basic information:
character name: Vera Hale
Gender & Pronouns: Woman, she/her
Height: 5'10
Age: Birthday: 21 / August 31st (virgo queen)
Location: Afterglow Compound
Faction: Afterglow - Military
Occupation: Private (EAA)
Strengths: Observant, loyal, disciplined, compassionate, curious
Weaknesses: Naïve, stubborn, self-sacrificing, overcritical, restless
FC: Mika Schneider
Vera ward never lacked family: she had warrant officers that taught her to read, instructors that taught her to shoot, fellow cadets who shared her dormitory. The East Atlantic Army had clothed her, educated her, and given her purpose. It had never once occurred to her to question where she belonged.
Her earliest memories are of lying in the warm grass between drills, laughing with the other cadets for how out of breath they had become. They are of heavy army rations, strengthening her after long runs. They are of bronzed skin in the sun, glowing with strength and exertion, and of knowing exactly how everything fit together. The world made sense.
She learned discipline from the academy; a skill that she will always carry with her. She learned companionship from a fellow cadet: Isaac. They grew up together and had a natural affinity for one another. They understood each other’s limits, could push each other to the brink and figure out how to excel, as a team and as individuals.
Isaac might have been born for the role of soldier, but Vera had to approach it with the same diligence she did everything else. She loved the training and worked hard at it, but her natural curiosity also led her to love learning more broadly. She has always kept notebooks, and observes things keenly. Of particular interest, are maps: she loves old maps, seeing how humanity’s understanding of the world changed, and she makes her own maps too. Usually of the world as it is, but sometimes of the worlds she wishes she could inhabit instead.
Shortly before graduation, a crack appeared in the story she had been told her entire life. Or perhaps more accurately, a crack was deliberately revealed. Vera was sent into the archives to do some research, and it was the strangest thing: in among the files she was meant to be looking at, were some unrelated personnel files. And it was then that she learned the truth: that her connection to Isaac ran deeper than friendship, and that her parents were alive. This was not the truth of the world as Vera had learned it, and this new truth was a cataclysm she could never have prepared for.
Claymore, the traitor, the defector. That is the story that Vera was told. And Ryō, the loyal soldier. She knew that one well. Both, as it happened, are not entirely true, not as it pertains to Vera. She does not know now whether to think of her mother as a hero or a traitor, and whether her father is a coward or a protector. She does not know whether the army raised her out of kindness or convenience. There is a lot that she doesn’t know any more, and Vera has never been particularly good at leaving questions unanswered. For now, the only one she trusts fully is Isaac. Her best friend, and apparently her twin. He has been deceived just as she has, though they're processing in very different ways. Vera has never been an explosive person. While her worldview is shattered, and she is realising how naive she has been, it does not erupt from her. Below the surface she is shifting, tectonic plates beneath her skin, trying to understand her new identity in this world that is new to nobody but her.
