Andrea Reference

I'm feeling uncomfortably sober right now.

-- Andrea, feeling.

Andrea Grant is an infamous scout and hunter in the mining city of Kilak in British enclave within Canada. She struggles with an alcohol addiction and her destiny to inherit the title of the enclave's leader after her father, who is slowly succumbing to a disease, announces his retirement. She sets off for Crossroads to save her father and avoid the terrible future of responsibility.

Appearance

Andrea is an athletic pale woman in her thirties. She has messy medium, black hair with barely noticable red highlights and bangs that often tend to cover her right eye.  She is at times referred to as "an ugly duckling" by her sister.

Due to her addiction, her face tends to be abundant in broken blood vessels and her ruby eyes often look bloated and puffy. She is generally perceived as the unattractive one of the two sisters.

She wears a dusty leather jacket on top of a blue turtleneck sweater, tattered jeans, and black military boots. She also wears dark-red leather gloves.

Her pants are fastened by a military belt with her revolver holstered at the front-left side and a flask inside her jacket. She has a silver chained coiled around her right arm.

Personality

Andrea is a foul-mouthed (literally and figuratively) Canadian who struggles with her place in the world so much so that she had decided to find an escape in alcohol. She likes lazing around and is unwilling to work if there is no clear benefit to it (like getting money for more booze). She is impulsive and hot-headed, does not mince words and tends to keep to herself, although she does not shy away from all social interactions if the mood is right and the glass full.

In general, however, she prefers solitude and often finds comfort in nature if, for some reason, a drink is not available.

Backstory

Firstborn to the Overseer of Kilak, Andrea had expectations set upon her by her father since the day of her birth. Knowing she would have to take over one day, she spent her youngest years studying the traditions of Kilak and surrounding region.

When she was was eight years old, an outlander who arrived in the city had taught her the basics of firearms and hunting which sparked her interest.

However, in the very same year her parents divorced as their views on how Kilak should be managed differed greatly from each other. Andrea stood by her father's and about two years later he remarried and had another child - Octavia.

Andrea's teenage years were a mixed bag. On one hand, she loved being the big sister to Octavia and her new mother was a very kind woman, but on the other hand, the gap between herself and father continued to widen.

Once she turned eighteen, she decided to become a strider - a skilled hunter and scout responsible for surveying and identifying threats and safe passages in the magical wastelands of the world. During her training, her already apparent skills with firearms increased substantially and she had also discovered slight affinity for magic.

At twenty-five, Andrea was a fully-fledged strider. She became an expert when it came to the regions around Kilak and many excavators, treasure hunters or collectors have paid for her services.

Her relationship with father, however, remained cold and distant. After she had finished her training the only interaction between them was whenever the Overseer needed someone found, or if the militia required strider’s insight into some matter.

Several years later, Andrea had grown resentful of her family. She felt alone and abandoned by her father, disregarded by her stepmother as a “fluke” in her husband’s past, and even her birth mother could not help but to treat Andrea with frigid courtesy. Octavia being the only one who seemed to openly harbour some warmth towards her sister, but by the time Andrea turned thirty, she has become jealous of treatment Octavia received from her family.

A year later, Kilak was attacked by a horde of monsters no one in the world had ever seen before. Andrea was part of the defences, but thousands of people perished, nonetheless. Eventually, the horde collapsed, but the situations was becoming hopeless very fast towards the end. Andrea’s own inability to put a dent in the opposing force, supported by the terrifying images of death and gore eventually broke her. She started drinking to cope and it does not seem as if she will be able to stop anytime soon.