BIO: River Tam

[rivertam]

RIVER TAM

CAN KILL YOU WITH HER BRAIN LILALBATROSS UNDERWORLD ANGEL PSL EXTRAS PB: Summer Glau

River Tam

"You know, you ain't quite right." / "It's the popular theory."

stats

NAME: River Tam

FANDOM: Firefly / Serenity

PB: Summer Glau

NICKNAMES: Mei Mei, Darling, Albatross

SPECIES: Enhanced Human

HEIGHT: 5'5" // 1.66m

BIRTHDAY: March 6, 2500

SEXUALITY: Heterosexual as far as she knows

HAIR: Brown

AGE: 17 / 18

JOURNAL:

EYES: Brown

CANON POINT: Usually post film, not including comics

appearance

River is a young girl who is somewhat small for her age, and extremely slender, sometimes bordering on underweight. She often has an almost frail appearance, in fact. She has long, brown hair that is not perfectly straight, though that is simply from a lack of desire to brush out the knots more often than not. River has very perceptive eyes, which are constantly looking around her, searching for more information, and moves as a dancer through the world with an extreme and delicate grace. Her clothing of choice include various childish sundresses and combat boots.

skills

INTELLIGENCE: River's intelligence grants her a heightened control over concepts like logic and intuition that borders on the level of psychic, a skill which was heightened by her time at the Academy. In addition to that, she is a quick learner and fascinated by the world around her - new skills come as easily to her as breathing does to the average individual. 

MIND READING: She can "read minds", though has little control over the ability, and has to focus and practice in order to glean any real information.

COMBAT SKILLS: She has extensive combat training from her time at the Academy built into her muscle memory, which makes her a force to be reckoned with during any battle that she chooses (or is allowed) to participate in.

history

"The sun came out, and I walked on my feet and heard with my ears. I hate the bits, the bits that stay down and I work, I f-function like I'm a girl. I hate it because I know it'll go away! The sun grows dark and chaos has come again. It's... fluids. What am I?"

River Tam was always an extraordinarily gifted child, who excelled at everything she did. There was nothing that didn't come as easily to her as breathing did to everyone else, be it something as intellectually complex as astrophysics or something as physically challenging as dance.

Her parents enrolled her in the most challenging school program they could find - an institution known simply as The Academy. The exact goal of this institution is unknown, but they appear to be training assassins, putting the strongest, brightest minds of the world through extensive testing and complicated surgeries in order to forge the perfect weapons. Though letters were guarded carefully to keep the weapons in the institution, River managed to send her brother, Simon a coded letter indicating that she was in trouble. With a lot of planning and exchanging of money, Simon sacrificed a career in medicine in order to break River out of the institution and the two set off as fugitives into the unknown, on the run from the Alliance government.

They joined up with a smuggler's vessel on the Firefly class transport ship Serenity, intending only to stay with them as far as their next stop. But when the Alliance caught up with the ship, a confrontation resulted in Captain Mal Reynolds making the decision to run from the Alliance and take River and Simon under his care.

Several months after coming aboard Serenity, it was discovered that while at the Academy, River had gleaned several things that the government didn't want her knowing. An Operative of the Government was hired to hunt her down, and he utilized several trigger words implanted into her brain in order to discover her location. This had the unfortunate side-effect of bringing to mind several other visions, and River led the crew of Serenity to the biggest cover-up in Alliance history (or at least - that's what they thought at the time): The Miranda Incident. Unable to let such a thing lie, Malcolm Reynolds took it upon himself to reveal to the world this horrible injustice. 

The reveal of this secret caused a great weight to be lifted off of River's shoulders, and a great deal of her sanity seemed to be restored because of it. She started to become more of a use to the crew of Serenity, even going so far as to learning how to fly the ship. In recent years, she often has greater periods of lucidity than insanity, though it varies day by day.

River's experience with the Academy causes her to be quite unstable. She is prone to strange moments of uncertainty, during which she may perform actions and be unclear of the reason for them. She has some difficulty communicating and expressing herself. And she feels everything, all emotions. She cannot repress them. Her intelligence also gives her a strange insight to the world around her that borders on psychic. In spite of this, she is quite kindhearted and loving, and views the world with a childlike innocence and fascination. She can be very sweet... when she chooses to be.

GAME: DauphineMare / Riverfell and Dauphinmare

The characters were drawn together to aid in the battle between Chaos and Order. The characters were pawns in a game played by the Powers, though the rules are always changing.

GAME: Island House

The year is 2365, and the United Academy of Science has developed the ability to travel through time - and the knowledge of alternate dimensions and timelines. Two overly ambitious men, Josef Sommer and Erik Lehrer, have banded together to create a social experiment.

For two years, the two men worked together on outfitting a house on a foggy island. Cameras and two-way mirrors were installed, secret passageways were created. Precautions were taken against most known forms of mutation and magic. The island was isolated, miles from any other land form, in the southern area of the Arctic Ocean, near Europe.

Once they thought the house was fit, they began to import people from different times and places and realities. The new residents of the house would wake up in a strange room, often decorated in a style similar to the norm for their time and culture - but still not their room. No explanation would be given as to why they were here, or even where 'here' is.

They were left to fend for themselves, to sink or swim among the other residents of the house.

GAME: Escape Mechanism

Not so very long ago, the Powers that Be decided it was time to decide which force should be ruling the Multiverse: the force of Order and light, or the force of Chaos and darkness. So the Powers set up two worlds inside of two bubbles, and picked their chosen representatives from various realities and points in time. Time rolled on, but after only three and a half weeks, they decided the forces were not balanced. That the pawns, the players in their cosmic war, were not equally matched. So they re-evaluated the people they'd chosen, shuffling some into the other bubble. They realized too late that some people had formed bonds in the short time they'd been in these worlds between worlds, nearly unbreakable bonds, and they would not be swayed so easy to their newly chosen side.And so, on midnight of the twenty-fourth day of the war, the Powers that Be sent most of their chosen warriors and catalysts to a new reality, merging the two existing bubbles. They have decided to start drawing in more people, letting bonds form with no barriers between the sides. Chaos' warriors are mingling with Order's chosen, and new people are being brought in on the whims of the Powers.

GAME: Ipswich RPG

Returning from his three year stint in Hell, Chase is pissed. He’s not alone, either – in his epic escape from Hell, he managed to rift time and space, opening gaps to other worlds … and letting people from all across time, space, and reality into Ipswich.

GAME: In Darkness

They’d started their ‘social experiments’ a quarter of a century ago, give or take. First it was locals, volunteers, and then ... they weren’t volunteers, but people that the Heads thought would be good candidates. In 2032, they developed the technology to rift space and time, and as they honed the technique to pinpoint characteristic held by people across realities. 

GAME: Beyond the Black

Miranda wasn't the first, last, or only cover-up the Alliance was involved in ...

GAME: Chaos in NY

The magician Horvath - in his attempt to return Morgana to the world - accidentally created a hole in spacetime through which other individuals fell through into modern day New York. These individuals were brought into the care and safety of the other magicians - some taking on the side of Morgana, and others championing Merlin.

GAME: Recruited!

Same story, different day. Individuals from across time and space are being recruited to fight in a war. This time, they're divided into categories that best suit them - everything from brute force, to stealth, to torture. A mandatory recruitment period exists, but at the end of the mission individuals are free to either return home none the wiser of their recruitment, or accept another mission. And so the cycle goes on.

GAME: House of Many Doors

One day, they opened a door and stepped through to find a room they weren't expecting, in a large mansion in a world that they'd never heard of. The door to their world closed behind them, but that's okay - there were plenty more doors to other worlds to open, and lots of places to explore. Usually they could get back to the mansion, but the door back home was harder to find...

GAME: Underworld Angel

Morality comes in shades of grey, and none know it quite so well as the Alliance. Exposed for their crimes, they curl up to lick wounds and regroup. Humanity is still in desperate need of betterment, and those who don't leave the establishment in disgust after the origin of Reavers is leaked unite to rebuild a better, more elaborate project. What better way to skirt by the principles of morality than by choosing test subjects who technically shouldn't even exist?

Nobody knows for certain just how the technology was acquired, but cleverly reverse-engineered alien - some might say, Time Lord - tech allowed the same projects responsible for River Tam to continue unscathed. Drawing people from other points in time within parallel universes meant having no family or friends to answer to when those test subjects were harmed during experimentation - and having access to a vast array of natural talents unavailable in humans of their home world.

It worked, initially, but over time the lab rats began to grow discontent. Subjects from the same realities grew closer, patients with similar augmentations began training together in secret, and ultimately the Alliance learned an extremely important lesson: when you mistreat people with incredibly powerful abilities, you will get burned. Those dragged into a world where they never belonged have taken up residence on the once-abandoned planet of Miranda and, with great effort, hijacked the technology used to bend reality. They may not be able to seal the rifts in time and space, but they have been able to prevent the world from collapsing and redirect most rifts to the commandeered planet so newcomers aren't stranded without assistance in a vast, new universe.

Though it took years of war and unfathomable losses, the military compounds which once experimented upon innocent other-worlders have been destroyed. Project: Paradise Lost, the origin of River Tam, has finally seen its last day in the sun and, as far as the 'verse as a whole knows, things have gone quiet on the human augmentation front. Deep in a secret facility, however, Project: Odyssey has taken root - and with it, the Alliance has begun cannibalizing its own military forces, drawing in new recruits who show potential in further experimentation with enhanced powers. Perhaps it's true, what they say: war never changes.

BIO CREDIT