This is a weekly article, delivered to you every Wednesday. These articles are intended to be a fun exercise as well as a good resource for role-players to explore Character Development so please feel free to post your own characters reaction to the weekly prompt. So be sure to stay tuned to this blog for future installments!
Has your character ever traveled outside of the war-walls? If so where and when and what happened to them there?
(The next series of stories for now will be about another character of mine, a Vigilante whom goes by the name of Captain Sophie Storm and Farsighter respectably, I hope everyone enjoys it!))
Sophies mother had been born and raised on the Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak during the 80s, a place where Sophie would turn to during times of great need, both for herself and the Kibbutz. She would visit her family there during harvest times when under Johns care and she had never been able to understand why her mother, when she had reached the age of 17 Jillian (Born Ruth Baratz) had run away from the place she had called her home, her parents, her Ishii Ben and throwing caution and her conservative Zionist morals to the wind became a dancer in Jerusalem. What happened to Jillian there after dear reader you pretty much know, however this story is not Jillians to be told but rather what happened in that short span of time that Sophie spent abroad before returning to take up residence in the Rhode Island City which had once been her home.
Deep in Negev Desert there deep set into the mountain side a rolling valley stretching out below was the entrance of a hidden base where resided the privatized Military Company known only as The Red Lions. The Red Lions had been founded by one Grigori Rykov, a former Spetsnaz GRU officer in 1964 where the small company of men (and strange rumors said one ghostly white haired woman) in 1967 made their claim to fame in the Six Day War fighting alongside the nation of Israel against the nations of Egypt, Syria and Jordan as a commando unit sabotaging Egyptian strong points and missile outposts and at the end of only Six days Israel stood triumphant against them all.
Sophie grew up under the care of John Monroe, as her Commanding officer, adoptive father figure and friend. She had been born in the land of Israel, and to its arms she returned brought home to the land of her ancestors by John to be raised by him after the horror of the events of Dark Astoria impressed themselves permanently upon her 8 year old mind. She grew tall, strong and beautiful under the hot desert sun. She was quick and lean and in manner a cold solitary ruthlessness to survive which one glance to her wintry blue eyes could make any of the junior officers shiver when they looked at her.
Rita Monroe had met the little girl shortly after John had rescued her, it had been Ritas wish that they could adopt the little girl from Paragon City to be raised alongside the twin Monroe girls who where just about the same age as Sophie, but soon it was realized that the strange powers exhibited by the little girl needed to be controlled, and explored in a safe environment with teachers of her own kind. First they had tried contacting Magi, however the young Warlock whom they had sent to assess Sophies powers had a nervous break down and had reported that the little girl plagued him with nightmares.
In the few years she had lived with John and Rita and their two lovely older daughters in the D.C area it had become a trial for Rita to keep Sophie in line while John was away on assignment. The local schools would not take her after her episodes of lying, stealing, breaking things and generally scaring the other children. However Sophie had tried on numerous occasions to tell her teachers that she had not broken that girls doll, or lied to that teacher about her husband cheating on her, or taken that boys glove but that it had been the others which surrounded and plagued her night and day. The few times when she had tried to explain most teachers had dismissed her as making up stories or when Sophie would say something a little to close to the truth she was again shifted from teacher to teacher, and school to school until Rita could take no more.
In the end John had applied to Rykov for permission to introduce the little girl to a compatriot who was on retainer with the Lions, a young but vastly powerful mage by the name of Damien Wrent. Damien was sixteen from Havana Cuba, but he had lived all over the Caribbean, Africa and South America. He was born however in Sierra Leon and grew up there learning to fight and survive in that hostile land as a child soldier. What was more Damien Wrent was a Babalorisha a priest or godchild in Santeria and a very powerful illusionist besides. When the young man had met Sophie he had thrown the ekwele for her and he had seen their future together. She was then only ten years old.
Rykov himself a long time and dear friend of Johns agreed with John one night after dinner over a cup of coffee and a few slices of Ritas home made cheese cake that to his assessment that the little girl would be better off, much to Ritas dismay, being raised amongst the few other child trainees at the Red Lions base. This way not only could she receive the best education her skills required in the proximity to a qualified teacher, but also so that the skills for fighting and survival she had not given up since joining the Monroe household (like sleeping with knives under her pillow, hording canned goods, making crude weapons, collecting water via a home made apparatus on the roof, building fires and hiding where no one could find her, could be put to some practical use.
So it was decided and Sophie said good bye to a tearful Rita and the likewise teary set of Monroe girls to live entirely in the desert landscape in a den of Lions with promises of Christmas and summer holidays to visit.
She had been trained in various forms of hand to hand combat, to use all manner of guns with skill and precision, to create and disable all forms of traps, mines and warheads, to assess threats and to find the most strategic points in order to take them down. Sophie became most proficient in the use of edged weapons and while a dear friend of hers was the most dangerous shot with his sniper rifle it was said Sophie was just as good with her blades.
Her training with Damien had been sporadic through out her years residing with the Red lions, he was always on undercover missions, he worked with other organizations and Governments other than the Red lions, mainly those who could afford his astronomical fees no matter what they wanted done as long as he got his fee was all Damien cared about. In short Damien Wrent was a Mercenary.
Sophie however saw none of Damiens flaws, indeed he kept all of his dealings to himself alone, he was known under many different aliases and those who talked often found there way to the bottom of a vat of Lyme somewhere out in the desert. Damien could afford to be choosy about the jobs he took however and he did so, someone with his specialized skill set and nominal moral compass was in short supply and Damien made a good show of it always around Sophie. He would tell her of the horrible foreign dignitary who he had just killed whom had been ordering his army to murder children and **** the women of whole villages before burning farms and leaving the survivors to starve. Most of the time he was right, but then that is the nature of the world and especially the one Sophie had lived in.
Sophie had grown up quite enamored with Damien Wrent, he had been dangerous, skilled and mysterious as well as devilishly charming. In a base full of soldiers some her own age or not many years older Sophie had never had many romantic feelings for any save one, so when Damien had returned to Base camp and announced Sophies education in the mystical arts would begin in earnest. (for until that time her powers had simply been dampened by an amulet given to her by Damien when they had first met, which as Sophie would later come to find out had been transferring some of her natural and uncontrollable power to Damiens use instead of her own.)With the boy whom she had been fond there had only ever been a single kiss before he too was gone, off to fight in the Rikti invasion of Tel Aviv, and leaving her to her fate she began her real training.
It was during this time that John and Sophie had received word that Rita and the two girls had been in a car accident. The girls had survived though both remained in comas but Rita had not made it and died in transport to the hospital. John and Sophie traveled back to D.C to sit by the bedside of the two girls who had been like sisters to her and when their spirits left their bodies it was not Sophie who wept She saw them shining and pure forms linger near her only a moment before with tender smiles and waving hands they walked off into oblivion together hand in hand as they had entered this world Rebecca and Anne.
Sophie had tried to comfort John as best as she could, but a silent gravity overcame him after the last coffin was put into the ground. He had not wanted to hear about the shining light or the open door way. He had not wanted her to talk about either Rita or the girls again, he became silent and remote. He no longer dined with her or Commander Rykov, he put himself again on active duty instead of training and tactical operations as he had been for the past seven years. He argued all the time with the commander behind closed doors and the only person he seemed to talk to was Damien.
Indeed Damien at that point and time had become inseparable to both John and Sophie herself, she awoke every morning with his name on her lips eager to tell him of some new dream or plan for their study, they would run together every morning and talk long into the night. He became her everything and when John had walked away from the Lions forever it was Damien who told her it was the only way.
John had taken a group of his finest men, those men and women whom where especially talented, who excelled in certain techniques and training to work for him instead of the lions as Mercenaries. It was Damien who gave John contacts and names, who set up meetings and helped to negotiate terms. It was Damien whom organized and orchestrated it all.
However as the saying goes, love is blind, and no lover was more so than Sophie. She thought the sun and moon rose and set over Damien Wrent, and to his own astonishment at least, though he had seen it fore told so many years ago in the ekwele, he adored and coveted her with such a zealous almost crazed passion that only a Sociopath could call love. In fact he had already killed two men who had asked for her hand to dance one night at a dance hall in Bogota, and a string of others in all the cities and town they had visited since. Sophie had never known however, indeed when one night deep in the heart of the Columbian jungles after the two had come together in the pebble lined pool of the local mineral hot spring Damien had proposed, and she had made him the happiest of men.
It was Damien to whom had convinced her that when John, whom had been acting strangely for many months, talking about retirement and not going with the team on assignments, had gone missing, that it was the right thing to do to use her power to torture the man whom had last seen John. To torture him in body and soul, for long screaming hours, deep in the wastes of Russias Siberian desert, where it was only Sophies heart which had turned from Ice to stone.
In many years that followed the two had wrought bloody macabre tyranny across the globe, killing indiscriminately on one side, and trying to find some clue of what had happened to the man whom had become her father on the other. Slowly Sophie's path had lead her back to Paragon City where she was not known as the "Harvester of Souls" where she hoped to find some clue of what had become of herself as well as John Monroe.
((Note to the reader: Special thanks to Hollowpoint Heroism for his help on the Red Lion information. The group is of his own making and when developing Sophie's back story he allowed me to use the RL as a jumping off point. Thanks B!))
So go with it if you want to 
((Well started writing about 1am thinking I could do this real quick before growing tired. Unfortunately I just watched myself rush through it so I need to get some rest. Got it saved and hopefully I'll tweak it for tomorrow.
))