PLAYER INFORMATION
Your Name: tussah
OOC Journal: ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) dondarrion
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: N/A
Email + IM: thebiographgirl (at) gmail | tullied (at) AIM
Characters Played at Ataraxion:
Robert Capa | Sunshine | payload
Mouse (Gideon Graham) | original character | addictive
Nigel Colbie | Like Minds | pike
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Hallah Tawse (operative "Aberdeen")
Canon: Original
Original or Alternate Universe: N/A
Canon Point: current canon
Number: 002 » 200 (if this is taken or not valid, feel free to randomly generate a number for her)
Setting:
For the past four hundred years the governments of the world - the parliaments, the senates, the kings, queen, emperors, the fascists and the communists, the proletariats and the bourgeosie - have never really been the ones in control of their countries. Orders - clandestine society of superpowered operatives - have worked tirelessly to ensure the smooth running of hundreds of governments throughout the world. Selecting their operatives according to their own agendas the Orders continue to regulate themselves independently of any governmental involvement whilst maximising their involvement in national affairs at the very topmost political levels.
Each Order assigns its operatives codenames according to various cities within its country and in the UK it's no different: each seat in the Order of Great Britain comes with its own city-related codename and a particular power. The operative assigned the codename St. David's has the role of gifting each new city their superpower and removing it when their time comes to leave. As befits their city, the operative codenamed London is the presiding leader of the Order. With St. David's as their right-hand advisor and the precog Westminster as their left, London has the last word in any decision that the Order makes.
Things have not always run smoothly for the Order. In times past events have escaped their control and come to light to the British public - from the English civil war to Jack the Ripper, there have been times when disagreements within the Order have threatened to destroy them. Orders members have always been political creatures - not only at large and on a national scale but within their own ranks. None of them are strangers to drama - but when you gift some of the brightest men and women of the country inconceivable powers, who could blame them for meddling with each other as much as they meddle with their government? (Verse overview written by fizzy on the verse information page.)
Aberdeen's world is not unlike the modern-day world we live in; in fact, on the surface level it is wholly identical. Its global culture, its international dynamics and its sociopolitical landscape is as our own, though there is an added layer of magical realism by way of the Order's ancient, clandestine secret societies. Once tasked with the responsibilities of delivering their respective nations towards empirical glory, the Orders have evolved over the centuries to best serve the political needs of their nation. Today they operate not unlike a 'benevolent' (subject to debate) Illuminati-type organization — pulling strings, making deals, maintaining delicate balances and treatises in order to maintain governmental stability and economic prosperity both at home and abroad. Think international intelligence agencies along the lines of the CIA and MI-6, only much more deeply embedded within the government and operating independently of the government's knowledge. The histories of the Orders are long, complicated and oftentimes messy things and tend to reflect the histories of their respective countries, for which the operatives are responsible for shaping (though blame has never been properly assigned; a difficult task when the culprit is completely transparent). There is no event in history of important (and indeed, many events that have gone unnoticed in the annals of history) that the Order — starting with the UK chapter — have not had some hand in shaping.
Each Order is populated by operatives who are given a codename based on a city and a metahuman ability historically linked to that city. All abilities, at least once upon a time, had relevance in helping run that Order's government — whether it be weather manipulation for a main port city or shapeshifting to spy on a nation's enemies. Operative "Aberdeen" has been around since approximately 1652, the position formed in the aftermath of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms between England, Ireland and Scotland. So named after The Battle of Aberdeen that took place between the Scottish Royalists and the Covenanters, agent Aberdeen's function was created to help weed out rebellion before it began by listening for the whispers of usurpation.
Aberdeen's ability is, simply put, clairaudience — the power to hear things at a great distance. Historically Aberdeens have played important roles in intelligence gathering during both world wars, as well as served as a check to UK Oxfords (specifically during the Cold War, when paranoia of moles within the Order hit an all-time high, demanding a more rigorous system of checks and balances of power). Because of the nature of Aberdeen's power — effectively the ability to hear everything on a global scale — there is an extremely high turn-over rate among operatives who take the position. Aberdeen's power is not easily controlled and is functionally passive, meaning that it cannot turned off or turned down through active means. Instead, operative Aberdeen is forced to use his or her own inherent mental capabilities to parse through the sensory overload of information — a tiring and oftentimes overwhelming task for most individuals.
History:
TIMELINE
24 - current age
23 - completes training to join the Order
22 - asked to join the Order
20 - graduates with dual doctorate, joins with the MI-6
17 - death of Elijah, academic sabatical
14 - graduates high school
11 - graduates elementary school
06 - IQ tested, yielding a result of 172
THE ACADEMICS' DAUGHTER | EARLY LIFE
Hallah Tawse was born in St. Andrews, Scotland in 1986, the youngest child and only daughter to Victor and Macide Tawse. Neither Victor nor Macide had intended to have children beyond Elijah, their second born, but when Macide discovered that she was pregnant for a third time, the couple sat down and weighed out both the pros and cons to having a child so late in life. In the end, they decided to keep the unborn baby; they named her Hallah after a great-aunt of which Victor still held fond memories. Given the unexpected nature of Hallah's birth and the untimeliness of it, at the very end of Macide's viable motherhood, there is a considerable age gap between Hallah and her eldest brother, Micah. All three Tawse children are spaced at five year intervals from one another, putting Elijah at five years her senior and Micah at ten years. As a result, Hallah and Micah never grew to be very close, Micah being more a secondary parental figure than an older brother. Perhaps because of this, Hallah and Elijah grew up even closer, Hallah oftentimes looking up to Elijah as her own personal role model.
Both members of the faculty at the University of St. Andrews (her father, a senior lecturer of linguistics and her mother, a lecturer in natural sciences at the Bute Medical School), the Tawses raised their children in an environment highly mindful of both the rigors and benefits of an academic life. They were taught several languages at an early age by Victor himself, he being ethnically half-turkish; both Hallah and her siblings grew up bilingual as a result, able to speak both English and Turkish to native levels of fluency.
Although each bright in their own way, Hallah proved to be the brightest of the three despite being considerably younger than both. Early testing revealed her IQ to be off the charts for a child her age; 172 according to the tests, relegating young Hallah to child prodigy status. As soon as this was realized, Hallah's parents scrambled to rearrange the constellations of their lives in order to best accomodate this new discovery. Hallah, only still six at the time, became her parents' for the time being, her education suddenly paramount while that of her brothers fell not to the wayside, but certainly into their own hands for once. This made little difference to Micah who was naturally studious and well-meaning. Although tenacious and able to grasp certain concepts readily, he was not nearly as inherently intelligent as his siblings were and, over the years, had come to accept how to be satisfied with what he had been given as well as his ability to achieve what he had. Elijah, on the other hand, grew unruly without his parents' attention. Inherently clever but also born burdened with a kind of restlessness, he was unable to maintain focus without a guiding hand and soon grew inattentive of his studies and wayward. By the time Hallah was ten, Elijah was already a teenager with a growing file with juvenile detention. When she graduated elementary school a year later, he was issued his first ASBO.
THE DEATH OF ELIJAH and THE BIRTH OF OBSESSION | ACADEMIC LIFE
Growing up a child prodigy, her education now minded attentively by the both of her parents, Hallah proved to have a natural inclination to both languages (the result of her father's influence) and mathematics. Much to her mother's chargin, young Hallah shunned the natural sciences and only with insistence from her parents towards well-roundedness was she able to move forward and accelerate through great swaths of her childhood academic career. She graduated primary school by the age of 11 and was done with her secondary education by the age of 14. A survey of academic institutions in the UK which would accomodate a young girl like Hallah for undergraduate (and graduate) study yielded poor results and ultimately Hallah, much to the sound of her own protests, was ultimately sent to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, MA to receive a BS in Mathematics and pursue the possibilities of a doctorate.
This decision created a rift within the family, and not just an emotional one but a physical one. Her father, eager to see Hallah flourish and receive the best education she could, left his position at St. Andrews to accompany his daughter across the Atlantic and help build some semblance of a normal domestic life around her. Her mother, on the other hand, was left in St. Andrews to be mindful of middle-child Elijah (nineteen at the time) who seemed only to grow that much more unmanageable with Hallah's departure.
Having been removed from what little social contexts she had had back in Scotland and painfully homesick for both her mother and her missing brother, adolescent Hallah rebelled any attempts at normalcy in the only ways she knew how. She began to emulate some of Elijah's mannerisms — his brusque way of speaking, his oftentimes tactless forthrightness — as well as picked up his tendencies towards both Goth and punk trappings. By the age of 16, Hallah had already begun her extensive collection of piercings and had taken up the task of cutting her own hair and dying it strange colors. This only helped isolate Hallah more from the classmates who already shunned her and her father, though well-meaning, proved hapless in controlling Hallah's bouts of stubbornness and insistence.
True fracture, however, came at the age of 17, right as Hallah began to embark on on her doctorate in game theory and mathematics. Elijah had fallen into not only questionable behavior over the years but unquestionably dangerous company as well. What had begun as juvenile delinquency had, without a stable home life and his little sister to keep him in check, spiraled into full-blown criminality and drug use. At the age of 22, on a snowy night two weeks after Christmas, Elijah Tawse was run down in the street just blocks away from his one bedroom apartment in Glasgow. According to witness accounts, the driver of the car proceeded to get out, riffle through Elijah's pockets and take the knapsack that Elijah had been carrying before speeding off into the night. Further investigation by the police revealed the 'accident' to have been drug-related, though charges were not pressed against anyone and no guilty parties ever came forward.
The news sent shockwaves through Hallah's family and the strained remnants of Victor and Macide's marriage finally bent to breaking. Hallah herself refused to continue with her studies and was forced by the Academic Council to take a years-long sabbatical or otherwise be pulled from her program. During that year, Hallah did little more than stay in her room and use her laptop; it was during this time that she threw herself into her on-again, off-again hobby of computer science with full force. when Hallah finally emerged, she was considerably different than the teenaged girl who had shut herself in a year earlier. what had been a kind of social awkwardness had bloomed into full-blown misanthropy and the hard edges of Elijah's behavior that she had tried to adopt had finally become a part of her, rather than just window dressing to her personality. With renewed focus (one might argue unhealthy obsession), Hallah began and completed not one but two doctorates by the age of 20. The first in mathematics and game theory, the second in computer science and cryptography and cryptanalysis.
THE SHUT-IN | LIFE AT MI-6
Armed with these two degrees, Hallah promptly abandoned her life in the United States to return to Scotland. Due to her parents' history with the college as well as her own outstanding academic achievements, she was offered a position as a research fellow at St. Andrews college in Scotland. Tired of academia, however, Hallah refused, instead choosing to accept an offer to work for the MI-6 as a civilian consultant. Her job, which consisted of testing the technological safeguards of MI-6's security by attempting to breach said security by whatever means possible, allowed Hallah to remain at home for large swatches of time. Her office was virtual and almost all of her work digital in nature and so Hallah began to live her life in relative seclusion. Choosing to separate herself from the outside world, she began to operate solely through virtual means while other things such as interpersonal relationships fell to the wayside.
During this time very little happened in Hallah's life if only because of her unwillingness towards action in any way beyond fixating on work and ignoring the calls of both of her parents who had, over time, grown both concerned and disapproving of her lifestyle. Her abilities behind a keyboard flourished during this period, though Hallah — loathe to have more responsibility than she already had — was quick to refuse any offers at promotion or advancement. Hallah proved so good at her job, in fact, that she began to breech clearance levels in an attempt to better stress-test the system. It was after her first successful override of clearance and her subsequent discovery of an overlooked breech in security elsewhere in the same system that Hallah was first approached by the Order with an invitation for initiation.
AGENT ABERDEEN | THE ORDER
Hallah's rather willful, unadvised and completely illegal violation of authorization level put her on unpaid probation with the MI-6, pending case review and possible prosecution. During that time, she was contacted by the Order and approached to become an operative for the clandestine organization (with the added bonus of having any possible charges brought against her dropped, with nobody the wiser). Though her skills were naturally best suited to the realm of the technologic, operative Cambridge's responsibilities already covered those bases and so it was decided that her innate abilities could be used elsewhere. Her ability to mentally multitask and perform complex tasks with large amounts of raw data made her a shoe-in for the recently vacated 'Aberdeen' position. The previous Aberdeen had been something of a mishap; the young woman chosen to fill the role had not managed a year outside of training. In a fit of mental exhaustion, she was retired, leaving the space unfilled and demanding attention. This was kept from Hallah, of course, who accepted only after the shortest grace periods of consideration. Though she was privately wary of the Order's intentions and questions of governance and accountability, she found the proposed training and her subsequent responsibilities intriguing. (She was, after all, of a scientific mind and found the prospect of metahuman abilities fascinating.)
Hallah began her training soon after her acceptance of the offer. Given the nature of Aberdeen's abilities, her specific program of integration into the Order was considerably longer and more extensive than baseline operative training, which covered mostly the expected physical and military operative-type training that all new members of the Order received. Given her slight stature, the new agent Aberdeen proved middling at combat training, though it was noted in her records that her exceedingly high tolerances to both physical pain and mental fatigue made her virtually impenetrable from an interrogation perspective. From physical training, Aberdeen was then handed off to undergo a bevy of mental strengthening and language learning (the former proving to be much more difficult for Aberdeen than the later). For six months she lived at a monastery in Laos, where Aberdeen was taught the fundamentals of mental re-centering, meditation, focus and clarity of mind. Before finally being given her abilities as Aberdeen, she was expected to learn a broad swath of languages as well; currently, Aberdeen is functionally fluent in 12 spoken languages.
As it stands, Aberdeen has been a member of the UK Order for going on a year now. She works in close proximity with agent Dundee — named Ian Malone — and their relationship is as much about the interaction of their roles within the Order (Dundee is tasked with broadcasting extremely time sensitive information to the necessary parties once it has 'crossed' Aberdeen's desk) as it is about their personal interactions (unofficially it has fallen to Dundees to historically look after Aberdeens, given the oftentimes overwhelming nature of their abilities). Though still grossly antisocial, Aberdeen is a dedicated and trustworthy member of the Order and does her job to the best of her ability (oftentimes to her own personal detriment). She spends her days and nights in front of her computer, perpetually transcribing the things that she hears, making note of questionable or odd behavior or activity overheard in both the UK and abroad. On the odd occasion that Aberdeen is seen at an Order function or outside her apartment, she will still be seen with her laptop in tow. As a side quirk, even without her computer, it can be observed that her hands continue to type absently. Despite the nature of her abilities and their tried and true history of breaking previous Aberdeens, the current Aberdeen shows no signs of mental fatigue or emotional weariness.
Personality:
HONESTY | A METHOD
Aberdeen is, in a word, frank. Something of a symptom of her mathematically-minded mind, she is not a fan of beating around the bush and would rather drive straight to any given matter at hand rather than beat around the proverbial or social bush. Being something of a misanthrope herself, she forgoes most of the trappings of socially accepted 'polite' interaction. As a result of her ability, she knows first-hand the extent of many people's duplicity and rather than indulge it, she chooses to bypass it or otherwise steamroll it entirely with her oftentimes sparse contributions to conversation. Aberdeen operates wholly without pretense, both with herself personally and with others. It is important to note, however, that when it comes to her own personal motivations and endeavors, Aberdeen generally avoids deep or meaningful self-reflection. She herself doesn't view this sort of willful ignorance as disingenuous or deceitful in any way, though it does mean that — for someone as brutally honest as she is — Aberdeen generally lacks a meaningful understanding of herself, her motivations and why she does things beyond simply: I want to.
PRIVACY | AN ILLUSION
Given the nature of her ability, Aberdeen does not have any concept of privacy. She will readily walk naked through a room full of strangers just like she will not hesitate in prying into the personal lives of the people around her. This does, in fact, account for approximately 75% of her responsibilities with the UK Order and, oftentimes, is tasked with observing and documenting the audio comings and goings of her fellow operatives or those of rival Orders, such as France. Tangential to this as well as the aforementioned tendency towards honesty on all accounts, Aberdeen also has no real sense of shame, nor little to no respect for other people's sense of shame either. She is, in fact, most comfortable around telepaths, having no issue with their tendencies to poke around in other people's heads. Aberdeen's ability affectively emulates telepathy and is equally intrusive in many ways; around telepaths, Aberdeen knows that her words and actions cannot be interpreted through the filter of pretense (a habit that most people have, even when they know she doesn't subscribe to it). The more Aberdeen is invested in a person — whether emotionally or intellectually — the more readily and frequently and enthusiastically she will violate their privacy. These tendencies extend beyond Aberdeen's clairaudience and can also be readily applied to Aberdeen's technological hobbies as well.
OBSESSION | A WAY OF LIFE
If there is one thing that Aberdeen learned in the wake of Elijah's death, it is that keeping her head down and focusing on work is one sure-fire way to keep herself from the kinds of distractions that will ultimately bring her pain or emotional harm. This defense mechanism, coupled with Aberdeen's inherent tendency to fixate on a given task until it's done to the point of obsession, means that Aberdeen makes very little time or space for things other than what's directly in front of her. Things like hobbies, interpersonal relationships and even self-care fall sharply to the wayside with Aberdeen and she makes no efforts beyond baseline necessity to given them attention.
RELATIONSHIPS | A BLINDSPOT
For all that Aberdeen is good at the things that she is good at, she is decidedly not good at in the places where her attention drops off or falls away. And so is the case when it comes to interpersonal relationships. Now, it is important to note that, despite being a very successful recluse, Aberdeen is not without human interaction. There are several UK Order operatives that she deals with on a semi-regular basis — most notably, Dundee, who is a permanent fixture on her doorstep, and Stirling, with whom Aberdeen lives. She also has a lover, a telepath from the Spanish Order called Barcelona. Although Aberdeen has these people in her life, however, that is not to say that her interactions with them exist within the realm of the everyday or are even healthy. Because of her lack of self-awareness, Aberdeen has very little understanding of why she does the things she does beyond the immediate gratification it gives her; the meat and potatoes of most socializing — conversation, emotional intimacy, reciprocity — hold very little interest to her and so what human interaction she does choose to have oftentimes happens with the understanding that these things will not happen or even be part of the exchange. When Aberdeen does interact with another person beyond perfunctory levels (perfunctory here meaning: work and sex), there is the strong possibility of obsession, though this happens on an intellectual level for Aberdeen, rather than an emotional one. Of the people in her life, she holds the most personal investment in both Dundee and Barcelona — without either in her life in space, she will suffer a gross emotional handicap which she will then proceed to fail to acknowledge and therefore fail to understand.
GENIUS | A SELLING-POINT
For all that Aberdeen is rough around the edges — for all that she is obsessive and brusque and quite often wholly inappropriate — there is one thing that she always has going for her and that's her ability to take what strengths she does have (and those weaknesses as well) and turn them in such a way as to create focus, focus to create yield and yield to create success. She is wholly driven in the tasks that she is assigned by the Order and although her bedside manner lacks any true sense of professionalism, she places a large amount of personal investment in being able to do her work well and to the best of her ability. It is without any largess of ego that Aberdeen can claim to be one of the most diligent members of the UK Order. Though she does not take to following orders with any semblance of finesse, she will accept the jobs given to her; and though Aberdeen may do said tasks on her own terms, she does do them — quickly and efficiently, so as to provide the desired outcome to those that she works for.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
PRODIGY | ABILITY
Hallah Tawse was tapped to become operative Aberdeen because of her natural brightness and innate ability to process and parse through very large amounts of information. She herself a child prodigy, she accelerated through much of primary school and secondary school, only to receive two doctorates at the age of 20. Although not capable of anything wholly resembling eidetic recall, Aberdeen is capable of mentally absorbing and sorting through data on a massive scale; in college she was referred to as 'the human calculator' due to her ability to mentally process complex mathematical functions. It is important to note, however, that at the gain of academic and educational gain, Aberdeen has suffered major losses in other arenas of her life; in particular: her social life.
HACKER | ABILITY
Although her primary area of academic study is in mathematics, Aberdeen has always been something of a hobbyist hacker, even as a young girl. Her propensity for and skill at taking things apart and putting them back together on a data-language level is immense, which is why she ultimately emerged from her graduate studies with doctorates in both mathematics and computer science. Because her particular computer science focus is in cryptography and cryptanalysis, Aberdeen was tapped immediately following graduation to serve as a civilian consultant to the MI-6, specifically tasked to attempt backdoor penetration and infiltration of various systems to find flaws in their security. Ever since joining the UK Order, she has continued to hone her skills through an on-going technological exchange between herself and the British technopath, Cambridge. She is by no means comparable in skill level to Cambridge though this back and forth has pushed her capabilities to well beyond average. She can probably encrypt to roughly 90-95% security on Ataraxion's network, given the population of the Tranquility and the sliding scale due to differences in levels of native technology.
OPERATIVE | ABILITY
As a member of the UK Order, Aberdeen has had to undergo various types of training, both for fieldwork (though Aberdeen is exempt from this) as well as operations. She is held to above-average levels of physical aptitude, and is trained in firearms, weaponry and self-defense. Basically field training that would be given to your basic FBI or CIA agent goes here. In regards to anti-interrogation training, it is noted in Aberdeen's file that she has a notably high tolerance to pain. Of the recruits brought into the Order over the past five years, she has the highest pain tolerance on record and, as a result, is considered one of lowest risk variables in case of enemy capture.
"ABERDEEN" | ABILITY
Aberdeen's metahuman ability, as defined by the city whose name she bears, is that of clairaudience — essentially the ability to hear things over great distances. This ability is accurate, acute and analytic — meaning that she can hear things with great specificity and at much greater detail than a normal human ear would be able to even if in the immediate presence of the sound. She is able to then pinpoint the sound and understand, geographically, where it is coming from. She is also able to analyze the sound meaningfully (for example, being able to identify the type of gun being cocked on the other side of a door by the sound that it makes). This does not mean that Aberdeen's hearing is echosonic in any way, the way Marvel's Daredevil's hearing works; he is able to use sound to paint a visual picture in his mind, which is more comprehensive and than Aberdeen's ability. In order to know what sort of gun is being loaded on the other side of a door, Aberdeen doesn't "see" the gun because of the sound it makes, but instead must already be familiar with that particular model and the noise its barrel makes when chambering a round, therefore providing a point of context for her to reference against mentally. Aberdeen's clairaudience is rumored to be global, though this is in fact inaccurate. The ability is wholly passive meaning it cannot be turned on and off; only through great mental exertion and focus is she able to shift her attention from one sound to another, parsing through the layers of noise to pick out important things here and there.
OBSESSION | WEAKNESS
Partly due to her personality and partly due to the nature of her ability, Aberdeen is very bad at focusing on anything other than her work. While this is to the Order's benefit, it is oftentimes to Aberdeen's own detriment. As a result, Aberdeen oftentimes gets hung up on focusing on professional or occupational tasks to the point of neglecting her own personal care. Back home, she has Ian Malone (operative "Dundee") to look after her; beyond his official role within the Order, he is also responsible for looking after Aberdeen in the most basic senses — making sure she's slept, making sure she's eaten, trying to ensure that she's taken a break recently, trying to convince her to go out and attend the occasional in-person meet-and-greet. In many ways — though Aberdeen would never admit it — she is dependent on Dundee in order to maintain a certain level of functionality. Without him, Aberdeen will be at a strong disadvantage, given her inability to see and acknowledge her own limitations.
SHELF-LIFE | WEAKNESS
Due to the nature of the "Aberdeen" ability, there is a very short shelf-life and high turn-over rate concerning operatives that take on the name. The ability is passive so, as a result, agents can never 'turn off' the noise around them once given their ability; the only exception is with the introduction of drugs or alcohol into the system (neither of which Hallah!Aberdeen indulges). Given the fact that Aberdeens cannot switch off their ability, many of them retire after less than five years, often suffering from nervous exhaustion, chronic fatigue, psychoneurosis or alcoholism. Beyond the perpetual bombardment of noise, there is also the emotional and mental strain that comes with seeing into the lives of others and knowing the ways in which they may be insincere or duplicitous to others (or to Aberdeen themselves). Upon retirement, most Aberdeens require much more 'fixing up' than other agents due to the amount of mental effort that their ability demands. Hallah Tawse was chosen specifically because of her ability to parse through great swaths of information with much less effort than the average person. Her mental capacity exceeds most people, as does her ability to mentally multitask; as a result, she shows little signs of mental nor emotional strain after holding the Aberdeen title for one and a half years. If anything, Aberdeen risks physical collapse as opposed to a mental one (see above: OBSESSION). With the introduction of the environment of space, however, this currently-held standard may begin to slip (see below: IN SPACE).
IN SPACE | WEAKNESS
Noise on an international scale is something that Aberdeen has grown accustomed to. In fact, it is something she actively seeks out, often reaching out and trying to listen in on as many things at any given time. Why she does this, she doesn't know (proof of her complete lack of self-awareness sometimes); the fact of the matter is that Aberdeen has grown dependent on the noise and also subconsciously fears the reintroduction of silence back into her life. This is the primary reason why Aberdeen never drinks, not even in social situations. She doesn't like it when the sound around her grows mute or dampens out, which is why her introduction into space will be something of a stressful situation for her. Although there will still be the sounds of the ship around her, beyond the ship's walls there is nothing but the dumb vacuum of space. The resulting quiet will first bother Aberdeen and then begin to properly disturb her. It is very likely she will try to instigate ways in which to generate more noise in her immediate vicinity in order to keep that extensive silence away; whether that disrupts the order of the ship around her, Aberdeen will probably not care.
SPECIALIST | LIMITATION
Skillwise, Aberdeen is way off the charts as far as her specific areas of expertise — mathematics, game theory and technology. However, her personality such that her level of knowledge and understanding drops off considerably when looking at things that she has no personal interest or investment in. This is not to say that she cannot apply abstract reasoning to draw informed conclusions, but Aberdeen is woefully ignorant about even basic things when it comes to topics like culture, natural sciences and history. The things that she does know about these subjects have been picked up via her observational work, as opposed to any formal study or vested interest.
LONE AGENT | LIMITATION
Aberdeen is not a field operative and, most of the time, does not need to interact with other agents (barring her relationship with Dundee and her cohabitation with Stirling). There are a handful of Order operatives that she does interact with some semblance of regularity (albeit thinly parsed) but in general, Aberdeen does not play well with others. She is antisocial and can come off off as aggressively misanthropic to those who place any sort of investment in things like manners and tact. In group dynamics that require teamwork and cooperation, she will falter and no doubt chafe her teammates. If given a choice, she would rather be provided her tasks and be allowed to go sit in a corner and do them on her own.
Inventory:
1 studded black leather jacket
various and sundry piercings
1 cross-body messenger bag and its contents:
Appearance:
 Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Just shy of five feet, three inches tall, Aberdeen is a slip of a woman — petite but with a body that's more boyish than womanly (flat hips, narrow shoulders, small breasts). Due to a combination of both a high metabolism and Aberdeen's own lagging self-care, she could easily be considered scrawny, given how her small stature is coupled with a skinniness that appears to border on unhealthy (though, if placed in a situation to fight, Aberdeen could still hold her own against average to above average opponents given to her training as an operative of the Order). She is ambidextrous, though she favors her left hand.
Aberdeen could have been called 'mousey' in another life, what with her high cheekbones and large eyes and naturally chestnut brown hair. But whatever softness there may be in her features has been readily obscured by Aberdeen's personal aesthetic choices. Bleached eyebrows, roughly hewn and asymmetrical geometric haircut (often styled in sharp ways), eyes heavily blackened by make-up to make her pitch-dyed hair. There is nothing soft about the way Aberdeen presents herself — from the piercings in both her face and her ears, to her tattoos, to the way that she dresses in mostly black, her wardrobe a collection of third-string hand-me-downs, leather and distressed denim.
Due to her high tolerance to pain, Aberdeen is able to indulge in heavy body modification and adornment. She has piercings in her eyebrow, nose, lip, tongue, up and down her ears and through both nipples, as well as a VHC. Tattoowise she has the shield from the Aberdeen heraldic coat of arms tattooed on the inside of one of her ankles, as well as this expression of mathetmatical beauty across her upper shoulders and the Smith chart tattooed across her stomach, radiating from her navel. She also has the first 100 decimal places of pi tattooed along the inside of her right arm, like a seam, not unlike this as well as Euler's identity beneath her right breast.
Age: 24.
AU Clarification: N/A
SAMPLES
Log Sample:
It takes her 36 hours to realize that she hates space.
The first 24 are easy enough, if only because she's so head down in the comms that she doesn't even noticed the lack of noise. The communication device in her locker had been strange, but nothing she couldn't handle and so she burnt her first hour and a half just setting herself up, trying to integrate the OS of her laptop to the comms device so that the two know how to speak to one another. When her fingers finally came to rest on the home line of her keyboard (asdf jkl;) a tension she hadn't realized was there in the first place finally relinquished her shoulders back down into their normal slump. And so, she'd begun.
At hour 25, she's finally managed to crack most of the encryptions she's come up against on the network; the language is strange and some of the algorythims are unlike anything she's ever seen before, but complex computations were her bread and butter for a while, so she cuts through them like hot wire through wax. As she does so she simultaneously restructures the syntax of her mind, allowing for adaptation to these new systems and the particular quirks of language; it gives her something of a buzz to do, not unlike the spike that comes after a peak in a roller-coaster ride, that rushing rush that fills the ears with wind and the head with blood. How long has it been since she's learned something new — something honestly and properly new? It's more than enough to get her through to hour 36 — which is when the problems start happening.
She realizes that she's hungry, which in and of itself is something of a shock. Aberdeen would never admit it, but she's used to all of Dundee's minding and so hunger isn't something that readily comes. He's too eager to help her to let her grow hungry and so when the first hints of peckishness begin to itch at her stomach, there's already something there at her elbow waiting for her (a donut, a bagel, a cup of coffee and an apple). It's only in abandoning her laptop for the time being, in wandering down the long and empty corridors of lithe and twisting black metal, that Aberdeen realizes that it's quiet. No, not quiet, it's practically silent.
(Sound is something of constant for her; even at her most distracted it's there, buzzing away in the back of her brain, like the sound of a refridgerator buzzing in the next room, only the coil in the freezer is the noise of the world — all of it, both accidental, incidental and deliberate. It's all there, in her head, and it's her job to pick through and Aberdeen is nothing if not through. Her greatest asset, her most flawed flaw.)
Only here, in space, that buzz is gone — well, maybe not gone, there's the ship and its inhabitants and its muted, indescribable secrets — but what sound there is to be had is stretched thin over a vast, overwhelming stillness. A thin veneer of noise like latex pulled taut and translucent over the vacuum held within a bell jar, even when Aberdeen focuses on the sound, tries to emerse herself in it, she can still see on through to the other side, to where the emptiness that lies beyond the walls of the ship is waiting for her. (It's deafening, silence is. It's suffocating.)
She abandons any attempts to find food and instead hurries back to her room. There are earphones there and her laptop but even then, with the volume turned up to ten, the expanse of space around her taunts her with its silence, tells her nothing, remains resolutely mute.
Comms Sample:
[ The first thing she does is read everything, access everything, pour over everything. It's as much a part of her personality as it is a subset of her operatives training. Know your enemy, know your environment. (No. Know everything.) She doesn't get very far from where she woke up in the Medbay, instead spending her first twelve hours on the Tranquility tucked into a corner of the locker room, finally dressed in the clothes salvaged from her locker — a small comfort, though Aberdeen would never use that word to describe it.
There are encryptions all over the Network, as obviously as policeman's tape cinched tight around a crime seen (nothing to see here, folks) and of course it's as good as big red button, taunting Aberdeen to look over here — and she does. She looks long.
Most of the code she's never seen before — some of it wildly progressive, the rest of it as good as in a different language. It makes her adrenaline spike sharply to come across and the code itself is as interesting as whatever secrets lie behind it (no, more so; she'd make a very poor spy).
She finds Oxford and Cambridge (the former's familiar, she recognizes his face over the feeds; doesn't recognize the later, Cambridge never had tits). Aberdeen doesn't hail either of them, though, because Oxford and Cambridge can be words, simply words, and if there's one thing the Order has taught her, it's that face value doesn't mean anything. It's what lies beneath, the things said in private, the thoughts that a person carries inside their head. She follows that train of thought to where it terminates: at Barcelona and Dundee. To be completely honest, they'd be useful now, but beyond that they'd also be—
Aberdeen stops that line of thinking abruptly and finds herself still staring down at her communicator. There is no debate as to what her first communiqué should be. (She remembers protocol.)
Simply, a hail: ]
aberdeen_
20DF-J 19322b
respond_ |
