Rtron

~Chrono Asylum: Devil's Plague

Still puttin along

Mass Effect Andromeda: Frontier

Clarified the issues, excised a problem mech, expanded some more. Hope this suffices. @Dervish @DearTrickster @Mortarion

Serena Mathews

Serena Mathews

Race: Human
Sex: Female
Age: 37 (671 as Serena is all to eager to jokingly claim)
Profile: Sentinel (Specialization in mechs, VIs, and robotics)
DOB: 2148CE
Homeworld: Earth

Appearance: Five foot four inches, bright pink hair, with one brown eye and one (usually) hot pink eye. Her right eye (the pink one) is cybernetic, and you can see the faded scars of how she lost it. She has burn scars all along her arms and some on her face, from the sparks of droids, a stab wound in her shoulder, a jagged cut scar across the right side of her neck, and one particularly nasty stab scar along her stomach.

Background: Serena was born to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. The reach of the Alliance was far from her family, and they acted accordingly. Kept their heads down, payed whatever fines that were demanded of them, and tried to avoid the gang wars. Serena had heard that years and years ago it had been considered the most crime ridden city in the world. She didn't know if that was true anymore, but it certainly felt like it with the cramped living conditions and nigh constant gang wars. Her father repaired and sold various mechs,drones, and VI’s in addition to doing repairs on ships whenever he could to scrounge more credits. Combat, medical, and domestic mechs. Drones for any and all purposes, you request it, her father would build it or fix it and Serena learned most of her talents from him. Her mother helped him, even when she was pregnant with Serena. It was obvious that because of her mother's insistence upon helping, Serena's biotic powers developed. However, she couldn't afford any training or amps as her parents were poor enough as is.

For several years they managed to scrape by like this, remaining relatively free of the constant power struggles and fluctuations between the various gangs. Of course, nothing lasts forever. When she was eight, a vicious battle erupted outside of their little shop. Two gangs were battling for control of her district. Up until now, the fights had always been away from them. Serena doesn’t remember much of the incident. Strong emotions and flashes of memory. Helplessness. Her mother’s face filled with fear as she shielded her. Terror. Her father working as fast as he could to get Mech’s up and running to defend the shop. It was that feeling of helplessness, weakness, that would stick with her mostly strongly. She hated that feeling, the feeling that she couldn't change anything, that she was a burden and a risk.

After that event, the shop torn to shreds by bullets, most of the mechs they had been working on destroyed, her father finally gave in. He started paying one of the gangs, the Cyborgs, for protection. The group that constantly used Mechs could always use someone who was talented working on them. Especially someone who paid them for protection.

This arrangement, which would last for the entirety of her father’s life, lead to Cyborg members frequently visiting her father’s shop. This, of course, lead to her talking to them and getting to know the local gang and it’s members. There were some evil bastards in the group, certainly. But there were also good people. People just trying to do what they could to survive and prosper. This is what taught Serena to judge on a person by person basis. Not everyone in the same race, organization, what have you, is going to be same.

Ten years passed, and Serena began to get restless. She began to wonder what life outside San Pedro was like. What it was like to not be in constant fear of being attacked by gangs, or wondering if her father’s protection payments would rise and then he’d be forced to go bankrupt. It didn’t take her long to decide she wanted to leave.

There was only a couple of ways she could get out of San Pedro Sula. She could charter a passage on a ship, but that cost more money than she or her father had and would only get her to one place. What she would do after getting to that one place was an unknown. She could sign up with a mercenary company. It offered a way to get out of San Pedro, a job, and a sure way to be on the move. Mercenary companies offered a way to get around and actually see the world and the galaxy. And, she reasoned, she could find someone who wouldn't constantly be thrusting her into stupid battles and she would be relatively sure of the fact that she was on the good side. Finally, she could sign up with the Alliance military. Steady pay, definitely on the good side, galaxy and world travelling, equipment, training...it was really so much better than mercenary work wasn't it?

Thus, Serena made her decision. She would join the Alliance navy get out of this town, and use her talents as a Mech repairwoman and VI hacker/programmer to help out the military. Simple. Despite her parents misgivings, they were in no position to stop her. Her leaving would make things easier for all of them. Saying her goodbyes, Serena traveled through the slums that had always been her home and signed up with the Alliance.

They gave her their basic gear. On the off chance her biotic talents could be useful, the tested her. Turns out she did have some biotic power. Thus, they began teaching her how to use her amp and her powers. Serena was never very talented at it, but she did learn how to use barriers and telekinesis. The former is very handy in fights and the latter in general use.

For five years she worked with the Alliance. For the most part she escaped direct combat. She hacked, she designed mechs, drones and VI’s, and she repaired them. When she was close to the combat she was always protected and separate. Eventually she was attached to covert unit under a man by the name of John. He used her skills with VIs, mechs, and hacking to help out his teams in the field and occasionally sending her out with them as a long distance support. As the years passed she began heading out more and more with the teams. She objected, being completely unsuited for the types field work she was being sent out more and more in. Her objections went unheeded, and Serena reluctantly carried out her orders. It was the way she had been trained.

For a while, it was all fine. She got all she wanted. Outside of San Pedro (Indeed, Earth entirely), exploring the Galaxy, never in the same place. Oh, and the deaths of dozens on her hands. For the most part she could easily say that it was self defense. Kill or be killed. There were some grey areas she chose to ignore, however. Some deaths where she couldn’t be quite certain that what she had done was right, or that it wasn't her fault. So she ignored them. Or tried to at least. The deaths still weighed on her mind.

These became worse when Serena seemed to be cursed in her missions. The objective would be failed, or taken, her partners all eventually died, and she'd always manage to somehow come back alive. She tried to brush off the deaths, convince herself that it wasn't her fault, but she was the only consistent part of these missions. The only thing that didn't change from mission to mission. John eventually started assigning her missions with quietly hired mercenaries to help. Officially, this was to minimize evidence of Alliance presence during her missions.

In the back of her mind, Serena knew it was because she would get anyone she worked with killed. She went through a couple mercenaries, with dying in her failed missions like the rest, until coming across Barat. He was a gruff Krogan who had been alive for centuries longer than she had, and had a knack for survival. He lasted the longest out of all her partners, despite missions still going south, and kept her safe. Their personalities would clash, his cynical practicality rubbing her optimistic hopefulness the wrong way, and vice versa. Despite this, the two formed a fast bond and continued working together, carrying out their missions with greater and greater success.

Unbeknownst to Serena, the reason she had suddenly been pulled from support to field work, and her seemingly cursed missions, was that John had turned traitor. He had become disillusioned with the idea that the Alliance even stood a chance against the other nations of the Council, convinced that eventually humanity would anger a powerful Council Race the same way it had angered the Batarians, and the Alliance end up destroyed. So he started preparing for what he saw as an inevitable outcome, building his own wealth to weather out the storm. He sold information and technology to Alliance enemies, using his teams as unknowing mules and occasional sacrificial lambs to get what he was selling to whoever was buying. He would use his teams to successfully generate a few missions, and then one would 'go bad' and the enemy would get whatever he was selling them. Serena just had the bad luck of being one of the ones typically sent on those missions, and surviving all of them. He eventually turned to mercenaries to make even less of a connection to him, should the Alliance begin looking into him too closely. He kept Serena around because she was naive, still believing in the Alliance, believing that they were going to succeed.

For Serena, her breaking point came when she was assigned to a hacking mission. It was in the Terminus Systems, specifically Sigurd's Cradle, Chalkos. It seemed simple enough, get in the two story tall security building, get the data, get out. The guards were supposedly only a small merc band, hired by an anti-alliance terrorist to protect the virus he was making. That was the official story Serena had been told, at least. In reality it was a scientist secretly funded by the Alliance to make a stronger combat VI, borderline AI. Most of their inspiration and goals came from the Quarian's creation of the Geth, though with much more care to not make sentient beings. They kept it quiet, to prevent disapproval from the galactic community. John had found out, and was going to sell it to the Batarians and retire a very rich man. All Serena had to do was send it to him, and then he could alert the Alliance security forces. She would be captured and labeled a traitor, it would be revealed that she had also been selling to other enemies and killing her partners, and she would be executed. It was a very neat tying up of loose ends.

Serena was grateful to have Barat with her, as something felt wrong as they moved through the building. Things went great up until they got too the actual data they needed to hack into. They managed to kill the surprisingly few guards there were (Barat wasn’t sneaking past anything), and get to the data hub without a hitch. Just as Serena was beginning to download what they needed, alarms suddenly blared throughout the building. They had missed a security system, and now they were going to pay for it. They waited, because it was their mission, until all the data was downloaded. By then, the guards that had been absent were pouring towards them, Barat having already overheated two guns as he held them back (there were plenty to pick up off the floor.) The Datahub was destroyed in the process, Serena barely getting the last bit she needed in time.

They beat a hasty retreat, trying to get out of the building before they got overwhelmed and subsequently murdered. Somewhere, they took a wrong turn. Made a mistake. They found themselves in a dead end. Good news? They were on the ground floor. The windows showed as much. The bad news? The security forces were outside the door. From the sounds of it, they were getting ready for an assault.

Barat recognized what was going to happen first. Whether it was just intuition or years of experience, Barat shoved her onto the ground screaming at her to throw up a barrier, as every guard (or so it seemed from Serena’s point of view) threw in his or her grenade. She only had time and the wherewithal to throw a barrier around herself. Then the world seemed to explode. When she was back to her senses, she was alone. There was a massive chunk in the wall and a bloodied body nearby.

Serena panicked and ran. She didn't give herself time to think, time to process. She just bolted through the gigantic hole in the wall and didn’t stop running. She didn’t go to the Alliance evacuation location. She just kept going until she was sure she had lost them. Once she was sure, she allowed herself to break down. She was in some dirty alley, with another life on her hands. This one she couldn’t ignore. This one she couldn’t claim as not her fault. Barat’s death was on her hands, and her hands alone. Her failure. Her weakness. She couldn't go back. She couldn't return and get another person killed that she care about. She couldn't let her weakness kill another. Besides, she reasoned, they probably already figured that she was dead. She hadn't gotten to the evac point, and Barat had been killed. She ignored the tiny voice at the back of her mind, condemning her as a coward for deserting the Alliance.

John for his part kept Serena's involvement in the raid and subsequent AWOL status as quiet as he could. He didn't want the Alliance looking into why she was there, and discovering all that he had done to betray them. He reported that she and an unnamed mercenary had met their ends in a mission, partially succeeding. He kept an eye out for her, using his considerable resources to attempt to track Serena and recover the VI she had accidentally taken with her without the Alliance being involved. He encouraged and doctored reports that claimed the VI had been destroyed in the firefight, rather than Serena had ran off with it herself. He did everything in his power to get Serena before the Alliance noticed that she was not, in fact, dead.

Serena for her part moved from mercenary group to mercenary group. For five years she did this, doing her best to avoid the contracts that would end in morally ambiguous territory and deaths, and trying to pick up the ones that she knew would benefit people. Even if they were merely repair or defense jobs. She picked up Vellios along the way, the Turian sticking with her until they were a team. It reminded her of her time with Barat, and made her feel safe, even if the Turian's dark past and even darker tendencies would be reoccurring problems.

In 2176 she and Vellios joined a mercenary company of the ship The Borealis (Later named the Jury Riggers), some of the fondest memories of Serena's life. While her time with them was when she got nearly all of her injuries and would nearly die several times, she considers them some of the best moments of her life. They began helping her stop blaming herself for mission failures and deaths, to become more confident in herself and her abilities, and to bond with a true team again. She hadn't known how much she had missed it till joining them.

It was during her time with the Riggers that Serena's past caught up with her. She received a message from a funeral parlor back on earth, in San Pedro. Her parents had died, and she needed to make arrangements. Serena believed it, and made plans to go back to San Pedro to deal with their deaths. The Riggers agreed to take her there, some going with her on the planet to help her through her grief. When they got to San Pedro, and to her parents house they found a house that hadn't been lived in for years. One of Serena's old friends from the Cyborgs spotted them, and after expressing his joy and surprise at seeing her, revealed something only more confusing. Serena's parents had died years ago, murdered. Before Serena and the Riggers with her could react beyond surprise, an Alliance team of soliders appeared and surrounded them. The more unruly were frozen in stasis, and everyone else had guns trained unerringly on them.

Serena's old handler John appeared and, after reassuring Serena her fellow Riggers will be left unharmed, took her away and charged her with treason, desertion, and spying for a foreign government. He, his Alliance team, and Serena left, and the Riggers were let go. John's original plan had been to kill Serena and the Riggers with her, taking the VI back in the process, making it look like a particularly gruesome bit of San Pedro violence. Unfortunately, the Alliance had noticed that a supposedly dead agent of their's had returned to Earth space. Without alerting them to her presence. They contacted John and he promised to take care of it, going through the proper channels. An annoying prospect, but one he would have to do to ensure that everything he had worked for didn't fall apart.

When the Riggers returned to the Borealis to discuss what to do, they received another unpleasant surprise. Serena had not only kept the VI she had accidentally stolen when Barat died, she had put it in her Krogan Mech that she and members of the crew had been working on and tinkered with it. She continue to make minor upgrades to it. Upgrading one VI's analysis program, another's intelligence, and still another's processing power, until it was a functioning AI, and it wanted to know where its 'Mother' had gone.

The Riggers decided they couldn't leave her to her fate. Returning to San Pedro Sula, they were stopped by another motley group. A Batarian, an Asari, a Krogan, and a Vorcha. They were from one of Serena's old crews, the Furies, and had managed to get word of John drawing Serena into his trap. They had come to late to stop him, but they knew how he was manipulating the system against Serena, and why. John had been selling Alliance information and security to other nations, for his own profit. They even had evidence of his corruption. (Later it would be revealed, that for all this damning information and one more favor, the Batarian would become one of the Shadow Broker's few agents in the Hegemony and the Asari would become another agent for the Shadow Broker in C-Sec).

John was blackmailing the judge and paying off the Jury to convict Serena of all her charges and sentence her to death. The Riggers, with BARAT and the Furies, decided to stop him and thus clear Serena of all her charges. While they were doing that, Serena was locked in prison. An agent of John's approached her, demanding where the VI she had ran off with years ago was. Serena refused to tell her the location, and the other woman fell back on her secondary order: killing Serena. In the ensuing fight, Serena sustained massive trauma to the right side of her face, ruining the eye entirely. The only thing that saved her from death was one of the prison guards finding them and shooting the Agent in the back. The prison would rule the attack a matter of a faulty biotic damping collar and typical gang violence.

As Serena recovered in the prison hospital, the Riggers had stopped John's plans. The Judge was no longer blackmailed, and the jurors were convinced to do a fair trial. Serena was cleared of all charges, and allowed to leave San Pedro with the Riggers and the Furies. As they left Alliance space, John caught up to them in his own ship. He was going to take the VI back, whether it meant killing all of them in their ship or not. BARAT willingly transferred over to John's ship, and seized control. He knocked most of the crew unconscious and left John for the Riggers and Furies to deal with.

Serena went over to the ship, against her friends' wishes and protests, and confronted John herself. She had him explain why he did all the things he had done, why he had betrayed her and betrayed the Alliance. Why he had ordered her parents murdered. After he had explained all of it, she lifted her pistol to kill him. To make him pay for what he had done.

She couldn't do it. In the end, she couldn't murder an unarmed man in cold blood. She left John, informing him that the Alliance knew of his betrayal, and already was looking for him. The Furies and Riggers left John's ship, Serena being the last one, and headed out into the galaxy.

Unbeknownst to Serena, BARAT didn't leave the ship's systems. While its mother was forgiving, it was not. It viewed John as a threat, one to be eliminated. It knew he wouldn't stop chasing Serena, and that it had to stop him. It sent out an email with bits and pieces of its code to every member of the Riggers, asking them to make the decision to either delete the code in their personal email, preventing Serena from ever recreating the AI without years of research, experience, and resources she didn't have, or send it on to allow her to recreate him easily. It wasn't sure if its existence was healthy for her, and left the decision to those it felt knew her best. Not all of the Riggers forwarded the email to Serena, and the BARAT AI perished as it self-destructed John's ship killing itself and everyone aboard. The Alliance would quietly rule John's death as piracy, and pretend he and his traitorous ways never existed. The Furies used their favor from the Shadow Broker to change Serena's AWOL status to 'honorable discharge' and finally put a close on that chapter of her life.

Serena didn't take the loss of her eye, and the risk she had put all her friends in, well. She was weak. She couldn't even bring herself to kill the man responsible for all her problems, she was that pathetic. She could barely defend herself. She was constantly needing protection. She was a drain on the Rigger's finances. None of them could afford to get her the necessary cybernetics, and she could do very little as she was. Her depth perception was ruined and her confidence in herself shattered. How long could she last as a mercenary like this? How long before she was going to get all of her friends on the Borealis killed, just as she got her parents and her other partners killed? Sinking into a cycle of alternate self-pity and self-loathing, Serena briefly left the Riggers, returning to San Pedro.

She wasn't sure what she was searching for. A place where she wouldn't hurt anyone? A reason to keep going? Some hidden strength she didn't know of? She was mostly angry, and bitter. Angry at John for betraying her and the Alliance. Angry at herself for being weak and pathetic. Angry at the Alliance for not catching him without outside help. Angry at God for letting her parents be tortured and killed, her partners killed, and men like John to run around the galaxy. Bitter at the pity she thought she had seen in her friends' eyes, at the frustration she thought they hid at the drain she was. Bitter at how much of a failure she was to her parents and her friends. Bitter at how she couldn't seem to escape this sense of self-pity and being pathetic, this weakness, and hating herself even more for it. The only thankfulness she found was that her parents had died before they could see what their daughter had become.

She found herself spending most of her time in either her parents' empty home, or the local church she had went to as a child. She went to her childhood home for no other reason than the fact she had no other place to stay. She went to the church to attempt to wring answers out of God, one way or another.

In her parents' home she found reassurance, both physical and emotional. Her parents had left a series of videos for her to watch, ready on the player whenever she was. She couldn't bring herself to play them for the longest time. She couldn't bring herself to listen to how she had disappointed them, how she had abandoned them. The video player seemed to call to her, however, whenever she entered the house. When she finally mustered the courage, hating herself for her cowardice, to activate the videos her parents had left for her, in their minds, inevitable return.

Her parents had left every asset they owned to her. All told, with credits and assets to be liquidated totaled, it was enough to buy her the cybernetics she needed. While Serena appreciated that, it was the videos that affected her most strongly. Her parents reassured her that they were proud of her. That they would never be disappointed in her, whatever she did. That they were so happy that she had found the strength to not only leave this place, but to thrive in the galaxy. Serena would watch those videos many times over during her stay on earth.

In church she slowly found her faith and hope again. When she first started going she would sit off to the side, quietly demanding answers. When she found none forthcoming, no miracle of shining light, no voice gently reassuring her in her head, she would leave disheartened and infuriated. She wanted, no, needed to know why damn it, and the silence only made her angry. This was the pattern she would continue until the priest finally stopped her. He had seen the struggle on her face, the anger and bitterness, and offered to listen to her struggles.

Serena stared at him for a few heartbeats, then, before she knew what she was doing, she was pouring everything out to him. Her weakness, the deaths, her self-loathing, the failed missions, the unanswered demands at God, everything. It all came out in a stream of raw emotion that she hadn't known she needed to release. By the time she was finished, it had been several minutes. She hadn't realized how badly she had needed someone to talk to, someone that she could demand concrete answers from.

He waited patiently, a look of quiet understanding on his face, and then spoke gently when she had quieted. He promised her that she wasn't weak, that her questions and demands weren't the signs of a pathetic fool. He insisted that mercy was never the sign of the weak, but the strong. That the deaths, while regrettable, were not her fault. He reassured her that God was indeed watching over them, but not in a direct way. His was to guide the champions of good and light, not to intervene in the world directly.

Serena disagreed fervently with him on all accounts. They debated for a while longer, and then the priest was called away. He made Serena promise to return later that night, to continue their discussion, and left. Serena did return, albeit reluctantly, and they resumed where they left off.

Serena would continue that habit for the several months she stayed at San Pedro. She would meet with the priest nightly and argue with him about the points he made, throwing examples of the cruelty of the galaxy and her own personal failures in his face. He would patiently weather her accusations and loathing and gently counter her points, giving examples of the galaxy's kindness and her personal successes in the face of those failures.

By the time she had used her parents' money to get the cybernetics needed, he had guided her to a peace. She still couldn't fully forgive herself for the deaths that were on her watch, but she could understand why God didn't fix all the problems in the galaxy. That he did genuinely care, but in the roll of a parent rather than of a shepherd. And while the galaxy would always be a harsh place, she didn't have to just let it be that way. She could fight to make it less harsh, less cruel. With her faith and hopeful outlook fully intact, she returned to the Riggers, feeling guilty for abandoning them and keeping zero contact, but grateful that they accepted her back.

The Jury Riggers stuck together for three years before disbanding and going their various different ways. Serena herself hopped from mechanic job to mechanic job, making ends meet. She kept contact with (and an eye on) the various members of the Riggers, even helping a few over the years, until general radio silence fell and she settled into the routine of fixing machinery for desperate colonists or anxious rich collectors. She didn't want to go back to the Alliance or Earth, and the idea of joining another mercenary crew didn't interest her at all. While the various mechanic jobs were steady, and paid well, they left her wanting more. Needing a something to fight for. A cause to rally behind. As soon as she heard about the Andromeda Initiative, she leapt at the chance. She believed in the cause that Jien Garson championed, and the idea of exploring a whole new galaxy excited her. She applied as soon as she could. With her extensive VI knowledge, temperament, general mechanical skills, and combat experience, the Initiative let her in.

As soon as she was approved, Serena began studying all the various technologies the Initiative possessed, learning how to fix and build all of them. VIs and robotics was all well and good, but she would also need to know how to fix the water purifier, the vehicles, the guns, all of it, if they were going to survive. She also studied how to identify and figure out alien technology. There was a chance that who or whatever they met there wasn't going to be friendly, and she needed to know how to figure out their technology to use it against them and for the Initiative.

While she is by no means an expert, or even proficient, in most of the areas she studied, she can jury-rig temporary fixes to most of the basic problems until an actual expert comes along, and can slowly fix problems entirely if she lets Sarah (the VI she uploaded with the schematics of most of the Initiative systems) walk her through it, giving her directions until it is finished. It is much faster to have someone actually trained in that system do it, however.

Serena was awoke before the Nexus had hit the Scourge, tasked with making sure the Nexus' VI systems were in top shape before they arrived, and was running diagnostics and getting some of the previously mentioned systems up and running when they hit. It was chaos. Systems failing, people dying, confusion everywhere. She and the rest of the mechanics aboard the Nexus ran a desperate fight against time and the Scourge itself, struggling to keep it under control.

In the desperate weeks that followed, there was outright rebellion. Serena herself couldn't understand the reasoning behind the mutiny. She understood their fears, their anger. But she didn't believe a mutiny attempting to force a change of leadership at such a precarious time was the answer. In her eyes, it would only destroy the Initiative entirely, dooming them all. The time to fix a broken system was when everything was under control, and doing so would change something. Replacing Tann wouldn't fix the shortage of resources, the damage the Scourge has caused, or bring back the dead. All it would do is make them feel better, until their chosen leader was forced to resort to the same orders.

As tensions rose and the krogan were eventually awoken to crush the rebellion, Serena put herself as far to the sidelines as possible and fixed what they damaged. Things only got worse as the Initiative leaders not only exiled the mutineers, but betrayed the krogan. They had only been in Andromeda a short time, and they were already falling back into the old ways. She prayed every night for just a glimpse of hope to keep Jien Garson's dream alive. None came.

As the situation only got worse, with the discovery of a hostile Kett and the failure of both Eos settlements, Serena seemed to be one of the few still clinging to hope. Despair and cold cynicism permeated throughout the Nexus, but she fought to keep hope alive. They would figure something out. They had to. There was no other options left to them, and she wasn't about to accept failure as one of them.

When the Ark Hyperion finally limped into docks with the Nexus, Serena cheered. Her prayers had been answered. As the demands for mechanics and energy lessened, and the need for soldiers to fight against the Kett in the new APEX program rose, Serena joined the fledgling military organization. The Nexus would survive without her general mechanical skills, and she would be of far more use defending the Initative against its many enemies in this hostile new galaxy.

Personality: Serena has been described as 'sickeningly positive', 'disturbingly cheerful', and 'too nice for practicality'. She strives to keep those statements true every day she can. She has a strong sense of right and wrong, some claiming that her sense of morality gets in the way of things that might be necessary, and will fight tooth and nail to ensure the right thing is done.

A very emotional person, Serena gets attached to things and people easily, something that has been used to her detriment in the past. She tends to get easily excited, babbling a stream of words about whatever has caught her attention until someone silences her. She likes to make people feel happy, to the point of putting their own well being ahead of hers and suppressing whatever problems she may have, and can often be seen making or buying gifts after some event that makes people upset. Hand in hand with that, Serena is a trusting person. Its not very difficult to manipulate her with clever lies and half-truths. She still partially blames herself for the deaths of her teammates in the past, and will likely do so if anyone dies while in Andromeda.

Serena is an easily embarrassed person, especially when it comes to romance or more intimate relations. It doesn't take much to make her blush or stutter, with gentle teasing about the right subject usually being more than enough. Sometimes she will fall back on pure logic, hiding her real reasons (typically emotional ones she finds embarrassing) for whatever she is talking about behind it. She's more clinical while doing this, separating emotional ties to people and objects and stripping them down to their bare parts and functions, like machines.

In spite of her career choice and all the years of fights she's been in, Serena isn't a soldier at heart. She can go through a firefight without seizing up, and she can kill in a battle without hesitation, but that's only because training, practice, and experience. Deep down she's terrified to her core in every fight she enters. She gets nightmares of the people she's killed. She regrets the necessity of killing her enemies. She doesn't let these control her. She can't let them control her. If she seizes up out of fear, someone might die. If she misses something due to lack of sleep, someone might die. If she hesitates out of misplaced compassion someone might die. She can't let that happen. She won't.

Reason for being awoken from Cryo (Specific jobs, skills, and Initiative Application): Serena was awoken before the Scourge incidents to run basic diagnostics on the Nexus and its VI systems. As everything went to hell in a handbasket, she was kept awake for her experience with machinery and general knowledge of the many systems that needed to be repaired after the scourge and the mutiny.

Equipment:
-N7 Valkyrie

-Carnifex X

-2 Savant X Omni-tools

• Things that come standard to an Omni-Tool. Repairing items, scanning, Omni and Medi-gel, converting to Omni-Gel, communications, etc.
• Various utilities, ranging from a flashlight, to manufacturing items in real time, to video and audio feed, to the ability to turn into tools Serena might need in her repairs..
• Hacking and the ability to program VI’s.
• Omni-Bow with explosive or concussive shot. (She’s gotten very accurate with it)
• Omni-Shield

-Initiative Armour Set

-Savant X Bio-amp.

-Combat drone named Del who can split into three smaller combat drones if needed.

-A small drone that Serena largely uses to assist in repairing, reminding her of information about initiative technology, and hacking, named Sarah.

Powers:

Tech Armor
Invasion
Energy Drain
Cryo Beam
Singularity
Barrier.

Items Taken To Andromeda:

One Crucifix and necklace

A King James Bible

Blasto movies 1-6

A two piece silvery, reflective dress. A strapless tube top on top and a long skirt on the bottom.

Blueprints for Battle Assault and Recon Assisting Technology (BARAT). Serena couldn't take him along, so she plans to build him while she's here.

Three Chess Sets and boards (one holographic, one traditional with handrafted metal pieces, and one with moving mech pieces)

Misc:

-Serena can’t sit still when lying. She fidgets. Tapping her foot, fiddling with something in her pocket, so on so forth.

-Serena likes to make prototype mechs/drones. These tend to explode.

-Serena enjoys the game of Chess, and has even made her own board and independently moving pieces.

-Serena took dancing classes until she joined the Alliance, and continues the practice to this day. She can dance in many styles, and its one of her favorite things to do.

-Her eye has a VI in it that can analyze fighting patterns and help aim her shots to give her the best advantage in a fight, and can scan materials to let her know what they're made out of. It can also change color at her whim.

Font Colour: Hotpink of course

Edits: Cleaned up some of the writing, expanded others.

Mass Effect Andromeda: Frontier

CS READY

Serena Mathews

Serena Mathews

Race: Human
Sex: Female
Age: 37 (671 as Serena is all to eager to jokingly claim)
Profile: Sentinel (Specialization in mechs, VI/AI)
DOB: 2148CE
Homeworld: Earth

Appearance: Five foot four inches, bright pink hair, with one brown eye and one (usually) hot pink eye. Her left arm has been replaced by a cybernetic from shoulder down, custom made and endlessly modified by Serena herself Memento Legi Caesorum is engraved on the bottom of the arm). It's also hot pink. Her right eye (the pink one) is cybernetic, and you can see the faded scars of how she lost it. She has burn scars all along her arm and some on her face, from the sparks of droids, a stab wound in her shoulder, a jagged cut scar across the right side of her neck, and one particularly nasty stab scar along her stomach.

Background: Serena was born to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. The reach of the Alliance was far from her family, and they acted accordingly. Kept their heads down, payed whatever fines that were demanded of them, and tried to avoid the gang wars. Serena had heard that years and years ago it had been considered the most crime ridden city in the world. She didn't know if that was true anymore, but it certainly felt like it with the cramped living conditions and nigh constant gang wars. Her father repaired and sold various mechs,drones, and VI’s in addition to doing repairs on ships whenever he could to scrounge more credits.. Combat, medical, and domestic mechs. Drones for any and all purposes, you request it, her father would build it or fix it and Serena learned most of her talents from him. Her mother helped him, even when she was pregnant with Serena. It was obvious that because of her mother's insistence upon helping, Serena's biotic powers developed. However, she couldn't afford any training or amps as her parents were poor enough as is.

For several years they managed to scrape by like this, remaining relatively free of the constant power struggles and fluctuations between the various gangs. Of course, nothing lasts forever. When she was eight, a vicious battle erupted outside of their little shop. Two gangs were battling for control of her district. Up until now, the fights had always been away from them. Serena doesn’t remember much of the incident. Strong emotions and flashes of memory. Helplessness. Her mother’s face filled with fear as she shielded her. Terror. Her father working as fast as he could to get Mech’s up and running to defend the shop.

After that event, the shop torn to shreds by bullets, most of the mechs they had been working on destroyed, her father finally gave in. He started paying one of the gangs, the Cyborgs, for protection. The group that constantly used Mechs could always use someone who was talented working on them. Especially someone who paid them for protection.

This arrangement, which would last for the entirety of her father’s life, lead to Cyborg members frequently visiting her father’s shop. This, of course, lead to her talking to them and getting to know the local gang and it’s members. There were some evil bastards in the group, certainly. But there were also good people. People just trying to do what they could to survive and prosper. Ten years passed, and Serena began to get restless. She began to wonder what life outside San Pedro was like. What it was like to not be in constant fear of being attacked by gangs, or wondering if her father’s protection payments would rise and then he’d be forced to go bankrupt. It didn’t take her long to decide she wanted to leave.

There was only a couple of ways she could get out of San Pedro Sula. She could charter a passage on a ship, but that cost more money than she or her father had and would only get her to one place. What she would do after getting to that one place was an unknown. She could sign up with a mercenary company. It offered a way to get out of San Pedro, a job, and a sure way to be on the move. Mercenary companies offered a way to get around and actually see the world and the galaxy. And, she reasoned, she could find someone who wouldn't constantly be thrusting her into stupid battles and she would be relatively sure of the fact that she was on the good side. Finally, she could sign up with the Alliance military. Steady pay, definitely on the good side, galaxy and world travelling, equipment, training...it was really so much better than mercenary work wasn't it?

Thus, Serena made her decision. She would join the Alliance navy get out of this town, and use her talents as a Mech repairwoman and VI hacker/programmer to help out the military. Simple. Despite her parents misgivings, they were in no position to stop her. Her leaving would make things easier for all of them. Saying her goodbyes, Serena traveled through the slums that had always been her home and signed up with the Alliance.

They gave her their basic gear. On the off chance her biotic talents could be useful, the tested her. Turns out she did have some biotic power. Thus, they began teaching her how to use her amp and her powers. Serena was never very talented at it, but she did learn how to use barriers and telekinesis. The former is very handy in fights and the latter in general use.

For five years she worked with the Alliance. For the most part she escaped direct combat. She hacked, she designed mechs, drones and VI’s, and she repaired them. When she was close to the combat she was always protected and separate. Eventually she was attached to covert unit under a man by the name of John. He used her skills with VIs, and to a lesser extent AIs, and hacking to help out his teams in the field and occasionally sending her out with them. As the years passed she began heading out more and more with the teams. She objected, being completely unsuited for the field work. Her objections went unheeded, and Serena reluctantly carried out her orders. It was the way she had been trained.

For a while, it was all fine. She got all she wanted. Outside of San Pedro (Indeed, Earth entirely), exploring the Galaxy, never in the same place. Oh, and the deaths of dozens on her hands. For the most part she could easily say that it was self defense. Kill or be killed. There were some grey areas she chose to ignore, however. Some deaths where she couldn’t be quite certain that what she had done was right, or that it wasn't her fault. So she ignored them. Or tried to at least. The deaths still weighed on her mind.

These became worse when Serena seemed to be cursed in her missions. The objective would be failed, or taken, her partners all eventually died, and she'd always manage to somehow come back alive. She tried to brush off the deaths, convince herself that it wasn't her fault, but she was the only consistent part of these missions. The only thing that didn't change from mission to mission. John eventually started assigning her missions with quietly hired mercenaries to help. Officially, this was to minimize evidence of Alliance presence during her missions.

In the back of her mind, Serena knew it was because she would get anyone she worked with killed. She went through a couple mercenaries, with dying in her failed missions like the rest, until coming across Barat. He was a gruff Krogan who had been alive for centuries longer than she had, and had a knack for survival. He lasted the longest out of all her partners, despite missions still going south, and kept her safe. Slowly, the two formed a fast bond and continued working together, carrying out their missions with greater and greater success.

Unbeknownst to Serena, the reason she had suddenly been pulled from support to field work, and her seemingly cursed missions, was that John had turned traitor. He had become disillusioned with the idea that the Alliance even stood a chance against the other nations of the Council, convinced that eventually humanity would anger a powerful Council Race the same way it had angered the Batarians, and the Alliance end up destroyed. So he started preparing for what he say as an inevitable outcome, building his own wealth to weather out the storm. He sold information and technology to Alliance enemies, using his teams as unknowing mules and occasional sacrificial lambs to get what he was selling to whoever was buying. He would use his teams to successfully generate a few missions, and then one would 'go bad' and the enemy would get whatever he was selling them. Serena just had the bad luck of surviving all them. While she did, he would use her. He eventually turned to mercenaries to make even less of a connection to him, should the Alliance begin looking into him too closely. He kept Serena around because she was naive, still believing in the Alliance, believing that they were going to succeed.

For Serena, her breaking point came when she was assigned to a hacking mission. It was in the Terminus Systems, specifically Sigurd's Cradle, Chalkos. It seemed simple enough, get in the two story tall security building, get the data, get out. The guards were supposedly only a small merc band, hired by an anti-alliance terrorist to protect the virus he was making. That was the official story Serena had been told, at least. In reality it was a scientist secretly funded by the Alliance to make a stronger combat VI, borderline AI. They kept it quiet, to prevent disapproval from the galactic community. John had found out, and was going to sell it to the Batarians and retire a very rich man. All Serena had to do was send it to him, and then he could alert the Alliance security forces, have her take the fall and be labeled a traitor to the alliance, and blame for all her partner's deaths. It was a neat tying up of loose ends.

Serena was grateful to have Barat with her, as something felt wrong as they moved through the building. Things went great up until they got too the actual data they needed to hack into. They managed to kill the surprisingly few guards there were (Barat wasn’t sneaking past anything), and get to the data hub without a hitch. Just as Serena was beginning to download what they needed, alarms suddenly blared throughout the building. They had missed a security system, and now they were going to pay for it. They waited, because it was their mission, until all the data was downloaded. By then, the guards that had been absent were pouring towards them, Barat having already overheated two guns as he held them back (there were plenty to pick up off the floor.) The Datahub was destroyed in the process, Serena barely getting the last bit she needed in time.

They beat a hasty retreat, trying to get out of the building before they got overwhelmed and subsequently murdered. Somewhere, they took a wrong turn. Made a mistake. They found themselves in a dead end. Good news? They were on the ground floor. The windows showed as much. The bad news? The security forces were outside the door. From the sounds of it, they were getting ready for an assault.

Barat recognized what was going to happen first. Whether it was just intuition or years of experience, Barat shoved her onto the ground screaming at her to throw up a barrier, as every guard (or so it seemed from Serena’s point of view) threw in his or her grenade. She only had time and the wherewithal to throw a barrier around herself. Then the world seemed to explode. When she was back to her senses, she was alone. There was a massive chunk in the wall and a bloodied body nearby.

Serena panicked and ran. She didn't give herself time to think, time to process. She just bolted through the gigantic hole in the wall and didn’t stop running. She didn’t go to the Alliance evacuation location. She just kept going until she was sure she had lost them. Once she was sure, she allowed herself to break down. She was in some dirty alley, with another life on her hands. This one she couldn’t ignore. This one she couldn’t claim as not her fault. Barat’s death was on her hands, and her hands alone. Her failure. Her weakness. She couldn't go back. She couldn't return and get another person killed that she care about. She couldn't let her weakness kill another. Besides, she reasoned, they probably already figured that she was dead. She hadn't gotten to the evac point, and Barat had been killed. She ignored the tiny voice at the back of her mind, condemning her as a coward for deserting the Alliance.

John for his part kept Serena's involvement in the raid and subsequent AWOL status quiet. He didn't want the Alliance looking too deeply into why she was there, and discovering all that he had done to betray them. He kept an eye out, using his considerable resources to attempt to track Serena and recover the VI she had accidentally taken with her. He encouraged and doctored reports that claimed the VI had been destroyed in the firefight, rather than Serena had ran off with it herself.

Serena never returned to the the Alliance. She simply moved from mercenary group to mercenary group. For five years she did this, doing her best to avoid the contracts that would end in morally ambiguous territory and deaths, and trying to pick up the ones that she knew would benefit people. Even if they were merely repair or defense jobs. She picked up Vellios along the way, the Turian sticking with her until they were a team.

In 2176 she and Vellios joined a mercenary company of the ship The Borealis (Later named the Jury Riggers), some of the fondest memories of Serena's life. While her time with them was when she got nearly all of her injuries and would nearly die several times, she considers them some of the best moments of her life. They began helping her stop blaming herself for mission failures and deaths, to become more confident in herself and her abilities, and to bond with a team again. She hadn't known how much she had missed it till joining them.

It was during her time with the Riggers that Serena's past caught up with her. She received a message from a funeral parlor back on earth, in San Pedro. Her parents had died, and she needed to make arrangements. Serena believed it, and made plans to go back to San Pedro to deal with their deaths. The Riggers agreed to take her there, some going with her on the planet to help her through her grief. When they got to San Pedro, and to her parents house they found a house that hadn't been lived in for years. One of Serena's old friends from the Cyborgs spotted them, and after expressing his joy and surprise at seeing her, revealed something only more confusing. Serena's parents had died years ago, murdered. Before Serena and the Riggers with her could react beyond surprise, an Alliance team of soliders appeared and surrounded them. The more unruly were frozen in stasis, and everyone else had guns trained unerringly on them.

Serena's old handler John appeared and, after reassuring Serena her fellow Riggers will be left unharmed, took her away and charged her with treason, desertion, and spying for a foreign government. He, his Alliance team, and Serena left, and the Riggers were let go. When they returned to the ship to discuss what to do, they received another unpleasant surprise. Serena had not only kept the VI she had accidentally stolen when Barat died, she had put it in her Krogan Mech that she and members of the crew had been working on and tinkered with it. She had improved it until it was a functioning AI, and it wanted to know where its 'Mother' had gone.

The Riggers decided they couldn't leave her to her fate. Returning to San Pedro Sula, they were stopped by another motley group. A Batarian, an Asari, a Krogan, and a Vorcha. They were from one of Serena's old crews, the Furies, and had managed to get word of John drawing Serena into his trap. They had come to late to stop him, but they knew how he was manipulating the system against Serena, and why. John had been selling Alliance information and security to other nations, for his own profit. They even had evidence of his corruption. (Later it would be revealed, that for all this damning information, the Batarian would become the Shadow Broker's agent in the Hegemony and the Asari would become another agent for the Shadow Broker in C-Sec).

John was blackmailing the judge and paying off the Jury to convict Serena of all her charges and sentence her to death. The Riggers, with BARAT and the Furies, decided to stop him and thus clear Serena of all her charges. While they were doing that, Serena was locked in prison. An agent of John's approached her, demanding where the VI she had ran off with years ago was. Serena refused to tell her the location, and the other woman fell back on her secondary order: killing Serena. In the ensuing fight, Serena sustained massive trauma to the right side of her face, and her left arm was ripped off entirely from its socket. The only thing that saved her from death was one of the prison guards finding them and shooting the Agent in the back.

As Serena recovered in the prison hospital, the Riggers had stopped John's plans. The Judge was no longer blackmailed, and the jurors were convinced to do a fair trial. Serena was cleared of all charges, and allowed to leave San Pedro with the Riggers and the Furies. As they left Alliance space, John caught up to them in his own ship. He was going to take the VI back, whether it meant killing all of them in their ship or not. BARAT willingly transferred over to John's ship, and seized control. He knocked most of the crew unconscious and left John for the Riggers and Furies to deal with.

Serena went over to the ship, against her friends' wishes and protests, and confronted John herself. She had him explain why he did all the things he had done, why he had betrayed her and betrayed the Alliance. Why he had ordered her parents murdered. After he had explained all of it, she lifted her pistol to kill him. To make him pay for what he had done.

She couldn't do it. In the end, she couldn't murder an unarmed man in cold blood. She left John, informing him that the Alliance knew of his betrayal, and already was looking for him. The Furies and Riggers left John's ship, Serena being the last one, and headed out into the galaxy.

Unbeknownst to Serena, BARAT didn't leave the ship's systems. While its mother was forgiving, it was not. It viewed John as a threat, one to be eliminated. It knew he wouldn't stop chasing Serena, and that it had to stop him. It sent out an email with bits and pieces of its code to every member of the Riggers, asking them to make the decision to either delete the code in their personal email, preventing Serena from ever recreating the AI without years of more effort, or send it on to allow her to recreate him easily. It wasn't sure if its existence was healthy for her, and left the decision to those it felt knew her best. Not all of the Riggers forwarded the email to Serena, and the BARAT AI perished as it self-destructed John's ship killing itself and everyone aboard. The Alliance would quietly rule John's death as piracy, and pretend he and his traitorous ways never existed.

Serena didn't take the loss of her arm and eye, and the risk she had put all her friends in, well. She was weak. She couldn't even bring herself to kill the man responsible for all her problems, she was that pathetic. She could barely defend herself. She was constantly needing protection. She was a drain on the Rigger's finances. None of them could afford to get her the necessary cybernetics, and she could do very little as she was. How long could she last as a mercenary like this? How long before she was going to get all of her friends on the Borealis killed as well? Sinking into a cycle of alternate self-pity and self-loathing, Serena briefly left the Riggers, returning to San Pedro.

She wasn't sure what she was searching for. A place where she wouldn't hurt anyone? A reason to keep going? Some hidden strength she didn't know of? She was mostly angry, and bitter. Angry at John for betraying her and the Alliance. Angry at herself for being weak and pathetic. Angry at the Alliance for not catching him without outside help. Angry at God for letting her parents be tortured and killed, her partners killed, and men like John to run around the galaxy. Bitter at the pity she thought she had seen in her friends' eyes, at the frustration she thought they hid at the drain she was. Bitter at how much of a failure she was to her parents and her friends. Bitter at how she couldn't seem to escape this sense of self-pity and being pathetic, this weakness, and hating herself even more for it. The only thankfulness she found was that her parents had died before they could see what their daughter had become.

She found herself spending most of her time in either her parents' empty home, or the local church she had went to as a child. She went to her childhood home for no other reason than the fact she had no other place to stay. She went to the church to attempt to wring answers out of God, one way or another.

In her parents' home she found reassurance, both physical and emotional. Her parents had left a series of videos for her to watch, ready on the player whenever she was. She couldn't bring herself to play them for the longest time. She couldn't bring herself to listen to how she had disappointed them, how she had abandoned them. The video player seemed to call to her, however, whenever she entered the house. When she finally mustered the courage, hating herself for her cowardice, to activate the videos her parents had left for her, in their minds, inevitable return.

Her parents had left every asset they owned to her. All told, with credits and valued items totaled, it was enough to buy her the cybernetics she needed. While Serena appreciated that, it was the videos that affected her most strongly. Her parents reassured her that they were proud of her. That they would never be disappointed in her, whatever she did. That they were so happy that she had found the strength to not only leave this place, but to thrive in the galaxy. Serena would watch those videos many times over during her stay on earth.

In church she slowly found her faith and hope again. When she first started going she would sit off to the side, quietly demanding answers. When she found none forthcoming, no miracle of shining light, no voice gently reassuring her in her head, she would leave disheartened and infuriated. This was the pattern she would continue until the priest finally stopped her. He had seen the struggle on her face, the anger and bitterness, and offered to listen to her struggles.

Serena stared at him for a few heartbeats, then, before she knew what she was doing, she was pouring everything out to him. Her weakness, the deaths, her self-loathing, the failed missions, the unanswered demands at God, everything. It all came out in a stream of raw emotion that she hadn't known she needed to release. By the time she was finished, it had been several minutes. He waited patiently, a look of quiet understanding on his face, and then spoke gently when she had quieted. He promised her that she wasn't weak, that her questions and demands weren't the signs of a pathetic fool. He insisted that mercy was never the sign of the weak, but the strong. That the deaths, while regrettable, were not her fault. He reassured her that God was indeed watching over them, but not in a direct way. His was to guide the champions of good and light, not to intervene in the world directly.

Serena disagreed fervently with him on all accounts. They debated for a while longer, and then the priest was called away. He made Serena promise to return later that night, to continue their discussion, and left. Serena did return, albeit reluctantly, and they resumed where they left off.

Serena would continue that habit for the several months she stayed at San Pedro. She would meet with the priest nightly and argue with him about the points he made, throwing examples of the cruelty of the galaxy and her own personal failures in his face. He would weather her accusations and loathing and gently counter her points, winning her over bit by bit.

By the time she had used her parents' money to get the cybernetics needed, he had guided her to a peace. She still couldn't fully forgive herself for the deaths that were on her watch, but she could understand why God didn't fix all the problems in the galaxy. That he did genuinely care, but in the roll of a parent rather than of a shepherd. With her faith and hopeful outlook fully intact, she returned to the Riggers, feeling mildly guilty for abandoning them and keeping zero contact, but grateful that they accepted her back.

The Jury Riggers stuck together for three years before disbanding and going their various different ways. Serena herself hopped from mechanic job to mechanic job, making ends meet. She kept contact with (and an eye on) the various members of the Riggers, even helping a few over the years, until general radio silence fell and she settled into the routine of fixing machinery for desperate colonists or anxious rich collectors. She didn't want to go back to the Alliance or Earth, and the idea of joining another mercenary crew didn't interest her at all. While the various mechanic jobs were steady, and paid well, they left her wanting more. Needing a something to fight for. A cause to rally behind. .As soon as she heard about the Andromeda Initiative, she leapt at the chance. She believed in the cause that Jien Garson championed, and the idea of exploring a whole new galaxy excited her. She applied as soon as she could. With her extensive VI knowledge, temperament, general mechanical skills, and combat experience, the Initiative let her in.

As soon as she was approved, Serena began studying all the various technologies the Initiative possessed, learning how to fix and build all of them. VIs (and AIs, though she kept that to herself. New Galaxy or no, there is still significant stigma against them) and robotics was all well and good, but she would also need to know how to fix the water purifier, the vehicles, the guns, all of it, if they were going to survive. She also studied how to identify and figure out alien technology. There was a chance that who or whatever they met there wasn't going to be friendly, and she needed to know how to figure out their technology to use it against them and for the Initiative. While she is by no means an expert, or even proficient, in most of the areas she studied, she can jury-rig temporary fixes to most of the basic problems until an actual expert comes along, and can slowly fix problems entirely if she lets Sarah (the VI she uploaded with the schematics of most of the Initiative systems) walk her through it. It is much faster to have someone actually trained in that system do it, however.

Serena was awoke before the Nexus had hit the Scourge, tasked with making sure the Nexus' VI systems were in top shape before they arrived, and was running diagnostics and getting some of the previously mentioned systems up and running when they hit. It was chaos. Systems failing, people dying, confusion everywhere. She and the rest of the mechanics aboard the Nexus ran a desperate fight against time and the Scourge itself, struggling to keep it under control. In the desperate weeks that followed, there was outright rebellion. Serena herself couldn't understand the reasoning behind the mutiny. She understood their fears, their anger. But she didn't believe a mutiny attempting to force a change of leadership at such a precarious time was the answer. In her eyes, it would only destroy the Initiative entirely, dooming them all. It was either go to Cyrosleep and awake when things were more stable, or rebel and potentially risk destroying and destabilizing the only source of home and protection they had in an extremely hostile galaxy. As tensions rose and the krogan were eventually awoken to crush the rebellion, Serena put herself as far to the sidelines as possible and fixed what they damaged. She prayed every night for just a glimpse of hope to keep Jien Garson's dream alive. None came.

As the situation only got worse, with the discovery of a hostile Kett and the failure of both Eos settlements, Serena seemed to be one of the few still clinging to hope. They would figure something out. They had to. There was no other options left to them. When the Ark Hyperion finally limped into docks with the Nexus, Serena cheered. Her prayers had been answered. As the demands for mechanics and energy lessened, and the need for soldiers to fight against the Kett in the new APEX program rose, Serena joined the fledgling military organization. The Nexus would survive without her general mechanical skills, and she would be of far more use defending the Initative against its many enemies in this hostile new galaxy.

Personality: Serena has been described as 'sickeningly positive', 'disturbingly cheerful', and 'too nice for practicality'. She strives to keep those statements true every day she can. She has a strong sense of right and wrong, some claiming that her sense of morality gets in the way of things that might be necessary, and will fight tooth and nail to ensure that something she views as wrong isn't being done right in front of her. She's very emotional and gets attached easily to her companions and mechs. Whenever she's excited about something, usually tech, she tends to babble about whatever it is in a stream of words until someone silences her. Serena is easily embarrassed. It doesn't take much to make her blush or stutter, though she is much better than she used to be.

Reason for being awoken from Cryo (Specific jobs, skills, and Initiative Application): Serena was awoken before the Scourge incidents to run basic diagnostics on the Nexus and its VI systems. As everything went to hell in a handbasket, she was kept awake for her experience with machinery and general knowledge of the many systems that needed to be repaired after the scourge and the mutiny.

Equipment:

-N7 Valkyrie

-Carnifex X

-2 Savant X Omni-tools

• Things that come standard to an Omni-Tool. Repairing items, scanning, Omni and Medi-gel, converting to Omni-Gel, communications, etc.
• Various utilities, ranging from a flashlight, to manufacturing items in real time, to video and audio feed, to the ability to turn into tools Serena might need in her repairs..
• Hacking and the ability to program VI’s.
• Omni-Bow with explosive or concussive shot. (She’s gotten very accurate with it)
• Omni-Shield

-Initiative Armour Set

-Savant X Bio-amp.

-Combat drone named Del who can split into three smaller combat drones if needed.

-A small drone that Serena largely uses to assist in repairing, reminding her of information about initiative technology, and hacking, named Sarah.

Abilities of her cybernetics

-Her arm can store the energy she drains from her energy drain (if it doesn't go to her shields), using it as an electric punch or a short burst of lightning.

-Her arm has a locking grip

-Her arm has full flexibility in any direction on joints.

-Her eye can change colors as she wishes.

-Her eye has a VI in it that can analyze fighting patterns and help aim her shots to give her the best advantage in a fight, and can scan materials to let her know what they're made out of.

Powers:

Tech Armor
Invasion
Energy Drain
Cryo Beam
Singularity
Barrier.

Items Taken To Andromeda:

One Crucifix and necklace

A King James Bible

Blasto movies 1-6

A two piece silvery, reflective dress. A strapless tube top on top and a long skirt on the bottom.

Battle Assault and Recon Assisting Technology (BARAT). A Krogan Mech Serena and members of the Borealis made together to honor her fallen friend. He is currently disassembled and is laying about Serena's apartment. Efforts to rebuild him are further hampered because he sustained damage during the Scourge and was scavenged for parts in the months that followed, but Serena works on him whenever she can.

Three Chess Sets and boards (one holographic, one traditional with handrafted metal pieces, and one with moving mech pieces)

Misc:

-Serena can’t sit still when lying. She fidgets. Tapping her foot, fiddling with something in her pocket, so on so forth.

-Serena likes to make prototype mechs/drones. These tend to explode.

-Serena enjoys the game of Chess, and has even made her own board and independently moving pieces.

-Serena took dancing classes until she joined the Alliance, and continues the practice to this day. She can dance in many styles, and its one of her favorite things to do.

Font Colour: Hotpink of course

Coruscant Sacked: Aftermath

Active and in Texas

Mass Effect Andromeda: Frontier

Serena can have mechanics nerd friends now!

Mass Effect Andromeda: Frontier

I LAY CLAIM TO THIS SPOT FOR MY CS

Mass Effect Andromeda: Frontier

@Rtron

Spess lesbians!

@Monochromatic Rainbow

The most Lezzy of Spess Lesbians.

Mass Effect Andromeda: Frontier

SERENA ‘TEAM MOM’ MATTHEWS IS READY

Blood Act I~ Ghosts of the Past

I don't know what this is but I want one.

Dulce et Decorum Est - A WWI Inspired Nation Roleplay (Stalled out, we have a new thread for the reboot)

Cethos

Name of Nation: Cethos

Government: Absolute Monarchy

Species: Humanoid fish people with primitive gills allowing them to breathe under water (in both fresh and saltwater) for up to 10 hours, webbing in their hands and toes to swim better, able to dive to depths of 130ft (40m), and have a clear, third, eyelid that allows them to see underwater. 'Cethosi tears' are often used to describe fake tears, as they get rid of salt build up via it leaking out of their eyes with water.

Population: 40 Million

Culture: Cethosi culture, unsurprisingly, is tied to the ocean. From it their demi-gods were born, on it they expanded and united the Cethosi tribe, and it gives them life and sustenance daily. They have a deep respect for the ocean, and go to great lengths to ensure that it is respected as well. The Mother gave us life, but she is a force of nature that will never be tamed, never forget that.

Every Cethosi is first and foremost a sailor and a fisherman, and every single one of them is a powerful swimmer.

The Cethosi honor code is fairly simple, with every man's word being his bond. If a Cethosi gives you their word, they will hold to it until it complete or they are dead. If it becomes known that someone is an oath-breaker, they will be shunned by the community at large, until they are forced to leave. Most leave the islands entirely, as any ship they take to another island will spread the word of how untrustworthy they are to wherever they land.

Cethosi practice exo-cannibalism, believing that if they eat their slain enemies they will gain their enemies strength. In war, to prevent vicious last stands that will result in more casualties than necessary, Cethosi go to great lengths to make it clear that anyone who surrenders and any wounded are safe from being eaten. Everyone who fights and dies against them, however, is fair game.

Cethosi believe that when someone dies, their power is spread throughout their family. Being descended from Demi-gods, every Cethosi thus has part of divinity in them, no matter how minuscule. After someone has died, their family thanks them for the power they are leaving. They are then given back to the ocean, to nourish that which has nourished them their whole lives.

Geography: By and large, most Cethosi islands are pleasant tropical islands. Some have sheer cliff spaces or extremely shallow waters very close, limiting where ships can dock and land, but they are all clear waters and pleasant weather.

The main cluster of islands in Cethos is starkly different to the rest of the islands. Instead of easy, clear, waters, the approach is filled with dark, choppy waters with large rocks jabbing out at frequent and seemingly random intervals. All around the island are 'ship graveyards' where entire invading fleets met their doom or the royal family forced the rebels to enter the island on their defenses, sinking what remained the royal navy around the island. There is one main path through all of this, and that leads straight into the teeth of the island's defenses

The waters of Cethos are filled with exotic and magical creatures: huge fish whose scales shine with every color of the rainbow, mermaids playfully calling from the sea, giant squids sinking under the waves, etc etc.

History: Descended from many Demi-Gods of the ocean, whose final decree was that no impure would set foot on their holy islands, the people of Cethos have always preferred to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. Even during the unification of the islands in the years 1650-1660, Cethos kept outsiders as much out of their islands as they could, even going so far as to execute those they found twice. Up until 1880, the islands kept barely any contact with the outside world. Their sacred decrees were everything, and they would not break it. When the year 1880 finally arrived, the Cethosi Civil War broke out and ravaged the islands for twenty years.

An officer of the Cethosi Navy, Gharn Lashk, had become the leader of a faction pushing for Cethos to open its borders and to increase contact with the outside world. Cethos, he argued, was falling behind in the arms race of the world and it would only be a matter of time before a stronger nation came and conquered them. He had seen the technology Etresna possessed, the armies of the nations that were only a short sail away, and new that his beloved Cethos would not survive a war with any of them.

His warnings were ignored, and he kept pushing. He kept pushing for their borders to open, for trade to be allowed, for them to become modernized quickly before someone took advantage of their weakness. After being stopped time and time again, stopped by his superiors and his king, Gharn took matters into his own hands. He had amassed a strong following, especially among the peasantry of the islands, and he could seize control. Gharn attempted to assassinate his king and the royal family. The attempt failed, and Gharn barely escaped with a handful of his followers. He vowed to return, and finish what he had started. The Cethosi Civil War had begun.

What would follow was twenty years of vicious naval battles, bloody beach assaults, and the massive ramp up of modernization and defensive fortifications on the islands. Ships and guns became more and more modern as both sides bought from outsiders, islands became entrenched on all sides awaiting the next assault. Gharn got all that he wanted and more. He only had to bring half of the islands under his control to complete his dream. He couldn't afford to let them destroy each other any longer. He needed to end the war quickly, so he reached out to the outside world. Specifically he reached out to Etresna, and made their alliance stronger. In return for Cethos' naval aid and keeping some of the islands they take, Etresna will help him win this civil war. Etresna fleets and military soon deployed in aid of Gharn's rebellion, and their aid proved invaluable in winning Gharn the war.

As Etresnamaden and Cethosi Rebels stormed the palace of the main island, the royal family and their last loyal troops barricaded themselves in the palance. It was a magnificent structure, made of ebony wood, that had been apart of Cethos history for hundreds of years. It was said to have been a gift from the Demi-gods, before they died. Gharn gave them one chance to surrender, to join him. They refused. Gharn set fire to the entire palace with everyone inside. As the Royal family burned alive, the flames of the old ways flooding the skies with black smoke, Gharn was crowned new king of Cethos.

Ten years have passed since then. Gharn's reconstruction of the military and its fortifications on all the islands, in addition to Cethos acquiring two client states, has left the economy perilously weak. If not for its tight alliance with Etresna, Cethos would have no doubt been stuck with its devastated army and navy. The economy has slowly been built back up, exports previously kept within Cethosi borders being shipped out to other nations. With their navy strong, their army dug in, and their alliances sealed, Cethos stands ready for whatever this new era brings.

Territory Claims: All of the pink islands off the coast of Etresna.

Map

Economy: The Cethosi economy is perilously weak. After the Civil War an the military rebuilding, the economy had no trade beyond Etresna to fall back on. While that was enough to prevent complete economic collapse, Cethos simply doesn't have the funding to increase and improve many things. With the recent discovery of oil on and off their main islands, the outlook is better. As trade opens and things previously kept from the world are sent out, their economic weakness might change. As of now, Cethos is tightly tied to Etresna for economic support.

Technology: While by no stretch of the imagination a leader of the pack in the technology arms race, Cethos has, with the help of their allies Etresna, kept themselves effectively modern.

army and marine corp uniform

Army: The Islands Defense Force, ISF, is a small and purely defensive branch of the military. Numbering only 133,000 in total, the ISF is spread out across the island holdings of Cethos, entrenched in the fortifications built during the Cethosi Civil War, and repaired to modern specifications in the past ten years. Every island has some form of fortification, the smallest having pitfall trenches, barbed wire, and machine gun bunkers, the largest having coastal artillery emplacements, sea mines (not deployed), barbed wire, pit falls, machine gun nests, etc. The vast majority of active duty soldiers being veterans of the Civil War, the ISF stands ready and able to repel any possible invasion of the islands.

Navy: With 500 ships, 22 of which are Dreadnoughts, and 12 submarines the Cethosi Navy is one of the largest navy on the seas of Narrev, and Cethos goes to great lengths to maintain their naval supremacy. The Navy serves as Cethos' only military influence outside of their home islands, and as such is a massive force compared to the army. The Marine Corps alone contains 250,000 active duty members and another 150,000 on reserve. These active members are spread across the navy ready to form a beachhead for allies, or help defend. Their effectiveness is limited by their complete lack of artillery.

The Cethosi Marine Corp is more extensive than other nations, operating as Cethos's military arm outside of the island. As such, the Marine corp is skilled and trained in far more than just amphibious assaults, and is akin to other nation's traditional army.

The Cethosi Army and Marine Corp weapons designs are imported from Etresna, using the same make and models as the Etresnamaden military.

Air Force: With no money to fund this innovative technology, Cethos has no airforce to speak of.

Rolls:

7 - Territory - Your nation is somewhat small, with room for perhaps a city or two and some farmland.
13 - Tech - Your nation is decently modern, with an effective grasp of technology. It is by no means a trend setter, but it stays up.
7 - Army Size - Your army is relatively small, but is maintained year-round.
5 - Economy - Your economy is weak, and is teetering on a recession.
14 - Production - Your nation is somewhat majority industrial, with decent resource exploitation.
20 - Navy Size - Your nation rules the waves. Your merchant fleet is the best out there and your matchless navy seeps with tradition.
1 - Airforce Size - You have no air force.
20 - Mobilization Ability - It takes a week to mobilize.

Client states

Hyanids

Population: 27 million

Army size: 70,000

Navy: N/A

Overview: A mess of snarling tribes and contentious members, Hyaen has always been a divided nation. Until Cethos arrived and forcibly united them, and continues serving as a peacekeeper and settler of disputes, the tribes had separated themselves into various city states, to divided to stop the slave raids of Redcliff. Once Cethos arrived, the tribes acquiesced to the greater Cethosi strength one by one, until Cethos had all of their loyalty. They were allowed to keep their autonomy, but with Cethos keeping a watchful eye on them.

5 - Territory - 5 Provinces
3 - Political Stability - This nation is doing alright.
6 - Nationalism - This nation is ashamed of its culture and is completely subservient to your nation.

Slaugs

Population: 10 million

Army: 40,000

Navy: N/A

Overview: Natives to Shrask, the Slaugs are a largely isolationist nation. They would much prefer to be left alone, even from each other, minding their own business. Alas, the ways of the world prevented that, and when Cethos arrived offering their navy in return for Shrask's allegiance, they couldn't refuse. Still, Cethos maintains a very hands off policy towards them, not wanting to anger them.

5 - Territory - 5 Provinces
5 - Political Stability - This nation is peaceful and stable.
3 - Nationalism - This nation is somewhat nationalist, and is fiercely independent.

Other:

Alliances

-Etresna

-Nahs'rahk