Post by NurseRani on Sept 29, 2017 17:37:39 GMT
NAME: Helen A. Neely
HOME TECH LEVEL: 4
HOME TIME: Late 1920s / Early 1930s (especially 1928 - 1934)
STORY POINTS: 5
AGE: 37 HEIGHT: 5' 8" WEIGHT: 121#
HAIR: Black, with a speck on grey
EYES: Dark auburn
ATTRIBUTES:
Awareness 6
Coordination 3
Ingenuity 5
Presence 4
Resolve 3
Strength 2
GOOD TRAITS
Attractive [Minor]
Empathic [Minor]
Hypnosis [Major]
Psychic Training [Minor]
Voice of Authority [Minor]
Arrogant [Minor]
BAD TRAITS
Adversary (Many) [Major]
Eccentric (Behaves as an "upper crust" stage actress, or "movie star") [Minor]
Outcast (Lesbian, in the 1920s) [Minor]
Distinctive ("stage" accent. Long, black hair) [Minor]
Weakness (Smoking addiction) [Major]
SPECIAL TRAITS
Fear Factor (assumed to be mean, or "wicked"; especially in her later years)
SKILLS
Athletics 0
Convince 9 (Leadership +2, Talk Down +2)
Craft 2
Fighting 2
Knowledge 5 (Literature +2)
Marksman 0
Medicine 2
Science 1
Subterfuge 4 (Disguise +2)
Survival 1
Technology 2
Transport 2
BACKGROUND
Born in Ashtabula, Ohio, in either 1897 or 1898. Helen was born just before Halloween, thus likely the early year. Her family were very wealthy back in those days, and most likely maintained their wealth until the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Her father was a well-know shipping magnate, and her grandmother was a Conductors on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War.
Almost as soon as she left high school, Helen moved to New York. As a young writer, she joined a gathering a other writers that would soon be known as the Algonquin Round Table. On the strength of her writing, she moved to Hollywood to write scripts for Keystone and Biograph. Soon she branched out into acting, at Keystone. And it was there that she first met the alien known as Thanezush.
She saw him for what he really was, and, afraid of him; she left Hollywood for parts unknown.
By the late 1920s, Helen had settled in Texas. She bought the deed to a small rooming house in a North Texas town, using money inherited from her family. And here she met Molly Fulcrum, after the unusual teacher took a room in Helen's apartment house.
Over the years Helen's rooming house became both a haven for eccentric individualists; artists, and musicians in the backward Texas town: and, later, an actually Longbow station. This happened when the Timelord known as Abelard Gan discovered an incrustion of shape-shifting aliens masquerading as the staff of an orphanage. And these aliens were lead by Thanezush, who maintained himself using the life-essence of others... especially children.
Helen, Molly, Joe Woodburn, and others operated out of Helen's rooming house, even threw the War years in the 1940s. But when Molly Fulcrum was killed by an alien called an Ot'urt, Helen became a recluse. She had been in love with Molly for over 20 years. And Helen did not want to go on without her.
Nevertheless, Helen did help the Zuecid Anti-Aggression Taskforce defeat the Ot'urt. There were several useful gadgets hidden in the seller of Helen's rooming house. And Helen maintained contact with both Abelard Gan, and the American branches of both UNIT and Torchwood.
She died at the respectable age of 91, in 1989.
The descendants of her family from Ohio took over and later razed the rooming house.
And no one really knows exactly what happened to all of the very unusual equipment hidden in her basement.
PERSONALITY
Helen Neely was a vibrant bon vivant. Though she had lived in North Texas most of her adult life, she never lost her stage-trained accent, though it had acquired a bit of a southern drawl in later years. She spoke very much like the well-known stage actress, Tallulah Bankhead. Helen even had a similarly smokey voice; brought on by her life-long habit of smoking Lucky Strike or Camel cigarettes.
She was a complicated woman; someone who might well have been happier in a later time.
Helen, before the lost of her beloved Molly, was a very brave and even reckless individual. She would take on a variety of enemies with only her antique silver-capped walking stick.
After becoming a recluse, the neighborhood children came to fear the "old witch" that lived in that little apartment house. And those children's parents and grandparents never bothered to tell them that that same lady with the heavy-lidded eyes had helped have their lives several time, for three decades.
One of the most eccentric thing about Helen was her name. Listed as "Helen A. Neely" since she lived in New York. But no one seemed to know what that 'A' stood for. The initial may have stood for her mother's maiden name, Ashford. And it may be that she never had a middle name, but she added the initial as a way to sound more like a writer in her younger years. She may have borrowed the 'A' from her hometown of Ashtabula. Using the computer in Gan's TARDIS; Torchwood operative Sukie Firestone researched Molly Fulcrum, Joe Woodburn, and Helen Neely.
And the TARDIS databanks returned the name, Alice.
PERSONAL GOAL
Helen always wanted to be a writer of poetry, and novels. But that goal always alluded her. Instead she devoted the majority of her life to the same cause that motivated Molly Fulcrum - protecting children, and more broadly, the Earth itself from the Ot'urt and their leader, Thanezush.
