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Contents
Cassandra de la Fuego
Description
This woman appears to be of a slightly shorter than average height for human females, standing at exactly five feet tall. However, she seems to exude an aura of command and pride, making up for her short stature with attitude. She has long, wavy fiery red hair that flows about halfway down her back and shines in the sun with an unusually bright luminosity. Her eyes are of the deepest emerald, the colour complimenting her hair nicely and gleaming with a brilliance belying her sly nature. Her facial features are sharp and thin, with exotically shaped eyes and full lips that seem to always be in some sort of a smirk. Her skin, however, is where the brightness stops. She's got a very pale complexion, and thin, glowing blue veins trace her muscles on her arms and legs. Her lips, while usually coated with a pink lip gloss, are naturally a deathly blue colour. The contrast between her eyes and hair and her skin is almost startling. Despite the dead look, however, she has ample curves that almost make up for it, usually not very well hidden by her clothing, no matter what clothing she uses.
She is currently wearing an outfit that one would expect to see in a pirate movie. She wears a three-pronged hat lined with gold, denoting her as the captain of her former vessel. Her frilled, low-cut blouse is somewhat hidden by a gold-trimmed crimson seaman's jacket, the buttons made of pure gold and the cuffs fanning out to allow quite a bit of movement in the wrist area. The jacket flows down past her waist and ends at about the knee, but it's generally open enough to reveal the tight brown leather pants that sit low on her hips, the leather buttons holding them tight enough to ensure they don't go down another inch. She has a razor sharp, ornately designed cutlass attached to her left hip, along with a rugged-looking repeater pistol, clearly not of Hiverspace design. Her tough black leather calf boots fan out and dip down at the top, giving another layer of protection. The heel is about one inch tall, allowing for a fair amount of old-school style while still being quite functional.
What other people say about her
Bio
I was born Cassandra Kairis in Italy in 1472, during the great period of exploration started by Prince Henry the Navigator. I had a Venetian mother and a Greek father, both of which were boring and uncreative. My father was a banker and my mother a noblewoman, both content to live out their lives in peace and contentment. From the time I was little, however, I wanted to be more, to explore the world, but I was always told that it wasn’t ladylike to aspire to such things, that I should be content with pleasing my future husband and knitting and doing other boring womanly things. Well, that was never enough for me, and even though my family was rather wealthy and I lived in a large estate, I always wanted more. All throughout my young life, I was made fun of by the other wealthy children my age because I always acted like a boy instead of a girl, and I enjoyed sword fighting and sailing with the street urchins more than I did sewing with the other wealthy girls. This got me into a lot of trouble more than once, and my parents never approved. That never fazed me, though. Cassandra would be a name known throughout the world as one of glory and adventure! But then, plans never work out quite how one expects.
My story really began when I was ten and six years old. That was when I was of marrying age, and that was when my parents arranged a marriage with some noble boy from France who I’d never met, blind as they were to my own wants. “We only want the best for you.” they’d say every time I voiced my displeasure, without fail. Well, this was the last straw, this was what caused me to decide to run away and make my own life. I would no longer be pushed around by this man-loving society, and I would never ever look back. I moved to Spain and changed my name to Cassandra de la Fuego, and bought a small caravel by the name of “Santa Rosa”. I hired a small crew of loyal but morally flexible men, who had no problem with having a woman for a captain as long as they got their share of the pay and rum to pass the days at sea.
To tell the truth, we were sort of brigands. What else was a female captain to do? None of the lords or kings took me seriously, so I never had official funding. We had to scrape by on what we could capture. However, my crew was always loyal and fearsome, and my ultimate goal was always the same: to go down in history as one of the great explorers of my time. But, this was no longer possible with just a small caravel to my name. So I captured a bigger ship! In a feat of skill and probably largely due to luck, we captured a large carrack off the coast of Italy called the L’amante, and renamed it La Serpiente Ignea. Thus began my golden years as a pirate and sailor.
Over the next few years, up until 1490, we captured quite a few ships, and looted enough gold and food to last us a lifetime. We hired more crew members and outfitted our ship with the finest guns ever. That’s when I realised that my dream had finally become achievable! All the explorers before me had wanted to find new ways to go around Africa to India. That wasn’t risky, that wasn’t new...I needed something else. So, instead, I decided to explore the waters to the south, known to contain ice and storms of unimaginable power. There had to be plenty of unmapped land down there. Maybe bounties that none expected, discoveries just waiting to be made! None of my crew mates were extremely happy with this idea, but I had made my decision, and they would not betray their captain. So, we set sail for the South. We had to ride the currents well to even get there, and it was a tough journey. I lost more than a few of my friends during those few years, and we were entirely cut off from the world. But finally, in the year 1495, I spotted it. The great storms I had heard of in legend, the raging waters and destructive currents that none dared brave. But, I was not like others of my time, for I was Cassandra de la Fuego, explorer and visionary! I ordered my crew to steer into the storm, and while I heard many dissenting grumbles, they obeyed. It took all of my captaining and navigating skill to get through that storm, and probably no small amount of luck, but we finally made it through...and then, the currents threw our ship like a toy into a large block of white ice, shattering the hull, cracking the mainmast, and forcing my crew to abandon ship. I, however, was trapped beneath the fallen mainmast, and I couldn’t follow my crew. I told them to go without me, to try and find some way to survive if they could, right before sinking into the icy depths. I remember thinking how badly this had gone, and thinking how much I wished the world would remember me as I was rather than by what I did...
And then I woke up, coughing and sputtering, an annoying beeping ringing in my ears, of a nature as I had never heard before. And I felt so...cold. There were men in white coats and odd, black goggles standing all around me. My cutlass and all the rest of my weapons were gone, along with most of the rest of my clothing. My skin was an odd pale colour, nothing like the Italian glow I had before I awakened. Could this be some odd dream? Was this hell? I was confused and disoriented, panicked...I stood up and forced my way through the men shouting in strange tongues to one another, burst out the odd sliding door, and that’s when I noticed...I was in a structure made entirely of iron, with such creatures as I had never seen before. Strange spiders of silver that clinked around on sharp claws, staring around with a singular luminous eye wandered the white hallways, slivers of black connected one odd thing to another, and indeed there was one box connected to me...that’s when I fainted, my body collapsing to the ground like a bag of charcoal.
When I woke up again, I could understand the men around me. They seemed to speak in muffled tones, and my eyes were blurry and unfocused. “All systems online.” said one in a strange accent I had never heard before, “Core at one-hundred percent capacity. Working out sensory glitches...now.” With that, my eyes focused rapidly and I could hear clearer than I ever could before. But...something was wrong. My vision was better than usual...I was no longer cold like I was the first time, and I could feel everything. There was that odd beeping again. “Ahh, Subject three, glad you’re awake.” said one of the white coat men, seeming to be in charge by the way the others all went quiet when he spoke. “How are you feeling?” I was too busy absorbing my surroundings to pay attention to him. The beeping seemed to be coming from a box that was attached to my arm by way of a very thin spike, similar to those you see on traditional clocks, which I immediately pulled out and threw on the ground, much to the chagrin of the white coat men. In fact, there was a lot of beeping and chirping coming from all sorts of metal boxes, and glowing circles dotted the glass. “Subject three?” repeated the man, raising a brow, “Can you hear me?” This time, I nodded. Little did I know, that nod would spur many a painful test. But at least the men were nice to me, even if they were boring and reminded me of my parents. God, my parents! I hadn’t spoken to them in years...I wondered if they knew I was alive and well. I still did not know where I was. I had heard tales of exotic technology far ahead of us in the East. Maybe that’s where I was? But how did they get to me? Later I learned how wrong I was. It was hard to absorb at first, but they told me that I had been buried beneath the ice of a continent called “Antarctica” (which I later learned was the one I was intent on exploring) for over one and a half thousand years! That was insane, and I did not believe them at first, but the more they showed me, the more I knew deep down they were right. Then, they told me something else, which almost made me lose it. Apparently, my heart was damaged beyond repair, and I rejected all the others. They had replaced it with a battery, and integrated it into my muscular system. They had given my cybernetic upgrades for those organs which refused to work, including my eyes, bones in my ear, and parts of my brain. Luckily, my memory was intact, but I appeared to be dead...
Over the next few years, I learned just what year I was in, which -planet- I was on (how crazy is that?) , and how much I could do with my new implants. I could conduct electricity and even expunge it in large quantities, I could see further than the average human, lift more...I felt amazing, but...I still sometimes felt cold. But I was in the year 3021, on a planet they called Sivad, one of the more advanced human planets. There were aliens and space ships, and...well, just too many great and unheard of things to name! I decided then that I wouldn’t stay there. I didn’t tell the white coat men that, of course, but they didn’t need to know. I started working for someone in secret, a tall, pale woman known as one of the “Mystics” who ran a cantina on the planet. I wasn’t sure what that was, but I didn’t care. She helped me escape, and funded my new ship and crew, putting me in deep debt to her. But I was finally free. I learned quickly how to pilot my new ship, the Blazing Beast, and fled the planet. I took a few years to learn how to unlock all my potential, including controlling my temperature, but things seemed to be going well! I even found pistols and blunderbusses that shot multiple rounds in under one minute! I was going to restore my former glory and start anew. That, however, is when something else unexpected happened.
The viewscreen of my ship was filled with a strange blue light, and next thing I knew, we were less than 100 feet from the surface of a planet, and zooming straight for the ground. There was no time to pull up. The ship was ruined and most of my crew dead or dying. The only reason I survived is because I’m not even alive. I took some damage, but overall I’m alright. None on my crew are still alive. So here I am, back to square one. I suppose I’ll just have to start again. Thanks for listening to my story, I know I have the tendency to ramble. Thanks for your ear, mate! I’m off to carve a living out of this new place. I’ve already done it once, after all...
Attitude
Cassandra is very confident, almost to the point of arrogance. She is friendly enough, however, except to those who have wronged her or her friends. She is loyal to those she deems worthy, but she can be very materialistic, which has the tendency to lead her astray. She still wants to be known as one of the greatest explorers of all time, which lends itself to her undying pride and drives her in all things.