Post by FangedSmile on Aug 9, 2015 19:10:23 GMT -6
Name: Damsel Vespiro
Age: 26
Species: Human
Description: She stands 5’7” with thick black hair, a constant tanned appearance thanks to the Spanish/Italian heritage passed from her grandmother, honey brown eyes, and a face that could launch thousand ships… Though, she has the attitude to make at least a couple hundred of those turn back.
Clothing: Form-fitting. Usually she’ll wear a cotton-blend button up shirt with a leather corset over top, and always wears leather boots to match. She tends to lean towards fall colors: blacks, reds, browns, stained yellows, and earthy greens. Everything she wears is expensive, so even simple outfits are high quality and delicately embroidered or accented with gold thread or hardware.
Weapons: She has a custom .454 magnum revolver with a 30mm grenade launcher that is decorated with an purpler and white orchid on a long, elaborately twisted stem along the barrel, as well as a picture of Kalista engraved into the bottom of the grip. She wears it on a hip holster that wraps across her hips and around her upper thigh, for use when she's feeling less subtle. Normally, however, she favors throwing knives- of which she has a set of twelve.
Personality: Damsel was born with the stubbornness of an entire team of mules. She quickly snatched onto the idea that no one could tell her what to do and the world was hers for the taking. Her life was completely her own and the possibilities were limitless. Most of this has not faded. If she puts her mind to something and feels it is the right thing to do, she’ll do it. Sometimes she can be reasoned with, but if the final word is “because I said so!” then all she hears is “Yes… but be sneaky about it.” She tends to get restless and make decisions others might question. This has caused her to have to struggle at times, but she has never truly regretted any decision. She has a hard time trusting people because many have tried to get close to her just because they know who her parents are, and want to use her. She is trying to escape her past and prove that she isn't just some spoiled rich girl, but it has been near impossible to get people to see her that way. Because of this, she tries hard to never let people know how much money she has and has tried countless times to get her parents to stop sending more. She mostly ignores the bank account they've set up for her. This causes her parents to send people to check on her though, so she often takes money out of the account just to feed to Kalista.
History: Damsel grew up believing her family ruled the country. There wasn’t a politician they couldn’t buy or a problem they couldn’t solve by throwing money at it, and sometimes just mentioning her family name was enough to get whatever she desired. She never considered if this was fair or not, until she first encountered a situation where her parents could not buy her what she wanted. No matter how much money they paid they couldn’t make her the world’s best dancer, or a musical prodigy, or a world renowned actress. They could pay people to give her lessons and pretend she was the best, but it wasn’t the same.
When the opportunity came to try out for those special schools that pretty much everyone tried out for, she never even studied. No one expected her to and most of her friends considered the idea to be laughable. Most didn’t want to deal with the hassle, and others knew their parents would buy their way in. Her dad handed over the funds and she received an acceptance letter. Upon being admitted, some little brat told her she was only as good as her parents’ money, and would never be able to get or hatch an egg. When she argued, her lead instructor had her write a report on the history of wealthy and influential families who had been successful in the school.
No matter how hard she researched/paid people to research, she couldn’t find any success stories in the past three generations. Unless the family was influential because of their career with the university, most wealthy students failed. They had other obligations to attend to and family businesses to run, and networking to do. Their servants cared for the eggs… which only rarely hatched. Most were returned to where they’d been found, and a rare few hatched and became attached to the servants. There was no way to pay your way through.
She awoke that night from a nightmare concerning her own future. She had always thought she had the world wrapped around her finger… but she was really just another face. Just a girl who was going to be handed money, power, and influence all built upon the shoulders of those who came before her. She really didn’t have a say in her life. She could accept it and play along, or kick and scream and become a tabloid star and lose the respect of the people she was supposed to be the boss of someday. Those were the only choices laid before her.
Damsel decided she wanted to show people she was more than just money. She wanted to get into the University- which had a long history of turning down bribes or finding ways to accept them without giving in. People had never been allowed to tell her she couldn’t do something, but now she was finding that even when people agreed she could do something… she failed every attempt.
Instead of giving up, Damsel looked to her younger siblings and thought about their future. She didn’t want them to be famous just for being famous, or find themselves trapped in a life they didn’t want.
So, she hit the books and the gym and began investing in her needs instead of her desires. She hired a personal trainer, tutor, nutritionists, and manager to help her succeed. The feeling that she needed to prove herself was constant. When the day finally came and she journeyed to find her egg, she stepped out without anyone who cared how much money she had. There was no way for wealth or power to help her find the egg meant for her- though after three days of searching she did try to bribe someone for theirs. When the time limit for the test drew towards its final moments, she became a nervous wreck- not that she’d let anyone know. She was pretending to have already found her egg, when her eyes were suddenly drawn off the side of a cliff. Down below there was an egg perched on a thin ledge.
It didn’t glow or shimmer, but she could feel it somehow. It seemed different than the rest and when she looked at the one she’d picked up earlier on, she felt the egg on the ledge call her a liar. “You would have to be the one most likely to get me killed, wouldn’t you?” she murmured.
But when she finally had the egg in her hands… well she still had to get back up the cliff...
In the helicopter heading back to the check point, however, she felt a rush of excitement. Over the following semesters is was a frustrating challenge to keep the egg content, but it was a good change for her because she had to care for something more than she cared about herself. She wanted to play it cool and pretend to have everything under control… but the egg was rarely content. She bought it expensive headphones and even had a recording artist write it a song when she discovered it liked music, but it responded by only being content if SHE sang to it. This sometimes meant leaving the classroom to march up and down the hall singing everything from commercial jingles to operas. The egg didn’t like going to clubs for more than half an hour, but, sometimes would decide it wanted to go back when she got home.
It adored the cold, but wanted her nearby. She’d had to pay a restaurant to let her spend time in its walk-in freezer each day- sometimes at 3 or 4 in the morning. But no matter what she did… the egg still fit easily in the palm of her hand. It sometimes felt like it weighed a ton, and other times she was afraid she’d dropped it. By the time graduation came around she’d lost her old friends because she was always too busy caring for the egg! It didn’t like her boyfriend, and would seem to scream if she tried to leave it in the care of her manager.
Every day she held it and hoped for some giant creature. Like a Pegasus she could ride, or a unicorn that would stab her enemies with its head- or maybe a genie who could grant her wishes! At 18, she graduated in the top 10 of her class of 118 students (number 10, in fact…). It was an event she celebrated as massively as possible- while still caring for the egg.
Her first year at University came with stress as her classmates showcased their eggs. They were larger, often had texture, and many were multicolored. Hers seemed polished and had only changed from gray to a brassy-copper. The other eggs had warmth to them or a lively chill. Damsel’s was cooler or hotter depending on the environment, it didn't create its own temperature. Other eggs smelled earthy or sweet, sometimes even salty or woody… Damsel’s egg didn’t smell like anything. The other eggs would move from time to time, and made organic sounds. The only thing Damsel heard sounded like rhythmic clunking.
Then one day, during class, her egg gave a twitch. She shouted, alarmed, and soon found she was the center of attention as everyone- teacher included- gathered around her. The egg spun rapidly and created a musical hum on her desk, until it gave an audible click and popped open along perfectly straight lines. She heard pleased gasps from those around her, followed quickly by confusion and disappointed grunts. A few even started to check the area around the egg, and the egg itself. Surely her creature wasn’t this… this… worm?
Damsel, however, beamed. Her creature was alive! It was a bug, but it was alive!
She ignored the inquisitive stares and mumbles of her peers as they shuffled back to their seats and happily took the permission slip as the nonplussed instructor handed it to her. The slip allowed her to enter into the creature courses. The worm looked to be made of copper, and was even oxidized in a few places, giving a webbing of turquoise over its body. It had rough fur, like steel wool, and inched its way across her desk in shutterstop motions like a Claymation video.
When she stared at it, she felt excited. When she looked up, however, she felt embarrassed. People were looking at her with pity, or snarky smirks. “Well…” said her nearest neighbor, with a pained smile. “Um… Hey! Yours hatched first! Congratulations!”
“It’s a worm…” said the guy in the row directly in front of them. “What’s it going to do? Help you plant a garden?”
“It’s a metal worm,” defended her neighbor. “It’d rust!” At the weak expressions from both Damsel and the guy, she added “maybe it’s a silkworm.”
“So it’s a metal silkworm? What’s it going to make?”
“Shut up. She’s brilliant!” was all Damsel had to say on the matter. Though she was happy to be able to come back the next day, slap a book down and shout “Caterpillar! Not WORM!”
If she thought the egg had been bad, keeping track of the caterpillar was insane. She bought a terrarium, but it just chewed its way out. And instead of eating leaves, it ate coins- a fact she discovered the first day while the veterinarians harped at her to feed it before it died, but it wouldn’t eat anything she offered. It ate coins and … output… little tiny balls of a metal no one could define. Her attempts to make jewelry out of them were thwarted by the fact that it just seemed gross. But other people liked it, so caterpillar poop jewelry became popular around campus and a few geology majors were excited by the prospects of a new metal.
Damsel barely had time to sleep. She was constantly afraid of losing her creature. The thing never stayed put for long. Once she figured out how to feed it, she got through nights by leaving long trails of coins around the room for her creature to eat during the night. Every night cost her about $300 when the caterpillar grew bigger and decided smaller currency wasn’t appetizing anymore. Caterpillar poop sales were not covering her budget and her family did hesitate a bit when she asked them to send ‘pet food.’ If that wasn’t enough, Damsel found herself fighting off other creatures that saw hers as a delicious snack. Crows were the worst, and Damsel had been pecked and clawed at plenty of times in her attempts to protect her creature.
After a year, the caterpillar spun itself a platinum-like cocoon.
While other people were hatching their eggs or teaching their creatures new tricks… she was an outcast. Her egg had hatched, so those with unhatched eggs weren’t interested in her- they would rather sit and ponder the limitless potential that was available to them. Those with newly hatched eggs were in the glow of discovery and weren’t interested in a girl who had a pet cocoon that she had to carry around with her everywhere. The cocoon made a suspicious ticking noise that could become quite distracting.
The coon stage lasted long enough that she was told not to enroll in the creature classes anymore. This was both defeating, and welcome, because some of the creatures that wanted to eat hers were becoming rather large. The night the cocoon hatched, however, was the best day in Damsel’s life. She knew it’d be a butterfly, but the sight of it broke her normally cool composure and brought her to tears.
Abilities: Is cash an ability? She also has an influential last name, though she tries not to use it. She’s in excellent shape and was encouraged to take etiquette classes so she could use her high society status properly for different missions. She’s usually calm under pressure and is rarely afraid to step up and fight
Weakness: She doesn’t always feel like she belongs anywhere. Around the University there are very few students who come close to her social standing, so she doesn’t have a common background. Many won’t work with her because they dislike her wealth, and others try to get close just to take advantage of her, so she tends to work alone while yearning for some company.
She can be standoffish and distrustful, but can also be too pushy or insensitive.
Name: Kalista
Age: Been alive for 7 years, been a butterfly for 4
Species: Umm… Well, living metal… insect… Flying type?
Description: Kali is a swallowtail butterfly made from metals. At 2.5 inches, she doesn’t seem formidable She looks to be gold and silver, but is as hard as titanium- though she feels very light. The edges of her wings are razor sharp, her antenna are watch-hands, as are her legs. Her eyes are princess-cut rubies, and her movement is enabled by cogs and gears, springs, and balances. When not moving, she looks like a very elaborate piece of jewelry. She does not speak, though there is a ticking noise that can be heard, and she can replay conversations that she’s heard. This means that she will sometimes communicate by playing back words that other people have said.
Weapons: Very sharp wings.
Personality: Kali believes that Damsel is the best thing to ever happen to the world and that they are both BAMFs. She tends to be delicate, but can get vicious and does not put up with people talking down to Damsel. She is intelligent and watchful, and prefers to play the role of the strong silent type, though her favorite thing to do is flap along to music with a great beat, or sniff every single flower in sight. She always knows what time it is, and eats precious metals, sugary drinks and frosting, and will often eat pollen. She occasionally will drink blood.
History: Kali was born in Damsel’s first semester at the University, then went into cocoon mode in Damsel’s second year, and emerged as a butterfly in the third year. She has since trained very hard to learn what abilities she brings to the partnership.
Abilities: Super-fast, she can cause a lot of damage with her razor-sharp wings. She can record sound, is adept at sneaking, and can shoot out a bolt of electricity that varies in voltage.
Weakness: She’s mostly indestructible, though extreme heat or cold can destroy or cause her extreme damage. She cannot heal herself very well, and instead relies on repairs. She can tarnish or rust if not cared for.
Age: 26
Species: Human
Description: She stands 5’7” with thick black hair, a constant tanned appearance thanks to the Spanish/Italian heritage passed from her grandmother, honey brown eyes, and a face that could launch thousand ships… Though, she has the attitude to make at least a couple hundred of those turn back.
Clothing: Form-fitting. Usually she’ll wear a cotton-blend button up shirt with a leather corset over top, and always wears leather boots to match. She tends to lean towards fall colors: blacks, reds, browns, stained yellows, and earthy greens. Everything she wears is expensive, so even simple outfits are high quality and delicately embroidered or accented with gold thread or hardware.
Weapons: She has a custom .454 magnum revolver with a 30mm grenade launcher that is decorated with an purpler and white orchid on a long, elaborately twisted stem along the barrel, as well as a picture of Kalista engraved into the bottom of the grip. She wears it on a hip holster that wraps across her hips and around her upper thigh, for use when she's feeling less subtle. Normally, however, she favors throwing knives- of which she has a set of twelve.
Personality: Damsel was born with the stubbornness of an entire team of mules. She quickly snatched onto the idea that no one could tell her what to do and the world was hers for the taking. Her life was completely her own and the possibilities were limitless. Most of this has not faded. If she puts her mind to something and feels it is the right thing to do, she’ll do it. Sometimes she can be reasoned with, but if the final word is “because I said so!” then all she hears is “Yes… but be sneaky about it.” She tends to get restless and make decisions others might question. This has caused her to have to struggle at times, but she has never truly regretted any decision. She has a hard time trusting people because many have tried to get close to her just because they know who her parents are, and want to use her. She is trying to escape her past and prove that she isn't just some spoiled rich girl, but it has been near impossible to get people to see her that way. Because of this, she tries hard to never let people know how much money she has and has tried countless times to get her parents to stop sending more. She mostly ignores the bank account they've set up for her. This causes her parents to send people to check on her though, so she often takes money out of the account just to feed to Kalista.
History: Damsel grew up believing her family ruled the country. There wasn’t a politician they couldn’t buy or a problem they couldn’t solve by throwing money at it, and sometimes just mentioning her family name was enough to get whatever she desired. She never considered if this was fair or not, until she first encountered a situation where her parents could not buy her what she wanted. No matter how much money they paid they couldn’t make her the world’s best dancer, or a musical prodigy, or a world renowned actress. They could pay people to give her lessons and pretend she was the best, but it wasn’t the same.
When the opportunity came to try out for those special schools that pretty much everyone tried out for, she never even studied. No one expected her to and most of her friends considered the idea to be laughable. Most didn’t want to deal with the hassle, and others knew their parents would buy their way in. Her dad handed over the funds and she received an acceptance letter. Upon being admitted, some little brat told her she was only as good as her parents’ money, and would never be able to get or hatch an egg. When she argued, her lead instructor had her write a report on the history of wealthy and influential families who had been successful in the school.
No matter how hard she researched/paid people to research, she couldn’t find any success stories in the past three generations. Unless the family was influential because of their career with the university, most wealthy students failed. They had other obligations to attend to and family businesses to run, and networking to do. Their servants cared for the eggs… which only rarely hatched. Most were returned to where they’d been found, and a rare few hatched and became attached to the servants. There was no way to pay your way through.
She awoke that night from a nightmare concerning her own future. She had always thought she had the world wrapped around her finger… but she was really just another face. Just a girl who was going to be handed money, power, and influence all built upon the shoulders of those who came before her. She really didn’t have a say in her life. She could accept it and play along, or kick and scream and become a tabloid star and lose the respect of the people she was supposed to be the boss of someday. Those were the only choices laid before her.
Damsel decided she wanted to show people she was more than just money. She wanted to get into the University- which had a long history of turning down bribes or finding ways to accept them without giving in. People had never been allowed to tell her she couldn’t do something, but now she was finding that even when people agreed she could do something… she failed every attempt.
Instead of giving up, Damsel looked to her younger siblings and thought about their future. She didn’t want them to be famous just for being famous, or find themselves trapped in a life they didn’t want.
So, she hit the books and the gym and began investing in her needs instead of her desires. She hired a personal trainer, tutor, nutritionists, and manager to help her succeed. The feeling that she needed to prove herself was constant. When the day finally came and she journeyed to find her egg, she stepped out without anyone who cared how much money she had. There was no way for wealth or power to help her find the egg meant for her- though after three days of searching she did try to bribe someone for theirs. When the time limit for the test drew towards its final moments, she became a nervous wreck- not that she’d let anyone know. She was pretending to have already found her egg, when her eyes were suddenly drawn off the side of a cliff. Down below there was an egg perched on a thin ledge.
It didn’t glow or shimmer, but she could feel it somehow. It seemed different than the rest and when she looked at the one she’d picked up earlier on, she felt the egg on the ledge call her a liar. “You would have to be the one most likely to get me killed, wouldn’t you?” she murmured.
But when she finally had the egg in her hands… well she still had to get back up the cliff...
In the helicopter heading back to the check point, however, she felt a rush of excitement. Over the following semesters is was a frustrating challenge to keep the egg content, but it was a good change for her because she had to care for something more than she cared about herself. She wanted to play it cool and pretend to have everything under control… but the egg was rarely content. She bought it expensive headphones and even had a recording artist write it a song when she discovered it liked music, but it responded by only being content if SHE sang to it. This sometimes meant leaving the classroom to march up and down the hall singing everything from commercial jingles to operas. The egg didn’t like going to clubs for more than half an hour, but, sometimes would decide it wanted to go back when she got home.
It adored the cold, but wanted her nearby. She’d had to pay a restaurant to let her spend time in its walk-in freezer each day- sometimes at 3 or 4 in the morning. But no matter what she did… the egg still fit easily in the palm of her hand. It sometimes felt like it weighed a ton, and other times she was afraid she’d dropped it. By the time graduation came around she’d lost her old friends because she was always too busy caring for the egg! It didn’t like her boyfriend, and would seem to scream if she tried to leave it in the care of her manager.
Every day she held it and hoped for some giant creature. Like a Pegasus she could ride, or a unicorn that would stab her enemies with its head- or maybe a genie who could grant her wishes! At 18, she graduated in the top 10 of her class of 118 students (number 10, in fact…). It was an event she celebrated as massively as possible- while still caring for the egg.
Her first year at University came with stress as her classmates showcased their eggs. They were larger, often had texture, and many were multicolored. Hers seemed polished and had only changed from gray to a brassy-copper. The other eggs had warmth to them or a lively chill. Damsel’s was cooler or hotter depending on the environment, it didn't create its own temperature. Other eggs smelled earthy or sweet, sometimes even salty or woody… Damsel’s egg didn’t smell like anything. The other eggs would move from time to time, and made organic sounds. The only thing Damsel heard sounded like rhythmic clunking.
Then one day, during class, her egg gave a twitch. She shouted, alarmed, and soon found she was the center of attention as everyone- teacher included- gathered around her. The egg spun rapidly and created a musical hum on her desk, until it gave an audible click and popped open along perfectly straight lines. She heard pleased gasps from those around her, followed quickly by confusion and disappointed grunts. A few even started to check the area around the egg, and the egg itself. Surely her creature wasn’t this… this… worm?
Damsel, however, beamed. Her creature was alive! It was a bug, but it was alive!
She ignored the inquisitive stares and mumbles of her peers as they shuffled back to their seats and happily took the permission slip as the nonplussed instructor handed it to her. The slip allowed her to enter into the creature courses. The worm looked to be made of copper, and was even oxidized in a few places, giving a webbing of turquoise over its body. It had rough fur, like steel wool, and inched its way across her desk in shutterstop motions like a Claymation video.
When she stared at it, she felt excited. When she looked up, however, she felt embarrassed. People were looking at her with pity, or snarky smirks. “Well…” said her nearest neighbor, with a pained smile. “Um… Hey! Yours hatched first! Congratulations!”
“It’s a worm…” said the guy in the row directly in front of them. “What’s it going to do? Help you plant a garden?”
“It’s a metal worm,” defended her neighbor. “It’d rust!” At the weak expressions from both Damsel and the guy, she added “maybe it’s a silkworm.”
“So it’s a metal silkworm? What’s it going to make?”
“Shut up. She’s brilliant!” was all Damsel had to say on the matter. Though she was happy to be able to come back the next day, slap a book down and shout “Caterpillar! Not WORM!”
If she thought the egg had been bad, keeping track of the caterpillar was insane. She bought a terrarium, but it just chewed its way out. And instead of eating leaves, it ate coins- a fact she discovered the first day while the veterinarians harped at her to feed it before it died, but it wouldn’t eat anything she offered. It ate coins and … output… little tiny balls of a metal no one could define. Her attempts to make jewelry out of them were thwarted by the fact that it just seemed gross. But other people liked it, so caterpillar poop jewelry became popular around campus and a few geology majors were excited by the prospects of a new metal.
Damsel barely had time to sleep. She was constantly afraid of losing her creature. The thing never stayed put for long. Once she figured out how to feed it, she got through nights by leaving long trails of coins around the room for her creature to eat during the night. Every night cost her about $300 when the caterpillar grew bigger and decided smaller currency wasn’t appetizing anymore. Caterpillar poop sales were not covering her budget and her family did hesitate a bit when she asked them to send ‘pet food.’ If that wasn’t enough, Damsel found herself fighting off other creatures that saw hers as a delicious snack. Crows were the worst, and Damsel had been pecked and clawed at plenty of times in her attempts to protect her creature.
After a year, the caterpillar spun itself a platinum-like cocoon.
While other people were hatching their eggs or teaching their creatures new tricks… she was an outcast. Her egg had hatched, so those with unhatched eggs weren’t interested in her- they would rather sit and ponder the limitless potential that was available to them. Those with newly hatched eggs were in the glow of discovery and weren’t interested in a girl who had a pet cocoon that she had to carry around with her everywhere. The cocoon made a suspicious ticking noise that could become quite distracting.
The coon stage lasted long enough that she was told not to enroll in the creature classes anymore. This was both defeating, and welcome, because some of the creatures that wanted to eat hers were becoming rather large. The night the cocoon hatched, however, was the best day in Damsel’s life. She knew it’d be a butterfly, but the sight of it broke her normally cool composure and brought her to tears.
Abilities: Is cash an ability? She also has an influential last name, though she tries not to use it. She’s in excellent shape and was encouraged to take etiquette classes so she could use her high society status properly for different missions. She’s usually calm under pressure and is rarely afraid to step up and fight
Weakness: She doesn’t always feel like she belongs anywhere. Around the University there are very few students who come close to her social standing, so she doesn’t have a common background. Many won’t work with her because they dislike her wealth, and others try to get close just to take advantage of her, so she tends to work alone while yearning for some company.
She can be standoffish and distrustful, but can also be too pushy or insensitive.
Name: Kalista
Age: Been alive for 7 years, been a butterfly for 4
Species: Umm… Well, living metal… insect… Flying type?
Description: Kali is a swallowtail butterfly made from metals. At 2.5 inches, she doesn’t seem formidable She looks to be gold and silver, but is as hard as titanium- though she feels very light. The edges of her wings are razor sharp, her antenna are watch-hands, as are her legs. Her eyes are princess-cut rubies, and her movement is enabled by cogs and gears, springs, and balances. When not moving, she looks like a very elaborate piece of jewelry. She does not speak, though there is a ticking noise that can be heard, and she can replay conversations that she’s heard. This means that she will sometimes communicate by playing back words that other people have said.
Weapons: Very sharp wings.
Personality: Kali believes that Damsel is the best thing to ever happen to the world and that they are both BAMFs. She tends to be delicate, but can get vicious and does not put up with people talking down to Damsel. She is intelligent and watchful, and prefers to play the role of the strong silent type, though her favorite thing to do is flap along to music with a great beat, or sniff every single flower in sight. She always knows what time it is, and eats precious metals, sugary drinks and frosting, and will often eat pollen. She occasionally will drink blood.
History: Kali was born in Damsel’s first semester at the University, then went into cocoon mode in Damsel’s second year, and emerged as a butterfly in the third year. She has since trained very hard to learn what abilities she brings to the partnership.
Abilities: Super-fast, she can cause a lot of damage with her razor-sharp wings. She can record sound, is adept at sneaking, and can shoot out a bolt of electricity that varies in voltage.
Weakness: She’s mostly indestructible, though extreme heat or cold can destroy or cause her extreme damage. She cannot heal herself very well, and instead relies on repairs. She can tarnish or rust if not cared for.