User:REDACTED
Character Details
Given Name: Crystala Khanna
Age: 39
Nationality: India, Punjab State
Allegiance: Zephyr Inc.
Occupation: Mercenary
Dominant Form: Hybrid of a Raksasha and Kitsune
Favoured Weapon: Sword, specifically the Khanda.
Characteristics: The child of a lowborn caste, Crystala carries the weight of her family's shame on her shoulders. She shows a measured restraint in most actions besides bloodletting, but her fury in battle is something to be frightened of. Her mastery over the delicate art of swordplay is almost unnerving, considering the size and weight of the swords she uses, they move with such speed and fury that they are rarely seen in motion. She is as harsh and merciless of acts she deems evil.
Kitsune (or as known to her people, Krishna) tricked her, using gods of her faith into dedicating her life to what she thought was becoming a servant of Devi, instead becoming a newly tainted Raksasha\Kitsune hybrid. Crystala struggles with keeping her darker side in check, as the Kitsune aspect feeds on her anger.
She is now very rarely seen not in human form.
Default Appearance
Crystala appears generally as a human, of Indian decent, her hindi accent varies but is quite noticable, reinforced from the decade she spent in her twenties in her home country. She wears colorful flowing dresses, particularly shades of teal, aqua and indigo, but no jewelry besides the small stud in her left nostril. Her eyes are an opaque green, soft and carry a weight of sadness in them. She tends to trim her hair short, keeping it from getting in the way when she fights, but long enough that she doesn't look boyish.
She wears Mehendi artwork on her hands and feet, the mahogany ink showing intricate designs, although the plant the ink is traditionally made from is certainly not available since the infection. She reapplies the ink each week, varying the patterns each time. She wears a small sunburst medallion that she uses as a clasp to tie two parts of her dress together. Her pert athletic frame highlights a relatively modest bust, certainly small by post infection standards. She has feminine curves, but they've been hardened and sharpened by years the practice of her art.
She generally is barefoot, even while human, preferring the balance and connection to the earth provided by it, and her feet are callused, with the tattoo work hardly covering how much abuse they have taken.
She wears a hip holstered scabbard, and one over her back, each tied with emerald silk. The blade is Khanda hilted, with a traditional straight blade, but has been thinned out and is much lighter weight, and ends in a deadly thin point. Despite the modifications they are still hefty looking weapons and it's hard to believe anyone of her size can wield one of these, let alone two.
She also keeps a hip pouch on the opposite hip from her scabbard, and a flask, which she uses for rituals more than sustenance. The hip pouch contains oil cloths, a japa mala (hindu prayer beads), and other essentials.
Occasionally one might catch a glimpse of her tails, and be left scratching their head and wondering if they're imagining things.
In battle, she lets her true form show, the ferocity and blood lust in her bringing out her inner self. Her nine tails are on full display, some vulpine, others feline in patterning and shape. She has a full vulpine muzzle, sharp and angular and an extremely unsettling grin. Her fur is white, with a leopard pattern, and her ears are tufted and round, although deep black. She has some distinct silver fox markings, like the black colors on her foot paws and hands.
The form she hides has a dark cruel streak, frequently mutilating enemies enough to drench herself with blood, her pure white fur stained red. She laughs in the face of slaughter, and revels in it, only to repent later when she realizes what she's become.
Character Background
Crystala was born in a rural community outside of the city of Hoshiarpur in Punjab, India. Her family was of a lower caste the Mallah, despite being officially outlawed by the state, there was still much prejudice toward the lower castes in the 60s, and her parents suffered greatly. Her father was a boatman, helping to move wheat and other grains up and down river. Her parents were actively practicing Hindus, and spoke Hindi, in a state where the majority were Sikh's speaking Punjabi, which further caused problems for their family. When she was two, during Monsoon season, her father did not return from a grain run.
Her mother was left alone, without knowing what happened to her husband, and without a good way to support her daughter, nor able to remarry for at least two years after her husbands departure, she took her daughter to Bombay. She took out a bonded loan, and repaid her loans through prostitution, carefully saving money and even resorting to theft to save money. She paid off her loan, when Crystala was seven, and used her remaining money to immigrate with her daughter to the US.
She brought her daughter to Daly City, a suburb of San Francisco, and there was an immigrant community of Sikhs that she was able to find support among, and got herself a job as a secretary, putting her daughter through school and hiring a tutor for english for her daughter. It took a while for her to be able to adjust to the new country, but like most immigrants Crystala became Americanized far quicker than her mother.
When Crystala graduated from high school, she did so with enough merit to be able to obtain a reasonable scholarship to the nearby University of California: SF, and entered the biomedical program they offered. She developed three deep friendships in her freshman year at college, but in the summer between sophomore and junior year, Crystala's mother passed of a stroke, and it was devastating for Crys. It sent her into a deep depression, and without her mother's support, even with the scholarships she was unable to afford the next year's tuition. Going through her mother's things, she finally discovered what had happened to her father, and that the possibility he might have simply left them ate at her. At a loss for what to do, her friends in the Sikh community convinced her to return to her home country and even paid for the plane ticket.
While her mother had long trained Crys in the art of Hindu rituals, gods and prayers, she had also grown up surrounding by a community of Sikhs, who believed in meditation and personal sacrifice, finding a god in all things, and many other beliefs that helped to shape the foundation of her belief system. In returning to India, she found home back in Punjab province with Sikh's, and joined the military. She also trained daily with a sect of sikh/hindus, learning the art of the sword, and her water dance. She was eventually dragged into the Siachin War, between Pakistan and India, fighting for her country was exhilaration at first, and gave her a clear purpose, but the long drug out war also showed her the true horrors of humanity first hand, and she left the military after three years of the messy war, having spent over five years with the state's military.
She spent another three years struggling to find her place in the country of her ancestry, looking for her father, and never finding sign of his death or a trail of his departure. She decided to return to the states in 1990, and ended up joining up with a private security contractor since it was her only skill. The company got involved in the Gulf War, although mostly for small peacekeeping and policing situations, as well as numerous other affairs.
She often times was disgusted by the behavior of her co-workers, lacking both military discipline, as well as compassion. One in particular raped a woman, in front of her, and she shot him in the back of the head. She lied about the situation, but quit the company. She returned to her old community in Daly City, and began work on improving her art form, and focusing on the Sikh practices of meditation.
The infection struck when she was out in the wood, meditating, and she returned to a mess of feral creatures. She eventually found herself in woodfield, rescued by Zephyr employees and inoculated before she lost her mind to an animal strain.
