Mach2 — Roleplayer Guild

Name: Today, she goes by the English name 'Katherine'. But at birth, she was known as Ekta, a name which meant 'unity'. 

Nationality and Race: Native American, Chiricahua Apache

Age: 19

Sex/Gender: Female

Appearance: 
Katherine's features are distinctly aboriginal. She wears her black hair long, occasionally tying it up in a bun when the weather is hot. She has dark eyes, and defined cheekbones. Her skin is brown, weathered from the sun and the wind. One of Thomas's first gifts to her was a parasol, to protect her skin from the sun. Shockingly, her skin tone never lightened, no matter how often she hid beneath the parasol. She is not a tall woman, standing at about 5'4", but she is athletic. A lifetime of hard work has rewarded her with compact, powerful muscles. An indented, discoloured scar covers the curve of her shoulder; courtesy of a burn wound received as a young girl from a laser pistol. 

Though she looks like an Indian, she dresses like a white woman. Her own buckskin dresses were lost when she was displaced from her home, but Katherine is fond of the soft cottons that the white people use in their dresses. Her wardrobe is limited, nearly all of the garments gifts from Thomas. She owns two dresses; one a dark blue, and one a pastel green. Both are long-sleeved and high-collared. Katherine finds the numerous layers of petticoats to be cumbersome (the dresses she wore as a girl were much lighter, and left her legs bare), and they tend to remain folded away somewhere. 

She did manage to hold onto a few small tokens of home. A beaded necklace, and her favourite pair of moccasins. Katherine was never able to grow accustomed to the uncomfortable button-up boots the white people expected her to wear. Her leather moccasins were more flexible, fitting to her feet with every step she took. 

Personality:
Katherine is a quiet woman. Her English is sub-standard, a trait she is painfully aware of. When she speaks, there are grammatical inconsistencies and forgotten words. And so, when given the option of speaking or remaining silent, she chooses to say nothing. When she can say something in a full sentence or in a handful of words, she always opts for the shorter. More often, she prefers to listen. But Katherine is a keen learner, and always hungry for knowledge. When she does speak, it is often to make an inquiry. "Stop asking so many questions," is a scolding she's received from Thomas more times than she can recall. 

Despite several years of living with white people, Katherine is still far from civilized. Old habits die hard, and there are some that she cling to stubbornly. She fails to understand the importance of table manners, and eats with her fingers when she can. She prays to her ancestors, and uses her native language. Curtsies are silly, and she tends to leave her parasol at home when she goes out for the day. 

Though typically quiet and reserved, Katherine has an impulsive side. She frequently acts without forethought. Sometimes it turns out in her favour, but more often ends in ill consequences. 

Likes: Digital libraries, especially ones with lots of pictures. Cotton dresses. Sewing and beadwork. 
Dislikes: Beards. Petticoats and parasols. Thomas. 

Skills, Abilities and Profession: Katherine is resourceful. She grew up on the land, and learned what it had to offer her. She knows which plants can be used to treat a fever, and which ones will make a person sick to their stomach. Unfortunately, much of the traditional knowledge acquired from her elders is only of use on Earth. Wherever they are traveling, Katherine doubts they will have the same plants she has come to know.

Though her education is somewhat bare-bones, Katherine is far from unintelligent. She is a fast learner, and always seeking more knowledge. While other women busy themselves with the latest in European fashion trends, Katherine spends her days scouring through digital libraries, trying to learn the inner workings of all the technology she now finds herself surrounded by. Though dense text and long words are still at times difficult for her, she learns well from schematics and diagrams. 

Biography: 

Ekta was born into a time of war. 

The elders remember the time of peace. The time before the white men crept onto the land like a weed. But the only knowledge Ekta had of that time was what she learned through stories. As a girl, she spent many nights sitting around the fire with her brothers and sisters, listening to the elders speak. She knows the tale of how the Child of the Water killed the Giant, the Eagles, and the Prairie Dogs; securing this land for the Chiricahua. How he crafted them from clay, and gave them the bow and arrow: tools that could be forged from the land they lived on. Tools they could use to hunt food, and to defend themselves from animals and men. 

She also learned of the Killer of Enemies, and his gift to the white men. The Apache received bows and arrows. But the white men received the gun. The first time Ekta saw one fired, she knew it to be magic. She was young, gathering dried wood with her sisters so they could have a fire that night. They did not pay attention to how far they were walking. They climbed over hills and around rocks, until suddenly they heard a man's voice shout in the distance. The words were nothing she had heard before, and they meant nothing to her ears. Strange words were followed by a strange noise (she would later learn it to be the sound of a laser pistol firing). Noise was followed by colour, a flash of red streaming towards her. And colour was followed by pain, as her shoulder erupted in agony. 

The girls dropped their wood, running back home as quickly as they could. But Ekta looked back as they ran. In the distance, she could make out the figures of several men, camped under a tree. One of them was standing, and looked to be holding a long stick. 

It would be several years before she heard the noise of a laser pistol again. 

In those years, she grew. She learned the plants and animals of their land. She learned the stories and legends of her people. She learned how to shoot a bow and arrow, and wondered why the Child of the Water had gifted them this tool instead of the guns the white men had. She learned to cook, to skin a deer, to build a new wikiup every time they had to move camp, and how to treat the burn wounds her brothers and sisters received when they skirmished with white men. 

All this while, she stayed near home. The wound on her shoulder had long since faded to a scar, but it served as a reminder to never venture too far away. She knew how to fight, but it was a responsibility that was better left to her elder brothers and sisters. They were stronger, more skilled, and someday she would join them in defending their lands. 

She was fourteen when tensions rose to war. A group of men from her tribe received word that they were to meet with the white men for negotiations. They agreed, and travelled to Apache Pass, where a railway camp had been set up by the Europeans. 

To this day, Ekta doesn't know the details of what occurred at Apache Pass. But she knows that the Chiricahua negotiating party did not return. And she knows that two days later, just as she was tying the final knots in a beaded necklace, the sound of laser guns echoed across the cliffs. She pocketed the necklace, grabbed her bow and arrow, and fled into a wikiup with her mother and younger sister. They hid there as the battle outside grew more fierce. Ekta crouched in front of her mother and sister, an arrow knocked, watching red lasers streak across the sky outside. 

Finally, the men reached her shelter. She let loose her arrow, and missed. They shot, and their aim was true. The first shot tore straight through her mother's chest, the next struck her sister in the head. Two men entered her tent, and the bearded one grabbed her by the hair while the other kept watch at the door. The Chiricahua did not grow hair on their faces, and this was the first time she had seen a man with a beard. She was forced to the ground, and her dress was torn. At the time, she did not understand the English the man growled in her ear. But she remembered the sounds. And sometime later, when she learned the language, she would recognize those sounds as "Little indian bride". This man was Thomas Wilkinson, her future husband. 

Ekta was taken as a prisoner of war, along with six others from her tribe. 

But unlike the others, who were killed or released within the coming months, Thomas had taken a special liking to Ekta. Unlike the others, who were kept like cattle in the most meager of accommodations, Ekta was invited into Thomas's home. He gave her clothes like the white women wore, and started teaching her English. He also abused her, mercilessly. Though he was infatuated with the Indian girl, he still saw her as less than human. A wife, without all the headaches of an actual woman. He called her 'Katherine', because Ekta was too foreign. Two years later, when her English had finally improved to a conversational level, Thomas asked her to marry him. It was more of a demand than a request, really, but she still obliged. 

When Thomas left for the day, to go work at the local gun shop, she browsed his digital libraries. She perused through the pages and pages of text, scanning for words that she knew. She projected holographic maps across her bedroom, and traced her way across the desert and hills and oceans of the world. The world was so much bigger than she had ever thought it could be. There was so much more information than she ever could have dreamed. Metal wagons that moved without being pushed. Planes and rockets that flew through the air like birds, but never moved their wings.  Devices that could record a person's words, voices, face, and motions; and then store it in a database forever. And she learned of how many people there were in the world. She had known that the white men were flooding into her home, but she had never known just how many of them there were in the world. Billions, and that number was constantly rising. 

When Thomas came home, she practiced her English, and cooked him dinner. She ate with a fork and a knife to keep him happy, even though she never understood the point of such silly customs. Thomas's mood dictated the rest of the night. If he'd had a good day, they would sleep. If he'd had a bad day, it was often taken out on her in some way or another. This was her routine, day after day, week after week, year after year. But over the years, she grew knowledgeable. And all the knowledge that Katherine gained almost made living with Thomas worth it. 

One day, Thomas came home with news. He had quit his job at the gun shop. "Buncha new settlers movin' in. Someone's gonna come take my job someday now anyhow. But that don't matter, I got somethin' better. Y'know those ships that go up in the sky, Katherine?" he asked her. 

She knew them quite well. She had spent the last three months trying to learn how their engines worked, and examining standard control panels that were used for navigation. But she played dumb, and answered with a mere nod. "Well, I got us one. We're goin' to the stars, sweetheart. Gonna find ourselves a new home. Ship leaves in two months, so we gotta get packing." 

Katherine forced a smile, and spent the next two months researching how to solo-pilot a ship. She had no intention of making this journey with Thomas at her side. 

Dependants: 
Thomas Wilkinson - Husband 

Thomas is a large man, standing at 6'3" and weighing well above two hundred pounds. He has the build of a labourer, and all the charm of your average brute. He wears his dark brown hair cut short and slicked back. His beard, on the other hand, receives somewhat less grooming. It is dark brown, unkempt, and somewhere in the range of five inches in length by now. 

Thomas has spent the last decade of his life working at the local gun shop. He has a hefty amount of savings in the bank, inherited money following the death of his mother some twelve years ago, but continues to work. He likes the gun shop. It's easy work with good people, and the inner workings of laser weaponry are of particular interest to him. Though he can be brutish and uneducated in certain subjects, some of the finer developments of Bridgewater's Rifle Shop have been his own inventions. The enhanced scope he came up with in '62 was exceptionally brilliant. 

Along with money, Thomas also inherited the Wilkinson estate. A fine house at the edge of town, the estate boasts numerous guest rooms, an advanced kitchen with a state-of-the-art stove shipped directly from England (his mother loved to cook before she passed away), security locks on all the doors, and one of the largest digital libraries this side of the Atlantic Ocean. He had a fine job, a fine home, and all that was lacking was a fine wife. Yet for some reason, with all his obnoxious charm, Thomas could never manage to pick up even the homeliest of women at the local bar. Boasting of his advancements in laser weapons, or detailed descriptions of what he intended for them in the bedroom later that evening, never failed to drive most women away. 

When the sheriff announced he was putting together a team to chase off a troublesome pack of Apache indians, Thomas signed up in a heartbeat. He was simply looking for an opportunity to test out the new version of his colt plasma handgun. He had no intention of meeting his future bride. But in the middle of the raid, when he laid eyes on Katherine, he knew that this was the woman he wanted. He'd take her home, teach her how to be civilized, and someday they'd start a life together among the stars.
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Mad Hops

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