Anneka Stojespal (Dropped)
World: Overview
Agent Anneka Stojespal is a member of SHIELD, a counter-terrorist division of her world's national government, tasked to explore as well as protect the World Tree from its many threats. As a field agent and pilot she draws on her investigative skills, marksmanship, and ace piloting to navigate the worlds around her. Fierce and focused, she can come off harshly, but under the badge she's a tormented soul who finds purpose in protecting others. She's lived a lonely life burdened by the baggage of her troubled past, and is slowly learning how to withdraw from her self-imposed shell. In battle she wields firearms loaded with potent sedatives, and she's also a skilled pilot of quinjets, an armed light transport fast as a jet and agile as a helicopter.
Perks
Agency Resources: Anneka can requisition mundane armour, weaponry, supplies, and lodgings.
SHIELD has chosen to preemptively explore the World Tree, and Anneka is one of the many agents chosen to spearhead these efforts. As such she has access to a variety of agency resources: Armour (anti-ballistic vests), weaponry (non-lethal dendrotoxin rounds), and vehicles (cars, trucks, motorcycles, quinjets). Most of the time she can get away with requisitioning this kind of equipment. She also has access to agency-owned facilities around her world where she can rest and recuperate.
Marksmanship: Anneka is trained to use and carries agency-issued firearms and sedative rounds.
Field agents are expected to protect themselves and others. To this end, Anneka is a better shot with a pistol than one might expect. She may be missing an eye, but she's learned how to compensate imperfectly for her handicap, and knows how to avoid accidents. Most times she can expect to hold her own against non-Tiered threats. In battle she relies on agency-issued firearms loaded with non-lethal ammunition. These special rounds, injected with a potent dendrotoxin, are designed to take mundane targets down without killing them. Nighty night!
Miscellaneous Skills: Anneka is bilingual and a professionally trained musician.
Though it was inconvenient to learn, Anneka taught herself English over the years, and speaks it more fluently than she lets on. She speaks fluent Russian as her first language. Anneka can also play the trumpet at a professional level; classically trained, with an academic interest in American jazz, learning to play blues so pure as to break the heart. It may not serve a practical purpose but it does let her blow off steam.
Piloting: Anneka is an expert pilot of supersonic aircraft. Her specialty is quinjets.
With decades of experience, Agent Stojespal is a superb pilot. Her specialty was originally supersonic fighters, specifically prototypes, but her preference now are quinjets: Futuristic but standard transport jets that move like a helicopter, armed with basic defenses. She's taught herself how to use them to their full potential even in the very worst of situations. Hypothetically, she can pilot foreign aircraft, as long as they're similar to earth-normal aircraft, helicopters, or quinjets.
Quinjet: Anneka flies a prototype jet with AI that moves like a helicopter.
Quinjets are light transport jets used by SHIELD to ferry agents and cargo around the world. They combine the speed of a supersonic jet with the agility of a helicopter, landing and taking off vertically. Most quinjets are fitted with minimal defenses. Their cargo space can cover an average-sized vehicle, a handful of agents and their cargo, or about two pallets' worth of junk. Anneka's assigned quinjet, the Valkyrie, is a special prototype that categorically outperforms standard quinjet models. Its improvements include more diverse weaponry, heavier armour, advanced engines, and an onboard artificial intelligence. (See NPC: Valkyrie)
Stubbornness: Anneka survives what would kill others by sheer stubbornness.
Blessed with naturally strong constitution, Anneka has survived trauma that should have killed a lesser woman. Not only has she survived but she's rehabilitated herself, driven by sheer willpower. This mulishness is a handy survival skill. It can keep her going when the odds are too bleak to do the math. She can try to power past the pain, at least for a little while. She'll fall over, afterward, but her stubborn streak can keep her alive through lethal situations.
NPCs
Valkyrie< D-Tier >: Anneka's quinjet carries an AI that can fly itself, attack, learn, and snark.
The Valkyrie is a unique prototype quinjet and has no equal within SHIELD's fleet. Its improvements include greater agility, speed, and responsiveness. Driven by a cutting-edge AI cooked up between SHIELD and Stark Industries, "Val" is designed to act with autonomy and support human agents. Val can fly with machine-precision, use weaponry, and maintain an uplink with agency databases. Anneka wears a wristband that lets her communicate remotely with Val. Through it Val can monitor Anneka's vital signs and call for help if Anneka gets into trouble.
Complications
Artificial Unintelligence: Anneka doesn't like or trust artificial intelligences. Not even allies.
Not too many things put Anneka on her guard as much as machines that think. Even the idea of artificial intelligence unsettles her. Past instances of AIs gone horribly wrong have negatively coloured Anneka's perception of all AIs. She dislikes and distrusts Val, her AI co-pilot, even though she works with it on a daily basis. Forced cooperation on the clock isn't enough to hide her hostility, though, and cooperating with foreign AIs may carry a whiff of malicious compliance. Choices between AIs or humans inevitably bias towards humanity.
Depth Perception: Anneka lost an eye years ago; her depth perception is permanently compromised.
Nearly burning to death in a plane crash fourteen years ago, Anneka ultimately lost her right eye. She's taught herself to compensate by relying on instinct and instrumentation, making herself a legend among agency pilots, but there are still things she can't do. On the ground she can't judge distances well, tending to trip a lot and come off as clumsier than she really is. Anneka isn't good at catching or throwing either. Stairs are her mortal enemy. She does tend to snap and snarl at offers of help in anticipation of jeers, though, and it's hard for her to avoid that reflex.
The Good of the Many: Anneka is protective of bystander civilians to a self-destructive fault.
Over time, duty and vengeance have burned Anneka out into a shell of her former self. Her sense of self-worth has been warped past the point of no return. She'll be one of the first to sacrifice herself for the sake of duty and protecting the innocent, particularly if no one else is. This unfortunately leads to a repeating cycle of sacrifice, rescue, recuperation, superior agents yelling at her not to do it again, and Anneka doing it again.
Pyrophobe: Having burnt alive, Anneka has a crippling, incapacitating fear of fire.
Many years ago Anneka's plane was sabotaged by HYDRA, a terrorist organisation, and crashed spectacularly. She almost burnt to death in the wreckage before crews could rescue her, and since then, she's developed a phobic-level fear of fire. Fourteen years later she still has vivid nightmares of burning alive. Anything bigger than a lighter can cause problems. An uncontrolled blaze inflicts such psychological trauma that she can't function. All she can do is run. Even if she isn't actually injured, the threat of fire is incredibly stressful and exhausting.
Rough Around the Edges: Anneka is not always a nice or patient person. It can bother people.
Fellow agents accept her eccentricities, but strangers might not like Anneka's abrasive personality so much. Her mannerisms can by turns be brusque, curt, impatient; she suffers no fools, easily frustrated by impunctuality. Once riled up she can come off as high-maintenance and hard to soothe. Anneka's spent so many years pushing people away for her own safety that she's forgotten how to stop.
Weirdness Junkie: The weirdness of the World Tree is a dangerously distracting novelty to Anneka.
The World Tree in all its glorious weirdness hasn't lost any of the novelty factor for Anneka. In fact, it's so captivating that she's often driven to seek out new experiences, places, people, and things. It's possible for her to get caught up in the moment and forget her orders or others' expectations to pursue the new and the novel. It may be annoying to allies, if not potentially dangerous to Anneka herself, and can make her seem flighty.
Recent Scenes
| ID | Title | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 1114 | Livin' It Up | Dec 20 2022 |
| 1113 | 'Saka Secret Santa | Dec 16 2022 |
| 1112 | Placeholder Title | Dec 14 2022 |
| 1111 | The Best Little Tea Shop In Night City | Dec 11 2022 |
| 1110 | Capture at all costs | Dec 09 2022 |
| 1108 | You've Got Moxie | Dec 06 2022 |
| 1104 | The Mad Ripper | Nov 30 2022 |
| 1095 | I Spy With My Little Eye | Nov 07 2022 |
| 1088 | The Warden: Asteroid Insertion | Oct 11 2022 |
| 1087 | Class One Hauntening | Oct 09 2022 |
Cutscenes
| Title | Date |
|---|---|
| Marching Orders | Mar 19 2022 |
| Paranormal Encounters I | May 14 2022 |
| Proof in the Pudding | Jul 24 2022 |