Emilija Vance (The Outlaw)

General Energy Playlist

TL;DR: Disaster cowboy, lives in the desert, doesn't pay taxes, friendly neighborhood bounty hunter, cryptid magnet, high DEX/AGI build, sharpshooter, no impulse control, loneliness whomst

A New Mexico native, who hardly ever left the Badlands, Vance had up until recently been very busy enjoying a life of relative quiet and mundanity, apart from all the murder. Her father being a bit touched in the head, see, meant she had been raised isolated enough that she, from a legal standpoint, did not exist. No birth certificate, no papers, not so much as newspaper subscription. Left with a paid-off house in the middle of the desert, bills accounted for thanks to a string of favors, Vance was free to live her best life.

This, for her, largely meant terrorizing the unsavory sorts in the greater Badlands area. Obsessed with the idea of frontier justice, she provided her services not to rich and powerful clients but the common man. Whether it was hunting down an abusive husband and beating him within an inch of his miserable life, protecting a struggling family from a particularly ruthless debt collector, or stealing back the wealth of a boss who didn’t feel like paying his workers a fair share, she took them all on in exchange for practical favors and some under-the-table cash. She took special preference towards targets who thought they could escape the admittedly incompetent and corrupt local law, and prided herself on cleaning up when the so-called justice system failed. Operating somewhat anonymously out of the local saloon, a relic fittingly called “No Scum Allowed”, she made connections far and wide across the post-boom, dried-up communities of the New Mexico wastelands.

Vance has leveraged her peculiar background into making herself a formidable opponent on the battlefield. Her family were old-fashioned Western show performers by trade, and as a result she’s one of the last remaining expert whipcrackers in possibly the entire Southwest. Combined with her uncanny aim with a revolver, she’s a force at close-to-medium quarters. If all else fails, the big family rifle helps clean up the rest, although she’s honestly a terrible shot with it by comparison. She’s also deceptively strong--years of slinging a heavy leather whip will do that--and can throw a decent enough punch, although it’s rarely her first choice. Used to working alone, she leans on speed and agility, and ambushes when necessary.

Not content to rely on having years to do nothing but practice her aim, Vance bartered her soul to a demon (he’s cagey about stating his affiliation, and Vance isn’t sure if he’s the genuine satanic article or he’s made it all up for show) named Jacovy when she was around 16. In exchange for some measure of improvement to her skills (not so measured that they’d draw attention or demand a higher price), they came with the obligation to send a few wicked souls down to the black pit every now and then. Turns out demons are much less inclined to waste time with temptation when there are plenty of future victims who could just hurry up and die already. Jacovy pops up around crossroads from time to time to bother her, but she lives otherwise fairly free to enjoy the benefits of her deal. 

It did have the unfortunate effect of making her more noticeable to some of the local Peculiarities one finds in the Badlands. While lack of a soul might sound like an advantage, a gaping void in the shape of where a human is supposed to be can still attract unwanted attention. Obsessed with the mysticism of the desert her whole life, Vance is well used to dealing with the strange things that come out at night to roam under the stars. She maintains that dealing with them is actually pretty simple if you keep your head. Be respectful, don’t touch what isn’t yours, mind your own business but don’t let your guard down. 

It was neither a magical mishap nor a community contract that brought Vance in touch with the REDs. After “rescuing” Miss Pauling, who had stopped while passing through town at the No Scum Allowed for a well-deserved drink, from a sleazy bar-goer, Vance kept the suspicious secretary’s number and thought nothing of it before heading out to a heist job the next town over. She returned to the burned-out wreckage of her lifelong home, thirty years of her life collapsed in a charred ruin.

Incensed, she hunted down Pauling, who denied any involvement until Vance revealed the only clue she had found: the casing of a flare gun round, distinctly Mann Co. make. Vance’s friendly neighborhood arms dealer knew only one company desperate enough to regularly be buying Mann munitions: Pauling’s supposed employers, Reliable Excavation & Demolition. At gunpoint by a murderous Vance, Pauling realized she had, in fact, been responsible, though not directly. There had been a job near White Oaks that night, at a derelict industrial facility in the shadow of which had sat Vance’s home. It had to have been a stray shot from the Pyro’s gun that by some fantastically poor stroke of luck landed close enough to the old building to ignite it. 

Devastated, but satisfied enough with Miss Pauling’s explanation to let her go, Vance was left with few options. Most of her money had been stashed throughout the house, and while a few things had been salvageable (she’d never been so grateful for all her paranoid father’s old lockboxes being so sturdy), she had very little left to her non-existent name. Unable to afford a new property or to restore her old one, and too dangerous a houseguest to be willing to inflict herself on any acquaintances, Vance was facing a very long and unpleasant camping trip. It stung her pride and went against every instinct that screamed in her gut, but having determined the true nature of the RED company’s work, she asked Pauling for a job. While moving into what seemed to be a mercenary frat house and taking orders sounded hardly ideal, it beat homelessness in the face of the oncoming desert winter. With the optimistic promise of decent pay and a roof over her head weighing heavily on her uncertain heart, she packed her last possessions onto her motorcycle’s trailer and drove out to the coordinates Pauling had left her...