Grey Moth
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
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| Gray Moth | |
| Player: @Hagia Sophia | |
| Origin: | Natural |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Stalker/Arachnos Widow |
| Threat Level: | 32/24 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Suzie Xiao |
| Known Aliases: | Operative Xiao |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 26 |
| Height: | 5' 2" |
| Weight: | 112 |
| Eye Color: | Dark Brown |
| Hair Color: | Black |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American/Chinese Mix |
| Occupation: | Assassin/Night Widow |
| Place of Birth: | St. Martial |
| Base of Operations: | St. Martial |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Mother, Father, Half Brothers |
| Known Powers | |
| special training (not meta-human) | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Ninjitsu, Claws fighting style | |
| Equipment | |
| Arachnos Issue Blood Widow Claws | |
| ' | |
Gray Moth/Grey Moth is also known as the Widow Xiao, or Operative Xiao. She was once one of Arachnos's blood widows, but she went independent for a time. Recently her status as a blood widow has been reinstated against her will. Even so she is trying to make the best of her situation. The constant probing she has been subjected to by psychics has awakened a weak but present latent psychic talent in the young woman, where previously she had no meta-human abilities. This new rising talent has qualified her to apply into and receive extra training as a Night Widow within Arachnos.
Contents |
Affiliations
Friends and Allies
Gray Moth really does not have friends only people she uses. However, among her allies she counts Dreadnot, Professor Malcontent, and Charles Psion.
Personality
On the surface Gray Moth seems to be friendly, even considerate. This is a facade. The truth about Gray Moth is that she is a cold killer. She gets an almost erotic pleasure from the act of taking a life. Also she is on the Sade/Masochistic side. She enjoys being hurt almost as much as she likes inflicting pain on others. In combat this makes Gray Moth very hard to intimidate. The way she looks at it, she has a good time either way. Other than that she has a total disregard for life; However, she is also an expert infiltrator and knows how to hide her character flaws well.
Equipment
An array of equipment used by blood widows and night widows including the set of claws common among them as well as: smoke bombs, caltrops, and a set of throwing knives.
Weaknesses and Limitations
Gray Moth is human and aside from her special training has no real super or mutant powers. As such she really does not have any special weaknesses aside from not having any special gifts. As a result of not being a meta-human Moth has to spend a great deal of time studying her target and preparing for an attack before she engages her enemies. Should a super powered individual get the drop on her it should be fairly easy to take her down. Other than that she has all of the weaknesses and limitations inherent in the human condition except that she is in phenomenally good shape do to her special training and passion for her chosen profession.
History
Childhood
Suzie Xiao was born to one of the ladies that works for Jezebel Jones in the Golden Giza of St. Martial. The "escort" had become pregnant after being assigned to entertain a Hong Kong business man who was also member of the Chinese triads. After giving birth Suzie's mother was no longer thought fit to work for Jezebel Jones having unsightly stretch marks after the pregnancy and other imperfections associated with the condition. Suzie's father had long ago returned to Hong Kong and attempts to reach him only resulted in his representative saying he was not interested in the hooker he had knocked up or her illegitimate child. As Such Suzie's mother no longer had a decent means of income for her and her daughter.
In an attempt to make ends meet The former escort was forced to turn to street prostitution servicing Hellions and horny villains fresh out of the Zig and other riffraff common in the Rogue's Isles. Because of the lack of daycare options available to a prostitute of the Isles Suzie was often forced to go along with her mother when she worked, exposing her to the multitudes of vicious and perverted scum pervading the trade. More often than not Suzie watched as some of the most lowly of the Isles played out their dark fantasies on her mother. They lived at this period in a shack built against the fort Cerberus wall in Mercy Island. Suzie as a small child used to watch the blood widows and fortunata seers in the service of Ghost Widow do their drills and combat practice. As time passed she became enchanted with the graceful moves of the blood widows.
It was bound to happen sooner or later: one of the johns that Suzie's mother serviced fell in love with her. In this case it was a member of the scrapyarder union. Thinking that the extra income, meager though it is, could only help with raising her daughter The prostitute engaged in a relationship with the scrapyarder and eventually agreed to marry him. Between the income of the prostitute and the minimal wages of the cage consortium, the newly-weds were able to afford one of the lower income apartments of Sharks Head Isle. At least they were out of the Shacks. Even so the neighborhood was a rough one and if the couple and Suzie were not being pushed around by the Cage consortium then the Marcones were forcing the door down demanding a cut of Suzie's mothers earnings.
In response to the stress the Scrapyarder turned to alcohol and drugs to escape the banality of life. Suzie's step father became abusive first mentally and eventually physically to both the little girl and her mother. What was more is that her mother was pregnant again, so there was a loss of the second income needed to survive. Suzie started turning to thieving and breaking and entering to try and help keep her mother and step dad in their apartment; mostly because Suzie herself did not want to live in one of the shacks surrounding Potter's Field. Suzie was good at what she had decided to do. It turned out she had a natural knack for stealth and soon she was fencing enough to make ends meet at home. However, this did not keep her out of trouble.
Little did Suzie know it, but a few months before her seventeenth birthday she managed to get her hands on a relic of the Circle of Thorns. Naturally the CoT came after their lost bit of treasure, and Suzie found herself underneath Sharks in a cavern being tortured by the CoT. Luckily for her some up and coming Villain had also heard about the theft of the relic and had tracked the CoT to the cavern were Suzie was found floating above an alter of the Thorn's as the mages enacted one of their rituals. The villain paid no mind to the teenage girl who was in obvious mortal peril. Instead he was interested only in the Relic he had come to retrieve. Fortunately for Suzie though when the villain engaged the CoT whatever spell was holding her above the alter was broken and Suzie found herself free to move about. She did what any other sane and prudent civilian in that situation would do, she hid behind a rock.
As the fight progressed the villain gained the upper hand and soon the CoT was decimated. The villain sat there admiring his prize. All Suzie saw was the fruit of her hard work and pain being transferred into the hands of someone else. Enraged Suzie picked up one of the thorn blades used by a CoT Guide and thrust it into the neck of the surprised super villain. He had hardly noticed the teenage girl when he came into the room and did not expect her to stick around after the fight began, never mind attack the victor.
As the life leaked out of the super villain that had been her savior, Suzie felt empowered for the first time in her life. This was the first death caused by her hand and the combination of fear and power in the act was a thrill to her that rivaled all other experiences before that point. knowing now what the relic was worth, Suzie left the the Cavern behind forever and fenced her relic off and brought home a nice little bit of income for herself.
When she got home, however, she found her step father in one of his drunken rages. Immediately Suzie regretted discarding the thorn blade she had used in the cavern. The much larger scrapyarder smacked his step daughter across the face and took the small fortune she had made away from her. His wife being no good to him in her pregnant state he then began to grope Suzie. However, Suzie discovered that after the horrors of the Circle of Thorns, she could pretty much blow off anything that her step father did to her. In fact it seemed that the scrapyarder's punches and restraint on her was more a playful challenge than something to actually fear. Eventually she managed to wiggle out of the man's grip and ran into the kitchen of the small apartment. The scrapyarder, drunken and now pissed, stumbled after his step daughter only to fall back out of the kitchen with a carving knife in his chest.
Suzie's mother sat there screaming in horror at the bloody mess that used to be her husband. Suzie herself looked at the woman and kicked the small treasure she had gotten from the sale of the relic over to her. Completely disgusted now at the woman who had sacrificed so much to raise her, Suzie simply pulled her torn clothing back over to cover herself and left the small apartment behind. Remembering back to her early childhood in Mercy Island, Suzie knew exactly were she wanted to go now. The memory of the grace of the blood widows as well as the promise of an opportunity to feel the exhilaration of killing again pushed her to head in her tattered and bloody clothing directly for the Arachnos recruitment center.
Arachnos
When a young woman in tattered bloody clothing came into the Arachnos recruitment center, the staff did not know what to make of her. At first they thought she wanted to file an attack report and were about to direct her to Rogue Island Police as a dismissal. They soon realized though that the blood on her clothing was not hers and decided to listen to her. After hearing her tale they became interested in her. She had an impressive resume of thievery around the Isles already and the recruiters were rather impressed that the young woman was able to already claim two deaths one of which was an up and coming villain. Even though she was still a year to young, Arachnos accepted her into training. Rather than have her competing with Arachnos they decided her talents could be put to better use as one of Recluse's soldiers. Seeing as in how she did not have the necessary abilities to be a fortunata, the blood widow program seemed like the best place to start her training. So Suzie's dream came true, she was being trained as a blood widow.
Suzie soon discovered that being a blood widow was far more comprehensive than she originally thought. On top of martial arts and stealth techniques she found herself being trained in infiltration, espionage, and military tactics/doctrine. Suzie found that as a girl raised in the nastiest parts of Sharks Head Isle, her most difficult training was in etiquette. She did not know a shrimp fork from a hair pick, saw no reason not to cut up her meal with her widow claws, and her idea of fancy conversation seemed to come right out of the brothels of Port Oaks. Arachnos needed for her to be able to fit in unnoticed among Crey executives and their wives or other members of the Paragon elite. So a rather bored Suzie was forced to sit through hours of mock dinners, wishing she had bothered to learn all this stuff when her mother was trying to teach it to her as a child. when it came to stealth and combat though Suzie excelled above and beyond what her instructors had projected. This combat training was the only thing that made sitting through all the boring classroom time worth while.
The zeal at which Suzie pursued combat though caused her some discipline problems within Arachnos. Once during a training session with the Mu academy in Grandville, Suzie "accidentally" severed the spinal cord of one of the students killing him. The survival of the fittest doctrine of Arachnos kept Suzie from being executed for that murder, after all she did make it look like an accident. However, she did spend some time in the brig for the little stunt, and her handlers in Arachnos had her marked as a loose cannon.
It was an entire grueling two years before all her training was complete, during which Suzie walked the tight line of indulging her various perversions with the discipline needed to survive in Arachnos. After graduation Suzie started her work within Arachnos as a blood widow. She was sent several times out on her own to assassinate specific targets that were a threat to Arachnos, or just were in someone's way. Often times though she found herself in Bloody Bay or Sirens Call as part of a unit. Occasionally she was sent out in charge of a squad of wolf spiders if the objective was considered a low enough threat not to warrant the attention of one of the night widows. While she seemed to get things done most of the time, it was noted that her squads had a higher casualty rate than was normal. Suzie took chances. often with her own safety and almost always without thought or care to those working under or around her. It was even noted a few times that Suzie operated more with the interest of her own good time than with the objective that was given her. For a couple of years she was able to operate like this never quite going far enough to spur Arachnos officers into action against her. However, finally one day her reckless abandon would take her too far.
Marshal Brass of Cap Au Diable had put months of preparation into this operation. He was eliminating several executives of a major corporation that had been a cover for Longbow. They were funneling agents and resources into the Isles from Paragon City, and information on the Isles out. Targets for the operation were on both sides of the wall. In order for the plan to succeed all of the targets had to be eliminated within a certain time frame. Too soon and the others may be alerted before he was ready, and too late and the chance of the operation being discovered went up. Targets included persons to be killed as well as massive amounts of paper with information on the Rogue Isles in them: microfilm, documents, hardware, etc etc. the executive/agent that was operating out of St. Martial happened to have a thing for Eurasian women, so Suzie was a natural choice to place with him seeing as in how she would have an easy time with infiltration. for a little over a month Suzie was the arm candy for this individual and he was starting to bore her. One night after a particularly boring date were the man was acting more piggish than usual, she killed him sending Marshal Brass's operation into execution a week premature. while the operation still succeeded three of the Arachnos operatives in Paragon were captured as a result.
Naturally Brass was pissed. He ordered a court marshal of Suzie and, as is often the case in Arachnos, the arbiters heard the case without Suzie being present. Suzie though was not entirely in the dark as to what was going on. The state of Marshal Brass's temperament when Suzie returned from the operation was enough to clue her in that she may have gone to far. predictably the Arbiters found her in absentee guilty and ordered her termination. However, when the wolf spider troops entered her room to arrest and execute her they were greeted instead by a bomb ticking away the last few seconds before it went off. Suzie had fled to Paragon City and was out of the reach of Arachnos for now. Within a month of Suzie's escape from the isles, the arbiters had rescinded the execution order on her. A fortunata stated that at some point Suzie's destiny may converge again with Arachnos's, and some day she could be important to Recluse's plans. Suzie however was completely unaware of this revelation. As far as she knew her ties to Arachnos were permanently severed.
Paragon
Sneaking into Paragon city while trying to dodge both Arachnos and Longbow was no easy task. But, the ever resourceful Suzie managed to do it. In this case she managed to land a contract as a privateer with the Council. They needed a ranking scientist of a corporation that had provided them with new technology eliminated. The council had discovered that the scientist was developing and selling the counter measures for the tech they bought to Longbow when he discovered that his invention was being used by the council. Suzie, still on the run from Arachnos at this point, used the alias Gray Moth when dealing with the Council. The name came to her as a nod, and partially an insult, to the Chinese Triads that her birth father belonged to. Thus the private assassin for hire Gray Moth was born from a fugitive blood widow.
The council provided transportation from the Rogue Isles into Paragon to Gray Moth on one of their submarines. Once there, Moth did the job she was hired to do, took her pay and began to build a new life for herself in Paragon. It didn't take long for her to establish herself as a competent assassin for hire in Paragon city's underground. Soon she was accepting jobs from the Marcone's as well as the Council, Sky Raiders, and even occasionally Crey. It only took a couple of her employers to turn up dead to convince those who hired her not to try and eliminate her after a job. Finding the competition in Paragon not quite as stiff as the Isles, soon the former blood widow was at the top of the list of Paragon City's assassins. She was making enough money to provide herself with a modest apartment in Astoria, and for the first time in her life experienced real independence.
During this time was when Moth finally learned how to temper and discipline herself. Being responsible for her own safety and welfare forced her to hold her impulses in check. After all now if she messed up it was her that would suffer for it not Arachnos. Suzie was very careful to cover her tracks, and rarely deviated from a plan once she put one into place. She often times was sent after targets that had super powers. Moth, having no super powered abilities of her own, was forced to plan ahead to be able to kill both villains and heroes successfully who for all intents and purposes should have completely out classed her. As careful as she was though, eventually her lifestyle would catch up to her.
((more to come soon :) ))
