Fidelity caught the discrete look up and down and returned it with one of her own, the hand not on her cane scratching under Basker's chin as she took in her fellow student. Shaggy blonde hair, loose-fitting shirt and dark jeans, he was good looking in a sort of grungy "I either don't care about my appearance or really care about looking like I don't" sort of way. Fiddle answered his question without hesitation or annoyance, so used to them that she didn't even have to stop giving him the once over to do it. Laurence. Solid name, simple without any attached gimmicks or obvious meaning behind it. Certainly nicer than the label she had been saddled with in an attempt to force her into picking up the trait.
The American didn't put much thought into her (admittedly pretty blunt) flirting. She called her new acquaintance handsome because she thought he was, sat down next to him because she wanted to rest her leg and felt like getting closer to him. There was no room in her mind to fill with worries about whether she was being too forward, the same compulsion to scream down freeways and burn through pill bottles kicking in under these much more mundane circumstances. So Fiddle made herself comfortable, shoulder just brushing against Laurence's. He was stammering now, tripping over his words in a way that made her smile sweetly. Maybe she'd be able to go to dinner or a movie or something with him instead of spending another night feeding her various addictions?
Or maybe he'd be scared off by the appearance of some blond bimbo too stupid to use a map. "Sure thing, I'm not going anywhere. Not too quickly anyway! It was self-deprecating laughter born out of a need to feel something other than annoyance, or else she was going to smack the interloper upside her thick head with her cane.
"Next time maybe look for people not in a conversation, or wait until they're finished?
She was struggling to keep her tone neutral, all sorts of colorful language barely restrained. Turner was the one thing keeping Fiddle from unleashing her true opinion about the idiot, the subtle tap-tap of her cane on the floor calling him over to rest his head in her lap. "We were kinda in the middle of something there.
Fiddle didn't actually say "You blind, deaf and dumb bitch." but it was certainly implied.
An image of the character could go here. Ensure this is heavily detailed as well in the appearance segment too.
Name Ikei Timoti
Gender Male
Age 25, January 27th, 1934
Sexuality Heterosexual
Nationality Kiwi
Appearance Description of how they look, physically as well as in their uniform. There are differentiation in the army's clothing when it comes to both their role and personality, meaning that some are easily identifiable based upon their additional adjustments to their uniform. Mention these as well.
Height 6'4"
Personality Ikei had planned to follow his grandfather's footsteps and become a doctor, probably getting a job at a large hospital in the city somewhere and becoming a respected surgeon. Instead he dropped out of medical school his second year and signed up to fight in Vietnam for the adventure. He hasn't looked back since. Military life is just as much a series of efforts to relive boredom as it strict discipline and combat and its there that he excels.
Rank Sargent
Role Combat Medic
Equipment -L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle: The standard issue rifle for New Zealand's troops in Vietnam. Preferred over the M16 for its increased stopping power and lack of mechanical issues. "Sweetheart" M1911: Bought off a GI for about fifteen dollars and a six pack. Ikei switched out his own L9 for it's stopping power, the grips didn't at all influence the decision. Honest. Medic's Kit: Carries bandages, sutures, antimalarials, bug spray morphine, splints and anything else a medic would conceivably need in some godforsaken jungle. Surgeon's Vibroknife: Designed to assist in both retrieval of wounded and in-field medical operations. The hypersonic vibrations allow the user to hack through vegetation and into downed vehicles before cracking open the patient's sternum or amputating their limbs.
Biography
Affiliations Who are they families, major friends or life-impacting individuals with prior to the war's beginning?
Relationships An optional segment that can be updated as it goes along, though most of the time this can just be merged into the affiliations tab.
Character Theme Not necessary, but can be used if wished.
Fiddle's alarm clock went ignored, its harsh beeping muffled by thick walls and her intense focus on the action happening on screen. Sleep, while certainly necessary, had seemed like a less productive use of time than online gambling. It had been maybe eight hours since she had started and in that time she had played approximately 800 hands (assuming she hadn't deviated too much from her hourly average of a hundred), winning just under half of them. She could have boosted this number of course using any number of the strategies peddled by supposed card sharks and numbers wizards but that would have diluted most of the fun.
Blackjack was a game of pure numbers, an example of random chance that had been carefully prodded at and quantified by centuries of experts. The odds were always the same each time you played: the house edge was about 2% (when she wasn't bothering with basic strategy of course) and she won about 48% of hands played. If she had been keeping track Fiddle would have found that of her 385 odd wins 19 of them would have been through being dealt a blackjack meaning that the remaining 366 were the result of standard hit-hit-stay play.
The money that won and lost (she just about broke even, having lost 4160 dollars and winning 3850 back) was entirely secondary. Fidelity got her rush just from experiencing the odds. If she had her way she would have spent another eight hours sitting there at her desk surrounded by empty energy drink cans and stale beers she had forgotten to finish. But while the incessant blaring of the mechanical clock could be ignored the two biological ones were much harder to brush off.
Turner and Basker, the best and brightest parts of her hectic and confusing life, had come to rescue their mistress from herself. There was nothing the little lady could do when her boys tugged her out of her seat except to reward them with pats on the head. "I know boys, I know. Breakfast time. They eat better than she did, the hounds devouring the steaks pulled out of the fridge for them while Fiddle contented herself with pain medication and cold pizza from the previous day.
Showering was the next step, an ordeal that required two stools. One was to sit on and the other to prop up her gimped leg. Back home her parents had one of the staff on hand to help her, an embarrassment that she was very much glad to be done with. All the babying and concern over her "disability" had been little more than an poor apology for their previous negligence. She had gotten along fine her whole life without them, she didn't need them to start paying attention while she scrubbed down.
Her body rinsed free of soap and her hair more or less combed she set about getting ready for the day, slipping on clothes, watch and leg brace and grabbing her bag. The alarm was finally silenced with a thwap of her cane, a short whistle calling her best boys over to be dressed in their little harnesses. The first time someone accused her of faking it had been enough to guarantee they would never go unemblazoned. With cigarette in mouth and keys in hand Fiddle slipped out of the penthouse inherited from her cousin, beelining for the stairs.
There was a much greater risk of her dying on the steps even if she hadn't been hobbling. The chance of an elevator suddenly collapsing was quite literally infinitesimal, a freak accident less likely than being struck by lighting and winning the lottery in the same day. Stairs on the other hand killed about a 12,000 people a year, of whom the majority had full mobility. The odds couldn't have been more lopsided and yet she still made the "wrong" choice every time. Stumbling down eleven flights seemed like less of a middle finger to the cosmos than riding up and down in the same little box that killed her cousin.
Descending was a deliberate process. Her cane never left the ground at the same time as her feet, keeping her grounded as her stronger leg touched the next step followed by the weaker. Once both were on the same level her stick could be moved ahead, the click of it against the stairs an auditory warning to anyone else insane enough to cling this far. Stronger, weaker, click. Stronger, weaker, click, all the way down.
And then once she was at ground level it was little more than a mile to Thame's Edge. Easy.
Not at all but Fiddle managed anyway. Her cane and her dogs made sure that no one got too close, giving her a solid circle of space to work with at all times. People tended to ignore her anyway thanks to the combination of her small stature and her obvious injury. Most people just scanned right over her and those that took a second look usually just wanted to gawk. Gawking was fine. She had been stared at and regarded as an object of curiosity ever since she had been chauffeured to little league games.
The cigarette was stubbed out against a wall and flicked into a trash can, Fidelity pushing open the doors to the university for her furry bodyguards before bringing up the rear. Honors Business, year three. Her last year of fucking about with no goals besides slow motion self-destruction, or at least fucking about with no goals while being funded by both parents. Once she had her degree she'd pick one of them to work for at random and likely never see the other again.
There was still time to kill before class and there wasn't really a better option than hunkering down in one of the common areas. She picked the closest one out of respect for her limited mobility, parking herself next to a much taller (who wasn't?) blond that she might have seen around before but wasn't going to rack her brains over.
"Howdy, how ya doing?"
With her light drawl and the way she rested her weight on her cane she could have been some Southern gentleman fresh off the plantation, a waved head signalling for the four hundred pounds of pup beside her to sit. Turner and Basker both looked up at the stranger as if sizing him, quietly panting as their mistress made small talk.
It was the 18th of August and Hush-Puppy was rattling around the back of a cargo plane, one hand gripping the canvas netting hanging from the wall and the other holding onto Łowca's collar. She was minutes away from Firebase Ember where she was going to set up an office in a backroom somewhere for an undefined period of time. Besides that she had no pressing concerns at the moment, a few calls to make and memos to send out but nothing that couldn't be put off for a day or two.
Two days ago it had been the 16th and Marie Wells had been laughing at unfunny jokes told by self-important businessmen at some fancy party in London, letting some KGB hotshot think he was cultivating a source of information on the ins and outs of the British banking system. She would have to remember to thank her host and give him his gift before arranging to have him strangled to death by one of her regular hired thugs.
The week before that and little Natasza was dropping in on her parents, finally having managed to get a day off from her work at the UN headquarters. They had breakfast, went to Mass and talked about her long dead siblings. Her only duties that day were having to fend off questions about when she was getting married and where were those grand-kids you promised and why aren't you coming around more often when you know your father doesn't have much time left? The usual answers were enough to table the conversation: When I meet the right man, when God decides its the right time and that's why I quit the CIA so please drop it because I'm trying my best.
Taking stock of recent events was a necessary habit when one was juggling so many personalities. It was the only to stay sane and even then merely a temporary fix. It had been eight or nine years since she had less than two lives to juggle, each with its own goals and ambitions and flaws. Each one had been as carefully crafted as any character on the stage and their lines set to memory so there would be trace of the player behind them. Hours upon hours spent cloaking herself in other people's skin meant that the chameleon no longer felt comfortable in her own. Like a hermit crab she had grown out of that shell and was left in a rather vulnerable state because of it.
Natasza was no more real than Marie Wells or Alejandra Reyes or any of the other covers she had adopted. It was a role she played for her parents sake, pretending that she was still the daughter they knew and loved and not some soulless automaton that had been designed only to destroy. It was familiar but uncomfortable,an old shirt that had grown too tight as she got older and more bloated by sin. The chameleon felt better when she was Hush-Puppy. The quasi-real phantom that had haunted West German back alleys in search of escaped Nazi scientists and drowned defectors in their bathtubs before they crossed the border, that was who she was for better or worse.
With a hard bounce and the skid of rubber on tarmac the C-47 slowed to a stop, the bay doors opening so that the men and material inside could stream out. HP was back in Vietnam after a couple weeks of putting out other fires and she was looking forward to getting back to work. Her cells in Saigon and hideout in Hue had the time building up stockpiles of actionable intel for her to pick from and she needed to decide what she would handle personally and what could be shunted down to her underlings.
"Łowca's , chodźmy"
The German Shepherd didn't have to be told twice, claws clacking against the ramp as he followed his mistress. No doubt the Marines they were leaving to unload were baffled by the pair. HP was aware of how out of place she was, her understated but still there makeup and light summer shirt with jeans outfit belonging back at home at a state fair. But the Department of Defense ID she had flashed when loading up with them had been enough to head off any stupid questions.
Inter-department cooperation had its uses.
The professional spook made a beeline for the room she had arranged, setting her suitcases on the desk and getting to work. Łowca looked on lazily as she brought out the pieces of her weapons, each component being carefully brushed down and inspected for damage before being fitted together. Her guns and bow had all managed to go without being broken, a minor miracle considering the quality of ride they had been on.
With her gear assembled and safely locked away in the locked gun rack she had set up (save for the Walther of course, that remained concealed under her shirt. Only an idiot would stroll around unarmed) the rest of her day was made free. There was still paperwork to do but that was a problem for a later date. HP needed a drink and thrown together bar in the mess tent would provide. She nearly jogged to the source of libation, refraining only out of respect for the oppressive heat.
The place was just as awful as she remembered, soldiers slurring drunkenly and slipping on mysterious spills, loud conversations drowning out the record player someone had set up in the corner. It was a far cry from the stately establishments she had hung out in recently, a welcome change of pace. She was in Vietnam to get dirty not to play dress up.
The warm beer she got was just as shit as all the others, barely fit for human consumption and certainly not improved by the presence of the unwashed morons that made up the United States Armed Forces. The beat up grunt outside the tent and his black and white grease monkey friend would make better company by virtue of being only two people. "Hey there, don't mind me."
She waved for the pair to keep talking, more focused on petting her dog than interrupting their conversation. She preferred listening when possible, the gossip and rumors thrown about by bored soldiers was often revealing whether true or false.
Appearance Fidelity has long since accepted the fact that daily life is harder for than. Short and slender she has to use her dogs as buffers to keep from being crushed in crowds and knocks objects off high shelves with her cane instead of getting assistance from someone else. She carries herself with a straight back and steady gaze, greeting most people with the same easy smile and wave.
Her clothes run the gamut from light casual wear to black leather and old jeans, Fiddle choosing outfits more for variety than any particular style. Her preferred Shadow World outfit is purposely extravagant and flamboyant to the extreme, Fiddle believing that there's no point in hijacking people's conscious if you're not going to have fun while doing it.
Height 4'8"
Personality Aimless, reckless, and obsessive Fidelity is caught in the curious position of being able to do whatever she wants and having nothing she wants to do. With no long term goals to reach for she tries to fill the hole inside her with with constant action. The urge to keep everything neat and tidy that had been ingrained in her as a child clashes with her urge to raise hell, her apartment caught in a constant cycle of being totally trashed and furiously scrubbed clean as conflicting compulsions battle against one another.
Fiddle is certainly friendly but there's an undertone to it that can be somewhat off-putting. She'll wave and smile brightly at an a acquaintance even as she peers around them at some non-existent phantom, eyes flitting about during conversations while she nods along. She's almost weirdly friendly, letting total strangers into her home every weekend to party and allowing people to take almost anything they want.
Her access to apparently limitless wealth has imbued her with a dismissive sense charity of charity, aware that she's much better off than most people but not feeling particularly guilty about it. Her family has money and others don't, that's just how life is. She leaves fifty pound tips on twenty pound meals and gives away jewelry to people who comment on it, waving off stammered thanks as she continues on with her day. Replacing it is just a minor inconvenience. She takes money for granted the same way most people do running water, oftentimes stuffing a wad of bills into friend's hands "to get something on your way home."
Arcana The Emperor
Persona The Mothman First sighted by a group of gravediggers, the Mothman seems to be attracted to death and poor fortune. Spotted flying low over forests and haunting highways, one of it's regular haunts was an abandoned munitions factory from the Second World War. Despite its fearsome appearance the Mothman seemed content to stay out of people's way, restricting itself to frightening motorists and picking off the occasional dog.
Until the Silver Bridge collapsed. A single defective eye-bar led to the whole thing tumbling down into the Ohio river, killing 46 people. Two of the bodies were never found. To this day people claim that all sorts of supernatural happenings had occurred in the days leading up to the disaster, visions of it happening before it occurred and visits from ghosts and UFOs and men in black and the Mothman circling the area as if waiting. This is of course ridiculous. The Mothman was likely just a a sandhill crane or unusually large heron, something mundane and not at all a harbinger of bad luck.
Still the legend persists to this day. If you ever find yourself out on some backwoods road at night be careful when you watch the sky. You might find a pair of red searchlights watching you right back.
Skill Curse. The Mothman uses it's bulk and ability to fly as a form of mobile cover, tanking damage for its user and more fragile allies. It can also curse enemies, making them vulnerable to damage or weakening their attacks.
Equipment Sword-Cane: A much more ornate version of her real world cane. The hooked head can snag on limbs and bits of clothing to drag or trip people and the blade itself is weighted perfectly to Fiddle's liking. The bottom is spiked, allowing it to be used as a spear or oversized ice pick.
Henry Rifle: The same rifle she grew up shooting. Sixteen .44 bullets (if you load one in the chamber) sent downrange with speed and accuracy. Her preferred way to fight for obvious reasons.
Education Business BA (Hons), 3rd Year
Biography Fidelity was born into immense wealth, the scion of a old ranching family and a more recent chemical empire. Her early years were spent bouncing between her parent's properties in Texas and West Virginia, being taught almost exclusively by private tutors and learning to ride horses and handle livestock. It was established early on that she would be inheriting one or both businesses depending on how things went, the young girl accepting her fate without much enthusiasm. She had no interest in learning the finer points of shipping nylon and neoprene around the globe and was better suited to shooting bottles and riding horses than castrating steers. But it was never about what Fiddle wanted. Her existence was a calculated affair designed to ensure both parties involved had an heir.
It was a somewhat lonely existence. What few friends she had she'd be separated from for months at a time as she bounced between states, being taken all over by one parent or another as they went about their mostly separate lives. With neither mom nor dad having much interest in her outside of her studies and general well-being she relied on her relatives for company, a private car dropping her off at all the birthdays and barbecues her parents didn't have time to take her to themselves.
Her favorite relative lived out of the country, working a meaningless upper management position for Astor Chemical Co. in London’s Canary Wharf district. Daniel was more of a parent to Fidelity than her biological ones, taking care of her for a couple months at a time when she needed to be out of the way. Fiddle sat for hours listening to him tell stories about aliens and cryptids haunting the backwoods, absorbing each tale of ghosts invading people’s heads or strange monsters that lurked in back alleys.
Daniel only fueled her interest in the supernatural, letting the girl dig through his collection of grainy UFO sightings and books on the occult. Just a bit of harmless fun, he told her. Strange stories that weren’t true but were good for a late night scare. She remained unconvinced, sure that there was more to the world than people accepted.
Those treasured days came to an end shortly after Fidelity’s twelfth birthday. Daniel had been heading home from work late one night when his elevator failed in a freak accident. He plummeted 15 stories before hitting the ground, reduced to paste almost instantly. A tragic case of bad luck, nothing could have been done. Fidelity took the loss hard, refusing to speak for nearly a month after the funeral. Less than a week after she started to talk Lady Luck spat on her again, a sudden thunderstorm turning the ground to mud while she was out riding. The horse tripped in the muck and toppled over, crushing her leg underneath it’s bulk.
It took more than five hours before she could be found and by the time she was taken to the hospital it was too late. Fidelity’s left leg had lost most of its function, forcing her to use a brace and cane to get around. After a long run of relative kindness Luck had decided to lash out and Fiddle took notice. Chance and probability became fixations for her, taking an interest in all sorts of gambling and numbers games. The randomness of it all intrigued her, watching with interest as people won and lost fortunes in moments.
From that point on she was stuck in a sort of functional dissociation. Her belief in the otherworldly only deepened with her newfound interest in chance, strange figures flitting about at the corner of her vision. She went to a private academy for high school and made up for all the stupid decisions she hadn’t been able to make, throwing herself into the drinking and drug scene with passion. More than one sports car ended up wrapped around a light pole or stuck in a ditch, substances doing nothing to temper her penchant for risk taking. It was a miracle she made it to graduation, her by now divorced parents gladly shipping her off back to London with the hope that she’d sort herself out there.
As long as she was educating herself both had pledged to support her, Fidelity’s self-destructive party lifestyle backed by seemingly limitless funds. She was now free to drift without any purpose save for hedonism.
Affiliations -Daniel Astor:Fiddle's now deceased cousin and surrogate parent. She keeps a picture of him in her wallet and on her desk in her penthouse. -Turner and Basker:Her service dogs and chaperones. Trained to help their mistress by serving as bulk to lean on and getting objects that would be otherwise out of reach, as well as defend her when needed. There are few people in the world capable of fighting off nearly four hundred pounds of attack dog and she has yet to meet one of them.
Appearance Fidelity has long since accepted the fact that daily life is harder for than. Short and slender she has to use her dogs as buffers to keep from being crushed in crowds and knocks objects off high shelves with her cane instead of getting assistance from someone else. She carries herself with a straight back and steady gaze, greeting most people with the same easy smile and wave.
Her clothes run the gamut from light casual wear to black leather and old jeans, Fiddle choosing outfits more for variety than any particular style. Her preferred Shadow World outfit is purposely extravagant and flamboyant to the extreme, Fiddle believing that there's no point in hijacking people's conscious if you're not going to have fun while doing it.
Height 4'8"
Personality Aimless, reckless, and obsessive Fidelity is caught in the curious position of being able to do whatever she wants and having nothing she wants to do. With no long term goals to reach for she tries to fill the hole inside her with with constant action. The urge to keep everything neat and tidy that had been ingrained in her as a child clashes with her urge to raise hell, her apartment caught in a constant cycle of being totally trashed and furiously scrubbed clean as conflicting compulsions battle against one another.
Fiddle is certainly friendly but there's an undertone to it that can be somewhat off-putting. She'll wave and smile brightly at an a acquaintance even as she peers around them at some non-existent phantom, eyes flitting about during conversations while she nods along. She's almost weirdly friendly, letting total strangers into her home every weekend to party and allowing people to take almost anything they want.
Her access to apparently limitless wealth has imbued her with a dismissive sense charity of charity, aware that she's much better off than most people but not feeling particularly guilty about it. Her family has money and others don't, that's just how life is. She leaves fifty pound tips on twenty pound meals and gives away jewelry to people who comment on it, waving off stammered thanks as she continues on with her day. Replacing it is just a minor inconvenience. She takes money for granted the same way most people do running water, oftentimes stuffing a wad of bills into friend's hands "to get something on your way home."
Arcana The Emperor
Persona The Mothman First sighted by a group of gravediggers, the Mothman seems to be attracted to death and poor fortune. Spotted flying low over forests and haunting highways, one of it's regular haunts was an abandoned munitions factory from the Second World War. Despite its fearsome appearance the Mothman seemed content to stay out of people's way, restricting itself to frightening motorists and picking off the occasional dog.
Until the Silver Bridge collapsed. A single defective eye-bar led to the whole thing tumbling down into the Ohio river, killing 46 people. Two of the bodies were never found. To this day people claim that all sorts of supernatural happenings had occurred in the days leading up to the disaster, visions of it happening before it occurred and visits from ghosts and UFOs and men in black and the Mothman circling the area as if waiting. This is of course ridiculous. The Mothman was likely just a a sandhill crane or unusually large heron, something mundane and not at all a harbinger of bad luck.
Still the legend persists to this day. If you ever find yourself out on some backwoods road at night be careful when you watch the sky. You might find a pair of red searchlights watching you right back.
Skill Curse. The Mothman uses it's bulk and ability to fly as a form of mobile cover, tanking damage for its user and more fragile allies. It can also curse enemies, making them vulnerable to damage or weakening their attacks.
Equipment Sword-Cane: A much more ornate version of her real world cane. The hooked head can snag on limbs and bits of clothing to drag or trip people and the blade itself is weighted perfectly to Fiddle's liking. The bottom is spiked, allowing it to be used as a spear or oversized ice pick.
Henry Rifle: The same rifle she grew up shooting. Sixteen .44 bullets (if you load one in the chamber) sent downrange with speed and accuracy. Her preferred way to fight for obvious reasons.
Education Business BA (Hons), 3rd Year
Biography Fidelity was born into immense wealth, the scion of a old ranching family and a more recent chemical empire. Her early years were spent bouncing between her parent's properties in Texas and West Virginia, being taught almost exclusively by private tutors and learning to ride horses and handle livestock. It was established early on that she would be inheriting one or both businesses depending on how things went, the young girl accepting her fate without much enthusiasm. She had no interest in learning the finer points of shipping nylon and neoprene around the globe and was better suited to shooting bottles and riding horses than castrating steers. But it was never about what Fiddle wanted. Her existence was a calculated affair designed to ensure both parties involved had an heir.
It was a somewhat lonely existence. What few friends she had she'd be separated from for months at a time as she bounced between states, being taken all over by one parent or another as they went about their mostly separate lives. With neither mom nor dad having much interest in her outside of her studies and general well-being she relied on her relatives for company, a private car dropping her off at all the birthdays and barbecues her parents didn't have time to take her to themselves.
Her favorite relative lived out of the country, working a meaningless upper management position for Astor Chemical Co. in London’s Canary Wharf district. Daniel was more of a parent to Fidelity than her biological ones, taking care of her for a couple months at a time when she needed to be out of the way. Fiddle sat for hours listening to him tell stories about aliens and cryptids haunting the backwoods, absorbing each tale of ghosts invading people’s heads or strange monsters that lurked in back alleys.
Daniel only fueled her interest in the supernatural, letting the girl dig through his collection of grainy UFO sightings and books on the occult. Just a bit of harmless fun, he told her. Strange stories that weren’t true but were good for a late night scare. She remained unconvinced, sure that there was more to the world than people accepted.
Those treasured days came to an end shortly after Fidelity’s twelfth birthday. Daniel had been heading home from work late one night when his elevator failed in a freak accident. He plummeted 15 stories before hitting the ground, reduced to paste almost instantly. A tragic case of bad luck, nothing could have been done. Fidelity took the loss hard, refusing to speak for nearly a month after the funeral. Less than a week after she started to talk Lady Luck spat on her again, a sudden thunderstorm turning the ground to mud while she was out riding. The horse tripped in the muck and toppled over, crushing her leg underneath it’s bulk.
It took more than five hours before she could be found and by the time she was taken to the hospital it was too late. Fidelity’s left leg had lost most of its function, forcing her to use a brace and cane to get around. After a long run of relative kindness Luck had decided to lash out and Fiddle took notice. Chance and probability became fixations for her, taking an interest in all sorts of gambling and numbers games. The randomness of it all intrigued her, watching with interest as people won and lost fortunes in moments.
From that point on she was stuck in a sort of functional dissociation. Her belief in the otherworldly only deepened with her newfound interest in chance, strange figures flitting about at the corner of her vision. She went to a private academy for high school and made up for all the stupid decisions she hadn’t been able to make, throwing herself into the drinking and drug scene with passion. More than one sports car ended up wrapped around a light pole or stuck in a ditch, substances doing nothing to temper her penchant for risk taking. It was a miracle she made it to graduation, her by now divorced parents gladly shipping her off back to London with the hope that she’d sort herself out there.
As long as she was educating herself both had pledged to support her, Fidelity’s self-destructive party lifestyle backed by seemingly limitless funds. She was now free to drift without any purpose save for hedonism.
Affiliations -Daniel Astor:Fiddle's now deceased cousin and surrogate parent. She keeps a picture of him in her wallet and on her desk in her penthouse. -Turner and Basker:Her service dogs and chaperones. Trained to help their mistress by serving as bulk to lean on and getting objects that would be otherwise out of reach, as well as defend her when needed. There are few people in the world capable of fighting off nearly four hundred pounds of attack dog and she has yet to one of them.
Appearance Fidelity has long since accepted the fact that daily life is harder for than. Short and slender she has to use her dogs as buffers to keep from being crushed in crowds and knocks objects off high shelves with her cane instead of getting assistance from someone else. She carries herself with a straight back and steady gaze, greeting most people with the same easy smile and wave.
Her clothes run the gamut from light casual wear to black leather and old jeans, Fiddle choosing outfits more for variety than any particular style. Her preferred Shadow World outfit is purposely extravagant and flamboyant to the extreme, Fiddle believing that there's no point in hijacking people's conscious if you're not going to have fun while doing it.
Height 4'8"
Personality Aimless, reckless, and obsessive Fidelity is caught in the curious position of being able to do whatever she wants and having nothing she wants to do. With no long term goals to reach for she tries to fill the hole inside her with with constant action. The urge to keep everything neat and tidy that had been ingrained in her as a child clashes with her urge to raise hell, her apartment caught in a constant cycle of being totally trashed and furiously scrubbed clean as conflicting compulsions battle against one another.
Fiddle is certainly friendly but there's an undertone to it that can be somewhat off-putting. She'll wave and smile brightly at an a acquaintance even as she peers around them at some non-existent phantom, eyes flitting about during conversations while she nods along. She's almost weirdly friendly, letting total strangers into her home every weekend to party and allowing people to take almost anything they want.
Her access to apparently limitless wealth has imbued her with a dismissive sense charity of charity, aware that she's much better off than most people but not feeling particularly guilty about it. Her family has money and others don't, that's just how life is. She leaves fifty pound tips on twenty pound meals and gives away jewelry to people who comment on it, waving off stammered thanks as she continues on with her day. Replacing it is just a minor inconvenience. She takes money for granted the same way most people do running water, oftentimes stuffing a wad of bills into friend's hands "to get something on your way home."
Arcana The Emperor
Persona The Mothman First sighted by a group of gravediggers, the Mothman seems to be attracted to death and poor fortune. Spotted flying low over forests and haunting highways, one of it's regular haunts was an abandoned munitions factory from the Second World War. Despite its fearsome appearance the Mothman seemed content to stay out of people's way, restricting itself to frightening motorists and picking off the occasional dog.
Until the Silver Bridge collapsed. A single defective eye-bar led to the whole thing tumbling down into the Ohio river, killing 46 people. Two of the bodies were never found. To this day people claim that all sorts of supernatural happenings had occurred in the days leading up to the disaster, visions of it happening before it occurred and visits from ghosts and UFOs and men in black and the Mothman circling the area as if waiting. This is of course ridiculous. The Mothman was likely just a a sandhill crane or unusually large heron, something mundane and not at all a harbinger of bad luck.
Still the legend persists to this day. If you ever find yourself out on some backwoods road at night be careful when you watch the sky. You might find a pair of red searchlights watching you right back.
Skill Curse. The Mothman uses it's bulk and ability to fly as a form of mobile cover, tanking damage for its user and more fragile allies. It can also curse enemies, making them vulnerable to damage or weakening their attacks.
Equipment Sword-Cane: A much more ornate version of her real world cane. The hooked head can snag on limbs and bits of clothing to drag or trip people and the blade itself is weighted perfectly to Fiddle's liking.
Henry Rifle: The same rifle she Fiddle grew up shooting. Sixteen .44 bullets (if you load one in the chamber) sent downrange with speed and accuracy. Her preferred way to fight for obvious reasons.
Education Business BA (Hons), 3rd Year
Biography Fidelity was born into immense wealth, the scion of a old ranching family and a more recent chemical empire. Her early years were spent bouncing between her parent's properties in Texas and West Virginia, being taught almost exclusively by private tutors and learning to ride horses and handle livestock. It was established early on that she would be inheriting one or both businesses depending on how things went, the young girl accepting her fate without much enthusiasm. She had no interest in learning the finer points of shipping nylon and neoprene around the globe and was better suited to shooting bottles and riding horses than castrating steers. But it was never about what Fiddle wanted. Her existence was a calculated affair designed to ensure both parties involved had an heir.
It was a somewhat lonely existence. What few friends she had she'd be separated from for months at a time as she bounced between states, being taken all over by one parent or another as they went about their mostly separate lives. With neither mom nor dad having much interest in her outside of her studies and general well-being she relied on her relatives for company, a private car dropping her off at all the birthdays and barbecues her parents didn't have time to take her to themselves.
Her favorite relative lived out of the country, working a meaningless upper management position for Astor Chemical Co. in London’s Canary Wharf district. Daniel was more of a parent to Fidelity than her biological ones, taking care of her for a couple months at a time when she needed to be out of the way. Fiddle sat for hours listening to him tell stories about aliens and cryptids haunting the backwoods, absorbing each tale of ghosts invading people’s heads or strange monsters that lurked in back alleys.
Daniel only fueled her interest in the supernatural, letting the girl dig through his collection of grainy UFO sightings and books on the occult. Just a bit of harmless fun, he told her. Strange stories that weren’t true but were good for a late night scare. She remained unconvinced, sure that there was more to the world than people accepted.
Those treasured days came to an end shortly after Fidelity’s twelfth birthday. Daniel had been heading home from work late one night when his elevator failed in a freak accident. He plummeted 15 stories before hitting the ground, reduced to paste almost instantly. A tragic case of bad luck, nothing could have been done. Fidelity took the loss hard, refusing to speak for nearly a month after the funeral. Less than a week after she started to talk Lady Luck spat on her again, a sudden thunderstorm turning the ground to mud while she was out riding. The horse tripped in the muck and toppled over, crushing her leg underneath it’s bulk.
It took more than five hours before she could be found and by the time she was taken to the hospital it was too late. Fidelity’s left leg had lost most of its function, forcing her to use a brace and cane to get around. After a long run of relative kindness Luck had decided to lash out and Fiddle took notice. Chance and probability became fixations for her, taking an interest in all sorts of gambling and numbers games. The randomness of it all intrigued her, watching with interest as people won and lost fortunes in moments.
From that point on she was stuck in a sort of functional dissociation. Her belief in the otherworldly only deepened with her newfound interest in chance, strange figures flitting about at the corner of her vision. She went to a private academy for high school and made up for all the stupid decisions she hadn’t been able to make, throwing herself into the drinking and drug scene with passion. More than one sports car ended up wrapped around a light pole or stuck in a ditch, substances doing nothing to temper her penchant for risk taking. It was a miracle she made it to graduation, her by now divorced parents gladly shipping her off back to London with the hope that she’d sort herself out there.
As long as she was educating herself both had pledged to support her, Fidelity’s self-destructive party lifestyle backed by seemingly limitless funds. She was now free to drift without any purpose save for hedonism.
Affiliations -Daniel Astor:Fiddle's now deceased cousin and surrogate parent. She keeps a picture of him in her wallet and on her desk in her penthouse. -Turner and Basker:Her service dogs and chaperones. Trained to help their mistress by serving as bulk to lean on and getting objects that would be otherwise out of reach, as well as defend her when needed. There are few people in the world capable of fighting off nearly four hundred pounds of attack dog and she has yet to one of them. Relationships TBD
No matter how many times she edits her appearance some things remain forever nonhuman, but thankfully are easily hidden. Indigo eyes with a cat's vertical pupils are hidden by contacts, her flexible spine and floating collar bone only noticeable if one were to walk in on her squeezing into some tight space. Her ridiculously low heart rate (less than ten beats per minute) and ability to operate in low oxygen environments are essentially invisible under normal circumstances.
Age: She lost track of the exact number long before living memory but she's been kicking around since the creation of the universe.
Bio: Whatever name Lynx had gone by at the beginning of time, however she had carried herself, she had probably already been bored. Springing into existence at the dawn of the universe fully formed and ready to rumble she originally quite liked the powers that had been given to her. But when the novelty wore off it quickly became apparent just how unpleasant of a life she was going to have. The speed at which she processed information meant that the world was in a constant state of slow motion for her, every moment spent waiting an unbearable torment.
Any hobby or pastime would have all the enjoyment sucked out of it within weeks or days, the Custodian quickly dissembling the activity and piecing it back together thousands upon thousands of times. She bounced from job to job, serving as everything from professional chef to starship captain to doctor and leaving after a few years when it became unbearably mundane. She merely existed for millions of years, trapped in constant race for gratification and amusement.
When some of her brethren went rogue it blindingly obvious that it wouldn't go well for them. The majority of Custodians that had stayed loyal had literal God on their side, only an idiot would have taken those odds. But fighting a doomed war followed by bitter defeat sounded more interesting than curbstomping a few rebels so of course she picked the losing side. The war went about as well as expected, she took out a few loyalists before getting booted out with the surviving rebels.
Historia made a decent place for a crash landing. The Custodian found herself among humanity, a race that measured up to hers about as well as ants did to them. But how interesting they were! Fragile and short-lived creatures they still dedicated themselves to climbing mountains and crossing barren deserts, just as willing to create beautiful (by their standards anyway) works of art as they were to form armies and raze each others homes to the ground. Irrational and hot-blooded, driven to prove that their lives had meaning even though the universe would have forgotten about them in a million years or two, they were simultaneously kind of pathetic and sort of inspiring in their stubbornness.
The Custodian was fascinated by them and wanted to get a closer look, so she began to disguise herself as members of their race. She spent time in the guise of queens, knights, artist, beggars, murderers, thieves and every archetype under the sun, poking at society to watch how it squirmed. She helped establish codes of law and then proceeded to break them to get a look at the prisoners suffering in salt mines, commissioned great works of art for museums and then joined barbaric hordes and stole them. She spent time living on the streets, watching the faces of those who'd give her a few coins and those who acted as if she didn't exist.
It was essentially an undercover investigative report. She learned just as much about humans watching them drag Descendants out of their beds as she did seeing them band together to recover from natural disasters. Over the millennia she built up a strangely patronizing affinity for them, regarding them as amusing animals that could do tricks.
Eventually she ended up in Hermannreich in the form of a gunrunner turned revolutionary, working with a cell of freedom fighters that sabotaged military installations and assassinated high value targets until they were wiped out by a surprise raid. The alien made her exit as her comrades were being lined up for summary execution, escaping to Iliad under the guise of a gunslinger and mechanic turned insurgent fleeing political persecution. With her billions of years worth of technological experience both human and otherwise it was easy enough to set up shop as a mechanic and machinists, getting herself a job as the shop teacher at Marduk. She got herself another position as a history instructor, firsthand knowledge of the world's major events coming in handy.
And so Instructor Lynx became a upstanding citizen of Iliad, wiling away the time grading essays and dismantling engine blocks as she waited for the inevitable need to drop everything and run.
Mundane Skills: Quite frankly her skillset is immense to the point of being too long to list. But for the sake of getting into character the Custodian limits herself to whatever her current identity would be good at. In Lynx's case her skill with firearms and melee combat is quite literally superhuman, at a level obtainable only through her natural powers and millennia of practice. She is a talented alchemist and machinist, modifying her gear and crafting different types of ammo for different types of targets,and has a penchant for explosives. Her careers of planning and foiling assassinations and robberies give her a good sense of small-scale tactics, her specialty being ambushes and smash-and-grab type operations. Stealth is a given, the alien just as quiet as her current namesake when she wants to be.
Powers: Supernatural Senses- Like her namesake Lynx relies on her senses to get an edge over her opponents. On a day to day basis her sense of smell is as good as a dog’s, counting individual threads on a person’s shirt from across the room and hearing each breathe they take. She’s capable of much more when she focuses but limits this to avoid sensory overload.
The real advantage is her ability to detect magic. If you’re paying attention there’s certain giveaways inherent to arcane energy. A low hum of some great machine, a minuscule hint of copper on the tongue, a faint shimmer in the air.Lynx can pick up on these clues that others miss and follow them, seeing through illusions and trailing mages by their traits specific to their spells.
Super-Speed- Good luck getting the draw on her. Lynx can move at about the speed of sound when running and hit Mach 2 if she were to sprint all out. Incredibly fast but also incredibly exhausting. Moving that fast for any longer than a few hours necessitates her to eat about half her weight to fuel the boost in metabolism so she tends to cruise at four hundred or five hundred miles an hour (when she's not forced to crawl along out of discretion.)
Enhanced Endurance- Moving twice as fast as sound requires a tough body. Lyxn is mostly unaffected by extreme speed or temperatures and needs only a few hours of sleep a week. Her stomach is strong enough that she can taste poisons to evaluate their strength, her skin shattering mundane weapons and deflecting some spells. Walls are no trouble, able to be smashed through with no adverse reaction.
Equipment :Krait- One of the first things she made after being so rudely ejected from the One's favor. The glove houses a container for storing all manner of liquids and a nozzle designed to eject it as an aerosol up to 15 feet. Typically loaded with various irritating agents or toxins.
Wife and Mother- A pair of matched revolvers that she took off a dying loyalist in the war in Heaven. Prime examples of Custodian engineering they generate the energy required to fire and are "reloaded" by letting the excess heat drain. The hammers can be fanned for rapid fire but doing so runs the risk of overheating them.
Starstrike- The usage of advanced Custodian materials allow the bow to be as strong as steel while remaining flexible, able to loaded with arrows of varying types. It's most valuable trait is its ability to absorb and charge arrows with starlight, the energy channeled into the tip to punch through armor and unleash a corona of searing light inside them.
Savagry-A tribute given to her during her days as warlord, Savagery is designed to hold under the extreme stresses of her usage, staying solid under forces and temperatures that would reduce a normal dagger to slag.
Plasmids: Not actually part of a bacteria's cytoplasm but the combination of chemicals and computer input that let her change her face. A thoroughly unpleasant process that requires her to isolate for a week as her durable body slowly melts and reforms.
Tools- The selection of wrenches, hammers, drills, plasma cutters, and other tools she uses to fix machines and make bombs and arrowheads as well as the stockpile of materials for doing so. These range from sheets of metal waiting to be cut to old cars dumped out in her back yard and rusty weapons ready to be stripped for parts.
The Essentials- Cigars and her hip flask.
MAGs- An upgraded version of the Krait. Made with components from a crashed Custodian ship the Mobility Assistance Gloves serve a dual purpose. The first is to form a seemingly unbreakable bond with a surface to allow Lynx to make sudden stops while running and hang from buildings.
The second is to gather the kinetic energy produced by her movement and store it to be released as needed. This allows for movement in mid-air as well as adding substantial force to her blows.
Matriarch and Patriarch- Wife and Mother after being spruced up and getting their inner workings tweaked. Heat build up is now less of a problem and a "choke" has been added to allow for different shot patterns: a wide shotgun style spray, the normal shot that splashes against a target and a focused beam to punch through cover.
Personality: "Blessed" with otherworldly speed and the required reaction time to manage it every moment of everyday in Lynx's life is more or less a living hell. Her natural impatience combined with the fact that time appears to move much slower for her than it would anyone else means that she bounces around from distraction to distraction, spending scarcely a few minutes on anyone thing before moving to the next. Her self-restriction of her speed causes her to twitch and fiddle with coins and other small objects, a nervous tic she passes off as shell-shock.
While she understands the difference between right and wrong it doesn't really factor much into her daily life. She does what the current persona she's inhabiting would do whether that's building orphanages and going on one woman crusades to rescue kidnapping victims or earning a reputation as fearsome raider pillages villages for sport. The morality of an act is much less important to her than if its in-character or interesting.
"Lynx" is more or less a good person, an exiled freedom fighter turned mechanic and teacher. She pays her taxes, shows up to work on time and gives students the extra attention they require and always has customer's repaired items returned to them promptly. She has a poker game every Thursday, plays golf on weekends with friends from work or just around the neighborhood and generally presents as a good-natured veteran that is sometimes a bit off.
Faction (Marduk, Ishtar, or Cassandra Club when it's founded): Marduk for the time being, whatever seems interesting after that. Are you a Descendant of the Illuminated Poet?: No Important Relations: -Duke, Diakonissa (Husband, Daughter, both dead) -Kane, Micah and Rachel Helegast (Husband, Son, Daughter, all dead) - ??? Makre, Jason Makre (Husband and Son, both dead) -Kotori Flatcreek (Girlfriend, dead) -Eyo-Zeki (Adopted son, dead) -Marcus ???, ???, ??? (Husband and two children, dead) - Mihek (Concubine/Bodyguard, dead) -Vudir, Walthred, ??? (Husband, wife, husband or wife, all dead) -??? (Boyfriend, dead)
Morgan passed smoke through her nose as he sized up the pair, unsure just what to make of them. The blond was touchy it seemed, overprotective and looking for trouble. "Do you have a problem with my name, Linde?" The half-Viet put the same emphasis on the word, locking eyes with the riflewoman. "You made a mistake and I corrected you. Don't take it so fucking personally, you're going to have to listen to people who know what they're doing if you wanna make it two months. Jungle'll chew you up and shit out bleached bones if you don't."
She picked lazily at a speck of dirt under her nail, still not taking her eyes off the bitch. She wanted to mad-dog her? Fine. "You'd better not pull that shit out there either. The President himself could be standing right in front of you during patrol and you don't call him sir, you don't salute, you don't even look at him differently. VC snipers spot that and they'll know just who to shoot. We only do that to officers we don't like.
Oh joy, she was dealing with a fucking comedian. "That's not sexism you fantastically stupid cunt, I'm calling you a faggot. Get it right." Was she fucking dense? How much glue had she sniffed on the trip over? "Hell I was really being polite. Did you not hear what I was saying about the gooks? You only have a problem with me now cuz you're a thin-skinned little dyke that doesn't like when someone calls you mean names.
It was a skill to keep her voice so even while spewing such awful vitriol, Morgan's stomach twisting itself into knots as she went on.
"Oh you're real original. I'm still tall enough to feed you your teeth you inbred backwater white trash. I'll bet your mother is your sister and you were only a virgin as long as you were faster than your brother!
Theresa at least knew they were outmatched, trying her best to defuse the situation before her girlfriend ended up decommissioned. Morgan was fine taking the out, scratching under her chin and nodding carelessly at the apology. "'S no problem, don't worry about it. Just busting each other's balls a little.
She was going to die of a fucking heart attack long before Charlie got to her. Combat was simple, all you had to do was stick close to the ground and pray that the people in the trees were bad shots and try and avoid walking into landmines. The traps laid in every conversation were much more insidious and Miracle had to make sure she triggered them to keep her cover. Miracle Morgan, the hard ass and brusque bitch who took shit from nobody and doled it out to everybody, was the shield for Bian Nzuyen, the scared little girl who didn't understand herself and didn't really want to.
Tortoise
Fish of Oblivion
Fetzen
Guardian Angel Haruki
