Name: Avelina (Angel) Callaghan
Age: 23
Gender/Race: Female/Halfling
Role: Mechanical Engineer/Scout
Bio: Avelina was left on the doorstep of an orphanage when she was too young to remember. It wasn't exactly an uncommon fate for halflings, while the Jilkrid might have a reputation as thieves and con men and where therefore treated with distrust the halflings were graced with far less civility by there peers. Most regarded halflings as some sort of strange
thing, an abomination, a mistake and not many had any reservations about treating the halflings with that same cruelty. Often enough even the parents of halflings didn't want something like
that in there lives. Because of this most any orphanage had six or seven halflings who lived bullied and beaten by the others while the social service workers who ran the houses pretended not to see any of it.
This kind of upbringing taught Avelina two very important lessons, the first was that she had to be smarter than everyone around her and the second that she had to be faster. Avelina's Jilkrid heritage lent her a bit of an edge with her second lesson. She was quick and she knew how to hide. Often enough these pursuits ended with Avelina leading them to one of the house's other halflings while she hid in an unsuspecting place.
It was not a good way to live and the moment Aveline turned seventeen and the house turned her loose she was gone. In many ways this was an improvement. The streets of Teieya were not nearly so harsh as the house had been. Avelina's heritage didn't show in her face. Thankfully this meant that much of the time she was able was able to conceal the fact that she was not purebred human.
Avelina learned a lot living by herself, doing what she had to in order to survive. Mostly she learned about people. What people expected, for instance, a girl with hunched shoulders and a gaze that never meets your eyes walks into a store dressed in a ragged jacket the clerk never takes his eyes off her because he expects her to pocket something. On the other hand a girl walks into a store with her head help high, smiles at the clerk and asks were to find a few products the last thing the clerk will think is that she's a thief.
About two years after this Avelina's life changed forever. It was just another day, she couldn't exactly steal everything she needed and any street urchin knew that if you wanted to survive you had to swimming. This was street slang for digging through what was known as the Shatter Bay. Shatter Bay was a little inlet right at the edge of Teieya controlled waters not far from where they met the shatterzone. In days gone past it wasn't uncommon to find shatter tech that had drifted out of the shatterzone and stuck up in the waters of the inlet. Nowadays shatter tech was a rare sight in the bay, though not unheard of. After the supplies of tech had dried up by thousands of people searching the bay hoping to become rich it became the municipal dump site. All kinds of trash got tossed into the bay and some of it even still worked. The smart street kids knew what was valuable, what they could carry and who they could sell to.
Avelina was swimming for something that could turn her a profit when she was attacked by three of the dragon men, the Fäldkrests. Being creatures of the Pikelands Avelina was unable to put up much of a fight. They knocked her unconscious and when she awoke her surroundings were unrecognizable. She was in some sort of underground lab filled with shatter tech. Things that you or I would identify as computers and bio monitors only registered to Avelina in pure fear.
Avelina tried to move but she was shackled none to gently to a wide metal operating table. Avelina wrenched at the shackles until her wrists began to bleed but they showed no sign of weakening. Then a door opened. A man in a lab coat who appeared human walked through it with two Fäldkrest standing as his guard. "My dear please stop, you will damage yourself." He seemed sincere and sort of scatterbrained to Avelina, harmless was the word that came to mind when she looked at him. The Fäldkrest standing on either side however looked far from docile.
It soon became clear however that the Fäldkrest were not the brains behind whoever had kidnapped Avelina, they merely served as muscle. The man in the lab coat, she later found out his name was Dr. Kaiser, knew very little about who was holding them. They seemed to be shatter tech experts and from what the Doctor had been able to learn they had an unhealthy obsession with repurposing shatter tech for there own designs. He refereed the the lab they were as Project Valkyrie. When Avelina asked why Doctor Kaiser told her about a religious belief held long before the Great Shatter about the Valkyrie, it was said that when a great warrior died the Valkyrie would descend on glorious silver wings to deliver the warriors soul into the afterlife.
It was not long after that when the operations began. Dr. Kaiser had been the foremost expert at the Mages Guild on what he called 'cybernetics'. The Doctor called the people who ran this lab Zwangsarbeit, Avelina later found out it meant 'forced labor'. It seemed the Zwangsarbeit had discovered a piece of shatter tech they'd dubbed the Valkyrie Wings. They were more or less completely intact metal wings that the Zwangsarbeit theorized in ancient times had been grafted to an individuals back allowing them to fly. They had kidnapped Avelina as a test subject for the wings. Or so said Dr. Kaiser before her started to cut into her.
Avelina couldn't find it in her heart to hate Dr. Kaiser no matter how many times she was under his knife, no matter how many times he wired a new device into her back. It seemed that no matter how much pain each of these alterations caused when she woke that act of installing them hurt him much more than they could ever hurt her.
It took two years as well as much pain and suffering for Avelina before Dr. Kaiser managed to create a working neutral interface that would link the wings control system directly into Avelina's mind, as if the Valkyrie Wings were just another limb. The Fäldkrest that served at the Zwangsarbeit guards took Avelina too a completely enclosed but wide open space before they connected the wings the Avelina's back. Then they placed a silver manacle around her wrist which was not actually attached to anything.
A voice echoed through the space seemingly from no where. "Please utilize the Valkyrie Wings to take off from the ground. Fly a circle around the test chamber and return to the ground." Avelina just starred trying to determine where the voice was coming from. Suddenly a painful jolt shot from the bracelet up her arm. "If you fail to comply with a request an electric shock will be administered, the longer you resist the more powerful the shock. If it necessary the shock is capable of delivering a fatal dose of electricity." There was a pause where Avelina despite being scared of the bracelet didn't know what she was supposed to do. The voice echoed again. "I would suggest unfurling your wings and giving yourself a running start before take off."
Scared of what would happen if she did not Avelina tried to open her wings and was surprised to find they responded just as easily as her arms or legs might. Truly they were an extension of herself. She backed up against a wall and ran for the center. When she reached it Avelina jumped into the air her wings out and tilted allow them to catch air. Her feet left the ground, she was flying. Second later pain corsed through her body at the place her were wings met her back. It was such an unbearable sensation that Avelina's mind went blank, she curled herself into a ball the wings wrapping around her form before Avelina crashed into the ground blacking out. Though she did not hear it the voice spoke again. "I suppose we'll have to work on that."
The next year was spent with Dr. Kaiser optimizing the wings, reducing the force they exerted directly on the connection between the wings and Avelina's body, distributing the pressure so as not the cause her pain whenever she took off and eliminate the possibility that the wings would tear themselves away from her body. It was tested repeatedly and at some point became the best that they could do. The pain Avelina felt when she flew was sharp but bearable and after repeated tests in which the upgrades and modifications had reached there peak Avelina found that the pain though always present didn't bother her as much as they had when the Project started. One of these modifications was to ensure that high speed winds that Avelina would likely be encountering would not damage her eyes. So they replaced those with synthetic copies that would not be damaged by the wind and could see in darkness as well as poor visibility.
Nearly a year later Avelina escaped. She's still not sure what happened exactly. The complex shook as if from a great earthquake and the lights went out and the door shifted open slightly. With a great deal of work Avelina was able to slide herself through the narrow gap in the door. There were luminous signs at different doors that read EXIT. Avelina followed them encountering no resistance whatsoever. It disturbed her greatly compared to the number of safety protocols the Zwangsarbeit had insisted upon thus far but this was completely forgotten when Avelina found the exit.
The door emptied out of the side of a mountain and from the view Avelina could see great chunks of the rocks that had been obliterated and airships destroyed and dead on the floor of a ravine. There had been some sort of great battle here. Without giving it another thought Avelina took to the skies. She'd learned to fly very well and the pain in her shoulders didn't bother her quite so much as it once did. Based on the position of the sun Avelina guess that civilization was due west if as she thought the Zwangsarbeit had taken her into the Shatter Zone.
She had to fly for two days straight to escape the Shatter Zone, her only regret that she was unable to find Dr. Kaiser. Avelina never considered for a moment that her escape might have been too easy. When she returned to civilization Avelina collapsed on the streets of Port Visus. When she woke she'd been taken in by the Order who were considerably kinder than those of Project Valkyrie. That was three years ago. Since then the Order has taught her how to use the Valkyrie Wings on her terms as well as teaching her combat, both unarmed and with a weapon they called a quarter staff, as well as marksmanship. Curious to explore the zone that had made Avelina what she was, the Valkyrie was eager to sign on to the airship when a position became available.
Personality: Avelina's upbringing taught her something very important. The squeaky wheel never gets oiled, it gets beat into silence. If you went around life wearing your pain and hardship on your sleeve you became a target, so Avelina puts on a bright, pleasant face and keeps the darker stuff underneath. Despite this there are cracks in Avelina's armor. Her wings being the biggest she doesn't like to talk about them or where they came from though she'd not above using them to show off. Avelina has a great lust for knowledge and an insatiable curiosity that goes hand in hand with it. Dr. Ipcress taught her some stuff but she is eager to learn more and more and more until there is nothing left to know. She is especially curious about the before times, what the world was before the Great Shatter. Though not many records remain from that time Avelina knows the really informative stuff will be found in the Shatter Zone. When threatened Avelina uses violence as a last resort preferring sarcasm, and wit to defend herself.
Equipment:-
Valkyrie Wings - tech recovered from the Shatter Zone. The Valkyrie Wings are grafted to Avelina's spinal column as well as her vertebra and a good section of her skeletal structure. They allow her to fly through the air. Made of a light weight but durable alloy they will deflect bullets up to a point. There heat tolerance is not high but they are also capable of shielding from flames for limited periods of time. When fully extended their wingspan is twelve feet though they fold up very neatly on Avelina's back. Much of her upper back torso is covered in a metal plating that is designed to disperse the force that flying exerts on Avelina over her entire upper body. Despite the efforts made in designing the Valkyrie Wings they still exert quite a bit of pressure where the metal integrates into the flesh. When there folded this isn't too much of a problem but actually using them hurts Avelina quite severely. The modifications made make sure that the wings aren't capable of doing any damage to Avelina herself but that is small comfort when it feels as thought the wings are trying to tear themselves from her, she takes muscles relaxants and pain killers regularly to deal with this. The wings themselves are able to be disconnected from Avelina's body for maintenance, this of course leaves behind all of the neural implants that allow Avelina to use the wings as well as the metal plating on her back. As part of the Valkyrie Project Avelina also has prosthetic eyes that are far improved from normal ones but do not look normal. Instead of whites they are silver, and the center glows will a green LED light that does a decent job of mimicking the shape of an iris.
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Quarter Staff - A six foot metal pole that is retractable. Capable of shrinking down to six inches. When not in use Avelina has it slotted into her belt.
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45 caliber Pistol - Kept in a holster on her left thigh, Avelina being left handed.
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22 caliber Pistol - A very small gun Avelina keeps in her combat boots just in case.
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Flight Jacket - Avelina has a flight jacket, made of sturdy brown leather with warm sheep skin on the inside. The back of the jacket has two slits sown into it to allow for her wings to escape. This jacket is specially made to accommodate her wings as apposed to her shirts, most of with she cuts two slits into with a sharp knife. The shirts tend not to last long.
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Switch Blade - A eight inch knife that Avelina can open quickly with one hand. She keeps it in the boot that does not have a pistol in it.
Skills:- Flight
- Marksmanship
- Quarterstaff Combat
- Unarmed Combat
- Mechanics
- Wit (She is rather lacking in social grace but more than capable of wounding someone with her words)
Optional: Only Avelina's handler knows her actual name, to everyone else she introduces herself as 'Angel'.
Appearance:Avelina stand at 5'9" and weights 127 pounds. Traditionally she wears soft pants made of brown leather not dissimilar from her flight jacket. They keep her warm at high altitudes. The shirts she wears Avelina shows little regard for slashing the backs to allow for her wings and her flight jacket. She's got pale skin like most halflings as well as wild red hair, and freckles. She has a pair of aviator glasses that she uses to cover up the strangeness of her synthetic eyes. She is build light and nimble but don't let that fool you, she is strong and fast and the installation of the Valkyrie Wings has given her an incredibly pain tolerance.
Member
Apollosarcher,
shylarah
