BMDR - Raylene


Name: Raylene Calhoun Gender: Female, Straight Age/DOB: ? / 2025 Origin: Repurposed Earth, Black Mesa Refugee City, New Mexico Family: Mother Rayell, father Barney; 'aunties' in the form of all the ELLs, and certainly has siblings including some in the Color Guard via Barney's donations Other: Is among the very few children born to ELLs, and proof that they can in fact make their own babies, not needing to rely on splicing or engineering Height: 5'8" Weight: 130* Icarus treatment reduces weight and increases strength, durability, and reflexes Hair: Dark brown, shiny, wavy, kept reasonably short to stay out of machinery Eyes: Brilliant blue-green, sparkly, thick lashes Appearance: light brown skin with a few freckles in the sun, delicate appearance belies her strengths, quite slender and lean, though clearly muscular; mixes and matches Aperture and Armacham armor and undergarments with fancy bits found among the ruins; notably has a pair of custom-fit Long-Fall boots, and almost always holding her portal gun Genetic Abilities: Mostly physical, Raylene has superbly enhanced reflexes and speed, as well as a sharp eye for aiming, she can hold her pose almost indefinitely and barely even breathe, and can focus on very-distant items with ease, no glasses needed. She does have a moderate amount of empathic power, able to sense sharp changes in mood around her usually among groups. With the use of the portal gun, she is easily able to move around, but also she has an innate sense of exactly where she is, both in localized 3-dimensional space, as well as overall direction sense, and can orient herself immediately if she's moved or teleported by another person or portal. She is possibly 4 times faster than a normal human, and can process information at a tremendous speed as well.	Image Credits: Doll Divine / Fairy Tale High maker
Icarus Processing: Yes, typically at the age of 3 years when it becomes physically plausable to do so, Rayell and Barney decided that she would benefit from it. The process increased her overall durability, she can take far more impact and blunt damage than any normal person, and her strength is around twice that of a normal person. It also aided the more Vortal power of her reflexes and speed.
Skills or Profession: Along with the Icarus processing, she received a good amount of practical skill downloads such as literacy and math, physics, some civil engineering, and a number of specific skills dedicated to the use of the portal gun and other such technology available to the Mesa's inhabitants. Unlike her father, she does seek out more to learn about physics and engineering, but that's more because she likes to fiddle with and fix, take apart and repair machinery and electronics. Her perception and direction sense aids her in navigation around any location including ones she's never been to: she can easily glance around a corner into a ruined building, and tell just where the ambush is, where she can place a portal, and how best to exit the area once she's entered. She makes an ideal guide and retrieval expert, both for living people as well as goods and specific technology needing to be liberated. Her father taught her a lot about how to break into and utilize the Combine's security systems, and she truly enjoys mucking about with their alarms, causing chaos among them when she needs to make an escape.
Personality: Intense and focused, Raylene makes both her parents remarkably proud. Barney, because he never thought he'd even have kids like her - willing and able to follow him into dangerous areas and even keep him safe; and Rayell... because she's a constructed clone, no one thought she could even have kids. While she's active and even fidgety when kept from doing physical work, Raylene is not openly aggressive or frustrated in her fidgets. She will keep a small amount of circuitry or a half-built gadget on hand, and be delicately working on it even when she's paying attention to other things going on around her. She does enjoy the damage she can do to the Combine, utterly thrilled to put them in their place.
Events or History: Part of the planning session to help Chell make a portal gun that also shot out surface-pellets, Barney and Rayell had discovered a lot in common, and finally kinda-sorta fell madly in bed together. This eventually led to the surprise of Rayell's pregnancy, which was lauded and celebrated, as much as it was a strange herald of things to come for the ELLs. Cherished, but obviously also extremely important genetically, Raylene was aged a little during her Icarus treatment - going in as a 3 year old, and coming out as a 'tween. This was quite typical for the ELLs after all, though Barney kind of missed having a little girl to raise. Because the Combine had already been effectively stopped by that time, she was able to help in the cleanup and rebirth of the areas around Black Mesa and the Enrichment Center. On learning of the Rookery world, however, she knows this will be her greatest challenge and her most fun time ever! She spends quite a bit of time at the Rookery, however once the 'other' Enrichment Center is under way, she and Diella head up to the North Aperture facility. They often work toward Shaft safety, by locating broken catwalks or pillars that need fixing, and marking them for repair or removal and replacement.
Dragon Name: Gnidiella 'Diella' don't call her needy (knee dee ELLA) Gender: Female Size/Shoulder/Length: Small 7'6" shoulder / 26' l / 45' and 26' ws Colors: Pale tans, white, warm sand; most of body is a very pale sandy tan shade, with white belly and wing markings, medium sandy tan wing coloration, light peachy tan on scales along back and neck, wing edges are darkish warm grey; horns, antennae, spikes, claws, and side spots are all sand-yellow, eyes pale cornflower blue Features: Silkwing, four slender legs with 5 and 4 sharp short talons on each with heel claw and forethumb, silk producing glands in fore-wrists; two pairs of butterfly-like wings with upper wings having three visible fingers, elbow strut, and wrist thumb, lower wings have one visible finger, wrist hook, and elbow strut, all with short and sharp claws; scaled, with soft underbelly from neck to mid-tail, large overlapping plates on sides, neck, limbs, and tail; entire spine has spaced short dull spikes; head is dished with beak-like lip, broad jaw nubs, external ears, prominent eye ridges, two long slightly fluted backswept horns, and two thin flexible antennae Powers: Winged Flight, Diella is a good flier, though unpredictably weak in steady stiff winds or overly cold conditions; she doesn't carry much weight around, but can hold on to a scroll that unfolds into a portalable surface for Raylene to use. This is carried in a small tube on her leg, sort of like a carrier pigeon's message tube. She is most often in the air at dawn or dusk, when her coloration works to best advantage against the dusty ruins. She's equally at home in underground spaces such as the Enrichment Center spheres, and above the rubble of a town or cityscape. She can easily land on precarious locations, without disturbing the balance of brickwork or concrete, taking off and landing with hardly a speck of dust out of place. Communication, though many of her breed can speak, Diella remains silent for the most part, uttering a few words here and there, making it known that she does understand both English and Vortigese, but she hardly ever speaks verbally. She does have an intimate mental connection with Raylene, however, and they seem to understand one another without one word being said anyway. This connection exists at any distance, including offworld or other dimensions. Along with this Vortal connection, she can also use her antennae to sense specific things, people, objects or other dragons on the wind. Even the most delicate scents left behind are hers to 'taste', and she's got a good idea of who goes where, how long before or how often, just by smelling the air around her. She relays this information easily and quickly, for Raylene to do with as she will. Sometimes they'll be chasing food, others trying to get away from Combine, or still others to look for stray Refugees in difficult buildings where she can distinguish dust from blood even if it's just a drop. Silk Production; Silkwings are able to create a jet of silk from glands in their wrists, and Diella's is highly flexible for its uses. She can gently spray a mist of it over a location that is crumbling, and as it dries, creates a kind of cement that prevents further damage, at least for a while. This makes it possible for her to pave the way for others to leave an unsafe location, when there is no other method such as portals. Since she's not strong enough to carry more than one person at a time, and slightly too large to really easily crawl around in human-sized tunnels or chambers without damaging her wings, she'll leave the actual inner-working exploration to Raylene and keep watch. She then also can produce silk that is quite sticky and gummy, which she utilizes to produce snares or large webs across streets or entrances, to keep Combine troops from getting in or out of a location. Finally she can also make a rubbery sling-shot kind of silk, that Raylene is particularly fond of, because it can be stuck to a beam or ceiling, and used to swing across, retracting like a bungee cord, and is reusable a good number of times before it stops springing back. Parentage: Unknown purebreed silkwings, is the mother of Prudence, with Starcluster Origin: adopted from Furrygamer2003 at Deviantart, WoF by Tui Sutherland Other Info: As adept at exploration as her human companion, Diella can remain motionless with her wings folded back as her namesake moth, clinging to a wall or even ceiling somehow, and finally dropping off after any danger has passed... or if lunch is 'ready'... to be pounced on. She does still have weight, it's just that she hardly uses it for anything but hunting, and no one even notices when she brushes up against them in a crowd! She's used this to her advantage, of course, but still is careful not to smush anyone in the process.