Tag Shapeshifting Breacher Captain
Name: Felix "Top Cat" Lyons
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Nationality: D.S.R-Born Libolian
Craft:
Shapeshifting.
Specifically, being able to shift to African Lion (Panthera leo).
TLDR: Felix will rip out throats, maul, and generally make an absolute mess out of anyone he goes into, as well as be able to more or less run faster than most people can. Quite handy in close quarters, or otherwise any situation you could feasibly say a lion would be helpful.
A breacher either needs to see into the future or just fuck things up way worse than anyone else can- he chooses the latter. If you can get a camera in the room, open the door and let Felix run in, and he will go through bone like butter because he knows what claws and teeth can do to necks. Even if he doesn’t kill everyone, a lion’s roar is enough to make most people run, if not shit themselves- a fully grown, kevlar-wearing lion is pretty fucking wild.
Oh yeah, because Felix managed- and this is somehow unknown to even the most Arcane academics out there- to keep his tactical rig on while in his alternate form, basically keeping the same protection that he would as a human. Great for fire support too, because it means he can go from point to point quickly and carry mags, grenades and cover in a pinch.
Felix as such is a great team player, because if you know he’s coming and follow him into the breach, you can shock and awe a team much harder than anyone else. The Flashbang and Felix combo has made him infamous in Reactor as the “man-eating merc” because once you hear him and have gone blind, you’re basically dead and in a way that you would wish bullets would replace. There are images on LiveLeak that would make most men puke, because it makes the Druid Mafia’s defenestrations look like a Christmas Play. (He could not be less of a cannibal if he tried outside of work- he’s trying to be Pescatarian from his guilt and knows he’s always looked at funny during dinner).
Conveniently enough, bullets and injuries unlike some other shapeshifters don’t carry from form to form- and as a lion, it would take a lot more to kill him than most of the team, making it a no brainer when on a breach, or when in a very intense bit of combat to soak up damage in one form, rather than the other. This is very convenient and acts as a second life for him- he’s taken bullets that could have killed him in a firefight, changed to a lion and then mauled the people that tried to kill him, before limping back to a Reactor Field Hospital and switching back, getting bullets peeled out of him when in a sterile environment. He can control it much better too- he can recognise foe from friend, after a significant amount of work, and he has overcome most, yet not all, of the morality issues that come with living in a lion’s mind for minutes, sometimes hours at a time. He can't talk as a lion, but he fully understands conversation.
Lastly, the abilities of a lion still carry a little in his human form- he's sometimes had weird teeth still from his other form, tufts of hair he didn't expect, but almost constantly- a sharpened sense of smell and high-pitch hearing that carries from his other form. Ironic that his surname matches….
However, being able to switch to a massive cat does come with drawbacks- significant ones that make such an overwhelming force of bullshit a bit more tenable. Felix cannot easily turn into a lion without being hungry. He can’t do it easy on a full stomach, he has to visualise quite hard anyway to do it, so full up it’s worse- to a point where it will give him bad migraines. He will therefore be sluggish naturally, if he is opting to keep his lion self available. Fully fed, Felix the Lion is a slower, more lumbering beast that is more just sleepy cat than angry merc, great for terror, crappier in fights. Hunger is his trigger: the more ravenous he is the cleaner and longer the shift. The more extreme the shift (longer, further from his human self), the harder the rebound — after a long shift Felix sleeps like the stationary prop of a freight train for hours and emits an alarming amount of mane hair, unless he makes a serious feed (ie he has to rip and tear as many people as he can). To prevent this, it requires a counter of a small mountain of caffeine, both in ProPlus and questionably coloured energy drinks that mean Felix is extremely up and down. This means he'll. Felix does though, on occasion, find a way to stay as a lion longer when needed without the drawbacks, but this takes a lot of energy, a good mood, and coffee.
The only other problem with shapeshifting- he can’t just be a lion and NOT have something to eat. This makes him way fucking scarier than he needs to be to his own side. He will need to feed that hunger somehow. Find something chunky with protein, and throw it at him, or he will start licking, and at that point, he isn't in control anymore when his hunger is screaming at him to consume anything, because shifting back is messy at that point as it's inverted to how he would change into that form- he needs to be "full" as a lion to switch, and even he doesn't understand why it needs to be that complicated. Even if you get past that- with him switching back to human, he will also have to deal with the legacy of the fact he’s just eaten people. This is sometimes a bit sickening, and if he has eaten…..look, he is getting picky over organs, gall bladders make his human self feel a bit poorly, so he is still figuring out what bits you can munch without consequence.
Lastly, as if shapeshifting wasn’t already clunky enough- lions have a shorter lifespan than humans do, so he tries to avoid it because at 37, he wants to enjoy middle age more. Lion years go by faster, so even if he could control that power- he doesn’t want to sit in that side too long.
Vessels Carried
Felix carries a series of vessels from his travels as a merc, optimised for the activities of a pointman and purely maximising chaos above all else. He relies on improvisation with the potent but small toolset he has- rather than being a specialist, Felix focuses on opening doors, and minds (literal and figurative).
Fibreoptic Wire (Copy Cat): An illusionist’s gift, Felix keeps a fibreoptic wire as his ultimate party trick. He can look into rooms with the fibre wire, so he has visibility- but he also, it has the ability to make him create a copy that will run dead straight, through any wall he targets. He’ll send an illusion of himself into a room directly towards enemy, but once bullets hit, that person, or the lion, disappears as it's a dumb illusion- a ghost, if you will. This means he can come in through another door, or take a flank. This has some very, very hilarious capabilities- and while his “mirror” doesn’t have the ability to hurt or do any actual harm, given the vessel’s fairly weak, it is diabolical when combined with a flashbang, smoke, or a flank....
Holy Hand (Flashbang) Grenades: A relic stolen off a dead Chapel Priest, a limited supply of flashbangs made by a caster clearly into illumination and transubstantiation makes some absolutely disgusting, war-criminal, filthy flashbangs. It will literally switch hostiles around when it goes off, not just blinding them but actually rendering them where their friends were in position on the other side of the door to truly mindfuck hostiles. Used sparingly, and combined with a Copy Cat and his signature talent, this is truly, truly bullshit and a reason why Felix usually gets doors open. He needs to ration this supply however- as being down to his last four, he doesn't want to lose this.
Gold-rimmed Signet Ring: A tiny sliver of a feline tooth set under glass. A memory of the other side.
If given to someone else....well, nobody's actually asked him…..would it turn you inside out, or just give you really good hearing and smell? He reckons the latter.
Channels Carried
Due to his craft’s very specific nature, Felix doesn’t carry any channels- he sticks to regular firearms.
He might load some cheeky enchanted shotgun shells for really fucking up doors, nothing beats breach glyphs on shotgun shells, after all…
Appearance:
Human Form:
(Think Domhall Gleeson above, albeit significantly rougher, and more worn).
Felix is 6”3, being rather tall. As the upper-middle class chap he is, he has a fair bronzed face, weathered from being outside in the heat from a lifetime of soldiering and being a man for adventure. Long, curly dark red / brown hair, a glorious light coloured stubble, and a scar that usually gets compliments from idiots across the left of his brow to his ear, which came from being hit by an IED on the Liboli-Kalan border.
He is found normally with a 5.11 Tactical TacTec plate carrier, a green buff, and tan cargo pants that look ready for Safari more than Salewa. He wears an olive tech-wool hoodie, adjusting his top more often than not for the climate and conditions- going from that to an overcoat. He doesn’t blend in at all at the bar, and is about as stick-outty as probably his other form would be in Polavia. He wears a grey-coloured wizard's hat that is relatively folded over at this point, acting more as a cover for his hair. A pair of very dusty brown boots, what looks like a gazelle's horns on his groinplate, and a few enfused-looking chemlights on his rig follow fitting.
Lion Form:
What does he look like as a lion? Really, you had to ask?
He's a lion? African Lion? Massive teeth, massive claws, about 200 kilos and seven foot of golden-maned big cat that roars loud as fuck? Have you never been to a zoo?
Okay, fine. One ear nicked, a diagonal scar across the muzzle that seems to have stayed from previous work. His eyes retain a sort of human cunning because he isn’t just some animal in there, he can hear you and understand you perfectly fine, and he’ll just growl back. Also, Felix hasn't fully figured it out why, but most of his tactical gear transposes. As a result, he ends up with a tactical rig around his back and sides, weapons sitting there, weirdly on safety of all things. It chafes around his (read, lion’s) neck when he runs, but he isn’t complaining because it’s saved his ass on a few occasions.
Tactical Lion then.
Can a lion fire a HK417? Drunk Reactor mercs have tried, and it turns out paws cannot hold a battle rifle that easy. Can you ride a lion into battle if you were dumb enough to do so? No comment.
Bio:
Born in the DSR to the Libolian Ambassador, Felix was the third son to a father that was a workaholic and a mother in high society, and expected to join in that- getting privately educated and then sent to an elite university. Yet was always passed over, despite good grades, despite it all- he wasn't the favourite, his brothers were. He wasn’t even second choice, he was worse.
So he didn’t really bother with that high society. He went through Officer Training in the Libolian Defense Forces, and led people in warfare. He was a career soldier. Married into decent money, had the seaside house, had it all. That was his way of doing it- he liked adventure, getting outside, and well, the playboy lffestyle.
But the money dried up as lifestyles altered, and he had a kid. The job sucked him in, looking for meaning, looking to live up to his siblings, and well, at the dinner table, gave him something to talk about. It was status, but it was the kind that left him without time for what mattered. He learned that lesson hard.
His wife, Clara, divorced him and took his daughter, Lyra, in the custody battle, and Felix then got divorced by the Defence Forces at the end of his term when they were planning to downsize, the pension paying off most of his divorce settlments. He had more fight in him. He joined Reactor. Probably to escape them all. Nothing but anger, because he really had nothing to lose.
That’s where shit went a bit fucky. Looking for redemption and a paycheck that blew his last one away, all he found was rage bubbled when he got hit by an IED.
While working in Kalan as a Senior Contractor, his team were hit in ambush where he woke to his squad getting killed, and him thrown out of the truck by pure luck. He unlocked the lion when he was left to die, and seeing Chapel militia start executing people, he could only let his anger, his violence over how much hate he had for his life choices bubble in one way in a fit of revenge- like up to that moment, everything manifested itself as his life had crumbled before him to start ripping and tearing it apart. It’s weird that a Lyons became a Lion….was it a memory, something else triggering? It’s hard to say, but for a man to want to tear people apart as a trigger for a Craft that wasn’t directly associated, that was extremely rare. Something must have flipped. And he went wild.
He mauled, and partly ate five people in one sitting. Reports suggest he went on a two week rage bender on the disputed Liboli-Kalan border, and killed plenty more over the next 14 days without coming back to his humanity, and was riddled with bullet holes when a lion sanctuary discovered him in the Libolian Desert, across the border.
Felix wasn’t exactly a bloodthirsty guy up until this point, but killing twenty five people is a hell of a way of blowing off post-divorce steam and reacting to watching your squad mates get executed in cold blood. In that moment, Felix had gotten a taste of control, of being an alpha that got the job done no matter the rules. He'd always been third best. Now he was able to do as he pleased. Fairly.....toxic I guess?
Felix woke up in an big cat animal centre with an ocean of tranquilizer in him and scared the living shit out of the local staff when a wounded Reactor merc re-appeared- and from there, a legend was born (once he had a lot of shrapnel pulled from him, of which lines him with many of the scars in his abdomen and arms). This is the Aimo Koivonen (if you know, you know) moment of Felix’s career that remarkably made him who he is now. If an operative of his standard was a nice addition to Reactor’s team, now he was a bona-fide.
Reactor, of course, promoted him for his quick-thinking, and put him on an intense course of training to control his new Craft. He’s no Wizard, Witch, his craft turned out to just be finding that animal deep inside him. And making sure that it wouldn’t just maul friendlies. His Officer training made him an apt leader, with a heightened sense for threats, danger, and how to react, not like a seer but like someone who knew how to get it done under fire. He managed his teams and kept them out of harm's way, perhaps selling himself to the job too hard.
A Team Leader, Felix was sent in on the jobs with a QRF that got the job done. Flash and Felix became code for “send in guys with mops”. There’s regular CQB, then there’s taking a tamed beast to the job. And Felix got good at it. Really talented. He paid his share of his divorce, and was looking for more than visitation rights, but a chance to raise Lyra with his upcoming handsome pension payments. He'd retire and spend time with her, go part time, be a proper dad to a nine year old. Things were again, looking really up. This whole lion business had really worked out well so fa….
He ate a parade horse in an impulse at a state event while on close protection duties to the DSR’s Prime Minister at a security conference.
That forced him on involuntary leave for three months, and then redundancy came because Reactor did not want that mess on their already fucked up press pack. To be fair, him getting conveniently sacked happened when the rest of the redundancies hit and they couldn’t justify keeping him on the payroll, even despite his success rate and excellent service record. Questions were asked by the DSR about why on earth he ate a horse. Media got a hold of it and hounded his family. He couldn't really stay, because the company just couldn't afford to explain to its insurers quite the reason a lion is a terrible idea to leave hungry on guard duties.
That and previous actions by Reactor, including multiple censored pictures made Felix a fairly high value target in the scheme of things, when it came to Reactor's massive illegal portfolio.
Shaving his beard, Felix went undetected and snuck into Polavia via Kralovec, and headed south, into the countryside, to a village he couldn’t pronounce, into a rickety hut in the woods, planning his next move.
Felix has little left to lose right now, maybe another contract, maybe just a passport, or something else. He never had a cause, outside of making money, but family would be one he would go back to if he could at least sort....what this mess of his got him to.
Personality:
Divorce and the fall from grace changed Felix from family man into just having bottomless amounts of mixed emotions. A valiant, pomp man with something to prove has devolved into someone trying to keep it together, even though the lion inside him that he thought would fix it all has managed to fuck it all up anyway.
Deep down, Felix hates the animal doing bad things on his behalf and is trying to tell himself he’s more than the craft he absorbed- it saved him, but manifested into something that through Reactor, is made to just be a weapon of terror. But it’s also satisfying. And kinda fun.
He’s mostly surly, occasionally sentimental, and loyal. He might be motivated by money, but he protects, and knows that through his service, he'll get whoever he's with through what they need to. He might have made mistakes, that much is clear, but there's someone there who's clearly repentant and wants to try and control what he is- rather than that toxicity he had when he was younger, he's maturing to what a craft means. The rage is easy to give into- and he already knows what he needs to do to be better to his ex-wife and daughter, he just needs to get there. While control has come about more and more, being angry and being hungry, some could say, hangry, would make him switch.
He’s a dapper shot with a battle rifle that everyone rolls their eye at, and seems to be a born mercenary, if anything, becoming a shapeshifter making him even more of a bastard than usual- but he’s out of place, out of time, and out of his fucking mind wondering how he’s ever going to go back to his seaside house in Liboli, his estranged daughter with a wife he divorced ten years ago now. How the hell do you go back to that when you’re stranded that far from home?
Weaponry (including Channels):
Primary: Heckler and Koch HK417 Carbine (7.62x51mm)
A DSR Special Forces weapon of choice, the HK417 is a bit too posh by most Polavian standards, with it sticking out line a sore thumb. He'll be lucky to get more ammo for it, but, for now, he has enough magazines, none of which are magical in any way (bar the magic of steel-cored bullets).
-EOTech Holographic
-Laser Sight
-Silencer
-Underbarrel Masterkey 870 Shotgun (loaded with Breach Glyph 12 gauge rounds)
Secondary: FN FNX.45- Osprey Silencer, LLM Module.
(Note: in lion form he prefers claws & bite; the weapons are for when he’s human and needs to shoot. Obviously. As a lion, he's usually carrying the weaponry on his side, so he becomes a mobile carrier for the team of his firearms.)
Other gear/weapons/equipment:
-GPS Unit
-Garwan Smart Watch (acts as a convenient check for feed, heart rate, and condition- which is extremely helpful for shapeshifting)
-IFAK First Aid Kit
-Flashbangs (many) and Holy Flashbangs (few)
-Glyph Spray-Paint (2x Cans)
-Liboli Blend Coffee (2x Instant Cans, 1x Thermos)
-A tin of Snus
-Bone Knife (a souvenir from Kalan)
Other useful information:
He does not mind being petted. As a lion. There’s a running gag that while he sees red while in his alternate form, he seems to also be a lot more….cat? Nobody understands this at all- if fed, he’s incredibly tame to a point where if he can’t lead and is sleepy, is unreasonably wholesome. (Do not pet him in human form. He will definitely kill you.)
Felix's voice is that of an almost colonial-like British officer, from his upbringing in the DSR and Liboli leaving him with that kind of inflection.
Likes
-Rock, 80s Music
-Dark Beer
-Adventure and Outdoorsmanship
-GPS Markers and Mapping
-Other Felidae Familiy
-The sweet, sweet taste of catnip
Dislikes
-Horse Meat
-Overcomplicated Paperwork
-High Pitched Noises
-Canines
-Being Hungry as a Person
-Being Hungry as a Lion
Name: Felix "Top Cat" Lyons
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Nationality: D.S.R-Born Libolian
Craft:
Shapeshifting.
Specifically, being able to shift to African Lion (Panthera leo).
TLDR: Felix will rip out throats, maul, and generally make an absolute mess out of anyone he goes into, as well as be able to more or less run faster than most people can. Quite handy in close quarters, or otherwise any situation you could feasibly say a lion would be helpful.
A breacher either needs to see into the future or just fuck things up way worse than anyone else can- he chooses the latter. If you can get a camera in the room, open the door and let Felix run in, and he will go through bone like butter because he knows what claws and teeth can do to necks. Even if he doesn’t kill everyone, a lion’s roar is enough to make most people run, if not shit themselves- a fully grown, kevlar-wearing lion is pretty fucking wild.
Oh yeah, because Felix managed- and this is somehow unknown to even the most Arcane academics out there- to keep his tactical rig on while in his alternate form, basically keeping the same protection that he would as a human. Great for fire support too, because it means he can go from point to point quickly and carry mags, grenades and cover in a pinch.
Felix as such is a great team player, because if you know he’s coming and follow him into the breach, you can shock and awe a team much harder than anyone else. The Flashbang and Felix combo has made him infamous in Reactor as the “man-eating merc” because once you hear him and have gone blind, you’re basically dead and in a way that you would wish bullets would replace. There are images on LiveLeak that would make most men puke, because it makes the Druid Mafia’s defenestrations look like a Christmas Play. (He could not be less of a cannibal if he tried outside of work- he’s trying to be Pescatarian from his guilt and knows he’s always looked at funny during dinner).
Conveniently enough, bullets and injuries unlike some other shapeshifters don’t carry from form to form- and as a lion, it would take a lot more to kill him than most of the team, making it a no brainer when on a breach, or when in a very intense bit of combat to soak up damage in one form, rather than the other. This is very convenient and acts as a second life for him- he’s taken bullets that could have killed him in a firefight, changed to a lion and then mauled the people that tried to kill him, before limping back to a Reactor Field Hospital and switching back, getting bullets peeled out of him when in a sterile environment. He can control it much better too- he can recognise foe from friend, after a significant amount of work, and he has overcome most, yet not all, of the morality issues that come with living in a lion’s mind for minutes, sometimes hours at a time. He can't talk as a lion, but he fully understands conversation.
Lastly, the abilities of a lion still carry a little in his human form- he's sometimes had weird teeth still from his other form, tufts of hair he didn't expect, but almost constantly- a sharpened sense of smell and high-pitch hearing that carries from his other form. Ironic that his surname matches….
However, being able to switch to a massive cat does come with drawbacks- significant ones that make such an overwhelming force of bullshit a bit more tenable. Felix cannot easily turn into a lion without being hungry. He can’t do it easy on a full stomach, he has to visualise quite hard anyway to do it, so full up it’s worse- to a point where it will give him bad migraines. He will therefore be sluggish naturally, if he is opting to keep his lion self available. Fully fed, Felix the Lion is a slower, more lumbering beast that is more just sleepy cat than angry merc, great for terror, crappier in fights. Hunger is his trigger: the more ravenous he is the cleaner and longer the shift. The more extreme the shift (longer, further from his human self), the harder the rebound — after a long shift Felix sleeps like the stationary prop of a freight train for hours and emits an alarming amount of mane hair, unless he makes a serious feed (ie he has to rip and tear as many people as he can). To prevent this, it requires a counter of a small mountain of caffeine, both in ProPlus and questionably coloured energy drinks that mean Felix is extremely up and down. This means he'll. Felix does though, on occasion, find a way to stay as a lion longer when needed without the drawbacks, but this takes a lot of energy, a good mood, and coffee.
The only other problem with shapeshifting- he can’t just be a lion and NOT have something to eat. This makes him way fucking scarier than he needs to be to his own side. He will need to feed that hunger somehow. Find something chunky with protein, and throw it at him, or he will start licking, and at that point, he isn't in control anymore when his hunger is screaming at him to consume anything, because shifting back is messy at that point as it's inverted to how he would change into that form- he needs to be "full" as a lion to switch, and even he doesn't understand why it needs to be that complicated. Even if you get past that- with him switching back to human, he will also have to deal with the legacy of the fact he’s just eaten people. This is sometimes a bit sickening, and if he has eaten…..look, he is getting picky over organs, gall bladders make his human self feel a bit poorly, so he is still figuring out what bits you can munch without consequence.
Lastly, as if shapeshifting wasn’t already clunky enough- lions have a shorter lifespan than humans do, so he tries to avoid it because at 37, he wants to enjoy middle age more. Lion years go by faster, so even if he could control that power- he doesn’t want to sit in that side too long.
Vessels Carried
Felix carries a series of vessels from his travels as a merc, optimised for the activities of a pointman and purely maximising chaos above all else. He relies on improvisation with the potent but small toolset he has- rather than being a specialist, Felix focuses on opening doors, and minds (literal and figurative).
Fibreoptic Wire (Copy Cat): An illusionist’s gift, Felix keeps a fibreoptic wire as his ultimate party trick. He can look into rooms with the fibre wire, so he has visibility- but he also, it has the ability to make him create a copy that will run dead straight, through any wall he targets. He’ll send an illusion of himself into a room directly towards enemy, but once bullets hit, that person, or the lion, disappears as it's a dumb illusion- a ghost, if you will. This means he can come in through another door, or take a flank. This has some very, very hilarious capabilities- and while his “mirror” doesn’t have the ability to hurt or do any actual harm, given the vessel’s fairly weak, it is diabolical when combined with a flashbang, smoke, or a flank....
Holy Hand (Flashbang) Grenades: A relic stolen off a dead Chapel Priest, a limited supply of flashbangs made by a caster clearly into illumination and transubstantiation makes some absolutely disgusting, war-criminal, filthy flashbangs. It will literally switch hostiles around when it goes off, not just blinding them but actually rendering them where their friends were in position on the other side of the door to truly mindfuck hostiles. Used sparingly, and combined with a Copy Cat and his signature talent, this is truly, truly bullshit and a reason why Felix usually gets doors open. He needs to ration this supply however- as being down to his last four, he doesn't want to lose this.
Gold-rimmed Signet Ring: A tiny sliver of a feline tooth set under glass. A memory of the other side.
If given to someone else....well, nobody's actually asked him…..would it turn you inside out, or just give you really good hearing and smell? He reckons the latter.
Channels Carried
Due to his craft’s very specific nature, Felix doesn’t carry any channels- he sticks to regular firearms.
He might load some cheeky enchanted shotgun shells for really fucking up doors, nothing beats breach glyphs on shotgun shells, after all…
Appearance:
Human Form:
(Think Domhall Gleeson above, albeit significantly rougher, and more worn).
Felix is 6”3, being rather tall. As the upper-middle class chap he is, he has a fair bronzed face, weathered from being outside in the heat from a lifetime of soldiering and being a man for adventure. Long, curly dark red / brown hair, a glorious light coloured stubble, and a scar that usually gets compliments from idiots across the left of his brow to his ear, which came from being hit by an IED on the Liboli-Kalan border.
He is found normally with a 5.11 Tactical TacTec plate carrier, a green buff, and tan cargo pants that look ready for Safari more than Salewa. He wears an olive tech-wool hoodie, adjusting his top more often than not for the climate and conditions- going from that to an overcoat. He doesn’t blend in at all at the bar, and is about as stick-outty as probably his other form would be in Polavia. He wears a grey-coloured wizard's hat that is relatively folded over at this point, acting more as a cover for his hair. A pair of very dusty brown boots, what looks like a gazelle's horns on his groinplate, and a few enfused-looking chemlights on his rig follow fitting.
Lion Form:
What does he look like as a lion? Really, you had to ask?
He's a lion? African Lion? Massive teeth, massive claws, about 200 kilos and seven foot of golden-maned big cat that roars loud as fuck? Have you never been to a zoo?
Okay, fine. One ear nicked, a diagonal scar across the muzzle that seems to have stayed from previous work. His eyes retain a sort of human cunning because he isn’t just some animal in there, he can hear you and understand you perfectly fine, and he’ll just growl back. Also, Felix hasn't fully figured it out why, but most of his tactical gear transposes. As a result, he ends up with a tactical rig around his back and sides, weapons sitting there, weirdly on safety of all things. It chafes around his (read, lion’s) neck when he runs, but he isn’t complaining because it’s saved his ass on a few occasions.
Tactical Lion then.
Can a lion fire a HK417? Drunk Reactor mercs have tried, and it turns out paws cannot hold a battle rifle that easy. Can you ride a lion into battle if you were dumb enough to do so? No comment.
Bio:
Born in the DSR to the Libolian Ambassador, Felix was the third son to a father that was a workaholic and a mother in high society, and expected to join in that- getting privately educated and then sent to an elite university. Yet was always passed over, despite good grades, despite it all- he wasn't the favourite, his brothers were. He wasn’t even second choice, he was worse.
So he didn’t really bother with that high society. He went through Officer Training in the Libolian Defense Forces, and led people in warfare. He was a career soldier. Married into decent money, had the seaside house, had it all. That was his way of doing it- he liked adventure, getting outside, and well, the playboy lffestyle.
But the money dried up as lifestyles altered, and he had a kid. The job sucked him in, looking for meaning, looking to live up to his siblings, and well, at the dinner table, gave him something to talk about. It was status, but it was the kind that left him without time for what mattered. He learned that lesson hard.
His wife, Clara, divorced him and took his daughter, Lyra, in the custody battle, and Felix then got divorced by the Defence Forces at the end of his term when they were planning to downsize, the pension paying off most of his divorce settlments. He had more fight in him. He joined Reactor. Probably to escape them all. Nothing but anger, because he really had nothing to lose.
That’s where shit went a bit fucky. Looking for redemption and a paycheck that blew his last one away, all he found was rage bubbled when he got hit by an IED.
While working in Kalan as a Senior Contractor, his team were hit in ambush where he woke to his squad getting killed, and him thrown out of the truck by pure luck. He unlocked the lion when he was left to die, and seeing Chapel militia start executing people, he could only let his anger, his violence over how much hate he had for his life choices bubble in one way in a fit of revenge- like up to that moment, everything manifested itself as his life had crumbled before him to start ripping and tearing it apart. It’s weird that a Lyons became a Lion….was it a memory, something else triggering? It’s hard to say, but for a man to want to tear people apart as a trigger for a Craft that wasn’t directly associated, that was extremely rare. Something must have flipped. And he went wild.
He mauled, and partly ate five people in one sitting. Reports suggest he went on a two week rage bender on the disputed Liboli-Kalan border, and killed plenty more over the next 14 days without coming back to his humanity, and was riddled with bullet holes when a lion sanctuary discovered him in the Libolian Desert, across the border.
Felix wasn’t exactly a bloodthirsty guy up until this point, but killing twenty five people is a hell of a way of blowing off post-divorce steam and reacting to watching your squad mates get executed in cold blood. In that moment, Felix had gotten a taste of control, of being an alpha that got the job done no matter the rules. He'd always been third best. Now he was able to do as he pleased. Fairly.....toxic I guess?
Felix woke up in an big cat animal centre with an ocean of tranquilizer in him and scared the living shit out of the local staff when a wounded Reactor merc re-appeared- and from there, a legend was born (once he had a lot of shrapnel pulled from him, of which lines him with many of the scars in his abdomen and arms). This is the Aimo Koivonen (if you know, you know) moment of Felix’s career that remarkably made him who he is now. If an operative of his standard was a nice addition to Reactor’s team, now he was a bona-fide.
Reactor, of course, promoted him for his quick-thinking, and put him on an intense course of training to control his new Craft. He’s no Wizard, Witch, his craft turned out to just be finding that animal deep inside him. And making sure that it wouldn’t just maul friendlies. His Officer training made him an apt leader, with a heightened sense for threats, danger, and how to react, not like a seer but like someone who knew how to get it done under fire. He managed his teams and kept them out of harm's way, perhaps selling himself to the job too hard.
A Team Leader, Felix was sent in on the jobs with a QRF that got the job done. Flash and Felix became code for “send in guys with mops”. There’s regular CQB, then there’s taking a tamed beast to the job. And Felix got good at it. Really talented. He paid his share of his divorce, and was looking for more than visitation rights, but a chance to raise Lyra with his upcoming handsome pension payments. He'd retire and spend time with her, go part time, be a proper dad to a nine year old. Things were again, looking really up. This whole lion business had really worked out well so fa….
He ate a parade horse in an impulse at a state event while on close protection duties to the DSR’s Prime Minister at a security conference.
That forced him on involuntary leave for three months, and then redundancy came because Reactor did not want that mess on their already fucked up press pack. To be fair, him getting conveniently sacked happened when the rest of the redundancies hit and they couldn’t justify keeping him on the payroll, even despite his success rate and excellent service record. Questions were asked by the DSR about why on earth he ate a horse. Media got a hold of it and hounded his family. He couldn't really stay, because the company just couldn't afford to explain to its insurers quite the reason a lion is a terrible idea to leave hungry on guard duties.
That and previous actions by Reactor, including multiple censored pictures made Felix a fairly high value target in the scheme of things, when it came to Reactor's massive illegal portfolio.
Shaving his beard, Felix went undetected and snuck into Polavia via Kralovec, and headed south, into the countryside, to a village he couldn’t pronounce, into a rickety hut in the woods, planning his next move.
Felix has little left to lose right now, maybe another contract, maybe just a passport, or something else. He never had a cause, outside of making money, but family would be one he would go back to if he could at least sort....what this mess of his got him to.
Personality:
Divorce and the fall from grace changed Felix from family man into just having bottomless amounts of mixed emotions. A valiant, pomp man with something to prove has devolved into someone trying to keep it together, even though the lion inside him that he thought would fix it all has managed to fuck it all up anyway.
Deep down, Felix hates the animal doing bad things on his behalf and is trying to tell himself he’s more than the craft he absorbed- it saved him, but manifested into something that through Reactor, is made to just be a weapon of terror. But it’s also satisfying. And kinda fun.
He’s mostly surly, occasionally sentimental, and loyal. He might be motivated by money, but he protects, and knows that through his service, he'll get whoever he's with through what they need to. He might have made mistakes, that much is clear, but there's someone there who's clearly repentant and wants to try and control what he is- rather than that toxicity he had when he was younger, he's maturing to what a craft means. The rage is easy to give into- and he already knows what he needs to do to be better to his ex-wife and daughter, he just needs to get there. While control has come about more and more, being angry and being hungry, some could say, hangry, would make him switch.
He’s a dapper shot with a battle rifle that everyone rolls their eye at, and seems to be a born mercenary, if anything, becoming a shapeshifter making him even more of a bastard than usual- but he’s out of place, out of time, and out of his fucking mind wondering how he’s ever going to go back to his seaside house in Liboli, his estranged daughter with a wife he divorced ten years ago now. How the hell do you go back to that when you’re stranded that far from home?
Weaponry (including Channels):
Primary: Heckler and Koch HK417 Carbine (7.62x51mm)
A DSR Special Forces weapon of choice, the HK417 is a bit too posh by most Polavian standards, with it sticking out line a sore thumb. He'll be lucky to get more ammo for it, but, for now, he has enough magazines, none of which are magical in any way (bar the magic of steel-cored bullets).
-EOTech Holographic
-Laser Sight
-Silencer
-Underbarrel Masterkey 870 Shotgun (loaded with Breach Glyph 12 gauge rounds)
Secondary: FN FNX.45- Osprey Silencer, LLM Module.
(Note: in lion form he prefers claws & bite; the weapons are for when he’s human and needs to shoot. Obviously. As a lion, he's usually carrying the weaponry on his side, so he becomes a mobile carrier for the team of his firearms.)
Other gear/weapons/equipment:
-GPS Unit
-Garwan Smart Watch (acts as a convenient check for feed, heart rate, and condition- which is extremely helpful for shapeshifting)
-IFAK First Aid Kit
-Flashbangs (many) and Holy Flashbangs (few)
-Glyph Spray-Paint (2x Cans)
-Liboli Blend Coffee (2x Instant Cans, 1x Thermos)
-A tin of Snus
-Bone Knife (a souvenir from Kalan)
Other useful information:
He does not mind being petted. As a lion. There’s a running gag that while he sees red while in his alternate form, he seems to also be a lot more….cat? Nobody understands this at all- if fed, he’s incredibly tame to a point where if he can’t lead and is sleepy, is unreasonably wholesome. (Do not pet him in human form. He will definitely kill you.)
Felix's voice is that of an almost colonial-like British officer, from his upbringing in the DSR and Liboli leaving him with that kind of inflection.
Likes
-Rock, 80s Music
-Dark Beer
-Adventure and Outdoorsmanship
-GPS Markers and Mapping
-Other Felidae Familiy
-The sweet, sweet taste of catnip
Dislikes
-Horse Meat
-Overcomplicated Paperwork
-High Pitched Noises
-Canines
-Being Hungry as a Person
-Being Hungry as a Lion
Tag: Druid Sniper Seer
Name: Oksana "Roxy/Roxie" Czasowa-Dylatowa
Age: 31
Gender: Female
Nationality: Polavian
Craft: Seer-Like Chronomancy.
They call her the Watcher-Witch.
From an old Polavian Folk Tale, the shady woman who can tell you what your future is from the deepest darkest Albani magic. Just the really, really immediate one. (And I mean, technically, not really a Witch. Not properly. Like, a Chronomancer isn't properly a witch, but...okay, fine, the tattoos, the black hair, fine).
Able to see four seconds into the future, Roxie has an incredibly capable vision, coming from one missed bullet that mattered everything to her. Watching the bullet come back as if it was on a string, Roxie realised it wasn't even fired yet. She had only thought it, dreamt it. Another trigger pull, for real, and it ended up, dead centre, where she wanted it to be. If she'd have missed, she would have missed her only chance at freedom.
So, Roxie can perceive a sliver of immediate future events: the instant a rifle muzzle will flash, the footstep that will land on a trap, the arc of a thrown grenade. That makes her an unnervingly precise sniper and an excellent overwatch scout — she can call a shot before a target moves or yell “that door opens” before it does. As a result, she doesn't miss when she's in control, if she wants to take out a target, they’re already dead. And control, that she does well. Roxie is lethal, and the fact she's a sniper means that she has bullshit ringing out of her veins when it comes to killing people from far-away. Even in a breach, she's insanely useful- she can tell you what's on the other side, and how likely it is you'll die if you push in wrong, or need to adjust. Four seconds is a lifetime, and the branching possibilities that she can see are near endless, because she can basically see it all play out.
It means flanking her is also risky. She will know you’re coming, and trying to get the jump on her is incredibly hard if she’s focussed. When not though, it’s always a good gag to get the jump on someone who can see every option you have. Roxie in combat is not as say, wild as a very unhinged chronomancer able to look like she just turns into a blur in front of you (critics of this would say that’s more a superhero talent of a “speedster”, but I mean, semantics!), because a seer is more about seeing what's coming- but she’s got decades of combat experience on her peers because she knows where to position herself, how to start a fight, and how to win in the moment to moment when she knows the right option, and you haven’t even swung a knife, reacting faster than you.
However, the foresight is unreliable, and comes with issues. Her visions come in bursts: sometimes exactly four seconds; sometimes a hair more, sometimes a useless image of something in four hours before splitting back to reality. Her dreams are still wild, a common issue for seers- she can see months into the future, sometimes in hazy, fuzzy futures- and her dreams will sucker others around her who are mana-enabled, because her mind is basically vivid. Under stress (loud explosions, stimulants, adrenaline), her foresight can flicker wildly — either lengthening into disorienting sequences or shrinking to near-zero- she calls this “Chaos Theory”. In life-or-death, it’s pretty obvious when the possibilities reduce to a handful what’s her best pick, though it’s not always spot on. This means that in a straight fight if you get her cornered with enough force, you’ll be able to stop her, if you remove all choices from the board.
This makes her really crap in heightened, direct combat- she cannot focus on what comes next because chaos creates too many visions for her, unless she’s in cover, or away from being suppressed and or shot at, unless she really, really pays attention under order. Previously, this action would make her black out, now, it makes her just get nasty migranes, meaning she can still fight when needed and extrapolate futures in a rougher sense. Also, seeing her team-mates die, over and over again in bad calls (that don’t materialise due to her actions, or radio callouts) has left her incredibly sarcastic- which then plays out to an extreme in what can only be called a sort of chronal disassociation. Without temperance of looking into the future (ie, constantly looking at what her visions are showing them), she isn’t much good for extended periods in the dead centre of combat. At an extreme, her foresight may devolve into useless or harmful visions that make nothing possible- this terrified her the first time it happened because it was like being stripped of her Craft entirely and is akin to schizophrenia. Oddly enough, it’s treatable by mana and microdosing on ketamine, which she tries to carry when she knows the team avoids checkpoints. “K-Hole Roxie” is absolutely the funniest thing you’ve ever seen, and while it’s only happened once, Reactor never forgot- but the tranquiliser somehow manages to restore her vision back to what it normally does again, at the cost of temporarily making her absolutely fucking useless.
In short, her seering/chronomancy makes her excellent for controlled environments and precision shots, with a bullshit second to only a few chronomancers, but needing moderation and care to keep her out of harm's way. She’s still a few years into it, so there’s good chance with more training, practice and focus, she could probably get more out of her craft, and probably iron out the kinks.
Vessels Carried
Oksana pinches a few druid-related tools to help her be a sniper- who knew, keeping friends on that side of hte family was helpful indeed. She is a bit too old-school for technology and under the old People’s Republic of Polavia, relies more on improvising.
Druid-stitched Ghillie: A full ghillie suit obtained from a druid contact. It is sympathetic to local flora — when Roxie plants herself, the suit sprouts moss, leaves, and bracken to match the terrain, granting superior concealment. This includes even in urban areas, where she can manifest herself into a pile of leaves, or a pile of turf. Handy, because while it isn't some insane cloaking device, it is basically a way for her to hide. Not so great in snow or composite areas, as it just tufts up, but she just usually heaps snow or stitches white into it.
Rope Vine: Roxie keeps a small vine by her hip, seemingly a memento, but is another tool that she has for movement in the vertical sense. Being able to throw it at surfaces, Roxie fucking hates how spiky it is, ripping her gloves to bits, but it will basically keep growing as far as she needs, like a shit spiky Beanstalk that needs a wall to work. More of a utility, but creates a bio-degradable port-a-ladder that doesn’t arouse suspicion in getting into hard-to-reach spots.
Spotting Device. Not much at the moment, but it seems rather bonded to her despite her never using it given her abilities. If given to someone else, there’s likely a chance they see what being able to see through doors is like.
Channels Carried
See Weapons- 1x PB that is her "wand".
Appearance:
Oksana is 5”8, wiry, a built-for-distance posture. Her face is fair, with short-cropped black / chestnut hair with an undercut, a pale scar beside the left eye (from an old wind-blown ricochet), her grey/green eyes sometimes cloud white when she’s seering into the future. She's pretty, provided you're into Slavic women.
In combat, she prefers her scuffed sage ghillie that always smells faintly of wet moss- the ghillie can be cinched into a weird looking hipsterish cloak for urban ops, and often carries a short pointy sage cap, with tactical glasses attached to her hat. Under the ghillie, she wears an sage combat shirt, which overlays a navy/white sleeved Telnyashka vest beneath it, paired to sage green trousers, and a very dusty looking ANA M1 plate carrier. Though is she known to switch that out entirely for a black woolen overcoat and black witch hat if she needs a lower profile or in an urban platform. She wears tactical boots, but just in case you weren't sure if you were dealing with a Chronomancer- she keeps a few little things on her as a reminder. A green Druid-infused tactical knife sits on her side, as do a whole pile of vines that have grown involuntarily from her Rope Vine and got tangled in her ghillie, all cut but now just stuck to her gear. Her tactical pack, a sage green pack contains the remainders of her bits and pieces.
Oksana’s rebel nature means she is covered in tattoos. Weirdly, she really, really likes butterflies. That’s totally not concerning for a seer, but there’s a massive winged one across her back, coloured in blue and yellow, a whole streak of them running across her stomach and side. A vine across her nape that runs through her chest, and metamorphizes into roses on her right shoulder, running through to a poly tetra-hedron design that basically extends to her wrist. She wants another sleeve for her left, but hasn’t yet seen anything she likes in the ink, bar a mushroom on her left arm that pokes out of her vest.
History
Polavian born, Oksana grew up in Kralovec, and from day one, knew survival was key. Living in an oppressive regime, she fell in line, but always felt a little bit torn apart due to her familial situation. Her father being in a Druid Albani family, she was torn between that and the traditional Polavian identity of her mother- then when her father ran away when she was barely 8 to raid ships in the Jodassa Strait, and likely due to being persecuted. They had no money to live, and with things in the Regime getting worse, Oksana grew up knowing queues for food, electricity cuts, brutal repression, state surveillance, and more often than not, indoctrination on anti-communist activities including those of the arcane community.
Conscription usually excluded women, but a Mana Test revealed traces of the substance in her blood. (Worth a mention that the test is an exceptionally poor way of telling if someone could unlock into a Craft or not, and was often seen by Polavian dissidents as a way of the Security Apparatus forcing more people to meet recruitment targets, including underage and female soldiers). That forced her in, in replacement of her older sister, Catherine, in a one-in, one out system. Oksana, given her remaining family were loyal to the state got the comfy position of working in the Border Security Guards, a fitting position she got from Catherine working as bureaucrat for the Central Committee. Strings were pulled, and for a few years, Oksana did nothing but enforcing the repression she grew up watching. Well, then her sister was then disappeared and Oksana’s own career took a hit from the reputation that Catherine had for “capitalist morality crimes”.
A funny look turned to interviews. Interviews turned to suspension. Next was prison, if Oksana stayed at home when the PSA knocked. Oksana realised there wasn’t any chance surviving it. They were the kind of interviews that made her flee the border, knowing the consequences were dire if she got caught. She had to live- and well, the West looked like a hell of a choice. She took her SVD, and made sure to keep her aim on the two guards, like her, that were in her way. Running across No-Man’s Land, she was shot upon, and realised she wasn’t going to make it unless she acted.
And then she felt something stop her. A realization she’d miss and the alarms would trip.
That bullet that was sent in reply couldn’t miss.
It simply wasn’t allowed to, not after everything. Maybe luck was on her side in that moment, to stop her getting gunned down by her former colleagues.
She realised she hadn’t fired. She’d visualised it, but snapped back in to seeing it all again, and with adjusted windage, time went back to normal.
The raw emotion itself forced itself into her, making sure that guard had a bullet fly through his skull, the chaos rose, and she could run across the dying embers of a Cold War border. She promptly passed out, and was recovered by a border guard on the Samiyan side.
And nobody wanted to hear the story- she was a refugee, and there was nothing that could be done to free her sister. There was nothing anyone could do. She was a refugee, hopeless, but with a talent that got her a sponsored visa in the DSR via Reactor PLC. They realised that a former Polavian Border Guard, with Mana in her veins, suddenly was a very handy asset to have. They helped her train, hone, and focus her instinct. And then, become a proper sniper without needing to mulligan every time.
Reactor gave her a chance to hide in the insanity of professional violence, and found the kind of people who didn’t ask “why” much, the pay being about ten times that of her previous employment, and enough for her to save up for her own flat in cosmopolitan Rushwater. Working in Reactor meant she didn’t have to constantly look for Security Apparatus looking to hunt her down for how much she embarrassed the regime.
The craft made her invaluable and hated in equal measure- shit in combat, but if you had her on overwatch, you got every order right. The Scarlet Revolution meant that the regime might have died in Polavia a few years ago, but quite literally, Oksana didn’t see any future at home, and more money on the horizon with Reactor.
The Druid Mafia kept her furnished with a few vessels in exchange for a few side-hustles, because Roxie doesn’t miss, quite literally, even when what she wanted was intel on a certain someone. The kind that doesn’t come with playing with drugs and trying to see the future. Her father turned out to be dead from a DSR raid two years prior- and she felt nothing given how many lives she’d already taken to get to that, and every possible future she saw having him never come back. It turns out, seeing the future means you can’t really change the past. Family stays blackened.
Roxie was never good enough for seniority given her attitude, but was posted in sniper teams, often providing overwatch to the rest of Reactor’s capability in theatre alone. She didn’t need a spotter. She could range everything herself because she’d already tried to see what the bullet would do, or she pissed off her spotter enough to leave her alone.
Redundancy was a shock then. She expected to stay, and with it, her DSR Sponsored Visa expired- meaning she was effectively going to be kicked out of the country, as well as wanted for questioning in the Medil crisis, in which she was an actor on Reactor’s side defending FOBs and other infrastructure.
Once again, due to a different state actor wanting to put her in prison, she ran before she was captured or brought into court.
Since Reactor’s collapse she’s oscillated between bitter humour and the stark horror of her homeland completely changing- now back in Polavia, at a local bar to where her Babushka lives in the countryside, Oksana is not pleased. “Ah shit, here we go again” is what plays in her mind. But aware the other Reactor mercs coming in probably would appreciate a local face and she knows a couple. It’s good the old regime is dead, but she knows that remainders of the Security Apparatus still likely harbour grudges against her killing Colonel Klebetznikov with a recast bullet, that border guard she killed it turns out, being her old boss’s boss who was the only person going easy on any of the staff.
Sometimes, you end up being able to look into the past and see your future is pretty fucking grim.
Bio:
Roxie is laconic, precise, and sardonic. She calls her forecasts “suggestions” and delights in undercutting dramatic moments with brutally dry commentary.
Ruthlessly practical, and prone to telling people their most embarrassing possible near future with deadpan casualness, Oksana is as blunt as a Slavic woman as you’re going to get. She’s professional, often distant, but quietly cares for the tiny moments — she’ll make the team tea, she’ll do more than her share of chores, almost as if she’s pissed off she had to do it, but ultimately, she really does care. Behind a glare and what looks like a constant grimace, she is actually fine with things. Do not ask her to smile. She is already happy enough. (The picture displays a rare picture of her in Reactor archives).
She smokes, drinks, and generally, is harder than most men from the West may think a woman of her size is due to growing up in Polavian squalor, food shortages, and having to become a fugitive from a homeland that is now awkwardly the way it is. She will know how to fix a car, how to jury rig an IED, she’s just got that can-do attitude to improvise, but this makes her poor around high-tech equipment, preferring analogue to digital. She is a dirtbag, one of the guys, but unafraid of also looking after her feminine side and has a face that while sculpted by war, is still fair and pretty to the men in her life. Oksana can be fun, but her version of fun is very crazy.
Oksana’s isolation in combat has made her even more jaded than most, but in a firefight, she’s a good team-mate when called upon. She will be blunt, but given she’s already seen you die, it’s because she’s just focusing on the job at hand. She’ll spot, fight and cooperate well with everyone. And of course, when vodka is in her system? Well, the visions disappear for a bit, and she might actually be able to open her walls.
Weaponry (including Channels):
OTs-03 SVU- Not really being a witch, she changed a staff for a bullpup, shortened Polavian-produced designated marksman rifle that is typically, not magical. A grey puzzlewood suppressed, sniper/marksman platform, Oksana makes this rifle work and then some- even though it doesn't have the wooden furniture that feels cosy in a Mosin-Nagant. Still firing bullets, Oksana can rotate between non-lethal knockout rounds built by her Druid contact to drop enemies with a knockout poison (similar to that of her PB), or switch to regular FMJ to smack enemies with a 7.62x54 rimless round (optionally subsonic).
PP-19-01 Vityaz: An alternative for urban ops with a compact, tactile Polavian-made SMG, Roxie prefers a lighter, 9x19mm platform in the instance she has to choose “chaos theory” rather than focus, hanging back and calling enemies and taking them out where she can. Equipped with a PKA-S holographic sight, a stubby silencer, a foregrip and a foldable stock, the SMG isn’t magical in any way at all, just a tool when she’s up close and either needs to spray, or put rounds into targets.
PB Makarov (backup): A quiet sniper’s best friend, and Roxie’s de-facto "wand", though again, she'll tell you- she is not really a witch! Enchanted with more Druid magic, the elongated silencer has been replaced by a darkwood, sound-suppressor wand that upon user contact, will send non-lethal knockout poison out of the wand’s ending, making it even more bullshit than a normal silenced pistol, albeit with the issue that it won’t work through heavy armour and requires her own mana to interface with it.
Yes, that makes it a Magical Makarov.
(Alternative- by special request)
VKS (primary channel). A bastard of an anti-material rifle with a custom, Puzzlewood-grade silencer that basically seems to remove all sound, this is the ultimate weapon of a silent, scout sniper that wants to delete even the most heavily armoured enemies without giving up Roxie’s position- so this is peak bullshit. It just beams people when she uses it- and uses a custom-milled 12.7mm subsonic bullet made by an incredibly drunk Druid in North-Eastern Polvia that silently tears people apart, as counter-intuitive as that sounds. As such, the rifle gets far less use than her typical tools and is employed on the most difficult of ops given bullets cost more than a month’s salary to make, but if she has it in hand, you’re having an extremely bad day.
Other gear/weapons/equipment:
-Rangefinder binoculars with cracked glass (she collects broken optics)
-GPS Unit
-Omegski Diver Watch
-IFAK First Aid Kit
-Smoke Grenades
-Portable ghillie repair kit (moss clippers, threads).
-Pocket sketchbook full of quick diagrams — she draws future snapshots (sometimes helpful, sometimes surreal).
-Flask of strong Polavian Mint herbal tea (she calls it focus tonic, it honestly just tastes like tea).
-Many packets of Marlborough Golds. She smokes a little bit more than she should, an unhealthy habit that even her foresight tells her isn’t good for health.
-Packets of Seasame Seeds
-Enchanted Druid Knife
Other useful information:
She collects matchboxes from places she’s been- not sure why she does this, but perhaps it’s from a lifetime of travelling and smoking cigarettes.
Likes
-Heavy Metal
-Sketching
-Polavian Standard Vodka
-Brutal Honesty
-Mint Tea
-Cats
-Collecting Mushrooms
Dislikes
-Medilian Hospitality
-The entirety of the former Polavian Security Apparatus
-Indirect Conversation
-Dogs
-Being in a K-Hole
-Constantly being asked "oh can you tell me my future?" "No, Vlad, this has been told to you enough times, I'm not a fortune teller, I'm a fucking seer!"
Name: Oksana "Roxy/Roxie" Czasowa-Dylatowa
Age: 31
Gender: Female
Nationality: Polavian
Craft: Seer-Like Chronomancy.
They call her the Watcher-Witch.
From an old Polavian Folk Tale, the shady woman who can tell you what your future is from the deepest darkest Albani magic. Just the really, really immediate one. (And I mean, technically, not really a Witch. Not properly. Like, a Chronomancer isn't properly a witch, but...okay, fine, the tattoos, the black hair, fine).
Able to see four seconds into the future, Roxie has an incredibly capable vision, coming from one missed bullet that mattered everything to her. Watching the bullet come back as if it was on a string, Roxie realised it wasn't even fired yet. She had only thought it, dreamt it. Another trigger pull, for real, and it ended up, dead centre, where she wanted it to be. If she'd have missed, she would have missed her only chance at freedom.
So, Roxie can perceive a sliver of immediate future events: the instant a rifle muzzle will flash, the footstep that will land on a trap, the arc of a thrown grenade. That makes her an unnervingly precise sniper and an excellent overwatch scout — she can call a shot before a target moves or yell “that door opens” before it does. As a result, she doesn't miss when she's in control, if she wants to take out a target, they’re already dead. And control, that she does well. Roxie is lethal, and the fact she's a sniper means that she has bullshit ringing out of her veins when it comes to killing people from far-away. Even in a breach, she's insanely useful- she can tell you what's on the other side, and how likely it is you'll die if you push in wrong, or need to adjust. Four seconds is a lifetime, and the branching possibilities that she can see are near endless, because she can basically see it all play out.
It means flanking her is also risky. She will know you’re coming, and trying to get the jump on her is incredibly hard if she’s focussed. When not though, it’s always a good gag to get the jump on someone who can see every option you have. Roxie in combat is not as say, wild as a very unhinged chronomancer able to look like she just turns into a blur in front of you (critics of this would say that’s more a superhero talent of a “speedster”, but I mean, semantics!), because a seer is more about seeing what's coming- but she’s got decades of combat experience on her peers because she knows where to position herself, how to start a fight, and how to win in the moment to moment when she knows the right option, and you haven’t even swung a knife, reacting faster than you.
However, the foresight is unreliable, and comes with issues. Her visions come in bursts: sometimes exactly four seconds; sometimes a hair more, sometimes a useless image of something in four hours before splitting back to reality. Her dreams are still wild, a common issue for seers- she can see months into the future, sometimes in hazy, fuzzy futures- and her dreams will sucker others around her who are mana-enabled, because her mind is basically vivid. Under stress (loud explosions, stimulants, adrenaline), her foresight can flicker wildly — either lengthening into disorienting sequences or shrinking to near-zero- she calls this “Chaos Theory”. In life-or-death, it’s pretty obvious when the possibilities reduce to a handful what’s her best pick, though it’s not always spot on. This means that in a straight fight if you get her cornered with enough force, you’ll be able to stop her, if you remove all choices from the board.
This makes her really crap in heightened, direct combat- she cannot focus on what comes next because chaos creates too many visions for her, unless she’s in cover, or away from being suppressed and or shot at, unless she really, really pays attention under order. Previously, this action would make her black out, now, it makes her just get nasty migranes, meaning she can still fight when needed and extrapolate futures in a rougher sense. Also, seeing her team-mates die, over and over again in bad calls (that don’t materialise due to her actions, or radio callouts) has left her incredibly sarcastic- which then plays out to an extreme in what can only be called a sort of chronal disassociation. Without temperance of looking into the future (ie, constantly looking at what her visions are showing them), she isn’t much good for extended periods in the dead centre of combat. At an extreme, her foresight may devolve into useless or harmful visions that make nothing possible- this terrified her the first time it happened because it was like being stripped of her Craft entirely and is akin to schizophrenia. Oddly enough, it’s treatable by mana and microdosing on ketamine, which she tries to carry when she knows the team avoids checkpoints. “K-Hole Roxie” is absolutely the funniest thing you’ve ever seen, and while it’s only happened once, Reactor never forgot- but the tranquiliser somehow manages to restore her vision back to what it normally does again, at the cost of temporarily making her absolutely fucking useless.
In short, her seering/chronomancy makes her excellent for controlled environments and precision shots, with a bullshit second to only a few chronomancers, but needing moderation and care to keep her out of harm's way. She’s still a few years into it, so there’s good chance with more training, practice and focus, she could probably get more out of her craft, and probably iron out the kinks.
Vessels Carried
Oksana pinches a few druid-related tools to help her be a sniper- who knew, keeping friends on that side of hte family was helpful indeed. She is a bit too old-school for technology and under the old People’s Republic of Polavia, relies more on improvising.
Druid-stitched Ghillie: A full ghillie suit obtained from a druid contact. It is sympathetic to local flora — when Roxie plants herself, the suit sprouts moss, leaves, and bracken to match the terrain, granting superior concealment. This includes even in urban areas, where she can manifest herself into a pile of leaves, or a pile of turf. Handy, because while it isn't some insane cloaking device, it is basically a way for her to hide. Not so great in snow or composite areas, as it just tufts up, but she just usually heaps snow or stitches white into it.
Rope Vine: Roxie keeps a small vine by her hip, seemingly a memento, but is another tool that she has for movement in the vertical sense. Being able to throw it at surfaces, Roxie fucking hates how spiky it is, ripping her gloves to bits, but it will basically keep growing as far as she needs, like a shit spiky Beanstalk that needs a wall to work. More of a utility, but creates a bio-degradable port-a-ladder that doesn’t arouse suspicion in getting into hard-to-reach spots.
Spotting Device. Not much at the moment, but it seems rather bonded to her despite her never using it given her abilities. If given to someone else, there’s likely a chance they see what being able to see through doors is like.
Channels Carried
See Weapons- 1x PB that is her "wand".
Appearance:
Oksana is 5”8, wiry, a built-for-distance posture. Her face is fair, with short-cropped black / chestnut hair with an undercut, a pale scar beside the left eye (from an old wind-blown ricochet), her grey/green eyes sometimes cloud white when she’s seering into the future. She's pretty, provided you're into Slavic women.
In combat, she prefers her scuffed sage ghillie that always smells faintly of wet moss- the ghillie can be cinched into a weird looking hipsterish cloak for urban ops, and often carries a short pointy sage cap, with tactical glasses attached to her hat. Under the ghillie, she wears an sage combat shirt, which overlays a navy/white sleeved Telnyashka vest beneath it, paired to sage green trousers, and a very dusty looking ANA M1 plate carrier. Though is she known to switch that out entirely for a black woolen overcoat and black witch hat if she needs a lower profile or in an urban platform. She wears tactical boots, but just in case you weren't sure if you were dealing with a Chronomancer- she keeps a few little things on her as a reminder. A green Druid-infused tactical knife sits on her side, as do a whole pile of vines that have grown involuntarily from her Rope Vine and got tangled in her ghillie, all cut but now just stuck to her gear. Her tactical pack, a sage green pack contains the remainders of her bits and pieces.
Oksana’s rebel nature means she is covered in tattoos. Weirdly, she really, really likes butterflies. That’s totally not concerning for a seer, but there’s a massive winged one across her back, coloured in blue and yellow, a whole streak of them running across her stomach and side. A vine across her nape that runs through her chest, and metamorphizes into roses on her right shoulder, running through to a poly tetra-hedron design that basically extends to her wrist. She wants another sleeve for her left, but hasn’t yet seen anything she likes in the ink, bar a mushroom on her left arm that pokes out of her vest.
History
Polavian born, Oksana grew up in Kralovec, and from day one, knew survival was key. Living in an oppressive regime, she fell in line, but always felt a little bit torn apart due to her familial situation. Her father being in a Druid Albani family, she was torn between that and the traditional Polavian identity of her mother- then when her father ran away when she was barely 8 to raid ships in the Jodassa Strait, and likely due to being persecuted. They had no money to live, and with things in the Regime getting worse, Oksana grew up knowing queues for food, electricity cuts, brutal repression, state surveillance, and more often than not, indoctrination on anti-communist activities including those of the arcane community.
Conscription usually excluded women, but a Mana Test revealed traces of the substance in her blood. (Worth a mention that the test is an exceptionally poor way of telling if someone could unlock into a Craft or not, and was often seen by Polavian dissidents as a way of the Security Apparatus forcing more people to meet recruitment targets, including underage and female soldiers). That forced her in, in replacement of her older sister, Catherine, in a one-in, one out system. Oksana, given her remaining family were loyal to the state got the comfy position of working in the Border Security Guards, a fitting position she got from Catherine working as bureaucrat for the Central Committee. Strings were pulled, and for a few years, Oksana did nothing but enforcing the repression she grew up watching. Well, then her sister was then disappeared and Oksana’s own career took a hit from the reputation that Catherine had for “capitalist morality crimes”.
A funny look turned to interviews. Interviews turned to suspension. Next was prison, if Oksana stayed at home when the PSA knocked. Oksana realised there wasn’t any chance surviving it. They were the kind of interviews that made her flee the border, knowing the consequences were dire if she got caught. She had to live- and well, the West looked like a hell of a choice. She took her SVD, and made sure to keep her aim on the two guards, like her, that were in her way. Running across No-Man’s Land, she was shot upon, and realised she wasn’t going to make it unless she acted.
And then she felt something stop her. A realization she’d miss and the alarms would trip.
That bullet that was sent in reply couldn’t miss.
It simply wasn’t allowed to, not after everything. Maybe luck was on her side in that moment, to stop her getting gunned down by her former colleagues.
She realised she hadn’t fired. She’d visualised it, but snapped back in to seeing it all again, and with adjusted windage, time went back to normal.
The raw emotion itself forced itself into her, making sure that guard had a bullet fly through his skull, the chaos rose, and she could run across the dying embers of a Cold War border. She promptly passed out, and was recovered by a border guard on the Samiyan side.
And nobody wanted to hear the story- she was a refugee, and there was nothing that could be done to free her sister. There was nothing anyone could do. She was a refugee, hopeless, but with a talent that got her a sponsored visa in the DSR via Reactor PLC. They realised that a former Polavian Border Guard, with Mana in her veins, suddenly was a very handy asset to have. They helped her train, hone, and focus her instinct. And then, become a proper sniper without needing to mulligan every time.
Reactor gave her a chance to hide in the insanity of professional violence, and found the kind of people who didn’t ask “why” much, the pay being about ten times that of her previous employment, and enough for her to save up for her own flat in cosmopolitan Rushwater. Working in Reactor meant she didn’t have to constantly look for Security Apparatus looking to hunt her down for how much she embarrassed the regime.
The craft made her invaluable and hated in equal measure- shit in combat, but if you had her on overwatch, you got every order right. The Scarlet Revolution meant that the regime might have died in Polavia a few years ago, but quite literally, Oksana didn’t see any future at home, and more money on the horizon with Reactor.
The Druid Mafia kept her furnished with a few vessels in exchange for a few side-hustles, because Roxie doesn’t miss, quite literally, even when what she wanted was intel on a certain someone. The kind that doesn’t come with playing with drugs and trying to see the future. Her father turned out to be dead from a DSR raid two years prior- and she felt nothing given how many lives she’d already taken to get to that, and every possible future she saw having him never come back. It turns out, seeing the future means you can’t really change the past. Family stays blackened.
Roxie was never good enough for seniority given her attitude, but was posted in sniper teams, often providing overwatch to the rest of Reactor’s capability in theatre alone. She didn’t need a spotter. She could range everything herself because she’d already tried to see what the bullet would do, or she pissed off her spotter enough to leave her alone.
Redundancy was a shock then. She expected to stay, and with it, her DSR Sponsored Visa expired- meaning she was effectively going to be kicked out of the country, as well as wanted for questioning in the Medil crisis, in which she was an actor on Reactor’s side defending FOBs and other infrastructure.
Once again, due to a different state actor wanting to put her in prison, she ran before she was captured or brought into court.
Since Reactor’s collapse she’s oscillated between bitter humour and the stark horror of her homeland completely changing- now back in Polavia, at a local bar to where her Babushka lives in the countryside, Oksana is not pleased. “Ah shit, here we go again” is what plays in her mind. But aware the other Reactor mercs coming in probably would appreciate a local face and she knows a couple. It’s good the old regime is dead, but she knows that remainders of the Security Apparatus still likely harbour grudges against her killing Colonel Klebetznikov with a recast bullet, that border guard she killed it turns out, being her old boss’s boss who was the only person going easy on any of the staff.
Sometimes, you end up being able to look into the past and see your future is pretty fucking grim.
Bio:
Roxie is laconic, precise, and sardonic. She calls her forecasts “suggestions” and delights in undercutting dramatic moments with brutally dry commentary.
Ruthlessly practical, and prone to telling people their most embarrassing possible near future with deadpan casualness, Oksana is as blunt as a Slavic woman as you’re going to get. She’s professional, often distant, but quietly cares for the tiny moments — she’ll make the team tea, she’ll do more than her share of chores, almost as if she’s pissed off she had to do it, but ultimately, she really does care. Behind a glare and what looks like a constant grimace, she is actually fine with things. Do not ask her to smile. She is already happy enough. (The picture displays a rare picture of her in Reactor archives).
She smokes, drinks, and generally, is harder than most men from the West may think a woman of her size is due to growing up in Polavian squalor, food shortages, and having to become a fugitive from a homeland that is now awkwardly the way it is. She will know how to fix a car, how to jury rig an IED, she’s just got that can-do attitude to improvise, but this makes her poor around high-tech equipment, preferring analogue to digital. She is a dirtbag, one of the guys, but unafraid of also looking after her feminine side and has a face that while sculpted by war, is still fair and pretty to the men in her life. Oksana can be fun, but her version of fun is very crazy.
Oksana’s isolation in combat has made her even more jaded than most, but in a firefight, she’s a good team-mate when called upon. She will be blunt, but given she’s already seen you die, it’s because she’s just focusing on the job at hand. She’ll spot, fight and cooperate well with everyone. And of course, when vodka is in her system? Well, the visions disappear for a bit, and she might actually be able to open her walls.
Weaponry (including Channels):
OTs-03 SVU- Not really being a witch, she changed a staff for a bullpup, shortened Polavian-produced designated marksman rifle that is typically, not magical. A grey puzzlewood suppressed, sniper/marksman platform, Oksana makes this rifle work and then some- even though it doesn't have the wooden furniture that feels cosy in a Mosin-Nagant. Still firing bullets, Oksana can rotate between non-lethal knockout rounds built by her Druid contact to drop enemies with a knockout poison (similar to that of her PB), or switch to regular FMJ to smack enemies with a 7.62x54 rimless round (optionally subsonic).
PP-19-01 Vityaz: An alternative for urban ops with a compact, tactile Polavian-made SMG, Roxie prefers a lighter, 9x19mm platform in the instance she has to choose “chaos theory” rather than focus, hanging back and calling enemies and taking them out where she can. Equipped with a PKA-S holographic sight, a stubby silencer, a foregrip and a foldable stock, the SMG isn’t magical in any way at all, just a tool when she’s up close and either needs to spray, or put rounds into targets.
PB Makarov (backup): A quiet sniper’s best friend, and Roxie’s de-facto "wand", though again, she'll tell you- she is not really a witch! Enchanted with more Druid magic, the elongated silencer has been replaced by a darkwood, sound-suppressor wand that upon user contact, will send non-lethal knockout poison out of the wand’s ending, making it even more bullshit than a normal silenced pistol, albeit with the issue that it won’t work through heavy armour and requires her own mana to interface with it.
Yes, that makes it a Magical Makarov.
(Alternative- by special request)
VKS (primary channel). A bastard of an anti-material rifle with a custom, Puzzlewood-grade silencer that basically seems to remove all sound, this is the ultimate weapon of a silent, scout sniper that wants to delete even the most heavily armoured enemies without giving up Roxie’s position- so this is peak bullshit. It just beams people when she uses it- and uses a custom-milled 12.7mm subsonic bullet made by an incredibly drunk Druid in North-Eastern Polvia that silently tears people apart, as counter-intuitive as that sounds. As such, the rifle gets far less use than her typical tools and is employed on the most difficult of ops given bullets cost more than a month’s salary to make, but if she has it in hand, you’re having an extremely bad day.
Other gear/weapons/equipment:
-Rangefinder binoculars with cracked glass (she collects broken optics)
-GPS Unit
-Omegski Diver Watch
-IFAK First Aid Kit
-Smoke Grenades
-Portable ghillie repair kit (moss clippers, threads).
-Pocket sketchbook full of quick diagrams — she draws future snapshots (sometimes helpful, sometimes surreal).
-Flask of strong Polavian Mint herbal tea (she calls it focus tonic, it honestly just tastes like tea).
-Many packets of Marlborough Golds. She smokes a little bit more than she should, an unhealthy habit that even her foresight tells her isn’t good for health.
-Packets of Seasame Seeds
-Enchanted Druid Knife
Other useful information:
She collects matchboxes from places she’s been- not sure why she does this, but perhaps it’s from a lifetime of travelling and smoking cigarettes.
Likes
-Heavy Metal
-Sketching
-Polavian Standard Vodka
-Brutal Honesty
-Mint Tea
-Cats
-Collecting Mushrooms
Dislikes
-Medilian Hospitality
-The entirety of the former Polavian Security Apparatus
-Indirect Conversation
-Dogs
-Being in a K-Hole
-Constantly being asked "oh can you tell me my future?" "No, Vlad, this has been told to you enough times, I'm not a fortune teller, I'm a fucking seer!"
