<span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: arial black;">Character</span><br/><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Talia Kastuev<br/><strong>Sex:</strong>Female<br/><strong>Age:</strong>27<br/><strong>BattleMech:</strong>Raven X<br/><strong>Homeworld:</strong>Tsingtao<br/><strong>Original Faction:</strong>Capellan Confederation<br/><br/><strong>Description:</strong>Born to a business owner and a housewife, Talia somehow managed to look nothing like her parents. Her skin has a slight olive tint to it, highlighting her topaz blue eyes, and her black hair flows smoothly to shoulder length. She's short, about 5' 6" though muscle from her years of military work has given her a defined, though not bulky silhouette.<br/><br/>Talia's clothing shows hard, outdoors use. Her favorite jacket can always be found on her, a worn brown leather affair with white sheep's wool lining the interior, and she sports a pair of bluejeans strung by a rugged leather belt with a light tan shirt tucked into her jeans. A treated leather satchel is slung across her body to hold a few oddments she may need (like a bola), but more importantly it serves to conceal the bulk of the side-arm, handcuffs, and stun baton she keeps on her belt--tools she'd feel naked without after her years as a bounty hunter. She finishes off the rugged-girl look with a pair of brown leather boots, the cuffs of her pants tucked into them.<br/><br/><strong>Background:</strong>Talia's parents are both citizens of the Capellan Confederation, her father a businessman running a string of small shops in her home town of Jerais Springs, and her mother's a house wife dedicating herself to artistic pursuits. Her home town itself is nestled into a northern mountain range in Tsingtao, and though it doesn't have significant military importance, it does station a small military garrison to protect the wealthy and high ranking visitors to the town's key feature: A resort located high into the snowy peaks of the mountain range and built around a series of natural hot springs bearing the town's name.<br/><br/>Talia herself was a member of the Jerais garrison, a Raven pilot of decent skill but no actual renown. Due to the nature of the garrison, the most common grunt duty for the pilots involved training exercises to 'pound the fluff' and fire munitions at the slopes to trigger controlled avalanches, thereby preventing those same avalanches from occurring when resort-goers are busy beneath them. It wasn't uncommon for Talia to spend days with just her Raven for company out in the wilderness, patrolling the uninhabited and harsh ranges for threats nobody really expected since the retreat of the 59th nearly a hundred years ago.<br/><br/>Unfortunately the good times could only roll for so long. After four years of a rather happy life, disaster struck. General Pila Chen, a high ranking official in the CCAF, was taking a bit of R&R at the resort. General Chen had a reputation for "creative" use of mercenary forces in the field, and an aggrieved party decided to discuss matters of remuneration with her using the business end of a sniper outfitted AC/2 while the good general was enjoying some sauna time. Heads had to roll. The General's location in the city, her location in the sauna, access to the cliff face... it all screamed of collusion and bribery in the local Garrison, but who and how many traitors there were was not known. Without enough evidence for a proper execution, the CCAF instead took all those garrison members who were the most likely culprits and dishonorably discharged them, stripping them or their ranks, medals, and their citizenship. For Talia, it also stripped her of her family; her father and mother disowned her to prevent the taint of their daughter's dishonor from harming her father's business.<br/><br/>Destitute, dishonored, disowned, and a freshly minted member of the servitor class, Talia had very few options available to her. She used her savings to leave her home world and instead leveraged her wilderness, tracking, and military training to pursue a career as a bounty hunter. She spent a year wrangling the low life across several successor states, and racked up enough of a head count to draw the attention of the Caged Birds, a lance of bounty hunter mech pilots specializing in targets with more heavily armored heads than the average fare. It turns out the Caged Birds recently had a 'retirement' in their ranks: A pilot of a lance-owned Raven X with the callsign Duck, had taken a dirt nap after a lucky shot through the mech's canopy. Talia's experience piloting Ravens, as well as her proven skill at tracking targets, got her the job.<br/><br/>The Caged birds marked a new high point in Talia's life, and the good times rolled again. The advantage of being the hunters, of being able to choose when and where to take targets and whether to take them in the cockpit or outside it, made piloting an expensive battlemech like the Raven X affordable, maybe even profitable. The sting of dishonor, of the loss of family and belonging, served to temper Talia. The girl who had once been a mediocre pilot had a focus etched from the acid of loss that made her a cunning and powerful foe who quickly outpaced her lance mates in skill.<br/><br/>Karma is a cruel mistress, however, and after only a short period of riding with her posse, Talia once again had to lose almost everything. The group was on the heels of a pirate with a nice bounty on his head, and followed him into a canyon... where an ambush waited. With the Caged Birds pinned, the pirate and his friends were firing from atop the canyon walls. She and her lance mates did their best to survive but it wasn't long before she was the only one left standing. As a last ditch effort she emptied her salvos into the canyon walls and ran, giving her dead comrades a burial, along with their attackers.<br/><br/>The loss was crushing. The Caged Birds had lost their leader and almost all its fighting force. The remaining crew, the dropship crew, and the sole mech pilot divided the remaining assets and parted ways. Talia took her chunk of the parting assets--spare mech parts, munitions, cash, the Duck, and the renewed sting of loss--and moved on.<br/><br/><strong>Personality:</strong>Talia's wounds are still pretty raw. During her time with the Caged Birds, Talia had begun to recover from her losses at Tsingtao. After the destruction of the Caged Birds, however, she's once again gone dark, though she can wear a smile for those around her well enough to fool most people. Her every shot of vodka is dedicated to honoring the members of her old lance, but she's trying to move on.<br/><br/>In the pilot's seat, Talia is creative, using terrain advantage to its utmost and putting her experience manipulating the terrain to deadly use. The ground around Talia is never stable enough for those she faces. There's an edge to how she fights that any seasoned pilot can pick up on... She moves and acts with the no-nonsense efficiency of a carnivore, any hesitation or compassion she once had was burned away by the harsh lessons of life.<br/><br/><strong>Specialty Skills:</strong>Talia is a trained and capable bounty hunter with basic hand to hand subdual skills, tracking skills, etcetera. She maintains her bounty hunter license even after the Caged Birds are gone, even if she's not always actively tracking. She's a skilled long term survivalist, capable of hunting her own food, basic wilderness medical skills, and other essential outdoors skills. She's also capable of maintaining a battlemech out in the wilds, allowing her to keep the Duck going for much longer than it otherwise would without proper hanger for service.<br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: arial black;">BattleMech </span><br/><br/><div class="floatright">(http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/b/bf/Raven_3X.jpg.jpg)</div><strong>Chassis:</strong>Raven<br/><strong>Model:</strong>Raven X<br/><strong>Weight Class:</strong>Light<br/><strong>Callsign:</strong>Duck<br/><strong>Description:</strong>Painted loosely like a mallard duck, this mech has an emerald green head and dull yellow 'beak' on a dark brown body. The side of its laser pod is decorated with a black duck silhouette in front of a bird cage. The paint job itself is rather subdued, increasing the difficulty of seeing it in most situations except for all-pastel cities, but in forested settings it really fails to stand out. In especially difficult climes, Talia is not above painting the hardened enamel paint of the Duck with a latex outer layer for better concealment.<br/><br/><strong>Weapons:</strong>MRM-20 (1 ton ammo), 2 Medium X-Pulse Lasers<br/><br/><strong>Equipment:</strong>Bloodhound Active Probe, Angel ECM Suite, Apollo FCS, Laser AMS, Composite Internal Structure, XL Gyro, 5 tons Ferro-Fibrous Armor, 10 double heat sinks, CASE<br/><br/><strong>Background:</strong>Talia knows of two previous owners of the Duck, both members of the caged birds. The one before her died from a ballistic slug through the canopy. The one before that apparently died after drinking one too many beers and trying to prove that you can actually survive re-entry in the wheel compartment of a dropship. Talia isn't quite sure about either story.