player.
NAME/HANDLE: Brittany
PERSONAL JOURNAL: highways
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: Yes.
CONTACT: orangecrush
OTHER CHARACTERS: N/A

character.
CHARACTER NAME: Ashley Williams
SERIES: Mass Effect.
CANON POINT: Shortly after her encounter with Shepard on Horizon in ME2.
AGE: 27
APPEARANCE: A Latina woman in combat armor with a really big gun.

PREVIOUS GAME HISTORY: N/A

PERSONALITY: Ashley is, first and foremost, a soldier—you see it in the way she holds herself, the way she speaks, and the way she interacts with everybody she knows. This career runs in the family: her father was in the Alliance Navy, and so were her grandmother and grandfather. It’s her grandfather that’s had the greatest impact on her military career, though not directly. The man was blacklisted for his actions in the First Contact War, in which he was the only human to ever surrender to an alien fleet. Since then, it’s been military policy to take this out on his descendants, which is why her father stayed at a low rank throughout his entire military career.

Nevertheless, Ashley still enlisted right out of high school, with a determination to do her damnedest to prove herself—and her family—to be better than the Williams reputation. Ashley doesn’t believe in complaining, she believes in trying harder, and despite how the Alliance has treated her and her family, she is a loyal, devoted soldier. Though she might engage in a little bit of insubordinate snarking or backtalk when she loses her temper, she is willing to follow orders without question and would lay down her life without hesitation. She tries to, in fact, on Virmire, and when Shepard saves her life at the cost of squadmate Kaidan Alenko, Ashley initially reacts with anger and frustrating, insisting that it should have been her. In time she comes to accept his death, but she believes she has to make her life worth his sacrifice.

Ashley is blunt and straightforward, though never cruel—never intentionally cruel, anyway. This can and does cause conflict; shortly after being recruited by Commander Shepard, Ashley wondered whether their turian and krogan shipmates could be trusted unsupervised around sensitive human technology. She doesn’t trust the Council the protect humanity’s interests. However, the mission always comes before her gut reaction—and she gets past these feelings, as time goes on. Putting your life in the hands of your squadmates repeatedly can do that to you. Ashley now implicitly trusts everybody in Shepard’s squad. She’d call many of them friends.

Ashley has a side one wouldn’t expect from a deadly professional soldier—several sides, in fact. She is religious, or perhaps spiritual: she doesn’t subscribe to a particular religion, but she believes in God and in an afterlife, something that brings her a lot of comfort when people like Kaidan don’t come back. She’s a fan of poetry, thanks to the influence of her father, and can quote Tennyson from memory. She’s also quite close to her three younger sisters, who she helped raise while their father was away on deployment. She doesn’t want her sensitive side getting out, though. She has a reputation to maintain.


ABILITIES: Ashley has no biotic powers, but makes up for it with her knowledge of heavy weaponry. She can maintain and operate virtually any kind of gun or rifle from her own time, and, with her military training and a bit of work, could quickly learn to be proficient in weapons from any other time as well. She’s incredibly physically fit, with a few minor genetic enhancements, but doesn’t have any abilities beyond what a really in shape human is capable of.

POSSESSIONS: Dressed for combat duty: M7 Lancer assault rifle, pistol, ammunition, combat armor, maybe medigel and other battle relevant supplies. Unfortunately lacking in clothing and anything else required for everyday, non-combat situations.


samples.
JOURNAL ENTRY SAMPLE: [voice post]

—I repeat, this is Operations Chief Williams, requesting assistance—hell, even acknowledgement would be nice right now. I’ve been out of contact for— [static] —not sure it really matters. If anything is receiving this... I guess it can’t hurt.

I don’t know how I got here. This isn’t Horizon. It’s not any planet I’ve ever been to, I’m sure about that. There’s something ... not right about this place. One one hand, it has an Earth-normal atmosphere, Earth-normal gravity—I’d almost believe I was on Earth. In fact, I can’t account for a lot of things any other way. The sun looks the same as it does on Earth. I can’t explain that.

But like I said, something’s wrong.

I’m transmitting my coordinates. I really hope someone’s out there.

[end transmission]


THIRD-PERSON SAMPLE: Ashley couldn’t believe it was happening again.

At least on Eden Prime she’d been able to do something—not anything worthwhile, not enough, but something. She’d been able to run, to shoot, to yell at her unit and try her hardest to keep them alive. It hadn’t worked, of course. They died, all of them, and she would have too, if Shepard hadn’t arrived when she had. Ashley still had nightmares about the attack, when she woke up sweaty and shaking, remembering the faces of her friends and the merciless approach of the geth.

At least she could be sure she’d never have that nightmare again. This was that much worse.

Her muscles were still stiff from the paralysis—she’d nearly fallen on her face from the first steps she’d taken, and now she took a moment to stretch her arms and legs.

It wasn’t what she wanted to do. She wanted to grab her gun and find some monsters to shoot; she wanted to find the colonists they’d carried off while she’d been frozen and helpless, watching. Horizon was so damn empty now. She hadn’t known these people, not really, but to watch those things carry off person after person, all of them as paralyzed and aware as she was, wondering if she was going to be next... She shuddered. But they were gone now. All of them.

This couldn’t keep happening. She had to be ready.

When she felt sure she was okay to start searching—and fight, if she had to—she drew her rifle and started walking. Ashley couldn’t be the only one that they’d left behind, and she was going to find some answers.