Description, Personality, Powers
May. 9th, 2009 08:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninelivesonceInfo Threads:
Physical Description at Landel's:
She is extremely tall -- 6'6". Her build is athletic, muscular but not stocky, and she probably weighs around 230 pounds. (I'm working from WNBA player photos and height/weight data on those numbers to get something realistic but well outside the average.) The only parts of her where body fat is in evidence is a slight curve to her hips and her breasts, which make it very clear even from a distance that, despite her height, she's female. She's not so well-endowed as to cause her trouble when fighting -- but she does enjoy flaunting what she's got. Even in gray cotton asylum gear. Her eyes (golden) and hair (brown, waist-length, touches of gray, frizzy unless braided or otherwise styled), and skin-tone (also golden) are unchanged. Her eyebrows are heavy, and clash with the rest of her face. Her fingernails will be harder than average, but they will break, and her feet are normal human.
Physical Description in Canon
Taura is 8 feet tall, athletic build. I'm guessing she weighs around 300 pounds, most of that muscle. She specifically says she can lift 250 kilos (550 pounds) -- she is very, very strong. Her mouth is a strange blend of human and animal -- perhaps wolf, perhaps large cat. She has visible fangs hooking down over an outsized lower jaw even with her mouth shut, and when she smiles, it generally doesn't look friendly. Even if it is. Her eyes are golden but otherwise normal, her hair is dark brown with a handful of gray hairs, waist-length and somewhat frizzy. She normally wears it in a braid or something else to keep it out of the way when working, but takes it down for quiet moments. Her nose is small, almost flat against her head, and her brow ridges are pronounced. Her finger- and toe-nails are closer to claws, though her hands and feet are. The nails/claws aren't especially long -- just a centimeter or so, but they're very durable, and she generally keeps them filed sharp. (And polished with something pretty.) Her skin is described as golden -- I'm taking this to mean something between Mediterranean and Asian in complexion.
Her clothes vary depending on what she is doing. If on duty, she's in uniform. Period. The Dendarii uniform is matte grey, and fairly practical as uniforms go. If off-duty, she likes pretty things. Lace and feathers and frills. Her taste in fashion is terrible, but she enjoys dressing up. It just takes a better eye for clothes than hers to make the results successful. She is attached to the color pink, because someone told her it was non-threatening, and thus she wears it a lot, despite it not being a good match for her coloring. Her nails are always shaped and polished, though whether they're filed to points or blunted depends on what she's doing. (She blunts them before going to bed with people, sharpens them for fights. Etc.)
Personality:
Despite being genetically engineered as a supersoldier, Taura is pretty much an average young woman, personality-wise. She likes to dress up, flirt, do her job well, etc. And she craves other people's approval and respect. While she's grown up a lot in the past five years, she's still subject to bouts of insecurity and worry. She still doesn't always see herself as human, especially when other people look at her and see a monster. The ongoing efforts of Miles and the Dendarii (who do treat her as human) have helped a lot, though.
She follows rules when given them -- when Miles asks why she didn't crack open a pipe sooner, she replies that they were punished for breaking things, but maybe he won't be as he's human. While she's learning to see herself as human, she still has an ingrained instinct to follow rules. She's also a soldier, and she follows orders, which is slightly different.
She has learned to have a sense of humor about her body, often self-deprecating. During the clone-rescue mission, she shows up at the pre-combat-drop meeting in space armor with a fluffy pink bow on it, to try to look less frightening. And in "Winterfair Gifts", she describes her tactics for dealing with unruly or unwanted attention by saying that first she smiles (which, with her teeth, is usually enough), and then she holds the person up at arms length and lets them swing ineffectually.
Her life expectancy is a major issue -- the Dendarii doctors do all they can to slow her metabolism and extend it. At twenty-six (the last point we see her in canon) she's been told she has a year left to live every year for four years running -- she keeps beating the odds, but she's always aware that at sixteen she'd already outlived the rest of her peers. So despite her self-image issues, she always looks at everything from the bright side. She could die of old age at any point -- or she could get killed in the line of duty. She lives for the moment. This also means she has a bit of a hedonistic streak and no guilt about indulging it -- she loves food, in just about every form, and has a metabolism that lets her get away with it. She also thoroughly enjoys sex, though she also likes it to mean something.
She can be very socially awkward at times, but she never needs a lesson given twice in that arena. However, she's operating by a consciously-learned set of social rules, rather than basic instinct. So even in situations she does know how to handle, sometimes she has to stop and think through how to handle it. She wasn't raised to be social -- she was raised almost like a pet by the fosterers until she was eight, and then as an experiment. So she's still learning the rules of human interaction (even at 26, six years after I'm taking her). Sometimes she can be astonishingly perceptive, if talking about someone she knows well, but when it comes to figuring out what she's supposed to say, she often is at a loss.
She's bright -- her IQ is given as 135, and she's been training as a mercenary for the past 5 years. She's trained in several practical martial arts, as well as a wide array of weaponry and ordnance, most of it high-tech. She can pilot a spaceship in normal space (she's not a Jump pilot, which is her universe's faster-than-light travel), fly a plane, drive a vehicle, etc. She knows how to disable and confuse security technology. She's also had some instruction in fleet-level tactics. I'm assuming she has an artificial biological resistance to truth drugs -- it's pretty standard in her universe. But that would require her universe's truth drugs to trigger.
Powers:
In canon: She was designed as a super-soldier, and she has the physical abilities to match. She can dead-lift 550 pounds. She can outrun an athletic human both over short distances and long. Her visible spectrum is wider than a normal human, going into the ultraviolet and infrared. (The specific quote is "among other things I can see slightly farther into the ultraviolet, and quite a bit farther into the infrared, than a normal person." -- "Winterfair Gifts".) I'm assuming this does means she can see far enough into the infrared to see heat -- built-in night vision goggles. (We don't see her using her soldier-skills much in canon, sadly, or the answer would be clearer. There are some significant biological impossibilities inherent in heat vision, but they actually apply to the near- and mid-IR as well. However, there are animals (snakes) with sense organs for far into the infrared and tie into the optic system, although they're not eyes as we think of them, and she was specifically designed partly using animal genes plus massive future science improvements.) Likewise, I'm assuming her hearing spreads further up and down the spectrum than a normal human -- she can hear dog whistles, etc. Otherwise, she has no magic, supernatural powers, etc.
At Landel's: Turning her human is going to substantially reduce her strength, speed, and teeth/claws. She'll be in the top 1% of average human abilities, but she will be within the range, and at Landel's, quite a few other people are in that region. Think superstar NFL running back -- a perfect balance of speed, endurance, and strength, just at its peak. It will take her a little while to get used to her new body, but her training will translate. Her hearing will be good, but within human tolerances.
She has kept the infrared half of her enhanced vision. All it really means is that she'll be able to see humans or monsters (if they have body heat) a little sooner in the dark, as vague blurs of heat in a particular direction. It's not very distinct, and if it's light out, it's useless.
- Pyramid Head (guilt)
- Aquilas (not a virgin)
- Schuldig (telepaths)
- Angel (not quite human)
- Zexion (scent)
- Kakashi (phys. techniques)
- Nigredo (mind control)
- Abe (identity and telepathic resistance)
- Renamon (not quite human)
- Stein (soul description)
- Crane (fears)
- Naraku (shapeshifter)
Physical Description at Landel's:
She is extremely tall -- 6'6". Her build is athletic, muscular but not stocky, and she probably weighs around 230 pounds. (I'm working from WNBA player photos and height/weight data on those numbers to get something realistic but well outside the average.) The only parts of her where body fat is in evidence is a slight curve to her hips and her breasts, which make it very clear even from a distance that, despite her height, she's female. She's not so well-endowed as to cause her trouble when fighting -- but she does enjoy flaunting what she's got. Even in gray cotton asylum gear. Her eyes (golden) and hair (brown, waist-length, touches of gray, frizzy unless braided or otherwise styled), and skin-tone (also golden) are unchanged. Her eyebrows are heavy, and clash with the rest of her face. Her fingernails will be harder than average, but they will break, and her feet are normal human.
Physical Description in Canon
Taura is 8 feet tall, athletic build. I'm guessing she weighs around 300 pounds, most of that muscle. She specifically says she can lift 250 kilos (550 pounds) -- she is very, very strong. Her mouth is a strange blend of human and animal -- perhaps wolf, perhaps large cat. She has visible fangs hooking down over an outsized lower jaw even with her mouth shut, and when she smiles, it generally doesn't look friendly. Even if it is. Her eyes are golden but otherwise normal, her hair is dark brown with a handful of gray hairs, waist-length and somewhat frizzy. She normally wears it in a braid or something else to keep it out of the way when working, but takes it down for quiet moments. Her nose is small, almost flat against her head, and her brow ridges are pronounced. Her finger- and toe-nails are closer to claws, though her hands and feet are. The nails/claws aren't especially long -- just a centimeter or so, but they're very durable, and she generally keeps them filed sharp. (And polished with something pretty.) Her skin is described as golden -- I'm taking this to mean something between Mediterranean and Asian in complexion.
Her clothes vary depending on what she is doing. If on duty, she's in uniform. Period. The Dendarii uniform is matte grey, and fairly practical as uniforms go. If off-duty, she likes pretty things. Lace and feathers and frills. Her taste in fashion is terrible, but she enjoys dressing up. It just takes a better eye for clothes than hers to make the results successful. She is attached to the color pink, because someone told her it was non-threatening, and thus she wears it a lot, despite it not being a good match for her coloring. Her nails are always shaped and polished, though whether they're filed to points or blunted depends on what she's doing. (She blunts them before going to bed with people, sharpens them for fights. Etc.)
Personality:
Despite being genetically engineered as a supersoldier, Taura is pretty much an average young woman, personality-wise. She likes to dress up, flirt, do her job well, etc. And she craves other people's approval and respect. While she's grown up a lot in the past five years, she's still subject to bouts of insecurity and worry. She still doesn't always see herself as human, especially when other people look at her and see a monster. The ongoing efforts of Miles and the Dendarii (who do treat her as human) have helped a lot, though.
She follows rules when given them -- when Miles asks why she didn't crack open a pipe sooner, she replies that they were punished for breaking things, but maybe he won't be as he's human. While she's learning to see herself as human, she still has an ingrained instinct to follow rules. She's also a soldier, and she follows orders, which is slightly different.
She has learned to have a sense of humor about her body, often self-deprecating. During the clone-rescue mission, she shows up at the pre-combat-drop meeting in space armor with a fluffy pink bow on it, to try to look less frightening. And in "Winterfair Gifts", she describes her tactics for dealing with unruly or unwanted attention by saying that first she smiles (which, with her teeth, is usually enough), and then she holds the person up at arms length and lets them swing ineffectually.
Her life expectancy is a major issue -- the Dendarii doctors do all they can to slow her metabolism and extend it. At twenty-six (the last point we see her in canon) she's been told she has a year left to live every year for four years running -- she keeps beating the odds, but she's always aware that at sixteen she'd already outlived the rest of her peers. So despite her self-image issues, she always looks at everything from the bright side. She could die of old age at any point -- or she could get killed in the line of duty. She lives for the moment. This also means she has a bit of a hedonistic streak and no guilt about indulging it -- she loves food, in just about every form, and has a metabolism that lets her get away with it. She also thoroughly enjoys sex, though she also likes it to mean something.
She can be very socially awkward at times, but she never needs a lesson given twice in that arena. However, she's operating by a consciously-learned set of social rules, rather than basic instinct. So even in situations she does know how to handle, sometimes she has to stop and think through how to handle it. She wasn't raised to be social -- she was raised almost like a pet by the fosterers until she was eight, and then as an experiment. So she's still learning the rules of human interaction (even at 26, six years after I'm taking her). Sometimes she can be astonishingly perceptive, if talking about someone she knows well, but when it comes to figuring out what she's supposed to say, she often is at a loss.
She's bright -- her IQ is given as 135, and she's been training as a mercenary for the past 5 years. She's trained in several practical martial arts, as well as a wide array of weaponry and ordnance, most of it high-tech. She can pilot a spaceship in normal space (she's not a Jump pilot, which is her universe's faster-than-light travel), fly a plane, drive a vehicle, etc. She knows how to disable and confuse security technology. She's also had some instruction in fleet-level tactics. I'm assuming she has an artificial biological resistance to truth drugs -- it's pretty standard in her universe. But that would require her universe's truth drugs to trigger.
Powers:
In canon: She was designed as a super-soldier, and she has the physical abilities to match. She can dead-lift 550 pounds. She can outrun an athletic human both over short distances and long. Her visible spectrum is wider than a normal human, going into the ultraviolet and infrared. (The specific quote is "among other things I can see slightly farther into the ultraviolet, and quite a bit farther into the infrared, than a normal person." -- "Winterfair Gifts".) I'm assuming this does means she can see far enough into the infrared to see heat -- built-in night vision goggles. (We don't see her using her soldier-skills much in canon, sadly, or the answer would be clearer. There are some significant biological impossibilities inherent in heat vision, but they actually apply to the near- and mid-IR as well. However, there are animals (snakes) with sense organs for far into the infrared and tie into the optic system, although they're not eyes as we think of them, and she was specifically designed partly using animal genes plus massive future science improvements.) Likewise, I'm assuming her hearing spreads further up and down the spectrum than a normal human -- she can hear dog whistles, etc. Otherwise, she has no magic, supernatural powers, etc.
At Landel's: Turning her human is going to substantially reduce her strength, speed, and teeth/claws. She'll be in the top 1% of average human abilities, but she will be within the range, and at Landel's, quite a few other people are in that region. Think superstar NFL running back -- a perfect balance of speed, endurance, and strength, just at its peak. It will take her a little while to get used to her new body, but her training will translate. Her hearing will be good, but within human tolerances.
She has kept the infrared half of her enhanced vision. All it really means is that she'll be able to see humans or monsters (if they have body heat) a little sooner in the dark, as vague blurs of heat in a particular direction. It's not very distinct, and if it's light out, it's useless.
