HELEN HANOVER

She's big, sharp-cut shoulders and her hands look like once they get a grip on a neck, there's no shaking it. The woman is fair-haired, blonde so blonde it's nearly white, and her expression is typically--unsettling to say the least about it; the way her eyes shift here and there, the slight twitch of her lip, there's something funny and she can't quite place what it is, that's how she seems to present herself. Helen's pretty, too, a sort of well-bred quality to her, like down that family line it was probably kept in the family, once or twice, keeping things civil and all even though they lived in the slums.  She doesn't look rough, but she doesn't need to, not when she's got the skill and the brains to cut down a person's entire life, to methodically kill everything they've loved, and held dear: she doesn't need to look rough. 

Helen dresses well, hardly seen in tattered rags, but the truth behind those outfits is well-hidden: she's utterly embraced the Military Leader mentality her sisters hoisted upon her: they are the Diplomat and the Planner, and she is the Executioner, and she dresses like it; everything Helen wears is military-minded, cut close to her body, pockets for ammunition and knives and hidden little places for other things. 

Looking at Helen gives a vision of a woman in a brutal cycle she doesn't quite understand: violence is her method, violence due to planning (the rush Helen gets from a plan clicking into place and executed is a rush that not even her sister Eileen understands) and working. But there is no true satisfaction from violence; she works for power and claiming a name for her sisters and herself, but Helen, she doesn't thrive on the violence, the wreaking of havoc, though well she should. Helen refuses to rush headfirst into violence, and once she has someone under her thumb, she employs horrific tortures, though it cannot be entirely certain if she tortures for information, or because she wants to eventually feel something. Numbness lies just beneath her surface and Helen has made herself so, without being aware of it. She is reaching the point in her life where to feel, she must be breaking something, someone beneath her fingers.

The woman is not easy to anger, surprising, perhaps, for someone who goes about their life committing the acts that she has. But Helen's violence is not rushed. It is calculated and quick, acts done to get messages across; a man will not fear you if you do not strike him where it hurts. Helen has swept entire family lines from the earth and she has done so aware of what she is doing. The woman does not expect forgiveness, nor does she predict kindness. Somehow, Helen has become the face of Gigas, and given the recent coup of Jonas-of-Vincit, she is uneasy.

But uneasiness comes, and it goes. Helen reminds herself of what she is; a leader of a group that came from nothing. Helen is a selfish woman: what leader isn't? She prepares to scourge another group from the face of existence, and does so quietly, and perhaps it would not be entirely far to call Helen an outright sociopath. She feels nothing for those who are not her family, who are not Gigas. Beg to Bea for survival. Beg to Eileen. Do not beg to Helen. Helen will slowly advance with guns that spit fire and burn a house to the ground; she is indomitable in her drive. Once, Helen promised a woman that her family would be spared in an attack, if she just told her where they were, where not to hurt. The woman, who had previously betrayed a smaller gang to the Gigas, was then made to watch as her family died first, before everything was destroyed.

It is wise to consider Helen's exact words when she makes a promise. When she promises a reward that is deserved, one should recall the actions made--because the deserved word may well be a bullet to the spine and a slow death at Helen's hands.

Without a doubt, however, the most horrifying thing about Helen (who is, no doubt, a monstrous woman), is her sheer charisma. She's terrifying, and her humor is dark and cutting, but she speaks with such conviction that it is hard to not get dragged in and convinced, pulled into her web; Helen's words move spirit, and Helen is aware of this, so very aware of it--she uses honeyed words to make promises that turn in to horrible, horrible truths later on.

Helen is a strange woman when it comes to attraction: her mother warped her, and Helen only fears one thing--seduction attempts have wound up with women shot and shot and shot and shot, and their corpses rended limb from limb. Love and romance is utterly foreign to Helen and this is for the best; it is all lumped up under a list of things that are painful and Helen doesn't want to deal with that pain anymore. For all she knows, the one who promises a change, the one who promises her it will not hurt, will hurt her even more; and Helen has been known to irrationally destroy those who make advances. It is, theoretically, possible--but it must be done incredibly carefully, and with a great deal of awareness of the consequences.

A word to the wise: do not threaten the family.

The last person who did so was skinned alive, and hung by their hands for the scavenging vermin.


LIKES:

• Family.
• The Gang.
• Quiet places and things.
• Displays of power.
• Bloodshed.

DISLIKES:

• Physical contact.
• Mother.
• Vermin.
• Lack of planning.
• Stupidity.

GOALS & SECRETS:

• goal::: To bring Jonas back, to bring August back, to drive them before Ground-Bound, to spit in the young upstart's face as she shoots his guts across the floor and as he gasps his last she will inform him that his family, his friends, his gang is gone, and that she herself killed his father, and that she will be taking over his business--and then, if Jonas and August bitch about her control, to bind them, put them in a barrel with that little upstart whelp's corpse and bury them alive.
• secret:::One of her sisters has been kidnapping and murdering girls of Zhadrah for years; Helen has been covering this up for years. Helen was the favorite of an overbearing mother and learned far more than she ever should have; Helen has refused all sexual partners for this reason.

GUNPLAY.

If it has a trigger, Helen can aim it, and shoot it. It is said that her accuracy is supernatural--which is merely embellished by word of mouth. Helen has a penchant for firearms and particularly firearms that result in gore filled deaths; gutshots are her favorites, and she revels in the screams, and the looks upon faces as death comes slowly. Helen is a grand shot, able to hit moving targets, and has a wonderful understanding of leading--however, Helen sacrificed this for her hand to hand combat skills. The best she can really do is strangle and choke, and most things at close quarters involve her using a gun as a bludgeon to make up for her inability to fight effectively. This is another reason why her acts of violence are quick: the faster it goes, the less time there is to fight back. There is no particular type of gun that Helen favors, but she is MOST commonly found with a M1911 pistol with hollowpoint bullets.

TORTURE.

Helen will make a person talk. She relies on her natural charisma, at least at first...because soon enough it comes down to blades, and needles, and nails and fire and -- by the end of it, there is no secret that can be kept, because Helen can skin a person alive and make them feel the majority of it. Secrets tend to be shed with the skin.

CHARISMA.

Helen, as stated, is a master. She twists her body language and facial expressions to the purpose she needs them to; she leads with words and gestures before she fills those she must with lead. Many a person has been swayed--but then again, there are those who know she is fake, though sometimes that doesn't save them. Mentions of her mother, or her family, will make the lie of her kindness, if she chooses such a thing, falter.

strengths:

• Excellent at gunfighting.
• Unintimidated by threats involving weapons.
• Able to extract secrets through various means.
• Incredibly...convincing.

weaknesses:

• Bad at Close-Quarters-Combat.
• Has a reputation of being a torturer.
• Choice phrases can shatter her charismatic speech.
• Horribly sadistic with her methods of torture.

We slept in Sundays.

Once upon a time, Mariah Hanover was a poor woman, even for Zhadrah standards, but she had a husband, and as husband and wife do, they had kids: three, three little girls, who grew up bitter and tasting poverty at the back of their throats, and a fourth, a twin, much gentler. The girls cut through backpaths and dangerous places, doubling here and there, with filthy faces and tattered clothing; mother taught them lessons about violence and death when her breath reeked of intoxicants, and she taught one girl in particular enough to rip away innocence: Helen, the middle child, the Black Sheep.

The girls were young when they marched in front of a man who demanded money from a mother who had none; a dog's head perched upon a pointed stick was their banner, and they called themselves the Dead Dogs, and as one the three girls deterred him; when he threatened violence, Helen spat between his feet and threatened to gut him with a broken bottle, because violence turned men and women away. She doesn't know how old she was when Mariah remarried, a man upper-class and fine, because she had to remarry, because her husband had been eaten by some hungry hounds.

Meanwhile, Helen and Bea and Eileen shuffled in the darkness, and made friends with vagrants and drunks but the vagrants and drunks led up to important people; when the girl was thirteen Bea pointed out a man and said simply:

He wants us to make someone disappear.

They did, too, the three sisters chopped the man apart, and it was then it clicked for all of them, like breath down the backs of their necks: they could do so much more if they worked together. And so it began.

So they began.

By fifteen, Bea's group had expanded to more--Helen was watching her sister befriend people with guns, oh, guns, and this was glorious. By the time Helen was seventeen, the Dead Dogs were small but strong, and slowly, Helen turned her brain from savagery (beating heads against walls, smashing skulls in urinals, slitting throats in back alleyways) to intellect. The sisters settled down and waited, slowly expanding their control, slowly reaching more and more power. Vincit was a whisper in their ear, Ground-bound even moreso, at least, until Bea literally ran into the leader of Ground-bound; it was a romance of sorts, he already had a son, but Helen and Bea and Eileen (Eileen had started cutting girlnecks by this point) knew a chance when it came.

Bea slept with the man for years, and perhaps it was to her benefit that Bea was born infertile; the man was glad to find this. Slowly, slowly, the sisters tightened their grip about Ground-bound and all the more they lay low, until the time was right.

Helen had been making the plan for years.

She smiled to herself as she personally murdered the one-time-leader of Ground-bound and slipped away; the son claimed the kill and took control, and the sisters watched, and supplied arms, arms they'd gained through illict means, through murder and chaos, and in that moment, Vincit was smashed like a wounded baby against the earth. But there was more to that. More. So much more. Because in the moment that occurred, Helen sent the word: targets that had been marked years ago, recent targets--all of them were to die. And in one movement, a major gang was deposed, a gang in the pocket of a gang that had once been the Dead Dogs, and were now the Gigas.

Her mother's head was delivered to Helen and the woman gazed out across the now-open Zhadrah border, and she smiled, for the first time in years.

In due time, she would have everything. They would have everything. And Tamesis? She's just given Helen the chance to destroy Vincit, wherever they may hide. Helen...appreciates her. Greatly.

known family:

Mariah Hanover - Forty-Seven - MOTHER. [Deceased: murdered.]
Bea Havel Hanover - Thirty-Two - Gang Leader: Gigas (The Diplomat)

Eileen Mercy Hanover - Twenty-Seven - Gang Leader: Gigas (The Planner) Serial Killer.
Elliot Hanover - Twenty-Seven - Gang Member: Spy (Elliot is hidden; many of the gang, those who are only Gigas and who do not remember the Dead Dogs do not know that Elliot is a young sibling. She does not kill, and has her own network of spies.)