OOC: Profile
PLAYER INFORMATION-
Name/Nickname: Kae
AIM/E-mail/Contact: derridamustdie (AIM) / zaghiel@yahoo.com (e-mail) / stitchedophelia (y!m)
LJ: izkariote
CHARACTER INFORMATION-
Canon Character and Series: Kara Thrace, Battlestar Galactica (reimagined series)
In-Game Name: Kara “Starbuck” Thrace
Age: 26
Gender: (Fe)male
Position & Ship: Fiertia, Pilot
Current Rank: N/A
Appearance:
Physically, it’s not too far off to say that Kara is all woman at first glance: she’s got the curves and the looks and the voice to prove it, and the fact that she wears her white blond hair long really, really helps. She is, however, built like a soldier through and through: she’s slim, decently tall for a girl, muscled and fit as a fiddle, with skin fairly bronzed by constant exposure to the sun. She has wide, dark gray eyes and a full pair of lips, which are often set in a crooked, almost boyish grin.
While she is, beyond all doubt, a girl, Kara definitely doesn’t carry herself like one - she does, in fact, swagger like a boy soldier, swear like a full grown man, drink anyone and everyone under the table and smoke cigars and cigarettes like a chimney. She is not graceful, not delicate, and certainly not feminine: she’s the kind of woman who will strip down to her waist while she’s fixing her plane, regardless of the fact that she’s surrounded by a bunch of guy pilots. Whether she does this because she just doesn’t give a fuck or if she intentionally tries to fluster people is uncertain.
Kara is often decked out like a soldier 24/7, with the tank tops and the fatigue pants and khakis - she does not ever plan on wearing anything remotely feminine ever, simply because you can’t move in that sort of shit, much less shoot someone effectively. She has three tattoos: wings on both her upper arms, and a strange insignia right at the middle of her back, like some sort of elaborate wheel or compass star.
Personality:
Outspoken, brash, hot-tempered, cocksure and wild: those are the five words that other people have the tendency to use the most when they describing Kara. Those are also traits that not a lot of people would normally associate with girls, and the fact that Kara carries herself like one of the boys doesn’t really help outdo that first impression. There are times, even, when it’s safe to say that Kara is actually manlier than actual men: she’s as tough as nails, and never backs down from a challenge, be it man, monster, machine or otherwise.
Kara also makes it a point not to take shit from anyone: she was raised in a group that believed in letting go and allowing experience be a child’s best teacher, and is therefore fiercely independent. She feels she does not need people unless they’re willing to serve as cannon fodder or bait while she’s shooting shit up. Digging a little deeper, however, will reveal that in spite of everything, Kara’s heart is still in the right place, and it’s a heart of gold in spite of the prickly exterior. She is a soldier, not a hardened criminal. Orders and orders, but if the orders don’t seem right, she won’t follow them at all.
All of that is, of course, how Kara treats the world in general, and the tough exterior she’s put up is only understandable given the way she was raised and the life she’s led up to this point. For the few that Kara considers herself close to, she’ll move heaven and earth to make sure that they’re happy and healthy and whole - they’ll just have to move an equal amount to actually get her to open up to them in the first place. She’s a steadfast friend to her friends, and may even compromise her own happiness in order to ensure theirs.
Kara also has a huge weak spot for underdogs. The poor, the weak, the helpless… anyone whom classify as have-nots, or does-not-have-nearly enough, she’ll go out of her way to help. Of course, she’ll do it in a rather roundabout way and will likely deny them or look totally uninterested in helping them at the first turn, but their hardships don’t go unnoticed to someone like her.
Beyond all of that, though, perhaps most notable thing about Kara is her unshakable confidence - her own awareness of her own skills and limitations is one that not a lot of other people have about themselves. She knows what she’s capable of doing just as well as she knows what she is NOT capable of doing, and beyond that, she knows she’s damned fucking good at her job. Her excellence is the bedrock upon which her confidence rests upon, and nothing is capable of destroying that. As such, Kara is unruffled by obstacles, unmoved by insults. She has not doubted herself thus far, and she probably never will for the rest of her life.
Abilities/Weapons:
Kara was raised as a fighter even before she learned how to talk properly: she’s a child of armed conflict through and through, trained to assess people as a friend or a foe, built to read their capabilities and adjust herself to them accordingly. She’s a whiz with firearms (she’s exceptionally good with light firearms and rifles), and an incredibly vicious fighter in hand-to-hand engagements - she’s also got a natural head for strategy, and knows how to move both with or without a team.
If her soldiering wasn’t enough, there is Kara’s skill as a pilot to contend with also… she is actually thrice as good a pilot as she is a fighter on the ground. Kara is so attuned to fighting in the sky that any plane she’s in becomes an extension of her own body, and as such, she is capable of amazing, almost impossible aerial feats, even in the heat of battle.
While Kara can make a pretty decent leader, she is best as a follower - anything beyond a vice position will not interest her, and will not bring out her full potential. She really lives and breathes the battlefield beyond anything else.
Off the battlefield, Kara appears to be a phenomenally lucky girl; she’s extremely good at cards, dice and other popular forms of gambling, and whenever fortune ISN’T smiling down on her, Kara’s wits and her bluffing skills are more than enough to tide her over.
How well can your character hack?: Can’t do it, and is totally not interested in it. Hacking’s no fun compared to busting shit up anyway.
Weaknesses:
With great confidence, of course, comes the natural tendency to be very, very arrogant - Kara is no exception. She worked hard to get to the point she’s at, regardless of the fact that it’s really the only path that was ever made available to her: she’s a firm believer in the saying “no pain, no gain”. She feels that people who fail simply aren’t trying hard enough, and she never hesitates to tell them so, with very colorful additions to boot.
Suffice to say, arrogance comes hand-in-hand with having a natural problem with authority. The Steel Wings of Caprica were believers in earning one’s rank on the field, and the best way to do that was by proving their mettle on assignment without any prowess on the battlefield, one might as well be dead. Hence, she is extremely judgmental when it comes to people in a higher position than she is and she is. Kara has also never been a fan of the military - mercenaries like her are always hired to fill in the blanks, so it’s only natural for her to assume that they’re all incompetent or self-serving.
It was also mentioned that her toughness may only be at the surface level in the earlier part of the app. With that sort of build, it should come as no surprise, then, that Kara is not nearly as strong or as impenetrable as she appears to be. It may even be said that she makes it a point to hold people at arm’s length or actively drive them away because she has an inherent fear of being responsible for someone other than herself. Bodyguard jobs are one thing (business is business, after all, and it’s very easy to justify things that way, including the accidents that MAY happen during the course of the contract), but the sort of responsibility that one needs to assume for dependents and significant others is frightening for someone like Kara. Suffice to say, this COULD lead to her having serious issues with intimacy, and may be the reason why she’ll never go deeper than being friends with anyone else.
If all of that wasn’t enough, it’s also important to note that Kara has close to no inhibitions, both with herself and with other people: she smokes up, drugs up, and drinks up the way she wants to. Furthermore, she never, ever hesitates to speak her mind, to tell people exactly what she thinks of them regardless of who they are. This gets her into a heck load of trouble, as there aren’t a lot of folks who appreciate being told off by someone as cocky as she is. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not - Kara is often insulting enough to make people notice her.
Lastly, beyond her uncompromising loyalty to the few she calls friends and the soft spot she harbors for the underdog, Kara is a true blue mercenary: she only goes where the money is, and while she fights harder than one would expect a regular mercenary to fight, she’ll only stay for as long as her contract decrees, and nothing more. Principles, for her, are nothing but fancy words and needless handicaps - it seems as though she can take any job that comes her way, regardless of what it requires of her.
History:
Kara was literally born in a ditch on one of the many small, unnamed battlefields along the border of Vohemar and the Badlands - she was the daughter of a pair of Vohemaro fighters from Berum, who had been on assignment during the time of her birth. Her mother died soon after giving birth to her, however, leaving her with a father who had absolutely no idea how to raise a kid on his own, much less a girl. As such, Kara was raised more like a soldier than anything else, and a male one at that.
To say that Kara grew up in the air is not an understatement - she was the baby of the group in as much as she was a fighter like the rest of them, and her father was a member of the Steel Wings of Caprica, a group of highly skilled mercenaries whose airship regularly cut across Vohemario skies in search of jobs that suited their level of strength. She learned partially through touch-and-go training sessions and mostly through sheer exposure - well and good too, because her father would not have a child who couldn’t stand up and fight like an adult. And naturally, one of the first thing she learned was how to pilot a fighter plane, as her father was one of the best pilots that their group had at hand.
Things changed when Kara turned fourteen. An assignment gone bad took off her father’s arm and mangled one of his legs, forcing him to retire very early. The two of them had themselves dropped off at Colvus - her father’s home town - and Kara took it upon herself to put bread on the table for the both of them. Thankfully, the huge monster population and constant territorial disputes meant that there was no lack of jobs that she could take on. Kara wasn’t exactly content with staying grounded, but she wasn’t about to abandon the one family member she still had left. Theirs wasn’t the conventional father-daughter relationship, but they loved each other in their own ways well enough.
Unsurprisingly, Kara’s father took his daughter aside in their third year at Colvus for the first and longest real conversation they ever had - in essence, he told her that it was useless for a person like her to stay tied down to him when it was already over for him, and she only had too much to live for. He told her to leave home and make her own way, and apparently would not take no for an answer.
Since the time she left up until the present, Kara has wandered all over Reial, hiring herself out as a mercenary who will take just about any job one has to offer her for so long as it can measure up both to her standards and to the price she wants. Most know her as the mercenary Starbuck, daughter of the old dog Husher, and she’s currently looking for an airship to take refuge in while the jobs are scarce and the lone road too dusty for her tastes.