Carmen Sandiego

Answers are formatted "IC | OOC".
Physical Affection: no | yes
Violence: maybe | yes
Death: no | contact
Power Usage: maybe | yes
Mind Reading: no | contact    

Answers are based on OOC preference only.
Backtagging: yes
Threadhopping: yes


Carmen Sandiego is a world-class thief and pickpocket. It might come up in a thread where she might lift something from your person; usually with a greater purpose, unlikely but possible to show off, but never just to take it for herself. I'll default to contacting the other party (or just writing an attempt, as per usual RP action rules) but go ahead and respond if you want to give an ahead-of-time okay or never.

PLAYER INFORMATION

NAME: Emily
CONTACT: deerleisure
OTHER CHARACTER(S) IN GAME: Maple D'Mello

CANON INFORMATION

CHARACTER NAME: Carmen Sandiego
CANON: Carmen Sandiego (2019)
HISTORY: Character wikia and TV series on wikipedia with episode summary

STRENGTHS:
MORAL: Despite her upbringing with V.I.L.E., Carmen remained a moral person. Because they sheltered her from the truth of their work, she grew up believing that hurting people was wrong - thievery was okay, as long as it didn't hurt people. Because of this unique upbringing, her morals are from a purely humanitarian stance, and cares little for actual rules and rigors of codified law. Those morals would still put her in conflict with the very people that raised her, once she realized both that V.I.L.E. had no qualm with stealing lives that got in their way, and also that their thefts would hurt the people and cultures they took from. As a professional thief after her turn from V.I.L.E., she focuses her actions on those who would harm others, and aims her own goals towards helping those victims - a modern day Robin Hood.

COMMITTED: Once Carmen sets her mind on something, she commits. Her morals often push her into making decisions, and she works tirelessly and ceaselessly to see those decisions through. Devoting her life to stopping V.I.L.E. is a huge goal, a difficult one, and one that dictates her entire life from that point, but nonetheless she throws herself into it. Likewise, with other goals she sets, she puts 110% into seeing them come to fruition. She doesn't change her mind when things get difficult - if anything, she digs her heels in harder, more determined than ever to succeed.

KNOWLEDGEABLE: Carmen was raised by the best illegal tutors money could bring to an isolated island off the coast of Africa, so her schooling was never lacking, even if normal socialization was. And because this rotating staff of tutors were from all corners of the globe, Carmen also picked up writing and speaking their native languages, as well as learning about the cultures from the homes of those tutors. This has led Carmen to have a huge amount of knowledge, especially concerned with world cultures, heritage, and languages. She makes use of this knowledge constantly in her new career of being a globetrotting thief, and will put it to use as a globetrotting do-gooder as well.

FLAWS:
BLEEDING HEART: Carmen is completely unable and unwilling to overlook somebody who needs help in front of her. Even if it's dangerous, she'll throw herself in that danger if it helps others - whether it be finding a heritage coin, stopping a theft, or rescuing people who are trying to arrest her. She puts others over herself, and not just the lives of others, but their well-being, their culture, and their peace of mind. When a heritage coin was lost, Carmen pushed herself past altitude sickness and into danger to get it back from V.I.L.E., even when it was only to help a historian she had just met. She could probably be convinced to break into a bank vault to steal back a ham sandwich you really like if you asked her nicely and cried a bit.

NEVER STOPS: The flip side of Carmen's commitment is that she doesn't know when to stop. She puts 110% of herself into reaching her goals and she doesn't... stop. She doesn't rest, not like she should. She needs a goal, something to do which will put her closer to her aims. She doesn't even know how to properly rest and relax, to de-stress. When she ran out of plots to spoil and safehouses to raid against V.I.L.E., her friends suggested relaxing on the beach and Carmen was simply, unable to relax. She needed more tasks, and hounded her contact to find something else for her to do, to steal or foil. In short, she's a workaholic.

INEXPERIENCED: Despite excellent schooling and an excellent education, Carmen is still relatively inexperienced in practical applications of her skills. Pranks in childhood, carried out on V.I.L.E. operatives, helped prepare her in terms of short-term, immediate skills, but has left holes in other practical knowledge. For example, she can plan heists, but often has no backup plan for when things go wrong - her schooling taught her how to plan the job, how to case the location and plan an entrance and exit, but didn't prepare her for when things happened outside the plan. When caught off-guard, it throws her off in a way that wouldn't be true of somebody with more experience. This is especially noticeable during one of her last run-ins with V.I.L.E., when she panics at being interrupted during a rescue attempt by a hologram, and then even more when she receives unexpected aid from an unexpected source.

CANON ABILITIES:
▼ Excellent skills in all manner of thievery
▼ Is especially noteworthy in picking pockets and other forms of deft-handedness
▼ Combat, both weapons and hand-to-hand, but like normal human level
▼ Speaks most world languages
▼ An excellent eye for recognizing artifacts and appraising objects
▼ Worldwide cultural knowledge

AU INFORMATION

AU CHARACTER NAME: Carmen Sandiego
AGE: Unknown, early 20s
GRADE: Graduate
AU BACKSTORY:
▼ Found as a baby in Argentina by a high-ranking agent of V.I.L.E., an organization of rogue mages and Candles operating as thieves
▼ Taken to V.I.L.E. Isle and raised there, the only child among the world's greatest thieves and criminals
▼ Took on the code name Black Sheep, having no real name and all V.I.L.E. agents going by code name
▼ During this time, managed to steal a magical communication device from an operative, and received a call from a mage/hacker (trying not to assign an AU in case we get a player) named Player
▼ As an older teen, convinced V.I.L.E. to let her officially train in their academy, used to train new operatives and agents of V.I.L.E.
▼ Was flunked at the end of her training by a teacher who seemed to personally dislike her
▼ Stowed away on the first mission of her graduating classmates, but once she realized the full depth of their actions (that they would use violence and murder to get what they want,) she intervened
▼ She also learned the whole truth of everything - the Outlands, daemons, and the coming Nightfall... and how V.I.L.E. didn't care, or would even use these against people on Earth if it meant gaining more power and prestige for themselves
▼ Spent more time on V.I.L.E. Isle, pretending to be repentant, but secretly plotting to escape
▼ Stole a huge amount of V.I.L.E. information and fled the island
▼ Worked with Player, and eventually two more thieves named Zack and Ivy, to steal from V.I.L.E. or otherwise thwart their schemes - This continued for a while
▼ During this, Interpol and eventually secret societies caught wind of Carmen's actions and movements, but took Carmen as a normal thief - abnormally skilled and talented, yes, but still a criminal working for her own self-interest, as opposed to her real motive of helping others
▼ After hearing about Daybreak Academy, poised a theft during which she planned to get captured - a practical exam, and a way for her to garner the attention of a school whose existence was as secret as V.I.L.E. itself
▼ Present day

AU PERSONALITY DEVIATION:
▼ Because of the existence of magic, Carmen has training and know-how of how to deal with magical and otherworldly threats and defenses, and is willing to use occult methods if they're available to her as well
▼ Because V.I.L.E. is made up primarily of mages and Candles, and Carmen is Not, she's a lot more used to having to deal with adversaries that are better than her in some way, instead of facing them on a roughly equal level. She's more prone to trying to fight-to-escape as opposed to fight-to-incapacitate, although she'll still try the latter if she thinks it's feasible.
▼ Overall, not much else is changed. Carmen gets a run similar to her canon in many ways, except with the existence of magic.

RACE: Human
SECRET SOCIETY: Not a member technically, but was completely raised by V.I.L.E., the Vagabonds International League of Enchantment. V.I.L.E. is made up of rogue mages (and some Candles, when they can recruit them) who steal and otherwise amass magical artifacts for personal gain. They're incredibly secretive, manipulative, and maintain many front organizations. The first step of fighting them is to even know they exist, and most people fail step one.

Their home-base is V.I.L.E. Isle, in the Canary Islands off the coast of western Africa. V.I.L.E. Isle is home to their Academy where they train new agents, as well as the residence of their five highest council members, the Faculty. It was also Carmen's home until she ran away a couple years ago.

POWERS:
▼ Excellent skills in all manner of thievery
▼ Is especially noteworthy in picking pockets and other forms of deft-handedness
▼ Combat, both weapons and hand-to-hand, but like normal human level
▼ Speaks most world languages
▼ An excellent eye for recognizing artifacts (magical and non) and appraising objects
▼ Worldwide cultural knowledge
▼ Although shit at magic herself, she has a pretty good understanding of how it works and how to recognize and bypass certain spells and magical security

HOUSING: Let her be an RA.

RP SAMPLE
INTERVIEW SAMPLE PROMPT
(The following scenario is available to all characters who are apping in and is considered canon - all returning graduates are assessed by staff members to catch up on their lives and to assess whether they’re suited to work at the academy.)


1. TELL US ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCES SINCE GRADUATING.
As I told you, I was trained in V.I.L.E. Academy. After graduating, in a sense, I worked stopping them wherever I could. I suppose you could say that I've... had practical work experience since then.

3. WHAT KIND OF TASKS DO YOU WANT OR EXPECT TO DO HERE?
I heard you send your students on missions to help people, or to strike back against the coming Nightfall. That's what I'm here for. [ She leans forward, her expression intense. ] I want in on that.

4. DESCRIBE YOUR COMMUNICATION STYLE AND YOUR CONDUCT AROUND BOTH FACULTY AND CURRENT STUDENTS.
I like to think that I'm professional and courteous, to people who deserve it. And I'm sure most people here are deserving of it, don't worry.

5. WOULD YOU BE COMFORTABLE WITH MENTORING CURRENT STUDENTS OR ACTING IN AN ADVISORY ROLE?
I don't think I'd want to help students with, well, my line of work. But if it's about geography or languages, I could help students out, no problem. I can speak, read, and write dozens of languages - and being a school that brings in students from all over the world, I'm sure I could put that to use here.

6. WHAT, IN YOUR OPINION, IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR A SCHOOL TO PROVIDE TO ITS STUDENTS?
A school? Ha... how about truth? [ A beat, and she leans back. ] No, sorry, that's not fair. I'm sure you guys do a great job, and you're actually working against Nightfall. Look, just keep doing that and you're fine.

7. WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE STUDENTS WHO ARE DEFIANT, ACTING OUT, OR OTHERWISE AT ODDS WITH PARTS OF SCHOOL LIFE?
That depends on how they're acting out, doesn't it? In most cases there are probably some root causes to look into. Not to mention, it really depends on how old this student is. I'm not used to working with kids per se, but I know I was a handful when I was younger.

9. WHAT, IN YOUR OPINION, IS THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON A STUDENT SHOULD LEAVE WITH?
You really like your questions, don't you? All right. I suppose the most important lesson is just that... people need to help one another. So teamwork, yes, but also helping out people in need. It's going to be even more important the closer to Nightfall things get.

10. WHAT, IN YOUR OPINION, IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU WERE TAUGHT BEFORE YOU GRADUATED?
Look, V.I.L.E. doesn't run a school like anything else. If anything, I would say the best thing I was taught was before I even entered the Academy, when I would get in tutors from all around the world, teaching me their languages and cultures. All my school taught me was how to better pick pockets... and I was plenty good at that already.

14. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS YOUR GREATEST STRENGTH? IS IT DIFFERENT TO WHAT YOU THOUGHT IT WAS AS A STUDENT?
I would say it's in my knowledge. Of the world, of the places I've been to or am going to. My ability to plan, to think. Back when I thought I would really become a V.I.L.E. operative, I would have said my ability to pickpocket... [ She laughs. ] That's still pretty high up there, though.

15. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IS YOUR GREATEST WEAKNESS? AGAIN, IS IT DIFFERENT TO WHAT YOU THOUGHT IT WAS AS A STUDENT?
I was taught never to show weakness. [ She answers with a scowl... but after a moment, she cracks a small grin. ] And that might be my greatest weakness. Not... that, in particular, but that I was raised thinking these sorts of things. I have to remind myself that's not right.

16. ONE OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF ACADEMY FACULTY IS PROTECTING STUDENTS FROM THAT WHICH MIGHT DO THEM HARM. THIS APPLIES TO GRADUATES AND ASSISTANTS AS WELL. TELL US HOW EQUIPPED YOU ARE TO DO THIS.
I can handle myself in a fight. Against most regular people, I'm confident I can win. Against daemons? Well, I'm certain that I can buy time for students to get to safety, at least. That'll have to do.

17. WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE TO PROTECT CURRENT STUDENTS?
I'd put my life on the line. I don't know what else you expect, but if it's within my power, I'll do it. I don't want any innocents to get hurt.