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P L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Your Name: Dray
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dray
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: No
Email + IM: dracothrope at gmail. Plurk is![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
drayma
Characters Played at Ataraxion: n/a
C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: AJ (Amanda Jolene) Harris
Canon: CRAU-OC; AJ is a clone of an original character (hairsay) and was created by the technicians of boxmods. She existed from May 2014 to July 2014.
Original or Alternate Universe: CRAU
Canon Point: Just before AJ died in game, shortly after a plague was disseminated into the box-shaped prison and before an undead outbreak.
Setting: Before AJ was cloned and released into the Box (her original, Jolene, was brought in during March 2014, and AJ possesses her original's memories from the time that Jo was born until their split in May) her memories tell her that she came from an earth very similar to our own, save perhaps shifted towards cynicism. She grew up and lived in southern Alberta, Canada, in a semi-rural mountain community. She eventually wound up in Calgary, the province's business capitol. In late 2010, the city was bombed or gassed or otherwise suffered a major apocalyptic disaster of chthonic proportions; because AJ was not able to gather more than first-hand evidence, she does not know how the city fell, only that for a few months she was hard-pressed to survive in the aftermath. The disaster ruptured to the surface and spread awful transformations across the landscape and over all life in its path, and much of the city's population died instantly. Others were mentally or physically disfigured, or both. For three or four months AJ and her friend survived by the skin of their teeth in ever-changing and and ever-worsening conditions, trying to find a way to escape the changes and outrun the expanding bubble of the disaster's influence.
For those unfamiliar with the Box, the prison was given this colloquial name because of its deadly electric barriers that extended not only around the perimeter (a couple dozen kilometers wide on a side) but also as a roof about a couple of kilometers up and a basement deep beneath the earth. Inside was what came to be known as the killing floor by some, where various characters were dragged in and left to fend for themselves (with the occasional nudge from the Technicians), and where all kinds of highly imaginative and highly deadly tests were rolled out to maximize pain, suffering, and ultimately death for the sake of vengeful, restless gods that rested deep below the Box itself. Every character that died was brought back to life via cloning and very careful augmentations (usually to mock prisoners, as with scars and memory augmentations) and left to fend for themselves again. This cycle happened over and over for each character despite the Technicians' waning resources and the waning patience of the gods demanding ever more sacrifices. For those who were able to survive and move on with life, the Box was otherwise a pleasant enough place in between tests: it supported massive forests, a river, marshes, a long strip of ocean-front (and even some ocean itself), two small towns, and various buildings in which characters could find useful items and deadly traps.
AJ's understanding of the Box extends beyond her original's experiences, as when AJ was first awoken, she was forced to endure the basement suite of the facility located far under the Box's lower barrier. She and all of the other clones (one for each character in the Box that month) were given the opportunity to explore the testing suite, the first layer between the Box and the world of the Technicians. She was traumatized: down here were kept bodies of those who had died and been reclaimed by runners, half-grown clones, and a whole bevvy of monsters kept in boxes on call, waiting for their time to be let out and to kill. AJ made a break for it at the first possible opportunity, but what looked like an escape route actually led her up into the killing floor... as for every other clone who tried to escape. This provided a bond between those who'd experienced the basement; many began to work together to try to take their originals down.
The reason for this highly-targeted malice was partially instilled by the Technicians: when AJ first spotted Jolene she was struck by a pang of unfairness and hatred so strong that it nearly consumed her. She struggled with this urge for the entirety of her short existence. Though the Technicians did nothing to specifically help the wave of clones destroy their originals, AJ was wily enough to manipulate her surroundings (and scared enough by the knowledge that if she failed she would be sent back down to the basement to be experimented on or worse) that she managed to get the upper leg on her original. At the time, Jolene was infested with an intelligent 'tetravirus' composed of thousands of sentient voices with great potential to knit and change flesh or even the fabric of biological existence, and AJ made a deal with it after knocking her double unconscious. In the end she wrested a part of its prickly, sticky red biomass for herself. The tetravirus claimed that it could grant invulnerability to just about anything that AJ could imagine, so not only was the clone able to greatly endanger Jolene's life (she had her double ripped open to pull parts of the tetravirus out) but had greatly extended her own chances of survival... or so she thought.
Like most things in the Box, the sentient virus wasn't to be trusted. AJ managed to survive eating drugged and poisoned food, as well as an outbreak of an unrelated virus that killed many other prisoners, but in the end her parasite turned on her and dissolved her body for its own biomass. Unlike the original prisoners, the Technicians had no interest in bringing a faulty clone back for another round. AJ passed alone in the dark of the forest where she had made her camp, a forgotten monster like all the rest.
History: Most of AJ's recent history is covered above, but she is a fleshed out OC from a fairly mundane background. She grew up in a mid-sized mountain town on a cattle ranch, in a large family composed of her parents and four older brothers. AJ was constantly hounded by her nigh-upon militantly religious and conservative mother to uphold the norms of her gender, but AJ, always stubborn, refused to comply at first because she didn't want to fall in line, and later because dressing and acting more like a girl irked her and made her feel weak and stupid.
Instead she wound up spending a lot of time playing with hand-me-down toys and wearing hand-me-down clothing from her brothers, trying to impress the younger of the four of them by hanging around their friends and getting into hyperbolic amounts of trouble to make up for what they saw in her as a handicap of being younger and physically weaker. She also spent a lot of time around her much more equitable father, who though taciturn and mostly done with fathering, still found her obsessive attention to detail easy to accommodate in his garage. Before he inherited their ranch he had joined the military as an air corps aviation engineer, and automotive mechanics was still his passion, so when he wasn't maintaining their ranch, AJ could inevitably track him down to watch him tinker.
By the time that she was fourteen, her father had passed on his truck to her to 'solve'. It was broken down and needed new parts, and her eldest brother made a habit of taking her down to the junk yard to help her source and buy parts to put it back together. By the time she was sixteen, and with the help of her dad, she had a working (if noisy) beast and AJ used it to escape her home and unhappy school-life by driving for hours over the provincial border to find walking trails and climbing spots.
Speaking of school-life, her stubbornness, her desire to fit in with the wrong crowd, and her inability to play well with other children marked her as an exile from a very young grade. Her unwillingness to fit in did not do her any favours, especially as she grew into teenagerhood. Ostracized by those of her gender and usually picked on by the opposite, she spent a lot of time that should have been going into getting good grades on getting into fights and sitting in detention. AJ missed a year that could have gone towards college in recovering from nearly dropping out. Her eldest brother again saved her bacon; as an electrical engineer working with a large company that spanned the entirety of the province, he convinced her that it was a lucrative career path to follow.
AJ enrolled a year later than she probably ought to have at the the major trades college in Calgary, packing everything into her truck and moving out to the big city. She met her first staunch friend as she tried to navigate college: a scrawny, short young man named Ryan Planter who inevitably was bullied within an inch of his life when thrust into the mix of classmates more interested in hockey and beer than mathematical brain-scratchers and universal anomalies. AJ teamed up with him as his defender while he helped her through the more complex mathematical problems inherent to the theory side of her curriculum. She also wound up talking him out of a very dark place, realizing that she'd grown close enough to him that she was deeply invested in his well-being.
When the disaster that struck the city fell out from under them, both she and Ryan were spared the immediate doom that took so many people, but Ryan was afflicted with a physical deformity, and AJ (or at least her original) was afflicted with a niggling growth of insanity, one that she would not recognize for what it was until it was too late. Her mental parasites were small and dumb and served mostly to tease negative thoughts from her, but if she had not been yanked into the prison of the Box she would probably have been overwhelmed the longer she stayed within the torn apart city, the same way that Ryan's small affliction was slowly growing and taking over his body, turning him into something unspeakably other.
Personality: AJ has more of her mother in her than she would like to admit to, without the searing social graces to put all of that sheer brute force to work in a useful way. She is a massive mix of deep-rooted insecurities, false bravado, social conditioning, rebellious impulses, and high focus and practical thinking that make it impossible for her to stay reserved or aloof for long. On top of that, her trauma traversing her destroyed city tends to crop up at times to expound on her negative traits, and on top of that her understanding that she's a worthless clone of an original that she hates, a disposable monster... AJ has a few issues that work against her.
This isn't to say that she is completely feral and unable to interact with others. In fact, AJ is capable of forming extremely strong bonds with others at a one-on-one level, as her experiences with her friend Ryan (both before and after the fall of her city) can attest to. She feels immediate and deep-rooted empathy towards other exiles and monsters, though common sense wins out if they are not the kind to be socialized with. AJ is very wary of groups, and has better common sense in some ways than does her original, Jolene; where at one time AJ might have been very pushy and relatively uninhibited (in light of that false bravado) she has been tempered by the horrors of malicious Technicians towards stoicism and avoidance of organized society. She is extremely observant, and all of that forceful personality tends to come out on a one-on-one level. AJ believes that trust can only be gained by fear and strength and though she is not a very good manipulator, she has the makings of perhaps one day being one if she can only survive through the mistakes she has yet to make.
AJ possesses a background in practical problem solving, specifically with mechanical problems, but also with electronics. She will study for hours on a topic if given the option, but this usually includes practical aspects in addition to book learning (in fact, if she's not able to take half-formed ideas to the test, she can lose steam and burn out easily.) She applies this to her study of humans and humanoids, using it to keep herself alive by approaching those whose arm she can twist and avoiding those she thinks might cause her trouble.
Unfortunately, AJ is not a great liar. Both her body language (often exaggerated, especially when her hands come near her face) and her facial expressions are easy to read. Usually, at least at first, this trends towards hostility, defensiveness, crudeness and suspicion, but if she grows more trusting, the defensiveness and suspicion drop somewhat. She is still crude (she swears a lot and makes a lot of gestures, some of which are contextual to her upbringing, and some of which ought to be universally understood on some level by all humans as being crass as hell) and she can still be pretty hostile, but this comes across in horseplay and pranking, which in itself is a kind of testing. She likes to know that those she's allied herself with are strong and worthy of her trust, though this isn't a conscious want. Just as AJ can sometimes go out on a limb to prove herself to others, she has a craving for the same in return. This might not have been as intrinsic were she not a certified clone; now she tends towards needing little gestures on a regular basis to validate her existence and her own worthiness.
While some might quail about their artificial existence, AJ can a stubborn ass about hers. She treats her mistrust in herself as a mistrust in life and the powers that be in general. Her hyper-focus could very easily turn inward without an outlet, which means that she usually leaps for anything to avoid introspection on too deep a level. This usually manifests in observation and study followed by a lot of experimentation, which allows her to vent any frustration (and deeper issues) on a temporary setback. Really, if she's to be stuck in a survival setting, she's one of those who will make the second move and put a unique spin on what others have failed at in order to try to succeed... and if that doesn't work, she more importantly will keep trying. When she has a goal that she can put solid work towards, she becomes an entirely different person, healthier and more sociable, or at least less skittish.
It's probably important to note that while AJ will try her best to remain on the outskirts, when she gets embroiled (and she probably will, and quickly) she sticks to her guns more than she would have without the clone conditioning. She makes decisions that she does not go back on, and while she will beat a retreat if she's made a terrible mistake, she can be very hard to convince that she's wrong. She only apologizes at truly apocalyptic mistakes, going out of her way to come up with some other way to mitigate either disagreements or opportunities for consolation.
It's probably completely unimportant to mention that AJ's such a prickly possum from childhood that she's always been a half-ways never-nude and a virgin besides, given that it doesn't originate from any particular trauma nor does it have bearing on most of her interactions, but she wears layers like they're a legitimate physical defense and she takes raunchy jokes aimed at her expense very poorly, never mind that she will launch a volley of the same at another.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations: AJ is an average human being, despite her fantastic circumstances. She has mechanical and automotive expertise within the realms of human ability, and a good understanding of the basic workings of electrical routing and its uses. Her knack for survival has been enhanced by her time narrowly avoiding death and disfiguration in a monster-infested hell hole, and her time at the Box has helped some, too. AJ's weaknesses are partly based around her physical strength (she is a 5'9" ectomorph who has survived on a malnourished diet for months) and her social reticence. Competing against others who are stronger or more socially and emotionally adept, she will always lose. Pitted against other manipulative people, she has not learned enough to defend herself against their wiles. AJ sees the world as a competition, which is a weakness in and of itself in light of surviving in an unknown world where social bonds will certainly be the key.
If she can be swayed to join a cause, she will work her damnedest to make it succeed. She goes to uncomfortable lengths for what she believes in.
AJ will have a slightly heightened understanding of telepathic communication and empathetic manipulation. The first comes from the tetravirus known as the Biomatrix that integrated with her brain and spoke to her mind-to-mind. AJ will be able to discern most voices that are projected into her head as just that. She has a slight resistance to emotional and memory manipulation because she no longer has any psychic parasites in her brain from Calgary's fall. Originally, these twisted her thoughts to evoke rage, fear, and despondence, modifying her memories to suit her negative emotions. Without that, AJ has had time to come to understand when a feeling is not her own. This also comes from her clone conditioning by the Technicians. She suspects that she could have gotten over her raw hatred for Jolene, but that emotional punch was hard to resist. She will need to take time to learn to resist manipulation but she will at least be aware that it's happening.
Inventory: Just some remnants of a tattered red scarf, the inert remnants of the tetravirus that dissolved her in her previous game. This material should be warm, but it is also prickly and uncomfortable. It will not come back to life at any point. Nerfing the tetravirus prevents it from taking root in the jungle and swallowing all of that biomass whole, which it inevitably would do if AJ was ported into the game with the tetravirus intact.
Species/Race: Human, caucasian.
Appearance: Five foot nine, bony, strong jaw and generally bitter look. Very long black hair, blue eyes, surprisingly few scars as yet. She likes to layer clothing, though she'll go with a tank top and long shorts if the climate is steamy and unrelenting.
Age: 20; her body is only a few months old but is vat-grown to resemble her predecessor exactly.
AU Clarification: AJ versus Jolene, or even AJ versus Jolene pre-Box canon, is not as wide a gap as it probably is for some CRAU characters. AJ was only self possessed as a living clone for about two months, and her time in the Box overall (including her memories of Jolene's time) a couple of months longer than that. They were all traumatic months, granted, but then AJ's time in Calgary after it had gone to anarchic chaos was also so traumatic that her center for judging danger and acceptable risk has significantly shifted. The reason for her name change stems from Jolene's full name, 'Jolene Amanda Harris'. Because AJ was not entirely successful in snuffing out her original and slipping into her shoes, she chose to go by something else, however 'Amanda' felt too feminine.
The largest differences are mentioned in her personality, but generally AJ is more mistrusting and more willing to rely on gut instinct. She's slightly less prone to bullying into the center of a dilemma at hand to prove her worth, and she is more likely to try to manipulate a person to do what she wants, rather than simply trying to impress upon them that what she thinks is right is right for everyone. She is more observant and more skittish. AJ is equally as crass and equally unapologetic. She's not a great or even, usually, a good person.
As a note here, I'd like to say that something in the process of sucking AJ into the grav couch completely wiped out the tetravirus' she'd contracted in the previous game. It was originally Biomatrix 117, passed along through a couple of player characters from the canon, Romantically Apocalyptic. Biomatrix was capable of massively twinkish powers such as infecting biological matter and traveling back in time along its genetic precursors (so, say it could travel 'upstream' through AJ's parents, grandparents, etc.) and change events wherever it wanted. The only thing that kept Biomatrix from completely taking over the Box and breaking out was the fact that it was under tight in game restriction mechanics. I think that he would probably quite easily take over the entire crash site of the ship in a matter of a few days if even a single iota of his existence passed into Ataraxion's universe. The reason that I would like to include a shredded red scarf in AJ's inventory is because Biomatrix had such an impact on her as a clone, both in terms of as a great hope for survival and a great betrayal when it wound up duping her for her biomass. It would be a nice transition for her character between the Box and Ataraxion.
S A M P L E S
Log Sample:
Being sucked into a faulty jump sequence was impossible for the human mind to comprehend, especially when she was grossly preoccupied with the concept of dying. AJ was already thoroughly steeped in a feeling of worthless utility; she was a clone and a monster, grown only to cause pain and suffering. It was likely only a boon as far as the Technicians were concerned that she could feel both, herself, and it had driven her half-ways mad. Now, or at least moments ago, she had been in the process of having her consciousness stripped and integrated with an over-possessive tetravirus that claimed it was for her best interests!
Well, fuck best interests! AJ was struggling to maintain her identity, what little of it she had left... then the jump sucked her in, then her nightmare lurched and she was pulled from a dissolving body on the dry floor of her forest camp to a mis-aligned grav-couch, very much like the slab she'd first woken up on under the killing floor of her old prison. Her mind suffered a lurch from dissolving reality to utter groggy useleness, and all she could do for a moment was wretch as the breathing tubes were retracted from her throat and her body was allowed to smack against the containing glass wall protecting her from the wreckage just beyond.
She felt her hands entangled and, pulling them away from her chest, glimpsed a blurry smudge of something dark in the red lighting that flooded the room. Giving a wet, feral yell, she struggled and felt something contracting tightly around her throat; it wasn't until she'd panicked herself out of the unit that she realized the prickly cloth was looped around her neck, that she was pulling it, herself. If it was the Biomatrix, it wasn't moving. It wasn't speaking. The susurrus of hundreds of voices failed to whisper into her mind. Her head felt empty, as fogged over as pea soup. It felt about as sludge-stuck, too.
Beyond that, blind fear slowly seeped away and the woman realized that she wasn't in immediate danger of death, even if she wasn't feeling wholly put together, either. 'What are you doing, are you fucking with me? Is this some kind of mind game?' she snarled. She brought a length of the knit scarf directly before her watery eyes to focus on it. Usually the Biomatrix extruded a skull-like face to schmooze with her, but the cloth remained inert and still. Dead, almost. Never living? AJ ground her teeth, slamming a few mental notes out in what she felt was the thing's general direction. 'I'm not giving in to you, fucker! You better stay dead!'
She waited, poised on the edge of her couch, to be sure, but there was no immediate answer. Only then was able to turn her attention outward, and in the process she realized that she was not in as much safety as she might have hoped. Everything about the damaged little bay threw her hair on end, and that made her realize she was completely bare, vulnerable entirely. AJ hissed as she scraped at her eyes with the heels of her hands and then, blinking blearily, began her investigation for something to cover herself with, for some exit out of here.
When the search party arrived she very nearly attempted to chance jumping into the elevator shaft; the last thing she wanted to do was show herself to anyone, lest they be Technicians come to put an end to her for good. She'd escaped the teeth of death by some fucking miracle and she wasn't going to waste a single chance to survive... which meant the shaft dropping into darkness was out. Hurriedly, she crammed herself into a locker in the bank facing the grav couches, pulling the door shut as the first survivor worked their way down the tangled wreckage from the blinding hole in the skewed ceiling. AJ held her breath and waited; if this person had been alone she would have jumped on them and half ripped their head off trying to get answers, but they were shouting up and down as they looked for others and the last thing AJ wanted to do was to give them an inkling that she was around, let alone worth being pursued.
It dawned on her that she was resting against something soft, canvas-like, but it wasn't until the search party finally left with questions unanswered, and the blinding sunspot had crossed most of the way across the room, that she exited the locker itself and dragged the jumpsuit out with her. For a few moments she shivered in uncertain fear, her face pulled in a rictus of undecided dread. She didn't know if this was the basement of the Box or if she was somewhere else entirely, but she wasn't alone, and she was going to have to get answers.
Donning the simple clothing and cramming a sharp dagger of medical glass in her belt, the one-time clone looked up at the dangerously skewed beams, grating and wires that would allow her to escape to whatever was outside, and she swallowed hard. She used to like climbing. Something told her she was going to like all of this much less.
Comms Sample [Telepathy, assumed maxing of its ability tree]:
[The low-grade cacophony created by everyone tethered to Tranquility's unreal will-melding system had become background noise to AJ over the course of months. Those who were new, those who were unpracticed, they liked to shamelessly spill embarrassing bullshit facts in the same way that five-year-olds shamelessly picked their noses... and as much as it was fun to chase those unguarded thoughts down like a hound relentlessly bayed after foxes, AJ had only learned to hone her own brains by controlling what she responded to and how.
In fact, she rarely reached out like this. It was a strain and often left her with a killer headache, even after months of practice. Listening in on her unwitting comrades was one thing, but singling out the voices belonging to those important to her could leave her so thoroughly distracted, chasing down the wrong foxes, usually for stupid reasons, and in the end it was often much easier to track someone down with a communications device to hijack and get a message across.
But there were some things that shouldn't be broadcast by network.
AJ had managed to make her way down into the canyon with the remains of the ship that had teetered over the edge some time ago. The efforts to get into the wreckage would be generational in their undertaking by this point, but she had been making special forays, working with others who she had managed to miraculously develop some iota of trust... and that was paying off just now.]
::I've found it,:: [she sent, the thought a tight band to her team.] ::It sounds just like what they were talking about; it's not intact but if we drag it out and hide it we might just fucking have our fucking leg up over this whole piece of shit hierarchy. ....It's fixable. I think it'll work.::
[She waited for any immediate responses to die down, and in fact attempted to keep the fervant thrum of hope and success dampened in her mind. The last thing she wanted was one of the officials overhearing her or anyone else on her little unofficial salvaging mission into the canyon, least of all for items that would be considered contraband. 'Highly dangerous' contraband be damned.] ::Who wants to piss off a lot of stick-ass numbnuts and maybe make a few demands while were at it, huh? No more being tossed to the back of the line because we're new and stupid and not a part of the favourite elite!::
[If she was told to shut her damned mouth and to get back to work, it would certainly not be the first time, but for once she was grinning like crazy. Small gains, running with a pack of lawless thieves.]
P L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Your Name: Dray
OOC Journal:
drayUnder 18? If yes, what is your age?: No
Email + IM: dracothrope at gmail. Plurk is
Characters Played at Ataraxion: n/a
C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: AJ (Amanda Jolene) Harris
Canon: CRAU-OC; AJ is a clone of an original character (
hairsay) and was created by the technicians of boxmods. She existed from May 2014 to July 2014.Original or Alternate Universe: CRAU
Canon Point: Just before AJ died in game, shortly after a plague was disseminated into the box-shaped prison and before an undead outbreak.
Setting: Before AJ was cloned and released into the Box (her original, Jolene, was brought in during March 2014, and AJ possesses her original's memories from the time that Jo was born until their split in May) her memories tell her that she came from an earth very similar to our own, save perhaps shifted towards cynicism. She grew up and lived in southern Alberta, Canada, in a semi-rural mountain community. She eventually wound up in Calgary, the province's business capitol. In late 2010, the city was bombed or gassed or otherwise suffered a major apocalyptic disaster of chthonic proportions; because AJ was not able to gather more than first-hand evidence, she does not know how the city fell, only that for a few months she was hard-pressed to survive in the aftermath. The disaster ruptured to the surface and spread awful transformations across the landscape and over all life in its path, and much of the city's population died instantly. Others were mentally or physically disfigured, or both. For three or four months AJ and her friend survived by the skin of their teeth in ever-changing and and ever-worsening conditions, trying to find a way to escape the changes and outrun the expanding bubble of the disaster's influence.
For those unfamiliar with the Box, the prison was given this colloquial name because of its deadly electric barriers that extended not only around the perimeter (a couple dozen kilometers wide on a side) but also as a roof about a couple of kilometers up and a basement deep beneath the earth. Inside was what came to be known as the killing floor by some, where various characters were dragged in and left to fend for themselves (with the occasional nudge from the Technicians), and where all kinds of highly imaginative and highly deadly tests were rolled out to maximize pain, suffering, and ultimately death for the sake of vengeful, restless gods that rested deep below the Box itself. Every character that died was brought back to life via cloning and very careful augmentations (usually to mock prisoners, as with scars and memory augmentations) and left to fend for themselves again. This cycle happened over and over for each character despite the Technicians' waning resources and the waning patience of the gods demanding ever more sacrifices. For those who were able to survive and move on with life, the Box was otherwise a pleasant enough place in between tests: it supported massive forests, a river, marshes, a long strip of ocean-front (and even some ocean itself), two small towns, and various buildings in which characters could find useful items and deadly traps.
AJ's understanding of the Box extends beyond her original's experiences, as when AJ was first awoken, she was forced to endure the basement suite of the facility located far under the Box's lower barrier. She and all of the other clones (one for each character in the Box that month) were given the opportunity to explore the testing suite, the first layer between the Box and the world of the Technicians. She was traumatized: down here were kept bodies of those who had died and been reclaimed by runners, half-grown clones, and a whole bevvy of monsters kept in boxes on call, waiting for their time to be let out and to kill. AJ made a break for it at the first possible opportunity, but what looked like an escape route actually led her up into the killing floor... as for every other clone who tried to escape. This provided a bond between those who'd experienced the basement; many began to work together to try to take their originals down.
The reason for this highly-targeted malice was partially instilled by the Technicians: when AJ first spotted Jolene she was struck by a pang of unfairness and hatred so strong that it nearly consumed her. She struggled with this urge for the entirety of her short existence. Though the Technicians did nothing to specifically help the wave of clones destroy their originals, AJ was wily enough to manipulate her surroundings (and scared enough by the knowledge that if she failed she would be sent back down to the basement to be experimented on or worse) that she managed to get the upper leg on her original. At the time, Jolene was infested with an intelligent 'tetravirus' composed of thousands of sentient voices with great potential to knit and change flesh or even the fabric of biological existence, and AJ made a deal with it after knocking her double unconscious. In the end she wrested a part of its prickly, sticky red biomass for herself. The tetravirus claimed that it could grant invulnerability to just about anything that AJ could imagine, so not only was the clone able to greatly endanger Jolene's life (she had her double ripped open to pull parts of the tetravirus out) but had greatly extended her own chances of survival... or so she thought.
Like most things in the Box, the sentient virus wasn't to be trusted. AJ managed to survive eating drugged and poisoned food, as well as an outbreak of an unrelated virus that killed many other prisoners, but in the end her parasite turned on her and dissolved her body for its own biomass. Unlike the original prisoners, the Technicians had no interest in bringing a faulty clone back for another round. AJ passed alone in the dark of the forest where she had made her camp, a forgotten monster like all the rest.
History: Most of AJ's recent history is covered above, but she is a fleshed out OC from a fairly mundane background. She grew up in a mid-sized mountain town on a cattle ranch, in a large family composed of her parents and four older brothers. AJ was constantly hounded by her nigh-upon militantly religious and conservative mother to uphold the norms of her gender, but AJ, always stubborn, refused to comply at first because she didn't want to fall in line, and later because dressing and acting more like a girl irked her and made her feel weak and stupid.
Instead she wound up spending a lot of time playing with hand-me-down toys and wearing hand-me-down clothing from her brothers, trying to impress the younger of the four of them by hanging around their friends and getting into hyperbolic amounts of trouble to make up for what they saw in her as a handicap of being younger and physically weaker. She also spent a lot of time around her much more equitable father, who though taciturn and mostly done with fathering, still found her obsessive attention to detail easy to accommodate in his garage. Before he inherited their ranch he had joined the military as an air corps aviation engineer, and automotive mechanics was still his passion, so when he wasn't maintaining their ranch, AJ could inevitably track him down to watch him tinker.
By the time that she was fourteen, her father had passed on his truck to her to 'solve'. It was broken down and needed new parts, and her eldest brother made a habit of taking her down to the junk yard to help her source and buy parts to put it back together. By the time she was sixteen, and with the help of her dad, she had a working (if noisy) beast and AJ used it to escape her home and unhappy school-life by driving for hours over the provincial border to find walking trails and climbing spots.
Speaking of school-life, her stubbornness, her desire to fit in with the wrong crowd, and her inability to play well with other children marked her as an exile from a very young grade. Her unwillingness to fit in did not do her any favours, especially as she grew into teenagerhood. Ostracized by those of her gender and usually picked on by the opposite, she spent a lot of time that should have been going into getting good grades on getting into fights and sitting in detention. AJ missed a year that could have gone towards college in recovering from nearly dropping out. Her eldest brother again saved her bacon; as an electrical engineer working with a large company that spanned the entirety of the province, he convinced her that it was a lucrative career path to follow.
AJ enrolled a year later than she probably ought to have at the the major trades college in Calgary, packing everything into her truck and moving out to the big city. She met her first staunch friend as she tried to navigate college: a scrawny, short young man named Ryan Planter who inevitably was bullied within an inch of his life when thrust into the mix of classmates more interested in hockey and beer than mathematical brain-scratchers and universal anomalies. AJ teamed up with him as his defender while he helped her through the more complex mathematical problems inherent to the theory side of her curriculum. She also wound up talking him out of a very dark place, realizing that she'd grown close enough to him that she was deeply invested in his well-being.
When the disaster that struck the city fell out from under them, both she and Ryan were spared the immediate doom that took so many people, but Ryan was afflicted with a physical deformity, and AJ (or at least her original) was afflicted with a niggling growth of insanity, one that she would not recognize for what it was until it was too late. Her mental parasites were small and dumb and served mostly to tease negative thoughts from her, but if she had not been yanked into the prison of the Box she would probably have been overwhelmed the longer she stayed within the torn apart city, the same way that Ryan's small affliction was slowly growing and taking over his body, turning him into something unspeakably other.
Personality: AJ has more of her mother in her than she would like to admit to, without the searing social graces to put all of that sheer brute force to work in a useful way. She is a massive mix of deep-rooted insecurities, false bravado, social conditioning, rebellious impulses, and high focus and practical thinking that make it impossible for her to stay reserved or aloof for long. On top of that, her trauma traversing her destroyed city tends to crop up at times to expound on her negative traits, and on top of that her understanding that she's a worthless clone of an original that she hates, a disposable monster... AJ has a few issues that work against her.
This isn't to say that she is completely feral and unable to interact with others. In fact, AJ is capable of forming extremely strong bonds with others at a one-on-one level, as her experiences with her friend Ryan (both before and after the fall of her city) can attest to. She feels immediate and deep-rooted empathy towards other exiles and monsters, though common sense wins out if they are not the kind to be socialized with. AJ is very wary of groups, and has better common sense in some ways than does her original, Jolene; where at one time AJ might have been very pushy and relatively uninhibited (in light of that false bravado) she has been tempered by the horrors of malicious Technicians towards stoicism and avoidance of organized society. She is extremely observant, and all of that forceful personality tends to come out on a one-on-one level. AJ believes that trust can only be gained by fear and strength and though she is not a very good manipulator, she has the makings of perhaps one day being one if she can only survive through the mistakes she has yet to make.
AJ possesses a background in practical problem solving, specifically with mechanical problems, but also with electronics. She will study for hours on a topic if given the option, but this usually includes practical aspects in addition to book learning (in fact, if she's not able to take half-formed ideas to the test, she can lose steam and burn out easily.) She applies this to her study of humans and humanoids, using it to keep herself alive by approaching those whose arm she can twist and avoiding those she thinks might cause her trouble.
Unfortunately, AJ is not a great liar. Both her body language (often exaggerated, especially when her hands come near her face) and her facial expressions are easy to read. Usually, at least at first, this trends towards hostility, defensiveness, crudeness and suspicion, but if she grows more trusting, the defensiveness and suspicion drop somewhat. She is still crude (she swears a lot and makes a lot of gestures, some of which are contextual to her upbringing, and some of which ought to be universally understood on some level by all humans as being crass as hell) and she can still be pretty hostile, but this comes across in horseplay and pranking, which in itself is a kind of testing. She likes to know that those she's allied herself with are strong and worthy of her trust, though this isn't a conscious want. Just as AJ can sometimes go out on a limb to prove herself to others, she has a craving for the same in return. This might not have been as intrinsic were she not a certified clone; now she tends towards needing little gestures on a regular basis to validate her existence and her own worthiness.
While some might quail about their artificial existence, AJ can a stubborn ass about hers. She treats her mistrust in herself as a mistrust in life and the powers that be in general. Her hyper-focus could very easily turn inward without an outlet, which means that she usually leaps for anything to avoid introspection on too deep a level. This usually manifests in observation and study followed by a lot of experimentation, which allows her to vent any frustration (and deeper issues) on a temporary setback. Really, if she's to be stuck in a survival setting, she's one of those who will make the second move and put a unique spin on what others have failed at in order to try to succeed... and if that doesn't work, she more importantly will keep trying. When she has a goal that she can put solid work towards, she becomes an entirely different person, healthier and more sociable, or at least less skittish.
It's probably important to note that while AJ will try her best to remain on the outskirts, when she gets embroiled (and she probably will, and quickly) she sticks to her guns more than she would have without the clone conditioning. She makes decisions that she does not go back on, and while she will beat a retreat if she's made a terrible mistake, she can be very hard to convince that she's wrong. She only apologizes at truly apocalyptic mistakes, going out of her way to come up with some other way to mitigate either disagreements or opportunities for consolation.
It's probably completely unimportant to mention that AJ's such a prickly possum from childhood that she's always been a half-ways never-nude and a virgin besides, given that it doesn't originate from any particular trauma nor does it have bearing on most of her interactions, but she wears layers like they're a legitimate physical defense and she takes raunchy jokes aimed at her expense very poorly, never mind that she will launch a volley of the same at another.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations: AJ is an average human being, despite her fantastic circumstances. She has mechanical and automotive expertise within the realms of human ability, and a good understanding of the basic workings of electrical routing and its uses. Her knack for survival has been enhanced by her time narrowly avoiding death and disfiguration in a monster-infested hell hole, and her time at the Box has helped some, too. AJ's weaknesses are partly based around her physical strength (she is a 5'9" ectomorph who has survived on a malnourished diet for months) and her social reticence. Competing against others who are stronger or more socially and emotionally adept, she will always lose. Pitted against other manipulative people, she has not learned enough to defend herself against their wiles. AJ sees the world as a competition, which is a weakness in and of itself in light of surviving in an unknown world where social bonds will certainly be the key.
If she can be swayed to join a cause, she will work her damnedest to make it succeed. She goes to uncomfortable lengths for what she believes in.
AJ will have a slightly heightened understanding of telepathic communication and empathetic manipulation. The first comes from the tetravirus known as the Biomatrix that integrated with her brain and spoke to her mind-to-mind. AJ will be able to discern most voices that are projected into her head as just that. She has a slight resistance to emotional and memory manipulation because she no longer has any psychic parasites in her brain from Calgary's fall. Originally, these twisted her thoughts to evoke rage, fear, and despondence, modifying her memories to suit her negative emotions. Without that, AJ has had time to come to understand when a feeling is not her own. This also comes from her clone conditioning by the Technicians. She suspects that she could have gotten over her raw hatred for Jolene, but that emotional punch was hard to resist. She will need to take time to learn to resist manipulation but she will at least be aware that it's happening.
Inventory: Just some remnants of a tattered red scarf, the inert remnants of the tetravirus that dissolved her in her previous game. This material should be warm, but it is also prickly and uncomfortable. It will not come back to life at any point. Nerfing the tetravirus prevents it from taking root in the jungle and swallowing all of that biomass whole, which it inevitably would do if AJ was ported into the game with the tetravirus intact.
Species/Race: Human, caucasian.
Appearance: Five foot nine, bony, strong jaw and generally bitter look. Very long black hair, blue eyes, surprisingly few scars as yet. She likes to layer clothing, though she'll go with a tank top and long shorts if the climate is steamy and unrelenting.
Age: 20; her body is only a few months old but is vat-grown to resemble her predecessor exactly.
AU Clarification: AJ versus Jolene, or even AJ versus Jolene pre-Box canon, is not as wide a gap as it probably is for some CRAU characters. AJ was only self possessed as a living clone for about two months, and her time in the Box overall (including her memories of Jolene's time) a couple of months longer than that. They were all traumatic months, granted, but then AJ's time in Calgary after it had gone to anarchic chaos was also so traumatic that her center for judging danger and acceptable risk has significantly shifted. The reason for her name change stems from Jolene's full name, 'Jolene Amanda Harris'. Because AJ was not entirely successful in snuffing out her original and slipping into her shoes, she chose to go by something else, however 'Amanda' felt too feminine.
The largest differences are mentioned in her personality, but generally AJ is more mistrusting and more willing to rely on gut instinct. She's slightly less prone to bullying into the center of a dilemma at hand to prove her worth, and she is more likely to try to manipulate a person to do what she wants, rather than simply trying to impress upon them that what she thinks is right is right for everyone. She is more observant and more skittish. AJ is equally as crass and equally unapologetic. She's not a great or even, usually, a good person.
As a note here, I'd like to say that something in the process of sucking AJ into the grav couch completely wiped out the tetravirus' she'd contracted in the previous game. It was originally Biomatrix 117, passed along through a couple of player characters from the canon, Romantically Apocalyptic. Biomatrix was capable of massively twinkish powers such as infecting biological matter and traveling back in time along its genetic precursors (so, say it could travel 'upstream' through AJ's parents, grandparents, etc.) and change events wherever it wanted. The only thing that kept Biomatrix from completely taking over the Box and breaking out was the fact that it was under tight in game restriction mechanics. I think that he would probably quite easily take over the entire crash site of the ship in a matter of a few days if even a single iota of his existence passed into Ataraxion's universe. The reason that I would like to include a shredded red scarf in AJ's inventory is because Biomatrix had such an impact on her as a clone, both in terms of as a great hope for survival and a great betrayal when it wound up duping her for her biomass. It would be a nice transition for her character between the Box and Ataraxion.
S A M P L E S
Log Sample:
Being sucked into a faulty jump sequence was impossible for the human mind to comprehend, especially when she was grossly preoccupied with the concept of dying. AJ was already thoroughly steeped in a feeling of worthless utility; she was a clone and a monster, grown only to cause pain and suffering. It was likely only a boon as far as the Technicians were concerned that she could feel both, herself, and it had driven her half-ways mad. Now, or at least moments ago, she had been in the process of having her consciousness stripped and integrated with an over-possessive tetravirus that claimed it was for her best interests!
Well, fuck best interests! AJ was struggling to maintain her identity, what little of it she had left... then the jump sucked her in, then her nightmare lurched and she was pulled from a dissolving body on the dry floor of her forest camp to a mis-aligned grav-couch, very much like the slab she'd first woken up on under the killing floor of her old prison. Her mind suffered a lurch from dissolving reality to utter groggy useleness, and all she could do for a moment was wretch as the breathing tubes were retracted from her throat and her body was allowed to smack against the containing glass wall protecting her from the wreckage just beyond.
She felt her hands entangled and, pulling them away from her chest, glimpsed a blurry smudge of something dark in the red lighting that flooded the room. Giving a wet, feral yell, she struggled and felt something contracting tightly around her throat; it wasn't until she'd panicked herself out of the unit that she realized the prickly cloth was looped around her neck, that she was pulling it, herself. If it was the Biomatrix, it wasn't moving. It wasn't speaking. The susurrus of hundreds of voices failed to whisper into her mind. Her head felt empty, as fogged over as pea soup. It felt about as sludge-stuck, too.
Beyond that, blind fear slowly seeped away and the woman realized that she wasn't in immediate danger of death, even if she wasn't feeling wholly put together, either. 'What are you doing, are you fucking with me? Is this some kind of mind game?' she snarled. She brought a length of the knit scarf directly before her watery eyes to focus on it. Usually the Biomatrix extruded a skull-like face to schmooze with her, but the cloth remained inert and still. Dead, almost. Never living? AJ ground her teeth, slamming a few mental notes out in what she felt was the thing's general direction. 'I'm not giving in to you, fucker! You better stay dead!'
She waited, poised on the edge of her couch, to be sure, but there was no immediate answer. Only then was able to turn her attention outward, and in the process she realized that she was not in as much safety as she might have hoped. Everything about the damaged little bay threw her hair on end, and that made her realize she was completely bare, vulnerable entirely. AJ hissed as she scraped at her eyes with the heels of her hands and then, blinking blearily, began her investigation for something to cover herself with, for some exit out of here.
When the search party arrived she very nearly attempted to chance jumping into the elevator shaft; the last thing she wanted to do was show herself to anyone, lest they be Technicians come to put an end to her for good. She'd escaped the teeth of death by some fucking miracle and she wasn't going to waste a single chance to survive... which meant the shaft dropping into darkness was out. Hurriedly, she crammed herself into a locker in the bank facing the grav couches, pulling the door shut as the first survivor worked their way down the tangled wreckage from the blinding hole in the skewed ceiling. AJ held her breath and waited; if this person had been alone she would have jumped on them and half ripped their head off trying to get answers, but they were shouting up and down as they looked for others and the last thing AJ wanted to do was to give them an inkling that she was around, let alone worth being pursued.
It dawned on her that she was resting against something soft, canvas-like, but it wasn't until the search party finally left with questions unanswered, and the blinding sunspot had crossed most of the way across the room, that she exited the locker itself and dragged the jumpsuit out with her. For a few moments she shivered in uncertain fear, her face pulled in a rictus of undecided dread. She didn't know if this was the basement of the Box or if she was somewhere else entirely, but she wasn't alone, and she was going to have to get answers.
Donning the simple clothing and cramming a sharp dagger of medical glass in her belt, the one-time clone looked up at the dangerously skewed beams, grating and wires that would allow her to escape to whatever was outside, and she swallowed hard. She used to like climbing. Something told her she was going to like all of this much less.
Comms Sample [Telepathy, assumed maxing of its ability tree]:
[The low-grade cacophony created by everyone tethered to Tranquility's unreal will-melding system had become background noise to AJ over the course of months. Those who were new, those who were unpracticed, they liked to shamelessly spill embarrassing bullshit facts in the same way that five-year-olds shamelessly picked their noses... and as much as it was fun to chase those unguarded thoughts down like a hound relentlessly bayed after foxes, AJ had only learned to hone her own brains by controlling what she responded to and how.
In fact, she rarely reached out like this. It was a strain and often left her with a killer headache, even after months of practice. Listening in on her unwitting comrades was one thing, but singling out the voices belonging to those important to her could leave her so thoroughly distracted, chasing down the wrong foxes, usually for stupid reasons, and in the end it was often much easier to track someone down with a communications device to hijack and get a message across.
But there were some things that shouldn't be broadcast by network.
AJ had managed to make her way down into the canyon with the remains of the ship that had teetered over the edge some time ago. The efforts to get into the wreckage would be generational in their undertaking by this point, but she had been making special forays, working with others who she had managed to miraculously develop some iota of trust... and that was paying off just now.]
::I've found it,:: [she sent, the thought a tight band to her team.] ::It sounds just like what they were talking about; it's not intact but if we drag it out and hide it we might just fucking have our fucking leg up over this whole piece of shit hierarchy. ....It's fixable. I think it'll work.::
[She waited for any immediate responses to die down, and in fact attempted to keep the fervant thrum of hope and success dampened in her mind. The last thing she wanted was one of the officials overhearing her or anyone else on her little unofficial salvaging mission into the canyon, least of all for items that would be considered contraband. 'Highly dangerous' contraband be damned.] ::Who wants to piss off a lot of stick-ass numbnuts and maybe make a few demands while were at it, huh? No more being tossed to the back of the line because we're new and stupid and not a part of the favourite elite!::
[If she was told to shut her damned mouth and to get back to work, it would certainly not be the first time, but for once she was grinning like crazy. Small gains, running with a pack of lawless thieves.]