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stella fortuna // app
➤ Player
Name: mala
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
Malathyne // disc: Malathyne#3688
Other characters ingame: n/a
Invited by: winky face emoji @ september
➤ Character
Name: Cosetta "Zetta" Arianne Reynolds
Canon: Malleable protag of Fallout 4
Canon Point: Within a couple months of completing "Dangerous Minds" (killing Kellogg), before going to the Glowing Sea. She's gathering resources in preparation for that trip and getting more involved with the Railroad. Most recently, Mercer Safehouse has been established (at Kingsport Lighthouse)
Age: 39
History:
The game: Fallout 4 | Fallout 4 Quests
The setting: The Commonwealth, Timeline and History Notes
The character: Sole Survivor (doubles as a generic plot summary for the game)
* canon divergence: The female player character is canonically a laywer. This isn't true for Zetta; instead, she was a roboticist
Personal history summaries: Pre-game (original) history | Game history
Personality:
> In Your Face: While on default, she is quiet, keen-eyed, and keeps to herself, once she gets involved with something... This is probably one of the first things people notice about Zetta. She is unapologetically assertive, rarely balks at voicing her opinion, and trends heavily towards the argumentative. She often comes across as more aggressive or hostile than she intends as a result. It isn't uncommon for people to get the impression that she thinks she's the smartest person in the room and has a personal issue with whoever she's arguing with. (It doesn't help that she's capable of yelling very, very loudly.) The truth, however, is that arguing is her favorite style of idea exchange, and it takes a lot for her to truly go into "attack mode." She treats arguing as a bit of a game, meaning it has rules and an end goal (usually to get information or enact some kind of change she thinks is important), and she loves it when people play back at her.
> Boundary-Focused: Zetta has very firm boundaries, and likewise pays very close attention to other people's. She reacts very poorly when she witnesses boundary crossing, even if it's done against someone she dislikes or is on bad terms with. This comes mainly from two things: her history with her toxic mother, and her close relationship with her childhood friend turned boyfriend turned husband, Riley. When it comes to her mother, Zetta wants to avoid behaving like her at all costs. With Riley, his personality is the opposite of her own, being more meek and having trauma around conflict, and he was the most important person in her life for most of her years. She was often his protector in their school years. This all comes together to mean that: she reflexively wants to step up to someone's defense if someone is willfully crossing boundaries; she holds very strict rules for herself when it comes to her arguing to avoid stepping over people's lines; and she has a bit of a hair trigger response when it comes to her own boundaries (or those of her loved ones) being crossed.
> Fix-It Mentality: She is, at heart, truly a mechanic. When she sees something broken or otherwise doesn't work, she wants to fix it. But this applies to more than just physical objects -- This is a huge drive for her desire to problem-solve. Above, it's mentioned that she argues to achieve an end goal, and this is often at the heart of it. She sees a problem, and she wants to fix it. Maybe she needs to get someone's cooperation for something to be fixed, or she needs to convince them that there's a problem in the first place. When presented with a problem that seems unfixable for any number of reasons (such as "there's a major problem with society, and she is only one person"), she does not tend to react well. (How, specifically, she reacts depends too much on the issue at hand and the context around it to really note, but it's bound to have a big impact on her.)
> Family-Oriented: But Zetta doesn't believe that family is who you're related to. It's who you choose, and who chooses you, and traditional family roles can bite her. To be honest, she has a pretty significant "us vs them" mentality as a survival mechanism, and the bulk of her "us" is composed of those she considers her family. Sometimes, that "us" is also simply people she relates to (such as Pre-War ghouls, who have a special understanding of what it's like to see the world end and still be alive afterwards, which speaks to her survivor's guilt especially). But by and large, it's those she's bonded closely to, and they are the most important people in the world to her. If she could, she would shape the world to suit them, and she certainly tries her damnedest to make it so. She isn't a socially driven person per se, but she needs Her People in order to truly function. Without them, she is adrift, and this can lead to... a LOT of problems.
> Anger Is A Coping Mechanism: What it says on the tin. Zetta definitely converts a lot of emotions, especially vulnerability, into anger. This is a behavior she is highly aware of, and something that's been a bit of a running joke with her loved ones. To boil it down... She's tsundere. Yeah, I said it. She covers up a lot of things -- insecurities, vulnerability, uncertainty, confusion, emotions she doesn't know what to do with or how to process in the moment -- into sarcasm and anger in varying levels. This is the "tsun" portion of the program. (It's worth keeping in mind her boundary-keeping rules in relation to this trait. Even when she's bumbling around covering something up with anger, she still tries to be respectful of other people's boundaries. Obviously, this isn't foolproof; she's only human, and misjudgments and mistakes happen. But she tries hard to be mindful all the same.)
> Idealist In A Cynical Suit: Zetta identifies with the "pragmatist" and "cynical" labels, and will actively buck any attempts to point out that she's actually a bit of an idealist, and outright laugh at the concept of her being an optimist. The last one is generally not applicable (unless she's actively choosing to be optmistic about something), but... At her core, she definitely is a bit of an idealist. She wants the world to be better than it is. She knows life's unfair and believes it to be shitty more often than not, and she hates that it's that way. She is cynical as a defense mechanism as a result, sometimes buying into it a little too hard (she is definitely the person who gripes at every holiday about how it's commercialized nonsense, even the ones she likes).
> Surprisingly Soft Center: For all of her bristles and yelling and protests, at the end of the day, what Zetta wants most is to curl up with her romantic interests(s) on the couch and watch TV and share a bit of sass and a lot of affection. This is the "dere" portion of the program. "Romantic interest(s)" gets specified here because they're the most likely to unlock this behavior. It's very rare for people to see it otherwise, because her romantic partner(s) are who she allows to get closest to her, and who she allows herself to rely on the most. The softness she shares with, say, adoptees and sibling-types is usually a different brand, because she feels the need to keep up some of her walls -- She feels responsible for them, after all, and doesn't want to over-burden them. But her romantic partner(s) see all of it, and she'll lean her entire weight on them. (And she likewise expects them to lean their entire weight on her. Equivocal exchange is deeply important to her at all levels of bonding, but especially this one.)
> Hell Or High Water: It's easy to say that Zetta is stubborn and bull-headed. But that doesn't really cover the extent of her determination once she's really gotten her teeth into something. At the start of Fallout 4, Zetta witnesses her husband murdered and baby kidnapped while she was trapped helpless in a cryogenic pod. When she finally is released, she sets herself on a warpath to get revenge and find her son. But at each step, that quest gained more complexities and mysteries, ranging from "the man who killed my husband works for a shadowy secret organization" to "my only lead is to dive into the memories of my husband's murderer supplied by his cybernetic brain implant" to "my baby is now a ten-year-old because I was kept in cryo longer than I thought" to "my only lead is in the middle of a deeply radioactive hellscape." Still, Zetta is refusing to back down. She's still utterly determined to figure out a way to get inside the Institute (which no one has ever done) and get down there and rescue her son. This is probably the closest she has to a superpower.
> Regression Arc: At the start of the game, after she left the vault, Zetta was in what we can call a "distinctly bad place." She has come a long way since then, evened out and began adjusting and lowered her hackles, began to accept the new world around her as her own. But early on, she was a damn mess. Separated in time from her boyfriend and second love, her husband and first love murdered in front of her, her baby boy stolen right before her eyes, all while she was helpless to stand by and watch -- All of that would be enough trauma, but it's piled on top of the utter fear of rushing to the vault as the nuclear bombs were dropped, right into the arms of scientists who had every intention of betraying them. She already had trust issues as it was, but those got amplified to sixty for a while. She was already a private person, but she actively tried to emotionally isolate herself. The only "us" she had to rely on was her family's robot who had survived the apocalypse. Everyone else, every other person and everything out in the world, was a "them." Her coping mechanism of turning vulnerability into anger became far more volatile, and she was prone to lashing out and baring her teeth at anything that so much as made her uncomfortable.
> Growth Arc: It is possible to tap into her secret idealism, combine it with her fix-it mentality, to motivate her to step up and try to create the changes she wants to see. This is the general shape of her positive growth in Fallout 4. A lot of the roadblocks she faced Pre-War no longer exist, or exist in greatly reduced forms. She is in a unique position to be able to do something on a major scale, and she's finally waking up to the idea and starting to accept it. She's also beginning to let herself care -- and not just in a general sense of "you should care about other people," but on a personal level. Letting herself relate to others' struggles. Letting herself want better for them, and step forward to make that happen. This is more than just returning to her normal, because before the Great War, she was disillusioned and highly cynical and focused on the survival of her family and only her family. So this is really several steps forward even from there.
> New Setting: On the bright side, she's done the whole "woke up to find a whole new world" thing before. On the downside, she's done the whole "woke up to find a whole new world" thing before. Luckily, Zetta is from a canon point where she's going to be stubbornly clinging to the development she's gained and try hard not to relapse into the way she was when she left the vault. She has only recently gotten her head above water, she does NOT want to slip back under. While she's definitely going to feel adrift and frustrated and alone and scared, she's going to find herself a project (or twelve) and throw herself into them whole-heartedly, both as a distraction and as a survival mechanism.
> Interests: Science!, robots, computers, cars, kids, BASEBALL, cheesy af comic books, fiddling with scraps and scavenged things. And she misses TV and chocolate and Real Food...
Abilities: Zetta is an average human without powers. Her more notable and/or specialized skills fall under the following categories:
> S.P.E.C.I.A.L.: An abbreviation for Fallout's base stats (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck). In previous games, stats started at 1 and maxed out at 10, but Fallout 4 removed that ceiling and allows for stats to go well above 10. The numbers themselves aren't going to matter in play, but I'll be listing them as a frame of reference. (I use the mindset of "10 is still considered typical human limits, and numbers above 10 represent especially exceptional things such as genius-level IQs, etc.")
Strength: 5 — Dead average. Zetta isn't particularly strong or particularly weak in this department.
Perception: 8 — She's sharp. She not only pays attention to details, but she's good at putting them together, too. Her intuition plays an important factor in this, too, because while she'll analyze her gut feelings later, she doesn't reject them in the moment.
Endurance: 7 — This has less to do with physical durability and more to do with sheer tenacity. Even when she ought to be succumbing to her injuries, she stubbornly pushes on anyway until she absolutely cannot any more, and her ability to push past pain or tiredness is remarkably high.
Charisma: 3 — She can be notably difficult to get along with, and her argumentative nature comes across wrong more often than not.
Intelligence: 12 — A combination of genius-level IQ and access to good education gives Zetta a definite edge here.
Agility: 6 — Her reflexes are a little better than human average, so she responds quicker than one might expect and is decent with a gun, but still doesn't really stand out here.
Luck: 3 — Life hasn't particularly been on Zetta's side. It's common for things to go wrong more often than they go right.
> Science: She's always had an interest in science, ever since she was a kid. She voraciously consumed anything that piqued her curiousity, and while she ended up settling in the field of roboticism, she has a solid grasp of chemistry and physics. In robotics, she specializes in the physical build (so the mechanics and engineering aspects), but her experience with Artificial Intelligence also means she's proficient in programming, computer science, and electronics.
Because Fallout is a setting that makes heavy use of nuclear energy and has access to things like energy weapons, she's also familiar with them, though far more of the latter than the former. Cars were powered by nuclear engines by the time of the apocalypse, so things along the lines of car maintenance and nuclear batteries are more in her wheelhouse than higher applications.
Once you start branching out into things like the natural sciences (biology, agriculture, environmental, health science, etc.), you start to lose her beyond the basics. The social sciences are definitely not something she's ever focused on. Due to the wasteland, she has some experience in adapting her specialties into things like construction work and she's definitely picked up quick and (often literally) dirty first aid.
> Crafting: A branch off of the above, but specific enough to be worth mentioning. You can't make a store run or put out an order for parts to be mailed in after the apocalypse, and with her obvious focus in Building Stuff, Zetta's spent a lot of time learning how to make and maintain wasteland necessities such as weapons (both ballistics and energy), ammo, and different kinds of hodgepodge armor. (And... explosives. Mines and grenades.)
She's also played around with blueprints for generators and turrets, and as mentioned above, picked up some experience in helping people cobble buildings together out of makeshift materials.
Her chemistry knowledge has given her a leg up in figuring out how to create useful medicines, though these are often basic due to availability of supplies, and she still isn't especially confident in this field. She'd much rather leave medicine to people who specialize in it and focus on mechanics.
> Combat: Before the war, her husband made sure she knew how to use a 10mm pistol once he got back from his deployment out of a general sense of paranoia. Zetta has since had to expand on those skills, so she knows her way around a rifle and a shotgun okay enough, but still prefers handguns and energy weapons. She's learned how to notice and disarm traps (like tripwires and landmines), as well as aforementioned first aid (sometimes improvised).
She's also learned a lot about stealth. This is her preferred tactic -- She'd rather avoid fights altogether if she can help it, and when she can't, she likes having the time to set up traps of her own and line up her shots to put down enemies before they can decide to try to kill her.
While she's got some experience in fistfights, close quarters combat is something she tries to avoid at all costs. When cornered into one, she's more prone to lashing out and improvisation than anything trained and practiced.
> Survival: How to identify if water is clean enough to drink, keeping alive when traveling long distances during Bostonian winters, hunting and the proper management of the meat you get from it, gear maintenance, backpacking, scavenging for supplies, finding secure places to camp, starting a fire (and knowing when it's too risky to), avoiding (and handling) radiation sickness... Zetta may have started out a city girl, but all of these things are examples of what she's had to learn in order to Not Die out in the wasteland.
Inventory: Everything that your character has on their person and will bring into the game.
Vision: Electro
Reason: While she'd also be a candidate for Cryo and Geo, she would also most comfortably identify with the aspects of Electro. While she hasn't been an outcast in her life per se, her prickly attitude and refusal to accept the roles laid out for her (by her mother and by society's expectations) has certainly seen her sitting on the outside more than anything else. Tenacity to hold true to her beliefs and herself is constantly at the forefront, and something she prides herself on -- even hinges her identity on without realizing it.
Role: Mage with a combination of defensive and buffing. Thoughts on her Genshin AU kit here.
Constellation: Lightning bolt
ref: game link
Name: mala
Contact:
Other characters ingame: n/a
Invited by: winky face emoji @ september
➤ Character
Name: Cosetta "Zetta" Arianne Reynolds
Canon: Malleable protag of Fallout 4
Canon Point: Within a couple months of completing "Dangerous Minds" (killing Kellogg), before going to the Glowing Sea. She's gathering resources in preparation for that trip and getting more involved with the Railroad. Most recently, Mercer Safehouse has been established (at Kingsport Lighthouse)
Age: 39
History:
The game: Fallout 4 | Fallout 4 Quests
The setting: The Commonwealth, Timeline and History Notes
The character: Sole Survivor (doubles as a generic plot summary for the game)
* canon divergence: The female player character is canonically a laywer. This isn't true for Zetta; instead, she was a roboticist
Personal history summaries: Pre-game (original) history | Game history
Personality:
> In Your Face: While on default, she is quiet, keen-eyed, and keeps to herself, once she gets involved with something... This is probably one of the first things people notice about Zetta. She is unapologetically assertive, rarely balks at voicing her opinion, and trends heavily towards the argumentative. She often comes across as more aggressive or hostile than she intends as a result. It isn't uncommon for people to get the impression that she thinks she's the smartest person in the room and has a personal issue with whoever she's arguing with. (It doesn't help that she's capable of yelling very, very loudly.) The truth, however, is that arguing is her favorite style of idea exchange, and it takes a lot for her to truly go into "attack mode." She treats arguing as a bit of a game, meaning it has rules and an end goal (usually to get information or enact some kind of change she thinks is important), and she loves it when people play back at her.
> Boundary-Focused: Zetta has very firm boundaries, and likewise pays very close attention to other people's. She reacts very poorly when she witnesses boundary crossing, even if it's done against someone she dislikes or is on bad terms with. This comes mainly from two things: her history with her toxic mother, and her close relationship with her childhood friend turned boyfriend turned husband, Riley. When it comes to her mother, Zetta wants to avoid behaving like her at all costs. With Riley, his personality is the opposite of her own, being more meek and having trauma around conflict, and he was the most important person in her life for most of her years. She was often his protector in their school years. This all comes together to mean that: she reflexively wants to step up to someone's defense if someone is willfully crossing boundaries; she holds very strict rules for herself when it comes to her arguing to avoid stepping over people's lines; and she has a bit of a hair trigger response when it comes to her own boundaries (or those of her loved ones) being crossed.
> Fix-It Mentality: She is, at heart, truly a mechanic. When she sees something broken or otherwise doesn't work, she wants to fix it. But this applies to more than just physical objects -- This is a huge drive for her desire to problem-solve. Above, it's mentioned that she argues to achieve an end goal, and this is often at the heart of it. She sees a problem, and she wants to fix it. Maybe she needs to get someone's cooperation for something to be fixed, or she needs to convince them that there's a problem in the first place. When presented with a problem that seems unfixable for any number of reasons (such as "there's a major problem with society, and she is only one person"), she does not tend to react well. (How, specifically, she reacts depends too much on the issue at hand and the context around it to really note, but it's bound to have a big impact on her.)
> Family-Oriented: But Zetta doesn't believe that family is who you're related to. It's who you choose, and who chooses you, and traditional family roles can bite her. To be honest, she has a pretty significant "us vs them" mentality as a survival mechanism, and the bulk of her "us" is composed of those she considers her family. Sometimes, that "us" is also simply people she relates to (such as Pre-War ghouls, who have a special understanding of what it's like to see the world end and still be alive afterwards, which speaks to her survivor's guilt especially). But by and large, it's those she's bonded closely to, and they are the most important people in the world to her. If she could, she would shape the world to suit them, and she certainly tries her damnedest to make it so. She isn't a socially driven person per se, but she needs Her People in order to truly function. Without them, she is adrift, and this can lead to... a LOT of problems.
> Anger Is A Coping Mechanism: What it says on the tin. Zetta definitely converts a lot of emotions, especially vulnerability, into anger. This is a behavior she is highly aware of, and something that's been a bit of a running joke with her loved ones. To boil it down... She's tsundere. Yeah, I said it. She covers up a lot of things -- insecurities, vulnerability, uncertainty, confusion, emotions she doesn't know what to do with or how to process in the moment -- into sarcasm and anger in varying levels. This is the "tsun" portion of the program. (It's worth keeping in mind her boundary-keeping rules in relation to this trait. Even when she's bumbling around covering something up with anger, she still tries to be respectful of other people's boundaries. Obviously, this isn't foolproof; she's only human, and misjudgments and mistakes happen. But she tries hard to be mindful all the same.)
> Idealist In A Cynical Suit: Zetta identifies with the "pragmatist" and "cynical" labels, and will actively buck any attempts to point out that she's actually a bit of an idealist, and outright laugh at the concept of her being an optimist. The last one is generally not applicable (unless she's actively choosing to be optmistic about something), but... At her core, she definitely is a bit of an idealist. She wants the world to be better than it is. She knows life's unfair and believes it to be shitty more often than not, and she hates that it's that way. She is cynical as a defense mechanism as a result, sometimes buying into it a little too hard (she is definitely the person who gripes at every holiday about how it's commercialized nonsense, even the ones she likes).
> Surprisingly Soft Center: For all of her bristles and yelling and protests, at the end of the day, what Zetta wants most is to curl up with her romantic interests(s) on the couch and watch TV and share a bit of sass and a lot of affection. This is the "dere" portion of the program. "Romantic interest(s)" gets specified here because they're the most likely to unlock this behavior. It's very rare for people to see it otherwise, because her romantic partner(s) are who she allows to get closest to her, and who she allows herself to rely on the most. The softness she shares with, say, adoptees and sibling-types is usually a different brand, because she feels the need to keep up some of her walls -- She feels responsible for them, after all, and doesn't want to over-burden them. But her romantic partner(s) see all of it, and she'll lean her entire weight on them. (And she likewise expects them to lean their entire weight on her. Equivocal exchange is deeply important to her at all levels of bonding, but especially this one.)
> Hell Or High Water: It's easy to say that Zetta is stubborn and bull-headed. But that doesn't really cover the extent of her determination once she's really gotten her teeth into something. At the start of Fallout 4, Zetta witnesses her husband murdered and baby kidnapped while she was trapped helpless in a cryogenic pod. When she finally is released, she sets herself on a warpath to get revenge and find her son. But at each step, that quest gained more complexities and mysteries, ranging from "the man who killed my husband works for a shadowy secret organization" to "my only lead is to dive into the memories of my husband's murderer supplied by his cybernetic brain implant" to "my baby is now a ten-year-old because I was kept in cryo longer than I thought" to "my only lead is in the middle of a deeply radioactive hellscape." Still, Zetta is refusing to back down. She's still utterly determined to figure out a way to get inside the Institute (which no one has ever done) and get down there and rescue her son. This is probably the closest she has to a superpower.
> Regression Arc: At the start of the game, after she left the vault, Zetta was in what we can call a "distinctly bad place." She has come a long way since then, evened out and began adjusting and lowered her hackles, began to accept the new world around her as her own. But early on, she was a damn mess. Separated in time from her boyfriend and second love, her husband and first love murdered in front of her, her baby boy stolen right before her eyes, all while she was helpless to stand by and watch -- All of that would be enough trauma, but it's piled on top of the utter fear of rushing to the vault as the nuclear bombs were dropped, right into the arms of scientists who had every intention of betraying them. She already had trust issues as it was, but those got amplified to sixty for a while. She was already a private person, but she actively tried to emotionally isolate herself. The only "us" she had to rely on was her family's robot who had survived the apocalypse. Everyone else, every other person and everything out in the world, was a "them." Her coping mechanism of turning vulnerability into anger became far more volatile, and she was prone to lashing out and baring her teeth at anything that so much as made her uncomfortable.
> Growth Arc: It is possible to tap into her secret idealism, combine it with her fix-it mentality, to motivate her to step up and try to create the changes she wants to see. This is the general shape of her positive growth in Fallout 4. A lot of the roadblocks she faced Pre-War no longer exist, or exist in greatly reduced forms. She is in a unique position to be able to do something on a major scale, and she's finally waking up to the idea and starting to accept it. She's also beginning to let herself care -- and not just in a general sense of "you should care about other people," but on a personal level. Letting herself relate to others' struggles. Letting herself want better for them, and step forward to make that happen. This is more than just returning to her normal, because before the Great War, she was disillusioned and highly cynical and focused on the survival of her family and only her family. So this is really several steps forward even from there.
> New Setting: On the bright side, she's done the whole "woke up to find a whole new world" thing before. On the downside, she's done the whole "woke up to find a whole new world" thing before. Luckily, Zetta is from a canon point where she's going to be stubbornly clinging to the development she's gained and try hard not to relapse into the way she was when she left the vault. She has only recently gotten her head above water, she does NOT want to slip back under. While she's definitely going to feel adrift and frustrated and alone and scared, she's going to find herself a project (or twelve) and throw herself into them whole-heartedly, both as a distraction and as a survival mechanism.
> Interests: Science!, robots, computers, cars, kids, BASEBALL, cheesy af comic books, fiddling with scraps and scavenged things. And she misses TV and chocolate and Real Food...
Abilities: Zetta is an average human without powers. Her more notable and/or specialized skills fall under the following categories:
> S.P.E.C.I.A.L.: An abbreviation for Fallout's base stats (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck). In previous games, stats started at 1 and maxed out at 10, but Fallout 4 removed that ceiling and allows for stats to go well above 10. The numbers themselves aren't going to matter in play, but I'll be listing them as a frame of reference. (I use the mindset of "10 is still considered typical human limits, and numbers above 10 represent especially exceptional things such as genius-level IQs, etc.")
Strength: 5 — Dead average. Zetta isn't particularly strong or particularly weak in this department.
Perception: 8 — She's sharp. She not only pays attention to details, but she's good at putting them together, too. Her intuition plays an important factor in this, too, because while she'll analyze her gut feelings later, she doesn't reject them in the moment.
Endurance: 7 — This has less to do with physical durability and more to do with sheer tenacity. Even when she ought to be succumbing to her injuries, she stubbornly pushes on anyway until she absolutely cannot any more, and her ability to push past pain or tiredness is remarkably high.
Charisma: 3 — She can be notably difficult to get along with, and her argumentative nature comes across wrong more often than not.
Intelligence: 12 — A combination of genius-level IQ and access to good education gives Zetta a definite edge here.
Agility: 6 — Her reflexes are a little better than human average, so she responds quicker than one might expect and is decent with a gun, but still doesn't really stand out here.
Luck: 3 — Life hasn't particularly been on Zetta's side. It's common for things to go wrong more often than they go right.
> Science: She's always had an interest in science, ever since she was a kid. She voraciously consumed anything that piqued her curiousity, and while she ended up settling in the field of roboticism, she has a solid grasp of chemistry and physics. In robotics, she specializes in the physical build (so the mechanics and engineering aspects), but her experience with Artificial Intelligence also means she's proficient in programming, computer science, and electronics.
Because Fallout is a setting that makes heavy use of nuclear energy and has access to things like energy weapons, she's also familiar with them, though far more of the latter than the former. Cars were powered by nuclear engines by the time of the apocalypse, so things along the lines of car maintenance and nuclear batteries are more in her wheelhouse than higher applications.
Once you start branching out into things like the natural sciences (biology, agriculture, environmental, health science, etc.), you start to lose her beyond the basics. The social sciences are definitely not something she's ever focused on. Due to the wasteland, she has some experience in adapting her specialties into things like construction work and she's definitely picked up quick and (often literally) dirty first aid.
> Crafting: A branch off of the above, but specific enough to be worth mentioning. You can't make a store run or put out an order for parts to be mailed in after the apocalypse, and with her obvious focus in Building Stuff, Zetta's spent a lot of time learning how to make and maintain wasteland necessities such as weapons (both ballistics and energy), ammo, and different kinds of hodgepodge armor. (And... explosives. Mines and grenades.)
She's also played around with blueprints for generators and turrets, and as mentioned above, picked up some experience in helping people cobble buildings together out of makeshift materials.
Her chemistry knowledge has given her a leg up in figuring out how to create useful medicines, though these are often basic due to availability of supplies, and she still isn't especially confident in this field. She'd much rather leave medicine to people who specialize in it and focus on mechanics.
> Combat: Before the war, her husband made sure she knew how to use a 10mm pistol once he got back from his deployment out of a general sense of paranoia. Zetta has since had to expand on those skills, so she knows her way around a rifle and a shotgun okay enough, but still prefers handguns and energy weapons. She's learned how to notice and disarm traps (like tripwires and landmines), as well as aforementioned first aid (sometimes improvised).
She's also learned a lot about stealth. This is her preferred tactic -- She'd rather avoid fights altogether if she can help it, and when she can't, she likes having the time to set up traps of her own and line up her shots to put down enemies before they can decide to try to kill her.
While she's got some experience in fistfights, close quarters combat is something she tries to avoid at all costs. When cornered into one, she's more prone to lashing out and improvisation than anything trained and practiced.
> Survival: How to identify if water is clean enough to drink, keeping alive when traveling long distances during Bostonian winters, hunting and the proper management of the meat you get from it, gear maintenance, backpacking, scavenging for supplies, finding secure places to camp, starting a fire (and knowing when it's too risky to), avoiding (and handling) radiation sickness... Zetta may have started out a city girl, but all of these things are examples of what she's had to learn in order to Not Die out in the wasteland.
Inventory: Everything that your character has on their person and will bring into the game.
Vision: Electro
Reason: While she'd also be a candidate for Cryo and Geo, she would also most comfortably identify with the aspects of Electro. While she hasn't been an outcast in her life per se, her prickly attitude and refusal to accept the roles laid out for her (by her mother and by society's expectations) has certainly seen her sitting on the outside more than anything else. Tenacity to hold true to her beliefs and herself is constantly at the forefront, and something she prides herself on -- even hinges her identity on without realizing it.
Role: Mage with a combination of defensive and buffing. Thoughts on her Genshin AU kit here.
Constellation: Lightning bolt
ref: game link
pre-game (original) history
Family
> From an early age, Zetta had a bad relationship with her mother, who treated her more like an accessory to mold and show off than a child with her own wants and feelings
> In truth, Zetta had inherited her mother's strong personality and stubbornness, so the butting of heads began very early
> In response to Zetta's rejections of the life planned for her, her mother grew controlling, which she continued to buck
> This relationship would come to inform Zetta's interactions for the rest of her life, as the origin of her sensitivity to boundary crossing, her decision to never become like her mother, and the initial seeds of her internalized misogyny
> While her father supported her interests and independence, she also often felt he "took her mother's side" more often than not, so while her connection with him was stronger, it was also complicated
> Her father died of cancer when she was in high school, and the surrounding experience served as a sort of nail in the coffin for her relationship with her mother
Riley
> Zetta was raised alongside a boy who was the son of close friends of her parents, Riley
> They grew close, nearly inseparable from an early age, coming to depend on each other for camaraderie and understanding as well as play and learning
> When Riley suffered abuse at the hands of his grandfather (eventually ending in his incarceration), her budding authority issues only grew worse, especially with how she felt their parents should have done more to prevent it from happening in the first place
> It also was the start of her overprotective feelings towards Riley. He welcomed this with great relief, and came to depend on Zetta for emotional support as well as protection and her assertiveness on his behalf
> This ended up setting the foundation for their dynamic from then on, cemented when Riley started experiencing bullying in school as global (especially anti-Chinese) tensions intensified
> Riley served as a foundation for Zetta; he was her safe space away from her mother and the troubles in their lives, where she could be genuinely herself without needing to defend herself. He also became a part of her core motivation: to protect and provide
> They began dating in middle school, and married right out of high school once they were of age
World
> Zetta's interest in science began early, and the more her mother tried to dissuade her, the more she aggressively pursued it. She settled on a focus in engineering and robotics, and attended university on scholarships
> Canon: In 2052, when Riley and Zetta were fourteen, the global tensions finally sparked into a flame and the Resource Wars began as the European Commonwealth declared war on the Middle East in response to rising oil prices
> To keep the bills paid, Zetta took on work as an auto mechanic; Riley struggled to hold down a job due to increasing workplace discrimination
> Eventually, Zetta got picked up by a small time company attempting to develop their own line of commercial robotics. She knew she could've taken a job at one of the large-scale companies, but refused as a sort of form of rebellion, as they both had contracts with the government, which she didn't want to support, especially as global tensions turned to war
> Canon: By the time Zetta finished her masters (2066), global negotiations had broken down, and at the end of that year, China invaded Alaska, and the United States declared war on them, raising tensions between the US and Canada in their attempts to secure their oil interests
> Years later (2070), with the war still waging strong and Riley's workplace discrimination struggles worsening, he became desperate enough to enlist in the army, despite Zetta’s protestations
> While Riley was away, Zetta busied herself with her job, descending rapidly into workaholic tendencies to cope, as she didn't maintain much of a social life
Ferran
> In 2072, as the US violently annexed Canada, Zetta’s company was put under a lot of pressure to produce wartime robots. Zetta was a vocal proponent against the idea
> Her protests against working for the government’s wartime efforts failed, and new contract negotiations began. Zetta quite literally couldn’t afford to quit, despite how staunchly she did not want to support the war
> Ferran Vane, a representative from a large scale manufacturer, was sent in to operate as a liaison between the companies
> Over the next couple years, Ferran and Zetta gradually became friends. Ferran was sharp enough to keep up with her, and his dry sarcasm and cynical humor matched hers blow for blow
> He expressed interest in her, and she rebuked him immediately — but he didn’t take it personally, and their friendship continued comfortably. His companionship kept Zetta from the edge of self-destruction via workaholism and alcoholism... and he was in the process of falling in love with her when Riley came home
> When Zetta introduced them, Riley was instantly taken with Ferran, and Ferran was likewise disarmed, though more suspicious and gunshy hidden under the surface
> Over time, as the three of them got to know each other better and developed their new dynamic, feelings on all sides deepened, culminating into Zetta and Riley adopting Ferran into their relationship
> In spring of 2076, Ferran decided to come clean to Zetta and Riley about his real job: working for the FBI investigating supposed communist sympathizers, including participation in framing and character assassinations, and that he was initially sent to investigate them. But he truly loved them, and now wanted to use his position to protect them
> To prove his loyalty to them, he offered them a house in a new high end neighborhood, Sanctuary Hills, for them to keep regardless of if they accepted him or not
> Zetta’s kneejerk reaction was hostility and anger. After the initial shock wore off, Zetta and Riley took the time to themselves, to emotionally recover and work out what they wanted to do. Riley struggled badly with the morality of Ferran’s job, while Zetta focused on the feelings of betrayal
> But in the end, they came to the conclusion that he was being truthful about his feelings and intentions for them, and that they didn't want to live without him. The three of them moved into the Sanctuary Hills house together, and there, Zetta would become pregnant and give birth to (Riley's) son, Shaun
2077
> Rioting had progressed to the point that military units are deployed in cities to contain the rioters, and temporary prisons were constructed. A state of emergency was declared, followed by martial law
> In January 2077, Alaska was reclaimed… and mechanized (power armored) infantry were deployed within American cities against the increasing numbers of food rioters. Soldiers who defected and were captured were sent to military prisons
> On February 14th, 2077, their son was born
> Ferran received a promotion at work and to undergo training for his new promotion, he was required to travel out of state in early fall
> On October 23rd, 2077, global nuclear war broke out. As nuclear bombs fell across the world, Zetta and Riley rushed with Shaun to Vault 111, where they thought they would be safe...
game history
genshin AU kit
Weapon type: Catalyst
> Scientifically minded, she is going to be very invested in studying magic and alchemy and figuring out how this world's rules work as well as how to use these new tools available to her
> She'll have her guns from home (and will want to craft new ammo types for them), and is definitely more of a ranged weapons type than anything melee, but wouldn't have the patience for learning how to use a bow
Playstyle:
> Shield generation via skill (a la Diona)
> Damage scaling with lower HP (a la Hu Tao), though Zetta is not going to seek this out bc pain sucks
> Whatever her burst would be, it'd be explosive...
> Boosting ally crit rate ("That looks like the weak point, get it" - Especially versus things like Ruin Guards, etc, anything mechanical)
> Affecting enemy movement (think electricity-stunning style)