Kestryll Heart

[Esper Kohnen]

The Details

~Full Name: Kestryll Heart.
~Nickname/Alias: Kess.
~Gender: Female.
~Age: Twenty-two.
~Sexuality: Heterosexual.
~Affiliation: Syndicate.
~Occupation: Mastermind.

At First Glance

~Appearance: The first and perhaps most striking feature of Kestryll is her face. It is often said that looks can be deceiving, and perhaps that just depends on who lies beneath the mask. In Kestryll’s case, however, this is certainly true. Her eyes are large, wide-spaced and an effulgent mix of grey and blue, framed by screens of long, dark lashes. Her hair seems to be black most of the time, although we all know there is no such colour for hair. Intensely dark, it is naturally straight, and falls to the base of her shoulder blades and down to her mid-back. At times, it does get in the way, causing her to curse it and threaten to hack it all off. She has only kept this promise once. She has a heart shaped face with a strong jaw line and a straight nose. Her alabaster skin is much fairer than what’s usually natural, as many years spend avoiding the sun have left her skin fair and bleached milky. High cheekbones and full lips pull her together in quite the lovely package. Of course, that is only on the outside.

Kess is quite tall in comparison to most women, standing at five foot seven, with a willowy frame. She is muscular, but not overly so, more in the lean muscle way, and she makes sure to keep herself thin enough to still be considered attractive, but there are times when it is nice to have a bit of muscle on your side. One rarely expects a pretty girl to have biceps. Lithe, slim, and relatively curvaceous, her frame bears strong shoulders and broad hips, rippled with deceptive muscle hidden by her curves. Her svelte form is surprisingly strong, built with tough sinew and dense muscle. She is athletic if not slender and well endowed if not voluptuous, though neither stick-like nor fleshy.

Under The Skin

~Likes:

• Flaunting the skills that make her better than others.
  
• Beating anyone in competition.
  
• Chances to be sarcastic.
  
• Chances to poke fun at people.
  
• Picking out other people's flaws, weaknesses and mistakes.
  
• Winning arguments.
  
• Using her powers of persuasion.
  
• Mirrors, reflections and shiny, expensive things.
  
• Attention to detail.
  
• Ordering people around and generally being in control.
  
• Having status over others.

~Dislikes:

• Losing.
  
• Being contradicted or argued with.
  
• Men with over-inflated egos.
  
• Other women.
  
• In fact, she doesn't like people in general.
  
• Being underestimated, but at least then she gets a chance to kick their doubting butt.
  
• Ruining a perfectly good item of clothing.
  
• People who she deems a threat to her.
  
• Being bested by someone she deems inferior to her.

~Strengths:

• Ability to suss out everyone else while still keeping her own cards close to her chest. If she wants to seem well-educated, polite and good-intentioned, that’s exactly how she’ll appear.
  
• Extreme self-control.
  
• Her intelligence and skill with what technology remains in this world.
  
• An extraordinary liar.
  
• She is a relentless perfectionist. Nothing is ever quite good enough but this makes her very good at her job.
  
• Will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

~Flaws:

• Assuming everyone can be persuaded by money and words.
  
• Doesn't trust easily, if at all.
  
• Relentless vanity, obsessed with own appearance.
  
• Narcissism.
  
• Generally tends to forget who she's talking to, and addresses everyone around her like a moron.
  
• Power-hungry.
  
• Extreme paranoia.
  
• Some say that with her brain working overtime, she's far more susceptible to mental degeneration and breakdowns.
  
• Loathing of higher authority.

~Fears:

• Losing control.
  
• Getting Alzheimer’s or some other mental illness, which would make her lose her intelligence.
  
• Death. Not even the greatest can escape it.

Personality: Kestryll has often been described as a nasty piece of work, and it’s not difficult to see why. She’s a cunning, vindictive, manipulating woman who will all too willingly exterminate her enemies and even the few allies she has in order to get what she wants. Kestryll is ambitious, with a mind filled with spiteful thoughts, but she hides this so spectacularly that at first glance she might appear to be a simple Freelancer, an engineer who takes a quiet pride and contentment in her job.

Because Kestryll is, first and foremost, an academic genius. No doubt about it. Ever since childhood, Kestryll was gifted with a brilliant mind. In her adolescent years she was an accomplished engineer, knowing amongst other things advanced maths, mechanics, and physics.
There’s just one thing. Kestryll is academically superior, and she knows this. Of course, constantly pointing out other people’s inferiority in comparison to her hasn’t given her a wide circle of friends. She doesn’t need friends, however. She has ambition. Once upon a time she may have wanted to be a ballerina, but in recent times Kess’ mind has lingered on higher goals that would give her power and authority over others.

She is, what you might call, almost emotionless. She does not love, does not appreciate. She needs neither friendship nor family. Her emotions are kept on a tight leash, with only hate and anger occasionally holding power over her mental state. Other than this, she remains utterly cold with no cracks or sympathetic links, no way to get to her.

She can flick from polite, courteous and urbane, to blunt, vicious and venomous. Kess is very precise woman who likes control. She dominates her face and can paint emotions as easily as she lies. Affecting tears, laughter and innocence isn't a challenge, but merely something she does when she has to.
She adapts well to a variety of situations. When dealing in a professional environment she tames herself to be respectful and courteous, playing the part of the perfect adult, although usually only with her own gains in mind. She is mildly rebellious otherwise, usually adhering to the rules yet questioning all of them and disregarding those she finds trivial.

As one could probably tell from her physical appearance, Kestryll is quite obsessed with herself. Not only does she put herself above all others, at all times, and at all costs, she sees herself as simply better than anyone else, which makes her distant, aloof and supercilious as she feels she is superior to practically everyone else around her. No one could possibly be prettier than her! And no one could be smarter, or faster, or better at anything than she is. It is just impossible in her mind. She is one of those vain girls who’ll gaze endlessly at their own reflection, and no matter where she catches a glimpse of herself, she’ll stop and admire herself: a lake, a spoon, a window, an enemy’s knife. Not a good habit to be in. She is a narcissist.

As such, Kess feels that she is superior to most women, and so treats other women with cold indifference, whereas she would be merely prickly and competitive towards men. She is a relentless plotter, and her mind is always scheming, always thinking of a hundred different outcomes to the same situation. She hopes for the best, plans for the worst. Most of the time, her plans don’t go as she’d like them to, but that doesn’t stop her from doing it anyway.

Her most extraordinary talent is her reading ability, and Kestryll is more accurate than any lie detector to date. But it’s more than telling truth from lies. She can watch someone and tell the kind of person they are, what they intend to do, when followed she can pick out her stalker in a crowd full of people. She doesn’t know how, but she just knows. When asked how she does it, Kess finds herself giving different answers in different situations. Perhaps a tremble in the voice, or a tone of voice that was either too assertively smooth and insouciant. Something around the mouth, a tremor in the chin, something around the eyes. There was always something. She’s like a poker player who innately knows everybody’s tell when they bluff, but she doesn’t even try.
Maybe she just has a skill with picking out micro expressions. Sometimes she even wondered whether her gift wasn't so much as a capacity as an incapacity: she wasn't able not to see. Most people filter what they see when they look at someone's face: they operate by the rule of interference-to-the-best-explanation, meaning that whatever doesn't sync with the explanation that makes the most sense to them they ignore. Kess lacks the ability to tune out with what does not sync.

The Past

~Family Members:
Jared Heart (Father)
Erin Heart (Mother)

~History: Kestryll Heart was born in December to two Settler parents, Jared and Erin Heart. There was nothing exceptional or unique about her birth. She grew up as a normal child – bright, but thoroughly normal. Her family lived on the outskirts of Bradford, near enough for Jared Heart to sell his wares but not too close to be too bothered by the gangs that ruled the place.
Kestryll’s father understood the importance of a good education, and from an early age, he and Kestryll’s mother taught her everything they thought she would need to survive, and more. Kestryll was taught English, Maths, Science, and History. Every week Jared Heart returned from the market with a new book for Kess to read, and then spent the week testing her on them. He taught her his craft, how to use a knife and how to adequately defend herself against people like Raiders if they ever targeted their home.

When she was just seven years old, just that happened. Kestryll had been watching Jared working on the forge when five Raiders on horseback approached the front of the house.
They jeered and laughed amongst them, calling to Jared to give them anything precious he owned. But Jared defied them and armed himself with a pickaxe as he stood before his home, doing the best he could to defend them all. Kestryll’s father also knew that Raiders wouldn’t care about killing children, so he ordered Kess to go inside. She’d never heard him speak like that before.
“Get inside. Go on.” He gave her shoulder an encouraging push, gently steering her inside. Kess obeyed, and went into the house, closing the front door behind her. As soon as she was out of view, she ran upstairs, calling for her mother.
Erin appeared at the doorway of the largest bedroom. “Kestryll? What’s wrong, honey?”
Kestryll had run to her. Erin had knelt as Kess bumped into her, wrapping her little arms around her mother’s neck in a fierce little hug.
“There are men outside,” Kess had said, “wanting stuff.”
Erin looked her daughter in the eye. Even at such a young age, Kestryll saw in her mother’s face that the men outside were a genuine threat, and what Erin did next didn’t exactly calm Kess' nerves.
Erin stood, taking her daughter’s hand and leading her into the bedroom. She pulled out a small footstool from below the dresser, and put her fingertips to the ceiling, pressing in a single ceiling tile. Erin beckoned Kestryll to her, and hoisted the little girl into her arms.
“Try and pull yourself up, honey,” Erin said, so Kess reached up and managed to link her fingers around the hole. With her mother’s help, she clambered up into the ceiling space.
“Stay up there, Kess,” Erin said, “until I come to get you, okay? If anyone comes in, don’t move, don’t make a sound. Breathe quietly. Don’t come out for anything.” Erin paused for a moment, kissed her hand, and touched Kestryll’s face. “Move the ceiling tile over, honey,” Erin whispered, and Kess slid the tile across and slotted it back into place.

Kestryll was left in the dark, and listened to her mother hurry from the room. For aeons, is seemed, Kestryll listened to faint sounds outside. Horses whinnied, her father shouted. Then there was the sound of gunshot (from whom, it was impossible to tell) and then everything was lost in a cacophony of noise and shattering glass.
Then somebody came into the bedroom. Kess pressed her face to the crack in the ceiling tiles, hoping to see her mummy, but when an armoured Raider came into view and started ransacking the place, Kess recoiled from the crack and lay there in the darkness.
“Grab anything you can,” a male voice said.
“Where’s the kid?”
“What kid?
“They had a little girl with them. Have they hidden her or something?”
“Search the house.”

For hours, Kestryll lay, waiting for the sound of silence. It came eventually, and even then Kess daren’t move from her position in the attic. Her mummy had told her not to come out for anything, not until she came to get her.
Kestryll waited, but Erin never came. Several hours spent in the silence of that house, up in the attic, were an eternity in the life of a child, and Kestryll grew restless. She lost faith in her mummy’s words, and moved aside the ceiling tile.
The child emerged to see the entire house in tatters. Glass was broken, wood was splintered, fabric was torn. Kess wandered aimlessly throughout the house in silence, but her parents were nowhere to be found.

Kess never shed a single tear.

She waited for her parents to come home, but when evening came and they still hadn’t returned, Kess gathered together some items; a blanket, food, a small number of weapons which she slipped into the pockets of her jacket, a lantern, and a number of trinkets and valuable objects which she could sell for money. She loaded up her father’s strongest mule and set off from the little house in the valley as the sun began to set. Walking to Bradford as night set was terrifying, but staying alone at home would have been far worse.

She wandered alone, a rope to the mule’s saddle in one hand and a candle lantern swinging in the other. She presented an all too easy target for roaming Raiders after nightfall. The sound of hoof steps betrayed the presence of people behind her, and Kess bowed her head and walked faster. The horses were faster, and the two mounted men on horseback rode their horses alongside her. It didn’t take a genius to guess what faction there were of.
“Hey, little girl,” the one to her right said.
Kess said nothing and kept her head down.
“What’s a pretty little thing like you doing out here alone on a dark night like this?”
Kestryll remained silent.
“What’s wrong girl, are you deaf? Mute?”
“Just kill her and take her stuff,” the other man said, then added, “Nice trinkets.”
A hand reached down and touched her arm, grabbing the sleeve of her coat. Kess whipped out her little knife and slashed at the offending arm with a scream like a maniac.
“Bitch!” the man to her right said. “She cut me!”
“She’s feral,” the other said. “Maybe we should put her down.”
Kess thought fast. She knew her chances of surviving, let alone surviving unscathed with her stuff, when she was so tiny and up against two men on horseback. Even after that, how would she survive on her own in a city like Bradford? Either way, without someone bigger and stronger standing beside her, she was already dead.
“No,” Kess said suddenly, and held up the little bag of trinkets. “You’re after these, right? Well you can have them, as long as you take me with you.”
“What’re you on about, little girl?”
“You might need me. Because I can fix stuff and make stuff. Look,” she said, and showed the man closest to her a bag of crossbow bolts her father had made. She’d been intending to sell them.
“I made these,” she lied.
They were good quality bolts, and because of that, the man was sceptical instantly.
“Sure,” The raider said, the word dripping in sarcasm. “So you’re saying that you, a little girl, know your way around a forge, and you made these?”
Kess nodded, but she could tell that her word wasn’t enough. And so she described, in detail, how a forge works, and how you shape the metal. She explained the intricate process of making sure that every bolt was identical to the rest. Of course, she’d never made a crossbow bolt in her life, but she’d watched her father do it enough times, and she knew all the mistakes that could go wrong in the process.
It was that detailed knowledge that saved Kess’ life. She handed over the trinkets and lived with Raiders for the next five years.

With the Raiders, Kestryll learned things her father hadn’t taught her; how to lie, cheat and steal, how to understand what people wanted and use it against them. Most importantly, she learned that too many men give in to a pretty face.

Pretty soon, Kess began to formulate a plan to get away.

When she was fourteen years old, she crouched amongst the Raider gang and asphyxiated them in silence, one by one as they slept. She started with the lightest sleeper, and finished with the deepest dreamer. She stole their weapons and what other items she deemed useful to her. She went directly to the Black Market and sold whatever she could spare, and the same night she used the money to buy her way into a motley group of Freelancers who had banded together out of protection. It was over a year later that Kess began to see trust in their eyes, and it was only then that she considered herself part of them. She travelled with them for the next four years after that. Raider attempts gave her four years to learn how to fight, to defend herself better than Jared had ever taught her. She honed her craft, and when there was no more she could learn from the Freelancers, and no reason to remain under the protection that she could give herself, she set out alone in the world, doing odd jobs for money.

Kestryll began to forge links with the Syndicate, and she eventually brought herself closer to the gangs by improving and rebuilding their weapons. She still has a few unasked favours that she could call out should she ever need their backup, and has been fixing their technology and designing more aerodynamic tranquiliser darts ever since.

Miscellaneous

~Inventory:
Starter Items: Water Bottle, Cooking Pan, Small Wood Axe, Lantern, Tinderbox & Flint
Group-Specific Items: Scrap-Built Crossbow & Bolts x4, Throwing Knives x2

~Anything else?: Nope.