Suspire
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Suspire | |
| Player: Cauda | |
| Origin: | Confidential |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Confidential |
| Security Level: | ~20 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Jessica Grant |
| Known Aliases: | - |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 33 |
| Height: | Confidential |
| Weight: | Confidential |
| Eye Color: | Confidential |
| Hair Color: | Confidential |
| Biographical Data | |
| Citizenship: | American Citizen |
| Occupation: | Confidential |
| Place of Birth: | Confidential |
| Current Residence: | Paragon City, RI USA |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Classified |
| Known Powers | |
| Assault Rifle/ Mental Manipulation | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Army Intelligence, CIA Black-Ops (Omega Watch) training. Expertise in information gathering, recon and hunting/ tracking. | |
| Equipment | |
| • Wrist comm unit • Head-Up Display, or "HUD" • MediPort beacon • Anti-gravity harness • Personal cloaking device • Kimber Ultra Carry personal sidearm • SCORPIO uniform made of special 8-ply Kevlar panels (able to withstand ballistic impact up to .45 caliber bullets) and "Atlex 5" a fire-resistant material that withstand temperatures of up to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit | |
| Footnotes | |
| Recovering alcoholic. | |
Contents |
Personality: I See A Red Door
Jessica "Suspire" Grant is a practical, down-to-earth woman with a healthy dose of cynicism born from years working behind-the-scenes in intelligence. She is a worker rather than a leader, making her easy for most people to get along with and cooperative member of any team, even if she generally keeps her thoughts to herself. She isn't a soldier without her demons, however, and secretly indulges too heavily in alcohol to avoid dealing with horror of her tour in Dark Astoria. Her quiet determination gives most the sense she is beyond her prime, struggling to stay in the game simply because there is nowhere else for an ex-soldier to go.
Powers: No Pain, No Gain
Suspire is a highly trained operative, specializing in search-and-rescue operations with all the skills and strengths one would expect of a soldier built to operate for long periods of time without support, behind enemy lines and a few they might not.
Primary Powerset: Assault Rifle
The standard issue S.C.O.R.P.I.O rifle. While Suspire is uncomfortable with all the flashy "extras", she does not deny that bolting a flamethrower, shotgun and grenade launcher to the weapon vastly expands ones tactical options. So familiar with firearms, Suspire considers the rifle an extension of her eye and is barely even feels the gargantuan weapons recoil anymore.
Secondary Powerset: Mental Manipulation
Most don't expect a grunt to have a brain, but Grant possesses one more deadly than the rifle at her side. The one outstanding feature that differentiates her from other spec-ops soldiers, Suspire is a natural psionic and harbours the ability to move heavy objects and disrupt the electrical signals in her enemy's minds with sheer force of will alone. She does not consider herself 'special' for possessing this ability, and is of the opinion it is simply a product of intensive training. To Grant, anyone could be a psionist if they can just "get it".
Tertiary Abilities
Despite years of abuse, Suspire's body is capable of great speed, strength and endurance. She is highly skilled in guerilla warfare, survival and navigating difficult terrain. Her premier ability is skills in hunting and tracking. With only minimal information, Grant can track down a target over great distances, making her an excellent scout and rescue operative.
Suspire's skills with psionics have altered her perception, and she is capable of seeing the invisible spirits who lurk after death. Though she rarely encourages the ghosts by paying any attention, their presence is a constant reminder of mortality that has her shaken.
Affiliations: Chain of Command
Having "come in from the cold", Suspire is no longer affiliated with Omega Watch or the US Army. Despite having left official service, she retain friends in many government departments, assets from her work as an operative and friends she has collected from her life as an 'outlaw'.
Since returning to Paragon at the behest of her former commanding officer Suspire has joined S.C.O.R.P.I.O., an extra-governmental intelligence and security organization run by a mysterious body of benefactors known as "The Nine". She has kept a low profile, leaving the parties and more exciting mission for those who still enjoy it. Among the few comrades who have met her, Suspire has developed a reputation for being a "strong and silent" type, and while not-quite-legal elements of her past are something of an open secret, nobody really suspects the beneath the demeanor of a solid, professional soldier lurks a scarred, haunted soul.
This arrangement was short-lived, and Suspire now acts as an independent operative.
Allies
None.
History
Some of Grant's life can be found on public record, but other parts have completely disappeared either due to time spent working on sensitive government "projects" or living off-the-grid.
Early Years
Jessica was born on a balmy Boston night, the (slightly) younger of two daughters. Her youth was unremarkable, punctuated by athletic achievements, but very little in the way of academia. She coasted her way into a business degree at college, relying on natural intelligence rather than diligent study, but found the lifestyle too lax and soon dropped out to join the US Army, where she found her calling.
Military Pace
It was in the Army that Grant found her calling. She thrived in the armed forces, and fell in to Army Intelligence where she reached the rank of Captain. It was on deployment in Kuwait, liaising with CIA operatives that Grant caught the attention of Omega Watch, a shadowy division of the agency. Before long, she joined the agency and staged a number of covert operations, focusing mainly on extracting important people from hot spots all around the world.
When the Banished Pantheon emerged in Dark Astoria, Omega Watch lent its resources to help in the fight, dispatching two teams codenamed "Suspire One" and "Suspire Two" respectively. Grant and a number of fellow operatives were dispatched to Dark Astoria to wage guerrilla warfare and rescue as many civilians as possible. Alone and behind enemy lines, most of the team were killed and their bodies harvested for use by the Pantheon. After months of combat, Omega Watch gave up on the possibility of the team still being alive and supported the order to designate Astoria a "hazard zone"- lost to the Pantheon and beyond hope of salvage.
When finally Grant and her team emerged, they were embittered by the indifference of the government and the citizenry to the fall of Astoria and their own agency for giving up on them. Those remaining left the armed forces and feeling unable to return home, left the United States. Grant went with them.
A Pact
For a number of years, the soldiers traveled around some of the worlds worst places, capitalizing from misery and rampant violence. Corporations that wanted to keep their hands clean employed them as mercenaries to 'convince' uncooperative natives to abandoned their resource rich lands, rescue kidnapped VIPs and escort tankers through dangerous waters. Criminal bosses paid them to steal secrets and smuggle goods across national borders. In between jobs, they acted as marauders, seizing anything that looked to be profitable and then wasting the cash. Despite their ruthlessness, the soldiers maintained a code: nobody would be left to rot, as they had in Dark Astoria.
Eventually the team disintegrated, lost to attrition through violence or degeneration. A few souls even returned to the United States and attempted to rejoin civilization. Having nothing to return home to, Jessica Grant remained in South-East Asia, scraping by on a measly existence in which heat, violence and alcohol were the only constants. Upon catching wind that the son of a fellow soldier had been abducted while holidaying in Malaccas, Grant emerged from her downward spiral long enough to infiltrate an organised crime ring and bring the man back to safety, with some last minute support from the shadowy organisation known as S.C.O.R.P.I.O.
Rebirth
In the company of S.C.O.R.P.I.O and momentary freed from her stupor, Grant began to question the direction her life was headed, but the clarity did not last long. She chose to remain in squallor until a few weeks later, she was informed that her former army commanding officer had passed away. Grant flew to the US to attend the funeral where she was convinced by her late friend's restless spirit to pull herself together.
Grant joined S.C.O.R.P.I.O's Special-Ops division shortly after, taking the codename "Suspire" to honour the comrades that fell in Dark Astoria, rather than bury their memory beneath a tide of alcohol and self-pity.
Intelligence: Stories of Suspire-One
Good Soldier: Coming back to life sometimes requires a helping hand.
Boiler Room: A look at the rage churning beneath Suspire's stoic mask.
Trivia
- Recurring motif: Lotus flowers.
- I had to use the Blinding Powder icon because there wasn't one for the Concealment Pool. Stop laughing.
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