Quiet Suffering
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Quiet Suffering | |
| Player: @Alliance Operative | |
| Origin: | Natural |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Arachnos Widow |
| Security Level: | 50 +1 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Theresa Winters |
| Known Aliases: | Night Widow Winters, Quiet Suffering, Katelyn Lee (Secret) |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 26 |
| Height: | 5' 9" |
| Weight: | 139 |
| Eye Color: | Milky white (blind) |
| Hair Color: | Near-black |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | Rogue Isles Citizen |
| Occupation: | Night Widow |
| Place of Birth: | Cap Au Diable, Rogue Isles |
| Base of Operations: | St. Martial, Rogue Isles (Vagrant) |
| Marital Status: | Never Married |
| Known Relatives: | Patrick Winters (Deceased), Amelia Winters (Deceased) |
| Known Powers | |
| Psionic sight, telepathy, combat precognition | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Night Widow Training, acrobatics | |
| Equipment | |
| Night Widow claw and venom gland implants | |
| While +1, she is not RPed as incarnate... yet. | |
Contents |
Common Knowledge
This woman is a Night Widow of Arachnos. Strangely enough, she displays an almost warm personality and does have friends outside of work. Her demeanor changes utterly, however, while she wears her white uniform. She becomes a model Widow, able to put up whatever facade necessary for the glory of Arachnos. If someone she knew betrayed Arachnos, she would execute her orders without hesitation.
Looking at her, she wears a blindfold around her eyes, and you can faintly see small needle holes around her mouth where she was pierced and stitched shut. She refuses to remove the blindfold. Furthermore, she is mute, and, if the blindfold is any indication, blind as well. Her psionic adeptations allow her to compensate for these two handicaps, allowing her to speak directly to a subject's mind and perceive the world through a special type of psionic sight.
Wanted on several charges of murder, terrorism, and grand larceny, as well as espionage.
Little Known Facts
Childhood and Teenage Years
Until the age of 17, she lived under the care of her mother and father in the slums of Cap Au Diable. The opportunity that a psionic child brought was not lost upon Patrick and Amelia Winters when their daughter was born, and they took great efforts to encourage the child to use her gifts. The slums, after all, were a poor place to live, and if they have a psychic? They could force little Theresa to see the future and find opportunities to make them rich! All through her youth, they did their hardest to make her focus on using her mind. Many techniques were tried, most involving a negative reinforcement of some kind to force her to see. Eventually, they had a success. Theresa accurately predicted some lottery numbers, allowing her parents to score a grand jackpot; enough to leave the slums and move into Aeon City.
But they'd only gotten a taste of fortune; her parents wanted more. But Theresa couldn't deliver. It seemed that the prophecy had come as a one off event, the duress her parents put her under finally triggering her powers to find a way out. As their winnings dwindled--squandered on petty, pretty things--and the possibility of being kicked back into the slums became more real, the parents became increasingly desperate. They'd heard about sensory deprivation being used to force gifted individuals to develop their gifts further. They spent the majority of their remaining funds trying to emulate these procedures. First, they had to pay off a corrupt doctor. He would remove Theresa's sight and speech capabilities by sewing both her mouth and eyes shut. Unable to see or speak, her parents hoped, Theresa would have to develop her powers, and as such, be able to make more fortuitous predictions.
Of course, a little girl having her eyes and mouth sewn shut by an unethical surgeon was a traumatic experience. During the procedure, she had her second vision. This one dealt with her, and how she would have her revenge. She saw many events that would play out, what her role in them would be, and how to shape them. As the last stitch was tied to the screaming child's face, she knew what her future would be. She was six years old at the time.
Her parents hired her a private teacher who would instruct her. She would be instructed as a normal child; for obvious reasons, she couldn't go to the public schools, and she'd need to be educated in order to take care of them. She was often forced to perceive the future, but her power could still not be controlled. Wrong predictions were punished. So were attempts to remove the sutures so she could see or speak again. The punishments grew increasingly severe, and her parents began reinforcing the idea that removing the sutures would cause something terrible to happen. Slowly, this psychological construct took hold, and she stopped trying to remove the stitches, fearing of pain and destruction that would come of it.
The frequent abuse wore on, and over time, she lost memory of what things were like before the surgery, and even began forgetting what she saw during the procedure. Her psychic subconscious had to work hard to keep her on the path. She eventually worked up the courage during her teen years to begin sneaking out at night and experiencing the world. As dangerous as that was, her power protected her. She would frequent clubs, sneaking in through ways less-talented people would never find, nor be able to negotiate, and dance the night away, returning just before her parents woke up and began the regiment again. Encounters with the thugs of the Isles taught her how to fight, and she received visions--or rather, memories--at the right times to progress her now all-but-forgotten vision.
Her parents were rather powerful by now, and had begun frequenting St. Martial's casinos to further press their luck; they tried to make Theresa predict the right times to bet and play before they went, but she wasn't able to help them. One night, they lost nearly everything. It was close to her seventeenth birthday at the time, and Patrick and Amelia's last night alive. They returned to the penthouse drunk and looking to take out their misfortune on the one who failed them; Theresa. Just before they opened the door, she received a vision again, warning her of their intentions, and telling her that it was time. She took a pair of knives from the knife block in the kitchen, and cut her parents down as they stepped into the foyer. Theresa stuffed what she thought would be useful into a day pack, left the bloody knives and corpses behind, and set off.
The Path of the Widow
She would spend years on the streets of the Rogue Isles. There, she'd learn the skills it took to be noticed by Arachnos and be recruited as a Widow. But first, she needed to eat.
Life on the streets was hard. With only the money she managed to steal from her parents bodies, she was able to stay in cheap motel rooms and subsist for a few months. But that eventually ran dry, and without a way to replenish it, she was forced to beg and scavenge. She had a distinct advantage with her disability here, though. Even in the Rogue Isles, a few compassionate souls would wander by from time to time and see the blind and mute young woman and take pity. But these rare moments of charity were hardly enough to quiet her stomach or keep her warm at night on the docks.
That was during the day, however. It wasn't long before she came to realize that her unique situation gave her great advantage after dark, where normal humans couldn't see very well, but her psionic sight could see them plain as day. She joined the rank and file of thugs who preyed upon others, stealing what little they had to improve her own lot. The first few times she did it, she felt horrible. But each time, it became easier to ignore the sobbing pleas and screams as she punched her mark. She didn't use weapons; her fists worked just as well. Furthermore, the darkness made it easy for her to conceal herself, always having the element of surprise.
The money from her muggings at night, and begging during the day, started to fill the void. She still lived in shanty town squalor, but at least she could afford to get something to eat, and a warm blanket. Years of this honed her skills at fighting from the shadows, and eventually, she even began carrying lethal knives as she began running into more and more armed citizens. But she was smart, agile, and quiet. Even guns would be useless against her as she closed the distance in an instant and disarmed the terrified victim. This saved her life when her shanty town was purged by Arachnos.
A traitor that had been feeding sensitive information to Longbow agents from Agincourt fled into the slums to hide among the homeless. He failed to account for the fact that Arachnos would simply kill whoever they thought was associated with him. One night, soldiers of Arachnos began marching through Theresa's shanty town, rounding up the squatters for 'questioning.' They never suspected what would happen when they tried to kidnap Theresa. Her body count grew by three that night, before a Fortunata realized what was going on, and called off the soldiers. Her resume was written in blood, and her interview conducted by a hearing. Arachnos wasn't about to pass up an asset like Theresa; her sight could see through even the heaviest of normal disguises, and her body was lithe and acrobatic. She would make a great assassin. And if her foresight could be honed and controlled, she could become a Fate Weaver, playing the threads of fate for Lord Recluse. Theresa didn't need too much convincing. Hot meals and warm, comfortable quarters were enough.
The surgery was painful for her implants, but when she woke up, she felt the immediate connection to her new sorority. She was now a Widow, one of the beautiful, deadly assassins of Arachnos; the eyes and ears of Lord Recluse. For the first time, she found solidarity in other people, her sister Widow trainees and superiors. It was a dangerous world, of course, with the various patrons plotting against each other for greater gains. More than once she found herself forced to kill a friend she'd made because their respective commanders didn't share the same goals. Her personality began to split, between the cheerful, warm sister, and the cold, merciless assassin. To her, being a Widow was something she did for work, like a banker would manage finances, or a chef would prepare meals. She killed people and manipulated events. Strangely, she resisted all attempts to have her eyes and mouth unstitched. The first two doctors who tried sustained severe injuries at the end of her claws. It seemed some psychological block had formed itself in her mind, having lived over ten years with her eyes sewn shut, stewing on the lessons that trying to open them or to speak resulted in great pain and catastrophe. The doctors left her alone after that. It would be some time before she could overcome this.
Assignment to the AED
Her first assignment of note has been to the Arachnos Espionage Division, coming not more than a month after her implant surgery and training finished. She was picked up by the now-commanding officer Fortunata Sanguine after a failed operation to acquire what appeared to be an asset that could cause distortions in time. While the attempt to acquire the woman with these powers ended in failure, Theresa Winters never the less showed competence and the request for her reassignment was approved by then-commander Bishop.
The AED itself was, and still is, in a period of restructuring after a string of defections. Theresa has made her opinion on the subject well known, favoring dissolving the AED and "retaining valuable assets in a new organization structure." Recent decisions made by Commander Sand Fox have quieted Theresa's opinion, and she favors a wait and see approach to determine if the changes will serve to save what she views as 'a sinking ship.'
Discontent
As time passed, Theresa began chafing under the direction of a group that seemed disinclined to play her to her strengths. She was a Night Widow, skilled at clandestine special forces raids, assassination, theft, and manipulation. Not public executions, military drills, and stand up slug fests. More and more, her thoughts started to search outward, considering the comfortable nest egg she'd built up skimming off the top of missions assigned outside of the AED. Off shore bank accounts, investments placed in the names of people who did not exist, even solid assets stored in safe deposit boxes (also under alias'), all of these making her consider what she stood to gain, long term, by being employed under Arachnos. Perhaps it was time for a career change? She doubted that the organization would let a Night Widow, and all of her implants, go willingly.
Defection
As meteors rained upon Galaxy City, Theresa Winters made her move. Between Longbow assaulting Mercy Island, and the Patrons and their forces in Paragon, Fort Cerberus, and Ghost Widow's tower was relatively undefended. She'd used her connections in Arachnos to look up information on the infamous V. Lynx. Chasing various leads, she was shown to the Inevitable Evolution group. Unbeknown to her, this group indeed house the V Lynx.
After several meetings, she was offered a position in their security division. With that came the agreement that this group would sponsor the removal of Theresa Winter's records from Fort Cerberus, and the subsequent deletion of all other data pertaining to her existence from other networked sources.
