The Crimson Cutlass

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C.C. is a swashbuckling air-pirate character with hints of her personality reminiscent of Errol Flynn's Captain Blood, Kara Thrace "Starbuck" from BSG, and the Dread Pirate Roberts from Princess Bride. The player of the C.C. is not copying the afformentioned characters, they were just used as inspiration.


File:Cc pinupsm.jpg
( Artwork by http://hugohugo.deviantart.com/ ! )
Crimson Cutlass
Player: @Thirteen
Origin: Technology
Archetype: Brute
Threat Level: 34/50
Personal Data
Real Name: Sierra Haley Hawthorne
Known Aliases: C.C., Crims, Captain Cutlass
Species: Human
Age: 26
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 115 lbs.
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Black
Biographical Data
Nationality: Unknown
Occupation: Air Pirate Captain
Place of Birth: Unknown
Base of Operations: Confidential
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: None
Known Powers
Confidential
Known Abilities
Confidential
Equipment
Confidential
No additional information available.


Contents

Character

C.C. is not a fundamentally evil or malicious character, despite her constant involvement in unscrupulous deeds. She falls more easily into the category of a free-spirited troublemaker out for crew and self. She is wanted by many shady organizations as well as authorities, mostly for the diversion of their shipments of goods and supplies.


C.C. has a very flamboyant personality as one might come to expect of any true swashbuckler. She is brave, reckless, defiant, and loves a chance to show off whenever possible. She won't back down from a challenge, and since she can't stand losing, she will often find a way to make a daring escape or employ other unsavory actions to swing the odds in her favor.

She is an absolutely phenomenal pilot. If it flies, she can fly it. This comes largely in part from being raised from infancy by her father, the original Crimson Cutlass, on deck of the Airship The Sooty Tern, where she began flying at age 3 with assistance from her father.


She is only loyal to those on her crew, and to them, her loyalty is unwavering. She will never willingly leave a crew member behind, and will do anything in her power she can to help them if they land themselves in trouble. As such, this makes her wary as to who she takes on as crew-members, because once in, they become family to her. She maintains her distance from them professionally, and would rather die than admit to it, but in her heart, loves each and every one.

As a leader, she is firm in her convictions but fair. She believes diversity is strength when it comes to the abilities and backgrounds of her crew mates which has led to a very colorful grouping of individuals she associates with.

Art by Poison!
Shia gift art!

Background

The Original Crimson Cutlass

The original Crimson Cutlass was her great great grandfather.

Her father was Evan Julius Hawthorne, born March 3, 1950 in Anchorage Alaska. He took up the pirating trade and the Cutlass name just as his father and his father's father had done before him. Notably he was the first of the family to take the piracy from the sea to the sky.

Evan Hawthorne's heists and adventures during his lifetime were legendary. His Airship, and true love The Sooty Tern carried him faithfully all over the world, until his death.

Despite being from a long line of pirates, Evan J. Hawthorne carried a strong moral code of ethics which he instilled in his daughter while he raised her from infancy aboard The Sooty Tern. Like him, whenever possible she will leave her victims alive, albeit with a nasty headache the next day.

Her mother is an unknown, her father would never speak of her no matter how hard C.C. drilled him for information.

Famous quote: "The great thing about being a pirate is that the world is your oyster. Just don't get caught holding the pearl."


May 23rd, 2002 Approx: 8:43PM - The Tern and crew was on a routine raid off the coast of Rhode Island when several Rikti assault craft appeared. The initial shock at the strange new invaders in their airspace took the crew off-guard, but only momentarily thanks to the naturally quick flying skill and luck of C.C., her instincts kicked in and she was able to avoid a disastrous collision with the ships. Piloting the Tern through a barrage of missiles and energy cannon blasts, C.C. was attempting to fly to safety when her father ordered them to turn about and fight. The Tern was sorely outmatched by the alien technology however and took a critical blow to the port engine. Evan grabbed his daughter and tossed her out of the ship to the ocean below in the hope she would live. As C.C. watched from the water, the Tern was shot down by the Rikti, ending in a massive fiery blast. C.C. still blames herself to this day for not disobeying her father's orders and trying to fly to safety.

Post Tern & The First Rikti War

File:Crimson Cutlass portrait.jpg
Art by Jeff Chang, gift from Dayn!

After the Tern's destruction, C.C. was left alone and hopelessly adrift on the open ocean. Still in shock but using the sky to get her bearings, she began to swim and didn't stop until she neared the the cape of Astoria. Suffering from hypothermia from being exposed to the cold water for so long, she passed out on the beach.

She woke up on a cot 2 days later in a make-shift hospital on Talos Island full of other victims from the Rikti's attack with no idea where she was or how she arrived there. According to the nurses and doctors volunteering, she was found wrapped in blankets outside the building. When asked her name, she gave her real one without thinking, Sierra Hawthorne.

Driven by her lust for revenge, Sierra left the hospital and tried to volunteer herself with the local military forces as a fighter pilot. However, with no records on file for her, she was denied. She took up the next best thing she could get, using her abilities as a pilot flying rescue team helicopters around the war-torn areas looking for civilian survivors. Her heroics, valor, and unorthodox methods of killing Rikti using only the blades of her chopper during the war awarded her with several medals, as well as being given an honorary heroes license.


(TBC)


Abilities & Assets

Acrobatic Reflexes & Fighting Prowess

C.C. sparring with RageBrood during fight practice.
C.C. fighting Shinsektor during The Great Pea Debacle of 2007.

Spending her entire life flying gliders and fighting alongside her father on the Sooty Tern has fine tuned C.C.'s reflexes. She is both graceful, acrobatic, and deceptively strong. She uses this to her in advantage in her fighting, often turning attacker's moves against them by manipulating their momentum.

Her fighting style is normally best described as being a dance-like freestyle hand-to-hand combat. This style has been left in favor of two blades she now carries on hips. She will still use whatever is available nearby to fight with if it gives her an advantange over her opponent however.

Awesome gift art by Quiet American!

The Bandit's Blades

Crimson is now seen almost always wearing two cutlasses on her hips. One is her fathers, recovered from the wreckage of the Sooty Tern at the bottom of the Atlantic. The other is her grandfathers, recovered from one of the Hawthorne family troves.

Her skill with the blades is lacking, rusty at best, as she quit her sword training at age 18 and hasn't touched a blade since. Her reasons for the change in her fighting style seem to be twofold. The first is that she holds no hope of defeating her rival and superior swordsman Flint Pierce while fighting in her normal unarmed style.

More importantly to her, her father never did approve of his daughters choice in fighting styles, so, in his honor she has begun to train again.

(Work in progress)

A Rogue's Luck

C.C. has always had an unexplainable nearly permanent lucky streak for as long as she can remember. To her it is second nature, and she doesn't seem to pay much attention to it. To others, it often can be quite a fascinating sight once they start to notice the trend. Examples include; guns aimed at her will suddenly jam up, projectiles fired at her will not only miss, but often riccochet off other objects, hitting her attackers, etc.

One of the earliest known manifestations of her strange luck occurred when she was 4. She was wandering around the Sooty Tern unattended when she found the manual release button for one of the bomb bay doors. Finding a big shiny red button irrisistible, she hit it, opening the door while the Tern was flying over Tuscany. A crewmember stepped into the area just in time to see the sudden depressurization suck her tiny body out the hatch. Running over in a panic, the crewmember found her giggling and dangling by her suspenders from a loose bolt on the inside of the hatch door.

After many more such strange occurances, the crew of the Tern began taking notice, starting rumors that Sierra was the result of a union between her father and Lady Luck herself.

( Invulnerability power is RP'd as her luck. )

After swiping her father's boots, gloves and goggles, a young Sierra runs amok on the Tern. Art by Bradders!


File:Screenshot 2007-09-16-14-11-08.jpg
Moments before the Cessna 'mysteriously' disappeared.

Piloting & The Airship

Cutlass' skill at piloting aircraft and helicopters is hard to match. It is her passion, and due to her persistent reckless nature, she isn't the least bit afraid to try death-defying aerial stunts. Quite to the contrary, she actually seems to get a kick out of challenges to her abilities in the sky, often goading any in her airspace to spectacular dogfights.

Currently she has in her possession a P-2 Neptune stolen from the Quonset Air Museum in RI.

The airship is a large flying base of operations for any respectable air pirate. C.C. is currently building her own from the ground up. What she plans to actually do with the airship after its completion is still a mystery.

( The Dread Aces base is the Airship. )

The Glider

The glider is C.C.'s prized possession and primary mode of transportation. Made of lightweight titanium alloy, the glider has twin boosters on the underside, allowing for quick vertical take-offs. The glider allows C.C. to drift swiftly and silently on air currents from place to place. Due to weight restrictions however, C.C. can only carry up to an additional 50lbs without experiencing difficulty staying airborne.

Originally, many of the gliders were manufactured for the primary use of allowing the crew to exit the airship and board their seafaring targets while the main airship hovered out of gun range far above, usually masked in cloud cover.

Also, it is one of the few things C.C. managed to salvage from the wreck of her old Airship. After the explosion, the loose glider drifted off riderless, and on a later return visit to the shore of Astoria to pay respect to the lost, she found it tangled up in the some nearby trees.

The glider is currently most often used for her personal transportation but it plays an integral part for reconnaissance on shipments she plans to intercept.

( Super Jump is RP'd as her using the glider to get from place to place. )

The Dread Aces

C.C.'s charisma has in the past drawn together a crew of misfits from around the Rogue Isles. Alone Cutlass is not a huge threat, as she does not possess superhuman abilities. The loyalty of her crew is what truly makes her a danger, and she is not often found without at least one or two of them around.

Weaknesses

C.C. and the crew scouting a Longbow stronghold.

Exploits; Past & Present

A brief synopsis of some of the Aces past RP events:





C.C.'s hunch about the possibility of increased resistance turned out to be correct, much to her surprise however, she recognized some of those who responded to the Longbow distress call as members of The Frontline. As the Aces and allies unloaded the engines on the dock of the bay, the The Havok Brothers, The Nitedevil, SincereAgape, The Black Spector and Celtic Arrow were gathering on the hillside above. The heroes staged several valiant and clever attempts to waylay the raiders, but all was for naught, the Aces had the advantage in numbers, and were able to hold the attackers off while C.C. escaped with her engines in tact.


Cutlass made a point to hire on Kichi again for the missive as her presence on the battlefield alone often turns the tide.

On the day of the heist, the Aces and associates Kichi and her protégé Vexx Vandal met in the Aces Warehouse, after a quick briefing on the mission, they filed out and met up at the coordinates given by Cutlass in Independance Port. Racing against the clock before heroes of Paragon would take notice of their activities, they quickly moved the metal onto their transport trucks and headed out to Steel Canyon. Their movement didn't go unnoticed as feared and a huge standoff between them and the The Frontline occurred as they entered Siren's Call from Steel Canyon.

The fight between the two factions began when the Frontliners attempted to stop the Aces, however, the strength of the Aces and associates was underestimated and they were able to fight the heroes off. Retreating with the goods after scattering the attackers, the Aces blew a flat on one of the trucks and were forced to stop, allowing the heroes time to regroup and attack again. Once again the Aces fought off the heroes, and once moving again they were able to get the goods to the rendezvous point with the transport ship. They were just beginning to load the stolen titanium aboard when the heroes attempted one more last-ditch effort, calling in allied heroes from all over to help stop the thieves. Hopelessly outnumbered, the titanium was lost, and Cutlass was almost taken into custody when her luck caused her to slip on a rock to avoid a fatal bullet aimed at her head. She bashed her forehead on a rock, rendering her unconscious while the heroes swarmed over her to push back her allies. Luckily for her, her crew regrouped and chased the heroes back long enough for Dead Eye Jake to grab her and retreat, leaving the goods behind.


A small army of Rogue Islanders did indeed show to thwart the Frontlines plans. Under the direction of the Aces a small guerilla force gathered in the wooded area a small way away from the Arachnos base and waited in secret for the hero forces to arrive. Sure enough, they showed and while they fought with some of the Islanders, a surprise attack from behind from the Aces hidden force effectively scattered the hero forces, a decisive victory for Cutlass and her crew in the pursuit of revenge.



She hired a Mr. Tompkins, captain of a small troller to take her out to the location, and donning diving gear she made her to the bottom of the Atlantic to the wreckage. What she saw down there she doesn't talk about, but when she returned to the Rogue Islands, her father's cutlass was slung on her hip.

However, the sword was not to remain with her for long.. not a few days later, the Aces were confronted and attacked by a childhood friend and rival of Crimson's, the traitor called Flint Pierce. Caught off guard, the Aces were at odds and the still unfinished airship took heavy damage. They recovered enough to chase Flint and his men off, but not before Flint had taken her father's sword from her.

Obviously such an attack and theft didn't sit well with Crimson. She was positively livid. She ordered the Aces to spread out and start looking for Flint's base of operations in the Islands. Once found, the Aces planned and mounted a successful attack, resulting in the destruction of his dirigible and a hefty toll of lives lost. The last Crimson saw of Pierce, he was falling away below her on the top of the burning dirigible.

(Chatlog of the Event)


Sure enough, after studying the design on the hilt, using her training in astrological navigation she was able to draw out a general idea of the latitude and longitude of where her Great-Grandfather's trove might be located.

Taking Professor Morte and Graffiti Samurai with her, they left the next night to search for the treasure. With their help, she was able to find the location of the trove, and after bypassing several traps left by her eccentric ancestors, they were able to reach the treasure and recover it back to the Isles. The loot recovered would be enough to finish the construction of the ship, but also among the stashed items, Cutlass found her grandfather's original sword as well.


After her triumphant return to the Isles, it was not long before another snake would rear its ugly head. This time in the form of Flint Pierce. Alive, well, and full of vengeance for Crimson. He sought her out, sending Kameleon to find her. Crimson obliged Kameleon's request, unaware of who she was being led to see. As a normal precaution, Crimson made sure Jet Nitro cloaked herself and followed along. Flint confronted Crimson, and made a promise that he would not rest until he destroyed her, and everything she's worked for. The threat remains to this day, but Flint has since vanished.


With the Airship finally finished, operational, and properly manned by the crew, Cutlass and the crew finally set sail from the Rogue Isles to begin preying on sea shipping lanes as her father before her did. First stop, England. Once in England, the Aces caused quite the mess. News crews were able to capture footage of the massive accidental battle against some of England's heroes in front of the Buckingham Palace. Luckily for the Aces, Mike, the airship's computer came the the rescue, allowing the Aces time to quickly board and escape. This was the last time the ship or crew has been seen... rumor has it they may have been shot down or captured, but no proof has been offered up to confirm this as of yet...


(TBC - RP Plot in process!)

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