Character Concept, Book 2

[Comrade Duck 178]

All rights reserved. This is an original character design by me (Comrade Duck). It is intended for use by myself only. It is being posted here for my own sake for future revision and character building for my future project.

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Duke Cho - The Darkest Shadow

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"Much like the willow tree, I'm always looking for a new beginning."

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A young, single Korean woman, Hae-won Cho, found herself in the United States at twenty-eight years old. Having studied business in her beautiful, bustling hometown of Seoul, South Korea, she longed for something more. A prominent and promising graduate, she ventured out and made her way west, eventually settling in New York City in 1986. She soon opened a popular bodega in Brooklyn, gradually growing her wealth over five years. Some time later in late 1991, she met a handsome, touring frenchman by the name of Jean. She swooned over him but their relationship ended rather quickly when he returned to France some weeks later. She was not without reminders of him, however, as nine months later, she birthed a son whom she named Duke. The child carried his mother's soft eyes and tender lips. His father had left the boy with brown hair and the growth rate of a stubborn weed.

Duke would grow to be six feet tall by the age of fourteen, with another three inches to his height being added over eight years. As a boy, Duke was a handful. He was constantly in trouble, with regular run ins with local law enforcement. Somehow, with his slick, silver tongue, the boy could talk his way out of any lock-box. Unfortunately for Duke, his trouble would eventually follow him home and cause problems for his mother. A shut-down, brought on by Duke's misgivings, caused Hae-won's bodega to soon go under. And while she was able to keep herself and her son afloat for a brief time, Hae-won struggled to get back on her feet. This only furthered Duke's path and led him to perform more daring and more dangerous acts to protect himself and his mother.

It wasn't long until Duke found himself entwined in the grip of heroin, as a dealer. It was good money, and it fed his small household. However, Duke was not yet street savvy, and had to learn harshly the realities that came with being a dealer. The constant stops and harassment he faced on a street corner quickly hardened his heart toward figures of authority. The feeling of running and the fear of getting caught put a chip on his shoulder for a great deal of time. The rage that he felt when a deal went bad or a stash got taken, or the regret he felt when he was picked up and lost his earnings made him colder. The combination of these factors also made Duke much more intelligent, as his involvement with heroin grew and grew. Eventually, Hae-won kicked Duke out of her home, and he was forced to fend for himself. He was neither surprised nor concerned when it happened. He had simply been waiting for the day to come.

He worked his way up the corporate street ladder, from dealer to supplier. By the age of twenty-two, he was a shadow that draped over Brooklyn's streets. He had taken a lot of his mother's business sense and used it to twist the game. He cleaned his money and invested it, doubling his profits. By the age of twenty-five, he was opening his first night club in upstate New York, through every legal channel. It quickly became a regular hot spot in the city, and Duke was already thinking about opening a second. Over the course of the next eight years, Duke established a heroin empire, solidifying his place as one of the greatest threats the east coast streets had ever seen.

Unfortunately for Duke, however, it was 2025. And the bombs were about to fall.

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Paige Green - The Light of the Hopeless

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"Papa was dedicated to his work. But so was mom. That's how I got here."

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Born to Jackson and Janine Green, Paige was still in the womb when her parents mutually separated. 

Delivered just shortly after her mother arrived in Los Angeles, Paige's Curly hair was her father's own. Her green eyes and her full lips were taken from her mother. Over the years she would develop a very small but well built frame. Paige was a born athlete. At five feet and ten inches, she was slender and quick. From her days in elementary, she loved to run. When she finally had the chance to do so competitively, she became a track star in high school. Racking up medals around the country, meet after meet, Paige soon set her eyes on the Olympics.

In her downtime, Paige was competitive with her best friend. She grew up in a modest neighborhood, and quickly got to know the red-headed girl next door, named Christina. They went to school together, from elementary to high school.  They were inseparable as friends, but they were even closer when they would compete. Though Christina didn't run track, she would never hesitate to challenge Paige to a race. And despite Paige not being a boxer, she spent a lot of time with Christina in the ring. When Christina eventually dropped out of high school in 2023, Paige went on to graduate at the top of her class in 2024. Always having the Olympics at the back of her mind, Paige needed to confront Christina and tell her best friend that she would be leaving. Paige had acquired a full ride scholarship to any school of her choice, and she wanted to study Sports Medicine. She would take her speed and pursue her goals of the Olympics while she ran for one of the best schools in Texas: Texas A&M. But she didn't want to leave without saying goodbye to her best friend.

The meeting was somber, and left a hole in Paige's heart. She spent the next year with Christina, talking about their goals and dreams. They went camping and hiking in the mountains. They crashed parties of high profile celebrities. They even snuck away to Las Vegas for a night to see the glamour for themselves. But, Paige knew she would eventually have to end their vacation together. She had so much to do to prepare for college, and even more to do to prepare for the Olympics.

This was it, for her. The year of 2025 was going to be the year that she put everything on the line.

Or, it was, until the bombs began to fall.

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Edited October 3, 2022 by Comrade Duck

[Comrade Duck 178]

Anastasiya Alexeyev - The Coldest Will

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"The will of the people is my will. The proletariat will no longer suffer beneath the boots of the bourgeois."

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Michail and Zasha Alexeyev were very well known peoples throughout much of Russia. Hailing from Yekaterinburg, they were both powerful leaders whose charisma and ideologies reverberated throughout the land. A long history of the oppression of the poor and working class people brought them together. Through their similar circumstances, they found that they shared a common mind and a common enemy. In the winter of 1974, they formed a coalition together with the people of Yekaterinburg. Starting small, they banded together with one hundred others in an attempt to release the people from the vice-grip of the ruling class. From the slums, they climbed out together, hand-in-hand, consciously with their fellow working class peoples, and began to break apart the ranks of the enemy, a piece at a time.

In the winter of 1999,  Zasha gave birth to Anastasiya. Her cold, icy blue eyes and her white hair were unusual, but her nose was much like her mother's. These two moments would coincide together to change the fate of the people and the Alexeyev family for years to come.

On the day of Anastasiya's birth, Michail was racing home to his wife when he was offered a ride by two men he had fought side by side with for three years: Dimitri Padlov and Sacha Chugunov. On their way back to his home, when out of reach and out of site of Michail's comrades, Dimitri and Sacha kidnapped Michail. He would never arrive home. When word of his disappearance got back to the people, their morale began to fall. Alone, Zasha tried to keep the people strong and together. She championed her daughter to take her father's place as their leader. However, this critical blow to the people sapped their strength and allowed discord to fester among them.

This gave the enemy their perfect opportunity to strike. As the people slowly began to lose faith, more seeds of corruption were sewn. Violence against the poor began to rise. Communities began to splinter. Camaraderie slowly waned. The years seemed to trickle blood from the life of the people, slowly bleeding them of vital resources and power. In 2004, a new power came to be over the Russian people: Timofey Chugunov. And for the next fifteen years, he would reign supreme over the Russian people with his son by his side.

The Chugunov Empire was a mighty one. With influence all over the world, ranging from China to the United States. However, the rebel in young Anastasiya would grow rapidly, with her mother showing her the way. Taking her mother's place would not be an easy task, but by 2019, Anastasiya had become public enemy number one, to the state. Her crimes against the ruling regime -- from destruction of property, vandalism, communing without permit, illegal water sourcing, theft, brandishing a weapon in public, and much more -- had her face plastered across many wanted posters throughout the country. Unfortunately for the state, Anastasiya was protected by the people. She had already proved to be elusive, but having the working class and the poor behind her made her that much harder to apprehend.

Over the next six years, Anastasiya had solidified her place all across Russia. She had become something of a legend, having turned the state's power, albeit slowly, on its head. During this time, she established the New Revolutionary Coalition for the People, or NRCP. Inside of this coalition, she had even begun to turn allies of the state against the ruling class. She had recruited a small number of politicians whom she managed to flip, and turned them into spies for the NRCP. Supplies and power began to flow back toward the people, and the time for the inevitable uprising had finally come.

The year was now 2025. The streets were flooded by the proletariat, with as many boots on the ground as the state had soldiers. Unfortunately, the time for revolution would have to wait, as the bombs began to fall.

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Pierre Jourdain - The Bellowing Wind

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"Music is to me like breath is to the lungs. Like blood to the heart. It is everything."

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A young prodigy, Pierre Jourdain was born in 1994 to his mother, Eloise Jourdain in Toulouse, France. Though young, Eloise was a promising and talented ballerina in her early twenties. Even after giving birth to Pierre, she never lost her way on stage. By the time Pierre was five years old, Eloise was turning into a prominent soloist. With breakout shows all over France, Eloise had made it big. But with that stardom, she sometimes lost sight of her son. She was away often, leaving Pierre with a sitter or relative for weeks at a time. She had a bubbling, bursting career that demanded every moment of her time, and it kept her from giving Pierre the love and attention that she wanted him to have.

At ten years old, Pierre had seen very few of his mother's performances. For those he did attend, he always sat as close to the stage as possible, but not for the reasons you may think. Though he admired his mother's work, his biggest reason for sitting at the stage was to best hear the music. Jazz and opera were his first loves, but Pierre quickly became pulled into the music world for its artistry. And on his eleventh birthday, his mother gifted him a fine violin. That moment would be solidified in his memory for many decades to come, as he then learned of his talent for the instrument. Pierre, however, wasn't solely blessed with talents behind the violin. He began to pick up other instruments with great ease. The piano, the harp, the keyboard, the electric guitar, the bass, a snare drum, the cymbals, and many more instruments came to Pierre over his young life. He was redefining music with his abilities, and the world was taking notice.

And when Pierre could find no other instrument he wished to master, he turned himself into the greatest instrument of all time as he learned to sing. At twenty-four, he was performing solo in some of the most high-profile operas in all of France. He received invitations to work at Julliard and The Conservatoire de Paris. His brown eyes and black hair and his tall, slim figure were in high demand all around the world now, and his mother had never been more proud. Having earned an early retirement, she began to attend all of Pierre's performances around the world. There was no show she had missed in over six years. And now, at twenty-eight years old, Pierre had performed hundreds of times across the globe. There was almost no one who didn't know who he was.

Despite his fame and his developing fortune, Pierre was not yet satisfied. He wasn't longing for companionship, but he had an itch he could not scratch. There was something more he was meant to do, but he couldn't figure out what it was that called out to him. He took a year hiatus from the world. He fell completely off the radar, never stepping back into the public eye. Only his mother ever knew his whereabouts.

For a time, he resided just off the waters in Corsica, not far from home. He purchased a small, modest home that gave him the privacy he wanted. He used his time to meditate and study. Over two years he tried to pick up a new topic or hobby every week. Unfortunately, nothing filled him the way music did. For a brief time, he had given up on filling the void that he felt in the pit of his stomach. At last, he finally realized he had overlooked the one thing he hadn't done yet: directing music. And when it came to him, he felt a chord being struck in his brain. His eyes were big with excitement, and he couldn't believe that he had overlooked it for so long. Excitedly, at the end of his two year stint in 2025, he called his mother to break the news to her.

Ecstatic, he returned to Toulouse where he announced publicly that he would be flying out to New York and purchasing a home so that he could study more at the school of Julliard in order to become a director.

Unfortunately, Pierre's next venture would have to wait, as the bombs began to fall.

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Edited October 3, 2022 by Comrade Duck

[Comrade Duck 178]

Edit: 9/21/2021

Kolby has been removed and replaced.

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Maali - The Molten Fortress

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"It's a part of me. I'm going to make it my own."

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Maali was born with a disability in her right leg. At birth, due to infection, it had to be removed immediately. As a result, she has gotten around most of her life with a wheelchair, crutches, or a cane. Her disability is a part of her identity, as much as the texture of her hair or the color of her skin. Maali is an Indigenous girl who has spent most of her youth home schooled. Her mother, Animkii, and her father, Namid, are both promising engineers. Even as young parents, both of them being only thirty while Maali is age 10, they have found a way to keep a perfect balance in their small home. Animkii and Namid have made many changes to their home over the years to assist and aid Maali in adapting to her surroundings. They replaced any stairs with ramps and placed more lift bars and cranes where she needs them. Maali, however, being the bright, forward girl that she is, doesn't want to rely on lifts, cranes, and ramps. Inspired by her parents, she has been studying their work and wishes to become an engineer as well.

She has a strong desire to research mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering. And though Namid is concerned that Maali may overwhelm herself with so many goals, he is learning to trust in his daughter's ability to not only decide things for herself, but to study them at her pace and to become successful in doing so. Little did Namid know, Maali would soon find a way to work through and with her disability. Over the course of two years, with diligent study, hundreds of hours of research, hundreds more hours of design and planning, Maali completed designs for mechanical leg that would not only replace her own, but be fully functional in all aspects of her life that she required it for.

When she finally presented the design to her mother and father, they were both ecstatic. They immediately began to take her through the process of getting a patent before putting the work into action. Eight months later, Maali's design was brought to fruition exactly as she had planned it. The surgery to attach the mechanical leg to her body was a success, and Maali was able to walk thanks to her own incredible efforts. At twelve years old, she had now developed what would soon become the future of prosthetics everywhere to change the lives of all disabled peoples who needed them. Unfortunately for Maali, her plans would have to wait. Bombs had begun to fall.

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Jasmine Evelynn Troy - A Concussive Wave

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"I don't like to wait. I like to keep a schedule and do things right the first time. Anything else is just lazy."

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Generation after generation of Jasmine's family has been apart of the United States military in one of many of its branches. Marines, Navy Pilots, Navy Seals, Green Berets, and many others lined the ranks of her family. Born to Gerald and Letitia Troy, Jasmine found her calling as a Navy SEAL operative.

Jasmine was at the age of seven when her military interest kicked in. Her mother, who was a Navy Pilot, and her father, who was a Marine, took quick advantage of her interests and groomed her into a machine over the course of ten years. Even throughout her time in high school, Jasmine's focus was to become the next line of military personnel in the Troy family. She aligned more closely to her mother, and this led her to choose a path in the Navy.

With outstanding and record breaking scores in physical, intellectual, and practical applications, Jasmine was quickly noticed by her higher-ups and called forth to be a SEAL operative. She survived the grueling six month training of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training and graduated to become a full Navy SEAL operative. By request of the secretary of defense, she was made a part of the highly classified SEAL Team Six, also known as DEVGRU. She had accomplished all of this by the age of twenty-five and was regarded as one of the most rapidly growing SEAL operatives to date, earning her the nickname, "J.E.T."

In 2025, her squadron was given a special assignment that would require them to partner with other elite task forces from around the globe. Russia's Spetsnaz, Canada's Joint Task Force 2, China's Falcon Commando Unit, France's COS, Africa's SFB, and many others gathered in an undisclosed location to battle what would be identified only as "an upcoming and imminent threat to the world over".

The worlds most elite soldiers gathered secretly to prepare for a battle that would require them to work together, despite their affiliations and differences. This threat would be coming from the depths of space, and preparation time was crucial. They had only days to gather their strength and gear before being tasked with being the first force to combat the unknown. Whatever was coming their way was highly intelligent, battle ready, and extremely deadly. This newly found unit, dubbed, United Earth Special Forces -- or UESF for short -- was the first and last of its kind. They would be tasked with combating the enemy on Earth and in space.

As the enemy's first crafts were detected, the UESF met them head-on just a few hundred miles outside of Earth's atmosphere. The event disguised their assault as a shower of meteors, numbering in the hundreds. They fought valiantly, but despite their training and technology, they were rapidly overwhelmed. A tactical retreat was ordered to return to Earth, but the UESF was too late as the enemy approached from all sides of the planet. The world was quickly being overrun and Jasmine was desperately making her way back to the surface.

However, Jasmine could only look on helplessly as her ship burned in the atmosphere. Explosions rocked the world as bombs began to fall.

Edited October 3, 2022 by Comrade Duck

[Comrade Duck 178]

EDIT: Jackson has been removed and replaced.

EDIT 2: Randall has been reworked and renamed.

Terell Williams - The Billowing Storm

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"I tried to fix it the right way. It was rigged. So now, I'm gonna take matters into my own hands."

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Born to Earl and Julienne Williams, Terell is a

Edited October 3, 2022 by Comrade Duck