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Ellen Taylor
Basics
Name: Ellen Taylor
Age: 23
Gender: Female
Height/Weight: 168 cm/ 56 kg
(Former) Occupation: Alaskan King Crab Fisher
Languages: Fluent in Italian, French, English. Conversational with German, Spanish and Portuguese
Appearance: Ellen has a scar on her left arm from a cord snapping and a piece of equipment striking her two years ago. She also has a tattoo on her right wrist, half of a yin yang, designed by her sister, who had the other half on her wrist. Her hair is currently brown at the roots with it lightening as it goes past her shoulders, but she has gone completely red and blonde as well. Her hair is naturally brown. She wears contacts, though her vision is decent without for short durations. She wears black stretch leggings, flats, and a layered top—usually a tank top with a cotton t-shirt or zippered sweatshirt on top.
Right design here:
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Biography
Ellen Taylor was born Elena Romano, in Italy. She and her identical twin, Chiara, were inseparable when they were young. She grew up in Milan, with the ability to hop on a train to nearly anywhere at the drop of a hat. They often spent weekends skiing in Switzerland, or shopping in France, during the weekends and holidays from school.
Chaira and Elena didn’t share all of the same hobbies. Chaira loved art, and Elena was more interested in physical activities like sports and gardening (the latter of which was not easy in the city itself). As they grew older, they both became aware that they traveled more frequently than most of their peers, and their classmates often vacationed with both parents. The Romano family rarely vacationed together. At first they believed it was their parents’ work schedules that kept them apart, but Elena realized, and eventually enlightened her sister to the fact, that their parents purposefully busied themselves to avoid the other.
Both spent adequate time with their daughters, but Elena was sure they were just waiting for the girls to turn eighteen so they could divorce. Chiara vehemently disagreed, and made it her mission to keep them together. She was always planning events for the whole family to attend, and it worked…sort of. Chiara and Elena were able to attend the same university, and Chiara made plans for family dinners nearly every month. She hoped to reignite the spark she was convinced was there when they were young. Elena was more skeptical, but went along with her sister rather than being labeled a cynic.
In 2016, Elena and Chiara were in their second year of college. They shared a room despite having vastly different majors. Chiara had been majoring in art with a specialization in graphic design. She really wanted to be a tattoo artist, and hoped that her education would help her land a great job. She designed the tattoos she and Elena got for their nineteenth birthday. Elena was majoring in Agricultural Science, though she spent most of her time with athletics. She enjoyed competitive and recreational skiing, fencing, and rugby. Unfortunately, neither girl finished their degree. On January 3rd, 2016 Chiara awakened, and most of the people in her dorm died shortly after.
Elena hadn’t been in her room at the time. She had been at a discoteque, dancing and relaxing on the Saturday night. By the time she got back to her campus after the awakenings caused mass panic, she couldn’t get back to her old room, let alone find the remains of her sister.
In the following weeks, Elena went home to mourn. Every morning she woke up, looked across the room, and expected to see her cheerful sister there, drawing or painting. Every meal at the table, she stared at the empty seat across from her. Every time she brushed her teeth in the bathroom, she looked at the holder that held both of her brushes. It was hell.
Her parents barely spoke to each other. They barely spoke to her. Elena went entire days without talking, and there were brief times she wondered if she had forgotten how to speak at all. She lay awake at night wishing she had been there. Perhaps if she had been with her sister, she could have stopped…whatever madness took her mind and her life. She didn’t know exactly what had transpired that night for her sister, and couldn’t bear to read the local reports. She read eye witness testimony about what happened to others around the world, and it made her ill. She couldn’t imagine her sister having gone through any of that…especially not alone.
Sometimes she wondered if her parents were filled with hate. Did they wish Elena had been taken instead? Did they think Elena could have stopped it? Did they blame each other? Did they think perhaps they had missed some underlying sign of madness, susceptibility, or…some other sign of what was to come? Elena tried to ask, but all she got back were bland reassurances that it wasn’t anyone’s fault. She didn’t think they believed their words, either.
Elena tried to pull her parents together. She made them dinner one night. She got them tickets to shows she thought they would like. She tried bonding with each separately, too. Elena went with her mother to some of the events of Milan’s fashion week. She took helicopter lessons with her father. Elena even brought them both to art museums. But she couldn’t be the glue for the family. Not alone. Chiara had barely been managing it before, and now it was like the cracked vase that was their family had shattered, and all Elena had to put it back together was a kids’ glue stick.
The pressure was too much. She couldn’t do it all. Elena dropped out of school. It was too hard to attend her old classes and pretend she had the energy to care about it all. It was too hard to see all of the people who did a double take when they saw her, thinking she was Chiara. It was too hard to have Chiara’s friends checking on her, all the while expecting some sort of comfort from her.
Soon all of Milan became too much. Her home, the neighborhood, the restaurants… Everything. When people she had never met looked at her for too long, Elena wondered if they thought she was Chiara, or if they knew…somehow…that she was only half-there. Only half capable. Elena packed up her things and left home.
On the anniversary of her sister’s death, Elena was at a bar, drinking and playing darts. The bar was a dive, but it was more crowded than most weekdays. Many people wanted to drink away the sorrow and pain of what had happened the previous year on that very date. Someone called for the bartender to turn on the news after checking their phone, and shortly after, the television in the corner blared that there were yet more awakenings. The dread and suspicion in the room mounted. Elena and the others in the bar wondered who would be next.
As nations around the globe finally agreed to cooperate, Elena grew anxious. She worried she would be afflicted, though there were no ties yet to people within the same family being affected by this…event. She had been saving money since she left home, as she had been working in Northern Italy as a ski instructor. She got a fake ID in France, then traveled to Switzerland. She spent the latter half of 2017 traveling around. She hated feeling like she was on-the-run, like she had done something wrong, but she needed to get far enough that she could…settle down a bit.
Funds were difficult to come by when she was constantly moving and only picking up odd jobs. She worked under the table, which was great for some employers, but not exactly the easiest type of work to apply for, and she was always looked at with suspicion when she made her payment preferences known. Somewhere in the Yukon, Elena, now going by Ellen, met a man and followed him onto a fishing boat. His crew was short someone and they promised good money for quick work. She didn’t know much about it, but she spent the Third Wave onboard a thankfully unaffected crab fishing boat.
The work was quick, but it was dangerous. Still, she earned enough money to make ends meet for most of the rest of the year, which made the risk quite worth it. Plus, the boss didn’t mind paying her under the table, as she took a smaller cut in exchange for the discretion. Eventually Ellen split from the man, but kept coming back for the job. She worked there for the next two seasons as well. She didn’t have to ensure she picked a job ending before January 3rd. No one ran their crab fishing boats over the anniversaries of the awakenings anymore. No one wanted to lose their whole ship and shipment because someone went nuts and developed some sort of magic.
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Skills and Weaknesses
Skills:
- Physically Fit- Ellen is used to working long hard hours without sleep. She has good endurance for manual labor, as well as tolerance of the cold, and can push her body hard before passing out.
- Captain- Ellen has experience driving cars, motorcycles, boats, jetskis, and even took a few helicopter flying lessons. She does NOT have her helicopter pilot license.
- Ready to run- Ellen doesn’t have strong ties to any particular place, though she would feel nostalgic about some places from her early life. She is used to traveling all around the world, and speaks bits and pieces of enough languages to get by in many places.
Weaknesses:
- Impatient- Ellen likes to stay active physically and mentally. She has a difficult time waiting around for things to happen. She will make a decision quickly if it means making one rather than waiting around and making lists of pros and cons.
- Impaired vision- Ellen can drive without her glasses/contacts, but she will get a headache if she goes too long without them. Without her contacts, she will need to bring writing up close to her face in order to read, as she is farsighted.
- Cynical- Ellen has always been a bit of a cynic, but there are certain things she just immediately feels negatively about. Like when she sees people looking happy, especially in family units, she tends to get suspicious and think they are hiding something or lying to themselves.
Spells:
- Condensation (Blue)- Ellen can pull water from the air in its gas form and turn it back into a liquid, coating her hands or the ground around her, roughly 0.75m in each direction. This will make the affected area (the ground or her body) slippery. She is susceptible to the effects as well for the duration of the spell and would have difficulty running or grabbing onto things. When she stops the spell, the water does not evaporate again—she must dry off.
- Seeing Double (White)- Ellen can create another version of herself as a hologram, and control it for a short amount of time. The illusion is silent, but can leave her field of vision. In such a case, she can shoose whether to see out of her own eyes or the eyes of the hologram. Any injuries that would be sustained by the hologram affect Ellen at a lesser intensity.
- Crab Claw (Red)- Ellen’s hands turn into elongated crab claws capable of tearing through flesh. Her left hand turns into one large claw, incredibly durable, meant for crashing and bashing. On her right hand, each finger turns into a long black enameled pincer complete with fixed finger and dactyl. Along the fixed finger are a series of small teeth for cutting. Prolonged use leads to hand numbness and aching of joints.
- Sea Glass? (Green)- Ellen can touch something made of glass and cause the particles in the glass to vibrate so quickly that it is ground into sand. She cannot turn the sand back into glass again. Trying to break down larger objects (like a large glass window on a shop) causes headaches, bloody nose, and potentially worse effects.
- Photosynthesis Antithesis (Green)- Ellen can create a 1.5m radius sphere in which the plants stop photosynthesizing and no longer release oxygen into the air. Any people/animals in the area would need to leave the bubble or suffocate from lack of oxygen. The excess oxygen is redirected to Ellen, over-exposing her to oxygen. This gives her headaches, sleepiness, and confusion depending on the length of the exposure.
- Second Skin (Red)– Ellen can make herself impervious to the effects of being cold or wet for an extended period of time. She does this by taking on the characteristics of the skin of a seal. She sprouts seal fur, which traps the warm air, and secretes an oil that works like blubber beneath the fur to keep her warm. Her skin turns greyish with the oil and fur, and will glisten in the light. Ellen cannot turn this spell off. After an hour or two, the second skin begins to molt and needs to be scraped off.