Played by Mach2
Vander Pzypialkowski
Totally working on a new and (hopefully!) improved sketch of Vander, btw.<Nickname(s):/> N/A
<Gender:/> Female
<Age:/> 19 yrs, 10 months
<Occupation:/> Ex-student. Part-time dealer, full-time addict.
<District:/> 16
<Height:/> 5'10"
<Weight:/> 116 lbs
<Appearance:/> 
Vander is, at first glance, unhealthy. She's too thin, with a tired look about her. But a closer examination will quickly reveal just how poor a state her body is truly in. An addiction to Lucid has left her as a walking skeleton. Although she is tall, she weighs barely eight stone. What little body mass she retains is comprised of decaying muscle, her drug having long since burned away any hint of fat on her body. Beneath her clothing, her ribs, spine, hips, and collarbone are all prominent.
Despite the haggard state of her body, she is still young, and her face retains a hint of the attractiveness it once held. She has strong cheekbones, shapely eyebrows, and a charming smile. Her eyes are dark, a brown so deep it appears black, and the pupils are more often dilated than not.
Vander's Zone Beta upbringing and ties to the less-respectable demographic show in her sense of style. Her wardrobe lacks colour, seeming to be comprised solely of blacks and greys. Jeans a few sizes too large are held up by a studded belt, and she has a collection of raglan shirts with the logos of varying rock and punk bands. Her face is decorated with several piercings; a brow stud, several cartilage piercings on each ear, and gauged earlobes. Her hair is long and naturally wavy, dark in colour as her eyes. Sometime around the formation of her Lucid habit, she elected to shave the left half into an undercut.
<Personality:/>Despite her edgy appearance, Vander is quite the pacifist. Quiet and reserved, she considers her words carefully whenever she speaks. Whenever possible, the young woman avoids violence and confrontation. Highly intelligent, the street smarts she acquired growing up in the depths of Beta are complimented by a wealth of academic knowledge. When she first became involved in the black market of drugs, she often served as middleman, negotiating carefully between involved parties to make sure that everyone got their way. Never once did a deal go sour.
Vander has dabbled in a handful of street drugs. Cocaine. Potent emotion tea. Ecstasy. But today, only one drug has her attention: Lucid.. Vander knows that her drug addiction is inevitably terminal. She has accepted her fate with a resigned bitterness, but fears death. For a Lucid addict dies in one of two ways - overdose or withdrawal. Vander hasn't decided which prospect is more terrifying. She tries not to think about it.
<Biography:/>Zone Beta has never been a great place to come from. District 16, in particular, contains all manner of shady folk. And it is here that Vander has spent the entirety of her life. She was raised by her father, Dominic Pzypialkowksi. A mother whose name Vander never learned left them a week after her birth. Her relationship with Dom had soured while the child was still in her womb, but the two had waited for Vander to arrive before they split apart.
Childhood was a small apartment at the corner of the seventh floor. Vander's bedroom window gave her a view straight down one of the busiest streets in Sixteen. But she was far more likely to be found staring at the pages of one of her books than looking at the city's nightlife. From a young age, it became apparent that the girl was academically gifted. Dom homeschooled his daughter for many years. But by the time she was twelve, her knowledge was far surpassing what he was capable of teaching, and he turned to hiring tutors from Zone Alpha. Maths came easily to her. Science even more so. At the age of sixteen, Vander took her graduate tests, and received her diploma. Her chemistry and biology grades scored in the 99th percentile, her overall score in the 96th.
The next logical step would have been university. A degree in biochemistry and a lucrative career in Zone Alpha. But even after applying for every scholarship, tuition for the top school was still more than her father's salary.
She was seventeen when she began synthesizing street drugs.
Vander started simple. Common drugs. The kind anyone could cook up in their kitchen with a little bit of know-how. It only took a few months for her to make connections and become immersed in the city's night life. She went to clubs, made connections, earned a little extra coin, and earned enough extra coin to move out and buy a small apartment a few blocks away from her home. A year later, she found herself a business partner. Grey was twenty-five. He was charismatic. He knew the business, and had a well-established clientele base. Vander was soon working as a middleman for him.
Their relationship was short-lived, but passionate. Barely eighteen, Grey was the first and only man Vander ever became involved with. Two months into their affair, Grey introduced her to Lucid. The following week was filled with sex and drugs, after which Grey left Vander alone to her addiction.
In the past year, Vander has lost everything. Her savings account, previously full of hope for a college education, instead dwindled faster and faster as her habit became more and more difficult to sustain. She sold her small apartment, moving instead into an even tinier and more run-down studio apartment. She is now nineteen years old, and her body is wasting away. Her internal organs are slowly shutting down. When she isn't on the drug, the stomach cramps and migraine are unbearable. The rent hasn't been paid in two months, and an eviction notice will likely go up soon. Her drug stash is dwindling, quicker and quicker, and she has no income to replenish it. But even now, she still takes hits of Lucid.
<Other:/>The prognosis for a casual Lucid user is four to five years, on the outside. Once an addiction is established, the body metabolizes the drug on a 48 hour cycle, after which withdrawal symptoms begin. Migraines, nausea, tremors, cold sweats, muscle cramps. The longer the habit is sustained, the more frequent the injections are required. Eventually, most victims can no longer financially sustain their addiction, and the withdrawal leads to death.
Vander's addiction is far from casual. She first encountered the drug a little over a year ago, and hit it hard. Today, her body craves the drug roughly every six to eight hours. Sleeping through the night without a dose is impossible. The drug's effects are less potent, and the withdrawals far worse, than when she first started. At best guess, she has a month or so before her body shuts down.
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TokyoPewPew
Lord Wyron
