Taura (Sergeant, Dendarii Free Mercenaries) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
unthreatening) wrote2017-09-10 10:24 am
unthreatening) wrote2017-09-10 10:24 am
Application
〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Liv
AGE: 28
JOURNAL: N/A
IM / EMAIL: running.blind.ok [at] gmail
PLURK:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
chirality
RETURNING: None right now, but you probably remember me from such all-stars as Minato Arisato and Gregor Vorbarra.
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Taura
CHARACTER AGE: Early 20s somewhere
SERIES: the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
CHRONOLOGY: Between Brothers in Arms and Mirror Dance
CLASS: Hero!
HOUSING: Maurtia Falls #002
BACKGROUND: Taura is a secondary character in the series so her wikia page is pretty pitiful and I'm going to instead give you a down and dirty highlights version of who she is. She's the central focus of two short stories and has significant appearances in two other books, with a mention of her death in one other.
Raised in a clone-crèche on Jackson's Whole, she is a made-to-order genetically engineered super-soldier, who went from crèche to a brief interim period with a hired foster-family to being a full time test subject in a lab. The scientists treated her fine, although she felt intensely dehumanized, usually referred to as it and the only name given being the first digit of her serial number, Nine. She was nine out of ten crèche-mates in her group, and the others all died successively due to rapid degeneration as a consequence of their genetic engineering. They were all failures, except for her, and she was assumed to be an inevitable failure as well.
Taura's DNA was extensively tweaked, bringing her to the edge of what's possible for humans for combat purposes, and then spliced with an array of animals' DNA as well to enhance her further. The primary animals used seem to be wolf (facial features, fangs, claws) and thoroughbred horse (size, musculature), but others were used as well. Canon leaves it unconfirmed how many and which, and Taura herself probably doesn't know. Regardless, she is an eight foot tall (really) incredibly muscular woman with visibly animalistic features.
She has enhanced senses-- she can see further into the ultraviolet and the infrared than normal humans, she can recognize people and poisons by smell (though nothing implausible like pheromones for emotions), her hearing is more sensitive, etc. Her claws are truly functional claws: when sharpened to points she can tear throats out with them, and her fangs are similarly functional. She's also conversant with VKS-era combat technology such as stunners, plasma arcs, needlers, combat armor, comms tech, etc. as befits a mercenary. She was designed as and trained to be a super-soldier and it really shows. She's never really outmatched on a physical level within her canon, and she leads her squad adeptly and smoothly, with all of her underlings proud to be on her team. Taura can shift from subordinate to C.O. and back without a single qualm-- ego is far from a concern, which makes her ideal for teamwork.
Miles rescued her from her fate as a dehumanized monster starving in a sadist's basement, abandoned and left only to feed on rats, and regularly insulted and degraded. Miles was the first real person to treat her as human, and Taura's attachment to him is correspondingly intense. From him she gained her name, a sense of purpose, and self-confidence, and she finds her place in the Dendarii Mercenaries as Sergeant Taura of Green Squad and never leaves it until the day she dies at thirty.
PERSONALITY: Taura is an essentially tragic figure who refuses to be defined by her tragedy. Taura knew her whole life that she would die early, and thirty was actually drawn out, over an extra decade from what she expected. That can be attributed to the Dendarii medics-- but moreso to Taura, who refuses to give in. She lives intensely and fiercely, making use of every moment she has and hungry for new experiences. She hugely values every kind person she meets and is scornful of those cruel. Taura wastes no sleep on those she kills or hurts, in part because she is so disillusioned about humans. "Humans lie," she says to Miles, "a lot." It's a proper Jacksonian cynicism and there's more than a trace of that at her core.
She's a contradiction of embraced bloodthirstiness (appropriate for her origins and animalistic traits), ultimate practicality, and forgiveness. Firstly: Taura delights in physicality in all respects. She's far from dumb-- she has an IQ of 135-- but Taura mostly lives in her body and enjoys fighting and sex and makes no qualms about it. That being said, she's intensely self-conscious of how others see her and regularly tries to be 'unthreatening' by adding things like pink bows when she meets children, or making sure to, futilely, hide her fangs as much as possible while talking. She doesn't like scaring people who don't deserve it-- which, to her, is most people. Taura is considerate of others and shy about compliments and attention, though over time she does gain more confidence and forwardness.
Taura lives as best she can and generally forgives others for their failures, even when they are truly reprehensible or hurt her directly. She expresses no real resentment of the scientists who created her, and she comes to see Mark, for all his sins, as someone who needs support and help. That is not a view her other castmates come around to quite so easily, though they do eventually. Taura just got there first. She has an extremely clear-eyed view of morality and motive and exhibits a keenness in understanding others that continually surprises Miles.
Worth mentioning is her relationship with Miles specifically. For a while after she signed on, they enjoyed a regular sexual relationship, though once he started dating Quinn that was downgraded to "very rarely", implied to be after near-death experiences. Yet Taura attends his wedding years later, and when she dies in hospice at thirty on Escobar, Miles drops everything to run across the galaxy and be with her to the end. They find pure acceptance in one another of a sort they never manage to find in anyone else, because they empathize directly as people who others consider subhuman on first glance. Taura isn't ignorant of his flaws by far-- in fact she will matter-of-factly point them out to Miles when he needs some clue-by-fours-- but she would follow him off a cliff, and happily. That's the sort of faith the little admiral tends to inspire in his Dendarii, but Taura has it in spades. She takes an immense amount of pride in being Sergeant and tries to be impeccably professional on the job.
One final character trait that definitely should be brought up is how much Taura enjoys being feminine. She has low self-esteem about it since she never really saw herself as human growing up, and accordingly still struggles with that, so her little steps toward femininity are extremely important to her. Taura tries to be thick-skinned and resistant to judgement, but the truth is that she wants to be beautiful, she wants to be desirable, and she wants to be seen unquestioningly as human. She's prone to taking idle comments (pink is unthreatening, lingerie is sexy) a little too far and latching onto those concepts as 'safe', so desperate is she to achieve those goals.
Taura is rational and no-nonsense while working, kind by default, violent when necessary, self-consciously feminine, and at all times beset by an ever-increasing sense of urgency due to her shortened lifespan. But she also doesn't want to complain about it, and is resistant to fishing for sympathy, leaving all of this unmentioned unless questioned on it directly. Taura is determined to make the most of what she has, and not apologize for who, or what, she is.
POWER: I would like to essentially steal Sabretooth's power set from the X-Men for her, although toned down to reasonable, non-Marvel levels.
So: (1) accelerated healing and enhanced durability, for herself only, to make her a tank able to function in an environment populated by comics characters; (2) super strength more on par with Sabretooth/Wolverine than something like Superman; (3) retractable three inch totally-not-adamantium claws that in the retracted state are her normal sharpened keratin extended fingernails.
I'm notably not giving her anything mobility-based so she is still weak to high agility characters, and to mind powers.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE: [ Taura looks noticeably comfortable on camera, used to the idea of vid messages, despite being an eight foot tall muscular woman with an outslung jaw, protruding fangs, and piercing tawny-gold eyes to match the light dusting of fur across her pale skin, visible at the right angle. She speaks around her teeth deftly, her eyes bright with eager interest. ]
Hey. I'm new here, and I was wondering if anyone was looking to hire some muscle. I'm not too proud for menial labor, although I am a trained mercenary. [ Her military uniform is a plain gray, but does have sergeant's tabs visible. ] I'm not sure when I'll be called on-duty yet, but I don't need a lot of sleep, so I can fit in whatever odd jobs you need me to do.
I also accept payment in food. [ She starts to grin wolfishly, and then hurriedly suppresses it, worried that her fangs will put people off even here where she's far from the oddest thing around. Taura hasn't mentally adjusted to that yet.
Clearing her throat, she goes on: ] My file said I'm stronger now, and I haven't broken a glass just from holding it since I was a kid, so I guess I must be. Is there anyone else around here like that? Or at least who's really tough to hurt? I need to adjust to my new level of strength so I don't hurt anyone. [ Taura's quite matter of fact about it, as if this is a business task. ]
--Oh, yeah. My name's Taura. Nice to meet you!
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: TDM threads!
FINAL NOTES: None?
NAME: Liv
AGE: 28
JOURNAL: N/A
IM / EMAIL: running.blind.ok [at] gmail
PLURK:
RETURNING: None right now, but you probably remember me from such all-stars as Minato Arisato and Gregor Vorbarra.
〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Taura
CHARACTER AGE: Early 20s somewhere
SERIES: the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
CHRONOLOGY: Between Brothers in Arms and Mirror Dance
CLASS: Hero!
HOUSING: Maurtia Falls #002
BACKGROUND: Taura is a secondary character in the series so her wikia page is pretty pitiful and I'm going to instead give you a down and dirty highlights version of who she is. She's the central focus of two short stories and has significant appearances in two other books, with a mention of her death in one other.
Raised in a clone-crèche on Jackson's Whole, she is a made-to-order genetically engineered super-soldier, who went from crèche to a brief interim period with a hired foster-family to being a full time test subject in a lab. The scientists treated her fine, although she felt intensely dehumanized, usually referred to as it and the only name given being the first digit of her serial number, Nine. She was nine out of ten crèche-mates in her group, and the others all died successively due to rapid degeneration as a consequence of their genetic engineering. They were all failures, except for her, and she was assumed to be an inevitable failure as well.
Taura's DNA was extensively tweaked, bringing her to the edge of what's possible for humans for combat purposes, and then spliced with an array of animals' DNA as well to enhance her further. The primary animals used seem to be wolf (facial features, fangs, claws) and thoroughbred horse (size, musculature), but others were used as well. Canon leaves it unconfirmed how many and which, and Taura herself probably doesn't know. Regardless, she is an eight foot tall (really) incredibly muscular woman with visibly animalistic features.
She has enhanced senses-- she can see further into the ultraviolet and the infrared than normal humans, she can recognize people and poisons by smell (though nothing implausible like pheromones for emotions), her hearing is more sensitive, etc. Her claws are truly functional claws: when sharpened to points she can tear throats out with them, and her fangs are similarly functional. She's also conversant with VKS-era combat technology such as stunners, plasma arcs, needlers, combat armor, comms tech, etc. as befits a mercenary. She was designed as and trained to be a super-soldier and it really shows. She's never really outmatched on a physical level within her canon, and she leads her squad adeptly and smoothly, with all of her underlings proud to be on her team. Taura can shift from subordinate to C.O. and back without a single qualm-- ego is far from a concern, which makes her ideal for teamwork.
Miles rescued her from her fate as a dehumanized monster starving in a sadist's basement, abandoned and left only to feed on rats, and regularly insulted and degraded. Miles was the first real person to treat her as human, and Taura's attachment to him is correspondingly intense. From him she gained her name, a sense of purpose, and self-confidence, and she finds her place in the Dendarii Mercenaries as Sergeant Taura of Green Squad and never leaves it until the day she dies at thirty.
PERSONALITY: Taura is an essentially tragic figure who refuses to be defined by her tragedy. Taura knew her whole life that she would die early, and thirty was actually drawn out, over an extra decade from what she expected. That can be attributed to the Dendarii medics-- but moreso to Taura, who refuses to give in. She lives intensely and fiercely, making use of every moment she has and hungry for new experiences. She hugely values every kind person she meets and is scornful of those cruel. Taura wastes no sleep on those she kills or hurts, in part because she is so disillusioned about humans. "Humans lie," she says to Miles, "a lot." It's a proper Jacksonian cynicism and there's more than a trace of that at her core.
She's a contradiction of embraced bloodthirstiness (appropriate for her origins and animalistic traits), ultimate practicality, and forgiveness. Firstly: Taura delights in physicality in all respects. She's far from dumb-- she has an IQ of 135-- but Taura mostly lives in her body and enjoys fighting and sex and makes no qualms about it. That being said, she's intensely self-conscious of how others see her and regularly tries to be 'unthreatening' by adding things like pink bows when she meets children, or making sure to, futilely, hide her fangs as much as possible while talking. She doesn't like scaring people who don't deserve it-- which, to her, is most people. Taura is considerate of others and shy about compliments and attention, though over time she does gain more confidence and forwardness.
Taura lives as best she can and generally forgives others for their failures, even when they are truly reprehensible or hurt her directly. She expresses no real resentment of the scientists who created her, and she comes to see Mark, for all his sins, as someone who needs support and help. That is not a view her other castmates come around to quite so easily, though they do eventually. Taura just got there first. She has an extremely clear-eyed view of morality and motive and exhibits a keenness in understanding others that continually surprises Miles.
Worth mentioning is her relationship with Miles specifically. For a while after she signed on, they enjoyed a regular sexual relationship, though once he started dating Quinn that was downgraded to "very rarely", implied to be after near-death experiences. Yet Taura attends his wedding years later, and when she dies in hospice at thirty on Escobar, Miles drops everything to run across the galaxy and be with her to the end. They find pure acceptance in one another of a sort they never manage to find in anyone else, because they empathize directly as people who others consider subhuman on first glance. Taura isn't ignorant of his flaws by far-- in fact she will matter-of-factly point them out to Miles when he needs some clue-by-fours-- but she would follow him off a cliff, and happily. That's the sort of faith the little admiral tends to inspire in his Dendarii, but Taura has it in spades. She takes an immense amount of pride in being Sergeant and tries to be impeccably professional on the job.
One final character trait that definitely should be brought up is how much Taura enjoys being feminine. She has low self-esteem about it since she never really saw herself as human growing up, and accordingly still struggles with that, so her little steps toward femininity are extremely important to her. Taura tries to be thick-skinned and resistant to judgement, but the truth is that she wants to be beautiful, she wants to be desirable, and she wants to be seen unquestioningly as human. She's prone to taking idle comments (pink is unthreatening, lingerie is sexy) a little too far and latching onto those concepts as 'safe', so desperate is she to achieve those goals.
Taura is rational and no-nonsense while working, kind by default, violent when necessary, self-consciously feminine, and at all times beset by an ever-increasing sense of urgency due to her shortened lifespan. But she also doesn't want to complain about it, and is resistant to fishing for sympathy, leaving all of this unmentioned unless questioned on it directly. Taura is determined to make the most of what she has, and not apologize for who, or what, she is.
POWER: I would like to essentially steal Sabretooth's power set from the X-Men for her, although toned down to reasonable, non-Marvel levels.
So: (1) accelerated healing and enhanced durability, for herself only, to make her a tank able to function in an environment populated by comics characters; (2) super strength more on par with Sabretooth/Wolverine than something like Superman; (3) retractable three inch totally-not-adamantium claws that in the retracted state are her normal sharpened keratin extended fingernails.
I'm notably not giving her anything mobility-based so she is still weak to high agility characters, and to mind powers.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE: [ Taura looks noticeably comfortable on camera, used to the idea of vid messages, despite being an eight foot tall muscular woman with an outslung jaw, protruding fangs, and piercing tawny-gold eyes to match the light dusting of fur across her pale skin, visible at the right angle. She speaks around her teeth deftly, her eyes bright with eager interest. ]
Hey. I'm new here, and I was wondering if anyone was looking to hire some muscle. I'm not too proud for menial labor, although I am a trained mercenary. [ Her military uniform is a plain gray, but does have sergeant's tabs visible. ] I'm not sure when I'll be called on-duty yet, but I don't need a lot of sleep, so I can fit in whatever odd jobs you need me to do.
I also accept payment in food. [ She starts to grin wolfishly, and then hurriedly suppresses it, worried that her fangs will put people off even here where she's far from the oddest thing around. Taura hasn't mentally adjusted to that yet.
Clearing her throat, she goes on: ] My file said I'm stronger now, and I haven't broken a glass just from holding it since I was a kid, so I guess I must be. Is there anyone else around here like that? Or at least who's really tough to hurt? I need to adjust to my new level of strength so I don't hurt anyone. [ Taura's quite matter of fact about it, as if this is a business task. ]
--Oh, yeah. My name's Taura. Nice to meet you!
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: TDM threads!
FINAL NOTES: None?