Val Townsend

Home

• Vital Stats

  • Name: Val Townsend
  • Gender: Female
  • Played by: Tristan
  • Nicknames: 'Val' is a nickname for Valerie. God help you if you use her full name.
  • Race: Human
  • Alignment: Chaotic Good
  • Age: 17
  • Body Type: Athletic
  • Hair: Black, with dyed red highlights
  • Eyes: Green, with a slight hint of a cat-like slit.
  • Handedness: Right
  • Scars: Many
  • Relationship Status: Single, with a long trail of one-night stands
  • Personality: Loud, abrasive, adrenaline junkie
  • Mannerisms: Smokes, drinks, hotwires cars for joyrides, rarely apologizes for anything
  • Likes: Hotwired hot rods, hot guys, hot gals, hard drink, and a good dust-up
  • Dislikes: Authority, her family, anyone who tries to push around people weaker than they are. Anyone who calls her 'Valerie'.

• Description

  Where her brother and cousins wear the latest designer clothes, and update their wardrobes regularly, Val goes in for biker chick chic, favoring heavy combat boots, ripped jeans or camo pants, and a ubiquitous black leather jacket. A cigarette usually hangs from her lips at a defiant tilt. Her raven-and-crimson hair is often pulled back into a ponytail, especially when she's spoiling for a fight, which is more or less all the time.
  
  Val enjoys nothing so much as flouting authority--any authority, but especially her family's. She has a calculated lack of decorum, deliberately defying every assumption of how a Townsend behaves. Currently entering her junior year, she's already had more run-ins with the cops than any other student--particularly due to her habit of jacking cars--and quite a few more with the school faculty.
  
  For all that she is rough around the edges to the extreme, she is a fiercely loyal friend if you can stand her, and never a bully--indeed, nothing gets her dander up more than seeing someone pushed around. Half the 'altercations' on her permanent record--and several that never got found out--were her stepping in to teach a lesson to, in her words 'assholes who deserved a good beating.'

• Biography

  Valerie Townsend (or 'Val', as she very strongly prefers to be called) was born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth. The Townsend family is one of the wealthiest and influential in the country; they more or less founded her hometown of Grizzly Peak, Oregon, their money and logging operations continuing to provide the town's economic lifeblood. Even among other Townsends, she is well-connected. Her father is Robert Adams Townsend, eldest cousin to paterfamilias Warren Earl Martin Townsend II, and next in line for CEO of Townsend Logging Industries. She was one of the elite, her future assured: graduation with honors from George Washington High, full scholarship to Townsend University, and after her diploma, she would find a wealthy and influential husband and enter the business world, just as Townsends had always done.
  
  Val decided early on that her family's plans were something she wanted absolutely nothing to do with. She had seen more than enough to know that 'good' Townsends were plastic toadies at best. And some of them were downright creeps. But even as she started acting out, she didn't know the half of it.
  
  When she turned 16, Val took to jacking unattended cars and going for joyrides, a hobby bound to get her in trouble. Which she was just fine with, until the trouble turned into far more than she'd expected. When the cop pulled her over and hustled her into the back of the squad car, she was expecting to be dropped off at Townsend Manor with a few idly placed harsh words passing from the cop to her father. Like always. But this cop had something different in mind. She hit him as hard as she could, and he went down...but he got right back up again, not looking quite human anymore. His eyes were glowing red, his teeth looked much sharper, and he had claws.
  
  The fight went poorly for her at first, until, out of nowhere, she heard the roar of a mountain lion. Oddly enough--perhaps because something with big claws and teeth was already trying to claw her face off, the roar didn't scare her. In fact, she felt a good deal more confident and at ease. Her next punch knocked the creature back a few feet. The next thing she knew, there was a sound of breaking bone, and the monster vanished in a puff of flame.
  
  That was about the time the Indian ghost appeared to give her a history lesson. She took it fairly well. In fact, it explained a lot, especially about her family. Besides, as history lessons went, it sure beat anything she'd ever heard in school. Tales of monsters, demons, and magic. Evil spirits which bound themselves to human flesh. And here she was, imbued with the primal power of the puma to face back the tide of darkness. Sounded like fun. Especially with Uncle Warren and his cronies up to their eyeballs in dark magic. Rebellion and a good cause--how could she resist?