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| characters:player:gamina [2023/11/21 20:49] – created gamina | characters:player:gamina [2023/12/12 08:41] (current) – [Gamina] gamina |
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| **Character Bio:** | {{472b0c51-fca3-4fc4-963f-b1f0d55b64ba.png }} |
| | ====Gamina==== |
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| **Gamina** is a short, slight catgirl of 20 or so (but who can really say, with catgirls?) with light brown hair, tawny fur, and big green eyes. | **Background:** She hails from a place that many Islanders regard as mythical called "Kentucky". She suspects that her mother and current boyfriend ("Bobby") are implicated somehow in the events that caused her arrival upon the Island. After many adventures as a human, in the course of which she founded the TALES clan, she found herself transformed into a kittymorph of generally human proportions but with feline abilities (and limitations) and characteristics. |
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| **Her Backstory** | **Significant plot summary:** Gamina's passion for storytelling, aside from the impetus for founding the TALES clan, led her to explore Island places extensively. In the course of her explorations she met a shapeshifter named WolphStrykes. They eventually married and started a glassblowing and papermaking enterprise based near Pleasantville. She refurbished a drinking hole, the Red Bar, near NewHome, but has very little to do with running it. Likewise, she renovated an abandoned houseboat then turned it over to John Keel as a writer's retreat. |
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| Islanders have a term they use: the //Mainland//. It's a place, sure... but by extension the word often refers to their former lives before being deposited ignominiously on the Island (Mainland; Island; there's a certain //landed// symmetry at play, which has little to do with actual landmasses) ...speaking solely, of course, of those Islanders who can remember anything of their lives pre-Island, to say nothing of those who claim to have always been on the Island... or those who attest a provenance from someplace at an altogether further remove from either Island or Mainland. | **Personality:** Inquisitive. Impulsive. Mischievous. Compassionate. Likes to make things. Prone to starting endeavours; less prone to finishing them. As a cat, she has embraced her hunting instincts. |
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| Gamina has revealed little, and to very few, about her Mainland existence; only that it involves a thing called "a trailer park" in a place which many Islanders regard as mythical (and Mina encourages this regard) called Kentucky. | **Apparent characteristics:** A short, slight catgirl of 20 or so (but who can really say, with catgirls?) with light brown hair, tawny fur, and big green eyes. |
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| What little may be gleaned about this subject comes by way of observing her habit of placing herself in front of one of the Network's ubiquitous automated cameras and speaking into it, thus sending a "video letter" to her mother (never named) who, she claims, watches the reality TV show that is the Island "constantly." | **Skills:** With WolphStrykes, she uses the papermaking and glassblowing craft skills she dabbled in at school on the mainland. As a cat, she has very quick reflexes and acrobatic abilities. (Being a cat enabled her to eventually get over her lifelong fear of heights.) |
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| Sometimes mentioned, among her not-infrequent less-than-complimentary characterizations of her mother, is someone named "Bobby" who, it may be inferred, is her mother's sometimes live-in male companion, or the latest in a long string of them. | For her full story, see her **Island Bio**. |
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| It may be further inferred that Gamina's presence on Improbable Island has something directly to do with her mother and Bobby, the nature of which is never made clear. The only clue is offered in the form of Mina's speculation as to whether her mother and Bobby have "already spent all the money yet?" Whatever history or frictions may persist between Mina and her mother, her sign-off at the close of her video "letters" is invariably: "[sigh] I love you, Mom. Fuck you, Bobby." ...usually delivered with a note of scorn and an accompanying hand gesture. | |
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| Of Gamina's life since her arrival on the Island, more is known, mostly from her own journal entries (and thus subject to embellishment), including some personal history. Her name, for instance, is a throwback to the name or nickname of one of her ancestors, referred to, not without some mystery and a note of scandal, by the rest of the family only as "the gamine." As such appellations become assimilated often without regard to or even knowledge of their meaning, the name was passed down and eventually conferred upon Gamina. It is doubtful that her mother has any clue as to the word's origin or meaning, though if she had she would probably think it appropriate. Then, as now, the name is often shortened to "Mina." | |
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| As for her family name: it came as a shock (and truth be told, a bit of a relief) to the girl when she learned that her mother's companion of the moment was not her biological father. Her only knowledge of her true father is that his name was Wulf, and of this she is certain not even of the spelling. What she was certain of was that she wanted nothing to do with any of her mother's lovers, including their names. Having grown up enamored of faraway places, and in particular Iceland, Mina adopted her unknown father's name as a patronymic, eventually even having it legally changed (a source of some rather heated exchanges with her mother, who regarded it as a waste of money better spent on recreational substances). Consequently, her "real" name, in every sense of the term, is Wulfsdottir, a name that she bears with pride. (She regards it as more prophetic than merely coincidental that Icelanders' spelling of their country's name is Island.) | |
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| Personal history aside, Mina's Island history, up to a point, followed the usual pattern: dumped naked out of a plane, chivvied by unlikely and often outrageous entities, etc.; lather, rinse, repeat. The girl managed to survive and even acquire some skills. After a brief and entirely unsuccessful career as an assassin for one of the Island's clans (she proved no good as a killer, though she was found to possess certain natural proclivities at seduction), and casting around for something better to do, she met and befriended, and eventually fell in love with a lonely sandcat kittymorph, a poet named Eggpie (nicknamed Keesh by her, for obvious reasons). With his encouragement, Mina founded the TALES clan, and together they established clan headquarters (The Big Book of TALES) on the eastern shores of the Island. | |
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| They were happy for a time, and circumnavigated the Island together, having many adventures. At one point, Eggpie healed her of a grievous chest wound; though he was implicated in the cause of it, his improbability-based skills restored her heart, though in changed form. For some time thereafter, she bore an open window in her chest, through which her beating heart was plainly visible. She, thinking others would find this offputting, hid it away, speaking of it only when circumstances happened to reveal it. (Over time, her body has assimilated the window, and it is no longer visible except under certain conditions.) | |
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| But Eggpie changed over time, becoming all but unrecognizable, and his behavior erratic. After his eventual disappearance, and even with the purpose derived from her clan activities, Mina was once again despondent and at loose ends. One bright spot was her friendship with a young woman named Rickles (but whom Mina knew as Ruth). Ruth introduced her to a formidable martial arts trainer named Cassandra, and before her eventual disappearance, bestowed upon Mina a weapon she called a Gamma Beacon (in the form of a collapsible staff capable of delivering a lethal but extremely localized explosive burst of gamma radiation, or simply useful as a bo staff) which she now carries in a holster strapped to her thigh. | |
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| Following the disappearances of both Eggpie and Ruth, Gamina was at a low point; even her clan activities were in a slump. She became reckless and nihilistic, taking ill-considered risks and wandering in the jungle for weeks at a time. It was at this time, during a visit to Improbable Central that Mina engaged in a game of chance with a joker, and as a result of a poorly-worded losing bet, her heart was physically extracted from her chest. Unexpectedly, this did not result in her death, though she existed in a quantum-state limbo for an unknown period of time, at the end of which the Improbability Drive chose, as it often does with the Island's inhabitants, to intervene and restore her. | |
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| With her renewed perspective, Gamina once again plunged into explorations and clan work, gaining a circle of friends to whom she remains fiercely loyal. The most momentous of these meetings was with a touch-empath shape-shifter named WolphStrykes, whom Mina first met in the shape of a woman with hazel eyes and a bluejay feather braided into her long hair and, most curiously, a pair of ghostly ephemeral antlers which she would vehemently deny having. Deeply amused by this, and intrigued by the woman in general, Gamina embarked with Wolphie, as she called her, on a new exploration of the Island, probing the mysteries of previously vanished inhabitants, and slowly getting to know one another. It was chiefly during their explorations of a mysterious hedge maze that they bonded, and eventually chose to be married there. | |
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| As a token of her union with WolphStrykes, Mina wears a wristlet of braided silken cords, the same cords used in the handfasting ritual of their marriage ceremony. Bound into the wristlet is a small stylized replica of the maze carved of boxwood, containing a pair of freshwater pearls that they found there together. | |
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| The tale continues. Chief among Gamina's present-day activities, in addition to her continued clan involvement with TALES, is her partnership with WolphStrykes in a combination glassblowing and papermaking shop named WolphStrykes & Wulfsdottir, Ltd., where they have set up housekeeping immediately south of Pleasantville, with a branch in the outpost of the Order of Saint Raphael, between Pleasantville and AceHigh. | |
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| With each successive encounter with the Improbability Drive, Gamina has taken on slightly more feline characteristics... until, perhaps inevitably, this kittenish human girl returns from an encounter with the Drive covered in tawny fur, with whiskers, vertical pupils, pointed ears, retractable claws, and a tail she likes to thrash. She is bemused by these changes, but remembers life as a human. | |
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| Accordingly, the girl has discarded her Non-Newtonian Kevlar Catsuit of form-fitting combat armor, but out of fondness for it, she keeps it at home like a teddy bear or a pet. | |
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| Gamina sometimes wears a close-fitting choker or collar with a tiny bell on it that goes Ting! and a single tusk of an Occam's Razorback on a thong around her neck. Somewhere on her body, under the fur, is a tattoo of a rose the color of the ocean after a thunderstorm. But unless you get to know her very well (or if you were present during the wedding ceremony, in which she and Wolphie took part in the nude), you may not ever see it. | |
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| .:. | .:. |
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| OOC Note: | |
| This narrator is responsible for the characters: | This narrator is responsible for the characters: |
| * Gamina Wulfsdottir | * [[characters:player:gamina|Gamina Wulfsdottir]] |
| * John "Even" Keel | * [[characters:player:john_even_keel|John "Even" Keel]] |
| * Sweepy Thyme | * [[characters:player:sweepy|Sweepy Thyme]] |
| * Someone | * [[characters:player:Someone]] |
| * Whom It May Concern | * [[characters:player:whom_may_concern|Whom It May Concern]] |
| * Gi Normus | * [[characters:player:gi_normus|Gi Normus]] |
| * Will O' Wisp | * [[characters:player:will_o_wisp|Will O' Wisp]] |
| * and Tanya Hyde, squat manager of Tanner's Skinnery | * and [[characters:player:tanya_hyde|Tanya Hyde]], squat manager of [[places:player:tanners_skinnery|Tanner's Skinnery]] |