Player.

Name: Lily
Contact: aeneia
Current Characters: N/A

Character.

PLAYER
NAME: Lily
CONTACT: aeneia @ plurk
ARE YOU 18 OR OLDER: Y

CHARACTER
NAME: Angel, "The Siren", "The Guardian Angel" "4N631"
CANON: Borderlands
AGE: 20-21
CANON POINT: Middle of the fight in control core angel
BACKGROUND:

Angel | Additionally to this, as her page is very brief: Borderlands | Borderlands 2 | Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

PERSONALITY:

Angel is a siren of the borderlands world, one of six that exist at any given time. For the other sirens, this means unimaginable powers, instant respect mixed with fear for their abilities -- and for good reason, of the ones met and that are commonly known: they command armies, make cities fly, melt people's faces off and prove to be devastating fighters just to start with, and Angel is no exception. Unfortunately for Angel, she is the daughter of Handsome Jack, and that would mean that her life took a different turn to suit his plans. To say Handsome Jack is a bad father is sort of like saying that the sun is hot, it certainly gives you an idea of it, but hardly covers it. Whether it was his own defense over raising a child who had the capabilities to blow up a room when she had a temper tantrum and killed her own mother in doing so, or just that he was always a terrible person: their relationship is complicated as it is toxic. He raised her to be a very particular way in his efforts to emotionally control what can be at times a complete force of nature. To that, she is her father's daughter. Both because of and in spite of, Angel in all her good and bad has been shaped by Jack.

Because from dealing with him, from a childhood where she loved her father to dying cursing him out, she developed coping mechanisms to deal with him - that was, to become as manipulative, lying and sneaking as he was. After dealing with her for awhile, almost no one trusts her in canon, but it's to the credit of her skill at those things, she almost always gets them to listen to her again. Some of that isn't completely forced, for a long time, because she loved her father for all intents and appearances, she served him willingly enough ( she was already locked in the control core by the time of Borderlands 1, and whilst as a child you do hear her screaming and crying desperately to escape, she seems to have given up and gone back to do what Jack said by the time the first game starts ). In the Borderlands world, there isn't a white, there is just so many shades of black and grey - she didn't think much about spying for him. Given the nature of sirens seeming to be drawn always outwards and onwards, that isn't all that surprising she seemed to enjoy that task. But more than that, killing isn't something that she quibbles so much as a concept. That's in part situational, killing is naturalized on Pandora as just how you get down the street half the time, given the populace is largely cannibals ( the baby eating kind ). But she's more than happy later on to use death threats to get what she wants - using her abilities to cut off oxygen to the moon base on Elpis to get what she wants which are filled with honest people trying to live.

What aides that manipulation is Angel's intelligence, no matter the words Jack puts in her mouth, she is the one that manages to spin those tales believably. It because apart from sheer intellect ( quoted as having the brain the size of a planet ) that makes her a passable AI, she's also very emotionally intelligent, and able to use it to soften people up. She speaks warmly, affectionately and is genuinely kind when she's given leave too. She expresses concern frequently for things that most people in the world don't seem to care about - like the CL4P-TP robots, commonly commented on for being considered the most annoying things alive, Angel cares about them. Even from the first meeting in Borderlands, it's Angel that guides the vault hunters to help and care for the robot. Not just because they need him, but because he is hurt. It's a frequently said that robots in this universe can't feel pain - which couldn't be further from the truth - but Angel is the only one that seems to go out of her way to care about that fact.

Angel: "Don't be alarmed. I need you to stay calm, and don't let on that anyone is talking to you. Start making your way off the bus. You don't have any reason to trust me, but I need you to believe that I am here to guide you, I'm here to help you find the vault."

[...]

Angel: "That was the first step on your journey. You must listen; who I am is not important. The first thing you must know - the vault is real. [...] This world is full of dangers. Steel yourself, and go. I will be watching."

She's also the one that insists to Jack not to fight against the robots frustrating programming that meant it had to dance all the time, instead, saying that he should work with it, not against it. Due in part to the limited involvement she can take in any situation and having to use others as her proxy, she often prefers to work around problems than in out and out conflict when it can be avoided, and shows remarkable patience. She stays calm in almost all situations, coaxing and encouraging where she can, and doing small things to help the path of others. She's very level headed and is always assessing situations as they come up to work out the best plan for the moment. Again either because of how Jack raised her or just surviving him, she doesn't have his temper, instead she keeps her head and assesses situations careful to the best possible outcome. She does what is best for her goals and the goals of the group. If that means killing, she doesn't even feel bad about it as being a necessity. Frequently her encouragement to the Vault Hunters is to kill whatever is in the way ( granted, that tends to be what vault hunters are best at ) but more than that, she doesn't even have their or Jack's glee over killing. When something is in her way, she gets it gone.

Despite however all that she does, and is capable of, underneath all that Angel is just a normal young woman who wants to do normal young woman things, most especially, have friends and to form real human connections of her own. This isn't as obvious when she's younger and her relationship with Jack is still on even ground. It's in Borderlands 2 after the abuses have begun to pile up and the emotional blackmail and manipulation and - well, drugging her to death, have finally become too much, that she seems to reach out more with them personally, showing her own opinions and quirks. Her habit of swearing that's be trained out of her that she keeps accidentally doing anyway, her at times incredibly dry and deadpan humour at the ridiculousness of bandits, her spiteful teenage banter with Jack and the vault hunters. You hear her be both genuinely excited and happy every time she speaks with them, and to help them in whatever way she can. That being really where her relationship with Handsome Jack begins to fall apart. She constantly calls the vault hunters friends, and seems excited to do so, and after her first betrayal of them in Borderlands 2, she is deeply sadden that they don't want to speak to her and that they can't trust her. Her tone is heartbroken when she says "we aren't friends anymore, are we?" All of her outward experiences that she wishes for and craves for but in time, are consistently denied by Jack, first by his locking her up for her "own good", then his using her to trick the people she ends up coming to care for over and over again. Those combined with the fact she has no means of escape pushes her too far. She's sick of hurting people and being the means by which he can cause such horrible destruction of so many lives, and she refuses to be complicit to it any more.


Jack: "So this is how you bandits fight, is that it? Can't come straight for me, you gotta kill an innocent girl?"
Angel: "That's how he works - he'll try to guilt you, to make you think it's all your fault. Don't listen."

[...]

Jack: "Sweetheart, everything you could have ever wanted is within these four walls! Angel, do you have any idea how much I've sacrificed for you? The bandits I've killed for you, the people I've manipulated for you -- everything I have done is to protect YOU."
Angel: [ignoring Jack] "Promise me you'll kill him, friend."

In choosing her own fate, she shows her own sheer strength of will and how far she's moved beyond Jack. For her it's not about giving up, but about choosing for herself, demanding better of herself than being complicit to his schemes. Even though the experience is clearly agonising for her, despite everything she must feel about Jack, she's gone past a point where he can emotionally touch her. She's finally broken free of him, and she fights to the very last with the vault hunters to bring about her own death. Her last words aren't of regret for the waste her life truly is, but in utter relief of freedom to have the things in the last moments she's been denied her whole life: friends.

And you know, cursing out her dad, because fuck him.

POWERS: Sirens in the borderlands universe are six women who are born with powers connected some how to the technilogically advanced vaults that were left by the Eridians and mysterious eridium they seem to produce after opening. Leaving them as "one part in the world, one part in another realm". No one really knows much about them not even the game devs, even the sirens barely know anything about themselves outside of their accessible abilities, everything else they have to muddle out. They all end up with a set of crazy powers that largely revolve around interacting with that strange "other" realm that vaults exist in. It allows them all to manipulate particular elements, increased healing and regeneration and impressive strength. They can be hurt and killed the same as everyone else, but they're certainly harder to keep down.

In other words, they're space magic bullshit, Angel is particularly bad and vague with it, and I am happy with however she needs to be nerfed, I tried to include every random detail they mention about them, but the lore is freaking every where.

Angel's ability, which she calls her "phase shift", is stated to be the "creation and manipulation of artificial realms". This manifests in two shown ways. She also seems to have the other signature siren trade marks and powers that go with them, largely to do with elemental manipulation. Without eridium, and even to a degree with it, they all definitely tend to fall into area affect, where she needs to be present and active to them.



Eridium is a mysterious substance, that largely everyone as a whole has no real idea how it works, just that it does and it makes guns really cool. Outside of mutating people and driving them insane in a manner like lead poisoning, it doesn't do much for the average person. For (some of) the Sirens on the other hand, it's like A Grade Performance Drug. It makes them death dealing invincible goddesses of murder and light. Angel certainly has a powerful reaction to it, and whilst it's not the one Jack wants, it still enables her to do amazing things. Whilst consuming it, her abilities are enhanced until so where most sirens have something of a limited range on their powers, Angel has no problem stretching her mind across a whole planet, bouncing through satellites and to a neighbouring moon. She doesn't seem to need to eat or drink, in fact she seems to exist on pure energy as she becomes a crucible, it pours out of her to charge the vault key. In that state she could be riddled with bullets and heal them instantly.

--

NERFING: Obviously a bunch of this is game breaking. In canon she is operating at her peak point because she's drugged to hell and back on super juice, so nerfing her happens automatically with her being cut off. Their powers can only effect small groups of people, or one very large object/person. Since her powers are more passive than active in that regard, there is only the one she seems to have that explodes people. It might be that her powers cover far less a spectrum and that she has a limited range to how far she can throw her mind effectively. Even within that range, how many pieces of software she can comfortably hack into before she becomes overwhelmed. I'll absolutely throw up a permission post for everything, especially for the artificial realities and give people opportunities to "see through it" if it ever comes up. It can't extend outside of her immediate space, either.

She will probably also need to keep the control collar whilst she is getting the hang of being like normal people, since she could potentially fry any computer systems nearby.

SAMPLES
1ST PERSON:
Fuck kings, honestly.
3rd PERSON:
This is hers now she's keeping it
Blushing faces

MISC.
SUITABILITY: Angel is a fighter, even if she was denied it a lot or taken fights a different way to most, and has a big issue with tyrants, given her life so far. She'll be loyal and determined to help COST , even if she is from Pandora and doesn't think much about getting her hands dirty. She won't take well to being force to manipulate people, and she is big on working and helping others.
ITEM: Her control collar.
CHARACTER @ID SUGGESTIONS: Go right ahead.
HOW DID YOUR CHARACTER JOIN COST?
Shortly before the final fight in the control core, as she was gearing up to ... die, a COST operative offered her a different way out that promised she could make sure that when the vault hunters did kill Jack, no one was bringing him back.