Dragon Slayers, Galaxy Saviors

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Vice is Baldurian born and raised, in a somewhat more literal sense that one might think. As in, the city did indeed raise her. Her birth name is Volga Redbrook, but she doesn't really remember it. The name, that is. The surname is easier. It's on her parents' gravestones.
    Her dad got murdered when she was an infant, and no one bothered to investigate a dead tiefling from a poor family (we've seen first hand how justice in this city works). Her mom hanged around longer, but got sick and also died when Vice was around 8 years old, leaving her an orphan.
    If Baldur's Gate has any children protection services to speak of, then Vice never met them. For some time she skulked around the now-empty place they used to live in, but no living space stays empty for long, so she very quickly found herself on the streets. And with streets came trouble.
    Stubborn by nature, constantly hungry and angry about it (the fuck do you MEAN you can't spare one damn apple you stupid asshole vendor--), she got tossed around more than once.
    That's until one day, when she got in big trouble with the Fists for getting caught stealing, another urchin showed up and snatched her away. A teenage orc girl built like a fighter, with a burn scar on her face and a short boyish cut. She brought Vice to her hideout where she's been collecting similarly lost kids kind of like an older version of Mol. Their own little gang of survivors with no one to look after them but each other.
    Now, Uretir, or Ur as they all called her, was about 14-15 years old herself, but to 10 years old Vice she seemed an impossibly cool adult older sister who can do everything and anything. She was strong, she dared to get into guards' faces if needed, she was larger than life. She also taught all of them to steal, to sneak, to lie, to parkour across the city's architecture if needed, and to fight.
    It's in that group that Vice actually took her virtue name, Vice, 'cause it was indeed her own vices that repeatedly got her into trouble. Her stubbornness, her anger, her independence.
    She used to be both impossibly angry at the world, especially those richer and more well-off than them, and ashamed of her anger, 'cause, well, it's not a good thing to have, is it? Never does her any good, certainly.
    Ur used to say that they didn't need what the rich folks had. That those were stupid and complacent, not seeing shit under their own noses. Someone to be conned and robbed and tricked and laughed at, not anyone to envy. Not anyone to fear either. Ur used to say that everything they needed they already had in them. Their hands, their wits, their strength. Their crew. Ur also used to say that Vice's anger is nothing to be ashamed of. If she has it in her, then it's her tool to wield, to make herself stronger and more resilient. All she had to do was to learn how to harness it to her advantage instead of an obstacle.
    Vice took the first part of advice to heart, which makes her incredibly frustrating to every character in the current plot who tries to bait her with power. She has her hands, her sword, her wits and her lies, her lockpicks and her strength. And also her friends. That's enough.
    Uretir got killed in a scuffle when Vice was about sixteen. No one showed up to help, not a guard, not a citizen, no one. By the time the rest of them got there, there was no saving their sister.
    So that's when Vice saw crystal clear the second part of that advice and made her rage her fuel. Let's just say that Ur's murderers didn't leave that alley alive either.
    And Vice? Well, she's a 'barbarian' since. A sneaky, stealthy, lockpicky, smiley and deceiving berserk that will not hesitate to go off if you give her a reason to. The fact that she grew into her considerable height and build only helps her with that.
    In the course of the next ten years their gang grew apart without Ur to hold them together. A lot of them decided to join the guild. Vice, however, was too sick of losing people, so she went the loner route, living it up while stealing and squatting, Disney Aladdin style (but without an animal sidekick).
    The nautiloid actually snatched her up right in the middle of being chased after a robbery gone wrong, so? Successful getaway, I guess?
    Now she has a whole squad of weirdos she'd really rather keep from dying and a girlfriend who's MUCH too close to death for comfort, which totally doesn't keep Vice painfully awake at night. Can she keep ANYONE in this godsdamn life.
Baldur's Gate 3
Born into a nomad family (formerly known as Bakkers), Val has always been trouble. Quite literally since she started walking and immediately almost electrocuted herself by sticking her fingers into some tech while no one was looking.
    While she was still little, the family came across a ghost town with some obvious potential. Part of the family decided to stay and try to settle it - Val's parents among them. Both Val and her older brother Cris, however, liked being on the move, so they stayed with main family until later notice. It didn't come as much of a struggle, really - every adult was akin to a parent, so separation anxiety was low.
    However, when a couple of years later the family decided to check on their now-static siblings, they found the town raided and everyone in it dead. Ever the disobedient brat, Val sneaked in to investigate what the adults were wispering about, only to stumble upon half-rotted through, but still recognizable corpses of her parents.
    Now, the loss itself didn't affect her as much - by that point the kid had started to forget them. The concept of death, however, or rather, what happens to you aftwerwards, gave Val a deep existential fear of dying.
    Which she, naturally, decided to confront head on. As a kid, she managed to convince herself that she just "won't die" and that's it. Easy. By the time she was a teenager, that belief became fanatical. Other people die. She doesn't. 'Cause she's not others. She's better. She had to be better than all of them, if she wants to best death itself. The more Val trained, the more reckless and brutal she became. On her very first raid she ran off after their target in spite of being told to stand down, got shot in the stomach and still managed to stab the guy to death with a knife, grab the cargo and jump out of a moving train, only to be found later, bleeding out in the dirt, but with the prize in hands. Another time, doing a pick up for the clan, she got tailed by Wraiths and dealt with them in the spectacular fashion of detonating a whole bag of stached explosives. She later came to the camp, again, victorious, although concussed and with her whole face covered in blood, scarred from the flying debree. And yet, every time she pulled something like that, she survived. Which only fed her mantra.
    Half a year later after coming to Night City, Val had to face death three times in a row. One - some gonk's on an extreme BD. Two - her own. Three - Johnny Silverhand's, inside his memories. And once again, she technically survived all of them, but the ticking clock in her head is filling her with terror like nothing else in the world possibly could. Now's the time to grasp for that mantra of never dying (because that's NOT about me!) for dear life... Literally.
    Many people turn religious when they find themselves in desperate situations like V's. Val? She's giving her personal delusion another level. Because, really, when everyone involved in the Heist dies, when so many people helping her die, when even the person in her head has to die a second time in order for her to live - you've got to ask yourself: is it so crazy to think that maybe, just maybe, death is always taking someone standing slightly to the left of you, because you're one of her best suppliers? Is smearing dozens of human beings in bloody splotches on the pavement daily not, technically, death worship? A sacrifice, perhaps? Val isn't cruel on purpose and she's also not without reason, her nomad upbringing left her more humanity that most NC citizen can ask for, but when you're a solo merc with a berserk implant in your head - your hands are always elbow deep in blood. And the more people are dying who aren't you - the higher your chances of survival. Theoretically.
Cyberpunk 2077
Second child of ban Fenran Trevelyan of Ostwick. Her father's first wife and her older brother's mom died in childbirth, which left both men in the family hearbroken, cold and bitter. Fenran married again, although for both it was more a matter of benefit rather than feelings. Thus, Kinara was born - and quickly became the ultimate family disappointment.
    Instead of learning how to be a proper noble lady, she was growing up a tomboy, making friends with servants' children and pranking her teachers. When it became apparent that there won't be any beneficial marriages in her future - and the family heir position was already taken by her golden older brother Leon - her father, coming from a prestige family line of templars, decided to train her as one. Kina never much liked his favorite equipment - sword and shield - but he maintained that it's the only serious approach.
    The templar premise itself, however, caught Kinara hook like and sinker; beings still a teenager, she wholeheartedly believed that they were sworn to care about mages, protect them and be their ultimate support. When sent to the Circle to observe and soak in, however, she managed to become friends with a cocky and adventurous mage girl named Tina. Sensing no danger from the awkward girl, Tina taught Kinara to sneak, steal food from Knight-Captain's rations and read age-restricted books they weren't supposed to read. Both believing that they'd be able to leave and travel when they're 18, albeit for different reasons, they dreamed of going off on adventures together. Kinara, not even realizing that herself yet, got a crush on Tina.
    And then she had the misfortune of walking in on one of the older templars harassing the girl. Seeing red, Kinara made a fatal decision to draw a sword on her superior. She didn't manage to strike. For such insolence she got beat up unconscious - what she failed to see, however, was Tina also trying to come to her rescue.
    Kina got off with bruises and many hours of repentant prayers. Upon being released, she learned that Tina was made tranquil for attacking a templar like that.
    Rose-tinted glasses shattered. Guilt was overwhelming. Oversome with seething hate towards the Order and everything it stood for, Kinara threw down the armor and ran. Since her training was still nowhere close to taking lyrium stage, she could afford to vanish.
    She lived a whole year pretending to be a young man in a small village, working as a local potter's apprentice. Eventually she was outed (thanks to an unfortunate one-sided infatuation with a local girl), and her family's men were able to track her down.
    At that point her status as family's disappointment was sealed. Her face was now scarred with the events of the past year, her hair was cut short, she dropped strength training, instead opting for speed, agility and stealth. And worst of all, while still an andrastian believer, she was thoroughly disillusioned in the Chantry, thus fully making herself useless for family's honor.
    In a last ditch attempt to save face and at least pretend thar his daughter is worth some salt, Fenran made her accompany Leon to the Divine's Conclave. Four words: "Don't fuck this up".
    That did not end like either of them expected.
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Growing up on spaceships with a military mom, Robyn was always fascinated with Alliance and everything that has to do with it. The fact that her own father went KIA before she could even remember has never put her off. It started with wearing Hannah's cap, playing with toy ships and nagging other marines for stories. It ended worse.
    When Robyn was 14, the Mindoir tragedy struck. A whole colony destroyed and abducted into slavery while Alliance soldiers could only helplessly watch. Since Hannah was on that ship, Robyn caught wind of what happened pretty quickly - and she was furious. Teenage maxumalism coupled with an indealistic view of the Alliance did their job - fully convinced that she knows best, Robyn insisted that the soldiers should have tried harder. That being scared of casualties and thus resigning to helpless observers is cowardly and unworthy. That yes, it would be more befitting of an Alliance for all of them to die trying rather than what happened. Blinded by her conviction, Robyn failed to consider that it would also mean her own mother dying. That whole incident and the screaming match that followed had put a rift between them that was never quite able to fully heal, despite some notable efforts later in life.
    The one thing Robyn was dead-set from that moment on, however, was this: she was going to grow up, enlist, become a soldier and show all of them how it's done.
    And so, as soon as she was eigteen, Robyn enlisted. In the Academy she was a weird mis of the most annoiying and also the most endearing kid in the group. She studies relentlessly, yet always found time to party. She was the awfully self-confident know-it-all - but she was always up to helping. Same thing with physical excerises. Everyone knew Shepard one way or the other.
    First time Robyn had to pull a trigger and kill another living being in the field, she didn't take it lightly, as most people wouldn't. But as she stood there, pale and badly consealing the tremor in her hands, an older soldier came up to her, pointed at people they assisted in getting to safety and said: "This is the result of that shot you took. Don't focus on the dead bastard. Focus on the good you've done."
    She took it to heart.
    When Torphan happened, Robyn was fully back to her self-confident self and her old convictions. With a rallying speech she led her squad into the slavers' underground base. In a way, to her it felt like a much-awaited paybeck for that slave raid that her mother failed to stop. Full circle. Relentless, she wouldn't make the decision to retreat - it went against everything she believed in, after all.
    When she came back, bleeding and with a handful of dogtags in hand, her commanding officer almost lost his mind. As it would turn out, he later would. He slammed her into the wall, demanding to know if she even realized how many men and women she straight up locked up in a death trap. If it was worth it at all. Looking through him, Robyn gurgled thorugh a gaping wound in her torn up cheek - soldiers die. That's what all of them, including her, signed up for. But the mission was done. In fact, she made sure to leave no survivors at all, delirious with pain and rage at the realization of losing her squad. At that point, looking in her glassed over eyes, hearing her motone voice, her commanding officer realized, that this one was too far gone. There was no reasoning with her.
    Contrary to the popular belief, Robyn did not Torphan lightly. She would never tell anyone about how much she wheezed over the sink, unable to throw up because she couldn't eat. About the fact that the whole journey back to Earth she was sleeping on boxes in cargo bay, 'cause the silence in now mostly empty crew quarters was deafening. She'd never say what she really felt inside when they gave her a medal. What was going through her head when a mother of one of her squadmates, her now dead friend's mother who knew her for years, was screaming in her face, pained and enraged. That woman was the first to give her the name Butcher of Torphan.
    Robyn's teenage naivety was gone, now replaced with the full weight of what her philosophy meant. It didn't make her change her views. It just made her realize the real cost of her philosophy. A cost paid in lives. Her own included, if need be. She never put herself above her people. Her survival was either a matter of skill or dumb luck - perhaps both.
    Robyn grew cold and detached, broke up with her girlfriend at the time - mostly to shield the girl from herself, knowing, that she'd make no exceptions for her either - and became sarcastic, self-assured and mean. Fits the image of the "butcher". Keeps her from growing attached to people, too. Weight slightly less on her soul that way. Not very, though.
    Until, perhaps, a certain team will make her care regardless, and then, as she loses some of them in desperate attempts to do the right thing - 'cause despite her methods, she does try to do the right things - it will hurt like a bitch again, making her wish she could be anyone but herself.
    You might say she could just change her approach. Too bad she doesn't believe in any other options.
Mass Effect Trilogy
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Dragon Age: Origins
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Dragon Age 2
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Saints Row
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Greedfall
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Fallout 4
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Mass Effect: Andromeda
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Saints Row (2022)