Alice

Just an orchid hunter eking it out in a cyberpunk landscape; part-time uni student. Also an amateur inventor of sorts; she builds her own orchid capsules and lives alone in a small, lowkey-rundown apartment filled to the brim with cheap houseplants and booby traps.

Alice is studying at a prestigious university, which comes with steep tuition fees and crushing debt. Ecumenopolis born and raised, she was well-aware from a young age of the vicious nature of orchid-hunting throughout the unstable exclusion zones. Many would not risk their lives hopping over mutated rooftops and diving into cyber-jungles for the coveted plants, but the prospect of a big payout is a great motivator when you have groceries, rent, tuition fees, etcetera, looming over you. She's not on great terms with her immediate family, so they don't provide financial support and she has to fend for herself.

Alice grew up in a rather cold and dysfunctional household. Throughout her school life, her parents pressured her to attend a variety of extracurriculars and to obtain the best grades possible, which led her to graduate high school a year early at the age of 17. She was accepted into an acclaimed Botanical Computing degree at [NAME TBN] university.

A year into her degree, she began suffering from undiagnosed depression and burnout under her parent's demands. She found a part-time job as a cashier and moved out despite many protests and threats of disownership. Shortly afterwards, she switched over to orchid-hunting since it appealed to her interests and had a higher salary.

Though she's almost died in the pursuit of an orchid more times than she cares to admit, she finds her profession uniquely thrilling and has made many good friends (not to mention good enemies) because of it.

Appearance

Alice has dark shoulder-length hair which she often keeps in a high ponytail. Her eyes, genetically modified for better night vision, are a desaturated purple with dark magenta highlights. She wears a pair of asymmetrical glasses. The left lens is large, bright pink, and cracked; it's a faulty orchid-homing lens blank scavenged from the dumpster of a high-end tinkerer's workshop. Most orchid-hunters aren't wealthy enough to afford them, which is why she kept it.

When orchid-hunting, she wears a kevlar hoodie (one sleeve went missing in an accident and she has yet to get it replaced) with blue utility pants (the tough type often worn by construction workers) and a home-made capsule harness to store samples in. On bigger hunts, she will bring one or more anti-gravity orchid storage-orbs with her.

When at home or in casual settings, she likes to wear oversized pullovers with sweatpants and sandals or slippers. She owns a couple of 'fancier' outfits which she only wears on special occasions. She rarely wears jewelry and when she does, it's simple and minimalistic.

Orchid Hunter's Journal: a thick and clunky book-like console with holographic pop-ups for 'pages'. It's half-logbook-half-field-guide and contains various entries on the morphology and locations of rare orchids. The journal requires both a password and biometric confirmation to open.

Half-glasses: the orchid-homing lens works much like thermographic cameras do, but rather than overlaying colours based on temperature, highlights orchids in the environment by known rarities.

Orchid Capsules and Anti-gravity Orchid Orbs: various empty capsules stacked neatly upon her makeshift workbeanch and floating orbs tethered to the backrest of an overstuffed armchair.

Mysterious Flowers: Alice has several unidentified flowers growing throughout her house that she found while orchid hunting. No one’s quite sure what they are, and they’re definitely not orchids, but they could prove to be useful later on. - Aorta

Pretty Purple Poison Dart Frog Plushie: one of Alice’s favorite stuffed animals is a pretty purple poison dart frog! Try saying that three times fast. - Aorta

Botanical Computing Textbooks: a small tower of university textbooks, full of highlighted passages and fluorescent sticky notes.