A troubled young woman with some curious potential!

(What follows is a player character write-up from a now sadly defunct play-by-post. Since I’m submitting some other stuff from that game, I figured I might as well toss the poor lass on here as well.)

(This is Harmony as she was at the start of the game.)

Harmony Singer

Physical Description: Long black hair tied back in ponytail, bright green eyes, dark complexion, elaborate tattoos on back and upper left arm.

She wears a black biker jacket with twelve of the Major Arcana painted on the back, a medicine bundle around her neck, well-worn jeans, and tee shirts.

Psychology
Personality: Saggitarius
Obsession: Cleaning up the world, one bigoted scumball at a time
Rage Stimulus: People who write her off ‘just because’ she’s a girl.
Fear Stimulus: Being confined in small spaces (Helplessness)
Noble Stimulus: Rescuing innocents

Statistics
Body: 70 BUILT FORD TOUGH
Body Skills:
General Athletics 30
Suckin’ It Up 35 (Drug and Alcohol resistance, maybe even resist torture…)
Barroom Brawler 50 (Obsession skill–streetfighting)

Speed: 60 FASTER THAN SHE LOOKS
Speed Skills:
Initiative 30
Dodge 25
Drive 45
Pool-shark 20 (plays a mean game of billiards, can make trick shots, etc)

Mind: 50 CRAFTY
Mind Skills:
General Education 20
Notice 20
Conceal 30
Locksmithing 30 (how to build ’em, break ’em, and take ’em apart)

Soul: 40 COARSE
Soul Skills:
Charm 20
Lie 20
Big Is Dumb 30 (Playing dumb)

Madness Meters
Violence: 3 H/0 F
Unnatural: 0 H/1 F
Helplessness: 0 H/1 F
Isolation: 0 H/0 F
Self: 0 H/1 F

Background, History, and Trigger Event:

Harmony is a very unusual young woman–her ethnic background is quite diverse: Mexican-Hispanic, Apache, and Nordic Euro-American. Her father was a preppy college boy who got her mother pregnant and then went off to get himself killed in a drunk driving accident before she even knew to go get a home pregnancy test. His wealthy New England family was more than willing to write off a poor Hispanic waitress with an exaggerated claim…and so Harmony was raised by her mother’s family. (Lest there be any confusion on this point, Singer is her mother’s family name, not her father’s!)

Bad luck followed her throughout her childhood. Her grandmother died of a stroke. Her mother was killed in a gang shootout. She ended up in foster care. Some of her new caretakers were good people. The others…

One couple would lock her in her closet for hours on end while they went about their active social life. To this day, Harmony freaks out when she’s confined in a small space.

Another foster father made the mistake of trying to molest her, only to find that the quiet and sullen young woman in his house was a vicious scrapper. She was promptly moved after he complained about her violent attitude and anger management problem. She never set the record straight, only too happy to escape his reach.

After that, she also started working out and getting into fights. While the schools noticed only that she was one of their problem children, she was learning how to fight effectively, efficiently…viciously. What got overlooked was her motive: she was not bullying weaker students so much as defending them.

Her last guardian, the one who helped her graduate from high school, was a self-employed locksmith. He showed her the basics of his trade–it would help her eat, he said. She took to it well, and her new hobby kept her out of even worse trouble. When she wasn’t working out in her home-made gym or hitting the books, she tinkered with his old locks. She still got into fights, but not as often.

When she graduated high school, her guardian gave her an unexpected graduation present: her Harley Davidson motorcycle! She had often expressed a desire to see the world, and now she could. He also gave her a couple hundred bucks for food and gas, and told her that she was always welcome to return home any time she needed a break from her wandering.

Three hundred and thirty three miles away, in a rinky-dink little truck stop in a two horse town, she met the man she calls Uncle Jim: a wild-haired old drifter with an eye patch and a pet raven, who told her the most amazing story about a broken blood line and the end of the world that didn’t happen. He later introduced her to another man she knows only as Coyote, who told her about the highways being the ley lines of America. She has since run into both of them on her journeys across the US…their meetings are usually friendly and always cryptic. All too often, their advice and gossip seems to lead her to people who are in need of her skills and help.

Her jacket was a present from Coyote during a stop in Bakersfield (California). She got the tattoos after Uncle Jim showed her the designs on a bar napkin in Kansas City and told her they were powerful medicine.

(Note: I intended Uncle Jim and Coyote to be understood as Odin and Loki, respectively, and large parts of Harmony are the result of her viking heritage overlaid on a ‘bad girl’ persona. She makes a lovely, lovely pawn…or a monkey-wrench.)