DEAD or ALIVE
C98,000,000,000 REWARD
Notify THE GRAND ADMIRAL of the TERRAN STAR NAVY
A relic from a bygone era, Dread Hunter Anibelle is the Mercurian captain of the Devil's Fang Pirates. Standing six feet tall and about 50 years old, Anibelle has outlived her own expectations given her life and profession. She is a willful and confident woman, carrying a quietly intimidating presence around herself wherever she goes- she often uses this presence to stand up for people she sees as being the underdog of a confrontation, that they might not feel alone against a crowd. This set of qualities lend themselves to a divisive personality; those who earn her trust find there are few allies more stalwart and safe, and those who earn her scorn learn she is persistent and has a very long memory. Anibelle has aged from a spicy young kid into a world-weary adult, filled with stories and anecdotes to share over drinks. Many of the misfits who find their way into her crew look up to her, which surprises her somewhat, as she doesn't particularly see herself as much of a role model.
Mercurians are known for bearing Gifts of Sol, having purview over some aspect of the universe. Anibelle is afflicted with a rare Curse of Sol, or a purview that is powerful in a way that leads a Mercurian into a short, explosive life. Anibelle's curse is quantum mechanics, she can see the superposition of possible outcomes of moments as manifested by the movement of subatomic particles and the broader theoretical superposition of concurrent dimensions playing out simultaneously. She usually describes it as "seeing ghosts" and "following waves". Seeing Ghosts usually means Anibelle is witnessing similar moments with different outcomes play out in other quantum states of the universe, which she uses to inform her own decisionmaking in her own reality. Following Waves describes the phenomenon of seeing a current of uncollapsed quantum waves flow like ripples on a river- when danger or an end point for her life are near she describes it as being like ripples rebounding off a riverbank or dashing against rocks, giving her a guiding low-level intuition as to the outcome of her own fate. Her curse has let her see her own death many times in many other dimensions, and while she tries not to let it show this does take a toll on her.
In her Firewalker form Anibelle can influence the collapse of these quantum waves and quite literally make her own luck, choosing whatever immediate outcomes she desires- choosing to realize outcomes where a Star Commander's sword grazes a little too far to the right or her ship's hull integrity just manages to hold together during a big impact. This aspect of her curse may in part explain the longevity of the Devil's Fang in fighting not one but two interplanetary superpowers. Firewalker Anibelles can also see each other across superimposed dimensional instances- those around them will often see them looking into middle space and making hand gestures to no one, but this is a way they have devised to communicate information to each other.
As captain of a pirate crew Anibelle tends to lead from the front, never asking her men to do anything she wouldn't do herself. Entrusting her crew to maintain the Coelacanth, she's often the one to kick out the door of a boarding round and be the first to set foot on an enemy ship, inspiring those behind her with the courage to do the same. Her weapon of choice is the chainhalberd; chain- type weapons are considered obsolete with the invention of the lighter and quieter wavecutter, but Anibelle is a bit old-fashioned and she likes the effect the hungering growl of the motor has on an enemy crew when she's taking a ship. "It lets 'em know who's coming". Anibelle's chainhalberd is a heavy instrument, it has a broad chainsaw face at the front, a flat chainsaw blade at the top and an impact hammer at the back, which she can sometimes use to slam-start the chainsaw engine when it stalls. At the pommel is a broad spike useful for breaking brittle surfaces. She installed a set of exhaust pipes to her chainhalberd's engine, and rumor has it when she revs the throttle great gouts of fire breathe from the weapon. Pairing with this she keeps a large Martian leadcaster holstered on her belt- it is a simple sidearm but crew who have fought the Devil's Fang and lived tend to tell tall tales about it. "When the Dread Hunter's leadcaster barks, you can hear the souls of the captains she's taken cry out in the echo of each shot". This is of course a silly rumor- the Dread Hunter likes to use her chainhalberd to pop the noggins off Star Patrol captains, so it's both the wrong weapon and their ghosts would be headless. It is the leadcaster she used to put out the Grand Admiral's eye and take the Coelacanth from him, though. That story is correct.
Star Patrol captains and commanders know the story well- when the Devil's Fang find you, they want your head, not your men's. They do not abide power-seeking men and as an officer of rank they regard you as an agent of that power, so when they come aboard your ship your life is in immediate peril. Commanders will order their men to fight tooth and nail, the promise of wealth and status awaiting whoever stops the Dread Hunter in her tracks, but one way or another she finds her way to your bridge, eyes of cinder fixed on you and you alone. It is, for many, a moment of truth- some few will grovel fruitlessly but many make a final stand for themselves, challenging the captain to a mano-a-mano resolution. Always with the mano-a-mano, these guys. Some prefer pistols at pace, others by the sword, but some brave few propose making their stand knuckle to knuckle, no weapons, no crew, just one on one. The six-foot Mercurian is always happy to find these commanders at the helm; she will hand her weapons over to her crew, slide her overcoat off her shoulders and let it fall to the deck with a weighty thud. The crew love it when the captain gets to put on a show like this. The commanders begin to suspect they miscalculated their odds.
Being a legendary outlaw means there's all kinds of stories about where you came from and how you ended up the most wanted person in the Sol system. While starfarers will spin their own yarn, the truth is Anibelle's story began on Mercury. She was born in a small underground cavern town, a place called Gou'Kusherobb-Ahr, or "Den of Pugilists". It was a place with a rich culture for sporting violence, where townsfolk aspired to martial skill and conflicts were resolved with knuckle and bone. A young Anibelle took a lot of knocks and ate a lot of dirt growing up, but she always learned to get back up and take her licks in stride. She had a bit of an artistic talent, and young Anibelle would often scratch out drawings of memories of cool moments she saw or experienced on whatever shreds of paper she could find. In time she'd learn, as all the children of Gou'Kusherobb, to pick her shots, to keep her guard up, to stay light on her feet and suck the coppery taste of blood off her lip. Don't take it personally, unless it was personal, then take it personally and never forget it- this was the way she was raised and it was the foundation for the young adult she would grow to become.
As a young adult Anibelle left the underground of Mercury and headed out into the stars, wanting to see the breadth of the Sol system and what other worlds had to experience. She came to space as an impish troublemaker, brought up in a place without aversion to direct and honest confrontation and now in a place where people had maybe not seen a spitfire like herself. She bounced around the system meeting people of all kinds- on her journeys she found herself in the company of sport-loving math professors, horse-wrangling secret agents, clumsy baby witches and technological wizards, as eclectic a band as you could find anywhere. She learned to put her upbringing into a bigger context of the universe and, in turn, came to understand herself better, learning to control her own troublesome personality. She struggled a bit to find her own place within it, but the young Mercurian would come to know the universe as a big and beautiful thing, something to be appreciated.
The waves of fate would eventually lead young Anibelle to the United Robotics Corporation, working a job as a maintenance technician in a Terran manufacturing facility. Money was hard to come by and she always liked tinkering with machines, so a job spinning wrenches felt like it was more interesting than alternatives. It was here she'd come to befriend a Venusian woman, a United Robotics engineer named June. She noticed the woman sitting alone taking lunch outside, tossing french fries and watching a flock of birds squabble over them. Anibelle thought a moment, stepped over and had a seat with the lonesome-looking woman, eating one of her fries and introducing herself. The two hit it off, and they would soon become lifelong friends.
Flash back to today, Anibelle and June find themselves in command of the mighty Coelacanth, hiding out in the shadow of the dwarf planet Ceres. Morale in the crew is high- they'd moved the mess hall tables into a squared circle and the Devil's Fang were holding a boxing tournament. June dances her fingers across a Venusian instrument, filling the mess hall with a stirring atmosphere of music. A trickle of blood runs a line down from Anibelle's nostril; she rolls her shoulders and cracks her knuckles, squaring up against the Callistan crewman meeting her in bracket. It's rare for anyone to lay a hand on the Dread Hunter and keep it, but a boxing tournament is about good will and sporting violence. The winner earns a drawing from the captain herself- a rare and prized trophy.
Anibelle looks out for her crewmembers, one and all. She knows that joining her cause is signing on to a crew of the damned, to earn the scorn of galactic powers from which there may be no pardon, where death is a certain and inevitable end, so she will not squander a life that chooses to join her through reckless command. She is an intimidating person, but she keeps a certain emotional distance and maintains her own quiet secrets, and some of the crew like to pick away at the threads of the captain's mystery. Some crew say she has the maternal instinct of a grizzly bear, that she fights to protect her men like they were her cubs. Other, older crewmembers claim she was a mother herself, that she had a young child she had to leave behind, that somewhere she had a little girl who could never know her mother for fear that she might inherit the terrible reputation she knew she would earn in fighting against Terran ambitions. That she'd seen it in the ghosts and the waves. They say she fights like she does because somewhere on Mercury there was a little girl who deserved to see the same big, beautiful universe she found for herself, and not a dull string of terraformed pearls. It's a pretty story, but that was what, twenty-five, thirty years ago? She'd be a grown woman by now. Wonder where she is, or what she's up to. I mean, that probably ain't true, right? Fighting the whole Terran Navy for one little kid...