Name: Lera Cody
Nickname: TBD
Age: 27
Face Claim: Lena Headey

Ability:
Artistic Creation: Lera is able to manifest her tattoos into semi-sentient beings. For example, the bird on her back can detach from her skin and become real in nearly every sense of the word. It can fly, chirp, eat, peck, and claw the way normal birds do. Lera and her tattoos have an empathic link when they're away from her. Another example is the flower on her back. If the flower manifests, it can gain sustenance from the sun and earth, and when it returns to her she's rejuvenated as if she'd fed from the same source. These animals and plants draw their power from her life-force, and when they are acting, she feels their absence.
Scarring: If a tattoo dies when it's away from her body, the skin where the tattoo used to live is burned and scarred as if it'd been removed. The skin then needs time to heal before another tattoo can be layered on top of the wounded skin; however, the more scarred she becomes, the less ink will take until eventually the area can no longer be tattooed. The death or injury of a tattoo also inflicts psychic trauma, and those wounds are much less visible and can accumulate if she doesn't take the time to heal them by being with people, sleeping, and doing other things that are good for the soul.

Symbolic Manifestation: She can draw power from any symbols, objects, or elements tattooed on her skin. If she has a key, she can draw on the key's power to pick a lock. If she has an compass, she can divine the safest path even in unfamiliar and hostile terrain.
Ink Allergy: The longer she draws on any given symbolic tattoo, the more the allergy manifests. For quick and simple uses, she simply gets flaky and itchy skin; however, the longer she draws on it or the more complex her need, then more serious swelling and pain manifests until she's so swollen or ill she can barely move. These wounds aren't subject the any form of tattoo or mutant rejuvenation, and are instead subject to heal at normal human rates.

Other Special Abilities: She's excellent at creating fabrics, repairing shoes, hat making, designing clothing, making new clothing out of discarded clothes. and sketching. She loves making things with her hands, and seeing other people wear her creations. Because of this ability, she's also handy at puzzles, repairs, and scavenging. The only thing she's not good a sewing is people. She passes out at the sight of too much blood.

Is your character a League member or a recruit? Neither. She's a captive civilian.
How many years with The League: None.
Occupation on the Campbell Compound: None. She's from a remote homestead.

Theme song: “This is Gospel” by Pamic at the Disco https://youtu.be/jO2_3pVd5k0
Physical Description: Lera is a spare woman with few curves to speak of and the lean build of a runner. Her hair is chopped short as her nails and frames her bright eyes and plump lips. Her skin is paler than the other men and women (even the children) on the homestead she lived on, but that was due to the nature of her craft. Someone had to keep up the work boots and smocks. Her hands show wear from handling the washing on a near daily basis.
Distinguishing Features: Apart from her tattoos, there's a scar about the size of a stamp on her inner left wrist. It looks like the skin there was recently branded and remains oozing and angry. There's also a patch of scarred white skin on her left middle finger.
Tattoo Masterlist:
Upper Back: One large lotus flower and a scattering of primroses. There's also one large falcon and two smaller bluejays that spill over to her right arm.
Left Forearm: Compass
Right Forearm: Pocket watch
Left Thigh: Black leopard lounging with a key on her nose
Behind Right Ear: Comedy and Tragedy masks
Left Wrist: Key
Left Ring Finger: Queen Honeybee
Right Foot: Poorly drawn medical staff and snake

History: Lera grew up the middle sibling of five. With so many mouths to feed their father and eldest sister started growing their own fruit and vegetables in their Chicago suburb backyard. By the time she was old enough to understand fashion and image, she noted how she only got hand-me-downs while her youngest sibling, the only boy, got new clothes whenever he asked. When she complained about this to her mother, her mother only handed her a sewing needle and spool of thread. The message was clear: make your own fortune, child, and make it by your own hand. She did.

When the over worked and underpaid theater teacher noticed Lera had some talent with design, he recruited her to create costumes for the middle and high school performances and supplied her with her very first sewing machine. With Youtube, a small budget, and plenty of encouragement, she tried her hand at shoe making for the 60s play where the school couldn't afford boots for all the extras, to the myriad of kookie hats in the Mad Hatter's workshop. Before she knew it, she was about seventeen and looking into universities to study fashion and design. The theater teacher promised to help her find scholarships... Except the virus broke out, and the world went to shit.

Lera didn't realize how isolated her family and school had been until the world and its problems forced themselves into their town. The United States collapsed, entire towns around Chicago were wiped out, and those that weren't barricaded themselves in. Lera and her siblings saw the walls go up, and they were on the wrong side. They ran together, their eldest sibling with a baby in tow, until they reached a field far enough from the outbreak that they decided to try growing their own food. They were once again isolated from the chaos, but not so naive. Lera and her brother would take backpacks and go to the nearest towns, dodge the victims of the virus, and steal supplies from lawless towns. Once they had to hole up in a tattoo parlor with another teenager when they were surrounded by other raiders, and while they kept their heads down, Lera picked up one of the tattoo guns, inks, and tried to figure out how it worked. The other teenager offered to tattoo her. Just a quick doodle for fun and to pass the time. After all, they were invincible then. The teen drew a compass on her arm. It burned like hell, swelled up, and took forever to heal, but the three got away from all the other scavengers and made their way back home.

Years and several tattoos later, Lera and the homestead was on the radar of the people who figured out how to put the world back together again. Once in a while a representative would come to the homestead, but their eldest sister told them to leave well enough alone. They managed to live like this for years, sustaining themselves and far enough away from most of the compounds, and stubborn enough, to be too much bother to absorb.

Until her nephew got sick.

Lera had her sewing needles, her eldest sister her crops, their brother had goats, and the other sisters floated between farm and animal husbandry. Even when they tightened their belts some mysterious hunter delivered a fresh deer to their doorstep. But none of them really knew much about medicine. Got a cut? Wash it off with soap and get back to tilling. Got a fever? Sleep it off.

But her nephew, a boy of only seven, got a fever that wouldn't let up for four nights in a row. No egg whites or honey helped his fever. Lera slammed her hand down on the kitchen table the morning of the fourth day, took up her backpack, and told her sister she wouldn't be back until she had something to help the boy. Period. She was going to raid the nearest compound and find their medicine. Organized folks like that always hoarded medicine.

Those organized folks had security cameras, and she was captured with footage of her and a hawk on her arm. Only hawks like those didn't exist on the continent. In the next few days someone helicoptered in to drag her away in chains. She never found out the fate of her nephew, but she did find the place with all the medicine.

She should never have left home. Medicine shouldn't hurt this much.