Sidewinder is a member of Polaris, and the first known posthuman to have successfully conceived a child.

Art and Origin: Thom Chiaramonte

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Sidewinder

Name: Amanda Yemen
Affiliation: Polaris

Attributes:

Melee: 45
Reflex: 30
Muscle: 20
Vigor: 50
Acumen: 25
Observation: 40
Will: 25

Life: 14
Influence: 90

Abilities:

Physiological Enhancement: Along with various biochemical enhancements that contribute to her Attributes above, Sidewinder’s posthuman treatments increased her reaction times considerably, which give her +3 to Initiative rolls and a +1CS to defensive Actions.

Sonic Generation: Sidewinder’s latent posthuman ability is actually a subsonic sound generation from mutations to her vocal chords. It is below the range of audible frequencies for the normal human ear, but can interfere with her opponents’ balance, focus and hand-eye coordination. The Ability has an Intensity of 40 and a Range of 5, and can be used at the beginning pf a round without counting as an Action. All opponents in range must make a Vigor Save or be negatively influenced by this effect, with -1CS to Physical Actions, and must make an Acumen Save or become disoriented, suffering a -2 penalty to the following 3 Initiative rolls. The subsonic attack lasts for 1d6 rounds before she must reapply it, but if any opponents are not affected by the attack, they remain unaffected for the duration of that combat.

Melee Weapon Proficiency: Sidewinder enjoys the benfits of +1CS to all offensive and defensive hand-to-hand combat Actions, as a result of her extensive training, with an additional +1CS to Active Dodge. Further, she employs a special melee weapon, similar to a mace and cord, which she has trained to use as a weapon [25 DP up to 2m reach] and as a parrying device [apply the 30 AP of the weapon as Armor on a successful Parry] and has an Armor of 30 and Core of 20.

Origin:

Amanda Yemen was born in Afghanistan, to an Afghan mother and Egyptian father, both parents working for the Red Cross, delivering aid and medical relief in the war-torn country. After her father was killed in a tribal skirmish outside of Kabul, her mother fled the country with her infant child, under the protection of the United Nations troops escorting the Red Cross caravan, and settled in Vancouver.

As a young adult, Amanda was fascinated by dance and theatrical performance, training and performing as a spirit dancer in her high school, and going on to study dance and performing arts at University. She was also obsessed with martial arts, studying Aiku-Jujitsu, Tae Kwon Do and especially Capoeira, which she began learning through the influence of a Brazilian dancer with which she had become romantically linked.

One late evening, Amanda and her boyfriend were attacked by gang agitators outside of a popular nightclub. Her boyfriend was struck down by a broken bottle, and in her attempts to fend off her three attackers, she bagan using her long-strapped purse as a defensive weapon, sweeping it in arcs to parry attempts to grapple her, while spinning long, fluid kicks using her Capoeira techniques. A crowd of onlookers gathered, and cheered as she soundly defeated all three attackers, who fled as the authorities arrived. Unfortunately, her boyfriend slipped into a comma from the force of the blow to his head, and was declared to be in a persistive vegetative state thereafter.

Depressed and isolated, Yemen dropped out of University, and began dancing at an upscale exotic club in the red light district, devoid of interest in her former pursuits and emotionally isolated. While she was a popular dancer, over the next few months, she did very little business for the club, as her withdrawn personality and lack of enthusiasm made for a sour customer base.

Eventually, she was visited by three suited men who watched her performance with interest, then approached her off-stage. Noting that two were covering exits while the third approached her, she feared an attack and defended herself, sending the man over the bar, and fled out the back to her vehicle. She was overtaken by one of the other two, who anxiously identified himself as a government agent, working for Canada’s infamous Section Five. They had come to see her, after tracking her down, based on interest in the organization over televised amateur footage of her nightclub attack. She was offered an opportunity to train with the same advisers that worked with Madison Fehr, prior to her transition to the Posthuman Development Initiative in Newfoundland. The PDI and Section Five were, by this point, enjoying a loose alliance, with clandestine coorperation between the agency and the private posthuman facility, a relationship not known about or authorized by the Canadian government overall. Section Five had become a seeding ground for new posthuman candidate recruits, and the PDI reciprocated by loaning out Polaris, the facility’s defensive security team, for select posthuman-related crime investigations in Canada. Yemen was an ideal posthuman candidate, and was intrigued. Within three months, she had graduated from the accelerated posthuman treatment process the PDI had perfected, and was training as a posthuman combatant. She joined Polaris late that year, under the callsign Sidewinder, for the hypnotic and dangerous corded ball and mace that she utilized as a weapon.

It was eventually discovered, by a small town journalist living in the same neighborhood as the retired parents of Polaris member Ladybird, the team’s youngest recruit, that the PDI had been sitting on a curious secret: two Polaris members had apparently conceived a child together. Initially only looking into the rumor as the basis for an entertainment news profile, the journalist contacted Ladybird’s family, and interviewed them. Within 45 minutes, a Section Five team arrived at the house and extracted all three civilians, declaring a national security concern. While Ladybird’s parents eventually returned to their home, withdrawn and far less talkative in the community, now knowing they were under surveillance, the journalist issued his resignation electronically and was never heard from again.

In fact, the rumor was true. Amanda Yemen and Fábio Miranda, the Polaris operative known as MOAB, had begun an affair and eventually conceived a child together. Being a private security team for the PDI, Polaris was not a well-publicized posthuman entity, and Sidewinder’s absence in field missions was not noted by the media on any of their public outings, particularly since Polaris frequently utilized candidates for field training, on a temporary membership basis. The sensitivity of this birth was two-fold. The first, the identity of the child’s father was a security issue, as Miranda had been assuming a false identity provided for him by the PDI to avoid attention for his accused crimes in Brazil. Second, there had never been a posthuman childbirth to date. It was a disturbing fact that hadn’t been noted until the birth of Yemen’s daughter triggered the realization of it’s disturbing rarity. An internal, comprehensive study was underway, attempting to understand both why posthumans seemed generally unable to procreate with each other, yet why Yemen and Miranda were successful. As a result of this research, treatments would be developed over time that would be made available to existing posthumans and all future candidates that, at the very least, increased the chances of posthuman/ normal human childbirth, though posthuman/ posthuman childbirth would continue to be rare. It would later be suggested that something unique in Yemen’s genetic code was allowing for her fertility, a trait synthesized as part of the fertility treatments to be developed. The identity of Yemen and Miranda’s daughter would never be revealed to the public, as she would be raised within the compound and be given a civilian identity, as the child of PDI staffers.

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You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Universe Gallery.

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Related posts:

1. TRDL Character Factory, No. 98: Gila
2. TRDL Character Factory, No. 29: Arclight
3. TRDL Character Factory, No. 23: MOAB