Name: Tami

Email: aliaguardian at yahoo dot co dot uk

AIM: Tamiest

RPG Experience: I once ate a live bird!

Civilian Information

Name: Hero Georgiana Renata Ordell

Meaning: "My parents hate me" not an option? Daddy named her, and unfortunately, Daddy was still stuck in the literary thirties. 'Hero' is for one of the heroines in Much Ado About Nothing; 'Georgiana' for Darcy's sister in 'Pride And Prejudice'. 'Renata' is her grandmother's name. Renata is "born anew": Georgiana "farmer" (with all the growth that implies): Ordell "beginning". Hero Who Works The Land, Born Anew At The Beginning?

Age: 19

Birthday: June 10th

Zodiac: Sun in Gemini, moon in Aquarius, ascendant in Sagittarius (translation: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH)

Height: 6'1"

Likes:

- noir films; there is nothing Hero likes better than hardboiled detectives, Constant Night, femme fatales and tense banter. She adores the detective and gangster films of the 1930s, though a couple of the modern ones are admitted past her grudging elitist radar - L.A. Confidential, Chinatown. She likes the dreary. She adores how everybody smokes. They appeal to something deeply morbid in her. Also, the costuming is fantastic. An inadvertant showing of Mildred Pierce when she was 13 contributed to Hero owning approximately six battered fedoras and thinking that suspenders were a worthwhile fashion statement.

- ee cummings, ezra pound - postmodern poets; there is very little of the Romantic in Hero (except in being a melodramatic crazywhore). She prefers the hot grittiness of Pound, Joyce, cummings, Eliot and Williams. She is an impenetrable literary dork. (As you can see, she seems to have a fetish stick to the early parts of the 20th century, weirdly. She also idolizes Fitzgerald.) Hero is one of those people who will be able to sit down and write you an immediate, concise dissertation on why The Wasteland was a serious blow to postmodern poetry but not be able to remember exactly who starred in the Titanic. (Though since she will never admit to not knowing anything ever without a fight, she will attempt to bullshit it. "Kate Bush? Kate Bush, right?")

- musical theater; there's nothing quite so snobby and richly-historied as musical theater, but it would be cruel to say that Hero just went to it for the chance to talk about how disillusioned she was with everything but the original Broadway cast. (Okay, we admit: for her, 35% of the fun is grousing.) Her favourite is unquestionably Sunset Boulevard. She does not care for Andrew Lloyd Weber's anything, except a certain weakness for Evita. (Che was a childhood crush. Be unsurprised.)

- jazz; Miles is God.

- critique; Hero adores to be the font of information, the judge by which all others are measured; she loves pointing out technical errors. It gives her a big critiquey hard-on. It's not so much the urge to find fault with something, just that she loves being in a point of knowledge where she can see where things are going wrong or dissatisfactory. It's a position of power.

- letters; why don't people write letters any more? (Because it takes too much time, is often self-reflective and wanky and there's a thing called e-mail, Hero? Pshaw). Hero loves writing letters. Hero loves receiving letters. Every so often she will get all excited, find a new penpal in Korea or whatever, write ten letters with ten pages each and then forget about it. (A few months later, she will start all over again. She is like the Pen Pal Heartbreaker. Because she is moving around so much, there are probably like fifty letters following her all over America, desperate to get to Hero.)

Random Likes: black coffee, strawberry gelato, a vile mix of Jolt Cola and Mountain Dew that should by all rights kill her dubbed Somnia, soy sauce on anything, Lauren Bacall, fingerless gloves, old classic cars, Barenaked Ladies

Dislikes:

- exercise; when you drink like a fish and smoke like a chimney, there are some things your body eventually refuses to do.

- anti-intellectuals; born to an uber-intellectual father, Hero feels aggrieved for all mankind when she meets somebody who doesn't appreciate booksmarts. Okay, not just aggrieved; downright peeved, pissed, and willing to bemoan it loud and clear for the person in question. And harangue. She has a lot of time for people who are willing to even venture an opinion (though she has the capacity to be hugely patronizing) on literature and the arts, but for those who badmouth it, their name is mud in her book. Her snobby, elitist book.

- people; well, not so much dislike. This is a subconscious one. Hero has almost a peoplephobia; she functions perfectly well on a shallow basis, is downright amenable and can connect on a short-term basis, but long-term relationships on any level are shot. To cope with what would otherwise be abject loneliness, she has a subconscious god complex that manifests itself as an inability to find or acknowledge anyone as her equal in emotive matters or thought processes (translation of the most pretentious sentence I have ever typed: she doesn't consider anybody else's ability to feel or read things on the same level as herself). She's not exactly going to go up to you and say it - this isn't Asperger's - but the distressingly egotistical word 'neurotypicals' applies here.

- critique; of others? Great. Of herself? Hero is a heavily temperamental, insecure, fragile artist, who goes through Byronesque waves convinced of either her own genius or her own mediocrity. (In fact, she invites it particularly BECAUSE it is Byronesque, so it is a horrible metatheatrical chain of drama.) She doesn't give a damn what people think of her, but of her work - the fact that she's never finished anything is probably symptom of this. She doesn't show anyone what she can do. She's heavily afraid. In any creative writing classes, she parodies helplessly so that she doesn't consider it her 'real' work, and always has done.

Random Dislikes: "The Cure", people who listen to "The Cure", annoying kids (includes teenagers; we're not sure what age Hero considers herself, but it's somewhere up in the crabby fifties), people who keep spiders as pets, people who call themselves "authors" or "artists", any slang term coined after 1989, numerous parts of life's little mystery that don't offend people who are sane

Hobbies:

- smoking and drinking; Hero considers smoking and drinking the hallmark of a true artist, as anyone she's ever really admired on a literary basis has generally always had some kind of wretched addiction. She's not into drugs, but has been smoking heavily since she was fourteen and drinking heavily the moment she got her hands on a fake ID. She will readily rattle off a list of famous smokers and famous alcoholics. Her liver and lungs will readily rattle off... well, okay, they'll just rattle. Generally, she works herself up to be an incredibly maudlin drunk.

- never finishing The Great American Play; a self-confessed playwright, Hero has been writing the opening to the Great American Play ever since she was about twelve. She never finishes. Her beloved typewriter has seen page after page of stunted openings that she's never satisfied with. Her live is marked in time by the beginning of a new script, and then how long it takes for it to fill the trash can.

- poker; if you're thinking that Hero's life is self-stylized on a noir film, you'd be right.

- religion; as a teenager and a child, breaking away from her father's latent agnosticism, Hero discovered religion... All religion. Any church she joined, she lasted about three months. Not out of laziness - well, okay, laziness - but as for the fact that she'd discover some new religion and subscribe to it too; she's a walking Pascall's Wager, and safeguards herself by pretty much worshipping anyone who'll give her the time of day. (She wears a pentacle and a cross and Buddhist beads, which is enough to confuse anybody.) Faithless? Hell, no. Hero has got a lot of faith to give, for just about every divinity that presents itself. She has proudly stated of being a member of about ten dozen faiths over the years, collecting them like Pokemon.

Appearance

Hair - Hero's one deliberate femininity. Hero is a true redhead, with cascading waves of thick ginger-gold down to the small of her back; sure, she doesn't DO anything with it, but she likes it to be there. More strawberry than blonde, she has a Lion's Mane of sandy red that is generally braided into two and pinned to her head haphazardly, or tugged into a high ponytail. Two feathery chin-length bangs are left free, often tucked behind the ears to prevent them from being chewed off. (Hero has tiger teeth and will chew anything; pencils, pens, plastic forks, your dog.) She doesn't really care about putting it up nicely; the braids will have bits working loose, be asymmetrical, and generally be covered by a hat. She just likes admiring it when it's out. It is for her consumption, not yours.

Eyes - Liquid pale apple-green, slightly crooked eyebrows, pale gingery lashes. Her eyes are too low a saturation apple to be brilliant; heavy lids give her a faintly sleepy, generally insolent look.

Face - Hero can be called handsome or striking rather than pretty or beautiful; if she's pretty, she's pretty in a slightly unnerving way, strong-boned and mannish. Great Hepburnian cheekbones, though. Slightly beaky, frank nose; diamond-shaped face, firm little chin with a faint cleft, ironic twist to her generous mouth. Her mouth was bred to smirk. She carries the Primeval Leer. She still carries a scattering of almost-transparent fading freckles across her nose and cheeks, but these are heading southward into the aether. (Thank God, because she complains they made her look like Pippi Longstocking's misbegotten bastard.) You cannot say that she has 'delicate' features. You can say she has 'good DNA'. Her lips are bitten heavily.

Hero is also redhead-fair; pink undertones, peels rather than tans, white as the whitest whitey in Whiteyville.

Build - Okay. As stated earlier, Hero is a godforsakenly enormous 6'1", and her bones are prevailingly strong everywhere - she's lanky, for starters, rawboned, stringbean-thin and with all the muscle tone of an icecream cake. She has long bony legs and bony hips and bony everything, just about, except Nature kindly gifted her with a full c-cup. This would be just dandy if Hero was ever inclined to wear a skirt, or any article of clothing intended for a woman. Like her face, she still carries faint traces of freckles on her body, generally upper arms and bosom. She has big ink-stained hands and bigger feet, quite broadly shouldered. She obviously missed a great career in basketball, only she was too busy being the winner of many a hard-fought bottle.

Clothing - You will never find Hero in a skirt. You will never find Hero in Pink. You will never find Hero in any article of clothing that was ever conceived for a woman except for the humble bra; Hero, in fact, tends to dress as if the thirties are coming back any day now and she's waiting for the shift in fashion tide. She can and will wear men's button-up shirts and sloppily done ties, the arms rolled up to her elbows; she wears trousers and men's jeans, baggy, but it's trousers rather than jeans. She often looks like Dick Tracy on the lam, without the yellow. She dresses like a bad parody of a journalist. Ties are a constant. Coffee stains are a bigger constant. The main prides of her wardrobe are a leather business trenchcoat down to her ankles that looks like it can't even remember better days, and her ten million fedoras. To say she looks weird would be an understatement. The most 'normal' she'll get is a wifebeater and severely abused jeans. Hero dresses like a man, and not just any man; the kind of man you expect to hear giving himself a dramatic monologue as he walks down the street and tips his hat rakishly to some gangster's moll. Hero is 6'1", deeply eccentric in thought and deed, and ceased caring about what people thought of her looks somewhere around the tender age of five when she thought that garbage sacks were hot costumewear.

Voice - Roughened with cigarettes and cheap liquor, Hero has a low and heartbreakingly scratchy jazzy alto. She also laughs like a horse.

Personality

Hero is her own Byronic, well, hero. She is the champion of all the faith in the world and nobody she's willing to give it to but herself; of nervous energy, of constant startings and never finishings, of grabbing hold a wild and crazy idea and never seeing it through. Oh, yeah, and she's a total acid-tongued bastard.

Hero is a passionate bundle of nerves whose energy is tied up in her one concern: Hero. There's only ever been one person in her life, and that's herself, and she's her own bosom companion and worst enemy. She's a tempestuous wannabe playwright who both obsesses and loathes over her own creation and talents; she has a massive ego you could use as a buoyancy device, but is constantly undermined by her own self-doubt as to whether she lives in a house of cards. She's not actually worried about this; she's settled into complacency that all tempestuous artists are tortured this way, that this is a good thing, and that she shouldn't actually try to get over her own stupidities. Talent, in Hero's book, will not come from striving to finish something; one day it will hit her like a lightning bolt and everything will be okay. O, for a muse of Fire. Hero strives and works herself to the bone on very short-term levels; she works in furious short bursts and then gets bored, dissatisfied, and throws her work away. She's restless and searching for something, but she sure as hell doesn't know what.

But who is Hero on first glance? 'Bastard' is accurate in one area, and that's the fact that Hero is totally bucking social gender norms. Hero walks the male walk, talks the male talk, and dresses to follow. She's not actually deliberately rejecting the label of 'woman' - she's female as all hell, and doesn't mind one bit - it's just that she seems to embody too many male characteristics for comfort. She's friendly in a distant, ungushy kind of way, prone to being totally aggressive in every walk of life, coarse and tactless and blunt; she has an acid, sarcastic tongue and will use it often. It's not even that she's irritable: au contraire, Hero is laid-back and casual, undemanding, frank and funny. She just seems to have very little patience for the human race, and isn't equipped to deal with irritability - she stresses easily, which translates in her to grumpiness rather than worry, and she turns to cigarettes constantly to bring back her mood. She is intensely solitary in a way where she doesn't hide away, but just gets aggrieved when humanity bumps into her expecting something. She is sarcastic, will get physically aggressive with men, downright rude and looking for a joke at your expense. (If you react badly, she will get surprised. What? It was just a joke, jesus.) She is not a restful person to be around, understandably.

Extreme and excessive apathy and don'tcarishness, coupled with the poise of a much older man rather than a nineteen-year-old girl, have seen Hero safely through high school. She walks entirely to the beat of her own drum, but due to lucky genetic cards and the "look, I'm just passing through and I don't give a damn" flashcard she tends to terrify people rather than attract their menace. (For one thing, Hero has all the menace you can ever eat.) She's cheerful, but entirely detached from school life. It is as if she is a mature student going through highschool again for some reason; not somebody who cares about the little kids swarming around, and somebody you ignore who sits in the back of the class. Even teachers are irked by Hero. She is mature and totally alien. She takes part in no activity, barely listens in class, and doesn't volunteer information unless asked. (And when asked, answers in a puzzled and faintly confused What Did You Ask Me For? You Know I Know, Why Didn't You Ask One Of These Kids In Here tone.) (She is also a year behind, having moved around constantly, and is relieved that she is in her final year before graduation.)

Being laughed at doesn't make Hero mad, because you have to value somebody's opinion to care about being laughed at and this is The Herodyssey. Hero's chink in her armour is knowledge. She can't stand not knowing something, even if it is something as stupidly trivial as "what is Boyzone's greatest hit?". She will denounce something she doesn't know as trivial even as she tries to get the answer, hotly stating that she knows it anyway, she just didn't want to tell you. Nothing gets Hero's dander up quicker than being called out on something she really genuinely doesn't know about. In the game of intellectual penis-measuring, her dick always has to be bigger.

But in the end, Hero doesn't care because she is selfish. She doesn't give a damn about anybody else or their problems, and would laugh at anyone who wanted to be her friend. She has great grand outspoken ideas about the world, about people as a whole, life and religion and art - but she cannot take people individually. It doesn't work. No can do. She cannot place any faith or trust in anyone. In a conversation, she has to muscle herself into a position of control - the conversations with the most shelf life are debates about topics she's interested in, sterile intellectual points. She will be enthusiastic, engaging, vivacious and generous in a fight. Fights are GREAT. It's just everything else she can't stand. She can't do small talk, she can't care about somebody else's life; mankind as a whole she has great hopes for, but God help her if she's going to trust the next-door neighbour. Hero has never been truly burnt in her life (or, at least, this life - metatheatrical hinty-hint), but in her book humanity is great on paper but bad up close. Her favourite people are dead poets, philosophers and presidents.

The only exception to this rule is romance, which for Hero is short and passionate. She will get obsessive crushes on people and press her advances aggressively for about a week, then forget about them. She is bisexual, having reasoned out to herself that it increases her chances of a date if she wants one and that it was a fallacy in planning for anyone to commit themselves to just one gender. (Translation: she will be a bad girlfriend for anyone. Or maybe it's 'bad boyfriend'. Gender placement, topping and bottoming doesn't have a home in Hero's life.) Romance is a great idea in her head, but 1. no writer should ever be lucky in love in her book and 2. the thought of commitment to another person makes her run screaming to the hills.

(Hero thinks two things are hot. She thinks intellectuals are hot, and will open her mental legs for words like "I am doing a dissertation on Siddharta". However, she also has a severe weakness for big eyes, "ooh, you're so smart!", and the chance to call someone Pumpkin.)

It doesn't really make an impact to her. Hero loves her own company. Her head is a nuclear plant, hot and boiling with ideas and internal monologues, in a constant brash rush of plans all toppling over themselves and scurrying away before she can sit on them. She doesn't need other people - or at least, she egotistically thinks she doesn't. She lives her life from one mood swing to another, her own one-woman play, and her inability to cope stems a great deal from having only herself to deal with herself. She is tempestuous. Her coping mechanism is Jack Daniels. She is headed for an early grave, but thinks it is dramatic irony. Hero is all about dramatic irony.

She fears her own failure. She fears not leaving an impact. In the end, a tiny kernel of Hero fears that she will have left an impact on nobody, has never left an impact, and that she'll die in a ditch with nobody caring about her. To force herself out of being terrified, she has taught herself to think that that idea is kind of cool and edgy and appropriate for a genius. It is all transparent bullshit.

Melodramatic, helplessly alone and even more helplessly pretentious, impulsively mental, totally locked in the Hero Show starring Hero written by Hero and directed by Hero, there are in the end two words for her. They're "batshit", and "crazy". (You could also use "gender fuck", if you like.)

History - Present:

Hero Ordell was born to a renowned and celebrated metaphysicist, who was excellence unrivalled at academic things and sucky at other things, like 'life'. His only foray into marriage with a pretty fashion model (for whom Hero takes after in height and hair) ended terribly when Hero was six years old in a messy divorce; Edgar took Hero, as her mother wanted approximately zilch to do with Edgar or his spawn ever again, and from there Hero's fate was sealed.

Edgar was a kind man, and Hero wanted for nothing; he instilled in her a love of academia, of the arts, of literature and philosophy and science, but didn't give her any other love. Edgar had a hard-on for his work, and dragged Hero from state to state and country to country where he worked at various universities for short lengths of time. He forgot about his little daughter, who was entirely self-sufficient in too many ways; she often went without a nanny or babysitter simply because she didn't need one. Hero grew up in close quarters with her father - who she called by his Christian name from the start - because she was useful; she opened maps and they both puzzled out how to ask directions in whatever language they were attempting to use, ate dinner together - but Edgar never spent any time getting to know who the hell Hero was. He was simply not cut out to be a father. The only time Hero could engage him in conversation was in asking him about Tolstoy's impact on Russian literature, or the theory of relativity as applied to twentieth-century poems. He taught her how to think and apply her brain. He also fucked her up emotionally but good! (Why do you think she has the sensibilities of an old man? Her father is the only one she has ever given time to, and she cannily learnt early that to put any faith in him was asking for trouble. Edgar once accidentally left Hero behind in Bangkok because he forgot about her. She just arranged her own flight ticket to their destination. She was ten. Hero was born self-possessed.)

Books were Hero's mother and father, simply because the TV was half the time in a foreign language she only had a smattering of. (Hero can speak a great number of languages. However, she can only speak enough of these languages to ask things like 'where is the bathroom' and 'this food gave me botulism'. Just like too many things, she is halfassed at it.) Reading Fitzgerald at age seven is going to fuck anyone up (and also make them think that getting piss drunk is more glamorous than it really is). Hero got enormous amounts of pocket money, whatever she asked for, and her own way as a rule of thumb. There were no rules.

Hero really didn't get into formal education until she was eleven and went back to America for a long spell, moving only state to state. Edgar enrolled her in local highschools; Hero coasted, doing well enough to pass comfortably but working about as hard as a summer grasshopper. She had already decided that she was going to be the World's Greatest Playwright, had contented herself with the thought of probably not going to college and instead just graduating highschool so that her brilliance had time to work. She saw her father more and more rarely as he burnt himself out giving lectures and writing articles; she got into drinking and smoking so as to further live the Literary Dream. (All he did was comment that she had better use ashtrays and not set things on fire, and then they had a spirited argument about President Johnson.) After running himself down, Edgar eventually decided that he wanted to go on a sabbatical to write a book, and chose Grand Bend as the place. They moved to a nice house Wickham Township which is way too big for both of them - they hardly see each other even when Edgar's home - but that's the way they like it.

Hero was enrolled into Grand Bend High, out of her way, simply because she wanted to slum it and because it was easier; in Grand Bend Park they would have made fuss about her missing classes, probably cared enough about her being Dick Tracy to send her to the guidance counsellor, and done other crap like that. In Grand Bend High, there are places to smoke, and there's a bottle shop down the road. Great!

History – Past:

Holding off on the nitty-gritty until there are more people, but: Fool was Death's tomboyish sister, and probably a hell of a lot easier to get on with than her current incarnation. Hero is more the upended Fool; old!Fool was less of a "endless beginnings with no resolutions" kind of gal, sweeter, more openly optimistic, would wear dresses if compelled. She probably doted on Death as passionately as she did the rest of her life (the great bits, not the trying not to get drunk at nice parties and hit ambassadors: I bet she loved horses), not very demure but incredibly loyal to her office and position. Then she fell for Pentacles in a seriously dumb move, quarrelled with Death about it, and things went Boom.

Soldier Information

Soldier/Knight/etc Name: Fool. THE Fool. Nothing but.

Sphere of Power: Beginning/Faith

Uniform Colours: Apple Green (#7CCD7C) and Peacock Blue (#33A1C9)

Uniform: Uniform based off the Visconti-Sforza 1450 cards. The base of Fool's outfit is a peacock-blue leotard, sleeveless, splitting at the base of her ribcage in a cleavage-defying v; over this is a thigh-length, ragged coat in apple green, tattered at the ends over her upper thighs, belted loosely at the middle. The sleeves are only three-quarter length, tattered over her forearms, and there are various patches in other green hues over parts of the coat. The coat appears to be made out of light matte cloth.

A garter goes around her right thigh, also in apple-green, ringed all around with copper studs. Heavy copper bracelets ring her wrists and a copper collar is around her neck. Nothing covers her legs except for what appear to be equally tattered peacock-blue leggings, rolled just before the knees, stretching from knees to ankles; the material tatters at the ankles. Fool goes barefoot.

Fool's hair is pinned up in messy braids; more interesting than the braids are the numerous peacock feathers tucked in them, stuffed so that they stand straight up, making her head look like a creepy pincushion. Two spirals are daubed on her cheeks, one in apple-green and one in (you guessed it) peacock blue.

Fool's only weapon is a nasty length of knotted oak, thickening at the end to make it a club. It's about four and a half feet long, slender, and heavy like a bitch.

Team/Alignment: Oh, well, I wonder. Maybe FOOL'S TEAM.

Transformation: Arcananum mutatio, Fool!

Powers:

Genesis Calling (offence, beginning)

Fool's ultimate attack, that she can pretty much only use once a week. If ever. This attack is wildly prone to spinning out of control and hitting everyone, teammates and enemies alike, as well as any soft fleshy things in the immediate area. To perform, Fool lifts her wedge of wood aboves her head in one hand; the other makes a melodramatic movement like a conductor calling a chord, and every soldier, page's and knight's hands glow like a nightfest at a radiation ceremony.

This attack calls up the elemental source energy in all soldiers, basically tossing them in a magical microwave and making their bibbity-bobbity-boo cells rebound. They have three choices as the energy rises; they can do an attack to get rid of it, they can attempt to do nothing and choke it down, or they can spin out of control and release their energy in a very primeval, crude FOOM. This causes complete chaos all over the battlefield as everyone at once has to release their energy (or get incapacitated trying to control it). Fool begins and creates this excess of energy, so it is no strain on them when they release it; their energy level goes back to normal as if nothing happened. However, energy is released, and if there are a large number of people things go understandably berserk.

However, thankfully, Fool won't care because she'll be collapsed on the ground in a dead faint. This attack ICES her. She is not going to use it unless she is in dire straits. It is the most lameass attack in the world; it hurts everyone, INCLUDING her, and has all the control of a horse with hot ginger up its ass.

This is Fool's Death Reborn Revolution, only it's retarded.

Shattered Faith (offence, faith)

(you can stop hitting me for the title ow ow ow)

Simpler offence/defence attack. Only lasts a minute, tops, because Fool has to stand still to keep the effect going and she's not going to stand anywhere for longer than a minute. Fool brandishes her club at her target and mutters the soldier name of her opponent (which she has to know!); immediately, the target will be wracked with indecision and lose total faith in their abilities and their comrades. They no longer trust their friends' ability to protect them or win the battle, or their own ability to fight. Cue tortured monologues. HA HA, SUCKA. If the person to whom it hits is already a cynical, jaded jerkoff who doesn't believe in their friends anyway, this attack is about as useful as a chocolate teakettle unless it hits at their own self-belief; the same applies for the weak of ego who don't trust in themselves.

Fool can use this about three times in battle if she feels so inclined. Generally she only feels inclined to hit people with her stick. This attack can always be resisted by the perky.

Writing Test: Hero vowed privately to eliminate rave music as soon as she got the chance.