Name: Veronique
Shadowname: Dax
Gender: Female
Species: Elf (Dryad) [appears human]
Age: 60
Role: Face

Looks:  Vera's had some work done, but not the kind many might expect.  Rather than enhancing her assets, she went and had a metatype readjustment to help evade all of the prejudice flying around for metahumans, so she appears as a tall human woman

With olive-toned skin and hair of a rich auburn hue, Vera cuts a striking form right from the start, getting the blood flowing all around.  She has a warm, inviting smile and a laugh that seems to include everyone in her moment of mirth.  Vera's extravagant eyes draw people in; they are a glimmering silver, lacking pupil or iris, orbs of a faintly luminescent argent hue.



Personality:  "Vivacious."  No word more properly encompasses all that is Dax.  Energetic in the extreme, at least when she's up, Dax is all about living life to its fullest.  She enjoys good food and drink, fine company and is a devotee of the sensate lifestyle.  She loves to 'run and she loves to schmooze; what's more fun than bartering in a market and then chatting up Mr. Johnson for some work?

A creature of great grace and vitality, it hurts inside more than a little that she must hide her true nature, though she privately enjoys her ability to manipulate others, especially with the gifts of her birthright.  Vera is a gorgeous and desirable woman, and fully aware of her impact on others.  She exploits it whenever possible.  Ruthlessly practical, she is a keen judge of character.  Those few she accepts as her friends, she will move worlds to help.  Everyone else is just an obstacle or a resource, a piece in the Great Game, or as she prefers to view it, merely a player in the Grand Symphony of Existence.

A social chameleon, Dax can flip from high society to street gang mentality and lingo without a hitch, comfortable wherever she might find herself, as befits one of her role.  She's a Face, through and through:  negotiator, haggler, distraction, seductress, her functions are many.  She is a practitioner of the art of social warfare and one in high demand.  Don't mistake her propensity for chit-chat as weakness, however; she's a tough cookie and nasty enough with her katana.  More than one sentient has underestimated Dax, taken her attractive form and love of talk to mean that she was soft, weak, vulnerable.  The dryad's eyes glimmer with dread amusement in such times, waiting for the mark to put his own head in her noose with vicious glee.  She is a woman born, bred and tempered in the shadows and there is nothing soft about her at all.  She'll carve you up and turn out your pockets before you can blink if you're not careful.

Skills/Powers:  Her most obvious skills are her ability to manipulate others, based on her striking looks and her social skills.  Negotiation, seduction, running cons, she's adept in a wide range of such skills and employs them all as surely as a gunfighter does his weapons.  Dax is as dangerous with her bargaining skills as is any weapons specialist with their chosen focus, and she is murderously effective in the seductive arts, to absolutely no one's surprise.  There are other skills in her bag of tricks, however; Dax is adept at disappearing when she needs to, stealthy and cunning like a fox.  She's also an expert pickpocket and more than a little fond of street "magic."  She is also a deadly swordfighter, mixing her incredible speed and coordination with highly developed skill.

Privately, Dax has one other ability of note: she has evolved a sense beyond the usual five, a sort of biological sonar system (per the biosonar metagenetic trait).  She jealously guards that fact from all but those closest to her, what few such people exist.

Weaknesses:  A creature primarily driven by social grace, she doesn't have the fortitude of a troll or the adept skills with firearms so often seen in bounty hunters and gunfighters.  She's not much use in a firefight, handling tech barries for which there is no personal solution and hers is no small secret in the contemporary social environment.  Her entire livelihood is predicated upon the belief of others that she is human and not nobilis, so that knowledge is a dangerous weakness.

Dax craves attention; she loves the spotlight.  She needs to be acknowledged, to be in the thick of things and she needs companionship and affection.  She does not enjoy being alone very much, even though she often surrounds herself with marks, tricks and temporary partners.  That's enough for her, as long as they are in steady supply.

Worse than that, she is bipolar; a life time of stress, hiding and living in the shadows has damaged her some, and her mood can swing wildly.  On the job, she's usually able to keep her composure, but she needs the work, the interaction, the stimulus and sensations or she finds it increasingly difficult to keep it all together.  Worse still are the occasional flashbacks she gets, reminders of dark times from her youth.  Beneath that chipper and exuberant surface there is a dark turmoil simmering, a mixture of anguish and rage that threatens to unmake all that Dax has achieved.

Background:  Born a second-class citizen due to her species, a factor beyond her control, Vera grew into her adolescence watching everyone around her victimized by humans.  She also watched bitterness over that fact drive her mother to drink and her father to eat a bullet before she turned eight years of age.  With one parent in the grave and the other most of the way there, she was on her own for most of her life.  Not born to a genetic heritage of strength and power, she made due with her silver tongue and later in life, with her femininity and a liberal abuse of implication versus promise.  Early on, she discovered that she was a gifted manipulator and deceiver, a bargainer and negotiator but for some time, her appearance held her back before she finally managed to scrape together enough work so that she could afford the surgery.  She got cut in a clinic to look like a human.  It wasn't much work: all that really needed doing was her ears.  The rest of her looked human enough, and pleasing enough that many didn't stop to wonder past her legs or her chest to even see her eyes, startling as they are.  Life tempered her like Damascus steel, focusing her in purpose through experience after experience.  Soon enough, she'd grown to here adult size and looked like a human.  Walked like one, talked like one, fought and rutted like one... she became indistinguishable from homo sapiens and infiltrated their species with grace and verve.

Doors formerly closed to an elven child opened to a beautiful human woman with an inviting smile, a throaty chuckle and those exotic eyes, and her career in the shadows hit the ground running.