Name: Daphne Ward
Code Name: Ward
Physical Stats – Age: 16, Height: 5’ 6”, Weight: 120 Ibs, Hair/Eye Color: Black/Brown

Background:
Daphne was born in a small Korean coastal fishing village.  Her father was an African American soldier who left her mother once he figured out she was pregnant.  To attempt to save her family some of the disgrace she had brought upon them, her mother left her at a small Christian orphanage. There she was adopted by John and Elisa Ward and brought back to Strawberry CA. There she was brought up in a fairly rigid Christian lifestyle and went to a strict religious school in a very WASP community.  Her parents always seemed to love her, but they were always distant.  She had many friends who she was close to, but she always got the feeling she was different.  The sudden appearance of Novas changed her community just like it changed many others. Many in her highly religious community thought that Novas were demonic or in some way evil. Her family and community tried to minimize Nova influence, but this was a mostly futile effort.

A few years after the first Novas erupted, Daphne’s parents had a child of their own.  Following this, her already distant relationship with her parents became almost impossible to keep going.  She quickly discovered that despite the appearance of having friends, she was not truly one of them.  All this left Daphne wondering where she fit in and why God had seen fit to test her like this. It was all too much for her and she began to withdraw from her life.  For the most part, she still pretended everything was ok, but she was never the same.

Soon after her 16th birthday she decided in order to try and connect with some of her friends more she would join them at a frat party in San Francisco.  Despite some initial awkwardness of being around college students, Daphne managed to fit in or so she thought.  One of the many frat boys who showed interest in Daphne invited her up to his room, being unsure of how to say now to an older boy, she agreed.  Despite his attempts to the contrary, Daphne managed to run away once she found out the frat boy wasn’t interested in going slow. She left her friends, and her ride, at the party and found herself somewhat lost.

She managed to find her way to a train station and buy a ticket for the last train north towards home. While waiting for the train to arrive, a man attacked Daphne for her purse and in the process of taking it knocked her onto the tracks in the path of the oncoming train. She had mere seconds before the train hit her. She has no memories of what happened, but has seen the videos of the train slamming into her.  She is knocked across the train station as the train itself is derailed and destroys much of the station and killing her would be mugger. Despite it being a late and relatively empty train, many people died.  Daphne certainly would have, if not for her eruption which left her completely unharmed and lying almost 50 feet away from the wreckage, in a corner of the station.

After this she would make her way home via taxi, but once there her status as a Nova would be discovered despite all her attempts to hide it from her friends and family.  Her parents attempt to send her to Mercy House (a christian conversion therapy center, 'specializing' in novas) to cure her of her evil nova ways, but Daphne ran away before they could do this.  She spends the next several months on the streets trying to understand what has happened and cope with it.  She handles all this poorly, as she attempts suicide numerous times before finally giving up and accepting that she can’t be hurt and can’t go back to being a normal teenager.