(no subject)
Liz O'Connell
AGE 27/28, September 1988
HOMETOWN █████, Chicago, 'l'Composé' SPECIES Human (baseliner?) FAMILY Alec (son), Marc (???) LANGUAGE American English, Wolfe patois (french creole), American Sign Language, Québécois, Spanish (American, Mexican, Puerto Rican), Russian (swears and pidgin), Cantonese (swears and pidgin) OCCUPATION Wolfe-Aligned Hunter DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
CANE CARNWENHAU SHIELD BRACELET WINGS of ICARUS |
Having run away only months after she turned eighteen with the express purpose of killing herself, the girl who would become Liz O'Connell did not expect to see the new year. A bookworm history nerd who believed in nothing, the very last thing she expected that frozen November night was to kill a man with an iron garden fairy post to save a family of Loup Garous. But that's exactly what happened; accosted by a hysterical child, she chose to take out the man threatening a family instead of the snarling woman. Literally snarling. With fangs. With that as her introduction into the Hunting life, it's no surprise that she's one of the few human hunters to take on other humans in defence of the preternatural. Thanks to her choices that night, Liz earned the favour of the Wolfes, a sprawling, supernaturally inclined clan made up of Loup Garous and psychics (as well as outliers and baseliners) that claimed an old, nature-reclaimed plantation as their home (Liz has never asked the providence of the land--it is not her place--but man does she have some suspicions). Staying only long enough to be bullied into something approaching good health, Liz left the Wolfes as a free-lance hunter, bouncing around the midwest until she stumbled across a boy roughly her age, only a few years her junior, slowly starving to death in the dilapidated rancher she was hunting a poltergeist in. Paying the good deed done to her forward, Liz took the boy out to eat; over greasy hashbrowns and stacks of surprisingly good pancakes, he told her about how he'd met a girl in Tijuana on his spring break; told her about how it was like being black out drunk, how nothing felt real until the brain matter from his best (crush) friend sprayed him across the face, how he'd tried to save him but it was too late so he'd jumped in his best friend's car and ran. 'Sounds like a succubus,' Liz told him, not unkindly. 'I can tell you how to kill them, if you like. Or help you hunt her down. Whatever.' It was the start of a beautiful friendship. They hunted together for the better part of a year before splitting up, Marc going on to meet Lyle and Liz going on to meet Carey and get fully enveloped into the Wolfe clan. During this time, Liz caught the attention of a very old and crafty god. For daring to use her name in rituals, Liz was marked as Her Warrior; when she died, everything that she ever was and everything she could ever have been would become forfeit, sacrificed so that the Morrígna could live on. Needless to say, this really cheesed her off. Still jumping between names at this point, Liz didn't get saddled with 'Liz O'Connell' until she went on a hunt just outside Chicago. Something was submerging children in the lake; it was only a matter of time before someone ended up dead. Unfortunately for Liz, it wasn't just a Jenny Greenteeth--it was a whole pack, with a trio of Lamiae as their leaders. They broke her leg and left her in an old sunken cellar to die, throwing in a freshly-turned vampire as a guarantee. But Marie, being not a dick, had no desire to kill the delirious woman in the cellar with her and proceeded to save both their asses. Because the ID that Liz happened to be carrying on her was under the name 'Liz O'Connell', she became somewhat mode-locked into it (going around and systematically beheading and de-fanging each and every one of the Lamiae that had tried to kill her also had something to do with it). Marie took Liz into her home, where she still lives to this day. When Liz showed up with a babe in arms and missing six months of her life nearly a year later, Marie sighed, and got to setting up a crib. Marie's apartment building, unbeknownst to her when she originally moved in, is something of a hotspot for the preternatural. The Owner's a ghost who's been dead since the 1930's, a yuki-onna's lived on the third floor for at least a decade by now, a swan maiden on the first, and the pub located in the basement shop across the street is a local meeting ground for it all. Liz finds herself happy there, living with magi and preternatural alike. Alec becomes fast friends with a girl on the third floor, an old soul who prefers to be called 'Sky', as well as an empath on the fourth named Jaime, and Liz herself falls in with the two magi nearly five years her junior on the fourth, spending many nights getting wasted and picking apart magical theory. It is a hoot. In the spring of 2015, Liz gets a call from a contact in NYC. The various supernatural elements in New York--human and non-, baseliner and non- alike--were disappearing. Good folk, those who were just trying to live their lives in peace. Therese's sister had disappeared, taken right from her own doorstep after work. Time being of the essence, Liz left without back-up, confident in her own abilities to solve this mess. When Therese herself was snatched right under her nose, Liz re-evaluated the situation and found herself in way over her head. She called out for help, but it was too late: before anyone even got her message, she too was taken, her braided charms ripped from her scalp, her face broken in the slam of a trunk and her body shackled to a wall. For three days, she hung there, watching as a small family of hunters with a rivalling philosophy killed those she had tried to protect, watched as they tortured them in the name of efficiency. Finally, Kayla Greene, a cursed magus and apprentice-level hunter Liz had half-heartedly trained found her; before getting Liz down, Kayla and Nox found themselves in a confrontation with The Family. Nox took a bullet to the brain-pan. Kayla opened her mouth and screamed. When she came to, when she came back to herself, Liz still hung from the manacles on the wall; she and Kayla were the only solid things in the room still breathing. The other hunters, the bodies other than Nox's had all liquefied, turning into a sea of blood. Her vision red and tacky and ears still ringing from the abuse, Liz ripped her left hand through the manacle completely, her fragile skin giving under the pressure (it took weeks for bruises to stop forming from the brush of fabric against skin, for the coating of blood to leave her nose and throat). Dragging a catatonic Kayla (and Nox's corpse, locked tight in Kayla's grasp) with her, Liz ran right into Marc and Lyle just outside. They'd been only hours behind. New York was the start of it all. The two largest families in the American hunting world, the Wolfes and the Croix-Rouge, always at odds due to their differing philosophies, each took offence at what had happened. The Wolfes due to the murder of thirty-three innocents and the abduction and torture of one of theirs, the Croix-Rouge due to the murder of their 'brothers'. And Liz was the lynch pin. As she was trying to get back to Chicago, back to her son, the Croix-Rouge struck again, this time catching not just her but Marc and Lyle in the crossfire. They abducted Lyle, intending on using him as leverage to force Liz to surrender herself. When Liz and Marc took understandable issue with that plan, they forced Lyle into a car to try and buy themselves safe passage. They didn't take what Lyle wanted into account. Taking them by surprise, he crashed the car, killing the four Family members. Unfortunately, not even his heightened durability and regeneration could save him; Lyle died in Marc's arms, his chest open and shattered as everything burned around them. To this day, neither Liz nor Marc can stand the smell of cooking flesh. Marc, upset and unreasonable, ditched Liz after one spectacularly bad night, leaving her stranded and injured over three hundred miles from home. They've since reconciled, but it took the better part of a year (and Marc shooting his mouth off in a bar and getting whammied with god-knew what) before they spoke again. Despite the war that's starting to rip the country apart, life has actually started to settle down for Liz. She hasn't sustained anything worse than some deep bone bruises in weeks, Alec's managed to not get himself into any trouble, Marie's wedding is proceeding on schedule, and Marc's actually been somewhat sober (he's got a girlfriend and everything). So of course, that's when she finds herself on an alien planet, an ocular implant shoved into her skull and no fucking clue where she is or what took her there.
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( codes by whambam ) |
Thread Tracker
D e c e m b e r |
12/30 | Mordecai Heller Liz finds herself not where she expects and this cat insists he doesn't have a concussion. 12/30 | Isha Devan And together they are just barely able to move it. 12/30 | Evie Frye And down she goes. 12/30 | Blue A wolf but not a Wolfe. 12/30 | Kara Styrdoyttir A tetchy exchange of information. 12/30 | Lestat d'Lioncourt B is for Boyband, which he was once in. 12/30 | Breq One-Esk Sure lets crawl through the creepy tunnels without a light. |
J a n u a r y |
1/14 | Allen Walker Hey there roomie. 1/14 | Gildor Helyanwe Gildor is helpful but Liz is like stupidly mistrustful gdi. 1/14 | Lewa Oh look at that. It's 8' tall and glows. Awesome. 1/14 | Kara Styrdoyttir Oh look you're here too. 1/14 | Mordecai Heller Look who made it after all. The 'not-concussed' cat. 1/14 | Gintoki Sakata This is what happens when you don't listen to what your nose tells you. 1/14 | Solan Re Biting the bullet and trying to get some answers. |
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Inventory
- Her cane, red, carved with symbols that may or may not be magic
- Shotgun (Remington 870), three boxes of shells (in bag), and back holster
- Handgun (Glock 22), five boxes of .40 S&W bullets and two extra mags (in bag), and hip holster
- Ornamental Dagger (Carnwenhau) and thigh holster
- Two boot knives and holsters
- Bowie knife and thigh holster
- Shield Bracelet (good for deflecting projectiles, but not all the force)
- Wrist mounted interface for Ocular-Implant HUD; irremovable
- Set of lock picks and multitool
- A Compass attuned to Marasha'a
- A pack of matches, exactly half gone
- Heavy Leather Coat (contains several charms of protection and detection attached to bloody lanks of braid, hidden in the lining)
- A backpack enchanted with ‘Bag of Holding’ and ‘Always On Hand’, containing:
- Three tee shirts, four flannel shirts, two tanktops, three pairs of jeans, a skirt, a back-up pair of boots not in her size (she’s been turned into a man enough times to be prepared ok), a pack of socks, two more socks courtesy of RedShift, a parcel of underwear, two bras, a set of thermals, two standard issue RedShift uniforms
- Canteen with water filter
- A litre of water
- Eight MREs (five from Evangeline, three from '1972' (ravioli?), 19 protein bars, five energy bars, two cans of soup, a bag of trailmix
- Fully stocked first aid kit containing a plethora of bandaids, neosporin, aloe vera, several suturing kits, a staple gun, two scalpels, a sling, an epi pen, rolls of bandages, excedrin, midol, aspirin, ibuprofen, dayquil pills, three pills of percocet
- A water proof tarp
- A three foot length of nylon rope
- 1993 Copy of Cryptolozoology Monthly, with all the word searches already completed
- A hunting knife with only a regular sheath
- Necklace with old bronze wings (Wings of Icarus, good for gliding for approx seven minutes while falling, leave burns from melting wax)
- The clothes on her back (afore-mentioned leather coat, blue tee-shirt, green/brown flannel, worn jeans, boots)
- Two small battery powered LED maglites
- A Lighter that never runs out of fuel
- Cellphone augmented by a technophage (useless, but for the data; lock screen is her and her son holding Marc’s gutted body up, flashing the v-for-victory and grinning)
Evangeline, Marc’s ‘69 teal and primer-grey BarracudaLeft behind, gone.
CR chart and Inventory
Solan Re ![]() |
Vevilan ![]() |
RedShift App!
Name: Betsy
Over the age of 18? Yes
Your preferred contact:
Other characters playing at Redshift: N/A
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Liz O’Connell
Canon: Original
Canon point: Post-NY, Pre-Vielfraß
Age: roughly 28
Species: Human, ‘baseline’
Appearance: 5’7, white American female with short blonde hair (silver on a large swatch of the right side of her head) and grey eyes
DISTINGUISHING MARKS:
- approx. 1” scar bisecting upper and lower lip on left side
- thick 3” bands of scar tissue surrounding each wrist, deeper along base of hands and along base of left thumb
- Lichtenburg figure scars travelling up each arm
- misc amount of scarring between shoulder blades, some discoloured and orange.
- thick, deep scarring along her left thigh; causes a limp
- crooked nose, the result of several breaks
Background:
Liz (that’s not her real name, but good luck finding out what is; there’s significant money that even she no longer knows what it is, having paid to have the information removed from the world) (which, you know, is utter bunk but that's how the hunting world works) is a Hunter from a world nigh-indistinguishable from ours, excepting that the supernatural exists. Liz herself is what’s known as a baseliner, someone without any powers, and unlike many others started with no dogs in this fight. Her parents weren't killed by a monster, her best friend growing up wasn't a vampire, she wasn't attacked by a succubus, nada. She ran away from home at nineteen to kill herself, and stumbled across a home-invasion (Hunt) where she killed the Hunter with a decorative garden fairy post and earned kinship to a large, sprawling family called ‘The Wolfes’ that operate largely out of the south-east (something she never once regretted). They’re Loup-Garous (Loo-Gahroo) and psychics for the most part, and when not Hunting function as something like a supernatural police force and Child Protective Services. Instead of dying, Liz found a purpose; funny how that works. Later that year, before she became stuck with the name ‘Liz O’Connell’, she stumbled across a starving seventeen-year-old courting death by exposure in a haunted farmhouse. After killing the ghost, she took him to a diner to get some food in his gullet and that, as the movies say, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. She still answers to ‘HEY ASSHOLE’ with ‘FUCK OFF JACKASS’ to this day.
She is, at this point, in a long term, bloody battle against a rival, zealotous group calling themselves ‘The Family’ (called ‘The Croix-Rouge’ by the Wolfes and referred to as the CR for brevity's sake); a couple of years ago, she was kidnapped while hunting down whoever was killing the supernatural in New York City. Strung up for three days, she was forced to watch as a small group of the CR tortured and killed any that they considered not human; a fellow hunter came to rescue her, but ended up killing her (haemorrhaging to death is extremely not fun, Liz does not recommend). And her story would end there, except when she was barely twenty she caught the attention of the Morrigna. The Morrigna marked her against her will as Her own, a champion if you will, who upon death will surrender everything she was and everything she could have been to the Morrigna, thus allowing the Morrigna to continue on. The Morrigna came to collect; Liz came to with blood still pouring from her nose, her ears, her eyes, choking on the slick mess in her mouth. Liz lived, but no one knows what that really means; at her most maudlin, Liz thinks she’s nothing more than a ghost, a tulpa held together by her friends and family. Marc thinks that’s fucking stupid, and tells her so. Often. Loudly.
Her best friend (Marc, the other half of the ‘two bastards dancing on the edge of forever’ and thus far the only person to continuously get name-dropped in this app) and his boyfriend got her out of there, but in doing so put themselves on the CR hit list. See, the CR blamed Liz for what happened to their fellows in New York (let’s just say they weren’t quite as lucky as her), and called out a blood feud on her and her kin. So they killed Lyle, a respected neutral party, and it degraded into an all in out war. On a personal level, not only did she have to bury her friend while still broken and damaged from NY, but after putting a drunken Marc to bed, she woke the next morning alone miles from home, Marc having left her in the middle of the night. At this point she’s mostly forgiven him, but he still owes her new boots.
Liz has a seven-year-old son, but she’s not as desperate to get back to him as you might think. Because she is so rarely home for extended periods of time, Alec is raised by the woman whose apartment she sublets and others in the Building. He’s fine, it’s Marc she’s worried about, but really, she’d like to get home sooner rather than later if it’s all the same to you.
Personality:
If the ‘asshole’ and the ‘twobastards’ line weren’t a clue, she’s a bit of an asshole. Having faced death on a daily basis since she was nineteen, Liz’s outlook has become a bit...warped. She cares about people, she really does, but push comes to shove she cares about those in her inner circle above all else (Marc becoming functionally immortal is both the best and simultaneously the worst thing to ever happen to them because now she can sacrifice him to save others without ever paying for it). She’s snarky and irreverent, not very good at making friends and very used to taking charge.
At this point, one of the strongest holdovers from NY (besides the not-being-dead thing) is a profound dislike of being restrained. She ripped her hands through manacles once to get free; don't doubt she'd do it again. Liz is willing to rip her body apart if it means success, and has probably made some of her injuries worse doing so (once, she walked across a desert on the leg that had only just recently been Healed from a gangrenous compound fracture; hence, the limp).
As you may have guessed, Marc is the most important person to her. They aren't involved (romantically or sexually), but they are incredibly co-dependent for not actually being near one another all that often. Not being able to contact Marc (or anyone else from back home) is going to stress her right the fuck out. That said, she's not going to trust anything that CAN put her back in contact with her home, because she's been to the Fae and the Wyrding Below: she knows how this shit works.
Abilities/Skills:
- Pretty competent hand to hand fighter (fights extremely dirty, uses her cane more than you’d think)
- Decent shot, preferring shotgun and handguns over sniping
- Knife-fighter
- Blunt-force fighter
- Is not magic, but has a large knowledge and reference pool from Hunting (the only spell she can pull off here though is the one to block pain; her communication spells rely more on the contact-ee than her own abilities)
- Can survive (it’s even her ‘family moto’)
- Knows basic first aid, enough to splint bones and stitch cuts and know when you’re well and truly fucked
- Can pick basic locks but in all honestly prefers to wile her way in (but lockpicking is preferable to ripping her hands through manacles)
- Her dagger, Carnwenhau, can cut through anything living and will always return to her, though not always right away, and rarely to her hand
- Has a ‘shield bracelet’ that can deflect bullets but not the full force; using it tends to leave Liz with fractured wrist bones
- Her kit always follows her; after NY, she paid a pretty price for that
Inventory:
- Her cane, red, carved with symbols that may or may not be magic
- Shotgun (Remington 870), three boxes of shells (in bag), and back holster
- Handgun (Glock 22), five boxes of .40 S&W bullets and two extra mags (in bag), and hip holster
- Ornamental Dagger (Carnwenhau) and thigh holster
- Two boot knives and holsters
- Bowie knife and thigh holster
- Shield Bracelet (good for deflecting projectiles, but not all the force)
- Set of lock picks and multitool
- Heavy Leather Coat (contains several charms of protection and detection attached to bloody lanks of braid, hidden in the lining)
- A backpack enchanted with ‘Bag of Holding’ and ‘Always On Hand’, containing:
- Three tee shirts, four flannel shirts, two tanktops, three pairs of jeans, a skirt, a back-up pair of boots not in her size (she’s been turned into a man enough times to be prepared ok), a pack of socks, a parcel of underwear, two bras, a set of thermals
- A litre of water
- Five MREs, twenty protein bars, five energy bars, two cans of soup, a bag of trailmix
- Fully stocked first aid kit containing a plethora of bandaids, neosporin, aloe vera, several suturing kits, a staple gun, two scalpels, a sling, an epi pen, rolls of bandages, excedrin, midol, aspirin, ibuprofen, dayquil pills, three pills of percocet
- Necklace with old bronze wings (Wings of Icarus, good for gliding for approx seven minutes while falling, leave burns from melting wax)
- The clothes on her back (afore-mentioned leather coat, blue tee-shirt, green/brown flannel, worn jeans, boots)
- Two small battery powered LED maglites
- A Lighter that never runs out of fuel
- Cellphone augmented by a technophage (useless, but for the data; lock screen is her and her son holding Marc’s gutted body up, flashing the v-for-victory and grinning)
Evangeline, Marc’s ‘69 teal and primer-grey BarracudaLeft behind, gone.
SAMPLES
Sample one (to die is the greatest adventure)
Sample two (how Liz found herself on an alien planet)
Sample three (TDM thread with Mordecai)
RedShift Sample!
“--and then Sky kicked me in the shins, but it was worth it!”
“Uh-huh.” ‘Ange rocked around her, the trunk slamming shut, and she winced from the motion. “Maybe, and this is just a thought, but maybe next time you see Missus Panek, you actually be on your best behaviour? You want Sky to be able to hang out with us, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but--”
“No buts.” Opening the door, Marc pushed her feet aside so he could sit down, shutting the door just about as gently as he had the trunk; Liz put her feet in his lap, digging her boots into his thigh. “Besides, I know Sky told you the same thing.”
“Yeah, maybe. Oh, is Uncle Marc there? Tell him I say hi!”
“My spawn says hello.” Slitting her eyes open, she took in Marc’s muttered curses and said, dryly, “Marc says hi back. Now, kiddo, you know the rules. Bed time for all chickadees with school in the morning.”
“Are you going to bed, too?” he asked, little voice broken by a huge yawn.
Liz smiled. “Yeah, Mommy got her ass kicked, so she’s going to sleep, too.”
“Kay. Night, Mom. Love you.”
“Love you too, kiddo. Night.” Hanging up, she dropped her phone into the footwell and groaned.
“What’d he do this time?” Marc asked, swearing as ‘Ange bucked instead of started.
“Oh,” Liz said over the sedate roar of the engine. “You know, the usual. Acted like my child.”
Marc snorted. “How’re the ribs?”
“Sore.” Wincing, she prodded the impressive bruise spanning along her side from where the bull had headbutted her. “Just the bruise, though. I’ll survive.” She’d gotten off easy; Marc had rushed in and had gotten savaged by the tusks, buying her and Rori time to escape. “Man, fuck family disputes.”
“Fuck them.” Liz twitched when his hand came down just next to the three-day-old road rash on her calf, his thumb stroking the denim over it. “Were you lying to your kid, or are you actually going to take a rest.”
“Actually going to rest. My head fucking hurts.” Kicking him once more, this time affectionately, Liz punched the pillow she’d nicked from the back and pulled her jacket over her head. “Wake me when it’s my turn to drive.”
“Like that’s going to ever happen,” Marc muttered.
She woke up, disoriented. The car wasn’t moving. “Marc?” Sitting up, she shoved her coat into her lap, the old black leather hot to the touch. “Fuck. Marc?” There was no one in the car but her, and outside--
A gust of wind blew sand onto ‘Ange’s hood, joining the small dune already forming against the windshield.
“Fucking fuck.” Scrambling up behind the wheel, she fluttered the gas and the clutch as she twisted the key. Nothing. “Oh, fuck, no, baby, come on.” Desperate, she tried again and again; the engine didn’t even whine, the key just clicking in the ignition. “Fuck.”
Scraping her hands over her face, she pressed hard along her eyes and nose like it would help. Tapping the scar on her lips, she took stock. There were no sand deserts in Seattle. Marc was missing. ‘Ange was dead, and Marc was going to kill her. Digging around on the floor, she begrudgingly added ‘unable to contact the outside world’ to her list of problems when her phone stayed silent and black in her hands. Painfully, she got out of the car and looked around. She stood in the middle of a dump of a desert. In the distance stood a large, tall building; along the opposite horizon was a smudge of black. A storm. A big one.
Sudden relocation, alone, nothing working; the odds were high that she’d somehow managed to find herself in the Fae. Again. Muttering darkly, she limped to the trunk and muscled the thing open, pulling out her kit and her cane. Eying Marc’s supplies, she also added a litre of water and a handful of his MRE’s. “I’ll replace them,” she told ‘Ange as she shut the trunk, tracing a hand over the cold and empty metal. Giving her one last pat, she slung her pack onto her back and started off towards the building...