Nadiya Delaney (Shadowrun: Seattle)

Nadiya was the first character that I ever made on a Shadowrun MUX. She was born out of the boredom of having to work on Thanksgiving Day in 1997. That's when I started her background. It was rejected once and went through a month of edits before it was finally approved around Christmas. As far as the longevity of characters go, she lasted a decent amount of time, but fell by the wayside after about five months because I changed jobs and changed cities. With all the new city stuff going on, I didn't have quite as much time to play or do anything at all and in the meantime, her playgroup petered off and disappeared. I don't think she ever recovered from that downtime and I strung her along for perhaps another year before giving up on her entirely and created a new character, Eve.

"Is that really something you want to do?"

"Yes."

"You're serious, aren't you? You'd give up all of this to run off into uncertainty."

"It's freedom, my friend. I'm a pet here and nothing more than an animal. This is my cage, a gilded cage, but a cage nonetheless. I am sure."

"Yeah, I guess I was just trying to deny what I knew you would say."

"It's alright. It took me months of denial before I admitted it to myself. I know what it is I need now. I have to reach out and grab it while I still can. Please, help me, Al. You're the only one I can count on."

How will I know when I've met her?

You've probably met her if you run into someone who looks like this:

Interwoven with golden highlights, soft tendrils of chestnut hair frame her face, while the rest are held up in a simply elegant crescent moon clip, contrasting with the paleness of her creamy complexion and lively grey eyes that sparkle like diamonds. Behind her right ear, hidden by strands of stray hair, there is a soft glint that may suggest a neural jack of some sort. The human woman holds herself with a self-confident bearing, adding inches to her average height of 5'5", though she has a certain energy about her that implies an ability to fly off in any direction at the blink of an eye. Unintimidating, amiable, and eminently approachable, her slender figure and appearance is attractive, but not overly so, and without the severe curves that seem to turn many a mind to driveling incoherence. If anything, she seems more like the classic girl-next door than any prom queen.

What else might I know? What's the word on the street?

Nadiya Delaney is not a fashion model, nor is she a singer or an actress. She's not drop-dead gorgeous or the most incredible thing to ever walk into a bar on high heels. She's just a little prettier than average in a clean girl-next-door kind of way, with a personality that is confident and well-grounded. Usually quite pleasant, she is a very approachable woman in her mid-twenties. A little flirty at times, she nevertheless has found herself a vaguely whispered rep as being fun at a party, but nearly impossible to entice into bed.

She's a freelance journalist, though her means of research are not always conventional. The vague word on the street would seem to indicate that she keeps the company of many, with perhaps a larger portion of deckers than normal (if 'normal' can even be defined). Understandably, she knows quite a few people on account of her profession, even though her material has not been printed in too many venues.

In general, she stays within the downtown area and the international district. Of late, she has been seen a little more often in Chinatown, but by and large her haunts remain the higher-classed establishments like Silhouettes, when it was still around, or Club Penumbra. For those who pay attention to such details, she has been seen driving both a red-purple Honda 3220 ZX and a Blitzen 2050, though the former has not made an appearance in quite some time. What her vehicle choices reflect of her character is left as an exercise for the reader. One thing that definitely follows her is that she has an interesting taste in clothing, leaning more toward the original than the traditional.

Most recently, she hasn't been seen at all. In fact, even to close friends, it seems as if she'd just plain disappeared, and it was suspected that she may have met an untoward end. However, mumblings of rumours here and there seem to indicate that she is once again in Seattle.

Oddly, some that have seen her have noted that she very vaguely resembles a celebrity that has long since dropped out of the public eye.