Beatrice Hollister

Former wandering vagrant turned high ranking business tycoon. Beatrice Hollister is the high ranking leader of the Hollister Connection, operating within the Myria region of Nuo, later allying with the Draknovi faction once they turn up into the continent.

Acting beyond reasonable reproach and operating with the self given title of "Chief Executive Officer of Casataka", she alongside The Hollister Connection travel around Myria doing their own shaded activities.

Inhabiting and protecting the hidden city of Casataka, with Beatrice acting as the defacto ruler of the entire city, backed up by both The Hollister Connection and a few others she's aligned with.

Appearance
Standing at 7'10 ft, she is a fairly tall hedgehog woman with purple fur, white highlights, and heterochromic eyes, one being Teal and the other Blue, her hair falling behind her head, with two smaller sets of bangs near the top, alongside a white muzzle and a small bushy tail.

Her clothing consists of a maroon/red suit with crimson heels, small necklace, a white neck-piece, various adornments on the suit such as buttons and paddings, and silver rings for her cuffs, she's also got crimson glasses, blue lipstick and set of ring shaped earrings, completing the flashy look that wouldn't be out of place with the Draknovi faction.

Her hands have several rings on her hands, containing various gemstones such as ruby, diamond, amber and so on. One of her hands has the Blood Beryl etched into her hand after a journey into Abberzan went awry.

Personality
Sinister and Amoral, She is about as corrupt and selfish as you can get, being more concerned about how to advance her own situation above all else, being an audacious figure unconcerned about the various happenings around Nuo, carrying little if anything about good or evil. She also shows a distinct lack of empathy for many of those around her, often seeing people as disposable tools that she can toss away with little thought if they're no longer a use to her, though this isn't a view she shares of every single creature.

On the face of it, she often appears polite and professional, but underneath this facade is a being who cares only for herself and how to benefit from a situation no matter how dire it may be, it's best to tread with caution if one happens to encounter her. She's known to be highly confident and arrogant in the face of danger, being certain that many will be able to do much against her or her connection, given the land formations and resource advantages on her side. On top of this, she is a known and dirty cheater, among her personal philosophies is the saying "An action isn't felonious unless one is visually apprehended", where a cheater isn't a cheater as long as they aren't caught in the act, to her cheating is just using whatever advantage you have at your disposal, it's "part of the game" so to speak.

Being a veteran gambler, she's good at the psychology of gambling, keeping a level head even when the stakes are high and is no stranger to manipulating people into making mistakes.

She's also no stranger to luck and chance, calculating odds and statistics in her favor, combined with her habit of rigging the outcome to the best of her abilities. That being said, she's not unflappable, and is known to be a paranoid individual to a fault. She's not so brazen that she'd assume a group is incapable of doing ANYTHING against her even with her if not given a reason, particularly the Kikova Mercenaries of Orak and the Alliance of Noore. She's also got an uncanny knack for looking out for cheaters, however she isn't as good at spotting past the simpler bluffs given it doesn't fully cross her mind that she might lose even with all her advantages, being too focused and lapsing into a tunnel vision if she feels she doesn't have the upper hand, as such if one is crafty and keeps a cool mind, they can force her into making a mistake, however the same is true for them, and a moment of weakness is all it takes to lose it all. For as much as she tries to plan and prepare for whatever comes her way, she's not an omnipotent being by any stretch of the imagination either.

Among her philosophies include "Αλεύρι και Παιχνίδια" or "Flour and Games", where the people within Casataka are fed, have water, taken care of, giving up civic responsibilities in order to obtain some form of stability, particularly taking advantage of the harsh and inflexibly hostile nature of the Myria deserts, This is also how she often convinces people to work alongside her, one should know enough about her power and influence to understand that aligning with her carries many benefits, conversely being her enemy carries no shortage of danger, even for those such as The Iridium Diamonds who do mercenary work solely for the money, she makes a point of offering things far greater than just money, though of course if that's their interest then they'll receive plenty of it. When dealing with Casataka, she has little interest in controlling the lives of others within the territory, allowing the various factions, such as The 99 Dice, with decent amount of autonomy, so long as they operate within a specified set of terms and conditions and doesn't destabilize Casataka, she's often reliant on The Iridium Diamonds and The Hollister Connection to maintain stability.

Relationships
Originally a street vagrant living near a run down village, she and her family were wanderers with little resources, being unable to afford....well anything, with Kokoro having a ball of string and a small necklace with a rock on it being all she had to her name.
 * Kokoro

Sometime in her travels

Aligned with Beatrice to a shaky and less than willing degree, the two operate in a somewhat mutually beneficial partnership, with Gao and her crew getting a stay in Casataka while making exotic and strange clothing. The two meeting after
 * Gao Feng

Their relationship is fairly professional but the chocolate kitten is highly unnerved by Hollisters approach to danger, given how she mainly cares about how she benefits from the various troubles in the lands. Gao has many moral convictions with how the hedgehog is, but given her power, status, alongside Hollister being a tough sod to fight in combat, Gao doesn't feel she has a lot of choices in the matter, leaving her and her band of weirdos forced to work with The Hollister Connection whether they like it or not, and they often don't.

Beatrice is confident one day Gao will see her way of thinking, given that she herself had similar convictions in her early days.
 * The Sirroco Lago

Given her role in permanently incapacitating their leader, Georgia Bloodthorne, the Sirroco Lago have a very intense grudge against Beatrice. She sees the lagomorphic vigilantes as more of an annoyance than a particularly serious threat, uncaring of Georgia's fate. Given their hotblooded nature and unstoppable conviction, she doesn't really attempt to reason with them, and while she doesn't go out of her way to antagonize them, she has no qualms with having them killed if they prove highly disruptive.


 * The Morpho Mercenaries

She's got nothing specifically against either Kikova nor the Arkanaya Alliance that they are a part of, seeing them as potential avenues for increased profits.

However the reverse is far from the truth, with the Morpho mercenaries finding her shifty and highly distrustful, and while they are mercenaries, they fight for a cause and aren't as easily swayed by money as Beatrice would like. Myriam Kaisome in particular finding her particularly troublesome.

By contrast, Beatrice is a common client of The Iridium Diamonds, often hiring them for whatever she needs, paying their prices, she's particularly familiar with Jolyene Chevalier.

Abilities

 * Charisma

She's known to have one hell of a silver tongue, being a skilled manipulator and playing people into her hands for her own benefit, often using these skills to talk her way out of a nasty situation or spin something in her favor.

She's also known to be quite cunning. Managing both The Hollister Connection as well as a handful of business ventures involving Casataka, knowing the right things to say to the right people to either sway them to her side, or at the very least get them to think.

She's also known for being fairly lucky, specifically being able to read a situation, taking a chance, and coming out ahead when her gamble pays off, on top of being no stranger to manipulating the odds in her favor if she can get away with doing so.


 * Gun Ranger

Her weapon of choice is "The Diamánti Damázo̱", a revolver made out of exotic materials such as platinum, silver, boreal wood, etched with various gemstones and several engravings, it is a very flashy and valuable weapon, it's not particularly fast by any means, but it packs an incredible punch, capable of knocking a foe of low resilience right onto the ground, that being said, with all it's power, it's slow to reload and terrible for any sort of crowd control. She prefers to save this for when there's no other option, often when an enemy isn't expecting it.

She's not the greatest in combat but she certainly gives it her best shot, in more ways than one, not being particularly durable but being dodgy and fairly accurate. She's also not an honorable fighter by any stretch, doing any dirty trick she can use to cheat her way through the fight, including shooting her opponent in the back if given the chance.


 * The Blood Beryl

Etched into her left hand is a sickly crimson gemstone known as the Blood Beryl, a sickly rectangular gemstone originally held by the long extinct Yaguye tribes of the Amarikoso. This gemstone allows for an assortment of strange and ethreal abilities, notably including trapping fallen souls and doing whatever she sees fit, often meaning trapping them into cards. This is represented by an enigmatic apparition known as the Ibyingenzi Umutego, an avian esque creature who turns up whenever the gemstone is most active.

However the gemstone doesn't have any direct combat potential at all, it's more for supplementing her existing strategies, notably making her high stakes games all the more dangerous given the loser is subjected to a fate many would say is worse than death, as was the fate of Georgia Bloodthorne, who took Beatrice on in one of her games only to fail...

That being said, this gemstone comes with several nasty side effects, being pure Sko, it affects her in many slow and unpleasant ways, and given she's not an Amarikoso blood as opposed to someone like Niska Amexi

That being said, this gemstone comes with several nasty side effects, given the gemstone contains nothing but Sko, it affects her in many slow and unpleasant ways, and given she's not an Amarikoso blood as opposed to someone like Niska or Xylia, she's impacted in pretty severe ways, from physical issues to mental depredations, which often manifests in her more darker and violent tendencies, and while she's never been a saint even before getting this gemstone, she's significantly worse afterwards.

Backstory
Starting off as a vagrant living in poverty within the deserts of Myria, traveling to small villages to sell flowers and herbs to help her and her mother get by, the two wandering the dusty sands and living in makeshift huts and small boxes, Beatrice befriending a small daddy long legs spider she named Legs.

Her mother eventually perished due to disease crushing her lungs, leaving the young hedgehog to travel the lands alone. she traveled the deserts trying to get by in any way she could, from treasure hunting to shadier dealings, she tried as hard as she could to get a better life for herself, which would later grow into an obsession, and with no guiding figure in her life to steer her steady with a combination of the harsh dangers of the desert, she would grow selfish and distant, looking after herself above at the expense of those around her.

Being orphaned at a young age, she fought her way to the top, being taught skills in self reliance.