Spoiler Warning
The following details are about a player-created storyline, or is information currently unrevealed about a character.
Please do not use this information ICly unless given permission to do so.
Helen was born on the day of the Qularr invasion of 2009, having been transferred as a lab specimen some time ago before the Mothership reached earthen space. A top secret project, the Qularr had been trying for decades to figure out her species secret: Hardwire Memory. When the Mothership reached Earth, Helen was nothing more than an egg gestating in on of their labs. Though as the ship went down and crashed into the river, Helen hatched and was flushed out of the lab into the open river.
She managed to make it on land however, hiding in the dark shipyards of Millenium City's Harbor District; feeding off the rats that she began hunting to survive and regain strength. But she found that there was a better meal to be had the night a drunken preacher had broken in one of the containment units. She followed him inside, a creature resembling a worm with slit eyes and stumped legs. When the preacher saw her he began kicking her, screaming at the top of his lungs " HELL and DAMNATION!" until she managed to subdue him and began feeding on the dead man.
When the body was discovered and the police began searching the premises, Helen made her way down into the sewage system, finding refuge in the dark tunnels where rats were abundant. Happening upon the occasional city-worker, Helen would learn to look out for these 'bags of meat' because they provided much greater sustenance than the rats she would hunt. She eventually made her way to a part of the system that had been abandoned for years, not knowing that this part would be part of a route a group of homeless nomads calling themselves the Refuge would take after their previous abode was destroyed during the Qularr attack.
===The Refuge===
The Refuge consisted of a handful homeless men women and children that had been gathered up by an older man known only as Old Saint Henry and his two companions: the blind Sweet Mammy, an old crone with a staff taller than she herself was, and Sunshine in the Skye, a young woman who was apparently mute. Shortly before the attack, they had welcomed Jaymar Williams, a 12 year old street urchin with a secret of his own to their group. Helen named him 'hatchling'
Helen sensed immediately that there was something different about these people, in particular the three leaders. So she followed them, studying them as it were, while she periodically went off in search of food. Old Saint Henry would tell the children stories so that they wouldn't be afraid and Sweet Mammy would hum as she handed out food that mysteriously seemed to come from no where. It was Sweet Mammy's song that seemed to call to Helen and keep her close by, though Helen would realize this only much much later. As Helen studied this group, she found herself picking up on the body language ( in particular that of the eyes) she had noticed a few young men making untoward advances toward the young woman called Skye, and it was obvious that this was causing a strain within the Refuge. These men were not good men, and in Helen's quickly developing yet still simple consciousness, these men needed to be plucked from the group. So she began her hunt upon the four, eventually leading all of them on separate occasions to an old storage room nearby that she had found and began nesting in. There she picked their bones dry.
During this period Helen boasted an amazing amount of physical and intellectual growth, often spying on the group as they would watch television, watching with them until the television was shut off. Or when they were listening to music; she found she liked this and it became clear to her that she was not going to hunt those that she liked, like Sunshine of the Skye, Sweet Mammy Jaymar and a few others.
Helen also began having dreams, strange dreams that seemed familiar, yet alien to her. With the hum of Sweet Mammy's tune, she began dreaming about things she knew she could not have experienced. Beings that looked like her yet didn't. As if out of the eyes of another being. These dreams would become very important to her later, though she only gave them a passing thought when she was on the hunt for rats.
When she had led the last of the bad men to her nest, Helen began experiencing longer periods of rest and an unusual weariness when she was hunting. She would retire for longer periods into her nest, feeling the need to hunt less and less. She would sometimes go to her hidden perch to look up on the group and noticed new faces, but also saw that these men were welcomed and so she would leave again
This went on until one night she heard a commotion outside of her nest and was surprised as the hatchling, Jaymar, stormed into the room with three of these new men chasing him. Though she only half understood she could tell that these men meant to do the hatchling harm, and that they had killed the one called Old Saint Henry. When one of the men turned on the light and the other shut the door, they were almost on Jaymar.
Helen pounced. In a matter of 5 minutes, all three men lay dead, and the hatchling sat in shock as he watched her slowly begin to feed. This would be the start of their friendship, as Helen made no signs of attacking him, even letting him pet her. Over the next few weeks Jaymar would check in on her, even accompanying her on her hunting outings. She found his company soothing, in light of the fact that she found hunting harder with time. In the few instances where the Refuge was threatened again, Jaymar led the troublemakers to the storage room, where she gratefully accepted the meal.
Helene then began her first 'molting', a process where she formed a cocoon with her saliva. Jaymar, shocked to find Helen in this state, would check in more than usual, drawing Sweet Mammy's attention to his frequent disappearances. Helen in the meantime began dreaming heavily while growing in the cocoon until she finally hatched again, with a surprise audience of Jaymar,Sweet Mammy, and Sunshine of the Skye. Helen had grown considerably with longer legs that allowed her to walk on two feet, a long tail, a more pronounced head, and claws beginning to form on fingers, which also had become more defined. She'd grown to the size of a small child of 6.
Though she had matured as such, Helen was too weak to put up a defence. After being feed raw chunks of beef Jaymar had stolen, the three wrapped Helen in a blanket and took them with her back to the camp. She found she could understand the three as they spoke, and gleaned that Sweet Mammy and Skye had followed Jayma; that he had admitted to them what had happened the day he met her, the recent disturbances being quelled because he fed the men to Helen. He had told them everything.
Sweet Mammy decided then that this wasn't a place for the being that saved her Refuge. Helen would be placed in the tent with her. In Jaymar's arms, Helen snuggled closer looking with bewildered eyes at Sweet Mammy, but made no sign to move or that she was against going there. She felt assured in this woman's presence, and was keen to the idea of being a part of their group. Her dreams had been horrible, and she felt protected now that they knew of her, and hadn't screamed in fear. When the old crone asked what she would like to be called, Helen was surprised to find her self saying "Helen...Helen Damnation" Although it was much more guttural. And so Helen is what they called her from then on, with Jay shortening it to Hel as a nickname. They put her in the tent with Sweet Mammy and Skye, careful not to alarm the other s in the camp. But from the very first night, they found she would sneak out, and could be found the next morning curled up next to Jaymar, sleeping like a baby....
===The Miseducation of Helen Damnation===
Helen's time with the Refuge consisted of learning the human ways, because it had been clear to the three companions that Helen was not from Earth. There were several things that the three would have to do without raising suspicion among the camp.
The first was finding a way for Helen conceal herself in order to walk among the other humans in the camp. Sunshine in the Skye chose what clothing would best accomplish this. Silently, the mute woman with the dark cafe-au-lait skin and honey kissed golden hair wrapped the scarf around Helen's face, tucking it under a hood made of the same material, along with a pair of white leather gloves. When she appeared among the citizens they eyed her warily, before being told by Sweet Mammy of the horrible incident which led to Jaymar finding the child. It's poor parents had run afoul of the New Purple Gang, and had been assassinated in connection with some deal or another. This was taken as fact, much to Helen's surprise, and so she would have been able to walk freely among them had she wanted to. Yet Helen remained elusive to the camp, coming only to attention when she was present to protect or find one of it's members.
It was clear that Helen willingly took on a protector role, 'marking' the camp as her territory. Sweet Mammy, Sunshine in the Skye, and Jaymar discussed at length what implications this could have for Helen. Up until then the girl had hunted humans and rats and whatever else they might be unaware of. It was perhaps better to wean her off of the hunt, or at least give her rules which, while still keeping her instinct fresh, would restrict possible wanton killing. Sweet Mammy seemed convinced that Helen's heart was in the right place, scoffing at the idea that Helen couldn't be taught to 'only kill if you have to'. Sunshine in the Skye would say nothing, as she had the habit of saying nothing. But her eyes eyed the child carefully, as if contemplating if it could be done or if it was a waste of time. Helen would often catch Skye watching her, and felt uneasy,although not afraid of the mute woman.
Jaymar was eager to train her. With his knowledge of the streets above and the crime that coursed through the underbelly of Millenium City, it seemed to him to be a perfect playing field to instruct her in what he called 'being a semi superhero'. It was he who, with a select few others, would make frequent trips to the surface, in order to scavenge what he could to bring down for the benefit of the Refuge. He felt confident in being able to accomplish Helen's 'schooling'. After all , was it not Jaymar who had managed to find the device that powered the electric devices the camp had quickly accustomed themselves to using? With that strange device that Jamar assured wasn't dangerous, cleanliness had increased dramatically in the past weeks, with anything set in a certain radius coming alive as soon as the switch on the object was turned on, without needing to be plugged in anywhere. Though many in the camp were self sufficient for the most part, Jaymar was further able to acquire those things which seemed impossible to get, and which could be used by all without prejudice.
Besides, he told the women, he had been teaching Helen how to speak words since the storage room. After her molting, he had gotten responses out of her that showed she clearly had used what he had taught her already. In the mornings when the children's television would shows were on, he would watch them with her, actively participate in the program's 'lessons. She found herself speaking more and more as time passed, soon being able to formulate complete sentences, though her wording seemed archaic. When Jaymar would read, Helen would often appear as if she had been there the whole time, giving Jaymar plenty of heart attacks. No matter how advanced or dull thematerial, she wanted him to read it to her. Her clawed hands made it useless to teach her writing, but she found herself recognizing words and sentences, and asked what the strange markings where that littered the letters, which Jaymar explained were punctuation marks.
Helen found herself enjoying this life, simple as it was, she hadn't really known anything else. She found she dreamed, but couldn't remember the dreams like she usually could, and as time passed she didn't give them a passing thought. She was excited when she eavesdropped on the trio discussing what do do with her, although she found herself wondering why it was important not to kill an enemy.
Helen never let on that she overheard the trio. She realized that her feasting on humans as she enjoyed was something that would possibly make the other sin camp afraid of her, just as afraid as they had been when the bad men had come and killed Old Saint Henry.
Although she struggled with this concept, she decided not to ever tell them that she had secretly been going to the surface, to the shipping yard where she had first hidden, to hunt the strange people with funny clothes, the people some in the camp called the Maniacs. It didn't matter that she studied them, trying to discern for herself the perfect victim. It did not matter that her criteria was to get the 'bad ones'. Sweet Mammy believed in her, and for some odd reason this resonated with Helen on such a level that she began to doubt her actions.
But not enough to stop entirely.
