approached his studies dutifully and at times diligently, Kaeli tore through her books with an appetite for learning that - while it was somewhat selective - bordered on the obsessive. The walls of her bedroom were often filled with drawings and partially-completed sketches, and her young mind was filled with ideas. In particular, she gravitated towards all things mechanical and electrical: understanding them, disassembling and reassembling them, and making them function. If she was hopeless at hunting, too small for smithing, and unenthusiastic about crafting finely filigreed and delicate jewellery, she had nimble, dexterous fingers, an eye for detail, and a keen intuition for the workings of anything with moving pieces. 

For the most part, however, people paid little attention to the girl, except as a curiosity, and she was left largely to her own devices. The one exception was Kaeli's (really her brother's) natural philosophy and mathematics tutor, a prematurely cantankerous academic named Tasten Aldavere. He spent extra hours fostering what he believed was a brilliant young mind, and his attitudes, mannerisms, and methods had a profound impact on her development. In her mid-teens, she was betrothed to him, even though he was nearly twenty years her senior. In reality, it wasn't a marriage founded on love, since Tasten was rather clearly homosexual. Rather it was a union of kinship and mutual respect, carefully calculated by the pair to afford Kaeli both some independence from her family as well as some monetary attention.

For a handful of years, things went well. Kaeli continued to educate herself and earned the respect of a notable portion of Magdalene's academic community. Even her father, who had advocated for exposing her to the elements during her infancy, came to appreciate her gifts and even fund some of her pet projects. Then her uncle, the local thane, made the grave mistake of defying the Alfking of Magdalene. Exactly what happened is not something that she will ever talk about, perhaps because she has never taken much interest in politics. A ruler who had for Kaeli's entire life seemed distant and mildly benevolent struck with sudden, ruthlessly efficient ferocity, purging her entire family. A harmless and somewhat useful curiosity, she was spared, inherited a small portion of her family's fortune, and placed under house arrest. Driven to depression by the restriction on her ability to move about freely and to tinker and scrounge outside of the confines of her home (where literally all of the best stuff was) and sensing that Tasten was likely to protest (thereby putting him in the line of fire), she slipped out of her cellar in a small wine barrel, and arranged to have herself smuggled out of town. 

With no choice but to end up far away from home and, to a lesser extent, curious about the mysteries of the world outside of the deep forests of Magdalene, she began traveling the roads of Invernier. Kaeli learned quickly and out of necessity how to cover large distances, where to hide, as well as who and what to avoid, while gradually using up her coin. She earns a sporadic income by repairing simple things well below the level of her expertise whenever she sets herself down for a handful of weeks as well as occasionally appearing in performances similar to sideshows. She doesn't particularly enjoy those jobs, but they put coin in her purse and provide her with free and easy travel.

[h3][u]I N V E N T O R Y            [/u][/h3]
Kaeli carries a small, lightweight, and finely-crafted tool set with her at all times. She has a handful of semi-functional electrical lights, a magnifying glass, her wedding ring, various replacement parts for common mechanical items, a needle and thread, a few changes of clothes, a switchblade, and a couple of cans of something like improvised pepper spray, with different varieties effective in repelling different common threats. She's working on auditory weapons as well and on extending the range of the sprays. She swears that she'll finish eventually.

[h3][u]O T H E R            [/u][/h3]
Even with legs, Kaeli would be considered small. Without them, she's absolutely tiny (maybe 2'6" and 55 lbs) and excellent at hiding in places where most people wouldn't even bother look. She can hold her breath for an extremely long time, remain still and quiet for extended periods, and go for longer than most without food and water. Conversely, she obviously moves at a slower pace than most people, expends more energy in doing so, struggles with tasks that require size, and tends to have her skills met with a certain skepticism in most places that she visits.[/hider]

Candace was made for [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/165254-oh-my-gods-always-accepting/ic]Oh My Gods[/url] and was, quite frankly, not the best of the six (yes, six!) CSes that I wrote. She was my first try at the 'disabled STEM girl' type. That was something I'd return to a couple more times.

[hider=Candace McMorran]
[center]Name: Candace McMorran

Gender: Female

Age: 22

Sexuality: Bisexual, but leans more towards women

Godly ancestor: Hephaestus

Son/daughter or further removed: daughter

Relationship with godly ancestor: Hephaestus has not fathered quite as many children as some of the more attractive Greek gods, so he is decidedly invested in the children that he does have. He intervened to help Candace and her mother when she was very young, and she has known about her parentage since her mid-teens. He admires her work from a distance.

Relationship with mortal family: after a period of pointed rebellion against her mother and stepfather, Candace has come to appreciate the loving and open minded upbringing that they provided her with. She hasn't lived at her parents' house since leaving for college in the US, but has always returned for major holidays and twice for summer vacation. She is six years older than her next-oldest half-sibling, and has never been especially close with any of them, though that's not to say that there are any issues between them. They're simply too far apart in age to share very much in terms of friends or common interests. She keeps in touch with her mother and her sister Virginia through various online means and, whenever she visits, likes to initiate lively discussions around the dinner table. She tries to influence her younger siblings (particularly her sister) where she can, and steer them in what she believes is the right direction.

Powers: Candace's powers reflect those of her father in almost every way.

- Candace can create and manipulate fire and is more or less immune to its effects.
- She has a talent for creating machines and gadgets to solve problems and serve specific purposes. These are often highly unconventional, idiosyncratic in design, and difficult to reproduce, but extremely effective.
- Candace can imbue things with force and motion that would otherwise remain static.
- She is able to make inanimate objects that have either a face or the form of a living thing come to life, in a sense. They will possess memories of what they have witnessed and will remain staunchly loyal to her.

Personality: Candace is strong willed, aggressively independent, and bullish when it comes to her sense of morality. Perhaps she just has stronger convictions than most people, and perhaps she's trying to bury some deeply held insecurities. In any event, as a visibly disabled person living in a world that is fundamentally at odds with her sense of agency, she feels as if she has no choice but to try harder, reach farther, and react with more force and fury than others do in order to be treated as an equal. 

Beyond that, she is best described as conventionally unconventional, subscribing with zeal to the trends and belief systems that define modern left-wing campus culture. She smokes weed and has experimented with a handful of psychadelic drugs, but isn't what one would ever consider a 'stoner'. Candace enjoys gaming (though not the thinly-veiled misogyny that runs through much of gamer culture) and is reasonably good at it, but makes a point of being active and challenging herself physically. She regularly plays wheelchair rugby and basketball and tries to remember to spend some time outdoors away from her workshop. She has dabbled in slam poetry, was active in a number of student bodies while in university studying engineering (with a minor in women's studies) and regularly attends protests and rallies. When not out and about doing something, she can often be found tinkering in her shop or at least using a CAD app to render her future projects on her iPad.

Bio: Candace was born in Glasgow, Scotland and raised by a single mother who was working as a waitress at the time. She doesn't remember much about her early years, but now understands the severity of the poverty that she and her mother lived in. For the first couple of years, there was a seemingly endless carousel of surgeries to lessen the effects of a particularly serious arteriovenous malformation of the spinal cord that left her paralyzed from the waist down. Though children of Hephaestus have often exhibited ambulatory difficulties, hers were particularly severe. The medical costs above and beyond what the NHS covered must have been significant, but they were handled by a mysterious benefactor. For many years after, she had a vague memory of him as a huge man with a bushy auburn beard, receding hair, and a severe limp who leaned heavily on a cane. When she was three years old, the girl's mother was able to return to university and complete her degree in early childhood education thanks to a generous grant from the bearded man. While there, she met, fell in love with, and married the man who Candace would grow up with as her father: Shane Coburn. It was a rather whirlwind love affair, and within less than a year of their marriage, had produced a child: Candace's younger sister Virginia. Two more would follow: twin brothers Neil and Brandon. 

Candace's way with mechanical things was plainly evident even during her childhood, as she would often complete Lego sets intended for much older children with perfunctory ease and enjoy them for a couple of weeks, before taking them apart and building entirely new creations of her own imagination. Indeed, the floor of her bedroom would often be a minefield of sharp Lego pieces that only she (not having to worry about stepping on any of them) could navigate with ease. She dabbled in minecraft and roblox, but was drawn more towards creating things in the real world with her own hands. Robot Wars was a near-obsession, and she still has some of her crayon drawings of her favourite competitors and orginal concepts. Trips to science fairs followed, as did subscriptions to magazines like Popular Mechanics (which soon turned into online subscriptions). She confounded many of her teachers because she didn't seem to have a particular aptitude for mathematics, being no more than slightly above average. It seemed as if her engineering abilities were intuitive in a way that other people couldn't understand.

While she featured in a number of human interest articles (often with a well-intentioned but somewhat condescending tone) as a young prodigy and an inspiration, Candace's teenaged years were particularly difficult. She struggled not only with her self-perception and confidence as somebody with a disability, but also with her budding sexuality. She found herself mostly, though not solely attracted to other girls. She tried to ignore these feelings for a few years, and her parents, thinking that her withdrawal stemmed from a lack of confidence, attempted to push her towards healthy heterosexual relationships. They also sent her to a summer camp for other disabled children and enrolled her in a wheelchair basketball program. Candace enjoyed the activity, and it provided an outlet for some of her energy, but she still wasn't all that comfortable with her feelings and was beginning to understand that she just wasn't going to fit the norm. Compounding these issues were the emergence of her latent powers. Candace found that sometimes, when she was working on an engineering project, the pieces would move as she visualized them. At first, she was afraid. She wondered if she was going crazy. Then, she studied the phenomenon and began using it to her benefit, though she became somewhat reclusive in her tinkering for fear of anybody finding out. Combined with her insecurities about her sexuality, Candace went through a year or two of being deeply reclusive.

Enter her father. It was a particularly cool April morning when Hephaestus appeared in front of her. She almost instantly recognized him as the bearded man from her infancy. The first thing that he said to her, with all of the tact and good grace in the world was "You're a lesbian, kiddo, or at least something close. Also, I'm your father." It wasn't the easiest of conversations. One party was confused and terrified and the other had never had much of a way with words nor much use for etiquette. However, her immortal father not only explained the extend of Candace's abilities, he also taught her how to control them, by demonstrating them himself. Further conversations followed, eventually involving her family. Disbelief turned into acceptance, and even into embrace. Candace, more sure of herself, reemerged from her shell and graduated with a scholarship that allowed her to attend MIT overseas. 

In campus life, she found her calling, The stories of other people who had struggled growing up resonated with her, and she became strongly committed to setting the world right, aware that she had been gifted more power than most by the unique circumstances of her conception and birth. She was active in student groups, campus politics and social life, and int he social movements of the day. Her long red hair was cut to shoulder-length, the left side of it buzzed, and its tips died all colours of the rainbow. Following graduation, driven by curiosity, she decided to take a couple of years off before starting her Master's and visit the city of New Celestia that her father had told her about.[/center][/hider]

As CS for a WW2 Heist RPG called [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/163361-band-of-bastards-ww2-heist-espionage-rp/ooc]Band of Bastards[/url]. This thing died a bit early, but this character acted as some formative inspiration for Penny from The Hourglass Order: basically, a sneaky one-legged chick with a saucy mouth and her own agenda.

[hider=Simona Ricci][i]This is potential character one of two. Maybe we can see which one people like better once I've posted Yuri (the other one). Anyway, sorry if this is a bit long. She's partially inspired by Virginia Hall, who was a legendary badass.[/i]

[u][b]Name (or known Aliases):[/b][/u] Simona Ricci, aka. Gianna Verdi, Margarethe Vonlanthen, Hopper 

[u][b]Age:[/b][/u] 23

[u][b]Nationality:[/b][/u] Italian

[u][b]Affiliation:[/b][/u] Italian Red Cross, works personally for Princess Marie Jose of Italy when she's not looking out for number one. 

[u][b]Role:[/b][/u] Nurse, thief, infiltrator 

[u][b]Appearance: (shitty pic coming soon)[/b][/u] A slim and petite (maybe 5'2") lightly-tanned Caucasian woman in her early mid-twenties, with shoulder-length straight black hair, blue eyes, and a nose that's just a bit too large, Simona skews to the 'pretty' side of average. She has dimples when she smiles (though it's usually more of a grin or a smirk), and a slight case of buckteeth. However, these things are usually not what people notice about her first. Instead, it's the pronounced limp that she walks with or - when she's not wearing her prosthetic - the fact that she's missing nearly her entire left leg. Due to the height of her injury, she moves better on crutches, though she'll often use her artificial leg to blend in more easily. Indeed, when she's just standing in a crowd, she tends to fade into it. Simona's not exactly open about the cause of the injury, mostly because it's a touchy enough subject that she risks getting emotional. 

She usually wears her Red Cross uniform, which looks just a little bit like a nun's habit. Otherwise, she prefers knee-length dresses or skirts. She's unlikely to be seen in a revealing or provocative outfit except when she's drinking. Simona usually carries a large brown backpack stuffed full of first-aid equipment, clothes, a flask of Limoncello, a small satchel of tools that look like scalpels but are really for less legal uses, and sometimes her prosthetic leg. It really is amazing what she can fit in there. The leg itself is actually useful for holding things, as it’s hollow and she uses it to smuggle letters and contraband when necessary. That’s dangerous works, so sometimes, she also wears a leg holster with a small Beretta under her skirt/dress. She knows how use it, but that doesn't mean that she knows how to use it [i]well[/i]. It’s more for her own sense of agency. 

[u][b]Personality:[/b][/u] Simona is whatever she needs to be at the moment, whether that be a dutiful Catholic girl and committed nurse, a sophisticated and creative young woman from a wealthy family with contacts in the government, a physically and emotionally broken victim of war, or a loud, irreverent, warm, and somewhat uncultured rural Italian stereotype. Exactly which of these is closest to her genuine personality is up for debate, and the truth may be that she’s a bit of each.

The final one, however, is undoubtedly the face she wears easiest. Simona can talk. She loves spinning a good story, sharing a good laugh (sometimes about rather crude subjects), and engaging in frank, witty, and often quite incisive verbal fencing. She can appreciate a good pun, though she hasn’t mastered the art of making them herself (at least not in English), and will readily make self-deprecating jokes about her one-leggedness. Having witnessed a great deal of death and suffering, at some point she ‘got over the hump’ with regards to emotional attachment and simply learned to accept that people come and go and that they’re still worth investing in. She’s quick to get close with anyone who’ll allow it, and can be almost uncomfortably touchy-feely at times, though she will never make romantic advances, nor will she be stupid enough to trust them.

In general, Simona calls upon the powers of sympathy, stereotype, friendliness, and caricature to ensure that she’s seen as a complete non-threat by enemies and most friends alike. At best she’s plucky and admirable, at worst she’s either a vacuous and annoying chatterbox or a pity case.

Outside of the social aspects of her personality, Simona is intelligent, quick-thinking, and surprisingly competent (mainly due to sheer moxie) at a number of unrelated skills. Conversely, she can be impulsive, pushy, and Quixotic in terms of her personal quests and goals. She’s flighty but ambitious, and profoundly confident in herself on a basic level, though the loss of her leg has undermined this somewhat and occasionally leads to bouts of overcompensation. Regardless, Simona is used to succeeding and regularly getting her way. When she doesn’t, it can be ugly, both personally and professionally. 

If she’s a bit materialistic, it’s not for the sake of having pretty things, but rather more practical reasons. She believes that money and resources can buy both safety and happiness to some extent and that accruing them will benefit her and her family. Despite this, the war has touched her profoundly, and Simona has come to genuinely care about those affected by it. She wants it to be over, and she would go so far as to die romantically and heroically to that end. What comes next is no concern of hers. She’s pointedly apolitical, though socially somewhat liberal, and she distrusts communists and political radicals of any stripe. Her primary loyalty is to her superior and patron, Princess Marie Jose of Italy, and it comes second only to herself and her family.

[u][b]Service History:[/b][/u] Simona joined the Italian Red Cross as soon as Italy entered the war and her brothers, Giacomo and Vittorio, were deployed to Southern France. She has never been one to simply sit idle, especially not when others are out doing what is expected of them. Sent to the African theatre, she served in field hospitals and POW camps for the better part of two years, often working in collaboration with British and American Red Cross units in the area. This is where she picked up most of her English, though she has some cousins who live overseas. Most of these places were chronically underfunded, so she had to find...creative ways to finance them at times. Whether it be pickpocketing the dead and dying, skimming supplies intended for military garrisons, or stealing officers’ bonuses right out of their safes, If her superiors disapproved of her methods, they never had the chance to voice that disapproval, because that would've involved catching her first.

She was working in a field hospital just outside of Addis Ababa when the forces of her own country strafed the entire compound (this is based upon a real historical incident). While attempting to evacuate the wounded, she was shot high up on the left thigh with a heavy-caliber round from one of the aircraft and she passed out almost instantly. Simona awoke minus a leg and fell almost immediately into a serious depression, partially due to the injury and partially due to the fact that her own country's forces had been responsible for the monstrous attack. The government, of course, vehemently denied such absurd rumours, and the incident was quickly buried, though not before it was brought to the attention of the head of the Italian Red Cross, Princess Marie Jose. When Simona was shipped back to Italy to convalesce, she was personally visited by the princess, who was something of a personal enemy of Mussolini and was looking for ways to bring the war to a close as soon as possible. Though it was officially supposed to be little more than a courtesy/publicity visit, the princess was eager to confirm the rumours that she had heard, and the two women ended up speaking for hours. Simona was deeply impressed by the patron of her organization, and it inspired a degree of personal loyalty that she previously hadn't felt towards anyone outside of her immediate family. They talked deeply and frankly, and she must've made an impression herself, because Princess Marie personally paid for her rehabilitation and prosthetic leg. Not to be outdone, the Italian government, under Mussolini, awarded her a medal for bravery and being wounded in service (despite the fact that she was wounded by [i]them[/i] and was in the service of an international NGO). 

Unwilling to simply return home and collect a disability pension, Simona returned to her duties, albeit in what were considered safer, more 'home front' areas. However, with the allied invasion of Italy beginning in 1943, the home front became a front in the true sense, and not only was her brother Giacomo one of the early casualties, but her upper-middle class family’s finances were devastated when the bombing campaign destroyed her father’s auto factory. As the situation worsened, Marie Jose stepped up her anti-fascist activities, and Simona, in secret correspondence with her superior, offered her services above and beyond the call of the Red Cross. When Mussolini's regime collapsed and he fled to the north of the country, Simona followed, albeit as something of a mole. She's been working tirelessly for the last six months in hospitals and POW camps in North-Central Italy, not only healing and feeding, but also working clandestinely with POWs and wounded fighters from various partisan groups to subvert the new puppet regime. A couple of days ago, a critically wounded republican fighter, remembering that another member of his cell had told him that "you can trust the one-legged woman", pressed a message into the palm of her hand with a mysterious address in Ulm, Bavaria. 

[u][b]Other:[/b][/u] Simona's a lot stronger than she looks, able to lug around her backpack/prosthetic/crutch(es) without complaint and despite her small size. She’s a generous 5’2” and weighs all of 78 pounds. Combined with her natural flexibility, this allows her to squeeze herself into extremely small spaces if need be. She’s picked up a number of other useful skills over the course of her relatively short life: She can play the flute and violin reasonably well thanks to lessons during her childhood; She speaks passable Swiss German as a result of growing up in Northern Italy not far from the border; She’s also picked up some English and some Ethiopian from her postings during the early part of the war and learned to swim while undergoing rehabilitation. Picking locks and pockets were further skills learned while in theatre. She also became pretty good at table tennis from playing with wounded soldiers in the various hospitals that she served in, though she’s not as good as she thinks she is. 

This tendency to overestimate herself extends to drinking. Her tolerance for alcohol is much lower than she’s convinced it is (this is partly due to her being smaller than she used to be), and she is liable to make a fool of herself when drunk. In the past, this didn’t extend to throwing herself at men, as she was saving herself for marriage, but after becoming an amputee, she decided that her marriage prospects were slim to none and that waiting for something that would never come was a daft idea. She’ll still never outright make the first move, but she’ll definitely respond. The truth is, Simona doesn’t really know how to act around a man who she finds legitimately attractive. In particular, she has a thing for Americans, American culture, and motorcycles.
Culturally, she’s far from traditional, with a love for Big Band Jazz, fast cars, days at the beach, and late nights out dancing, though she’s a bit self-conscious about the latter two now. She’s eager to squeeze everything that she can out of life, she’ll make sport of anybody, and she can sometimes come across as a bit of a misandrist. She has a nickname, Legnoso (which means ‘Woody’ in Italian), for her prosthetic leg, and sometimes talks about it as if it’s a person with a will of its own.

Ultimately, as an Italian in late 1943, Simona knows that she can play either side if need be. As a nominal member of a neutral organization, she can gain access to people and places that might be impossible otherwise. As a small disabled woman, Simona knows that she won't readily be viewed as a combatant or any type of threat but also that it's not exactly easy for someone with such a visible difference to be inconspicuous if her cover is ever blown. She's never looked a man in the eyes and shot him, but she's certain that she could do it if the need ever arose.[/hider]