watchtower_fans | The Field Guide to Fauna

Character Name: Aurora Rose Andersen
Player name (nickname, handle): Jessica or Allronix. I also play Connor Hawke and Duke Kostan of Triton.
Character LJ: alt_minds2

Physical description (face, build, weight): Aurora is on the small end (1.55 meters or 5'2"), and looks somewhat delicate. However, she's stronger than she looks because of hard work on the farm and a lot of physical activity. (Seeing as my drawing skills aren't terribly great, and I've yet to see an actress that really "works" for an avatar, I use Sims 2 and HeroMachine.)

Abilities:

Limited shapechanging and animal communication -- It's nowhere near as sophisticated as Garfield's. She keeps the same general mass, bipedal structure, and blond hair even as she takes on the animal attributes - think either Shane Gooseman (for obscure 80's cartoon fans) or your typical "furry" from the Don Bluth/Disney school. Wings, claws, gills, fur...she can grow it, but it falls into "crude, yet effective." Her usual fall-back is felinoid - white fur, black stripes.

Another side-effect is that she is able to talk to many animals as easily as she would talk to another human, and that the animals treat her as a benign creature. When she says "a little bird told me," she means it literally. Birdsong sounds like gossip to her ears, friendly dogs try to start conversations, and she's bribed the local raccoons to keep an eye on Leslie Thompkins's clinic. Notice that this is conversation, not control. Even if she had the ability to force an animal to her will, Aurora would find it ethically repugnant.

Hand to hand combat -- Aurora has a green belt in aikido, which she learned as a means of body awareness/control. Her father insisted she take it when it became clear to him she'd leave the Commune one day. This is being supplemented by training under her boss, Dinah "Black Canary" Lance.

Other skills: If there's anything that's to Aurora's credit, it's her dedication to hard work, a trait she learned on a Commune where even "leisure" activities had a purpose in supporting the greater whole. Such activities - sewing, gardening, vegetarian cooking - were necessary skills on the Commune. Her background in civil disobedience and activism have also opened doors among fringes that would otherwise be suspicious of "capes." She's also a decent singer (at least by Mid-Nite's and Beast Boy's opinions).

Weaknesses and flaws:

"Freak Out" -- the big one. Push her into mental or physical duress and she berserks. Figure about 5-10 minutes of having a pissed-off, wounded predator animal in full-on survival mode. After 10 minutes or enough wounds to incapacitate her, she reverts to human form. Aurora remembers very little of what she did under a "freak out," and is groggy, lightheaded, disoriented, and generally unwell for several hours afterward. Also, while in an altered form, she has to work against the "fight or flight" instinct - In gaming terms, she has to make a willpower roll when in animal form. It's an easy willpower check if there is no immediate danger. When the lives of her loved ones are in danger, or when she's pushing her powers to the limit, the animal tendencies threaten to overwhelm her.

The only upside to this is that it makes her a little more difficult for a telepath or a "skin rider" to keep or maintain a lock on her.

"Bunny shift" - Excessive worry sometimes causes her to go into a rabbit-like form without intending it, but it's become much rarer sice Gar's been teaching her how to control.

Rookie/naive/doubt - Gods, yes. She will make most of the typical rookie screw-ups. She already has made a couple. And while she is used to thinking in terms of being part of a community out of costume, she's resigned herself to being alone as a "cape," part because of her time in Vegas and part because of being left to her own devices in Gotham. This combination led her to going off half-cocked to try and distract some baddies and getting soundly bitched out by Nightwing. She not only took as a battle command, but a harsh reminder that she has miles to go before she could ever be considered a full Titan. In fact, a good deal of her wonders if they only tolerate her because of her relationship with Garfield.

Superhero magazines were banned by the Commune Founders. She's a hard worker, dedicated to this with her whole heart, and picks up the concepts well, but experience is her short suit. Only things she knows about the rogues are the things she picked up from Ms. Lance or the Titans. She's inclined to believe someone has good intent until proven otherwise - and with many, that point is "too late."

Marked/Enemies in High Places - Luthor certainly hasn't given up on her. Like Superboy/Kon-El, she's another project of his he wants back. He captured her again, and was freed when Jack Slater and Black Canary busted her out. We've tinkered a bit with the experiment that she was part of in-game. Lex has also arranged hits on a couple activists she knows.

She's also managed to earn the wrath of Terra, for reasons that may have started with the geomorph/Chaos Goddess wanting to attack the Titans (especially Gar), but become a lot more ugly the longer it went on. Terra was supposed to have "replaced" Aurora, using the other woman's memories and connection to Gar as ammo, but Aurora put up strong resistance from within Terra's mind and made the experience as unpleasant as possible. Later, a wounded Aurora saw Terra almost kill Garfield and went into a "freak out," nearly murdering Terra. Terra managed to limp away from the fight, but it's doubtful the vindictive little tramp's going to forget. Aurora, for her part, feels terribly guilty about that loss of control, even though Gar doesn't blame her a bit.

Secret ID - While her parents now know, along with the Titans and her boss, Aurora keeps her abilities and hero ID pretty quiet, as she knows many in the activist community and her own home despise "capes."

Base of operations: Gotham right now, patrolling the University District and the areas in and around Gotham Park. She appears to have not earned the wrath of Gotham's most famous urban legend, or is so small-time as to be beneath his notice, and that's fine by her. She is a student at Gotham University, and changed her major to botany and herbal medicine, since she realized correctly that she will be unable ti return to her home to stay. She also works part-time in Sherwood Florist as a clerk and de facto assistant manager.

She's been asked many times if she is a Titan or plans on joining the Titans, since she visits as often as she can to see Gar and provide whatever assistance she can. Aurora's answer is that she really isn't in their league just yet, and that they mostly just view her as Gar's "non-psycho" girlfriend. (Her perception, though. Those of other Titans may vary).

Alignment (villain, hero etc): Principled. Almost fanatical in trying to live her beliefs and is trying with mixed success to reconcile her strict pacifist upbringing with the realization that some will mistake it for weakness until beaten back.

Relatives (living or dead): Daisy Andersen (mother) was brought to the Commune at its founding. Her mother Anne(Rora's grandma) was a folksinger raising a daughter alone. When Anne tried to restart her career, the tour bus suffered a catastrophic accident, leaving Daisy to be raised by the rest of the Commune. "Brother" Joseph Cross took special interest in Daisy and later, Aurora. He was the strictest about maintaining the pacifist ideas, seeing his dedication to them and passing them to others, as atonement for atrocities he committed in Vietnam.

Glen Andersen, Aurora's father, had a conventional upbringing in Minnesota. "Dropping out" of regular society, he drifted for many years until ending up at the Commune in 1982 and deciding to stay. Glen's rough times are why he insisted Aurora take aikido and encouraged her to finish an education. He barely escaped serious harm a few times, and wanted his daughter prepared.

Their share of the Commune is two acres of herbs and medicinal plants they grow and the herb shop that opens for tourist season. Aurora is their only child. The rest of Aurora's "family" are the 309 others at Clearwater Commune.

Backstory: Clearwater Commune is in the Sierra Nevadas, just off Sequoia National Forest (IRL, it would be in the Forest itself, just north of Lake Isabella). There's a large reservation, an offshoot of the Tulle, about 5 miles away. It was a reclaimed ghost town from the Gold Rush that about 200 hippies pooled their resources and bought at government auction, founding the colony in 1970. It's several hundred acres after slow acquisition. The colony is governed by an elected council of 5 "Founders." Four are elected every 2 years, the fifth ("Brother Joe") is the last surviving member of the Commune's actual founders and no one seems willing to challenge his position. Tourism, art, and organic farming income keep it mostly self-sufficient.

Clearwater's foundation is its strict pacifism. Violence, even in self-defense, is punished harshly. Violent words are punished with additional chores, violence against property is punished with reparations, and physical violence warrants temporary (or, rarely, permanent) exile. There is very little "outside" media. The only TV is in the town bar, and "only the tourists watch it." There are 5 phones for the whole populace, and internet access is a group of slow computers with heavy filters shared with the reservation. Books, newspapers, and magazines of the "alternate press" variety are quite common.

Despite its rigid definition of pacifism and poverty, it was a calm and idyllic place to grow up. Aurora always knew she wanted to see what was out there, encouraged by her father's stories and the books she read. Over the objections of the Council, Glen put Aurora in aikido classes taught on the reservation. When it was put to a larger vote, it was agreed that she could continue and that others could join her. It backfired on her when she was sixteen - a drunken tourist tried to grope her, and she struck back. This earned her a week's exile out in the woods.

She left at 18 to go to college in Star City and quickly got involved in the activist scene there. One of the protests was in front of LexCorp's regional HQ, objecting to animal testing. As she was going home, she was kidnapped and became one of the test subjects. A group of shady wanna-be capes, believing it to be merely a drug lab or waypoint for illegal immigration, broke into the lab and freed her. They convinced her that, as a "freak" with Lex looking for her, she had no one else to turn to. One of them, the ghost Ash, befriended her and convinced her that fleeing and survival was an option. He was also the one who gave her a "crimefighter's" nickname of "Fauna." Her first post is stepping off the bus in Gotham after fleeing that team.

Adventures in Watchtower

She spent months hiding in Gotham and trying to suppress her metahuman abilities, but the denial was starting to eat at her. How could she just pretend it all didn't happen? How could she keep lying to herself and everyone else? When Ash came to visit, she got the phone call that changed her life. The half-resurrected duo of Troia and Omen were summoning help in countering Hades's inevitable treachery. They needed "wild cards," or allies that no one would recognize. Aurora only volunteered because Ash was going, and she felt she owed the phantom firefighter a favor for her escape. Before she left, she asked Black Canary for advice.

Hiding among a knot of curious civilians, Aurora watched the Games and grew increasingly disgusted with Hades bullying the Titans. When Nightwing was killed before her eyes, she had a realization. It wasn't enough to walk away or turn one's back while others were in peril, dismissing it as just another consequence of a world built on violence. It meant, in the words of Gandhi, that she would have to be the change she wanted to see in the world. When Hades unleashed his skeleton armies, Aurora leapt into action, battling on the side of the Titans. In doing so, she may have saved the life of Beast Boy. The two animal-shifters were happy to learn that they weren't as alone as they thought. While it could hardly be called the most romantic of circumstances, it was love at first sight nonetheless.

A month later, Aurora was attending a global hunger conference in San Francisco when the Plague hit. Her altered physiology left her immune, but the rest of the hotel fell ill. For days, she was alone and surrounded by the sick and dying, trying her best to keep them alive by filling all the beds and turning it into a makeshift hospital. Gar found her while patrolling the city and tried to assist, the two of them lending strength to each other to deal with the horrors they saw, including Gar's guilt in the aftermath when he blamed himself for the affliction. This spurred Aurora further down the path of wanting to help others with these new abilities, despite the potential costs to herself. Revealing her intentions first to Ash, and then to Gar, she returned to being Fauna - willingly this time.

This led to complications when she finally accepted her parents' request that she return home. As if having to tell them about her new life, and on the arm of an obvious metahuman wasn't going to complicate matters enough, a militia had been bullying the residents and the situation was about to reach boiling point. The Titans' presence tipped the situation into critical, leading the militia into an all-out attack. Holding position on Nightwing's orders while her mother was taken hostage was "the toughest thing [she'd] ever done."

Sadly, in the aftermath of the battle, Aurora's mother recognized her among the masked heroes and almost repudated her daughter on the spot. Nightwing pleaded her case, and Aurora ended up explaining what she had become, with Donna and Gar acting as moral support.