Hank

Why Is No One Joining My RP (General Advice Thread)

<Snipped quote by Hank>

Oh yes Hank.

Tell me what happened to Nights of Pestilence.

@Stormflyx

Why Is No One Joining My RP (General Advice Thread)

I'm incorrigible. I'm impossible. I'm inevitable. I'm in..I'm im...I'm Bango.

@BangoSkank

Thanks for making this thread. We haven't had a good old-fashioned site pow wow like this in a while. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Now let's all heed @Stormflyx's words and shift our focus away from the current conversation. We all know what it's like to be in Reborn's shoes, he says that we don't, we insist that we do, yadda yadda, we're all still here when hell freezes over and Jesus comes down from heaven and he looks uncomfortable while he taps us on the shoulder and says "Come on guys, it's the Rapture, it's... it's time to go," and we say "hold up a second there Jesus we're not finished with Reborn here" and Jesus looks at his watch and pinches the bridge of his nose and says "It's been millenia, you guys, can we please... can we please just go? God's waiting" and--

Well, you get the idea.

I'll pose a new question to everyone here instead:

We've all walked away from roleplays before. Probably roleplays that we were supposed to be GMing, too (I know I have). What's usually going on with you, and with your life, when that happens?

Greetings! Candy Cane Service!

Thanks to whoever sent me one!

Greetings! Candy Cane Service!

I believe it was a Mr... Hmmm, the name on this letter is slightly smudged. A Mr... Honk who signed off on the letter! Thank you Mr Honk!

@Christmas Elf

Yes, that's me. Mr Honk. That's definitely right. Mr Honk. Can't see anything wrong with that. That's just... yep, that's about right.

Mass Effect: Caelestis

Oh Captain, My Captain

_{featuring the sublime and sensual @Stormflyx}

---

Present day,

Omega

“Come on, man,” Delilah muttered to herself and groaned, scrunching up her face, as she pulled out a wrinkled pair of men’s undergarments from beneath the bed of her small room. She’d spent the last few weeks of her latest shore leave with Jameson, but she’d kicked him out the day before and told him to clean up after himself. Evidently, he had done a shitty job of it. She rolled her eyes and tossed the boxers into the trash before washing her hands one more time. Water dropped quietly from the tap, one drop every few seconds, after she turned it off and glanced around the room one last time, the only other sound to be heard aside from the constant, droning background noise of Omega. Spotless, just like they’d taught her at Jump Zero. The elcor concierge would be pleased. Delilah wondered if he’d talk to himself when he inspected the room. “Pleasantly surprised; the room looks to be in good order,” the woman said in a monotone voice and sniggered.

It was early morning on Omega, or whatever passed for early morning on a space station like this, and Delilah had made sure she had gotten a good night’s sleep, a healthy meal and an extra boost from some mildly questionable, uh, supplements. She wanted to be in perfect health for her first day on her new job, and to be as presentable as possible. Having cleaned and packed, Delilah swallowed away her fear and stepped in front of the mirror, her mascara at the ready as if it was a weapon. She quickly, but expertly, applied her make-up and fluffed up her hair for maximum volume, holding it in place with a few dashes of hair spray, all the while trying to ignore the murderous glint she saw in her reflection’s bright blue eyes or the hungry grin that tugged on her mirror image’s lips. She finished just in time, as she did every morning, before the ice-cold claws of panic could climb into her throat, and turned away from the mirror with trembling fingers.

Taking a few deep breaths to calm herself, Delilah smoothed over the black and gray fabric of her best clothes -- a typical spacer’s ensemble, vaguely reminiscent of Alliance navy uniforms but decidedly more stylish. She inspected her nails one last time and nodded, satisfied. There was nothing left to do but leave. Putting on her coat and popping up the collar against the unexpected gusts of cold air from the system’s oxygen-recycling pumps that one became accustomed to walking into while navigating around Omega, Delilah grabbed her meager belongings, shouldering her backpack and hoisting up her travelbag onto her elbow. She winced slightly beneath the weight and hoped the Caelestis wouldn’t be moored at the arse-end of the docks.

The Omega spaceport was abuzz with activity and the thrifty hum of business, an electrical undercurrent that permeated the air. Deals were made, transport was arranged and crews were assembled. Delilah loved this part of the job. The tentative excitement, the tingling thrill of the unknown. What was her captain going to be like, or the rest of her crewmates? Was it going to be a long haul or an easy job? And what about this distress signal, hm? Professional curiosity meant that the comms specialist couldn’t wait to get her own hands on the broadcast’s datastream and frequencies. She daydreamed about encrypted subliminal messages and hidden coordinates while she made her way over to the docking bay where the Caelestis was to be found, and it wasn’t until she laid eyes on the ship that she snapped out of it.

The elegant, long prow of the salarian-made cruiser gleamed in the artificial lighting array that spun overhead, its underbelly dimly illuminated by the holo-glow of the landing strip. Delilah recognized it as an old model and a bit of a rarity these days, but a fine vessel and a beauty in her own right. “Hello there, old girl,” Delilah murmured and smiled up at the ship before she tapped her omni-tool a few times to send a short message.

“Hi captain, I’m here.”

The blip of the message came through obtrusively to Naryxa’s own omni-tool, stowed away on the desk in her suite. She never did like wearing the thing when she grounded. It was just weight and flashing lights. A tattooed turquoise arc that made for an eyebrow raised curiously, and she placed down the puja that was in her hand, that she had been drawing lazily around the edge of a copper singing bowl, staring mindlessly out of her window at the virtual view of a vast mountainscape.

“I’m here,” she repeated out in acknowledgement of the message as the last long vibration from the bowl played out her exit. Her feet found shoes in the doorway, and she moved quietly down the hall towards the arrival.

Naryxa had dressed herself appropriately in a black bodysuit that felt almost too formal for her, but was correct for the day's affairs at least. She needed to make the impression of a captain and with this contoured silhouette, she absolutely did. Powerful, sharp shoulders, outlined in white striping that drew out the mellow lilac hue of her skin.

As she made her way, she found herself stopped in her tracks- and her hands were instinctively brought to her lips. “Oh no,” she sighed; staring down at a plant that appeared to have been thrown from it’s decorative alcove. Not just any plant either, an Earthen delight, specially grown for the unusual colouring. Her prized Monsterra, with the split white and green leaves - sprawled out now across the floor in a heap of soil, amidst a shattered pot.

“Delilah, is it?” Naryxa called out - knowing she would be about halfway to the girl. “Don’t be shy - follow my voice,” she said, frowning down at the mess.

“Yes ma’am,” Delilah called back, having stepped aboard the ship. Its elongated shape made it easy to navigate and she had little trouble finding the asari captain. On the way there, Delilah sniffed the air and appreciated how clean it smelled. Most spaceships stunk like the fifty-year-old footlocker that they were. And she liked the salarian design of the place, too. It was clean, functional and elegant. Nothing like the bulky and industrial machines that humans often made.

She came upon the captain inspecting the fallen plant and Delilah quirked a brow of her own at the sight. “Uh, hi,” she said raised one hand in a languid wave. Tearing her gaze away from the dirt on the floor, she looked at Naryxa properly and felt herself straighten up a little immediately. The asari was beautiful and impressive to behold, her posture immaculate and her form striking in the bodysuit, and knowing that she had several human lifetimes worth of experience under her belt didn’t help to soften the impression. Delilah cleared her throat and conjured her best, professional smile.

“Delilah Reed, reporting for duty,” the human adept said. “It’s nice to meet you, captain. You, uh… had a little accident there?” she asked and gestured at the tragedy on the floor.

“Someone had an accident…” the asari answered, narrowing her eyes down at the ground, and then taking a long glance down the sterile corridor. “Hmmm.” After a pause, the spell was broken, and Narxa returned her gaze to the human in front of her, and it was all of a sudden far less piercing, in fact she even smiled just a little as she regarded Delilah with her observant eyes.

“She is tough, she’ll persevere,” Naryxa said with a smirk as she stepped over the plant. “I still have to learn not to leave the nice ones in the path of reckless hands,” she chuckled. “So you are to be my new communications officer…” the asari said as she strode onwards, expecting the woman to keep up. “You’re quite young, but very accomplished from what I gathered from your dossier. You have experience of ships like this?”

Of course an asari would feel that Delilah was quite young, even if she herself didn’t feel that way anymore after passing the big three-o a few years ago. “I do,” she said as she struggled to keep up with the captain. She was still carrying around her luggage, after all, and sent hopeful glances into every room they passed with the wish that one of them would be crew quarters where she could dump her things.

“I first worked on a cargo freighter but I’ve been on smaller crews and ships since then,” Delilah explained, audibly out of breath but soldiering on anyway. “Crews where it was just me manning the comms, too.” But Naryxa would know all of that, if she studied her dossier closely.

“Right,” Naryxa answered with a nod, looking across at Delilah with a smile. She began to slow down as they stepped into a communal space - with a counter for cooking against the wall. “The kitchen, obviously. It is stocked, so please help yourself to food and drinks when it pleases you. I’m not…. Asking you to work shifts,” she added, placing an elbow down on the bench and relaxing for the first time since Delilah had arrived. She’d sized the woman up enough by now. “There may be tasks that I’ll ask you to do throughout the day, but they’re to be completed at whichever pace suits you. All I ask is that they’re completed.”

“I try to plan a sit down team meal a few times in the week. Our pilot happens to be a decent enough chef. The last crew would eat breakfast together each morning,” the asari smiled. “Do you like breakfast?”

Delilah nodded along as Naryxa outlined the specifications of the job. It sounded reasonable enough, as the job notice had already hinted at the fact that the position was for more than just a communications officer, and she appreciated that the captain was generous enough with her trust not to enforce a schedule. The communal space wasn’t anything like a bunk, but Delilah couldn’t bear it anymore and gently lowered her bags to the floor, rubbing her shoulder and trying not to grunt in front of the captain.

The question about breakfast blindsided her a bit though, and she blinked. Nobody had ever asked her about breakfast before. “Uh… no, I guess not, actually,” Delilah admitted and chuckled. “I get nauseous if I eat anything before I’ve had my coffee, so I usually just… don’t. Not until lunchtime, anyway.” Then she smiled and shrugged. “But I don’t mind the company, so I’ll be there if that’s what the crew likes to do.”

“Well I’m not one for eating early either,” Naryxa responded with a quiet smile, watching as Delilah placed her bag on the floor. “I also partake in a liquid breakfast, but I’m a painfully late riser - so it’s unlikely you’ll find me here in the morning.” The asari opened up a cupboard, and removed two clean cups, sliding one into the tray of a machine beside her. With a chuckle, she pressed a button and brought the machine to life. “I hear the coffee onboard is actually, quite pleasant.”

At first, the machine seemed to cough out the first drips of the espresso, before settling into a steady stream, strong enough to fill the space with the arome. Naryxa watched as the rich brown drink began to turn golden and velvety into the cup. “Take a seat,” she said, casting a quick sidelong glance at Delilah but not much more than that. She was curious about the woman. “Now,” she began with a honeyed breath - removing the cup of coffee from the machine to sit it on the table. “When I advertised the position, there were… Quite a few other similar openings, shall we say.” The asari took her own seat at the table, crossing one leg over the other, and once again placing an elbow down in front of her. “Some offering some exceptional remuneration for a woman with your experience.” There was no question, but an answer was expected in the silence.

Doing as she was told, Delilah sat down opposite Naryxa, observing how elegantly the alien took her seat and feeling a momentary pang of jealousy. She placed both of her arms on the table and leaned forward a little, relieved to take the pressure off her feet. “Well, yeah, there were,” Delilah said as she cocked her head at Naryxa, the ghost of a smile playing around her lips. She almost followed that up with ‘what about ‘em?’ but decided it was too soon to start antagonizing her new captain. “But none of them mentioned a distress signal,” she said, and then her smile fully materialized. “And none of them were captained by a former Huntress.” She laughed. “I did my homework.”

That made the asari smile, and her eyes sparkle. “I lived that life long before you were even born.” Her head tilted to the side as she found herself relaxing more in her seat in the young woman’s company. “It was a long time ago, a long and dangerous time ago. If you truly did your homework you’ll know that I retired that profession to hide in a lab, and behind a desk.” Naryxa took in a deep breath, watching Delilah, observing her in the chair, the slightest change of expression across her face. She wondered about the scars, but knew not to ask - rather, to wait to be told, at a later time. “The signal,” she eventually said, “I think most of this new crew thought the same thing. I’ll play it for you later, when everyone has arrived and settled in.” She felt a tingle across the back of her neck just thinking about it, and her eyes briefly narrowed again as she let the ghostly sensation fade.

“Do you have any questions? Please - feel free to put me on the spot while it’s just you and I,” the asari offered, changing the subject.

She had lots of questions about the job itself, like the equipment she’d be working with and the nature of the distress signal, but she figured they could wait. Delilah interpreted this as an invitation to ask about the captain herself. “Sure,” Delilah said and slowly leaned back in her chair, eyes darting around the kitchen while she thought of something to ask.

The captain had seemed intimidating at first glance, but her warm and open demeanour was reassuring and Delilah felt more comfortable being herself. “Ah, right. Well, you mentioned this yourself already, kind of. What made you choose this line of work, after a lifetime -- well, a series of lifetimes to me,” she said and laughed again, “of war and science and… dancing, is that right?” Delilah’s eyes gleamed with something mischievous as she tried to imagine Naryxa in that kind of outfit. It turned out not to be a very hard thing to imagine.

“It is surprisingly not an uncommon venture for maiden asari, we want to explore, and be free. We are restless. Dancing is an exciting career, a chance to meet so many unique individuals. It’s not unusual for asari to find a break from dancing through the connections they make,” Naryxa explained casually, only emphasising how absolutely normal it was. “I loved it,” she laughed. “If nothing else, there was plenty of money to be made, and it was fun. I remember it all with joy and fondness.”

She chuckled, as if she had recalled a memory or two as she had been speaking. “As for this… I had lost my mother, I wasn’t sure of my purpose. I had come into credits, and suddenly… The Caelestis came to me-” she waved her hands around her elegantly, as if demonstrating her surprise to Delilah. “How could I not?”

It was almost impossible for Delilah to imagine a society where it was normal for young women to have that kind of freedom, though she had come to understand in recent years that this was heavily coloured by her own experiences. “Wanting to be free,” she echoed and nodded. “I understand that. I guess when you put it like that, it makes sense,” Delilah mused. “It’s just… for us humans, dancing like that… it’s something people do when they’re out of other options, usually. It’s looked down upon,” she explained and looked at Naryxa with a thoughtful expression, before suddenly chuckling. “Stupid, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is unfair,” Naryxa said, feeling a sense of privilege that it hadn’t been that way for her, or for asari.

She looked around the ship again. “Yeah, fair enough. It’s a fine vessel. And what’s more free than being captain of your own ship?” Delilah asked rhetorically. She was beginning to understand the asari mindset a little better. Why not follow your heart, if you have all the time in the world? She turned back to Naryxa. “Are you single?” she blurted out. Realizing what she’d said, Delilah laughed and waved her hands quickly. “Wait, sorry, that came out wrong. I’m just curious if you… have a partner you share your life with, I guess.”

Unlike Delilah, Narxya didn’t laugh at the question, and instead, placed her hands on the table and looked down at them - at the tips of her fingers. “We asari would be considered very fortunate to find a life partner who can live alongside us,” she explained. “To share our lives. We dedicate our lives to development, to something that will outlive even us. We become mothers and share our lives with our children, and their children.” There was a hint of melancholy to her voice that she wasn’t ashamed to hide. “Everything else, is a series of shared moments that we keep as just that - moments, some longer than others.” She took another breath, and sat back in the seat, looking around at the blank page of a kitchen.

“Are you single?” the asari asked nonchalantly, finding mischief in it as she looked back at Delilah again.

She felt small, to be considered nothing more than a moment, and felt bad that she’d broached a subject with such levity that caused such melancholy for Naryxa. So when the opportunity presented itself to change the subject, Delilah seized it with conviction.

“Oh yeah,” she scoffed. “Big time. Not for anything near as sad and beautiful as… that,” Delilah said with a wry smile. “I just find people to be disappointing. Easier to be by myself. Have a little fun every now and then, sure, but then kick them to the curb,” she said casually. “And that gives me the freedom to do shit like this. Sign up for a mission to track down a distress signal to God knows where.”

Delilah thought she sold the lie rather convincingly.

She cleared her throat and gestured to the rapidly cooling cup of coffee. “Was that for you or for me?”

“It was for you,” the asari answered with a nod. “I prefer tea,” she winked. “It’ll be the first and last coffee I make you, so enjoy it.”

With a sigh, she straightened up in the chair again. “Kick them to the curb?” She said aloud — it was one of those very human sayings and she thought about it before chuckling. “I can’t say I’ve ever kicked anyone to the curb… I may have… Waved them out of the door?” It didn’t have the same ring to it. She laughed again before hunching forwards to place her chin into her hands. “And it’s Loki. We’re headed for Loki.”

“You should try it sometime,” Delilah said and winked, reaching for the coffee at last and having a sip. She’d been so engrossed in their conversation before that she’d forgotten all about the brew until just then. It was good, even if it was a little cold, and she was grateful to the anonymous human traveler that boarded the Caelestis before her that must’ve installed the machine.

She didn’t know anything about Loki as a planet, but she was familiar with the name. “Loki? That sounds ominous,” Delilah said and quirked a brow. “Do you know what Loki means to humans?”

Truthfully, Naryxa was familiar with the name, but she had a thought that perhaps Delilah would like to be the one explaining. The asari blinked slowly and shook her head. “To humans? No I don’t.” Bringing her hands to her lap, she gave a relaxed smile, “not something scary, is it?”

“Loki is the god of mischief in one of the old religions of ancient Earth,” Delilah explained. “A real trickster god with all manner of crazy bastard spawn. A giant wolf, an eight-legged horse, a serpent that wraps around the world… I hope he doesn’t watch over this planet, or we’ll be in for a wild ride,” she said and smirked over the rim of her cup of coffee.

“You’ll have to come to your own decisions when I play the message,” Naryxa said. “I hope not to discover a serpent wrapped around it. At best, a ship that has crash landed with the crew all well, just stuck. At worst… Well…” she said with a sigh.

Not wanting to frighten the woman already, Naryxa began to get to her feet. “Come, how about I show you to your dorm?”

Delilah’s curiosity was undoubtedly piqued by that unfinished sentence, but she elected not to pry just yet. All in due time. “Sure thing,” the woman said, got to her feet and hoisted up her bags again, her discomfort audible this time. “Fuck me,” she mumbled through gritted teeth, hopefully too quiet for the captain to make out the words. “Lead the way.”

As the two made their way through the rest of the ship, it was as they rounded a corner that another mess presented itself. Another human, slumped back against the wall with his legs splayed out — and a ghastly white complexion, fast asleep with his mouth wide open and a long strand of drool hanging from his lip.

“Uhhh, Delilah.” Naryxa began, with an arched brow and a hand on her hip. “This would be our pilot,” she said before shoving her foot into his side. “He’s normally in only a marginally better state. Just step over him,” she shrugged - doing so herself. He did not move. “The dorms are down here.”

“Charming,” Delilah replied and tutted at the pilot’s condition. She could only hope that he drank less when he was supposed to be flying the ship, but Naryxa’s comment did nothing to reassure her in that regard. Still, if the ship hadn’t crashed thus far, why would it start crashing now? She stepped over the pilot and followed after the captain.

With a groan, the pilot woke up, rubbing his hand clumsily over his chin to catch his spittle. “Sorry aboot yer plant Cap,” he grumbled and slurred. “Al get her clean as a whistle later, just let me sleep this shite off,” he growled, drawing his legs up to his chest.

Naryxa acknowledged him with a shake of her head before muttering quietly “I gave him the night off. He… Tends to drink more than he should.”

With another groan, he had pulled himself up to his feet now. “And ahd avoid the bathroom down there fer a bit.” If he had noticed Delilah, he simply didn’t care to be polite or anything but himself. With a complete lack of grace, he stumbled away to the kitchen.

“Sorry about that one,” Naryxa said, trying to hide her clear and apparent embarrassment with a forced chuckle. “Alright, is there anything else pressing before I leave you to it?” She asked, desperate to clear the image of the pilot, and scrub away the terrible first impression he must have made.

Delilah watched the pilot stumble off with a chuckle of amusement, further exacerbated by Naryxa’s obvious embarrassment. She nodded and grinned. “Yeah, one last thing. Do you still dance?”

“Of course,” Naryxa answered quickly. “But only when nobody is watching,” she smiled.

“Now that’s a damn shame,” Delilah lamented with a twinkle in her eye. “Alright, I’m going to get settled in. Call me if you need me, captain.” With a nod and a quick mock salute she crossed the threshold into the dorm, determined to find the best bottom bunk bed for herself.

Mass Effect: Caelestis

A long time ago,

somewhere in the Skyllian Verge...

“NO!”

The scream came before the CT scanning nodes attached to her temple had even picked up any brain activity. In the blink of an eye, the shockwave of explosive biotic power tore through the room. Nurse Jamie, Sylla and Chester, those standing furthest from the epicenter, were thrown with their backs against the walls. Nurse Kanto and doctor Minzua had been much closer, monitoring her vitals, and were flattened against the floor, the invisible power dragging them along the length of the room until they slammed into a medical cabinet. And doctor Bruyne had been hovering over her while coaxing her out of the artificial coma. His eardrums were blown out as he was rammed into the ceiling and was held there by crushing pressure for three seconds.

Every glass object and surface in the room shattered into a thousand pieces. The door to the room was blown off its hinges and sent clamoring into the hallway, knocking down another nurse. The faux holo-windows and their idyllic representation of rural Earth were fried, their chips sending sparks arcing through the room. The CT scan went haywire, registering 97% brain activity before it was overwhelmed and caught fire. The bed buckled under the weight of the shockwave and its metal frame snapped clean in two.

Delilah herself levitated in the air, her face contorted in rage and agony, her body aglow, while the ear-piercing scream forced itself out of her throat with unnatural force, and the very air seemed to tremble in fear.

As soon as it had started, it was over. Delilah collapsed onto the sundered bed, Jamie, Sylla and Chester fell to their hands and knees, and Kanto and Minzua could breathe again. With a heavy thud and the painful snap of bones breaking, doctor Bruyne dropped out of the air and smacked onto the floor, hitting his head so hard he fell unconscious immediately.

Wild-eyed and terrified, Delilah looked around frantically with unseeing eyes. Her vision was blurred and her ears were ringing, and her chest rose and fell rapidly with each hyperventilating breath. All she could hear was the deafening wailing of the alarm klaxons -- the ship’s seismograph had picked up on the tremors and thought it was under attack. Black shapes shouting indiscernible commands and waving oblong shapes in her face stormed into the room and surrounded her. “No, please! Don’t shoot me!” Delilah wanted to say, panic overtaking her, but her mouth didn’t cooperate and all that came out was a strangled cry. She held her shaking hands, still fitted with a pulse monitor and an IV-drip, out in front of her face, only to find them abruptly cuffed.

She was yanked out of bed and thrown onto the floor, the floor cold against her cheek, next to doctor Bruyne’s motionless body. Delilah blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision, and saw the slackness in his jaw and the blood dripping out of his ears. “Oh God,” she gasped, and tears filled her eyes. “Is he dead? Oh God, no, no, no… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! I thought -- I was still -- no, no…”

Vaguely she could hear doctor Minzua above her, yelling at the navy armsmen in their bulky armor not to hurt her patient. She could hear the nurses crying in shock as they fled the room and spilled out into the hallway. She could hear the CT scan machine burning and the whooshing of someone using a fire extinguisher. And above all else there was the ship’s wailing still, each caterwauling whoop stabbing into her brain. But her watery gaze was fixed on doctor Bruyne, willing him to come back to life, to open his eyes, to take a deep breath. “Please,” Delilah said through split lips, tasting blood on her own tongue.

And he did, coughing and moaning and grabbing the sides of his head in agony, but he did. Relief washed over Delilah and she began to weep in earnest, each sob wracking her body, sending pain down her own spine where the armored boot of one of the armsmen held her pinned to the floor. As the doctor was helped up to his feet Delilah could see beyond where he had lain, and her own reflection looked back at her from the reflective metal surface of an overturned cabinet. A strange woman, familiar and yet alien, hairless and scarred, looked back at her.

And Delilah saw nothing there but murder.

Mass Effect: Caelestis

Delilah Reed

_{DELILAH REED
33 ⟁ FEMALE ⟁ HUMAN ⟁ ADEPT}

_{A P P E A R A N C E}

---

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

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

_{H I S T O R Y}

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_{P E R S O N A L I T Y}

---

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

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

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

_{A B I L I T I E S}

---

• Slam
• Pull
• Throw
• Warp
• Barrier

_{E Q U I P M E N T}

---

• Omni-tool customized with signal-boosting and decryption-enhancing modules that improve its ability to send, receive and break into digital communications.
• Light armor suit for hostile environments and emergencies. Every spacer has one.
• A simple M-3 Predator pistol that she’s never fired before. Currently taking up space in her locker.
• Her mind. Don’t underestimate it. Don’t provoke it, either.

_{S T R E N G T H S & W E A K N E S S E S}

---

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

_{G O A L S & R E G R E T S}

---

• The holy grail of Delilah’s life would be earning enough credits to find some salarian or asari genius neuro-biologist who can cure her of her physical ailments and safely upgrade her biotic implant to something more stable, but that is a pipe dream for the time being. Her real goal of finding somewhere to belong like a completely normal person is even further away from being realized.
• Most of Delilah’s regrets are centered on things that were outside of her control -- she wishes she was never exposed to element zero, never been subjected to Conatix Industries’ tests, never sent to Gagarin Station, never been blown up in combat. She has been fixing the consequences of these events for years now, but most of her bitterness is focused on the actions of other people that ruined her life before she had any agency over it in the first place.

Mass Effect: Caelestis

At last, I have done the thing.

Delilah Reed

_{DELILAH REED
33 ⟁ FEMALE ⟁ HUMAN ⟁ ADEPT}

_{A P P E A R A N C E}

---

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

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

_{H I S T O R Y}

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_{P E R S O N A L I T Y}

---

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

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

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

_{A B I L I T I E S}

---

• Slam
• Pull
• Throw
• Warp
• Barrier

_{E Q U I P M E N T}

---

• Omni-tool customized with signal-boosting and decryption-enhancing modules that improve its ability to send, receive and break into digital communications.
• Light armor suit for hostile environments and emergencies. Every spacer has one.
• A simple M-3 Predator pistol that she’s never fired before. Currently taking up space in her locker.
• Her mind. Don’t underestimate it. Don’t provoke it, either.

_{S T R E N G T H S & W E A K N E S S E S}

---

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

_{G O A L S & R E G R E T S}

---

• The holy grail of Delilah’s life would be earning enough credits to find some salarian or asari genius neuro-biologist who can cure her of her physical ailments and safely upgrade her biotic implant to something more stable, but that is a pipe dream for the time being. Her real goal of finding somewhere to belong like a completely normal person is even further away from being realized.
• Most of Delilah’s regrets are centered on things that were outside of her control -- she wishes she was never exposed to element zero, never been subjected to Conatix Industries’ tests, never sent to Gagarin Station, never been blown up in combat. She has been fixing the consequences of these events for years now, but most of her bitterness is focused on the actions of other people that ruined her life before she had any agency over it in the first place.

Mass Effect: Caelestis

Working on a little somethin' somethin'. Current concept is a female human biotic fitted with the notorious L2 implant, who keeps her true nature hidden and prefers to work as a simple communications officer on free ships. Because reasons.

I like the sheets I've seen so far! Good mix of races, backgrounds and skills.

The Elder Scrolls: Eye of the Hurricane

The Man of Glass

_{with @Peik}

“I must be the only Dunmer here,” the gray-skinned alchemist muttered to herself.

The hustle and bustle of the jungled village passed her by while she had taken a moment to rest on a street corner, leaning against the walls of a house that looked like it had been grown straight from a tree, her spear nestled in the crook of her arm and her hackle-lo pipe dangling from her lips. Smoke curled and turned lazily in the air before her eyes as she exhaled slowly. The architecture of the village reminded her a bit of the Telvanni mushroom towers of Morrowind and she mused for a moment on the fact that her diminutive elvish cousins turned out to be just as liable as her own kind to grow homes from plants. A coincidence, or not?

Then Ina hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders and resumed her languid exploration of the village, taking in the sights, smells and sounds the festival had to offer. Other visitors and locals bumped into her from time to time, their excitement speeding up their pace and preventing them from clearly seeing where they were going, but the unhurried mer paid them no mind. She stopped to inspect the wares of a textile merchant for a few minutes, the Bosmeri merchant looking at her with expectant eyes that grew increasingly annoyed as the minutes stretched on, and Inanna heard a disapproving tut behind her when she turned away at last without having purchased anything. She chuckled to herself and moved on.

She stopped at a glassware merchant’s shop next, who inhabited a space that looked more like a permanent storefront than anything she had seen so far. Ina let her eyes wander over his wares for a while before looking up at the man himself, expecting to see a local. Instead, she was greeted by the sight of a very Imperial man, the style of dress and grooming immediately familiar to the once-inhabitant of the Imperial City, and she raised her brows in surprise. Ina took her pipe out of her mouth and gesticulated at the man’s storefront.

“You live here?” she asked flatly. Not one for etiquette and propriety, Ina forewent a greeting of any kind and her gaze was as irreverent as ever.

“A customer!” must have been the first thing to cross the man’s mind upon hearing Inanna’s words, for his eyes glinted so visibly with elation that one could’ve thought of it to be magic. Eyeing the Dunmer up and down momentarily in what was no doubt an assessment of disposition, the man’s face took a rather worldly expression before he started speaking.

“I guess I really don’t look the part, do I?” he said in a rather humorous tone, leaning more towards breaking the ice rather than disparaging the province’s residents. “No, sera, I’m afraid not, I’m originally from Cheydinhal. This here’s a temporary establishment.” He stopped for a moment. “Garo Secundus Minassian, at your service,” he said, opening his arms as he spoke as if to show that the store was also at her service as well.

Her expression softened at Garo’s usage of the proper form of Dunmeri address, a smile playing on her lips, and she nodded along with him when he mentioned Cheydinhal. That explained his familiarity with Dunmer customs. But it was his family name that prompted an audible ‘ah!’ of recognition. “Minassian, I know that name,” she said, approval evident from the tone of her voice. “Quality glassware. Well, well, your reputation precedes you.”

Ina smirked and inclined her head gracefully. “Inanna Aryon, alchemist. A pleasure, serjo.”

She placed her spear against the wall and looked back at the displayed wares, taking in the rugs on the ground, the shelves full of crystal glass goblets, wine cups, pitchers and vases, the trays settled on the walls behind the goblets, and the pillows scattered everywhere. Ina deduced that their purpose was to break the fall of anything that might drop and shatter, but it had the additional effect of looking remarkably cozy.

“Vials?” she asked without looking back up at him, her eyes still searching through the glassware but not seeing what she was looking for. “Do you have those?”

Garo accepted the woman’s compliment and introduction with a curt, yet graceful nod, smiling with a half-humble, half-proud expression and keeping silent to let the woman observe the products that covered the walls without interruption. There was a queer air about her, the way she smirked and put her spear down and eyed the shop as if she owned the place – had he been younger he would’ve warned her about being careful around the products, but at his age and experience he knew that a merchant’s reputation, while as brittle as glassware, was much harder to substitute.

“Vials? Of course we do,” Garo replied confidently upon hearing the question. “Although I keep them in the back. They’re not as appealing as luxury wares on the storefront, you see. Hold on, let me show you some.” He pointed up as he turned back, as if to signify he’d be back in a minute, and indeed moments later he’d come back, holding a box of oak, narrow of height but horizontally wide, with an iron frame and hinges. He put the box on the counter, turned it towards Inanna and pressed a rather nondescript button on the front of the box, unlocking it with a metallic ‘click’. He opened the top part, revealing three rows of seven equal-sized vials of a dark amber color, resting side-by-side in a generous padding of soft red velvet. The vials in the middle row had crisp patterns branching out from the bottom to cover the bottles’ exterior, as if there was lightning caught inside.

“A pleasure to hear that you have a high opinion of our glassware, and a pleasure to meet you as well, sera,” he said as he pointed at the vials with an open hand. “I’m afraid they don’t come in any other color, it’s a side-effect of our special hardening process. This way they have a tendency to cave in when struck, rather than shattering outright,” he added, his wording quick and softly emphasized.
“The ones with lightning patterns just are the same, it’s just decorative. One of my brothers came up with the idea. Looks quaint, doesn’t it? Makes it feel magical… Of course, one can make it so, I guess. I had a few customers who bought them to separate magic or potentially harmful brews.”

Ina nodded appreciatively -- that was Minassian glassware, alright. Looking at the well-furnished box they came in and the lightning tendrils that spiderwebbed across the vials, Ina’s first reaction was to doubt whether she could even afford them. She’d learned long ago not to skimp out on materials she used for her profession, of course, but being a wandering alchemist was not as lucrative a position as she might have liked and she was almost always short on cash.

She looked back up at Garo while he talked, taking in the way he spoke and the way he gestured, her head slightly tilted to the side. It was clear that he was an expert on the topic at hand, and a good salesman; swift, effective, empathic but soft-spoken. He wasn’t the boisterous, dramatic type, many of whom were manning the stalls that she had passed, that annoyed Ina so much.
“I’d be using them for a similar purpose,” she said when he had finished his appraisal, but let the implication that some of her brews might be poisons go unaddressed. “Good to know.” Her fingers fidgeted with her hackle-lo pipe for a moment before she took a draw from it, let the smoke swirl in her mouth for a bit and exhaled, never breaking eye-contact with Garo.

“How much for the lot?” she asked at length.

The glass merchant did not waver from the sudden gust of hackle-lo smoke and consistent eye contact, except for a slight moment when he rubbed his chin as he thought of the pricing. She wasn’t a bad looking woman at all – he wouldn’t let that act as a subconscious price discount.

“The clear ones are three Septims each… The ones with lightning are four, owing to the magic processes they’re put through. I have regular vials for only two Septims but those get no impact resistance guarantee. The contents of the box are 70 Septims in total, you want the box wholesale, I can give you a 10 Septim discount on the house, along with the box, and the corks for the vials. What do you say?”
It was a big expense, but she was in the market for new vials… and the impact resistant quality that Garo claimed they had was interesting. Azura knew Ina had enough small nicks and cuts on her hands over the years from working with inferior glass. She reached for her purse and weighed it in her hands, estimating how many septims she still had. Was she going to haggle? He’d already offered the bulk discount without her saying a word. Must be her wily charm at work. Ina resisted the urge to scoff at the thought.

“60 for the whole box,” she repeated and nodded. “You’ve got yourself a deal.” Ina started counting out the coins. As she counted, Garo leaned down under the counter and pulled a sack from below, untying its mouth to reveal its contents - hundreds of identical corks.
“Only the best corks from the finest Colovian Oak. You can have some extra on the house - though if you take more than ten I’d have to start charging again,” he added, chuckling.

She took precisely ten corks with a coy smile, thanked him for his business and stuffed the box of vials in her backpack, which was now positively overflowing with belongings. It was time to find a room. Ina wandered back onto the streets until she found a large tree-home that advertised itself as an inn, with a sign that had grown straight out of the branches of the tree that enveloped the building. It was quite inventive, and Ina chuckled at the sight.

Thirty minutes later Ina had obtained a room, unpacked her clothes and equipment, and changed into something more comfortable -- a black satin robe, with loose folds and flowy textile. The hum and buzz of the festival outside grew louder while she applied the kohl makeup to her eyes, and she felt the familiar purr of excitement in her chest. Losing herself in a crowd of strangers, locking eyes, quickening pulses… this was her favorite part.

“Let’s have some fun,” she whispered to her reflection and winked.