Callie Linder:

Species: Planetouched (Cansin)

Allegiance: None
Religion: Meraist (casual practitioner)
Social Status: 1 (average income M50,000/yr.)

Age: 23 as of 12/21/1999
Eyes: Colors vary at random (see below)
Hair: Wild, matted and poofy, resembling a lion's mane; mouse-brown with gold and red streaks
Height: 175 cm (5'9")

Physical Notes: Beautiful facial features -- large, expressive eyes; unblemished skin; pert nose; high, moderately-defined cheekbones; high, thin eyebrows; and a chin that is pointed without being jutting. Mouth turns up slightly at left corner, giving her a permanently wry or "quirky" expression. Lean, athletic build, with small breasts.

Behavioral Notes: Dresses in random assortments of clothes that never match. Highly extroverted and sexually forward; generally cheery and playful demeanor, but can turn serious in an instant when circumstances demand it. Very fond of cats.

Supernatural Abilities: Chaos aura; entropic shield, 1/day.

Callie Linder is a cansin, a relatively rare type of Plane-touched. Cansins carry a supernatural predisposition towards chaos, but are not particularly aligned with either good or evil. This is almost always the result of a mixture of celestial and fiendish ancestry, as the two bloodlines partially cancel each other out. In Callie's case, her supernatural heritage comes from her father, an Earthbound outsider who was the son of an eladrin and a succubus.

Powers:

Callie's chaos aura, a product of her cansin nature, subtly alters the laws of probability in her vicinity, making weird or unusual events more likely to happen. The effects of this aura are usually beneficial for Callie herself, and she has had many lucky escapes over the years which she attributes to its influence. For those around her, however, the chaos aura is more fickle, bringing favor to some and misfortune to others without any apparent rhyme or reason. The only consistent rule about Callie's aura seems to be that mundane, "normal" events are far less likely in her presence than one would normally expect. Because of this, most of Callie's underworld bosses have explicitly forbidden her from entering their casinoes -- the first time she did so, she caused half of the slot machines to hit jackpots just by walking past them.

The entropic shield is a stronger, more focused use of Callie's powers, and using it drains her chaos aura of most of its potency until she has had several solid hours' sleep. When she summons it, the shield appears around Callie and everything close to her as a field of sparkling pink motes of light. While it is active, the shield deflects any ranged weapon that is targeted at her, causing rocks, arrows and even bullets to veer from their previous courses and head off in random directions. The shield doesn't last for very long -- ten or twenty seconds, at most -- but that's usually enough time for Callie to either disable her attacker or get out of harm's way.

History:

Callie was born out of wedlock, the result of a casual fling between her father and a single woman of meager means. The expense of pregnancy and child-rearing might have bankrupted her, but Callie's mother found refuge in a poor but tightly-knit community on the Street level of Metamor City.

Growing up in the underbelly of the city, where every day was a struggle to make ends meet, Callie learned the somewhat skewed system of ethics that is sometimes found among the very poor; i.e., "stealing is okay as long as you really need it and the other person won't miss it much". She quickly developed a strong set of thieving skills, working to put food on the table by swiping it from the shops and restaurants further up in the city. She also became quite adept at social skills, cajoling or conning those with extra food or money into giving it up.

Despite her impoverished upbringing, Callie was extremely bright and a fast learner. In her teens, she hired out her services to a wide variety of businesses, including magic stores, computer repair shops and swoop dealers, learning more through these odd jobs and internships than many college students in formal schooling programs.

When she was sixteen Callie began working part-time as a "runner" in the Metamor underworld. At first the jobs were simple, consisting mostly of courier work, but Callie's sharp intellect and uncanny knack for getting herself out of trouble soon led the businessmen and crime bosses to entrust her with more important missions. At the behest of one such employer she was apprenticed to Silas Kenning, an aging master runner, at the age of seventeen. Silas took the ample foundation of skills Callie already had and forged her into a focused, capable agent, teaching her the use of firearms, ritual magic, computerized security systems, and even explosives.

Allies and Enemies:

Callie's mother has no idea that she is involved in such a dangerous profession, and Callie does whatever she can to keep it that way. She has used some of her earnings and connections to get her mom a better job and a home in a safer neighborhood, but other than that she tries not to mix her family life with her professional life. Her mother gently nags her from time to time about not coming to visit often enough, but Callie tries to restrict her visits so she won't accidentally reveal her mom's location to anyone who might want revenge against Callie. Callie generally feels that as long as her mother is safe and looked after, everything is basically all right with the world, even if she runs into a spot of trouble now and then.

Callie has, at one time or another, worked for or against most of the factions in Metamor City. Lightbringer liason Janus Starson has a noted dislike for her, thanks to Callie stealing a magical artifact from their custody in order to protect one of her clients. She works well with the Psi Collective, which has a similar disregard for Mundane laws. While she doesn't know very many people in the Collective, and knows almost nothing about its internal structure, she has made a lot of money working for them; in addition to running shipments of psi-drugs between the underground labs and "spooky" cells elsewhere in the city, Callie is occasionally hired to sabotage anti-psi research or steal compromising information from businesses or government offices. Since her appearance is so distinctive, Callie makes extensive use of disguises (both mundane and magical) in performing these missions. Of course, her first tactic is usually to avoid being seen in the first place.

Callie has recently formed a friendship with Will Kerenson, which may well develop into something more serious.