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Name: Ariela Cole
Callsign: Banshee
Age: 30
Gender: Female
Appearance:
Stands at about six feet exactly. Has an athletic build, with well-defined muscle tone.
Personality:
Ariela is a product of childhood trauma and highly unethical military indoctrination. Intense psychological conditioning has eliminated the chance of her suffering combat stress or PTSD, but resulted in mildly sociopathic tendencies such as an inability to emphasize with most people and a callous attitude towards combat and death. She is direct, no-nonsense, and foul-mouthed, having grown up to resemble the drill sergeants that trained her in her youth. She bears a certain sense of affection and responsibility for those close to her, though can only really express it by emulating the examples she was given as a child. Unfortunately, most of those were the aforementioned drill sergeants.
Having known no other way of life since she was a child, Ariela lives for combat, unable to find meaning as anything other than an AUG pilot. She bears a certain amount of martial pride, finding enjoyment in challenges and overcoming them. As a result of her experiences and conditioning, though, Ariela's ability to emphasize with or relate to civilians and noncombatants is poor, and she can only reliably form emotional connections with other soldiers.
Naturally for someone whose home was destroyed by them, Ariela despises Lemnosians, and will readily work against their interests without much convincing. Her relationship with the UEC is far more complicated. While she fought loyally for them in the final years of the War, the fact that she and her fellows were cut loose as a political inconvenience afterwards rankles. Her former loyalty to Earth and her colonies has degraded into a grudging neutrality, her resentments evening out her old affiliation.
Skills:
- Armor Pilot: Under the Enhanced Pilot Initative, Ariela received training in how to pilot most conventional forms of Mobile and Augmented Armor, and the usage of mech-sized weaponry. While she prefers close combat, she can swap roles in a fireteam if needed with a change in armament. She can pilot most UEC-standard Armors without further retraining, and adapting to different cockpit layouts and operating systems is easier for her than it would be for most. Can also perform maintenance and patchwork repairs on her own, though anything more complex is beyond her.
- UEC Soldier: Ariela was trained to achieve competence in infantry combat, in case she was ever shot down and had to evade enemy capture. She's about as good as any grunt on foot, but most of her training in this area was designed around fieldcraft and avoiding pitched firefights. Furthermore, given falsified credentials, she's able to easily disguise herself as an active-duty member of the UEC military, given her upbringing with them.
- Versatile Trades: Ten years spent going from odd job to odd job in the Neutral Zone have left Ariela with basic knowledge and core competencies in several fields of practical knowledge and labor. From being a line cook, to agricultural work, to starship maintenance, she knows enough to get by in several areas. None of them have ever brought her as much personal fulfillment as piloting and active combat have, though.
Brief History:
The first year of the Universal War resulted in many razed colonies on the UEC's border. Among those planets was Ariela's home of Castor-IV, which was one of the first hit in the LTS's initial blitzkrieg. At only eight years of age, Ariela was placed on one of the only ships able to flee the planet by her parents, and drifted deeper into UEC core space before being placed into the foster care system on arrival. Given how many worlds were decimated in that first year, it came to little surprise for any observer when several of these war orphans seemingly fell through the cracks, disappearing from official records.
What most didn't know, however, was that these children all found themselves press-ganged into the UEC's Enhanced Pilot Initiative: an off-the-books project intent on training and conditioning the best Mobile Armor pilots possible to supplement the ongoing Augmented Armor development in the works at the time. Traumatized, confused, and vengeful over the loss of their parents, Ariela and most of the other pilot cadets willingly threw themselves into training, wanting to strike back at those who invaded their homes and seize some control back in their lives. The EPI candidates endured hellish training and illegal psychological conditioning for over half a decade, learning to master the ins and outs of Armor piloting, the Augmented Armor project developing in part thanks to their flight data.
Over half a decade of training later, seven years into the war, the Augmented Armors finished development and the EPI pilots were let loose to try to turn the tide of the war. Of the Originals that comprised the first Augmented Armor pilots, a solid portion had been EPI candidates, with the majority still being high-achieving soldiers in the regular military. The EPIs were carefully deployed to avoid too much interaction with these other pilots, so as to avoid any questions or inquiries in the use of child soldiers. Ariela served for the next three years through to the end of the war, taking part in several fierce battles and raids even as her fellow pilots were shot down, unmourned and unremembered by the majority except their fellow teenagers. When the war ended, however, the surviving EPI pilots were in for one last shock.
The UEC was cutting the entire project loose. The pilots had accumulated enough combat data that the fruits of their training could be incorporated into the regular military, and their sheer existence was political kryptonite for the administration should they ever be discovered. So each of them was summarily discharged, given a hefty sum in back pay for their service as hush money, and thrown out into repatriation programs to hopefully live quiet lives. Their AUGs were mothballed into storage facilities and quietly forgotten about in order to conceal the evidence of the program while also keeping a reserve for the future.
Lost, drifting, and purposeless, Ariela spent the next decade trying to move on from the war. From combat. From piloting. She couldn't. As it turned out, the EPI indoctrination program had worked too well in her case. Nothing quite so mattered to her anymore as being within the cockpit of an AUG. She spent ten years going from odd job to odd job across the Neutral Zone trying to deny this until she couldn't anymore. Combat piloting was what defined her. And she devised a method to return to action.
The UEC would never take her back. She couldn't sneak into service either. And though Ariela resented the UEC for using her until it was inconvenient, she would never pilot for the Lemnosians. No, the only solution was to go into business herself as a mercenary. But that hinged on her having an AUG. Fortunate that she knew where to acquire one. Ariela had kept in touch with some of the trainers and support staff from the EPI that had been sympathetic to the children, and managed to get one such person to reveal that their old machines were mothballed in a storage facility familiar to her: a hidden facility on the border with the Neutral Zone. With that in mind, Ariela made contact with EINHERJAR, and recruited several mercenaries to her plot: raid the facility and seize the Augmented Armors within for themselves. The only catch was that LINEBREAKER was hers and hers alone. The raid succeeded, though not without a firefight with the security forces. For the first time in over ten years, Ariela was reunited with her steed.
Over the next year, Ariela began work as an EINHERJAR merc herself, relearning the ins and outs of piloting on low-risk missions. Ten years out of the cockpit had put a good amount of rust on her, but she shook off most of it within the year, with Ariela's skills returning close enough to what they were at the height of the war. Now, she hopes to return to the dangerous, high-risk missions she spent her formative years training for.
Other:
Voice claim: Colleen Clinkenbeard
AUG Name: LINEBREAKER
Armaments:
- MA-325CQB Carbine: Ballistic rifle with a shortened barrel for close to mid-range combat. Can be fired in semi-automatic, three-round burst, or full auto settings. Dual-wielded in LINEBREAKER's default configuration, one in each hand.
- Rosenkranz-Pattern Laser Cannon: Particle laser cannon for heavy ranged assault. Designed as fire support for use with medium-weight Armors. Mounted on the right shoulder.
- SUNBURST Beam Saber: Arm-mounted high-output laser blade for close-quarters-combat. Capable of tearing through conventional defenses with ease. Both of LINEBREAKER's forearms are mounted with one.
Specifications:
Originally, LINEBREAKER was a stock model first-generation UEC Augmented Armor with balanced specifications to handle most situations. Over the years, Ariela's preferred fighting style and her customizations have transformed the former military mecha into a lightweight, high speed close-quarters specialist with immense booster thrust and maneuverability at the cost of reducing its armor plating. At its core, however, the LINEBREAKER is still a War-era AUG, missing many of the optimizations in technology that have been created over the past twelve years. While still formidable, the LINEBREAKER is a generation or so behind current top-of-the-line Augmented Armors, with a performance gap to match.