Name: Sierra Solomon
Race: Half-Demon
Sex: Female
Birth date / Location: March 4 1994/ Dixmont State Hospital, Pennsylvania
Position: Crime Scene Investigator to the NYPD:SCU
Description:
Sierra is played by Katharine Isabelle.
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Anesthetics and Dress: Sierra's standard cloths tend toward dark jean and tasteful black tee-shirts over which at work she wear a navy blue jumpsuit and black leather gloves, covering her skin from the her neck down to the tips of her Lowa Tibet GTX Pro hiking boots. The most expensive single piece of cloth she owns. Closely followed only by her 1940s vintage bomber jacket.
Attitude: Sierra is openly friendly to people she knows but closes herself off from strangers. Her psychic ability's drawback has trained her to keep her distance from others and this has affected her ability to not only get close both physically but emotionally as well.
Lifestyle: Sierra rents a small studio apartment on the corner of spring street and mulberry street, little Italy.NY. The NYPD:SCU, in no way pays her a great deal for her services but she has gotten by with much less.
Background:
In 1993 Lisa Solomon (Sierra's mother) had been working with the Pittsburgh police department as a psychic trying to locate the latest victim of the Pittsburgh Butcher. A serial killer known for the kidnapping, rape and murder of five young girls and eight women.
During the investigation of the latest body, Lisa felt disturbed, something was different but before she could pinpoint the unusual feeling, her police escort and herself were taken by surprised by a blast of energy, knocking them all out. Lisa awoke weak from the blast and handcuffed to a pole in some dark part of the sewer.
Although Lisa could not see, she could "feel" her assailant. Its hands and fingers seemed to cut and burn with every painful touch. Lisa passed out from the pain. For weeks the unseen fiend tortured Lisa until the point when her mind snapped. Seven weeks after her disappearance her almost dead body was found still handcuffed to the pole.
She was taken to the nearest hospital where her burns and cuts were treated. After another week of being comatose, Lisa awoke screaming and fighting what seemed to be invisible attackers. After her wounds had healed she was transferred to Western Pennsylvania's Dixmont Hospital for the Insane. Where her condition worsened and the doctors found that she was two months pregnant.
In March of 1994 Sierra was born and turned over to the state for care. Lisa's life was normal until shortly after her fourteenth birthday. Her psychometry ability hit in full force nearly killing two young girls who happen to be touching Sierra as her powers emerged. As Sierra sat in the police station waiting on the local authorities to find out what had happen. The wall behind her exploded in shards of cement as black tendrils of darkness enveloped her.
After what seemed liked hours in her ropes of darkness. Sierra felt her hands being cuffed. Sierra heard "see" and her mind forced her to watch as her psychometry power showed her the horrible kidnappings and murders of all the other women including the woman she knew to be her mother. After the visions had passed, Sierra heard the beast again." Good. You will do fine." And with that the darkness lifted, and Sierra knew she had to keep running and hide from this monster because it would be back for her.
Sierra ran for some five years. staying any place she felt safe for the night. she moved from city to city, not staying in one place to long in fear that the creature would find her. All this time, teaching herself to use her new psychometry ability. She got to the point that she started working out small cons in which to make money. she would "play" as a psychic or a medium reading dead peoples items and telling the loved ones their secrets. For a small time she even fell in with organized crime, used her ability to open safes by reading the leftover history on the dial. Until one day , she got caught by a sting setup by LAPD:SCU "spook squad". Sierra made a deal to setup some of her shadier partners in crime. Sierra began selling her services to the LAPD's Paranormal investigations from time to time, until they offered her a full time job and the training to become a Crime Scene Investigator. Sierra spent three years as a trainee before becoming a full member of the LA team. Four years of serving the LA team ended with a failed relationship with a senor member of the team. She moved and took a position with the NYPD SCU.
Items: vintage bomber jacket, her mother's handcuffs, NYPD standard-issue equipment belt ( handcuff ,radio. nightstick, tazer gun and secondary clip) cheap cell phone,
Powers:
Psychometry A form of psychic reading in which Sierra can to obtain details about another through physical contact with their possessions. For the most part; the energies of strong emotions are what is known to leave a sort of "historical finger print". Leaving mental images of the events that provoke them. i. e. If a knife is used to cut a wedding cake then used just after to cut down the husband on the wedding night. most reading the knife would only be able to read the slaying over the wedding " However, Sierra has been gifted with the ability to "sometime" read most of or even all on the these energies even blocking out some to find other " older" images.
Sierra's power has two powerful downfalls. She cannot turn it off ,and when anyone contact her flesh for more than a quick second, causes terrible feedback in both Sierra and the person touch her. Sierra has learned to endure the pain for a few seconds but the experiences still stuns her and can cause her to blackout. However the other person isn't so lucky. This contact if not dropped causes pain and if maintained for more than a few seconds can cause brain aneurysms and death.
Secrets:
Although Sierra is technically half- demon -- her father being the"Pittsburgh Butcher" -- her body tests and appears completely human. She insists her abilities come from her mother and that she does not know her father.
The fact that the fiend known only as The Pittsburgh Butcher was never been found and has some plans for his little girl distress her to no end.
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Great character. It's fun
Great character.
It's fun to see psychometry making an appearance - I had a huge amount of fun with Tash's psychometry and I love the idea of the feedback loop if she touches a person. I daresay it makes her CSI work a lot easier - how does she explain her amazing 'intuition' about crime scene objects to her fellow workers? Or does she keep her use of the psychometry to a minimum in her work?
Remember she works for the
Remember she works for the Spooky Squad! They are used to the strange. :)
I like it, John, she lives near my char too, plenty of opportunities to meet.
I may have misread Dave's
I may have misread Dave's entry on the NYPD SCU but it seems they have "enhanced" people working openly with in the spook squad.(The Amazing Kramer, magic-sniffing ferret ext) she was going was work the crime scenes with her gift and evidence examination after the scene was precessed.
No, no, you didn't misread.
No, no, you didn't misread. I'm sure they would put a girl like Sierra to good use. :)
Just some information: a
Just some information: a full-time Crime Scene Investigator makes about $65,000 (in 2010) a year in the NYPD. They are considered a "technical" job (like secretaries and such) and aren't eligible for the police's union.
A degree isn't required but just a Bachelor's degree would get you a better title (Crime Scene Technician) and considerably better money ($85,000/yr). And your talents would be considered invaluable not only for us but for other units as well...if the other units knew you had them.
Which is probably why you get paid so little. It is hard to justify paying for special abilities if you can't tell anyone about them. Kramer works as "office support staff" most likely.
You would, as a CSI have access to the morgue, labs, and the NYPD:CSI personnel for analysis as well.
You likely do the photography as well as evidence collection and fingerprint analysis.
You'd have access to the nationwide crime files and the FBI database.
All in all not a bad gig.
This brings an interesting
This brings an interesting side question: just how widespread is knowledge, among the supernatural community itself, of the "Spooky Squad" and what it does?
In my original idea the SCU
In my original idea the SCU was there to "prevent fear and protect the public" from supernatural beings. But that they had defined the public very narrowly as "only humans". This has lead to the SCU being kind of supernatural dogcatchers who find and eliminate demons, werewolves, vampires, etc who are hurting or otherwise terrorizing the public.
From the supernatural communities standpoint it is like drug dealers in New York. They continue to do what they do and if it involves drinking human blood, stealing human babies or the occasional violent rampage then they know the risks. But they also know the chances of getting caught are slim.
There are only about 50 officers in the the SCU. They work three shifts which means that no more than about 20 of them are on duty at any given time (and likely less). Their job depends on being called in for something "abnormal". Most regular cops suspect vampires and witches as cultists or weirdos and are willing to suspend disbelief long enough to call them as a point of procedure, but less inclined to believe in demons or monsters.
So the supernatural community thinks of them as kind of a toothless tiger. But even toothless tigers have claws. They might know that the SCU is there but they aren't willing to antagonize or call attention to themselves on the off chance that the SCU focus all of their resources on them.
The SCU does its best work when it is devising cover stories to explain supernatural phenomenon. "A powerful new street drug" will likely be used to explain the soon-to-be murder sprees and stories of people walking away from potentially fatal wounds. The SCU will send information to the precincts on how to deal with users of the "drug" and how to prevent being "contaminated" by quarantining the users.
Every police officer has seen notices from "Special Crimes" telling them to avoid using certain products or to look for individuals with "odd skin conditions". The nature of these unusual notices is how they earned the nickname "spooky squad."
Of course there are always stories...
SCU
Not to beat a dead horse here...
There is a similar branch of the Chicago PD in the Dresden File novels by Jim Butcher. One of the main characters, Murphy, was in charge of the division in the earlier books. The kind of cool thing is my NPC, Niall, is going to be designed off of Harry Dresden.
Interestingly, I've never
Interestingly, I've never read the Dresden Novels. To be honest I got this idea from a TV show called "Special unit 2"
The TV version was a little less violent and militanat but they served the same general purpose: Keep the supernatural and the mundane separate.
Oooh..."Special Unit
Oooh..."Special Unit 2"...deliciously cheesy. I was watching it on Sci-Fi the other day and Robin thought it was one of those bad made-for Sci Fi movies. LOL...
I like
I really like the character. It's dark and I like how she will already have a connection to Sandoval as well as potentially some other characters. Can't wait to see her in action.
I say move this to your blog,
I say move this to your blog, John.
Also I found two fantastic images of the actress which I attached to this post.
I remember Katharine Isabelle
I remember Katharine Isabelle from the cult werewolf movie 'Ginger Snaps'
I really like this character though, and I imagine she'll be an invaluable member of the Spooky Squad!