Fade Rift - Application

[whathumansdo]

PLAYER

Name: Mel
Age: 30
Contact: theangstmonkey
Other Characters: Cyril Ashara, Felix Alexius
Interests: With Shepard I'm hoping to stick a toe in more with some of the action/fighting based opportunities!

CHARACTER

Name: Jane Shepard
Canon/OC: Mass Effect
Journal: whathumansdo
Race: Human
Nationality: Fereldan
Occupation: Solider
Age: 32

History

Commander Shepard on the Mass Effect wiki.

Jane Shepard was born in Redcliffe in 9:08 Dragon. She was 22 when Connor became possessed by a demon. Her family and many of her friends were slaughtered the waves of undead attackers. When Cousland and company came through the village she was among those who fought to protect it. She didn't meet The Warden or any of his party members personally, but she did see them around during the preparation for battle and while they were fighting undead.

After Arl Eamon woke from his poisoning, she went with his household to Denerim. She served as a guard for the house and joined the army brought together to fight the Blight. During that battle she spent most of her time fighting darkspawn and protecting her fellow soldiers and civilians alike. She earned reputation as a fierce and principled fighter among her fellow veterans.

Once the arch demon was defeated, Shepard stayed in Denerim for a time helping to rebuild. Then more details about the Landsmeet filtered to her as rumors and gossip. Disgusted by some of the revelations - specifically, that the Arl's poisoning had been a political move - she abandoned the city.

She traveled throughout Thedas, helping villages recover from the Blight and taking the odd job here and there. While she isn't well known throughout the land, those who have some knowledge of different mercenary groups may have heard her name spoken. She is known as being someone you want on your side as she makes a very formidable enemy just as much as she can be a very loyal friend.

Once the Breach opened, Shepard focused most of her skill on fighting demons to protect innocent people who might be hurt by them. Through this, she learned more and more about the Inquisition. The knowledge that the Inquisition seems to be doing very good things eventually drove her to sign up with them.


Personality

In terms of Mass Effect morality, Shepard is a Paragrade. That means that while she is a decent person who makes choices that are diplomatic and good, she has some rough edges to her. She's the type of person who will save a noble from a band of bandits but then spend her time insulting that same noble for being useless. That said, she only acts that way towards people who she thinks deserves it. She tends to be careful not to be needlessly cruel.

She is a natural leader, who gets along well with people she considers 'hers.' When it comes to the people who are loyal to her, she tends to consider them family and rely heavily on them for moral and emotional support. She also realizes that when a leader is needed she has to put her own feelings aside to ensure that as many people make it out alive as possible.

Shepard has a witty sense of human that tends towards "punching upwards." This means she'll happily drag nobles and other powerful people who deserve a bit of mockery to knock them off their high horses. She absolutely will stand up for those who need it though. For example, when a village is being attacked by darkspawn or bandits, she’ll run in head first to protect them. She is also gracious when they thank her for her work, though she tends to just consider it part of her duty.

She does feel a sense of guilt for abandoning her home out of disgust and tries to make it up by doing good things. She’s just not a perfect Chantry sister while doing it. She’s likely to curse and shoot the shit just as much as save the day.

She’s also not above insulting people when they need it.


Strengths & Weaknesses

Two Handed Warrior
Shepard is a two handed warrior. She is very strong and can bash her way through situations if that is the approach needed. She has many of the basic techniques for two handed warriors down and has a lot of experience surviving a variety of battles. She can serve as her party's tank if needed and strives to protect her squad mates by taking a brunt of the fight on herself. She is very skilled in battle and is known for managing to pull actions that might seem impossible to others - such as storming a bandit stronghold where she's severely outnumbered and still managing to get out alive.

Leadership
Shepard is a natural leader. She's able to motivate those around her and is known to inspire real loyalty in the men and women under her care. These people come to believe in her abilities and know that she is always going to be there for them. Whenever she manages to pull of the impossible, those who believe in her will just shrug and say "well that's Shepard" before moving on with their day.

Psych Profile
Despite everything, Shepard is pretty healthy, psychologically speaking. She has good handle on how to deal with things. She dealt with her family's death and rather than break down she focused on saving Redcliffe and then fighting the Blight. She can put aside her own personal feelings to focus on the task at hand. That said, she's not emotionless. She knows she needs to filter through her feelings rather than bottle them up. This means she develops very healthy relationships with friends she knows she can rely on and uses them to relieve some of her stress. This could be by doing things with them or having real, honest conversation about what she's feeling. She also strives to be a source of relief for them whenever possible.

Bullheadedness
Shepard's major flaw is her bullheadedness. While she is good at being a leader and a warrior, she also has a real talent for burning bridges when she is driven to her breaking point. When she found out that it was political posturing that cause Arl Eamon's poisoning she realized the issue was not that a scared boy with magical talent gave into a demon, but that some asshole had poisoned his father to try and get the political upper hand. She also eventually came to believe that Cousland did all that he did for his own political gain, not for the best of the people (as a matter of opinion, may be accurate or not). These realizations prompted her to abandon any work she had been doing in Redcliffe and Denerim out of disgust. She still thinks very poorly of nobles and political power players because of these experiences. She can be very vocal about this disgust which means she's not very skilled at playing The Game and those higher ups might find her to be nuisance. She's a solider first and her loyalty is to the common man and her people. To those people, she's a fantastic leader and stalwart defender. To any one with noble blood, she can be a huge pain in the ass.

Inventory

One Greatsword.
One set of plain armor (black in color with red stripe painted down her right arm).
A variety of rations, basic camping supplies, and healing salve.
One book (of a slightly smutty variety).

Motivation

Shepard is driven to do what is right for Thedas and it's people. After being burned by the wiles of the nobles in Ferelden, she tends to mistrust large political organizations but she has come to realize that the Inquisition is really trying to do right and bring order to the chaos. She also wants to find out what really happened to the Divine - who had seemed like a good enough person and possibly someone who could end many of the issues the Chantry has - and bring justice to those who killed her.

SAMPLES

Shepard and Garris go rat hunting.
Shepard recuses Red.