Thalia - Mercenary of ASCU

((Wall of text incoming... I am sorry!)

General Information

Full Name: Thalia (Last name omitted at this time)
Nicknames: Red

Race: Human
Gender: Female
Age:23
Hair: Red
Skin: Pale
Eyes: Green
Height: 5’1
Weight: 125lbs

Biographical

Place of Residence: Unknown
Place of Birth: Unknown, presumably one of the VBI compounds

Relatives: Unknown, presumed deceased
Allies: ASCU

Profession: Researcher/Surgeon (both not formally trained)
Areas of Expertise:
Field/Combat Surgeon
Research/Science
Limited combat abilities and use of EGO Decoy skill set

Personality

Alignment: Neutral
Motivations: Female seems to be driven by whims
Disposition: Serene
Outlook: “Give up the smallest part of a secret, and the rest is no longer in your power.”
Religion/Philosophy: If science were a religion she would be a devout follower. Atheist.
Sexuality: Straight
Positive Personality Traits: Loyal, Friendly(to those deemed deserving)
Negative Personality Traits: Aloof (to everyone not known to her and most situations not in need of her expertise)
Misc. Quirks: She is observed to be what is most commonly referred to as shell shocked.

Affiliation

Organization: ASCU
Rank: Unknown, presumably in charge of medical and research

Interests

Likes: Research and medical application of said research, cooking
Dislikes: Somewhat undecided, her likes and dislikes seem situational.
Favorite Foods: Anything sweet
Favorite Drinks: Water
Favorite Colors: Seems to change

Hobbies: Research, Eating and Shopping (DO NOT take her near an actual settlement with something resembling real stores or small shops unless you are prepared to watch her spend all her earnings and potentially yours too.)


Biography

Thalia *lastname*, born in 2023 to the biomedical researchers Drs. Dorian & Adara *lastname*, was the second child in the family. Her brother, Silas, had arrived several years before. Thalia’s birth came during a troubled time, in those harried weeks just before the Pale Wars began, and both her parents were engrossed in their research and prototyping of advanced medical technology at VBI in order to supply the human forces on the battlefield.
Thalia spent the first nine years of her life sequestered in the secret research facilities VBI operated during the war, learning to be content with herself as company as both her parents worked feverishly in their labs. Often brought to the labs for lack of other activity, this early exposure to technology in an environment created for research and the collection of knowledge defined her. Day in and day out she watched her parents at their work and picked up more knowledge than a child her age would usually have access to, covering topics far beyond the scope of even the most advanced elementary learning programs.

Sometimes towards the end of the war Silas had a falling out with their father and left to volunteer for the marines, determined to fight in the war. This was the last time Thalia saw her brother and he soon became a distant memory. During these formative years Thalia’s mother had never paid her much attention, and now with the absence of her only sibling, her father became her sole source for familial interaction, affection and comfort.

Shortly after her ninth birthday the Pale Wars ended and Thalia and her parents were moved out of the underground facility, revealing a world unlike anything she remembered of her scant few visits to the surface, and nothing like the data-sources she had studied. In 2030 the alien ships, the Arks, had mysteriously exploded and the debris raining down and crashing to earth had started the process of terraforming the earth into an alien landscape. Thalia was intrigued by all these new vistas and unknowns, her thirst for knowledge was by now near insatiable, spending her time at the VBI resettlement compound learning as much as she could about her parent's work and this new and still changing world.

The years in the underground facility had taken their toll on her parents, the stresses and fractures in their relationship were given time and space to reveal themselves. Over the coming months their marriage deteriorated rapidly until it came apart completely in an argument over the state of post-war politics. Her mother could not look past the war, vehemently blaming the Votan for the end of their planet's way of life. Her father wanted to move forward, to make the best of things as they now were, and pointedly refused to play the blame game. The couple split, the now twelve year-old Thalia begging her father to take her with him into this new strange world as he left VBI completely. She wanted to learn of and experience the world outside of the controlled and safe environments of research labs and fortified camps.

With her mother so absorbed in a fugue of apathy and hate, hardly seeming to notice her daughter at all, her father eventually agreed despite his private reservations. They set out together into the rebuilding world, traveling from settlement to settlement while Dorian offered his services as a doctor in trade for their basic necessities. It was a very different existence from the life they had led previously but Thalia learned quickly and before she was fourteen she was already assisting her father in the care of his patients as skillfully as any trained nurse might have done. Despite her talent and her pride in it, her greatest love was discovery. There was not a day when she would not, often against her father’s instructions, venture alone into surrounds of the villages and towns they stayed at, searching for things she had not encountered before. Be it animal, plant or mineral, or other things harder to classify, she would often bring her discoveries back with her and study them together with her father. Many of these new additions to terran flora and fauna could be put to use as medicinals, food stuffs or used for clothing and tools. They were aided in this process by trading information and technology with the votans that they met during their travels, and thus they learned to understand their new world a little more every day.

Their travels came to an abrupt end during late 2039 when they were enslaved by a group of marauding bandits that raided the little settlement they were staying at. Being a doctor, a rare commodity on the frontier, her father negotiated a deal with the bandits for his services as their physician on the condition that Thalia would stay unmolested and work as his assistant. This went on for roughly a year until Dorian reached his breaking point, his morals and ethics stretched too far by the kinds of work his new patrons kept adding to his responsibilities. Providing medical assistance to the bandits and those they felt worth saving twisted over time until he was applying his medical knowledge to torture and developing toxins the bandits could use to easily wipeout whole communities that apposed them.

During one particularly gruesome “interrogation” Dorian refused to revive the subject for another cycle of horrendous abuse. Without missing a beat the bandit leader had Thalia brought in and put a gun to her head, asking the good doctor to reconsider. Immediately her father did as he was asked but the bandit leader was now enthralled by a new, more interesting entertainment, switching the aim of his weapon to Dorian and instructing Thalia to continue where he had left off. When she did not immediately react he casually put a bullet in her father's leg, promising her that if she hurried up and did a good job she'd be allowed to tend her to father when she was done. The nearly seventeen year-old girl, motivated so cruelly, displayed great skill and creativity in inflicting pain, so much so that the bandit leader decided her father was no longer needed. The moment she wrung a satisfactory answer out of her subject a pair of shots rang out and Thalia found herself watching as first her victim’s head exploded, then a half-second later the same fate befell her father.

Thalia was informed that she had just inherited all of her father’s responsibilities. The bandits certainly didn't seem to care that she had never received formal training in medicine and that all her knowledge came from her father or was self-taught. Later some of the other captives who survived would say that day, when she was forced to torture for the first time and saw her father die, was the day she stopped being an exuberant, lively spirit and became an almost silent automaton. The girl she had been grew into an introverted, quiet woman that would often seem absent from the present until given a task, her empty stare only returning from the middle-distance when she was performing her tasks or found something new and intriguing.

Thalia remained with the bandits until 2043 when they were wiped out by a mercenary group called the ASCU, who freed all of the surviving captives that the bandits had taken. After returning them to the nearest settlement a few of the men and women decided to stay with the mercenaries when they offered a place, the unit having suffered a number of losses during the engagement and needing recruits. One of the women choosing to keep going with the mercs was a person Thalia had somewhat communicated during her captivity and Thalia decided she would also stay, though it was decided by the leader of the mercs that Thalia should remain with them at least until they could deliver her to Defiance. The young woman seemed unfit to be left by herself and there were hardly facilities in the small settlement that could offer her any aid in recovering, or in finding someone who might know her.

By the time they reached Defiance the now twenty year-old Thalia had recovered somewhat and would speak even if not prompted. Her skills were something the mercenaries could use and she had developed close ties with the leader and his second who had spent a lot of time trying to get her to communicate with them.
To this day the woman remains more than a little socially awkward, a condition those around her often refer to as "shell-shocked". She acts confidently when she has a task, such as tending wounds, studying new discoveries, or researching current medical techniques. Though still introverted and quiet, if given food, sweets especially, then she can be downright talkative, while at other times she will wander off without a word, chasing something that caught her interest and it has often been a challenging and aggravating job to keep her safe.

this was a brilliant read, your a brilliant roleplayer

Aww thanks, I do try.