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pallantiasOUT OF CHARACTER
Player Name: Sue
Are you 16 or older: Four years older!
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
crimsonxiphos or PM!
Current Characters: N/A
Tag: athena
IN CHARACTER
Name: Athena
Canon: Borderlands
Canon Point: A few days after being captured by Mr. Shank’s men in The Secret Armory of General Knoxx
Age: ~30, maybe? Never canonically stated.
History: As a young child, a Pandoran girl of now-unknown name and ancestry was “recruited” by a military force known as the Crimson Lance to be trained as an assassin. Like all assassin recruits, she was forced to kill her parents and take on a new name – she was given the name Athena, after the goddess of wisdom and just war. The girl’s sister, Jess, escaped before she too could be killed as part of the initiation.
The newly-named Athena was raised to be a ruthless and efficient killer, utterly devoted to the Crimson Lance’s sponsor, a war-profiteering corporation known as Atlas. After years of training and brutal conditioning, Athena was given the title of official Lance Assassin. Noted for her skill and dedication to the mission, she was soon given command of Omega Squad, known to be the best of the best of the assassins. However, unbeknownst to Atlas command, Athena harbored plans to find her lost sister and escape with her from Pandora and the Lance. Unfortunately, Athena made the mistake of revealing her plan to General Knoxx, her trusted superior officer, and through him, Atlas command found out about her dreams of escape. Unwilling to lose one of their best operatives, Atlas arranged for Athena to unknowingly wipe out the village where her sister lived, severing her remaining familial ties and crushing any future plans of escape.
However, this plan ended up backfiring horribly for Atlas. Realizing she had been tricked into killing her own sister, Athena turned on the Crimson Lance forces, cutting down many soldiers and fellow Lance Assassins alike before being subdued. General Knoxx, the officer who she had trusted with her plan, was now responsible for shipping her back to Atlas HQ as a prisoner. Fortunately, Athena managed to escape before this could happen, once again gruesomely cutting through any Lance forces that stood in her way.
Soon afterwards, Athena teamed up with the Vault Hunters Lilith, Roland, Mordecai, and Brick to wipe out what remained of the Atlas Corporation on Pandora. Unfortunately, her plans hit a snag when she was captured by a gang of bandits led by a man called Mr. Shank, who planned on selling her back to Atlas for a bounty. Her canon point will be taken 2-3 days after being captured.
Personality: In many ways, Athena is an exemplary assassin and soldier. Obedient, unsentimental, and uncompromisingly ruthless, she has long been an extremely valuable asset to the Lance and a terror to their enemies. However, Athena’s obedience does not correlate with weak-mindedness. The fact that she withstood literal decades of Atlas brainwashing and still harbored plans to escape speaks to her defiance and determination.
Though strong emotion can drive her to chattiness and even excitability (as Knoxx describes when she tells him of her sister), for the most part Athena is very frigid, speaking in short, terse sentences and focusing on the mission above all else. Occasionally, this stiffness breaks down when speaks about her sister or Atlas, though she’s always quick to revert to her normally austere demeanor afterwards.
Despite her cold nature, Athena also shows a terrifying capacity for rage and vengeance. For example, after she realizes she has been tricked into killing Jess, she immediately turns on her former allies, with the strong implication that she killed not only Crimson Lance soldiers, but also her fellow Assassins, who had been raised alongside her since childhood as her “sisters.” Her sudden and violent shift in allegiance will later cause her to comment that while she may be “loyal to the mission,” this does not at all mean she is “loyal to people.”
Given her abnormal upbringing, it is not at all surprising that Athena does not excel socially. Besides her general stilted, militaristic way of speaking, she also commits faux paus such as hiding important intel in male enhancement ads, while apparently not understanding the humor in doing so. It is later revealed that Atlas conditioned her to be unaffected by sentiments related to love and sex and though her future relationship with junk dealer Janey Springs will reveal that Atlas failed spectacularly in both regards, her current ignorance and disinterest in such topics adds another layer to her social awkwardness.
Abilities/Skills: Athena is very, very good at killing. Though she prefers to fight with blades, she is also capable of killing with her bare hands and likely through a wide variety of other means. She is also very stealthy and acrobatic, as one would expect from a dual-wielding assassin.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
+ Great at murder
+ Great at following orders
+ Also great at giving orders
+ Very focused and efficient
+ Never does anything halfway
- Terrible at conversation
- Honestly terrible at most things that don’t involve violence
- Will not laugh at your jokes
- Never does anything halfway
Items: Nothing but the armor on her back
SAMPLES
Network Sample:
[Athena taps at the device on her wrist, frowning behind her faceplate. Her first day on the ship had been turbulent, to say the least, and the fact that she now has to record this message to deal with the fallout is… regrettable. Not least because she’s never had to record a message of this nature before and isn’t completely sure how to approach it. It's not like she's ever had to apologize for this kind of behavior before, after all.
She spends another moment organizing her thoughts, then starts recording.]
Attention crewmen. This is Athena speaking. You may recall that there was an announcement made about me yesterday. [Seeing as the announcement was something along the lines of, “She has a knife, please apprehend,” she doesn’t exactly sound happy to bring it up again. There’s a pause before she continues.]
Since then, I have been told of the true nature of this ship and the intentions of its crew. I've come to the conclusion that the actions I took yesterday were… ill-informed. [Another pause. Here comes the hard part.]
I would like to apologize to the crewmen I may have harmed while operating under these false assumptions. Specifically, to the two medical personnel I attacked upon waking in the medbay, the crewmember I held at knifepoint in the hall, and to the captain that I threatened to kill. Had the situation been made clear to me earlier on, I would not have acted as I did.
To the wounded, I wish you a swift recovery. I will not make such a mistake again.
[Okay, there. She said it. Do you know how hard it is for an assassin to apologize for trying to kill someone?]
That is all. Athena, out.
Prose/Action Sample: Sample from TDM
Are you 16 or older: Four years older!
Contact:
Current Characters: N/A
Tag: athena
IN CHARACTER
Name: Athena
Canon: Borderlands
Canon Point: A few days after being captured by Mr. Shank’s men in The Secret Armory of General Knoxx
Age: ~30, maybe? Never canonically stated.
History: As a young child, a Pandoran girl of now-unknown name and ancestry was “recruited” by a military force known as the Crimson Lance to be trained as an assassin. Like all assassin recruits, she was forced to kill her parents and take on a new name – she was given the name Athena, after the goddess of wisdom and just war. The girl’s sister, Jess, escaped before she too could be killed as part of the initiation.
The newly-named Athena was raised to be a ruthless and efficient killer, utterly devoted to the Crimson Lance’s sponsor, a war-profiteering corporation known as Atlas. After years of training and brutal conditioning, Athena was given the title of official Lance Assassin. Noted for her skill and dedication to the mission, she was soon given command of Omega Squad, known to be the best of the best of the assassins. However, unbeknownst to Atlas command, Athena harbored plans to find her lost sister and escape with her from Pandora and the Lance. Unfortunately, Athena made the mistake of revealing her plan to General Knoxx, her trusted superior officer, and through him, Atlas command found out about her dreams of escape. Unwilling to lose one of their best operatives, Atlas arranged for Athena to unknowingly wipe out the village where her sister lived, severing her remaining familial ties and crushing any future plans of escape.
However, this plan ended up backfiring horribly for Atlas. Realizing she had been tricked into killing her own sister, Athena turned on the Crimson Lance forces, cutting down many soldiers and fellow Lance Assassins alike before being subdued. General Knoxx, the officer who she had trusted with her plan, was now responsible for shipping her back to Atlas HQ as a prisoner. Fortunately, Athena managed to escape before this could happen, once again gruesomely cutting through any Lance forces that stood in her way.
Soon afterwards, Athena teamed up with the Vault Hunters Lilith, Roland, Mordecai, and Brick to wipe out what remained of the Atlas Corporation on Pandora. Unfortunately, her plans hit a snag when she was captured by a gang of bandits led by a man called Mr. Shank, who planned on selling her back to Atlas for a bounty. Her canon point will be taken 2-3 days after being captured.
Personality: In many ways, Athena is an exemplary assassin and soldier. Obedient, unsentimental, and uncompromisingly ruthless, she has long been an extremely valuable asset to the Lance and a terror to their enemies. However, Athena’s obedience does not correlate with weak-mindedness. The fact that she withstood literal decades of Atlas brainwashing and still harbored plans to escape speaks to her defiance and determination.
Though strong emotion can drive her to chattiness and even excitability (as Knoxx describes when she tells him of her sister), for the most part Athena is very frigid, speaking in short, terse sentences and focusing on the mission above all else. Occasionally, this stiffness breaks down when speaks about her sister or Atlas, though she’s always quick to revert to her normally austere demeanor afterwards.
Despite her cold nature, Athena also shows a terrifying capacity for rage and vengeance. For example, after she realizes she has been tricked into killing Jess, she immediately turns on her former allies, with the strong implication that she killed not only Crimson Lance soldiers, but also her fellow Assassins, who had been raised alongside her since childhood as her “sisters.” Her sudden and violent shift in allegiance will later cause her to comment that while she may be “loyal to the mission,” this does not at all mean she is “loyal to people.”
Given her abnormal upbringing, it is not at all surprising that Athena does not excel socially. Besides her general stilted, militaristic way of speaking, she also commits faux paus such as hiding important intel in male enhancement ads, while apparently not understanding the humor in doing so. It is later revealed that Atlas conditioned her to be unaffected by sentiments related to love and sex and though her future relationship with junk dealer Janey Springs will reveal that Atlas failed spectacularly in both regards, her current ignorance and disinterest in such topics adds another layer to her social awkwardness.
Abilities/Skills: Athena is very, very good at killing. Though she prefers to fight with blades, she is also capable of killing with her bare hands and likely through a wide variety of other means. She is also very stealthy and acrobatic, as one would expect from a dual-wielding assassin.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
+ Great at murder
+ Great at following orders
+ Also great at giving orders
+ Very focused and efficient
+ Never does anything halfway
- Terrible at conversation
- Honestly terrible at most things that don’t involve violence
- Will not laugh at your jokes
- Never does anything halfway
Items: Nothing but the armor on her back
SAMPLES
Network Sample:
[Athena taps at the device on her wrist, frowning behind her faceplate. Her first day on the ship had been turbulent, to say the least, and the fact that she now has to record this message to deal with the fallout is… regrettable. Not least because she’s never had to record a message of this nature before and isn’t completely sure how to approach it. It's not like she's ever had to apologize for this kind of behavior before, after all.
She spends another moment organizing her thoughts, then starts recording.]
Attention crewmen. This is Athena speaking. You may recall that there was an announcement made about me yesterday. [Seeing as the announcement was something along the lines of, “She has a knife, please apprehend,” she doesn’t exactly sound happy to bring it up again. There’s a pause before she continues.]
Since then, I have been told of the true nature of this ship and the intentions of its crew. I've come to the conclusion that the actions I took yesterday were… ill-informed. [Another pause. Here comes the hard part.]
I would like to apologize to the crewmen I may have harmed while operating under these false assumptions. Specifically, to the two medical personnel I attacked upon waking in the medbay, the crewmember I held at knifepoint in the hall, and to the captain that I threatened to kill. Had the situation been made clear to me earlier on, I would not have acted as I did.
To the wounded, I wish you a swift recovery. I will not make such a mistake again.
[Okay, there. She said it. Do you know how hard it is for an assassin to apologize for trying to kill someone?]
That is all. Athena, out.
Prose/Action Sample: Sample from TDM