Name: Valora Vedette
Age: 21
Gender: Female
Eye color: Gray
Hair color: Pale Blue
Height: 1.85m / 6'1"
Weight: 72.57kg / 160 lbs
Faction: Independent Soldiers of the Colonies
Appearance:
Though tall enough to look most men straight in the eye as she speaks her mind, Valora falls a bit short of being imposing. Her eyes may be gray and impassive, but her lips are usually turned in a friendly if confident smile. She's quick to shake hands with those delicate, feminine hands of hers ... one might just fail to notice that they were steady as stone and that her handshake was as firm as someone much stronger seeming than her. Her body is trim and fit, without projecting that predatory grace that some people expected from a seasoned fighter. No, rather than dangerous, she seems self assured, in the same way that a lawyer or business woman might stride into a board room holding the contract that would trump the efforts of her rivals.

Valora keeps her pale blue hair cut short, letting it hang straight well above shoulder length, but keeping it well cared for. She can often be found wearing a short violet dress over dark stockings, a slender gold chain around her neck threaded through a charm that looked to be cast from a bullet and engraved with some kind of obscure symmetrical pattern. Over that, she also wears a pershing style cap, and the white and black I.S.C. jacket with it's gold trimming which she leaves open, as well as ankle high white boots with a low, flat heel so that they don't interfere with here movement much. She mostly uses the jacket to conceal the omni-present shoulder holster which she carries one of her personal firearms in instead of the standard side arm.

Personality:
Valora is a fairly simple person in the grand scheme of things. She knows the things that she likes, and so, she chases after them with her best effort. She values camaraderie and always participates in group activities, but she has few actual friends, knowing that circumstances might steal them away in an instant. She doesn't hold grudges, since they interfere with progress, but she makes a point not to show mercy or restraint to an enemy either. In the end, this means that though she's always acting and surrounding herself with people, in a more intimate sense she is exceedingly alone. Ironically enough, this can be quite beneficial for her second favorite past time, gambling, since it allows her to easily find people to play with who she won't feel bad about taking money from.

Valora's true passion, however, is undeniably firearms. An amateur armorer in her own right, she loves the heft, the styling, the graceful firing action, and the lethality of guns to a degree that would make most people uncomfortable. Her love expresses itself through expert marksmanship, as she consistently sets the high scores for target shooting in the I.S.C. and her quick draw is almost beyond the ability for the human eye to track. Beyond her familiarity with them, Valora is an avid collector of small arms, and though she mostly has modern pieces that've been modified for functionality or customized for appearance, she's always itching to get her hands on an antique from the Earth Sphere. In her room she keeps a display case with all the pieces she's managed to gather up so far, including the original "Snub" that started her collection, which was lovingly restored to perfect condition and kept for it's sentimental value alone.

To Valora, fighting is simply the penalty she has to pay for the perks military living grants her. She's all too aware that if she gets sloppy, the enemy won't hesitate to end her life in an instant, so she makes sure to shoot first whenever the opportunity presents itself. If peace were to break out, nothing would make her happier, but as long as there's an enemy between her sights, she'll continue to fight for her own survival, regardless of who threatens her life.

Weakness:
Valora's key personality flaw is probably greed. Though she has principles, they seem to rapidly disappear when matched against cold hard cash, or flat out self immolate when offered an expensive new piece for her collection. She's ruminated aloud in the past that she'd commit high treason for an 1850's era Colt in firing condition. It doesn't help that her taste for gambling follows her away from the card table either, the temptation of a Big Score will always draw her interest, and if the potential pay out is large enough it doesn't particularly matter how long the odds are.

Bio:
Valora Vedetta was born on the streets of Daishin, an unwanted child in a city that could ill afford to support such a person. These days, she can hazily recall that she was bounced from one foster home to another, though she cannot recall the faces of any of those who cared for her, the feeling of leaving something behind haunts her childhood memories with a deep persistence. In time, she remembered that she couldn't take the constant uproots any longer, she escaped from the vehicle taking her to a new home as it sat at a stop light and disappeared into Daishin's city streets to take control of her own life. Wherever there is a society, there are people who fall through it's cracks, people who were replaced by advancing technology, or who lost their homes in a fire and had no family to turn to on the moon, or even people who simply ruined their lives by trying to self medicate their problems away. Valora lived among them, struggling to live from day to day, but amidst all the cold nights and hungry days one moment clearly stands out. The day she found that Lunar Corporation .38 "Snub" automatic, a tiny gun that just felt right as she clutched it in her hands. A lump of cold manufactured steel that meant security, power, and respect. Owning that gun moved her from being a helpless street dweller to a petty crook in record time.

Valora Vedetta was 16 by the time the Earth launched their operation to destroy the Ion Cannon on the moon. She'd worked hard to maintain her own life, but she was doing favors for criminals with better connections with increasing frequency. Guns had become her passion in life, aside from her "baby" the Snub that had freed her from hunger and poverty, she'd acquired roughly a dozen other "children" over the years. It was hard to find antique guns in space, of course, all the chief pieces were on the Earth, and generally already in the hands of collectors who knew their true value, but she had some quality show pieces, and a few bits of old military technology that had gone missing on a shipping manifest somewhere. She drank with friends, killed enemies, and gambled with both as the time went on, generally enjoying her life and the meager protection association with the pseudo-mob provided her. That is, until the Ion Cannon was destroyed.

So many little projects had been in play near that cannon, the center piece of the city in many respects, that when it was destroyed by prototype mobile weapons the balance of power within Daishi's underworld went to hell. In the shadows of recovery efforts, a war was being fought to see if the top dogs could be toppled by those whose operations had been largely untouched since their operations were on the outskirts of town. A lot of markers were being called in, and Valora realized she was going to be pulled into a lot of senseless fighting, and she was hard pressed to figure out who the winner was going to be. She laid low for a while, but it was a temporary solution at best. Either the muscle would come looking for her because they didn't want sympathizers to the old order in town, or they'd come looking because she'd gone to ground instead of taking up arms for the people she owed so much. She had to relocate, but she didn't have enough money to hop a shuttle to one of the Colonies, and stealing enough would send red flags up to anyone keeping an eye out for her. Finally, her chance came with the formation of the I.S.C.

Any records of Valora's past, including whatever her real name might've been, were destroyed in the attack on the Lunar Colony, so of course the background check when she signed up for the I.S.C. turned up nothing curious at all. She figured that waiting out a tour of duty would be no real trick at all, and in the end, she could simply leave her troubles on the moon behind and start her life over elsewhere. She didn't suspect at the time that she'd have a talent for Mobile Suit piloting, or that the I.S.C.s pay was more reliable than she was used to, and not at all bad either. The transition from gun woman to soldier seemed almost natural, and as he second year with the force grows to a close she finds herself debating renewing her service contract.

Sample RP Post:
"So ... are we agreed?" Valora's low, smug voice inquired of the man before her. It was a dark room in the back of a squalid little bar, the kinds of dives she liked the most. The silence was almost palpable, she could taste his worry as easily as the fifth of bourbon she'd put down earlier. "Baron" Marcus Struger wasn't at all used to losing, so how this stranger from outside of the colony could have amassed all the seed money he'd put down for the bet was a mystery to him. She'd cleaned him out utterly, and was calmly shuffling the deck with her left hand alone as she waited for his response to this ridiculous wager of hers. Her smile grew an inch as she watched his eyebrow twitch.

"Come now, do I have to go over it again? The rules are very simple, and I'd say they favor you quite nicely. With a single game of high card, you can take all these winnings arrayed before me for your very own and maintain your reputation as a master gambler. And if you lose ... why ... all I'm asking is for that old 1931 Tokarev I hear your father left you in his will a few months back. You're nowhere near the gun collector your old man was, Mr. Struger ... surely, a few thousand dollars weighs well against the sentimental value of a piece of iron the Red Army outgrew almost two hundred years ago?"

Of course, she knew what he was thinking. If she was willing to risk that kind of money for such an antique, how much would it be worth if he sold it to a collector. He was caught between an amount of money he knew, and one he didn't have sufficient knowledge to even guess. It was a neat little trap, but as she watched him turn his mental gymnastics, she realized he was about to err on the side of caution. Sighing, she pushed her chair back and started to stand.

"Ah, I see, you've lost your nerve." she said, her voice heavy with disappointment.

"No, wait!" he said, starting to get up himself. She raised her eyebrows in curiosity while on the inside she was grinning like a maniac, he'd just needed a little push after all. Leaning over, she pressed the desk of cards to the center of the table and stepped back, her arms wide and a smile on her lips.

"Oh ho! It seems I underestimated you after all! By all means, Baron Struger, pick your card." she waited, hands clasped in front of her. The local man's pudgy fingers closed around the deck, and as he lifted it up and away, he revealed the King of Diamonds, grinning like a shark.

"It seems my luck is finally turning around, too bad for you, lady."

"Yes, yes. You've made quite the excellent draw..." she said, scratching the bottom of her chin as he put the card back down. Slowly, she reached over, licking her lips, grabbed the deck near the bottom and pulled it up to reveal . . .

"A Joker!?" the Baron said in surprise.

"Oh ho, bad luck for you Baron, there are only two in the deck, so obviously the joker is of superior value!" she said with a vibrant smile.

"You crazy broad, you don't use the jokers in High Card!" he retorted, going red in the face.

"Oh? Is that so ..." she said, turning the cards around in her hand so that she could look at it, "I guess you play it differently here than on Luna. Okay, suit yourself, one card down!" she said plucking the Joker from her hand and tossing it to the center of the table. Sticking her tongue out, she turned the cards around to reveal the Ace of Hearts. "Tsk, tsk, looks like Lady Luck is still on my side."

She watched impassively as he looked at her, dumbstruck by the turn of events as she put the cards back down on the table. Then she noticed the shift in his eyes, the gritting of his teeth. My, he'd gone from smug to furious in record time.

"You goddamn che--" he started, rising to his feet and reaching under his business jacket with his right hand. Before he could so much as finish his accusation, however, he was staring down the barrel of a 2148 Mayday fully loaded with caseless 10mm rounds and palm reader safety mechanism.

"Come now Baron Struger, let's not get violent. I had so much fun tonight, I'd hate to ruin a dress because of a sore loser." she said with an easy smile and a hard look in her eyes. Of course, she had cheated. The entire purpose of that bit of theatrics with the joker was to give her a chance to slip in the card she'd palmed while shuffling. Still, her smile was sublime and innocent as could be, practiced at the tables of thousands of card games before this one, "Don't forget that I'm a member of the I.S.C., and they know my habits quite well. If I were to disappear, there'd surely be an investigation, and I'm sure a man in your position has things he doesn't want the government poking around near."

She watched as he let go of the piece he kept under his jacket and raised his hands slowly in defeat, and she nodded easily and slid her handgun back into it's own holster, though she didn't snap it closed again. Join the I.S.C., see new places, meet new people, and take them for everything they're worth ... the military life wasn't so bad after all, it seemed.