Post by Isabela Holstein on Dec 18, 2013 8:47:16 GMT -5
Player: 0173
Contact: (PM me)
Intentions: Villain
Background
Name: Isabela Holstein
Race: Human
Species: Banshee Heritage
Age: 20
Tier: 3
Social
Place of Birth: Rynok, Central Ruthenia
Allegiances: Ruthenian Mafia
Aspirations: Be useful to her Papa
Nicknames: -
Titles: -
Relatives: Parents unknown, Grigoriy Holstein (adoptive father)
Significant Other: -
Mental
Personality: Cold as steel. Merciless as a knife. Loyal as a dog. Isabela knows she's a weapon - a deadly, cherished weapon, but a weapon all the same. She also knows it's exactly what her Papa needs, and for the man who sheltered and raised her as his own, she'd do anything. It doesn't matter that there's killing involved; that's just biology playing out. Planning her "visits" is always a good challenge to keep her mind sharp. The moment of death, the smell of terror, the fear in their eyes - she isn't particularly thrilled by those, but they don't faze her any longer. The nature of her role, in the sort of organization upright citizens should want nothing to do with - that's just someone else's point of view. People have needs. Her Papa works hard to meet those needs where no one else wants to. She's just being a good girl and taking out the trash. She's happy right where she is, with who she is and what she does. It's not like there's room anywhere else for a freak like her.
Likes: Papa, her pet rats, planning "visits" to misbehaving clients, her personal bodyguards, flute music
Dislikes: People who play the hero, small children who get mixed up in her "visits", her dark glasses, the sheer look of horror on the average person's face when she steps fully into the light and removes her dark glasses
Strengths: In the hands of people who know what they're doing, devotion can be quite the formidable tool. Blessed of a fairly intelligent mind, with the experience derived from ten years on the job, she's already more than adequately equipped for her role as an enforcer. Bring in the motivation, not just to succeed but to excel. Add a few metric tons of dedication to efficient, clean work, an equal willingness to live or die to suit her Papa's needs, and the good sense of judgment for when which is the more appropriate of the two. Isabela knows weapons have to be maintained, and regularly hones her skills to make sure she stays the sharpest living knife in the mafia's arsenal. She won't hesitate when it's time to stab.
Weaknesses: Isabela's social skills are mostly limited to the different ways she can keep an eye on people or threaten them into cooperation. She has very few attachments in life - few people to trust, even among the bodyguards assigned to watch over her. A necessity when today's bodyguard may end up on tomorrow's chopping block, which has happened more than once, but it reaches the same conclusion: she has a better baseline for friendship with her numerous psychically tamed rats than she can form with most people.
Physical
Major Details: Lean build, 5 ft 8 in (172cm), wavy black hair in a ponytail, white skin, eyes have no pupils
Appearance: Some banshees are beautiful. Some aren't. From a distance, Isabela looks like an average human of twenty years, slightly on the lean side. Get within a few feet and something begins to seem off about her. Her skin isn't just very pale. It's chalk white, and dark veins can be seen around her temples, neck and wrists. But the eyes have it. Blank white sclera, no pupils, streaked here and there with cracks of red where blood vessels are nearer the surface, and yet, she can see through them without any trouble. To save on the shock value, she keeps most of her body covered up with gloves and long-sleeved clothing, and hides her eyes behind dark glasses.
Natural Abilities: Isabela has a gymnast's agility and strength, is a good marksman with handguns and rifles, and was trained in the Upper Kingdom's Serpent style of hand-to-hand combat.
Natural Traits: Mostly regular human traits (see Appearance)
Strengths: If shooting isn't an option, Isabela knows plenty of ways to kill people with her bare hands. Or maim them, or disable them in a relatively painless manner, or beat them to within an inch of their lives. A flexible body and a fluid combat style make her good at dodging blows, turning to dampen their impact, and sneaking through enclosed spaces.
Weaknesses: There's always something bigger, heavier, or stronger. Sometimes they're armored, or made of their own armor. Occasionally, they're Weres. Most of the time, bullets make them laugh. Up against anything in a weight class that goes beyond human, Isabela's physical abilities won't cut it. Without magic to back her up, her options are "run", "hide", "wait for backup", and "don't get hit". When there's a ton of force behind a blow, there's only so much she can deflect with an average human body.
Magical
Specializations:
- Tier 1: Mental (Psychic), Proficiency 3.
- Tier 2: Physical (Serpent Among the Clouds), Proficiency 3.5. Isabela can use her movements to generate or manipulate lightning.
- Tier 3: Mental (Metal), Proficiency 3. Isabela can create or manipulate metal with her thoughts.
- Tier 4:
- Tier 5:
Visual Display: Isabela's psychic aura and lightning have a metallic silver color.
Special Abilities:
Tier 0: Enhanced Speed 1
Tier 1: Enhanced Speed 2
Tier 2: Enhanced Strength 1
Tier 3: Familiar
Bonus Special Abilities:
Tier 0: Alternate Sense: Night Vision
Tier 2: Insight
Heritage: Alternate Sense: Life Force
Unique Abilities: Isabela has a piercing scream which can be focused over a specific area around or in front of her to deal sonic damage at the level of a tier 1 spell.
Strengths: Guided by her inventive streak, Isabela has discovered and developed many different ways of using her magic to skin the proverbial cat. Her lightning magic, being a physical style, is boosted by her mastery of a martial art. Turned inward, her psychic abilities provide her with a catalog of sharpened memories and better focus; pointed out at the world, they take the form of powerful telekinetic and telepathic spells, and help her direct an army of rats. Her use of metal goes beyond simple projectiles and shields - with blueprints stored in her mind through her Psychic magic, she can summon a small arsenal of modern weaponry at the speed of thought.
Weaknesses: Even magic has limits. When Isabela pushes herself too far, she usually feels it in the form of piercing migraines and a bleeding nose, a clear sign to those in the know that she's reaching her limits. The headaches disrupt her concentration further, affecting her performance in all areas across the board, and resist magically based attempts to dull the pain.
Inventory
Mundane: Kevlar armor under a form-fitting suit, a collection of fake identity cards, a small briefcase containing signal-jamming and anti-surveillance equipment, money in multiple currencies, three silenced handguns, one knife strapped into each boot and a supply of bullets
Magical:
Thunderclap Tags - Written (Consumed). Paper tags with detonation spells written on them in Upper Kingdom script, meant to be placed on a target in groups, one no further than two feet apart from the next. Magical damage to the tags causes them to detonate, releasing electric and sonic pulses that trigger and are amplified by nearby tags.
Essence of Crypsis - Material (Consumed). An aerosol spray can containing a colorless, odorless liquid produced from distilling chameleon scales, squid ink and silver filings in alcohol. When sprayed in an area, the liquid masks and distorts the traces of magic that remain from casting a spell, making its origins and nature more difficult to identify.
History
Isabela didn't have parents. She had her Papa.
(Grigoriy Holstein is a lean, wiry man with sharp intelligence in his cold, hard eyes. But they always seem to soften when he sees her. He has seen her every day, as far as she can remember, if even for only a few minutes, and more than a few times with at least one of them convalescing in an infirmary bed. She trusts him with her life. She always has. She always will.)
Isabela didn't have friends. She had bodyguards.
(None of them are ever her playmates - flat-eyed women and hulking men and stern old crones and young men with smiles like knives and frightened young servant girls and whip-thin, grave old gentlemen. They come and they go. They raise her. They protect her. Sometimes they try to kill her, within acceptable limits dictated by her Papa. They teach her Mathematics and History and languages and culture and first aid and combat.)
(They craft a world she will never be a part of, a lush orchard full of fresh fruit waiting for daring little thieves to break in and steal, but teeming with vicious predators to catch the ones not swift or strong enough to get away. They teach her to survive. They're just doing their job.)
Isabela always knew she was ugly.
(She's seen the photographs. She's studied the books. She knows what little girls should look like - bright smiles, rosy cheeks, hair that dances with a life of its own, eyes shining like windows to another world of guile and mischief. Not pale as death with hideous veins running through her skin like cracks. Not with blank, pupilless eyes lined with little scarlet cracks. The first time she truly understands, when she realizes the quasi-human creature in the bathroom mirror is herself, her Papa's most precious treasure, she screams and runs and hides and weeps. It gets easier after the first few years.)
Isabela was quick to learn that life was unfair.
(This is a lesson Papa is quick to teach her - with as much kindness as a little girl requires, but there is no point in hiding the truth. There is not, and never will be justice. Equality only exists beyond the grave. He is an agent of equality himself, consigning rich and poor alike, noble and gentle and rabble all to an unmarked end. With each pull of the trigger, with each body weighted down and lost in the debris of the swirling rivers, his influence grows. Influence is power. Power is what they need to survive, and some just happen to be better survivors than others.)
(Humans, in particular, are good at surviving in Ruthenia. Isabela, sadly, is not human enough, but if she is cunning and strong and lucky and knows when not to play by the rules, she just might come out on top.)
Isabela went outdoors once in her childhood.
(She wants to know if there are more people like her. She follows the secret passages and hidden doors out of her room, out of Papa's fortress in the heart of Rynok when she has not been given permission. She steps into bright sunlight and a bustling market square, a furtive girl of nine years certain she could lose any pursuer amid the crowd. She is unprepared for the screams, the yells, the terrified gesticulating, all directed at her - It has escaped, it has escaped, a matronly voice shrieks, and she can only get so far in a bustling market square suddenly roused to hysteria before the slavers catch her and throw her in a cage.)
(Papa comes to claim their heads in a blaze of wrath and gunfire. He strikes the lock off her cage door and lifts her out onto his strong shoulders. He has his men drag the slavers back to his stronghold, battered and bleeding. He makes them kneel before her and plead for their miserable lives. He looks down. He whispers, "No.")
(For her ninth birthday, Isabela confers equality upon five affluent humans who gained their power by trading in bodies. Her shaking hands position the barrel. Her trembling finger pulls the trigger. Again. And again. And again. And again. And again.)
Isabela didn't get a car for her sixteenth birthday.
(It is a trend among the rich and powerful, she is aware, to purchase expensive vehicles for offspring who come of age, with an apparent disregard for their steering abilities. To be rich and powerful and to be wise are clearly not dependent upon one another, but Papa is both.)
(He stands before her on the stage of a vast auditorium and speaks his words. She kneels before him and speaks with all her heart. Their only audience, an old, blindfolded mothfolk woman who has come and gone in the years past, listens and nods, then draws their blood with a copper knife and burns symbols onto the floor between them while speaking in an unfamiliar tongue. Electricity rushes through her veins and fills her bones with heat.)
(She's flying. She's flying. Papa drifts by her side, a rare lazy grin on his face while she laughs and soars and wheels on an invisible wind, scattering white sparks from her fingertips and pulling chairs and floorboards and other objects previously nailed down into her dance. The mothfolk watches, despite the blindfold. The old woman smiles, and the expression is joyous and regretful and looking into the two, through the two, beyond the two, seeing something bittersweet and far away. She wonders, if only for a moment, but leaves it behind in a heartbeat because she's flying.)
Isabela didn't receive a pet for her seventeenth birthday.
(Papa gives her a wallet and tells her to use it wisely. She strides down into Rynok, safe behind her dark glasses and thick coat and tall collar, and walks out of a seedy little shop with a monster of a rat in a cage under her arm. The creature watches her silently with its beady eyes. It does not fight.)
("Maksim," she says. She rests a finger on its forehead, and another on its heart. "Your name is Maksim." White light flows. She feels a second presence leaning against her thoughts, closer and more permanent than Papa looking in from the outside. She lowers her hand. The giant rat stands on its hind legs and snaps off a rigid military salute. Milady, it thinks, and she hears it.)
(Maksim is a leader, like Papa. He is not her pet. He is her general, as she is his queen. They share their thoughts, their talents. She gives him a comprehension of language and a link to the world of those who walk on two legs and persecute the weak and the different. He gives her an army of sewer rats.)
Isabela had a rather different childhood. She would hardly call herself deprived.
Familiar
Name: Maksim
Race: Magical Beast
Species: Rodent Of Unusual Size
Tier: 1
Appearance: Maksim is an unnaturally large black rat, with a body length of 2 ft 6 in and a tail twice as long.
Natural Abilities: Maksim's sensitive whiskers enable him to feel his way around obstacles in the dark. He has a powerful sense of smell and can hear into the ultrasonic range. He can communicate with other rats, and his relative size and strength keeps them from challenging him for pack dominance.
Natural Traits: Sensitive whiskers, sharp teeth, thick tail
Specializations:
Tier 1: Mental (Telepathy), Proficiency 1.5.
Special Abilities:
Tier 0: Telekinesis
Tier 1: Healing
Bonus Special Abilities:
Item Shapeshifting 1
Item Shapeshifting 2
Unique Abilities: -
Strengths: Maksim is as intelligent and savage as rats come, with a fierce survivor's streak, the willpower to dominate lesser rodents and the ambition to gather more into his pack. He is literate in Ruthenian and Upper Kingdom. When not on the job, he can be found reading general's war manuals, running his pack through drills and attack formations and sending them out on reconaissance to ensure his lady will always have a hiding place. He synergizes well with Isabela in battle, be it front and center as the distraction, concealed on the sidelines with his gun at the ready, or as a blade in her hands.
Weaknesses: Maksim's sentience does not make him any less of a rat. Rather, they make his thoughts easier to communicate to Isabela, and they frequently tend toward eliminating the weak, fleeing or backing the strong or staying hidden while the strong oppress the weak - all well and good for the mafia, unless their objectives happen to run counter to those principles, such as their recent project to add to the chaos by giving the Resistance a hand. His more private and less sanitary practices also filter through his mental bond with Isabela. She finds them highly irritating.
Magical Items:
Tinderbox - Written (Perpetual). A sniper rifle marked with Ruthenian script and shrunken to fit into a large rat's paws. The rifle is silenced, and generates small metal fragments to use as bullets.
Contact: (PM me)
Intentions: Villain
Background
Name: Isabela Holstein
Race: Human
Species: Banshee Heritage
Age: 20
Tier: 3
Social
Place of Birth: Rynok, Central Ruthenia
Allegiances: Ruthenian Mafia
Aspirations: Be useful to her Papa
Nicknames: -
Titles: -
Relatives: Parents unknown, Grigoriy Holstein (adoptive father)
Significant Other: -
Mental
Personality: Cold as steel. Merciless as a knife. Loyal as a dog. Isabela knows she's a weapon - a deadly, cherished weapon, but a weapon all the same. She also knows it's exactly what her Papa needs, and for the man who sheltered and raised her as his own, she'd do anything. It doesn't matter that there's killing involved; that's just biology playing out. Planning her "visits" is always a good challenge to keep her mind sharp. The moment of death, the smell of terror, the fear in their eyes - she isn't particularly thrilled by those, but they don't faze her any longer. The nature of her role, in the sort of organization upright citizens should want nothing to do with - that's just someone else's point of view. People have needs. Her Papa works hard to meet those needs where no one else wants to. She's just being a good girl and taking out the trash. She's happy right where she is, with who she is and what she does. It's not like there's room anywhere else for a freak like her.
Likes: Papa, her pet rats, planning "visits" to misbehaving clients, her personal bodyguards, flute music
Dislikes: People who play the hero, small children who get mixed up in her "visits", her dark glasses, the sheer look of horror on the average person's face when she steps fully into the light and removes her dark glasses
Strengths: In the hands of people who know what they're doing, devotion can be quite the formidable tool. Blessed of a fairly intelligent mind, with the experience derived from ten years on the job, she's already more than adequately equipped for her role as an enforcer. Bring in the motivation, not just to succeed but to excel. Add a few metric tons of dedication to efficient, clean work, an equal willingness to live or die to suit her Papa's needs, and the good sense of judgment for when which is the more appropriate of the two. Isabela knows weapons have to be maintained, and regularly hones her skills to make sure she stays the sharpest living knife in the mafia's arsenal. She won't hesitate when it's time to stab.
Weaknesses: Isabela's social skills are mostly limited to the different ways she can keep an eye on people or threaten them into cooperation. She has very few attachments in life - few people to trust, even among the bodyguards assigned to watch over her. A necessity when today's bodyguard may end up on tomorrow's chopping block, which has happened more than once, but it reaches the same conclusion: she has a better baseline for friendship with her numerous psychically tamed rats than she can form with most people.
Physical
Major Details: Lean build, 5 ft 8 in (172cm), wavy black hair in a ponytail, white skin, eyes have no pupils
Appearance: Some banshees are beautiful. Some aren't. From a distance, Isabela looks like an average human of twenty years, slightly on the lean side. Get within a few feet and something begins to seem off about her. Her skin isn't just very pale. It's chalk white, and dark veins can be seen around her temples, neck and wrists. But the eyes have it. Blank white sclera, no pupils, streaked here and there with cracks of red where blood vessels are nearer the surface, and yet, she can see through them without any trouble. To save on the shock value, she keeps most of her body covered up with gloves and long-sleeved clothing, and hides her eyes behind dark glasses.
Natural Abilities: Isabela has a gymnast's agility and strength, is a good marksman with handguns and rifles, and was trained in the Upper Kingdom's Serpent style of hand-to-hand combat.
Natural Traits: Mostly regular human traits (see Appearance)
Strengths: If shooting isn't an option, Isabela knows plenty of ways to kill people with her bare hands. Or maim them, or disable them in a relatively painless manner, or beat them to within an inch of their lives. A flexible body and a fluid combat style make her good at dodging blows, turning to dampen their impact, and sneaking through enclosed spaces.
Weaknesses: There's always something bigger, heavier, or stronger. Sometimes they're armored, or made of their own armor. Occasionally, they're Weres. Most of the time, bullets make them laugh. Up against anything in a weight class that goes beyond human, Isabela's physical abilities won't cut it. Without magic to back her up, her options are "run", "hide", "wait for backup", and "don't get hit". When there's a ton of force behind a blow, there's only so much she can deflect with an average human body.
Magical
Specializations:
- Tier 1: Mental (Psychic), Proficiency 3.
- Tier 2: Physical (Serpent Among the Clouds), Proficiency 3.5. Isabela can use her movements to generate or manipulate lightning.
- Tier 3: Mental (Metal), Proficiency 3. Isabela can create or manipulate metal with her thoughts.
- Tier 4:
- Tier 5:
Visual Display: Isabela's psychic aura and lightning have a metallic silver color.
Special Abilities:
Tier 0: Enhanced Speed 1
Tier 1: Enhanced Speed 2
Tier 2: Enhanced Strength 1
Tier 3: Familiar
Bonus Special Abilities:
Tier 0: Alternate Sense: Night Vision
Tier 2: Insight
Heritage: Alternate Sense: Life Force
Unique Abilities: Isabela has a piercing scream which can be focused over a specific area around or in front of her to deal sonic damage at the level of a tier 1 spell.
Strengths: Guided by her inventive streak, Isabela has discovered and developed many different ways of using her magic to skin the proverbial cat. Her lightning magic, being a physical style, is boosted by her mastery of a martial art. Turned inward, her psychic abilities provide her with a catalog of sharpened memories and better focus; pointed out at the world, they take the form of powerful telekinetic and telepathic spells, and help her direct an army of rats. Her use of metal goes beyond simple projectiles and shields - with blueprints stored in her mind through her Psychic magic, she can summon a small arsenal of modern weaponry at the speed of thought.
Weaknesses: Even magic has limits. When Isabela pushes herself too far, she usually feels it in the form of piercing migraines and a bleeding nose, a clear sign to those in the know that she's reaching her limits. The headaches disrupt her concentration further, affecting her performance in all areas across the board, and resist magically based attempts to dull the pain.
Inventory
Mundane: Kevlar armor under a form-fitting suit, a collection of fake identity cards, a small briefcase containing signal-jamming and anti-surveillance equipment, money in multiple currencies, three silenced handguns, one knife strapped into each boot and a supply of bullets
Magical:
Thunderclap Tags - Written (Consumed). Paper tags with detonation spells written on them in Upper Kingdom script, meant to be placed on a target in groups, one no further than two feet apart from the next. Magical damage to the tags causes them to detonate, releasing electric and sonic pulses that trigger and are amplified by nearby tags.
Essence of Crypsis - Material (Consumed). An aerosol spray can containing a colorless, odorless liquid produced from distilling chameleon scales, squid ink and silver filings in alcohol. When sprayed in an area, the liquid masks and distorts the traces of magic that remain from casting a spell, making its origins and nature more difficult to identify.
History
Isabela didn't have parents. She had her Papa.
(Grigoriy Holstein is a lean, wiry man with sharp intelligence in his cold, hard eyes. But they always seem to soften when he sees her. He has seen her every day, as far as she can remember, if even for only a few minutes, and more than a few times with at least one of them convalescing in an infirmary bed. She trusts him with her life. She always has. She always will.)
Isabela didn't have friends. She had bodyguards.
(None of them are ever her playmates - flat-eyed women and hulking men and stern old crones and young men with smiles like knives and frightened young servant girls and whip-thin, grave old gentlemen. They come and they go. They raise her. They protect her. Sometimes they try to kill her, within acceptable limits dictated by her Papa. They teach her Mathematics and History and languages and culture and first aid and combat.)
(They craft a world she will never be a part of, a lush orchard full of fresh fruit waiting for daring little thieves to break in and steal, but teeming with vicious predators to catch the ones not swift or strong enough to get away. They teach her to survive. They're just doing their job.)
Isabela always knew she was ugly.
(She's seen the photographs. She's studied the books. She knows what little girls should look like - bright smiles, rosy cheeks, hair that dances with a life of its own, eyes shining like windows to another world of guile and mischief. Not pale as death with hideous veins running through her skin like cracks. Not with blank, pupilless eyes lined with little scarlet cracks. The first time she truly understands, when she realizes the quasi-human creature in the bathroom mirror is herself, her Papa's most precious treasure, she screams and runs and hides and weeps. It gets easier after the first few years.)
Isabela was quick to learn that life was unfair.
(This is a lesson Papa is quick to teach her - with as much kindness as a little girl requires, but there is no point in hiding the truth. There is not, and never will be justice. Equality only exists beyond the grave. He is an agent of equality himself, consigning rich and poor alike, noble and gentle and rabble all to an unmarked end. With each pull of the trigger, with each body weighted down and lost in the debris of the swirling rivers, his influence grows. Influence is power. Power is what they need to survive, and some just happen to be better survivors than others.)
(Humans, in particular, are good at surviving in Ruthenia. Isabela, sadly, is not human enough, but if she is cunning and strong and lucky and knows when not to play by the rules, she just might come out on top.)
Isabela went outdoors once in her childhood.
(She wants to know if there are more people like her. She follows the secret passages and hidden doors out of her room, out of Papa's fortress in the heart of Rynok when she has not been given permission. She steps into bright sunlight and a bustling market square, a furtive girl of nine years certain she could lose any pursuer amid the crowd. She is unprepared for the screams, the yells, the terrified gesticulating, all directed at her - It has escaped, it has escaped, a matronly voice shrieks, and she can only get so far in a bustling market square suddenly roused to hysteria before the slavers catch her and throw her in a cage.)
(Papa comes to claim their heads in a blaze of wrath and gunfire. He strikes the lock off her cage door and lifts her out onto his strong shoulders. He has his men drag the slavers back to his stronghold, battered and bleeding. He makes them kneel before her and plead for their miserable lives. He looks down. He whispers, "No.")
(For her ninth birthday, Isabela confers equality upon five affluent humans who gained their power by trading in bodies. Her shaking hands position the barrel. Her trembling finger pulls the trigger. Again. And again. And again. And again. And again.)
Isabela didn't get a car for her sixteenth birthday.
(It is a trend among the rich and powerful, she is aware, to purchase expensive vehicles for offspring who come of age, with an apparent disregard for their steering abilities. To be rich and powerful and to be wise are clearly not dependent upon one another, but Papa is both.)
(He stands before her on the stage of a vast auditorium and speaks his words. She kneels before him and speaks with all her heart. Their only audience, an old, blindfolded mothfolk woman who has come and gone in the years past, listens and nods, then draws their blood with a copper knife and burns symbols onto the floor between them while speaking in an unfamiliar tongue. Electricity rushes through her veins and fills her bones with heat.)
(She's flying. She's flying. Papa drifts by her side, a rare lazy grin on his face while she laughs and soars and wheels on an invisible wind, scattering white sparks from her fingertips and pulling chairs and floorboards and other objects previously nailed down into her dance. The mothfolk watches, despite the blindfold. The old woman smiles, and the expression is joyous and regretful and looking into the two, through the two, beyond the two, seeing something bittersweet and far away. She wonders, if only for a moment, but leaves it behind in a heartbeat because she's flying.)
Isabela didn't receive a pet for her seventeenth birthday.
(Papa gives her a wallet and tells her to use it wisely. She strides down into Rynok, safe behind her dark glasses and thick coat and tall collar, and walks out of a seedy little shop with a monster of a rat in a cage under her arm. The creature watches her silently with its beady eyes. It does not fight.)
("Maksim," she says. She rests a finger on its forehead, and another on its heart. "Your name is Maksim." White light flows. She feels a second presence leaning against her thoughts, closer and more permanent than Papa looking in from the outside. She lowers her hand. The giant rat stands on its hind legs and snaps off a rigid military salute. Milady, it thinks, and she hears it.)
(Maksim is a leader, like Papa. He is not her pet. He is her general, as she is his queen. They share their thoughts, their talents. She gives him a comprehension of language and a link to the world of those who walk on two legs and persecute the weak and the different. He gives her an army of sewer rats.)
Isabela had a rather different childhood. She would hardly call herself deprived.
Familiar
Name: Maksim
Race: Magical Beast
Species: Rodent Of Unusual Size
Tier: 1
Appearance: Maksim is an unnaturally large black rat, with a body length of 2 ft 6 in and a tail twice as long.
Natural Abilities: Maksim's sensitive whiskers enable him to feel his way around obstacles in the dark. He has a powerful sense of smell and can hear into the ultrasonic range. He can communicate with other rats, and his relative size and strength keeps them from challenging him for pack dominance.
Natural Traits: Sensitive whiskers, sharp teeth, thick tail
Specializations:
Tier 1: Mental (Telepathy), Proficiency 1.5.
Special Abilities:
Tier 0: Telekinesis
Tier 1: Healing
Bonus Special Abilities:
Item Shapeshifting 1
Item Shapeshifting 2
Unique Abilities: -
Strengths: Maksim is as intelligent and savage as rats come, with a fierce survivor's streak, the willpower to dominate lesser rodents and the ambition to gather more into his pack. He is literate in Ruthenian and Upper Kingdom. When not on the job, he can be found reading general's war manuals, running his pack through drills and attack formations and sending them out on reconaissance to ensure his lady will always have a hiding place. He synergizes well with Isabela in battle, be it front and center as the distraction, concealed on the sidelines with his gun at the ready, or as a blade in her hands.
Weaknesses: Maksim's sentience does not make him any less of a rat. Rather, they make his thoughts easier to communicate to Isabela, and they frequently tend toward eliminating the weak, fleeing or backing the strong or staying hidden while the strong oppress the weak - all well and good for the mafia, unless their objectives happen to run counter to those principles, such as their recent project to add to the chaos by giving the Resistance a hand. His more private and less sanitary practices also filter through his mental bond with Isabela. She finds them highly irritating.
Magical Items:
Tinderbox - Written (Perpetual). A sniper rifle marked with Ruthenian script and shrunken to fit into a large rat's paws. The rifle is silenced, and generates small metal fragments to use as bullets.