(overjoyed) application

Character

Name: Kára Styrdóttir

Age: Pushing 1000, looks in her early 20s, gonna be like nebulously in her mid-twenties in game

Memory Option: 1

Established Status: Yes, for almost a year. She's been keeping to herself working at Eulogy while occasionally meeting with Killjoys and Resistance members to trade information.

Canon: Original

Canon Point: 21st Century, after the Masquerade is dropped

Citizenship: Originally from a moon called Svergie, with fake papers for Westerley if that is… okay

Job: Security at Eulogy, part-time information broker, low-key Resistance informant/member

Abilities:

• Immortality/invulnerability (minor): Kara can die, but it's a hard task to manage (headshots or massive bodily trauma will do it). She doesn't age, heals quicker than a human, can take harder hits without it damaging her, is mostly immune to poisons and can't get sick. In canon this is magic, in game it will be due to nanos and some minor genetic modification done by the military.

• Enhancements (I want to say minor? But maybe major): She's slightly stronger and faster than a human, with reflexes and stamina to match. Basically for someone who's like 5'4 she fights as though she's built like The Rock. A result of genetic modification in game.

• Wings (minor): More magic in canon but in game these will have been grafted on by the military as a genetic mod experiment; they're a combo of lab grown flesh/bones with cybernetic wiring to hook them into her brain. Her top speed is 90mph but she can't maintain it for more than a couple of minutes, and her average speed is about 50mph. She can fly for about an hour at a low speed with a good wind, but longer than that and she just tends to pass out from exhaustion. She's still learning to properly control them. The cybernetics also include a cloaking device.

• She's an ex-soldier, so she knows how to handle most weaponry as well as hand to hand combat, and tactical/recon knowledge and abilities.


Personality:

Kara is, in one word, old. While not necessarily a personality trait, her age does influence a lot of her personality. Being somewhere around 1000 years old means that Kara has been around for a long time, and she's seen pretty much everything there is to see. As a result she tends to be very pragmatic dealing with situations, especially those involving humans. It influences how she relates to people, how she lives her life, how she thinks about the world. A lot of the time, she likes being immortal and appreciates having been able to experience so much. There's a part of Kara that really admires humanity, despite the fact she tends to act as though she looks down on them. Watching how humanity has grown is fascinating to her and she respects it, the same way she respects how much they can pack into their tiny little lives.

Immortality has given her maybe too much time to create a persona for herself. Which is to say that a lot of how Kara acts isn't genuine, or at least not entirely genuine, despite the fact she claims to prefer honesty. She will be honest with people, but only if it doesn't require her to admit anything about herself.

That's partly why her relationships with people are kept purposefully casual. She hasn't had a romantic relationship for an incredibly long time, and doesn't really plan to have one in the future. She also doesn't really have friends, there's just people whose names she happens to remember, or who she'll go for a drink with if they promise to pay, but she doesn't make a habit of forming any sort of emotional connection. Before most of them retreated with the gods, she was close to her fellow valkyries, but it's been a long time since she's seen most of them. It doesn't necessarily bother her, but she does get a bit lonely on occasion, it's just something that she doesn't like to admit to herself. She tells herself she's perfectly happy by herself, which she is most of the time. While she does sleep with people (of any gender), she primarily restricts it to one night stands.

Despite her reluctance to get close to people, Kara isn't cruel. While she can often be blunt, but she's rarely actually mean to anyone, just a bit cold. She shows she cares in somewhat strange ways, often by forcing people to learn hard lessons they don't want to, or telling them point blank to get their shit together. Once upon a time, she was warm and caring and cheeky, but a lot of that has been buried with time.

There are exceptions to everything, and Kara's exception is warriors. She can't actually separate what's part of being a valkyrie, and what's her own feelings when it comes to soldiers/warriors, but she feels herself drawn to them and often ends up being quite protective.

That said, for someone who's so damn old, she can be kind of immature. The thing about the supernatural is that their behaviour can become somewhat 'stuck' in the age they were when they gained immortality, or 'stuck' at a time to reflect their nature. For example, a dryad in spring will be very childlike, due to the association of spring with birth, and in the same way, Kara is still somewhat of a young adult. She can be petulant and a bit of a smart ass, especially if she feels like someone is mocking her. Along the same lines, she tends to talk back to people she shouldn't talk back to, like incredibly old and powerful creatures. To Kara, respect is something earned through actions, not because someone was born into it. Her immaturity doesn't extend to her sense of humour; she does have one, somewhere, but it's more inclined towards dry jokes or sarcasm, (she hates puns), but it is one of the most human things about her.

The other main aspect of Kara's personality is the fact she's a warrior. While she doesn't wade into battle like she used to, she's still a fighter, and it's still played a huge part in who she is as a person, and she isn't sure how to be anything else (or if she even wants to). It's the reason that she's never settled down after leaving Valhalla, and the reason that she works for the council despite not feeling any loyalty to them. Kara just doesn't know what else to do. She's battle hardened, and that hasn't left a lot of room for anything else, so she copes by filling her long life with work.

Kara is wired for battle, so she's incredibly helpful in a fight or anything that requires similar strategy (she's great in car chases, when they happen), but it isn't so applicable in the real world, and that's left her floundering in a lot of situations. It's contributed to her being a little rough around the edges, because whenever she encounters circumstances she doesn't know how to handle, she covers it with bluster. And occasionally tries to provoke a fight just so she'll be in familiar territory again.

Both her age, the period she was born in, and the fact she's a warrior by nature has had a big impact on Kara's morality. While she has adapted as time passed and cultural standards changed, the fact of the matter is that she was born in a time when morals were a little bit different to what people expect in the twenty first century. Combined with the fact that she's old and effectively immortal, Kara tends to think on the large scale rather than small. She won't kill or hurt someone for no reason, she isn't sadistic, but she will if it's for the 'greater good', and is willing to make sacrifices if necessary. She also tends to take a bit of a 'live and let live' approach to what other people do with their lives; while she can be slightly judgmental, and will call someone an idiot if she thinks they're being one, Kara isn't going to go out of her way to change someone's way of life, even if what they're doing is illegal or dangerous. If she spent her life getting involved in everyone else's shit, she'd never get anything else done.

At the end of the day, Kara is functional, but only because she's carefully created the circumstances in which she operates. She has limited contact with people, fills her time with work to keep herself busy, and has found a few hobbies that distract her the rest of the time (music being the main of these). Her life is one of constant movement, because settling down risks making connections, it risks interacting with the world in a way she can't control, and she doesn't know how to do that.

AU Notes: Obviously Kara won't remember being as old as she is in canon, so she's going to be a little like she was when she was younger, which means she's slightly more willing to get involved with people and causes, and is less inclined to withdraw into herself. The change in memories isn't going to completely overwrite her personality, it's just that some of the stronger aspects that came about due to her age will be toned down a little.

AU History:

Kara was born on a moon named Svergie, somewhere in the outer edges of the J-Star Cluster, and she spent the first 16 years of her life on that moon, one relatively untouched by technology. Her people grew their own crops, raised their own cattle, and traded with the other moons surrounding an inhospitable planet. Kara always had aspirations of joining the Einherjar, the military organisation that started in the little cluster of moons she called home, and grew into a formidable force. There was a little bit of raiding, because these guys are based on Vikings, what else did you expect, but overall it was a well-respected military.

When she was 16, Kara's village was attacked by a rogue group from one of the other moons, and though they were eventually defeated, Kara lost her family (mom, dad, a gaggle of siblings) in the process. It was the final push that Kara needed to join the military, since she didn't have anything left on Svergie.

The next few years passed relatively simply; she rose up through the ranks amongst the Einherjar, having an almost uncanny affinity for battle, though she was never cruel. Somewhere around her third year in the organisation, Kara was tapped for an elite soldier program that involved some minor genetic modifications, changing how her body produced and utilized adrenalin, making her stronger, faster, and increasing her stamina. It was the first hint to Kara that the military was beginning to dabble in things they likely shouldn't, but she accepted it at the time. She wanted to be a better warrior.

The Einherjar primarily concerned themselves with business in their own little corner of the universe, but would occasionally ally themselves with other organisations or planets if it would benefit them. As their interests in genetic modification grew, they started to become more of a mercenary force than a traditional military, and Kara started to grow wary.

A battle on a planet called Edo is the first place the Einherjar crossed paths with the Company (this is to give Kara and [personal profile] shikomizue some past CR). Although initially fighting alongside the people of Edo, the higher ups of the Einherjar were encouraged to withdraw their forces, mainly by the Company offering them some shady shit to help with their experiments. Though the equivalent of a Captain at this point, Kara wasn't privy to the reasoning behind the decision, but being pulled out of an effort that she thought worthwhile was the start of her disenchantment with the Einherjar.

Unfortunately things came to a head rather quickly after that; Kara was mortally wounded at another battle, and the experimental division of the Einherjar were essentially given free rein to bring her back, as they were with all mortally injured soldiers. Kara was one of the few successes, having received a treatment via nanotechnology, increasing her healing speed. The scientists, bolstered by their success, decided to go one step further with the modifications, and attempted to attach a pair of wings to Kara. The aim of the experiment was to create flight-capable soldiers who would give them an edge in battle, and Kara was the first test subject.




It was a success, mostly. Kara woke to a tremendous amount of pain and a large set of wings grafted to her back, interlaced with circuitry. Outraged at the violation, as the operation was done without her full consent, Kara waited until her healing was complete, then broke out of the lab and left her life behind. She hitched a ride on a slaver ship, working in return for passage, travelling the J-star cluster with the only intention being to stay the hell away from the Einherjar.

Eventually, she ran into someone from the Quad, and the chaos of Westerley sounded like the perfect place to get lost. With a very expensive stolen identity, Kara travelled to the dirty moon and started a new life, not knowing that the Einherjar had expanded their relationship with the Company, or that they had set up shop in the Badlands.

Luckily, she hasn't run into them yet, focusing instead of keeping her head down and staying under the Company's radar. After making some connections and earning a reputation amongst the criminal element as someone not to be trifled with, Kara landed a security role at Eulogy, where she met a few low tier members of the Resistance. Despite having no personal connections with Westerley, Kara resented the control of the Nine and the Company, as it went against the notions of justice and honour that her parents instilled her with, so when small opportunities to help the Resistance cropped up, she accepted.

And that's been her life for the past year, working at Eulogy, developing a little information network with the Killjoys, because it's important to know what's going on in the world (and because despite her day job, she thinks some criminals deserve to be caught), and doing what small things she can for the Resistance. So far, it's going alright for her.

That's probably going to change.

Original History:

Kara Styrdottir was born in the early 11th century, into a world where legends, gods, and myths are real. Both her parents were warriors and Kara followed in their footsteps, training as a shield maiden. By the time she was in her twenties, Kara was quite an accomplished young warrior, and when a rival clan attacked, she was one of the first to leap to defend her people. The battle was a gruesome one, and although Kara managed to cut down the attacking clan's leader, she was mortally wounded in the process, and died not long after.

This is where things got interesting for her. Not all valkyries are born, some are women who died in battle and were given the opportunity to do more than simply wait for Ragnorak to come. Kara was taken to Fólkvangr, where Freyja offered her the choice to become a valkyrie, and Kara accepted withou hesitation. For a long time, life (or... undeath) was good. Kara missed her parents, but she befriended her fellow valkyries with ease, and did her duty as she supposed to, leading the slain to Valhalla and ensuring they were ready for the final battle of Ragnorak.

And then monotheism took over.

The growth of Christianity is what affected Kara's own world the most, because as it spread and various 'pagan' religions were being lost in favour of it, the gods of those religions began to withdraw. Power comes from worship, and with their worshippers dwindling, most of the gods decided to cut their losses and close themselves off with the followers they'd already gathered. The gates of Asgard were closed, the beings there given the choice to leave and be cut off from their people, or to stay and be cut off from the world. Similar choices were being made throughout other religions, both in the East and the West, although some gods remained while their people were untouched by Christianity and Islam.

For Kara, the idea of being locked away from the world for an unknowable amount of time was terrifying; it would be like being trapped, and being locked out seemed easier to cope with. If only in part because she hoped that one day the gods would return. Some days, she regrets her choice, but that's a conversation for another time.

In the space left by gods, there was a scramble for power amongst supernatural creatures, that eventually resulted in a council being formed. With humanity expanding and monotheism leaving little room for anything that didn't fit into their world view, the council decided that they should hide themselves away. Thus the Masquerade was born.

Although the balance of power would occasionally shift within the newly dubbed High Council, it was fairly stable, with certain species having more power than others and preferring to keep things how they were to further their own interests. The politics of the supernatural aren't all that important to Kara's life; she works for the council on occasion, but only as a PI/bounty hunter/parole officer, and she's made a point not to get involved in all the inner workings, for her own sanity. She doesn't care who's in charge, as long as she's getting paid and no one's trying to kill her.

For several centuries, life carried on. Kara drifted from place to place, tracking down stray creatures if they broke any of the councils rules, picking up work in various countries when the opportunity arose, or simply wasting decades doing nothing but drinking when things got a little too hard to handle. She made sure to keep up with the developments of the world, adapting and adjusting where it was necessary, but she remained more of an observer than anything else.

Things changed again, for everyone, in the 21st Century. Throughout history there had been various pushes to break the Masquerade and reveal the supernatural to humans, but it was always decided against, until it started becoming nearly impossible to remain secret. CCTV, cellphone cameras, and the internet, all made it increasingly difficult for the supernatural creatures to keep themselves secret. That isn't to say that no one knew about them; a number of governments worked alongside an assortment of beings, but the general public was kept in the dark for a very long time.

Eventually the High Council decided to reveal their existence to humanity, thinking it was better to control the information while they still could. It happened in small increments; governments informed more of their workers, those beings who'd created normal lives for themselves told friends or family, a few creatures revealed themselves within the small communities they were in. By the time the media was starting to report on the rumours, the High Council had reached an agreement with the United Nations, and a press conference was held.

People were, understandably, a little shocked. For about two years, there were a lot of protesting and inquiries and, well, witch hunts across the world. The supernatural beings had been prepared for a backlash, and as such retreated to safe places while the storm raged, allowing the High Council and it's new public representative team handle all the problems that arose when humanity found out that the things that go bump in the night are real. It was stressed that no one meant humanity any harm, that they would be self-policing, but would also follow the laws of the countries they were living in.

It wasn't perfect, people were still unhappy, but things started to settle down and life moved on, as it always does. Without any reason to keep themselves secret, supernatural beings began to draw a little more attention to themselves, in some cases using their abilities to their advantages, often for monetary profit. But the High Council watches them closely, to ensure no one steps over any lines and endangers the shaky peace with humanity, and Kara found herself with a full-time job again. Since the Masquerade was abandoned, she's working almost entirely for the Council, tracking down rogue creatures who've been hurting or killing humans in a way that could attract too much scrutiny, and either bringing them in, or eliminating them as a last resort. It isn't a job she particularly enjoys, but she knows that it's necessary to ensure humanity doesn't decide that the supernatural needs to be wiped out.


Inventory:

The only thing I'd like her to keep is her +VLFBERH+T sword. In canon it's magic and can never dull but I'm okay to nerf that. If someone actually using a sword would be a bit too anachronistic, it could just be an ornamental thing that she got during her military service.

Samples:

There's a couple threads here!
A bunch of threads from an old game

Miscellaneous Notes: