'She Who Dares Wins' Profiles'

A updated and fleshed out profiles for my characters in my story that can be read Here

Winona Galen (Code name: Mousetrap)

Age: 47 (Appearance age: 27)

Gender: Female

Species: Neko

Height: 6’0

Weight: 137lbs

Eye Color: Yellow

Hair: White (Short)

Skin Tone: Normal white.

Diet: Normal human, with the occasional Tinie now and then.

Card Symbolism: The Spades playing cards are known to symbolize adversity, conflict and challenge. The Queen of Spades are assigned to women who have judgment that is practical, logical, and intellectual but have a tragic lovelife, normally widows.

Clothing/Equipment:

Signature outfit is a black velvet sleeveless waistcoat dress with white chiffon top worn underneath and long black socks.

Winona’s equipment is always specialized for the situation at hand, having the benefits of being an ISD agent and the liberties being on the Magiocrat’s side would afford. These include but are not restricted to An ISD Hover car equipped with cloaking technology, Physic ID’s that show whatever identification information she desires when uncover. Polykeys that can change shape in order to unlock almost any door. A laptop computer connected to a secret ISD network and an enchanted phone that can connect to similar devices regardless of location.
Background:

Winona is a middle class Negavian Neko, born in the City of Negav in 2028. As an young adult she came to become widely known as a self-published researcher into predators, a career that she worked side by side with her husband, shaun. Together they researched and catalogued many common species of Felarya and commissioned this information to be accessible for public use, all for the intentions to create more awareness of Felarya dangers and stop naïve visitors from marching to their deaths. One of their distinctive aspects as researchers was how they used and adapted the principles of human psychology into their work, stressing greatly that the predators of felarya weren’t stupid animals and their behavior is as complex as much a human’s, and therefore should not be underestimated and dealt with a sense of restraint and caution.

In 2058, at the age of thirty Winona suffered heartbreak as Shaun was caught in an unexpected mishap that lead to him being eaten by an predator, Winona went off the rails, feeling betrayed by a city unwilling to enforce justice for someone who gave twelve years of dedicated service. And also betrayed by certain individuals that taken advantage of her in her time of weakness. She struck back, committing certain crimes against the city using her skills of psychological manipulation before eventually being tracked down and caught by the ISD.

In exchange for her crimes not going to court she reluctantly agreed to serve the ISD as a agent and investigator, using her skills as an predator hunter consultant and criminal psychological expert to help keep the ISD a few steps ahead of their suspects and other unconventional threats to security. Codenamed ‘Mousetrap’ for her ability to draw predators and criminals into traps using bait, typically live bait.

Abilities/Skills:

Those who don’t know who Winona is tend to greatly underestimate her. Outside use of gadgets and artifacts she has no magical ability, she isn’t skilled in martial arts and has no outstanding skills in weapons. But she will rarely engages her targets upfront and rather use every dirty trick in the book against them.
Winona mostly relies on her skills of deduction and can quickly work out a weakness of an opponent merely by observing her target, or if that’s not possible by using any other information possible.

She is also skilled in manipulation, able to use the very personalities of her targets against them. Winona is good at deceiving others and can put on any emotion and non-verbal communication to keep people from knowing her true intentions. A lot of the time she doesn’t even need to outright lie to fool people, but merely distort the truth by twisting it around, often hiding deception in truth in order to be effectively persuasive and get what she wants.
Because of this great understanding of non-verbal communication she can cold-read other people’s body language and can tell what they are most likely feeling, which only makes her ability to manipulate them even more precise.

Winona is somewhat stubborn in her use of logic, to the point of breaking laws she believes are contradictorily or have logical fallacies, however she also has a great understanding of how illusions of grandeur can make someone inept simply by studying foolish people that pass through Negav, She knows better to underestimate a target and merely judge them on unfounded assumptions of superiority and instead focuses on hard facts backed up with evidence. Unlike others she has a great understanding of how small and weak she is compared to many other creatures and therefore refuses to fight in a way that would only play to their strengths.

Personality:

Winona for the most part carries a particular charm about her, speaking nicely and politely even to people who know they are being screwed over by her. She has a keen sense of humor and often replies wittingly when people talk to her. Many believe this is an attempt to manipulate people by making them sympathize with her via ‘Stockholm syndrome’. She knows that too many people in Negav are unpleasant to talk to and highly arrogant, and thus she knows that simply by acting charming and polite she has a better chance to win over people than most. Which is why the ISD sometimes use her in integration, as she knows how to appeal to the suspect’s best interest and make them open up.

Underneath this charm is a sadistic side, she is indifferent to other people’s suffering save for the few people who cares for, to the point where she eats Tinies as punishment for invading her home. Many believe Winona to be a sociopath, who while greatly understands people’s feelings and can pick up on them and fake responses to them.

Winona’s coldness also have something to do with growing up in Negav, her father always encouraging her not to make too many friends in an attempt to save her from being traumatized if they were to be eaten by predators. While cold to everyone else, she highly values the few emotional ties that she does have, being fully aware of the consequences of being a lone wolf in a world where loners are preyed on. She also values her friendships as they maintain her social abilities, giving her the edge she needs when manipulating people. She makes friends based on people’s intelligence, as she likes to surround herself with people who can give her meaningful perspectives and insights and anyone who can match wits with her can impress her and win her confidence, but has almost no tolerance for ineptness. She considers stupid people harmful to society as they drag everyone down with them and therefore has no qualms with using them as she sees fit if she can get away with it, as she believes using them as pawns puts them to better use to society than they would have been if left alone to their reckless lives. Overall this means she does not judge people on who or what they are, but on how they deal with situations. This also applies to her sexually, she is Bi and her partner can be either gender or any species as long as they win her affections with their wit.

Winona is fond of strategic games, such as chess and card games, and likes to take part in them as part of socializing, often talking to her opponents and picking up Information on their responses and how well they play. When Shaun was still alive she used to love playing with him, as he was always the most challenging player. As part of their playing they would flirt and play by rules that heightened sexual tension as a way to make their games more interesting.

Even though Shaun has been dead for a decade, Winona hasn’t moved on and still talks to him at an memorial that she built in her own house. She does engage with the occasional sexual relationship, lately with her supervisor ‘Rachael’, Winona does have a fondness for Racheal as she reminds her of herself when she was younger. But their conflicting views on the treatment of others often create tension and bitterment that prevents their relationship being anything more than casual.

Winona has an addiction to smoking Catnip, she smokes when she wants to block out distractions and suppress negative emotions such as stress. An often-unwanted side effect to the Catnip is that it makes her less restrained and more open, and might over act to things she wouldn’t normally. Winona’s habit has made her more used to Catnip than the typical Neko, and so can casually smoke an amount of nip that would have anyone else on the floor.

Winona is a lucid dreamer; able to dream whatever she wants. She originally trained herself to do this to “spend time with Shaun” but now more often uses it to help her solve particular problems and help plan her schemes, practicing out scenarios and figuring out their most likely outcomes.

Saskia

Age: Unknown (Physical age: Default 27, but she can change willingly)

Default Gender: Female

Species: Unidentified Polymorphous humanoid

Default Height: 5’8

Weight: 125lbs (Can not change by shape-shifting)

Default Eye Color: Purple

Default Hair: Black (Short)

Default Skin Tone: Ghostly White

Clothing/Equipment:

Saskia almost never sticks to one outfit, as she is always passing herself as someone else. Though she seems to prefer hooded coats and robes.
Saskia doesn’t tend to stick to certain weapons and equipment. Instead she buys and steals whatever she needs from her victims as she needs them. Though she often carries enchanted communication rings to keep in contact with certain people. The rings seem to have been purchased from the Negav black-market.
Diet: Normal human, partially fond of fruit, sweets, ice cream and strong liquor. She doesn’t eat meat at all. Not because she doesn’t want to harm living creatures, she just doesn’t like the taste.

Card Symbolism: The Spades playing cards are known to symbolize adversity, conflict and challenge. The Ace of Spades value as a card changes from game to game. Widely known as the death card, it is thought to symbolize misfortune but can also symbolize an end to an situration and the beginning of a new.

Background:

Who or what species Saskia belongs to is a mystery, but it’s understood she is a form of humanoid shape-shifter, apparently able to change her appearance without the aid of magic. The shape-shifting ability seems to be a camouflage genetic trait that allows her to blend in with humanoid beings roughly her size. Given her intelligence and familiarity with civilization it is assumed that she originates from a civilized society. But for whatever reason she has devoted her life to the disruption of Negav, anyone she befriends on the way serve little more than pawns for her to manipulate to her cause. She lives somewhere out in the forest and retreats to her hideouts when she needs to lay low. She has multiple places for hiding out in, some are villages and towns, and some places are remote like caves. This makes her really difficult to track down, and allows her to travel through Felaya more effectively, traveling from hideout to hideout, meaning she is rarely too far away from a place of refuge and only rests out in the open if given no choice.

Due to the fact that no one has ever encountered something like her before, and there is no illusion magic to detect, she can willingly walk in and out of Negav under any guise, as she likes.
Most never live long enough to acknowledge her existence beyond the facades she sets up. Even if she reveals herself, it may very well be another level of deception. For example she has revealed herself to Predators in the past, but plays the part of a carefree fun loving predator…but this is actually a ruse to manipulate them into taking care of people she needs to depose of, under the pretence of ‘preparing a meal for her best friends.’

Abilities/Skills:

Saskia can pass herself as anything that’s roughly human in shape and size. She can grow and shrink a few feet to simulate a height of a particular person, but cannot grow into a giant or shrink to Tinie size. She also can’t radically depart from the humanoid shape, so she can’t grow a Naga tail or grow fairy wings. But something subtle like Neko ears and tails or elf ears she can do. This appears to be because Saskia has a constant body mass, she can’t produce more mass than what she already has, so when she shape shifts, she is actually moving molecules to one place to another. So when she makes herself taller, she becomes much thinner as she takes existing fat from her body to produce the added height, and when she becomes shorter she becomes chubbier, as the reduced mass in placed anywhere she could squeeze it. At her shortest (4 foot) she ends up with a considerable potbelly.

She can use her shape-shifting ability to close small flesh wounds, but is still greatly vulnerable to attacks to vital organs like the heart and brain. Also any dismembered body parts could in theory be regenerated using any excess body mass, but obviously there would be a limit to this before she runs out of mass. A finger would be easy and could be replaced several times before having an effect, replacing a whole arm just once would leave her skinny and malnourished, and she wouldn’t even be able to replace anything more than an arm without killing herself.

She can alter her vocal cords to simulate the voice of someone else (she can estimate shape of one’s vocal cords simply by ear) and can change her gender. She can also change her age appearance anything from ten years up to eighty.

Only predators with really sharp senses can detect that there is something different about her while she is disguised, and even then they wouldn’t be sure of what it is. Saskia often gets out of being eaten by amusing predators with her shape-shifting skills, and disassociating herself from civilized creatures, her ‘predator disguise’ often involves her going naked, something she has no qualms in doing if it means she can gain their trust quicker. Most predators simply see her as a predator that knows human ways, never suspecting that she is genuinely civilized.

Saskia is very observant in the way certain species speak and their mannerisms so she can duplicate them for an even more convincing disguise. She tends to avoid trying to duplicate certain individuals, as that requires a complete character study of her target, and so prefers to create her own identities. This allows her to have complete anonymously, able to commit crimes and give the impression that they are all unrelated cases performed by different criminals. This is how her existence has gone unnoticed by Negav.

Personality:

While Winona is intelligent and manipulative by using logic, Saskia is equally intelligent and manipulative through creativity and thinking out of the box. Her chaotic view of the world allows her see solutions that others wouldn’t see. Also, while Winona relies a lot on gadgets, Saskia’s plans often rely on technology not working, as she has a talent for disabling and breaking things to an extent that she could almost be considered a gremlin in her own right.

Saskia takes great amusement in her ability to shape-shift, often creating very characteristic identities, with varying vocabularies, priories and ambitions. Most of the time they simply serve a function to manipulate someone, but that doesn’t stop her from putting detail into the roles. Part of the fun is to just see what she can get away with and still not be caught, and her characters can often be outlandish, mad or simply implausible, and since Negav is such an cosmopolitan culture with all sorts of visitors from different worlds, it means they never cacth on.

She tends to go by many names due to her use of made up identities. ‘Saskia’ is not even her birth name, simply the name she picked to use when around most predators. Asking Saskia for her real name tends to be counter-productive, as she will just give another made up name.

Saskia has a fondness of strong liquor, to the point where she will take a moment to indulge herself if given the oppourinity, even when half-way through malipuating someone. Though she rarely gets compltely drunk from this, meaning that either she has a good sense of her limits or she’s really good at holding her drink. Though taking her bizzare characters into consideration, it might be the case that Saskia spends quite a bit of time being mildly intoxicated at the very least.

She doesn’t seem interested in living a normal life, perhaps feeling that she can never be accepted anyway without using a facade, and so normal life is pointless to her. Instead she pursues to what takes her interest. Her latest hobby, bringing down Negav. She mostly seems to be doing it because it presents a challenge, but deeper down she seems to have a grudge against Negav authority.

When Winona starts trying to uncover Saskia’s actives, she unwittingly has started playing Saskia’s game, and for the first time in a long time has a rival that can match her. Pity those that get stuck in the crossfire.

Rachael Torin (Code name: Bittersweet)

Age: 28

Gender: Female

Species: Neko

Height: 5,4

Weight: 115lbs

Eye Color: Blue

Hair: Red (Long)

Skin Tone: Black.

Diet: Normal human.

Clothing/Equipment: Suiting to her executive job, Rachael wears a business getup, A sleeveless waistcoat, a white shirt underneath, a red tie, an office mini skirt and opaque tights.

Rachael is involved in Agent management, and therefore doesn’t work in the field and wouldn’t have the exact same equipment that Winona has access to. But she does have communicated devices such as ISD laptop computer and enchanted phone.

Card Symbolism: The Hearts playing cards are known to symbolize those that are more driven by their feelings.

Background:

While Rachael is descended from Felaryan Nekos, she herself was raised in another world. Generations’ back, her ancestors befriended a group of human adventurers and eventually decided to accompany them back to their home world through the Negav gate. While settling into a human world with no other nekos did have it’s share of discrimination towards the family because of their appearance, however things were pretty much an improvement, while this world was in trade with Felarya, it wasn’t common for nekos to cross over and therefore a small minority associated them with predators.

Rachael, just like the generations since, was brought up in a modern human civilization, only knowing of Felarya from stories the family passed on through the generations. She was raised with normal human values. Soon Rachael became unsatisfied with her life on this planet. By the age of twenty-eight she found herself unemployed and struggling in an competitive job market, where most jobs were outsourced to other worlds and many employers choosing to pick humans over her despite her experience in office work.

Searching for purpose in her life, she decided to the world of her ancestors, reasoning that a more dangerous place like Felarya would have more job openings than the lazy overdeveloped world she was brought up in. So her new purpose in life was now to try to bring some good to a troubled world, it didn’t matter how small the job was, as long it she felt she was helping Negav. And so found a way to get to Felarya, unaware of the morally convoluted world she was about to enter.

Ever since The ISD forced Winona Galen into servitude to the agency, they have always had a supervisor to make sure she kept to her obligations and to aid her I her work. Something that Winona herself resented and never saw the supervisor as nothing as a ball and chain, only having freedom outside the city (relative freedom that is, as her whereabouts are always known by the agency from a curse they placed on her.) So Winona always had a habit of making her supervisor’s life hell so that they would quit. So the Agency started looking for someone who might have a chance of keeping her in line, someone Winona would empathize with. After seeing that a civilized Neko with qualifications in social studies and psychology was looking for work, they decided that Rachael was the closest candidate they were going to get.
Rachael earned the codename ‘Bittersweet’ which refers to her red hair and the fact that she has an bitter attitude about Felarya life, but only because she rejects the cold attitude that she often sees around Negav and tries her best to help people.

Abilities/Skills:

Rachael came to Felarya for a executive placement, and therefore has no magic abilities or fighting skills. Though she is more likely to pick up a gun than Winona is. She owns a pistol that she has for protection. She is trained in social skills and Psychology and for the most part can keep with Winona and is not be so easily manipulated. She is also trained in medical assistance and can treat wounds and other medical problems.

Personality:

Rachael, compared to Winona, is much more empathetic, less arrogant and has more traditional morals that makes her stick out like a sore thumb in Negav. She in particular has great sympathy for Tinies, having never grown up around them and had the neko habit of eating smaller animals socially conditioned out of her. She is therefore horrified to discover that in Felarya, eating Tinies is commonplace with the Neko population, even if it’s discouraged by their human allies.

Rachael strives to do what she feels is right and tries her best to help others, but often finds herself having to turn an blind eye on certain things in the name of doing her job for Negav security. She feels it doesn’t matter what side she takes, she will always be doing something she feels is wrong in some way or another, so she picks what she thinks is the lesser evil, at least in Negav Government she can help keep the citizens of Negav safe from the outside world of Felarya.

Rachael often serves as Winona's conscience, as she is convinced that Winona doesn't have one. She often argues with Winona when she thinks Winona goes out of line. Winona and Rachael’s relationship can be best described as an squabbling couple, their conflicts often being a clash of ideologies of two different worlds but able to work together regardless and are able to put their issues aside, even if their disputes sometimes end in violent outbursts.

Despite her misgivings towards the general Negav attitudes and Winona’s cold manipulative personality, Rachael still puts up with it all to do her work, she feels she has more of a purpose in Negav than that she had in her home world. Rachael and Winona put up with each other because they know that they want the same thing, to protect Negav, It’s just that they have different ideas as to how Negav should be protected. Rachael would like to fix the unlawfulness and corrupt nature of the city, Winona is only interested in dealing with immediate threats to security and believes in almost doing anything (lawfully or not) to do so.