Age: 20
Gender: Female (she/her)
Field of Study: History
Physical Description: Esther is extremely small, short at only 5 feet tall and somewhat underweight at around 90 pounds. In addition to being underweight, Esther is naturally slender and has little muscle mass to complement her low body fat, leaving her body thin and lacking in curves. Her face could be described as sharp and heart-shaped, with a pronounced chin and jawbones and a straight, slightly upturned nose. Esther’s eyes are deep- and close-set, with pale grey-blue irises capped with thin brows. She has naturally pale skin, and gets very little sun to darken it. Her most prominent natural feature is her hair, a tangle of unkempt, wavy ginger locks worn just past her shoulders.
Esther takes little care over her appearance, rarely dressing to impress or putting effort into her hair or makeup. On the day of the experiment she wore an oversized navy blue greatcoat with Chicagoan and Czech flag patches on the left sleeve. Under this she wore black winter gloves, black denim jeans, light brown boots, a black t-shirt with a skeletal design, and a white hoodie with a design of a man holding a spear on it. She also had a fluffy brown ushanka-style hat with a bear face, snout and ears on it stuffed into her coat pockets.
Background:
- Born in Pilsen, Chicago, Illinois on the 29th of November, 2001 to parents Kašpar and Magda Ježek, Esther enjoyed a comfortable early childhood. Her father Kašpar made enough as a police officer to support Magda working only part time for a maid service and spending the rest of her time as a homemaker. Content with their lifestyle, the couple had no further children. Esther was raised nominally Catholic, but the family was not especially devout and typically only attended church for Christmas, Easter, and weddings and funerals. She likewise inherited her parents’ sporting affiliations, becoming a casual fan of the Chicago Bears and White Sox.
- Though reserved, Esther had a broadly normal experience with elementary and middle school. She had few friends but kept them close, and worked hard to achieve consistently high grades. In particular, Esther took well to language and literature, greatly enjoying reading and creative writing.
- On the 31st of December 2016, life for the Ježek household changed drastically when Kašpar was killed in the line of duty. Magda was forced to work full time, leaving the inquisitive Esther alone at home most nights where she sought details of her father’s death from a tight-lipped CPD. What few answers she found were vague and contradictory, leading Esther to believe there was a conspiracy with something to hide. Mostly responsible for her own upkeep, Esther soon learned to take care of herself and her home, but gradually slid into subsisting on low-quality food thrown together quickly, very little sleep, and caffeine to make up for both.
- Though Esther never found closure on her father’s killing, it sparked a lifelong skepticism and distrust of authority. She drifted away from her mother and friends, finding companionship in online circles that reinforced her conspiracist ideas and offered grander narratives to fit her simple unexplained death story into. Esther never truly bought into the grand unified conspiracies offered by the likes of Flat Earth and QAnon, but equally refused to dismiss anything outlandish out of hand. Meanwhile, her mistrust of police directed her to more leftist political circles, in which she came to believe in a deliberate coordinated effort among politicians and capitalists to slowly strip rights from the poor and return to a state similar to serfdom.
- For a time, Esther's grades suffered due to her mistrust of the curriculum presented and the state behind it - especially in history, which had previously been a favourite subject of hers. After several reprimands for her off-topic and conspiratorial efforts, and on the advice of online acquaintances, she began filtering her beliefs and figuratively telling her teachers what they wanted to hear. Her grades recovered, and the lapse was brushed off as an odd effect of trauma that she soon got over, though the deception also served to entrench her feelings: she considered her skepticism more valid than ever, and grew further entrenched in the notion that there were at least some hidden truths being censored.
- After finishing high school, thanks to her economic background and continued strong grades, Esther was offered a scholarship to the University of Cascadia. With no college fund of her own and a deep mistrust of the institution of student loans, she gladly accepted it as her only chance to attend higher education. To pursue her growing obsession with deeper truths and grand narratives, she signed up for a course in History with a minor in Journalism.
- At UofC she has few friends and makes no concerted effort to socialise, having joined no student societies in her time there. Alone and far from home, she has however begun regularly attending a local firing range with the intention of purchasing a handgun as soon as she’s legally able to on her 21st birthday. With the rest of her free time, Esther enjoys reading and writing fiction, socialising online, studying the lives of interesting historical figures, listening to podcasts, and occasionally playing video games, particularly those with an interesting historical or alternative-history basis.
- Initially Esther was highly wary of the offer to visit a remote, foreign island presumably under functionally complete corporate control, but eventually curiosity won her over. She wanted a chance to peek behind the metaphorical curtain at what Janus-Hayes were studying, and to a lesser extent, had a more mundane interest in the Soviet history of the place.
Assets: Esther is familiar with and competent at using small arms. She is cautious, arguably paranoid, and as such almost always on guard for tricks or physical threats.
Limitations: Esther is very antisocial, which combined with her paranoia, makes it very hard for her to trust and cooperate. Her small frame and overall unfitness also pose a disadvantage, she’s lacking in stamina, very weak without a weapon, and vulnerable to the cold.
