Appearance: Ariah has beautiful, piercing blue eyes. Her hair is quite long and tangled, coloured jet black. She ties it up into either a messy bun or low pony tail, only rarely letting it fall about her shoulders. She wears her specially designed goggles above her brow, and has a faint scar above her right eye. Around her neck and down her right clavicle and shoulder Ariah has an ornate rose-vine tattoo; something she doesn't openly talk about with others. She wears a light brown and green vest/corset buttoned up over her chest - she had it made from a strong Kevlar type material but prefers the corset design in terms of movement when out in the wilds. Ariah wears low ride green leather pants with a side-slung knapsack hitched off the right side off of her belt. Midway down her thigh she has two daggers holstered as back up should she ever come face to face with something unsavory to her taste. She has brown lace up calf-high boots and bandages wrapped around her arms from previous injuries; the bandages serve more as a means to cover up cosmetically rather than protection as Ariah is rather self conscious of her image more than she likes to admit it.
Age: 25
Position:Since you can't seem to find a job nowadays without a title, Ariah identifies herself as a scout. With a demeanor that's hard to crack, her employers often have no trouble sending her into the darkest of caves, densest of forest and deepest of valleys first. But in truth, Ariah prefers it that way. She's a thrill seeker and adventurer at heart, something she attributes to spending the better half of her childhood in the wilds. She's particularly acrobatic, and her ability to move effortlessly through the wilds has seen Ariah come to be known as one of the best and worst scouts to work with. Her ease of danger-spotting and thrill-seeking and a strange ability to move among the beasts of the wild has created Ariah into one of the best scouts available on offer.
Personality: Ariah is a tough skinned sort-of tom boy with a fiery attitude and passion for the unknown. Her demeanor isn't particularly jarring, nor is she one to strike fear into the heart of those who first lay their eyes upon her. But she does have a well known reputation for being a no-holds merciless mercenary who has no qualms about putting you back in your place if you stir her pot a little too far. She has a penchant for remaining largely mysterious among those she's worked with and for, it's not uncommon for her to change the subject of her past when questioned about it. For the most part she's a relatively standoffish obnoxious woman who was born to explore the world and does as she pleases; this attitude in itself has seen her cut from companies and jobs faster than she could argue back. Her inability to properly empathize with other people leads her to resemble an outcase among the common and often is a result of why she has few friends and many enemies.
Abilities:It took her a long time and a lot of her money to get the equipment Ariah carries. She holds everything she uses in the field dear to her heart and priceless, no matter whether their value is worth something or not.
Goggles - Her goggles are probably her greatest asset in her line of work. Powered by dust, they allow her to see in the darkest of caves and forests. When she wears them, she's able to activate their ability to pierce shadows and it's as though she's walking among the rays of the light. However, her goggles aren't infinite and she can't use them for long without replenishing the dust that's used to make them work. Ariah holds these goggles tightly to herself no matter what happens. They belonged to her parents and it was a great deal of emotional stress to her when she finally decided to have them upgraded to the night vision goggles they are; she feared she would be tarnishing her father's memory.
Lightening Daggers - The two daggers Ariah carries holstered to her leg are also imbued with minor dust. They cost her nearly a years worth of saved credits, but she'll tell anyone they're worth their weight in dust ten times over. They're usually only for back up, but in her line of work and profession, Ariah often finds back up is more of the initial plan. She honestly couldn't tell you how they function, in truth she doesn't care how dust works, but she knows that when she needs to add a pack to her punch, daggers that deliver a lightening blow always warn her enemies she's here for fight and she means to win. Unfortunately, much like her goggles, Ariah can't depend on her daggers to work indefinitely and she needs to constantly replenish her daggers with dust.
Beast Wanderer - Not even Ariah herself can always explain her ability to walk among the wilderness with as much ease as she does. It's not a strict rule that she lives by exactly, but many of the animals in the wild often ignore her or bid her no harm where others may face death. She attributes it to her time growing up in the wilds and her exposure to living in a dust enriched environment. Whatever the reason, it seems Ariah has much less of a hard time navigating the wilds and living among the wild dangers than others. On the rarest of occasions Ariah has been known to be able to interact with the wildlife and it's no secret that she would fight to save an animals life before she let someone kill it "just because it could be dangerous ".
Background Information: Ariah isn't 100% sure where she actually originates from. Where she was found as a child there are a number of ruins that belong to outer encampments of pioneers. Her parents were explorers, and Ariah was born within the wilds. She doesn't remember the name of the small encamp she was born into, nor how many people lived there. All Ariah knows is that it was a small settlers camp that was set up within that area of the forested wilds. In fact, Ariah couldn't even tell you nowadays where exactly in the world it was.
It was shortly after she turned eleven that her parents and small village were destroyed. Her village was situated next to a small lake that directly fed dust to the local wildlife and flora in the surrounding region but also sat at the precipice of a cliff. Her parents often told her that they lived in one of the largest known regions at the time for dust excavation. In fact the most prominent thing she remembers of her time with her parents in the far settlements was the story her parents told of a great dust diamond that sat deep within a cave.. They told her it was the biggest deposit of dust anywhere the whole world and that it's only ever been seen by one person... They told her that was largely why their's and the other settlements in the region were around here, to apparently one day find this great dust diamond. Ariah would always be so fascinated by this story and promised to one day find it if her parents couldn't.
It was one ill fated morning that Ariah lost everything she knew around her. A tremor in the earth had caused the cliff-side the village was sitting on to collapse. By chance and luck alone, Ariah's house was the only one to not fall to it's doom and her and her parents survived. All contact ports had been lost when the village was lost to the side of the cliff and Ariah and her parent's had no choice but to make their way back to civilization by foot. But that was a task that ultimately cost Ariah's parent's life. They were taken by what Ariah only remembers as a great bear-like beast. Left with nothing but her father's goggles, Ariah spent just over five years of her life growing up in the wilds. She had learned from her parents how to survive off the land, but unfortunately had no idea how to make her way back to civilization.
During her time living by herself in the wilds, Ariah did come in contact with other humans... But being a young girl in the wild and most of the dust collecting teams back then being male, it was a hard life for a pretty young girl. She hated the way humanity treated nature when they thought no one knew anyone was watching. She saw countless parts of the forest she lived in razed to the ground in search of dust and resented every time a part of her wild home was destroyed. It wouldn't be until after she left the wilds that Ariah would become mostly numb to destruction of the environment.
Ariah walked among the wilds, lived off the land and it was just after her sixteenth birthday she was found by chance by a dust mining company excavator team. She was taken, against her will, back to the metropolis known as Rada and she spent a few months as celebrity, or more accurately known as The Wild Woman. She was forcibly educated after her fame subsided and eventually housed within an orphanage until she was eighteen. Her time spent in the wilds made her into a harsh girl who did not like the company of others. When asked if she ever met others before her "rescuers" Ariah would always nod with a yes, but never disclosed details to anyone.
After her ejection from the orphanage Ariah was forced to live the streets of Rada for two years, something she again never prefers to talk about. Sometime during her stint on the streets she was recruited into a dust hunting team and from there her career was sealed. She's been working as a dust collector scout as a part of various teams over the last five or so years and it's a struggle for most to understand her. But Ariah just look sternly forward, does the job she's supposed to do and resents anyone who gets in her way.
Relationships:
Nova Barnes
Ariah had come down with an incredibly debilitating viral infection just before she turned eighteen. It seemed like her life was coming to a close and in all honesty, Ariah welcomed it. Everything she had lived for was taken from her in her early childhood; she had been forcibly ripped from the comfort of the wilds she grew up in and titled as savage unruly girl. It seemed almost natural to her that her existence should end painfully with almost utter indignity... But just as Ariah was resigning herself from living, she met Nova Barnes. Initially Ariah wanted nothing more than to be left to die.. But Nova was able to cut through her dramatics, bring her back to health and essentially slap some sense into Ariah.
It was most notably Nova's ability to care and not judge while also detaching emotion from professionalism that made Ariah admire her. After Ariah was better she stayed in contact with Nova, holding her in high regards and always looking towards her for help when she feels she's falling out of line and hold Nova in high regards as a person and friend. Nova is also the woman who introduced Ariah into the current team of dust miners.
Natalie G. Johnson
Being roughly the same age it would make sense that Ariah and Natalie get along. Having to grow up without their parents made it natural they would get along. But their rough-spin attitude and almost blatant inability to communicate their feelings is most probably why they're friends. Ariah knows their relationship is more of words unsaid than anything and she respects Natalie more than anyone will ever know. It was shortly after Ariah lost her parents that she met Natalie and her uncle; pure coincidence and a lot of trust was formed when they first met. Throughout the years Ariah would remain in intermittent contact with Natalie and her uncle as they came and went from the wilds; they would always help Ariah when they could and she supposes it was from their understanding of her wanting to stay in the wilds that made her want to be friends with Natalie.
After Ariah was taken to Rada, she lost contact with Natalie for a few years - but they never seemed to need to be in constant contact - and it was just after Ariah was brought into the Dust mining business she rekindled her friendship with Natalie again, and not too long after that Ariah was helping Natalie and a woman known as Amanda find help. Never one to press the issue or distrust Natalie's decisions, Ariah introduced her to Nova Barnes, and she fixed them up and sent them on their way. Now on what seems like Ariah's twelfth dust mining crew, she finds herself back side-saddled with Natalie and her friend Amanda.
Amanda Rox
Ariah doesn't know much about Amanda, other than she is a gen-human and at some point, if she still isn't now, was in big trouble with the wrong people. Introduced by Natalie, Ariah used her contact Nova Barnes to help bring Amanda to health after she and Natalie found themselves in an unsavory predicament. Because of Ariah's inadvertent nature to be detached with strangers she never really became more than acquaintances with Amanda, but found her to be a reasonably likable if not similar person to herself and Natalie, which explains why Natalie and Amanda get along so well. Her relationship with Natalie is probably why Ariah wasn't too surprised to see Amanda when she found out that Natalie and Ariah were on a team together.
