Post by lylacaraway on Jan 9, 2011 20:07:03 GMT -5
NAME: Dr. Lyla Elizabeth Caraway
AGE: 26
RACE: Human
AFFILIATION: Formerly Shinra, currently a free agent and seeking affiliation with the WRO.
BACKGROUND: As far as Lyla knows, she was born in Midgar to Dr. Kenneth Caraway and his wife, Elise. Her mother died shortly after she was born, and she and her father moved to Junon, where Lyla was raised and continued to live until recent years. While this is not exactly the truth, she has never been told anything different, and it would likely take a lot of convincing to get her to believe something other than what she remembers as truth. In reality, she is just another statistic – another byproduct of one of Shinra’s science department’s projects.
Shinra scientists had been working on genetically engineering subjects for military study for ages, and many of their specimens had been counted as successful attempts – Sephiroth, for example. Lyla was not another Sephiroth; in fact, she was the exact opposite. Still no more than a baby, she was labeled a failed prototype thanks to unimpressive genetic makeup, like so many subjects before her. Dr. Kenneth Caraway, one of Shinra’s most dedicated scientists at the time and one of the people most heavily involved in the current project, couldn’t help feeling something akin to pity when he was informed that the most recent specimen was going to go the way of the other failures before her: either reduced to a guinea pig or ultimately destroyed and erased from the files. After a few appeals, he was able to persuade the rest of the team involved to let him remove the child from the lab, citing her as a “pet project” in order to sway them. It was eventually permitted, and while he stayed on with Shinra’s science department, he transferred to Junon shortly thereafter.
Dr. Caraway never married, but raised the subject as his own child. The experience had given him just a little more respect for life after so many years of tinkering with bio-engineering in Shinra’s labs. He suddenly shied away from his previous field of expertise and dedicated himself to computer research rather than the hands-on variety. He never married, but raised his daughter to believe that her mother had passed away when she was an infant. While he never told her of her origins, this was never done out of malice, but out of respect. Life, he had decided, was the same for all beings, no matter how they were brought into existence. Whether born or created by other means, either way, what you ended up with as a result was a person who deserved nothing more than to live their life the way anyone else would. He followed this credo to the letter as Lyla grew up, going through school like any other child would have, and later continuing on to Junon University with an interest in science that had been passed down to her by her father. Caraway found that she had become both his child and his own pet project, an unobtrusive experiment in seeing whether or not someone born by unconventional means could still continue on like anyone else. So far, his hypothesis has been answered with a resounding “yes.”
All but born into the field, Lyla has decided to follow in her father’s footsteps in the field of science, though she feels that she’s nowhere near the genius she perceives him to be. She simply has a keen interest in the field and a passion for the study of life, two things that lend themselves well to her chosen profession. Lyla has only recently earned her doctorate and would have taken up a position in Shinra’s Research and Development program, having spent a long internship there just before the start of the Meteor Crisis -- except for the fact that Shinra fell to pieces. She has an especial interest in the work of Dr. Hojo, though she seems more interested in cleaning up or rehabilitating any remnants of his past experiments.
APPEARANCE: Lyla is of fairly average height for a woman, standing at 5’6” without aid. Her build is mostly average as well, though her limbs are roped with lean muscle – nothing particularly spectacular, but enough to show that she has made efforts to keep herself in fighting shape. She keeps her straight, chestnut-brown hair long, often tied up messily or pulled halfway back to keep it out of her blue eyes. It is a bit shorter in the front, implying that she had bangs recently but has started to let them grow out. Otherwise, when left down, her hair falls to just beneath her shoulder blades. While working, she tends to favor slacks or even a skirt and blouse beneath her labcoat, and occasionally wears a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses when working with the lab computers in a pre-emptive attempt to save her eyesight. In her free time or while traveling, she dresses a little more casually, favoring snug pants, tall, zippered boots and a long-sleeved top, occasionally with another, lighter shirt worn underneath. She usually wears a cropped, khaki jacket with the sleeves rolled up when not dressed for the office. (fadingdusk.org/origin/images/carajudd-lylakaiun.jpg)
PERSONALITY: Somewhat reserved and introverted, Lyla is an intellectual by nature. Though she is by no means antisocial, she often preferred the company of books to that of people when she was younger and therefore often finds herself in awkward social situations – she makes a lot of slip-ups and puts her foot in her mouth rather frequently, though her remarks are almost always good-natured. She is hard on herself, being a perfectionist and somewhat self-concious, and has difficulty coming to grips with her own lack of social graces whenever it’s pointed out to her. She is something of a workaholic and has a tendency to be obsessive with a sharp attention to detail.
Lyla thinks fast and is good in a crisis, not to mention persistent, two qualities that go very well together and play into her natural-born stubbornness. That same stubbornness that some people might think is a positive trait can also work against her. Persistence and determination are one thing, but being blindly stubborn is another and can often be a person’s downfall. The ability to think on her feet also means she makes a lot of snap-decisions, not all of which are good. She could stand to slow down and make use of her better judgment from time to time.
ABILITIES: Though the need hasn’t arisen very often in the past, Lyla is fully capable of defending herself if she has to. She spends a decent amount of time keeping up with her own personal training, especially as working in a lab means she doesn’t get much exercise otherwise. She is considered a sound and capable fighter, as she is moderately strong and on the speedy side, though she doesn’t quite measure up to SOLDIER standards. Thanks to her origin, she has excellent stamina and endurance and is reasonably stronger and more agile than your average human, with a great affinity for magic via materia use. Her specialty is close-quarters combat with an emphasis on speed, falling back on magic use when necessary. Because of her willingness to travel for work, she does a lot of work in the field, meaning she’s come up against her share of nasties out there in the world, though so far it’s been nothing life-threatening.
Her acumen should be considered just as valuable, if not more, than her fighting skills. She’s excellent with computers, a thorough researcher, and has a keen eye for detail. She approaches most situations from a scientific angle and has a good head for strategy.
WEAPON: Butterfly Staff – A double-bladed staff/swallow that relies on the user’s speed and accuracy more than physical strength to do damage. (media.giantbomb.com/uploads/2/24656/881392-3254832720_2a673f7c68_large.jpg)
RP SAMPLE: (The following is from a previous game.))
Lyla thoughtfully chewed on the eraser-end of her pencil as she dully stared at the flickering computer monitor in front of her. She did very little handwritten work while in her own little cubicle, but nonetheless she almost always had a pencil on hand, often stuck over her left ear in case she needed it. Most of the time, they wound up getting chewed on rather than written with, a bad habit she needed to break but was perfectly content to let persist for now. Most days, she really enjoyed her job – loved it, even. She didn’t like to make herself sound like a goody-two-shoes bookworm, as she certainly didn’t see herself that way, but there was something to be said for working at a job where you constantly got to learn new things about the way the world around you operated. Biology was a field that was constantly changing and yet constant in so many ways. Yes, it was safe to say that Lyla Caraway loved her job.
Except for today.
It wasn’t that she had been given some unsavory assignment. In fact, quite the opposite. There was nothing to be done. Nothing whatsoever. There wasn’t even any paperwork to sort through or deliver to another office. Whatever was going on in the main lab that day had been branded “top secret,” only Professor Hojo and the staff members he trusted as his “nearest and dearest” were allowed in that day. Lyla wasn’t sure what he was trying to keep the lower ranks from seeing or hearing about, but the longer she was shut out, the more she wanted to know. She had already bent the rules and done a little snooping through the computer, trying to patch into Hojo’s own files to see if she could get a little glimpse that might satiate her curiosity, but everything was locked up tight.
She sighed and leaned back in her chair, giving up on finding any amusement in her email or in the reports she had been reviewing earlier that week. No work to do, no incoming field assignments… nothing. The air in the office was so dead and still, broken up by nothing but the bland hum of computers. She was just starting to become accustomed to the faint, steady buzzing when she heard footsteps coming to a stop just outside the “door” of her cubicle. She scrambled to get to her feet, almost desperate to receive whatever assignment might have been brought to her, but was sorely disappointed to look up and see another lab aid, a young man who looked just as bored as she felt.
“… uh. Hey. Lyla. There’s a fresh pot of coffee in the break room. All the aids are going to stand around and try to look important for awhile, maybe break up all the silence with some small talk. All the head cheeses are busy anyway, no one will care we’re not working.”
Oh. Not an assignment. Damn.
“No work to do, anyway,” Lyla replied, letting a second sigh pass her lips. “… so. Break room. … are Turner and Novak going to try taking shots of creamer again to see who gets sick first?”
“Probably. It could be good times. Better than sitting around at our computers and making ourselves go blind, right?”
“… we’ll write it off as research,” Lyla found herself agreeing, smirking as she got to her feet and joined the other aid at the door before following him in the direction of the break room. Alright, so it wasn’t exactly productive, but it was better than doing nothing at all. Besides. She still had money riding on Turner to throw up first from the week before. This was sure to be a quick and easy 100 gil.
AGE: 26
RACE: Human
AFFILIATION: Formerly Shinra, currently a free agent and seeking affiliation with the WRO.
BACKGROUND: As far as Lyla knows, she was born in Midgar to Dr. Kenneth Caraway and his wife, Elise. Her mother died shortly after she was born, and she and her father moved to Junon, where Lyla was raised and continued to live until recent years. While this is not exactly the truth, she has never been told anything different, and it would likely take a lot of convincing to get her to believe something other than what she remembers as truth. In reality, she is just another statistic – another byproduct of one of Shinra’s science department’s projects.
Shinra scientists had been working on genetically engineering subjects for military study for ages, and many of their specimens had been counted as successful attempts – Sephiroth, for example. Lyla was not another Sephiroth; in fact, she was the exact opposite. Still no more than a baby, she was labeled a failed prototype thanks to unimpressive genetic makeup, like so many subjects before her. Dr. Kenneth Caraway, one of Shinra’s most dedicated scientists at the time and one of the people most heavily involved in the current project, couldn’t help feeling something akin to pity when he was informed that the most recent specimen was going to go the way of the other failures before her: either reduced to a guinea pig or ultimately destroyed and erased from the files. After a few appeals, he was able to persuade the rest of the team involved to let him remove the child from the lab, citing her as a “pet project” in order to sway them. It was eventually permitted, and while he stayed on with Shinra’s science department, he transferred to Junon shortly thereafter.
Dr. Caraway never married, but raised the subject as his own child. The experience had given him just a little more respect for life after so many years of tinkering with bio-engineering in Shinra’s labs. He suddenly shied away from his previous field of expertise and dedicated himself to computer research rather than the hands-on variety. He never married, but raised his daughter to believe that her mother had passed away when she was an infant. While he never told her of her origins, this was never done out of malice, but out of respect. Life, he had decided, was the same for all beings, no matter how they were brought into existence. Whether born or created by other means, either way, what you ended up with as a result was a person who deserved nothing more than to live their life the way anyone else would. He followed this credo to the letter as Lyla grew up, going through school like any other child would have, and later continuing on to Junon University with an interest in science that had been passed down to her by her father. Caraway found that she had become both his child and his own pet project, an unobtrusive experiment in seeing whether or not someone born by unconventional means could still continue on like anyone else. So far, his hypothesis has been answered with a resounding “yes.”
All but born into the field, Lyla has decided to follow in her father’s footsteps in the field of science, though she feels that she’s nowhere near the genius she perceives him to be. She simply has a keen interest in the field and a passion for the study of life, two things that lend themselves well to her chosen profession. Lyla has only recently earned her doctorate and would have taken up a position in Shinra’s Research and Development program, having spent a long internship there just before the start of the Meteor Crisis -- except for the fact that Shinra fell to pieces. She has an especial interest in the work of Dr. Hojo, though she seems more interested in cleaning up or rehabilitating any remnants of his past experiments.
APPEARANCE: Lyla is of fairly average height for a woman, standing at 5’6” without aid. Her build is mostly average as well, though her limbs are roped with lean muscle – nothing particularly spectacular, but enough to show that she has made efforts to keep herself in fighting shape. She keeps her straight, chestnut-brown hair long, often tied up messily or pulled halfway back to keep it out of her blue eyes. It is a bit shorter in the front, implying that she had bangs recently but has started to let them grow out. Otherwise, when left down, her hair falls to just beneath her shoulder blades. While working, she tends to favor slacks or even a skirt and blouse beneath her labcoat, and occasionally wears a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses when working with the lab computers in a pre-emptive attempt to save her eyesight. In her free time or while traveling, she dresses a little more casually, favoring snug pants, tall, zippered boots and a long-sleeved top, occasionally with another, lighter shirt worn underneath. She usually wears a cropped, khaki jacket with the sleeves rolled up when not dressed for the office. (fadingdusk.org/origin/images/carajudd-lylakaiun.jpg)
PERSONALITY: Somewhat reserved and introverted, Lyla is an intellectual by nature. Though she is by no means antisocial, she often preferred the company of books to that of people when she was younger and therefore often finds herself in awkward social situations – she makes a lot of slip-ups and puts her foot in her mouth rather frequently, though her remarks are almost always good-natured. She is hard on herself, being a perfectionist and somewhat self-concious, and has difficulty coming to grips with her own lack of social graces whenever it’s pointed out to her. She is something of a workaholic and has a tendency to be obsessive with a sharp attention to detail.
Lyla thinks fast and is good in a crisis, not to mention persistent, two qualities that go very well together and play into her natural-born stubbornness. That same stubbornness that some people might think is a positive trait can also work against her. Persistence and determination are one thing, but being blindly stubborn is another and can often be a person’s downfall. The ability to think on her feet also means she makes a lot of snap-decisions, not all of which are good. She could stand to slow down and make use of her better judgment from time to time.
ABILITIES: Though the need hasn’t arisen very often in the past, Lyla is fully capable of defending herself if she has to. She spends a decent amount of time keeping up with her own personal training, especially as working in a lab means she doesn’t get much exercise otherwise. She is considered a sound and capable fighter, as she is moderately strong and on the speedy side, though she doesn’t quite measure up to SOLDIER standards. Thanks to her origin, she has excellent stamina and endurance and is reasonably stronger and more agile than your average human, with a great affinity for magic via materia use. Her specialty is close-quarters combat with an emphasis on speed, falling back on magic use when necessary. Because of her willingness to travel for work, she does a lot of work in the field, meaning she’s come up against her share of nasties out there in the world, though so far it’s been nothing life-threatening.
Her acumen should be considered just as valuable, if not more, than her fighting skills. She’s excellent with computers, a thorough researcher, and has a keen eye for detail. She approaches most situations from a scientific angle and has a good head for strategy.
WEAPON: Butterfly Staff – A double-bladed staff/swallow that relies on the user’s speed and accuracy more than physical strength to do damage. (media.giantbomb.com/uploads/2/24656/881392-3254832720_2a673f7c68_large.jpg)
RP SAMPLE: (The following is from a previous game.))
Lyla thoughtfully chewed on the eraser-end of her pencil as she dully stared at the flickering computer monitor in front of her. She did very little handwritten work while in her own little cubicle, but nonetheless she almost always had a pencil on hand, often stuck over her left ear in case she needed it. Most of the time, they wound up getting chewed on rather than written with, a bad habit she needed to break but was perfectly content to let persist for now. Most days, she really enjoyed her job – loved it, even. She didn’t like to make herself sound like a goody-two-shoes bookworm, as she certainly didn’t see herself that way, but there was something to be said for working at a job where you constantly got to learn new things about the way the world around you operated. Biology was a field that was constantly changing and yet constant in so many ways. Yes, it was safe to say that Lyla Caraway loved her job.
Except for today.
It wasn’t that she had been given some unsavory assignment. In fact, quite the opposite. There was nothing to be done. Nothing whatsoever. There wasn’t even any paperwork to sort through or deliver to another office. Whatever was going on in the main lab that day had been branded “top secret,” only Professor Hojo and the staff members he trusted as his “nearest and dearest” were allowed in that day. Lyla wasn’t sure what he was trying to keep the lower ranks from seeing or hearing about, but the longer she was shut out, the more she wanted to know. She had already bent the rules and done a little snooping through the computer, trying to patch into Hojo’s own files to see if she could get a little glimpse that might satiate her curiosity, but everything was locked up tight.
She sighed and leaned back in her chair, giving up on finding any amusement in her email or in the reports she had been reviewing earlier that week. No work to do, no incoming field assignments… nothing. The air in the office was so dead and still, broken up by nothing but the bland hum of computers. She was just starting to become accustomed to the faint, steady buzzing when she heard footsteps coming to a stop just outside the “door” of her cubicle. She scrambled to get to her feet, almost desperate to receive whatever assignment might have been brought to her, but was sorely disappointed to look up and see another lab aid, a young man who looked just as bored as she felt.
“… uh. Hey. Lyla. There’s a fresh pot of coffee in the break room. All the aids are going to stand around and try to look important for awhile, maybe break up all the silence with some small talk. All the head cheeses are busy anyway, no one will care we’re not working.”
Oh. Not an assignment. Damn.
“No work to do, anyway,” Lyla replied, letting a second sigh pass her lips. “… so. Break room. … are Turner and Novak going to try taking shots of creamer again to see who gets sick first?”
“Probably. It could be good times. Better than sitting around at our computers and making ourselves go blind, right?”
“… we’ll write it off as research,” Lyla found herself agreeing, smirking as she got to her feet and joined the other aid at the door before following him in the direction of the break room. Alright, so it wasn’t exactly productive, but it was better than doing nothing at all. Besides. She still had money riding on Turner to throw up first from the week before. This was sure to be a quick and easy 100 gil.