Cassandra Jones

Gender: Female

Age: 29

Group: Civillians & Other

Game: Blue Dwarf

Species

Human

Job

Currently between jobs

Physical Appearance

With green eyes and short, dark hair, Cassandra stands at a reasonably statuesque 5'9" tall. She has a slim and a (for wont of a better word) "perky" physique, built very much more for speed than comfort, and while her slender frame might not be everyone’s cup of tea, it has garnered more than enough unwanted attention over the years
The six months Cass recently spent away in the service of the STCP have toughened her. Even by her own estimation, she’s probably the fittest she has ever been, and she’s pleased to have finally managed to conquer her on-off nicotine habit for what she hopes will be for good, this time
While her hair is short now, Cass previously had straight, waist length hair which she used to dye jet black - both for a little extra impact, and to cover the depressing number of grey hairs which seem to have crept in over the recent years. She had it cut when she and the rest of the crew visited the tropical paradise of planet Fernando’s, where Cass was briefly enslaved and had her hair hacked off as a punishment by one of the brutal Haruk matriarchs; an act she was privately devastated about, having previously refused to have her hair cut, since her mother died when she was eight
With makeup being a relatively rare and unusual commodity on the three million year old Dwarf, Cass tends not to bother wearing any, but when the occasion demands and she can actually locate any, she generally accentuates her looks with subtle shades and on the whole, scrubs up well – although on a day to day basis, her usual style would probably best be described as an uneasy truce between utilitarian and casual; the usual result being somewhere along the lines of: A pair of heavy boots, skinny jeans, a fitted top of some description and a heavy jacket or coat against the ever-present chill aboard the Dwarf

Personality and Interests

Ferociously intelligent, insular, capricious and darkly sardonic, Cassandra takes not suffering fools to an almost entirely new level, with the result that her dealings with the rest of the Blue Dwarf’s crew have at times been turbulent; but scratch the surface of her abrasive personality, and beneath all the venom and spite, you’d find the stone cold heart of an almost entirely self-serving harpy – a fastidiously constructed series of facades, intended to keep all but most patient and understanding of people as far away as possible; although with the trials and tribulations resulting from her recent, short-lived relationship with Jay Chrysler, the masks have begun to slip, to reveal the somewhat vulnerable person beneath
While Cass can on occasion be hard work, and conversation with her tends to give the impression that she’s way ahead of where you were going with the dialogue and is just waiting for you to catch up, she is not without redeeming features, and if you prove yourself worthy, she can be interesting, dryly witty and even exhaustingly engaging company when she wants to be
That said, even when she’s in the mood, it’s rare for her to let her guard down sufficiently enough to allow anyone more than the most cursory insight into either any of her past, or the inner workings of her mind; although with the different perspective afforded by being one of the last humans left alive, she has of late become less concerned about jealously guarding her many secrets and has recently, slowly, begun to open up to a select few
In any case, from the little she’s wont to give away about herself, it is apparent that Cassandra is an exceptionally intelligent woman with a deep knowledge of a range of sciences. Given that the previous demonstrations of her skills seem to have revolved around advanced robotics, nanotechnology and AI / computer science, it would probably be fair to say that these are where her core competencies lie

History

Arguably, the dark heart of the ‘Dwarf, Cassandra has become an integral part of the ships compliment since emerging from stasis, and while she still considers most of the crew to be a bunch of vacuous imbeciles, she has slowly come around to the idea of relying on, and in some cases even trusting, her crewmates – although even with those select few, when she’s asked about her past, she is still generally evasive, and usually changes the topic to converse on a range of subjects, ranging from the deeply intellectual to the numbingly banal
Clearly she isn't all so willing to speak of her past, which is hardly surprising, given that it recently emerged that she was abused by her father when she was a child. How this may have affected her is less clear, given that only Jay and Jade have ever been offered any deeper insight on the topic
That said, from the tittle-tattle, rumour and conjecture surrounding her, it would appear that Cassandra pitched up as damaged goods on the ‘Dwarf a few million years ago. As a stowaway with no visible means of support, she began an inexorable spiral down through the various civilian social strata, until she eventually hit rock bottom; finally having to resort to working in a sleazy strip club in the red light district as an “exotic” dancer in order to make ends meet – It was here, to his wife’s irritation, that she first caught Jay Chrysler’s attention
After distinguishing herself by recreating Holly out of a bunch of spare components and a chrome pop-up toaster when Efof accidentally jettisoned the old one out into space, Cassandra remained active but largely dropped off the radar. Surfacing briefly as an involuntary but highly instrumental part of an unsuccessful coup staged by an underworld boss, Cass finally emerged as Queen Brittany’s advisor after the sovereign had apparently been killed by the Molopods on Little Cheftonia
How Cass came to be associated with the Queen was never adequately explained, but as it turned out that this Brittany was actually an imposter, the matter had been the subject of some speculation up until around nine months ago, when the ‘Dwarf’s rag-tag group of survivors travelled through time to the end of the universe to rescue Jay and Katrina’s son Max from the clutches of the sinister STCP
It was there in the Space Time Continuum Police’s headquarters where Jay was infected with a nanophage virus, and where the crew met Queen Brittany, now the clandestine head of the STCP. The encounter with Brittany blew Cassandra’s mysterious past wide open, when the monarch admitted Cass to be nothing less than a backup copy that she had taken of herself, before she had run the transformational procedure to reengineer herself in the dead monarch’s likeness and assume her place
Up until that point, Cass had been quietly hoping to rekindle the relationship that she had briefly enjoyed with Jay before his apparently dead wife had come back from the future; but with the knowledge that Cass was a copy of Brittany, the one source of so much pain in his life (not to mention the single most dangerous individual in the universe), he was (some might say understandably) aggrieved to the point of trying to kill her; leading her in turn to confess much of her past to him in order to convince him that she was nothing like the Queen, and indeed, had been striving not to be
Tensions with Jay waxed and waned over the following months with Cass struggling to cope with the collapse of her relationship with him, and achieving, at best, only moderate success. This all changed after the crew returned from an abortive holiday on Fernando’s, when Jay collapsed and slipped into a coma, the victim of the nanophage virus that he had earlier been infected with by the STCP
With Jay’s life in grave danger and with almost nobody else willing or able to take the lead, Cass surprised herself by stepping out from the shadows and away from her preferred role of the behind the scenes puppet master of the ship, to assume command and organise the effort to find a cure for Jay’s condition
While the quest was ultimately unsuccessful and forced Cass to exchange herself for the cure, as Brittany had planned all along, she proved to be an able enough leader; and while she still prefers to let others issue the commands while she wields the power behind the scenes, she can and will take control of a situation if the occasion necessitates it


Although many of the details of her past are known to Jay and to a lesser extend Jade alone, several titbits about Cassandra have recently surfaced, such as:
As a backup, she’s only just over a year old (give or take three million years in stasis), and while to all intents and purposes she is just a continuation of the woman Brittany was, she struggles with the knowledge that the vast percentage of her memories are not really hers
Her real name is Narcissa
Even in spite of the unpleasant and never officially acknowledged end to her relationship with Jay, she still cares deeply about him
Cassandra (the original one) was offered a scholarship at Cambridge University when she was just thirteen
Having recently escaped Brittany after six months serving with the STCP, Cass recently confided in Katrina that she intends to leave for good in the not too distant future

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This character is owned by: Locke