So, since Scratch was lagging when I tried to post this as a comment thread and also muted me for some reason, I'm making the bio a project. Very sorry about this. <-- Doodle of her that I made because I wanted to draw her. Elise Harbinger {} 40 {} Female, she/her. {} Aro/Ace. She doesn't know the words for it, but she isn't interested in non-platonic relationships. {} Stormline {} Co-Leader {} Trackhopper. It's useful as a danger indicator. {} Elise is about 5'7" tall, with light chestnut hair that's becoming salt-and-peppery as the occasional strand goes white. Her hair looks like it's slightly longer than shoulder-length, but it would go down to around her waist if she let it down. It's usually tucked into her hood for ease of movement and tied with several hairbands so it stays in place. She's well-built and makes an effort to keep her body in shape. Her skin is pale peach, but it would tan easily if the sun came out for long enough. Her posture used to be upright and healthy, but her shoulders are starting to slump forward. Her eyes are a greenish hazel that looks bright green in the light and near black when it's dark, and her lips are pale and thin. Her left pinky doesn't bend quite as well as it should, due to aftereffects from frostbite in the first weeks of the storm. She usually wears a long cashmere coat that she's added extra padding to the inside to keep warm and sewed a fur-lined hood onto, a pair of thin gloves that don't provide much protection from the cold but allow her to maintain her manual dexterity where thicker gloves would impair her hand movements, and a pair of fur-lined snow boots. Underneath all that, she has black fleece pants and a sweater, sometimes more than one sweater depending on how cold it is, and several layers of socks. A large toolbag filled with various implements involved in repairing mechanical items hangs over her shoulder at all times, sewn onto her coat to carry the weight more evenly, sometimes accompanied by a pair of welding goggles on her head if she's in the middle of a repair job. She also always has a white scarf that she got from her grandma as a child. It's hand-knitted and one of her only sentimental possessions. Elise's voice is authoritative and naturally loud. Her consonants sound harsh, lending her speech a slightly angry sound even when she's not actually angry. {} Elise runs mostly on adrenaline, but she isn't jumpy. It's more that the adrenaline is what's keeping her awake and clear-headed. She always tries to think out every possible option and have a plan, but she's learned to think on her feet in difficult situations, and she always goes for the option that sacrifices the least amount of people to save the most. If sacrifices must be made, they must always save something worth more than the loss. She's commanding and likes to have things her way-- it's a bit of control that she clings to when nothing else is going the way it should be. She's relatively patient in a cold sort of way, but if those below her go against her too many times, she loses her temper. When she thinks no-one is looking, though, she occasionally breaks down. If you're close enough to her sleeping spot at night, you can sometimes hear her crying. {} Elise's family moved around a lot while she was a child, constantly following the threads of her father's research on some obscure topic and her mother's study of virtually every biome in the world, so when Elise went to university to study, she was relieved to be able to settle down for a while while she learned. When the storm hit, she was partway through a PhD program. The university shut down almost immediately, and Elise was stranded there with no way to get anywhere and no knowledge of where her family even was. She ended up following the closest rail lines as the snow piled up, on the move again despite her need to find a single place to call home, eventually finding her way to a group of people who had gathered at the abandoned station. She stayed there as the Stormline party formed, in the hopes that this could be somewhere permanent to remain. Unfortunately for her, she'd found her way to the most nomadic of the groups. When she became co-leader, she resigned herself to a life on the move. After all, a group was far more stability than she would have otherwise found in the storm, and she'd always loved trains. {} Strengths: Good leader, works well with others when everyone has a common goal. Handles large groups well, which is probably why she ended up as co-leader. Very intelligent, good with machines. {} Neutrals: Surprisingly organized, tactical, stern.
{} Weaknesses: Despite her tough exterior, she lets her emotions get the better of her surprisingly often, which leads to errors in judgement and poor decision-making. Controlling, occasionally manipulative but not entirely intentionally-- she knows what she wants and what she'll achieve, but not quite what she's doing to achieve it, if that makes any sense. Doesn't calm down easily when angry. Tends to bottle up her emotions rather than actually, you know, processing them. {} She can fix just about anything mechanical provided that it operates on the basic laws of physics and doesn't involve software. High physical endurance, good at rock climbing since it was a childhood hobby of hers. She can sew, but prefers to only do it for her own possessions. {} Frostbitten pinkie finger on the left hand. There's a deep-set paranoia within her that planted itself at the start of the storm and has only been growing since then. To some level, she has depression, but she's not about to let that stop her from being useful. In fact, she feels like it doesn't affect her at all while she's busy-- it's only once she stops working and gives herself time to think that the depressive thoughts creep in. {} Fears: Deathly scared of losing everyone she knows and has connected with, even if she dislikes or distrusts some of them. In the same vein, she's afraid of being alone, and specifically she's afraid of being the only person awake. She makes sure someone else always stays up with her if they're setting up watches. Ironically enough, she's not scared of the cold. Freezing to death sounds kind of peaceful to her, though she'd never want to actually die. {} Comforts: The scarf her grandmother knitted for her. It holds good memories. Petting her trackhopper. It's soothing for her to know that there's another living thing near her, and that's how she gets to sleep at night. She also finds comfort in repairing machinery. It's like a problem to solve, an intellectual challenge to find what goes where, a chance for her to remind herself that her intelligence hasn't just vanished with the rest of her PhD. Plus, it keeps her mind busy, and keeps the bad thoughts at bay. {} Relationships: None yet. She does view everyone in Stormline sort of in the same way that a shepherd's dog might view its pack of sheep, as beings to be protected and herded in the right direction rather than equals. It's become very hard for her to trust someone enough to view them as even an acquaintance, much less a friend. {} Extra: (I'm dumping anything that I couldn't fit into the other sections here, so this part is kind of like an addendum to the backstory.) Elise was born somewhere in northern Europe on the Scandinavian peninsula, and she knows how to speak several European languages, but since her family moved around so much, she never really formed enough connection to any one place to call it her home in any real sense of the word. She studied at Sorbonne University in France, perfecting her already rather decent French skills there. While her family travelled the world, Elise found solace in one thing that remained the same anywhere they moved: every location on Earth had space for her to run. She quickly found out that speed was not her strong suit, but her endurance was beyond that of most others, and so ended up running for hours every day, working off her frustration at the constant moving by taking control of where she went. When her family spent time in the Andes mountains, she picked up rock climbing, and from there on out, tackled just about every rock and mountain that her family came across. She was also homeschooled for most of her life, but occasionally ended up in local schools for a few months at a time. Her parents wanted her to be prepared for college. In between school, homework, research, and extra studying, Elise somehow also found the time to tinker with mechanical devices, starting with old, broken clocks and primitive flip-phones, quickly graduating to car and boat engines and other larger items. Though she disliked the constant travel, Elise always found herself excited to see new places, and she did love long train rides. Staring out the window and either observing the slowly changing surrounding or daydreaming was one of her favorite activities. Perhaps her love of trains is what led her to Stormline. It was definitely one of the reasons that caused her to stay. {} C°...I'm American but a sucker for science. Plus it makes more sense to me, probably because I like science, haha!
