Core Profile

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Crime(s): Sedition, Incitement to Riot, Fraternizing with Terrorists, Entering Human Seclusion Zones, Violation of Xenosapient Race Protocol, Fraternizing with Unrecognized Trade Organizations, Unauthorized Weapons Distribution, Unauthorized Weapons Distribution to Xenosapients, Possession of Advanced Weaponry, Unauthorized Distribution of Narcotics, Deadly Assault on Protectorate Personnel and/or Contractors

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Species: Follower

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Gender: Female

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Height: 5'5"

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Age: 20 ESY {Human Maturity Equivalent: ~30}

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Skin Hue/Racial Morph: Red, w/ dark spotted pattern, AKA "Laiter" Follower

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Hair Color: Black

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Eye Color: Purple

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Physical Profile

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Taura Lex is of roughly average height and build for her species and race. Like all Followers, she is smaller and more lightly built than a Human, with longer, slender limbs and neck, blood-red skin, large eyes, delicate, mobile ears, and a prehensile tail. As a Laiter, or spotted Follower, her skin is spotted and mottled with darker red, she has a thicker tail, broader hips, and more lower body strength overall. Taura is tough and scrawny, built for speed and endurance. Two years of living on Paradise have left her lean and wiry, with a slim, defined face. Her thick, wire-like hair is pulled back in a tight topknot, and typically covered by a hood. Her nose, like that of all Followers, is slim and slightly upturned, with small slit nostrils on either side, unlike a human's hooded ones. Her chin is noticeable, but not conspicuous. Her brows are sharp, arched and suggest a sly intelligence, even without a human's hairy eyebrows. Taura still bears the shadows of tattoos, long since burned off under a detention officer's laser, that marked her as one of the infamous Daughters of Darkness, and she carries herself with the gait and confidence of an experienced warrior.

Taura's costume is cobbled together from various sources, acquired throughout her years of roaming Paradise's deserts. She wears the simple, tough work boots from her original penal uniform, with ragged, patched cargo pants and a fitted hide jacket held together with handmade buckles, stitches, and more than a few prayers. Strapped to her right hip is the sheath/charging cradle for her freq blade, a short, broad machete-like affair. Below it, in a drop leg holster, is her particle beam pistol: a simple, bulky, single-accumulator model with the battery pack placed in front of the trigger guard, sold under the brand name "Shouzer T696". Her metal storm carbine (originally a triple-barreled shotgun with the barrels cut down and the stock sawn off) rests in a sheath on the small of her back, just below the power pack that provides charge for her freq blade and spare particle pistol batteries (which inhabit charging pouches on her left hip). The carbine's ammo sticks are stored in a quiver slung across her back. Over this ensemble is a tattered, dusty cloak, a pair of sand goggles, and a rebreather that allows her oxygen-greedy Follower lungs to survive in the thin atmosphere.

Psychological Profile

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Taura Lex is highly intelligent, and she knows it. Confident, even arrogant, she walks and talks with the snarky swagger of one who believes she holds all the cards. Most Followers are smart, in one way or another, and Taura is no exception, though her abilities are those of a strategist and a commander, rather then a programmer or engineer. Scheming, plotting, and more than a little paranoid, to Taura, every conversation, every interaction is a battle of wits. While not particularly cultured or knowledgeable beyond matters of military combat and strategy, she is very streetsmart, and possesses a low cunning that makes her excellent at reading and manipulating people. Charismatic and inspiring when she wants to be, she generally affects an attitude of boredom or sarcastic cynicism, deviating only when it suits her ends. If it is true that he who fights with monsters is destined to become a monster, then Taura's attitude has been shaped by the humans she has found herself pitted against, becoming more like her enemy than she would ever care to admit.

Taura's brash arrogance is unusual for a Follower, a species generally marked by relative docility and a humble desire to put the needs of the community before their own, but not at all unusual for a Daughter of Darkness. Followers have had dark places in their history, just as humans have, and the Daughters draw from a tradition of social elitism and perceived genetic superiority that had reached its peak prior to first contact with Humanity. While there is most decidedly a basic spark of decency in her, she is an unfortunate product of her circumstances, and just one of the many billions of casualties of 28th-century society. Still, two years on Paradise have had something of a humbling effect on her, tempering her hotheaded rashness with caution and perhaps even the very beginnings of wisdom. Taura Lex is at a crossroads in her life, a touchstone moment where she will either learn to find true intelligence and wisdom, or sink back into the sea of intolerance and endless conflict that created her.

Historical Profile

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Growing up as a Follower in the Inner Ring of the galaxy is not an easy task. Especially when you're born in the outer ghettos of Shakhorta, one of the largest cities on Shin-Teltrin. Taura Lex was no stranger to this, and her early life was difficult to say the least. The world where she was born was one settled during the second wave of Human expansion, and by the 28th century it was heavily urbanized, overpopulated, and home to some of the most virulent criminal activity in the galaxy. Her colony (the closely knit relative/friend community that forms the basic unit of Follower society) was relatively small, and quite poor. While not subjected to the same intense rivalry shared between Serev and Kess Followers, Laiters were always relative outsiders even among their own species, and the young females among them had little opportunity. That the young Taura became involved with gangs was no surprise to anyone, indeed, it was a virtual inevitability.

Followers generally have a high degree of attitude with technology, an attribute which makes them invaluable to 28th-century society. While Taura could hardly be considered incompetent, her skills lay in planning and executing strategy, talents which were of little use to Xenos who wished to remain on the Protectorate's good side. For a criminal however, they were highly useful. The Scarlet Ravens had been a fixture of Shin-Teltrin's underworld for centuries, and for an individual who could not hope to compete with her brothers and sisters for the coveted technology and maintenance jobs in the city's Human quarter, they provided a welcome home. Taura started as a street-level member, running drugs and guns between the various alien gangs that dominated Shakhorta's poorer districts. She quickly gained a reputation for caution, efficiency, and ability to think outside the box, which saw her rapidly promoted to the upper ranks of her district's chapter.

But while her position in the Ravens offered her relative comfort compared to those around her, it gave her little purpose. Taura wanted a cause, a challenge to her intellect and ability, something which organizing "unrecognized commerce" did not offer. That chance would come with the rise of the GLF. The Liberation Front had its roots in uniting and absorbing gangs in the cold city of the Protectorate forge world from which they had risen, a tactic which they did not abandon even after rising to interstellar prominence. When GLF forces arrived on Shin-Teltrin, they offered positions of power to the upper echelons of the local gangs. Taura accepted this offer without a second thought, and served the Front well as a recruiter and organizer in the slums of her home. When the world fell to the GLF, her role did not go unnoticed, and her proficiency in combat as well as leadership made her very attractive to the Daughters of Darkness.

Infamous across the galaxy for their viciousness and brutal tactics, as well as a fanaticism that made even the average GLF footsoldier look like a moderate, the Daughters of Darkness appealed to the most basic roots of a young female Follower. Taura's ancestors had been hunters, predators who had stalked the long nights of their arid homeworld with swift feet and sharp fangs. They offered a young woman an opportunity to truly be a part of something bigger, the most basic desire of every Follower. And Taura welcomed it with open arms. Flying with the black ships of the Daughters, she saw combat across the front lines of the war with the Protectorate, against every facet of Humanity's elite. She made a name for herself leading strike teams against heavily fortified targets, taking on even the most secure facilities of SIPE and SEPE. But she had one fatal flaw that would eventually be her undoing. Taura had grown overconfident, and more than a touch arrogant, and it was only a matter of time before her eyes became bigger than her stomach.

Taura and her strike team had been tasked with infiltrating high-level facilities on Tossavo, the site of a massive GLF push into the inner ring, and destroying the leadership of the various private military contractors employed by the Protectorate to defend their worlds. They knew that a Protectorate Adjutant, an operator of the highest level, beholden only to the Board of Directors themselves, was leading the forces on this world. Adjutants were the stuff of nightmares, ancient, experienced humans with the knowledge and wisdom of centuries of war, and the authority to annihilate entire planets by unleashing the dreaded Charon Protocol. But Taura had come to underestimate humans, to laugh at the idea of a flat-tooth who could outsmart her. And when the Adjutant prepared a trap for her and her sisters, she walked right into it with the swagger of one who has never met her match. SEPE operators under the Adjutant's command had taken the places of several high-level PMC commanders, and their supposed location had been leaked to GLF intelligence. When Taura and her strike team cut through the facility's security with little resistance, they found not defenseless officers, but hardened, heavily augmented SEPE commandos in Tyrant power armor and a highly amused Adjutant waiting for them.

The mission was an unmitigated disaster. Taura's sisters were slaughtered, and despite putting up a ferocious fight, even she was no match for a cyborg who had been fighting Followers since the conquest of her people more than 500 years ago. But her defiance impressed the old human, and rather than put a bullet in her, he spared her, although whether a one-way ticket to Paradise counts as being spared is up for debate. Taura was stripped of her uniform, her freq sword and her rifle. Her hair, once held high in the elaborate braid of a Follower huntress, was shaved, and her DoD and Scarlet Raven tattoos lazered off, replaced with the indelible barcode and orange fatigues of a Protectorate detainee. Kicked off the ramp of a prison shuttle into the infernal dust of the hell-world she would call home for the next two years, Taura was left to ponder the results of her arrogance, and plot her escape and revenge against those who had had the gall to force this indignity upon her. The young Follower bided her time, training and gathering her strength, learning to survive and thrive in the harsh environment and vicious social anarchy of Paradise. One mantra kept her alive: one day, she would get off this rock, rejoin her sisters, sink her freq blade into the guts of the grinning Adjutant, and every world in Protectorate Space would burn. All she needed was the right crew, and the right opportunity.

Misc. Notes

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Known Affiliations:

• "Galactic Liberation Front" - Class A Terrorist Organization - Active combat role (see "Daughters of Darkness" below)
• "Daughters of Darkness" - GLF Spinoff Cell, female Follower exclusive, combat/special operations-oriented cell
• "Shin-Teltrin Scarlet Ravens" - Class D Unrecognized Trade Organization, weapons and narcotics distribution local to the Shin-Teltrin System