Bio Page: Mercurial

General Callsign: Mercurial Joined: 1999.08 Skins: Download Squads: none Intro: Losses History: Cycles	Personal Name: Maria Wolfe Location: Oxnard, California Birthdate: 1964.04.25 Email: mercurial@antipode.cjb.net ICQ number: none Website: none Forums: Nowhere
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Character information: Maria Wolfe

General history

Maria Perez Wolfe was born in Madrid, EA in 2564. In 2601 she joined the Immortal Brotherhood at the request of her sister Rosalia. During the Fire from 2602-2625, she served as a medical research specialist working to develop methods of shielding organomech brains from Cybrid detection. After the death of Ambrose Gierling and Solomon Petresun's decision to become Emperor, she challenged the future Emperor regarding various recent 'accidents' among those in the Brotherhood who opposed him. When she determined that she was next for such an 'accident' she left for Venus, where she resided among the ruins of Sa Thauri from 2642-2670, most of that time with Rosalia. In 2672 she set out on a tour of the outer solar system searching for signs of human habitation in the Kuiper Belt and other distant regions. In 2717 with the discovery of Cybrid forces in Neptune orbit, the Imperial Navy began searching for experienced long-distance pilots, and upon her return to Earth in 2730, she enlisted in the Imperial Navy.

Using a variety of names, she enlisted in the Navy in several twenty-year shifts, and during her last such shift in 2797 she visited Triton. On that visit, she suffered an accident that should have killed her-- permanently-- but instead found herself saved by awakened paranormal abilities. These abilities were accompanied by various visions of the future that she found disturbing, and she attempted to surpress these abilities.

In 2804 she joined the Imperial Knights, serving as a HERC combat pilot on Earth, Mars, Callisto, and Titan. In 2820 her abilities began to manifest themselves in combat situations, arousing the interest of the Emperor and the Brotherhood. A research program founded by Stryker of the Brotherhood in 2821 had some success inducing psi powers in certain Imperial Knights with organomech brains, and the Brotherhood sought Maria as a test subject. She married fellow Knight John Wolfe in 2821 and had a daughter, Rosa. She resigned from the Knights abruptly in 2826 when John was assigned to Mercury's Antipode Garrison, and she signed on as a medical response courier with a local med center late in 2826. She continued in this role until the Starsiege began in 2829.

Development of abilities

In the period just before the Fire Maria occasionally had the feeling of being watched, though it took the trauma of her stay in the destroyed city of Sa Thauri to awaken her first active abilities. On Venus she occasionally had precognitive flashes about periods several years in the future, and one of these flashes would save her life in 2666 as it helped her avoid an erupting volcano. In 2797 her experiences on Triton, during which she unconsciously escaped from a pool of liquid nitrogen and was able to survive unprotected on Triton's surface for a period, led her to kill the bridge crew of her torchship Farsight to keep knowledge of these abilities from reaching the Emperor. During the next few years, disturbed by visions of the Starsiege, she forced herself to surpress her abilities. They presented little measurable impact in her life until 2830 when she met fellow Ghost Delithita on Mercury, confirming the visions she had had thirty years previously.

During the Starsiege, she used her high psi rating not to engage in paranormal activities, but rather to increase her physical and mental strengths for higher combat skill, as was necessary during the Cybrid occupation of Mercury. After Fantasma was repaired and returned to operational status in late 2833, she secretly constructed the Sanctum, a hidden chamber deep in the rock below Fantasma. Here she explored the paranormal aspects of her abilities, and in April of that year she experienced a temporal loop involving her fully-awakened future self, and her abilities were thus completely realized. She rebuilt herself in non-corporeal form, maintaining a physical manifestation only to interact with the residents of Fantasma. In May 2834 that physical form was killed in a battle with the Brotherhood (who had discovered her location on Mercury and doubled their efforts to capture her as a test subject) and her fellow Ghosts considered her killed until they discovered her non-corporeal form inhabiting Mercury's Core.

During the next few centuries she used both physical and non-physical forms as she wished, and expanded her abilities to godlike levels. In 3444 she constructed for herself a permenant physical form, reclaiming what she could of her humanity while retaining her powers.

Traits

178cm. 58kg. Black hair (long, straight) over black eyes, precise and calculating of movement and attitude. Often cold and unemotional, Maria occasionally loses her iron control and succumbs to emotion, at which time she prefers solitude.

Character study

She opened her eyes slowly. Morning, she thought, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Lights," she said, and slowly the sodium-vapor lights in the room flickered to life.

She sat up in bed, and threw the covers aside. As she stood, she shoved them into the corner of the bed, then pulled a robe on over her body.

She drew a cup of tea from the water dispenser she had reprogrammed (inefficient, Xenogears had muttered once), tasted it, and grimaced. Whatever would she do without cinnamon? She set the cup down on the stone table where the chessboard lay set up in the standard ghost-versus-Cybrids arrangement.

She steepled her hands in front of her, placing her elbows on the table as she gazed through her fingers at the board. She wouldn't get into a game; she would have to be in Ops in an hour or so.

She took a deep breath, let it out, repeated the process. She had to relax. When she wasn't relaxed, she was angry, and when she was angry, she made errors. Most of time the errors were minor, but she could not afford them, not in her position as the leader of the Ghosts, the protector of all the people in Fantasma.

She let another breath of Fantasma's ozone-tainted air fill her lungs, hoping no annoying crises would disturb her meditation. It was such an annoyance to reach a second-level trance, floating free in pure white light, then to have one of the Ghosts calling her to come fix this or go shoot that.

She smiled with wry humor and closed her eyes.

She knew there was something important she had to reach in her meditations, something astonishing that would lead the way for great things. But she had to escape all the distractions and crises of Fantasma.

She knew she was very close.

She touched the control that would seal the airlock and shut off the radio system to the sanctum, and let herself drift away on a focused thought....