I
Icicle
Guest
Original poster
Hello! This thread was made specifically for @Icicle and @Amber Sky. If neither of those usernames are yours, then you have no business posting here. Feel free to look around, but don't ruin our fun.
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Setting: A world-wide science-turned-terrorism organization named XEDRA developed many devices over its lifespan, including biotics, power armor, and advanced laser technology. However, their most well-known discovery to date is XE037, also known as "the blob." XE037 has the unique propensity to alter the phenotype of organisms which it parasitizes, allowing scientists to conduct research to isolate particular mutagens to induce specific mutations to those who inject the substance into themselves. If a person wanted cat ears or adamantine claws, all they needed was a hefty sum of money and government approval and they could become the test-subjects for an extremely unstable mutagen.
However, XE037 was soon determined to be much, much more than XEDRA, or even the governments of the world, could handle. The introduction of the blob into Earth's ecosystem drew in horrors and destruction the likes of which humans were never prepared to face. Triffids, Mycus and Nethereum were the three main terrors which invaded our world. The day that they did is now referred to as the "Catyclysm."
At first the world thought that XE037 was just a sort of mold, but it turned out to be much, much worse. The black ooze has an extremely violent tendency - if touched, it rapidly invades the aggressor's body and devours all the nerves, fats and nucleic acids it comes across, replacing said materials with it's own goop. In layman's terms, it eats people and animals from the inside out and uses their bodies as vehicles to turn them into "zombies". This material was later determined to have originated in the nether, and never travels too far from the portals from which they originate.
National governments stepped in to stop the spread of the black ooze only to find that the ooze was the least of their problems. In addition, a form of rapidly-spreading fungus which none of the scientists of the world ever before identified, and a sentient plant species known as Triffids planted spores and hearts across the forests of the world, generating hundreds of unwilling, thoughtless allies in the process. By using its spores to infect creatures and to turn them into unthinking slaves, they managed to decimate unprepared military forces. When the blobs and other nether creatures started riding onto the surface, all chaos ensued.
Weeks have passed since the catyclysm. The population of sentient, unmutated and unparasitized humans has dwindled to just over 20% of the previous total population. The technology, materials and efforts of the struggling world militaries and science organizations are the only reasons humankind is still capable of fighting back. Some humans claim to have achieved a "control" over certain aspects of the nether energy which leaked out from the portals, and the few outposts of survival which remain are either manned by heavily armed survivors, indiscriminately genocidal military personnel or desperate, insane bandits. The few individual wanderers which travel the outside world are few and far between.
The world's gone to shit. What's left to do but to take it back?
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Icicle's Character: Myles Vance
Name: Myles Vance
Age: 27
Gender: Male
Profession: Gunsmith and Firearm Designer
Appearance:
Myles has long, unruly and light brown hair, grey blue eyes, a stoic expression, and a slim figure. He ate well with his rations during the first two weeks of the Catyclysm, but never had much weight in the first place, weighing in at 120lbs and standing at 5"11'.
He has moderately pale skin since he spent most of his time indoors even before retreating to his shelter, and has no tattoos, birth defects, or major skin markings/scars. His most identifiable features are his eyes, which caused his friends to give him the name, "hawk-eye" simply because they said that his eyes make his face, "resemble a bird."
He has fairly good hygiene and dental care, but wears glasses to correct his far-sightedness when working. He shaves daily, if possible, and washes himself bi-weekly at least. He can rarely be seen dirty.
Personality: Myles was extremely friendly, almost overbearingly so. Despite his stoic and solemn appearance, one of his hobbies used to be coming up with clever ways to greet acquaintances whom he saw often. This changed after the Catyclym since all his acquaintances became walking fleshbags and corpses. He is now far more serious on a regular basis, as if conforming to his stoic appearance. He rarely smiles, and is always wary about the slightest noise or movement. He hates killing, more than anything else, so he greatly dislikes being forced to do so by his circumstances. Each time he has to kill, his mood gets more and more sour.
He thinks very quickly, and is a genuinely good improviser. Since he played a lot of video games and did a lot of military simulations in his lifetime, he developed his analytical thought process and became more of a thinker. His quick thinking also translated to good leadership skills, which he developed almost without realizing it. Despite all of this, he hates accepting praise, even when it is merited, since he prefers to stay at the same level as those around him. He doesn't like formalities.
One of his greatest quirks is his sense of right and wrong. Since he's a god-fearing man, he can't stand the sight of what his gut tells him is evil, nor can he bring himself to perform evil acts easily. He doesn't think much of his moral judgement, since he knows that it has been wrong in the past, but he still adheres to them closely so that he has something to cling to. His strongest goals result from his sense of right and wrong - to help others in need, to destroy evildoers, and to save the world - if not all of it, as much of it as possible. As a result, he never kills on sight without first observing the behavior of the thing in question, and always thinks twice before choosing not to trust a stranger.
Background: Myles was born and raised as a gun fanatic. His father loved everything about guns, so he took his son to shooting ranges, on hunting trips, to gun shopping expos, and all sorts of other gun-related things. These trips invariably resulted in Myles' fascination with weapons and his hatred for killing, which he's kept with him for his entire life. His parents also handed the fear of god down to him, which, unlike his siblings, he kept with him as he aged.
Myles was a relatively good student, although he procrastinated a lot and rarely studied. Plenty of his teachers saw a lot of potential in him, and encouraged him to seek out engineering projects and opportunities to show his skills and creativity. A particular opportunity in weapon design competitions and internships came his way, and he hasn't deviated from weapon design since. He worked to become certified as a gunsmith and got a job as a weapon designer for a famous gun manufacturer. He spent a total of 3 years in this job before getting sick of it and quitting. He decided to try and make a gun business of his own, so he was working on that up until the Catyclysm.
Luckily, he had all of his work materials with him in the shelter, so he was able to construct himself a firearm with supplies left over from his planning. But as soon as the first day in the Catyclysm, he started to mutate as a result of nether energy in his shelter, and discovered that he could change the composition of substances using this new ability. He called the ability "combat alchemy" after thinking of ways to use it to conserve resources, and eventually came up with a weapon design that would accomplish his goals well enough.
The weapon was designed as follows:
The four barrel design allowed him to get the most out of the effort he took to use his combat alchemy to reload the weapon. The barrel length was increased to 14" to fit up to five rounds at a time, and circuitry was placed along the barrel to activate firing pins in sequence so as to allow for the firing of multiple barrels and multiple rounds with near perfect synchronicity. The resulting weapon compensated for its low calibre and high penetration with a very high fire rate. He judged that this would be the best option for him since he could not aim well, and the large re-fire rate would give him many opportunities to hit his target even if he missed multiple times. The traditional problem with such a weapon would be ammunition conservation, but he was able to overcome this flaw by using his combat alchemy.
His handgun, which he designated as the M9v2, was the sole reason that he had the confidence to venture forth into the hostile world outside of his shelter. He has kept it in hand ever since, keeping it loaded at every opportunity.
Talents and Skills:
Inventory: Myles carries ~21kg worth of stuff around with him. He hasn't been able to scavenge much in the three days he's had since leaving his shelter, and he wants to travel light as much as he can. He wishes he had something to keep himself warm during cold nights.
- Worn: Briefs, Jeans, Tank-Top, Socks, Pair of Steel-Toed Boots, Leather Duster, Backpack, Tool Belt, Blue Bandanna(around Mouth), Ear Plugs(around neck).
- Backpack - Contains enough food and water supplies to last three days, thread, solder, a King James Version Bible, a few batteries, and a medicine kit containing Advil, Prozac, Codeine, vitamin, and antibiotic pills, mint chewing gum, sanatized cloth bandages, iodine tablets, one dose of cough syrup, and a pair of his contact lenses in saline solution.
- Leather Duster - Contains his reading classes and a few spare gun parts and 9mm rounds. He keeps a few spare pieces of brass and lead in his outer pockets in case he cannot transmute any for his gun. He also keeps two 100g bottles of smokeless gunpowder in his duster pockets since he cannot make it with his combat alchemy.
- Tool Belt - Contains his pocket knife, a flat-head screwdriver in two sizes, a sewing kit, and a soldering iron.
- He carries his gun, the M9v2, in his jeans pocket only when he isn't carrying it in his hand. He almost always has his gun ready so that if he is taken by surprise, he won't be completely helpless.
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Amber Sky's Character: Rylee Martin
Name: Rylee Martin
Age: 26
Gender: Female
Occupation: Corporate and Government Hacker
Appearance: Small and lithe, Rylee transformation due to the mutagens only enhanced her pre-existing speed and dexterity. Standing at 5'4 and weighting 109lbs before the cataclysm, her weight has dwindled down to 100lbs due to the lack of suitable food she has been receiving. Her skin is pale from her life indoors, and her body is now also covered with light fur that ranges from a gray-white to light brown. Her hair remains the same blonde it has always been and she prefers to tie it in braids that keep it out of her face. She does her best to maintain her personal hygiene, though the development of sharp canines have incurred some problems in dental maintenance. Her eyes are blue and are constantly darting around, not missing anything that happens around her and dark colored ears habitually twitch at any sound she hears.
Personality: Rylee is incredibly Machiavellian in nature. She's always working to advance her own interests and cares little about the morality of her actions or their effects on others, instead being primarily preoccupied with her own well-being. The only problem with this is that she has no future goal to strive for, and so up until the cataclysm has been consistently striving for wealth as that is the only thing she could think of doing. This lack of direction was incredibly dangerous but luckily was never acted upon as she remained preoccupied with her hacking career, though it is likely if she had ever found herself bored Rylee might have wrecked a lot of havoc with all the secrets that have passed through her hands over time.
However, her self-centered nature isn't to be perceived as selfishness. While she will only act to advance her own needs, if she happens to help others along the way she is perfectly fine with sharing her results to assist others. This is why she has taken in a few apprentices over time to help them follow her profession's footsteps, and also why she does have some friends here and there. In the big picture, however, Rylee is isolated within her own little technological world and seldom ventures out of it. She has never found the appeal in human contact or interaction and therefore does not actively seek it, she is much more interested in the digital world. She finds that humans are prone to being spontaneous in a way that unnerves her as she is used to everything following a strict program.
Given the fact that she's been a recluse from human society for most of her life, Rylee can be surprisingly friendly when she does wind up talking with people. It's just that she would rather avoid getting into that situation in the first place. Her social skills are not lacking and she's capable of conveying her thoughts effectively, and her sense of manners and small talk are also acceptable. Depending on her mood she can be good company by all standards, but if she happens to have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed she will either grow very impatient or otherwise just stop talking after awhile. On occasion her delivery can be uncomfortably deadpan and this is usually a sign that she has grown tired of the discussion.
Rylee's thought process is very logical and down-to-earth. She by no means believes in an afterlife or supernatural forces, though she does not look down on people that do. Her view on people different from her is not judgmental and instead she readily accepts all kinds of beings and begins to calculate how she can manipulate them to meet her objectives. She tends to take comments quite literally and idioms are nearly always lost on her. Similarly, Rylee finds it hard to detect sarcasm, taking words at their face value and reacting accordingly.
Background: Rylee's father worked at a prestigious software designing company that created all sorts of electronic interfaces and was also trusted in constructing high-security information databases, and her mother had died while she was still young. Her father rarely had time to care for his small daughter so for the majority of Rylee's childhood she was looked after by her older brother Rege. Rege was an avid gamer who was ten years older than his child sister and a result of their father's first marriage, but he was a surprisingly caring child-minder. He was, in all regards, a kid genius however he never achieved much academically because he lacked motivation to complete school work.
When presented with Rylee, Rege immediately began to introduce her to the gaming world. During her early years Rylee watched her brother play countless games, from dating sims to complex chess simulations to third-person shooters and more. He also taught her to read and write at an early age but once she was enrolled in school, it became clear her ability was in math. Seeing this, Rege began to teach her increasingly difficult math and she devoured it all. He attended college near their home and continued to return home to teach her until she was fifteen, at which point he left to work at a videogame design company halfway across the country.
Suddenly finding herself with no mental stimulation, Rylee grew bored. It was at this time she began to delve into cheats on the games she and her brother had played, later turning to hacking their databases and stealing user information. The downfall was that she had nothing to do with this information and she soon got tired of it. That was about the time when she began to snoop around on her dad's computers and read the information on them when he wasn't aware and this piqued her interest. Reading about his troubles with rival companies who were developing more advanced software, Rylee turned her gaze on her newfound enemies.
Ever since then, Rylee has been a corporate hacker. She majored in computer science while in college but turned down the multitude of jobs that were offered to her, continuing to operate in the shadows. One day in her early twenties, a government official managed to track her down with a certain offer pertaining to the weapons situation in China. Thus began her partnership with the government. This arrangement lasted up until the start of the cataclysm while Rylee was taking a break after a high-security operation in Russia. Forced to bunker down due to her lack of weapons or anything to protect herself with, Rylee tried to figure out the cause of the outbreak and traced it down to XE037 but found that all other data had been deleted. It was shortly after this discovery that she began to grow cat features, much to her distaste. She now ventures to find the XEDRA mainframe in order to access more information about XE037 and how to combat it, and more importantly how to get rid of her new cat features.
Talents:
-Enhanced balance, dexterity and agility.
-Improved night vision and hearing.
-Increased cold resist.
Inventory:
-Semi-Automatic Beretta M9, with two 17-round magazines.
-Weapon Supplies: 23g of gunpowder, 34 rounds of ammunition, 56 bullet shells.
-Worn: Gym shoes, low-cut socks, jeans, a blue short-sleeved shirt, brown sweatshirt, black belt, beanie hat, ear muffs, bag that clips onto her belt (small), green/gray backpack.
-Backpack: One change of clothes, water for four days, food for a meal, first aid kit.
-First Aid Kit: Gauze pads, elastic bandages, tweezers, splint, elastic bandage, antiseptic wipes, adhesive tape, adhesive bandages, one flashlight with one set of extra batteries.
-Small Bag: Weapon supplies (see above), the extra mag, a bottle of water, a piece of flint, a nail-sharpener.
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Important Links:
Catyclysm Wiki
Catyclysm Item Browser
@Icicle
@Amber Sky
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Setting: A world-wide science-turned-terrorism organization named XEDRA developed many devices over its lifespan, including biotics, power armor, and advanced laser technology. However, their most well-known discovery to date is XE037, also known as "the blob." XE037 has the unique propensity to alter the phenotype of organisms which it parasitizes, allowing scientists to conduct research to isolate particular mutagens to induce specific mutations to those who inject the substance into themselves. If a person wanted cat ears or adamantine claws, all they needed was a hefty sum of money and government approval and they could become the test-subjects for an extremely unstable mutagen.
However, XE037 was soon determined to be much, much more than XEDRA, or even the governments of the world, could handle. The introduction of the blob into Earth's ecosystem drew in horrors and destruction the likes of which humans were never prepared to face. Triffids, Mycus and Nethereum were the three main terrors which invaded our world. The day that they did is now referred to as the "Catyclysm."
At first the world thought that XE037 was just a sort of mold, but it turned out to be much, much worse. The black ooze has an extremely violent tendency - if touched, it rapidly invades the aggressor's body and devours all the nerves, fats and nucleic acids it comes across, replacing said materials with it's own goop. In layman's terms, it eats people and animals from the inside out and uses their bodies as vehicles to turn them into "zombies". This material was later determined to have originated in the nether, and never travels too far from the portals from which they originate.
National governments stepped in to stop the spread of the black ooze only to find that the ooze was the least of their problems. In addition, a form of rapidly-spreading fungus which none of the scientists of the world ever before identified, and a sentient plant species known as Triffids planted spores and hearts across the forests of the world, generating hundreds of unwilling, thoughtless allies in the process. By using its spores to infect creatures and to turn them into unthinking slaves, they managed to decimate unprepared military forces. When the blobs and other nether creatures started riding onto the surface, all chaos ensued.
Weeks have passed since the catyclysm. The population of sentient, unmutated and unparasitized humans has dwindled to just over 20% of the previous total population. The technology, materials and efforts of the struggling world militaries and science organizations are the only reasons humankind is still capable of fighting back. Some humans claim to have achieved a "control" over certain aspects of the nether energy which leaked out from the portals, and the few outposts of survival which remain are either manned by heavily armed survivors, indiscriminately genocidal military personnel or desperate, insane bandits. The few individual wanderers which travel the outside world are few and far between.
The world's gone to shit. What's left to do but to take it back?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Icicle's Character: Myles Vance
Name: Myles Vance
Age: 27
Gender: Male
Profession: Gunsmith and Firearm Designer
Appearance:
He has moderately pale skin since he spent most of his time indoors even before retreating to his shelter, and has no tattoos, birth defects, or major skin markings/scars. His most identifiable features are his eyes, which caused his friends to give him the name, "hawk-eye" simply because they said that his eyes make his face, "resemble a bird."
He has fairly good hygiene and dental care, but wears glasses to correct his far-sightedness when working. He shaves daily, if possible, and washes himself bi-weekly at least. He can rarely be seen dirty.
Personality: Myles was extremely friendly, almost overbearingly so. Despite his stoic and solemn appearance, one of his hobbies used to be coming up with clever ways to greet acquaintances whom he saw often. This changed after the Catyclym since all his acquaintances became walking fleshbags and corpses. He is now far more serious on a regular basis, as if conforming to his stoic appearance. He rarely smiles, and is always wary about the slightest noise or movement. He hates killing, more than anything else, so he greatly dislikes being forced to do so by his circumstances. Each time he has to kill, his mood gets more and more sour.
He thinks very quickly, and is a genuinely good improviser. Since he played a lot of video games and did a lot of military simulations in his lifetime, he developed his analytical thought process and became more of a thinker. His quick thinking also translated to good leadership skills, which he developed almost without realizing it. Despite all of this, he hates accepting praise, even when it is merited, since he prefers to stay at the same level as those around him. He doesn't like formalities.
One of his greatest quirks is his sense of right and wrong. Since he's a god-fearing man, he can't stand the sight of what his gut tells him is evil, nor can he bring himself to perform evil acts easily. He doesn't think much of his moral judgement, since he knows that it has been wrong in the past, but he still adheres to them closely so that he has something to cling to. His strongest goals result from his sense of right and wrong - to help others in need, to destroy evildoers, and to save the world - if not all of it, as much of it as possible. As a result, he never kills on sight without first observing the behavior of the thing in question, and always thinks twice before choosing not to trust a stranger.
Background: Myles was born and raised as a gun fanatic. His father loved everything about guns, so he took his son to shooting ranges, on hunting trips, to gun shopping expos, and all sorts of other gun-related things. These trips invariably resulted in Myles' fascination with weapons and his hatred for killing, which he's kept with him for his entire life. His parents also handed the fear of god down to him, which, unlike his siblings, he kept with him as he aged.
Myles was a relatively good student, although he procrastinated a lot and rarely studied. Plenty of his teachers saw a lot of potential in him, and encouraged him to seek out engineering projects and opportunities to show his skills and creativity. A particular opportunity in weapon design competitions and internships came his way, and he hasn't deviated from weapon design since. He worked to become certified as a gunsmith and got a job as a weapon designer for a famous gun manufacturer. He spent a total of 3 years in this job before getting sick of it and quitting. He decided to try and make a gun business of his own, so he was working on that up until the Catyclysm.
Luckily, he had all of his work materials with him in the shelter, so he was able to construct himself a firearm with supplies left over from his planning. But as soon as the first day in the Catyclysm, he started to mutate as a result of nether energy in his shelter, and discovered that he could change the composition of substances using this new ability. He called the ability "combat alchemy" after thinking of ways to use it to conserve resources, and eventually came up with a weapon design that would accomplish his goals well enough.
The weapon was designed as follows:
His handgun, which he designated as the M9v2, was the sole reason that he had the confidence to venture forth into the hostile world outside of his shelter. He has kept it in hand ever since, keeping it loaded at every opportunity.
Talents and Skills:
Bartering: 0
Computers: 0
Construction: 0
Cooking: 0
Driving: 0
Electronics: 1
Fabrication: 4
First Aid: 0
Mechanics: 0
Speaking: 0
Survival: 0
Swimming: 0
Tailoring: 1
Trapping: 0
Dodge: 1
Melee: 0
Bashing Weapons: 0
Cutting Weapons: 0
Piercing Weapons: 0
Unarmed Combat: 0
Marksmanship: 1
Archery: 0
Launchers: 0
Throwing: 0
Handguns: 1
Rifles: 0
Shotguns: 0
Submachine Guns: 0
Computers: 0
Construction: 0
Cooking: 0
Driving: 0
Electronics: 1
Fabrication: 4
First Aid: 0
Mechanics: 0
Speaking: 0
Survival: 0
Swimming: 0
Tailoring: 1
Trapping: 0
Dodge: 1
Melee: 0
Bashing Weapons: 0
Cutting Weapons: 0
Piercing Weapons: 0
Unarmed Combat: 0
Marksmanship: 1
Archery: 0
Launchers: 0
Throwing: 0
Handguns: 1
Rifles: 0
Shotguns: 0
Submachine Guns: 0
Unmutated:
- No mutagens in system.
Unmodified:
- No bionics installed.
Magic - Combat Alchemy:
- User can change simple elements and substances into other simple elements and substances. Result does not account for impurities, but is thorough.
- User can change the shape and location of small, individual objects with enough mental focus.
- Each use of this ability increases hunger and thirst and decreases heath. If used more than twice in a minute, each consecutive use causes pain. Requires direct contact with the material, object, or container to function.
- No mutagens in system.
Unmodified:
- No bionics installed.
Magic - Combat Alchemy:
- User can change simple elements and substances into other simple elements and substances. Result does not account for impurities, but is thorough.
- User can change the shape and location of small, individual objects with enough mental focus.
- Each use of this ability increases hunger and thirst and decreases heath. If used more than twice in a minute, each consecutive use causes pain. Requires direct contact with the material, object, or container to function.
Inventory: Myles carries ~21kg worth of stuff around with him. He hasn't been able to scavenge much in the three days he's had since leaving his shelter, and he wants to travel light as much as he can. He wishes he had something to keep himself warm during cold nights.
- Worn: Briefs, Jeans, Tank-Top, Socks, Pair of Steel-Toed Boots, Leather Duster, Backpack, Tool Belt, Blue Bandanna(around Mouth), Ear Plugs(around neck).
- Backpack - Contains enough food and water supplies to last three days, thread, solder, a King James Version Bible, a few batteries, and a medicine kit containing Advil, Prozac, Codeine, vitamin, and antibiotic pills, mint chewing gum, sanatized cloth bandages, iodine tablets, one dose of cough syrup, and a pair of his contact lenses in saline solution.
- Leather Duster - Contains his reading classes and a few spare gun parts and 9mm rounds. He keeps a few spare pieces of brass and lead in his outer pockets in case he cannot transmute any for his gun. He also keeps two 100g bottles of smokeless gunpowder in his duster pockets since he cannot make it with his combat alchemy.
- Tool Belt - Contains his pocket knife, a flat-head screwdriver in two sizes, a sewing kit, and a soldering iron.
- He carries his gun, the M9v2, in his jeans pocket only when he isn't carrying it in his hand. He almost always has his gun ready so that if he is taken by surprise, he won't be completely helpless.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amber Sky's Character: Rylee Martin
Name: Rylee Martin
Age: 26
Gender: Female
Occupation: Corporate and Government Hacker
Appearance: Small and lithe, Rylee transformation due to the mutagens only enhanced her pre-existing speed and dexterity. Standing at 5'4 and weighting 109lbs before the cataclysm, her weight has dwindled down to 100lbs due to the lack of suitable food she has been receiving. Her skin is pale from her life indoors, and her body is now also covered with light fur that ranges from a gray-white to light brown. Her hair remains the same blonde it has always been and she prefers to tie it in braids that keep it out of her face. She does her best to maintain her personal hygiene, though the development of sharp canines have incurred some problems in dental maintenance. Her eyes are blue and are constantly darting around, not missing anything that happens around her and dark colored ears habitually twitch at any sound she hears.
Personality: Rylee is incredibly Machiavellian in nature. She's always working to advance her own interests and cares little about the morality of her actions or their effects on others, instead being primarily preoccupied with her own well-being. The only problem with this is that she has no future goal to strive for, and so up until the cataclysm has been consistently striving for wealth as that is the only thing she could think of doing. This lack of direction was incredibly dangerous but luckily was never acted upon as she remained preoccupied with her hacking career, though it is likely if she had ever found herself bored Rylee might have wrecked a lot of havoc with all the secrets that have passed through her hands over time.
However, her self-centered nature isn't to be perceived as selfishness. While she will only act to advance her own needs, if she happens to help others along the way she is perfectly fine with sharing her results to assist others. This is why she has taken in a few apprentices over time to help them follow her profession's footsteps, and also why she does have some friends here and there. In the big picture, however, Rylee is isolated within her own little technological world and seldom ventures out of it. She has never found the appeal in human contact or interaction and therefore does not actively seek it, she is much more interested in the digital world. She finds that humans are prone to being spontaneous in a way that unnerves her as she is used to everything following a strict program.
Given the fact that she's been a recluse from human society for most of her life, Rylee can be surprisingly friendly when she does wind up talking with people. It's just that she would rather avoid getting into that situation in the first place. Her social skills are not lacking and she's capable of conveying her thoughts effectively, and her sense of manners and small talk are also acceptable. Depending on her mood she can be good company by all standards, but if she happens to have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed she will either grow very impatient or otherwise just stop talking after awhile. On occasion her delivery can be uncomfortably deadpan and this is usually a sign that she has grown tired of the discussion.
Rylee's thought process is very logical and down-to-earth. She by no means believes in an afterlife or supernatural forces, though she does not look down on people that do. Her view on people different from her is not judgmental and instead she readily accepts all kinds of beings and begins to calculate how she can manipulate them to meet her objectives. She tends to take comments quite literally and idioms are nearly always lost on her. Similarly, Rylee finds it hard to detect sarcasm, taking words at their face value and reacting accordingly.
Background: Rylee's father worked at a prestigious software designing company that created all sorts of electronic interfaces and was also trusted in constructing high-security information databases, and her mother had died while she was still young. Her father rarely had time to care for his small daughter so for the majority of Rylee's childhood she was looked after by her older brother Rege. Rege was an avid gamer who was ten years older than his child sister and a result of their father's first marriage, but he was a surprisingly caring child-minder. He was, in all regards, a kid genius however he never achieved much academically because he lacked motivation to complete school work.
When presented with Rylee, Rege immediately began to introduce her to the gaming world. During her early years Rylee watched her brother play countless games, from dating sims to complex chess simulations to third-person shooters and more. He also taught her to read and write at an early age but once she was enrolled in school, it became clear her ability was in math. Seeing this, Rege began to teach her increasingly difficult math and she devoured it all. He attended college near their home and continued to return home to teach her until she was fifteen, at which point he left to work at a videogame design company halfway across the country.
Suddenly finding herself with no mental stimulation, Rylee grew bored. It was at this time she began to delve into cheats on the games she and her brother had played, later turning to hacking their databases and stealing user information. The downfall was that she had nothing to do with this information and she soon got tired of it. That was about the time when she began to snoop around on her dad's computers and read the information on them when he wasn't aware and this piqued her interest. Reading about his troubles with rival companies who were developing more advanced software, Rylee turned her gaze on her newfound enemies.
Ever since then, Rylee has been a corporate hacker. She majored in computer science while in college but turned down the multitude of jobs that were offered to her, continuing to operate in the shadows. One day in her early twenties, a government official managed to track her down with a certain offer pertaining to the weapons situation in China. Thus began her partnership with the government. This arrangement lasted up until the start of the cataclysm while Rylee was taking a break after a high-security operation in Russia. Forced to bunker down due to her lack of weapons or anything to protect herself with, Rylee tried to figure out the cause of the outbreak and traced it down to XE037 but found that all other data had been deleted. It was shortly after this discovery that she began to grow cat features, much to her distaste. She now ventures to find the XEDRA mainframe in order to access more information about XE037 and how to combat it, and more importantly how to get rid of her new cat features.
Bartering: 0
Computers: 4
Construction: 0
Cooking: 0
Driving: 0
Electronics: 3
Fabrication: 0
First Aid: 1
Mechanics: 0
Speaking: 0
Survival: 1
Swimming: 0
Tailoring: 0
Trapping: 0
Dodge: 2
Melee: 0
Bashing Weapons: 0
Cutting Weapons: 0
Piercing Weapons: 0
Unarmed Combat: 0
Marksmanship: 0
Archery: 0
Launchers: 0
Throwing: 0
Handguns: 0
Rifles: 0
Shotguns: 0
Submachine Guns: 0
Computers: 4
Construction: 0
Cooking: 0
Driving: 0
Electronics: 3
Fabrication: 0
First Aid: 1
Mechanics: 0
Speaking: 0
Survival: 1
Swimming: 0
Tailoring: 0
Trapping: 0
Dodge: 2
Melee: 0
Bashing Weapons: 0
Cutting Weapons: 0
Piercing Weapons: 0
Unarmed Combat: 0
Marksmanship: 0
Archery: 0
Launchers: 0
Throwing: 0
Handguns: 0
Rifles: 0
Shotguns: 0
Submachine Guns: 0
Talents:
-Enhanced balance, dexterity and agility.
-Improved night vision and hearing.
-Increased cold resist.
Inventory:
-Semi-Automatic Beretta M9, with two 17-round magazines.
-Weapon Supplies: 23g of gunpowder, 34 rounds of ammunition, 56 bullet shells.
-Worn: Gym shoes, low-cut socks, jeans, a blue short-sleeved shirt, brown sweatshirt, black belt, beanie hat, ear muffs, bag that clips onto her belt (small), green/gray backpack.
-Backpack: One change of clothes, water for four days, food for a meal, first aid kit.
-First Aid Kit: Gauze pads, elastic bandages, tweezers, splint, elastic bandage, antiseptic wipes, adhesive tape, adhesive bandages, one flashlight with one set of extra batteries.
-Small Bag: Weapon supplies (see above), the extra mag, a bottle of water, a piece of flint, a nail-sharpener.
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Catyclysm Wiki
Catyclysm Item Browser
@Icicle
@Amber Sky