Betsy Stanson (disambiguation)

Betsy Stanson on this wiki may refer to any of the following characters:


 * Betsy Stanson (Earth-G5), a minor supporting character in Ciem 2.
 * Betsy Stanson (Earth-G6), her counterpart in Ciem: Nuclear Crisis.

Extrapolations pending
Note: Extrapolations from this page will, until finalized, be used for rebuilding Classic Gerosha.

''The following article is about a villain in Dozerfleet Comics. For the similarly-nicknamed Marvel villain Chon Li, see Aardwolf (Marvel Comics)''

Note: This article may require a dramatic rewrite.

Captain Simon Aardvonius/Aardvin (a.k.a., Captain Aardwulf and Capp Aard) is a Dozerfleet Comics villain that features in Ciem 2 and in Ciem: Nuclear Crisis. He is an archnemesis of both Ciem and Miriam Flippo, as well as Vienna Dockler. He was originally designed in 2005 to be a parody of Alfred Molina as Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2 combined with Gollum, but was later revised to become an original character with a more complex and sympathetic backstory.

Biography
Simon's life and times were always difficult, to say the least. However, those difficulties became more pronounced as time went by. He was originally to be a flat character, a villain spoofing Doc Ock and allowing the Ciem webcomic series to be free-for-view. As the webcomic sections of the Dozerfleet Web Network died out, so did interest in making Ciem a free-for-view parody of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films. The original story was retooled to create a potentially-profitable book series that aimed to be as original with the characters as possible. Due to this, the very nature of who Aard is became completely different from Classic to Comprehensive Geroshas. Therefore, he has two biographies here.

Early involvement with Miriam
Classic Capp Aard was once a benevolent seafarer named Simon Aardvonius. Simon had a wife named Kathy and a daughter. He often operated a fishing boat near Alaska during the ideal months, and spent time with his family when not on duty. It was during this time also that he got to meet the adventurous couple Steve McLaine and Miriam Flippo. However, an incident during an expedition resulted in him being extorted by the Hebbleskin Gang.

Not long afterward, Steve tried to help Simon escape from Hebbleskin persecution. The plan backfired; and Steve soon found himself the victim of Hebbleskin espionage efforts. Arfaas sent a loyalist named Melvin Markus to befriend the couple and report back on whatever the couple did. Making matters worse, one of Steve's other friends betrayed the couple and started hiding cameras in their cabin. He used stolen sex tape footage to portray Miriam as a porn star named Mila Fila. Eventually, this resulted in the porn site webmaster being assassinated, and his hard drive stolen, when Hebbleskins wanted it to learn more about Miriam.

Hebbleskin forces soon cracked down on Simon's payments and upped their efforts to spy on Steve and Miriam once they recognized that Mila Fila was one of Shalia's daughters. They assumed that Miriam was also Sniperbadger, and that she may be the Gifted Flippo in hiding. Curiously, they did not suspect Candi of being the Gifted Flippo first, in spite having spy footage proving she was Emeraldon's girlfriend.

Transformation into Capp Aard
Simon's failure to make extortion payments following a few more incidents at sea led to him trying to go into hiding to avoid punishment from Duke Arfaas. The pressure this put on his family resulted in Kathy filing for divorce and taking the child with her. A lonely Simon trudged on, making as much distance between himself and Miriam as possible to avoid bringing down further wrath from Arfaas.

His plans ultimately failed, and he was captured by Hebbleskin scientists determined to use him as a Guinea pig for developing the Meethlite werewolf technology they were assigned to. Since Milthuen research was failing and AI backvisors were becoming ineffective, Arfaas was quickly losing interest in Milthuen Prototypes like Milp. He planned to create a werewolf army, which would forever crush the Centhuens and Centhuen Prototypes and destroy Phaelite science.

Simon was all set up to be made into a wolfman; but then a shipping error complicated things. The scientists did not receive the wolf DNA they wanted for their experiment. They decided to substitute with aardwolf and hyena DNA, an aardwolf to get the wolf-like characteristics they wanted and a little hyena DNA to give their creation some aggression. As they were working on their experiment, they were about to plant on Simon anything they could to make him unquestioningly loyal. They failed to do so in time. The extreme agony of his transformation instead prompted Simon to force his way out of the transformation chamber. He shattered the glass, and immediately proceeded to slaughter all the scientists involved. He escaped into the night, making his way back home in only his underwear.

Split personality takeover
He began growing aardwolf fur rather quickly, and within the span of two days he found most of his excess body fat had been converted to fur. He began developing an insatiable appetite for termites, and being haunted by an alter-ego. That alter-ego soon took complete control, limiting his vocabulary and narrowing his focus. Capp Aard had been born. He immediately used what mentally faculties remained to read up on information that Arfaas had sent him regarding plans for a Mik-Non invasion of Dirbine. He kept reading until he discovered that those plans would also involve framing Sniperbadger for espionage against the Chinese government. Part of the plan would be to either find and capture Miriam while she was still in Alaska or chase her all the way to Gerosha, where she would most likely run to for cover. Aard also reasoned that she was herself searching for the Queen Illaka Ruby.

Russia, and Alaskan Inuit tribes, debated furiously as to whom the ruby truly belonged; but its worth in ransom would be more than enough for Aard to create his own termite plantation. Megalomania set in, and he argued to himself that a termite plantation was the beginnings of his quest to take over the world and have women serving him termites night and day.

Stalking Miriam
Aard ventured out of his home, no longer loyal to either Miriam or Arfaas. He soon learned of Vienna having captured the Ming-Yo from China, and reasoned that capturing that jewel would give him an extra advantage over merely stealing the Queen Illaka. Its radioactivity didn't seem to matter to him. He resurfaced during the Mik-Non attack right as Candi and Miriam were attempting to flee Dirbine. He swooped down on Miriam, attempting to kidnap her. This led to a brief battle with Ciem, which ended when Miriam hit a distracted Capp Aard with the front of a stolen car. The girls made their escape from town, and Miriam began the long process of clearing her name.

However, Aard quickly recovered from the initial assault. He battled Vienna for the Ming-Yo, initially losing only because she was able to use superior firepower to her advantage. However, he followed her scent all the way to Latin Town. Vienna tracked down the girls and attempted to hide with them; but Aard set up a trap to ambush Vienna. He snatched the Ming-Yo and challenged Ciem to a battle. Candi was now at the peak of suffering from her flu, with her powers glitching constantly. She chased after Aard anyway in her efforts to get the Ming-Yo away from him before he accidentally nuked the whole town. Alas, she lost the battle; and was sent flying into traffic. A family she had saved earlier rescued her from the highway, and took her unconscious body to their house until she could recover. Aard used Ciem's defeat as his golden opportunity. He attacked the Latin Town motel yet again, this time successfully kidnapping Miriam and making off with her. Vienna went in pursuit of him, chasing him all the way to a Farrenville industrial complex.

Death
While Candi recovered from her illness and Donte retrieved his Emeraldon gear, Vienna teamed up with Chinese agent Black Rat to keep Aard from activating the Ming-Yo. The rapid deterioration of Aard's mind to a more animal-like state resulted in him activating it anyway. He soon killed Black Rat; and Vienna was forced to hide while Aard continued to play with the Ming-Yo and unwittingly expose himself to its radiation.

Ciem showed up with Emeraldon, and battled Aard as a diversion. Emeraldon flew the Ming-Yo as fast as he could to the Gulf of Mexico and destroyed it; while Ciem kept Aard busy. She finally lured him outdoors and bought time for Miriam and Vienna to expose Lloyd Kolumn's treason against the US and conspiracy with Arfaas. With Chinese as US forces allied against the Mik-Non and the Hebbleskin Gang, Miriam was finally off the hook. Aard began slowly melting to a puddle as the Ming-Yo's radiation ripped his molecules apart. A horrified Candi fled the scene, lest she be captured by police. Aard's last word was: "Ter....mites....."

Discharge from military
Simon Aardvin was an army private right out of college, where he did his best to make a living. However, his girlfriend Kathy Gentry broke off their engagement to run around on him with another soldier. After that, he began having multiple flings with women in his unit. Word of the drama this produced eventually led to an investigation which got him discharged. He went about his life from one job to another, frustrated that he never got to live up to his dream of being an army captain as his father had been.

Kolumn's plot
When Arfaas decided he was going to launch a second attack on Evansville to get revenge for Darius exiling him two years ago, he decided to capture the Ming-Yo experiment from China. He also suspected Miriam of being the Gifted Flippo, and was determined to have her either captured by his forces or else killed by the Chinese. With the aid of a corrupt NSA agent named Lloyd Kolumn, Arfaas was able to connect with a hacker named Melvin Markus. Melvin follows a trail of clues that Miriam's identity has been hijacked by a porn site, creating an online persona of her without her permission named "Mila Fila." He goes to Alaska and breaks into the science lab to steal equipment that can be used to frame Miriam. However, Steve discovers Melvin's intentions. Melvin steals several Sniperbadger passwords.

Impersonating Snipergbadger, Melvin hacks into the Chinese government's Ming-Yo project mainframe. Steve flies to China to meet with authorities and warn them of Arfaas' ruse, which leaves Miriam to flee to Evansville in the hopes of finding Candi. Some detective work on the Hebbleskin Gang's part leads to them discovering that Miriam had taken a plane to Evansville, so they set a trap.

Capture and transformation
Simon was captured by the Hebbleskins after failing to get a license to carry a concealed weapon. They killed the hooker that he was with at the time, and took him prisoner. He was transformed into his Capp Aard form, and warned that his new animal side would start taking over his mind. Kolumn promised a cure to stabilize him so he could stay somewhat human; but only if he captured Miriam and brought her to Kolumn. He is then informed that the Ming-Yo and Ming-Cho had been intercepted by CIA agents Vienna Dockler and Betty Harmin. Betty was missing; but Vienna was believed to be hiding somewhere in downtown Evansville. Aard would have to capture both Miriam and the Ming-Yo, and take them to a specially-disclosed industrial park. Kolumn would send Melvin there with the stabilizer, and an exchange would be made.

Frustrated with the extortion on him, Aard initially lashed out and killed a few scientists. However, he reluctantly agreed to Kolumn's terms. His path eventually becomes similar to that of his Classic Gerosha counterpart.

Motivation
Classic Capp Aard developed a complete split personality, similar to Gollum in Lord of the Rings. This split personality very quickly takes him over, and he develops a very limited vocabulary. He also obsesses with termites and with ways to get termites. Comprehensive Aard also has a craving for termites; but he is driven more by wanting to prevent the further deterioration of his mind than he is by megalomaniacal delusions of a "termite empire."

Classic Aard is "Captain Aardwulf" because he used to be a seafarer. Comprehensive Aard is given the title mockingly by Kolumn and Arfaas, since he wanted to be an army captain like his father. This affects the way that the two Aards dress significantly. Classic Aard whipped together what little clothing he needed to look terrifying and be functional without looking like a naked monster. Comprehensive Aard still has a lot of his mind intact, and wants to keep it that way. Since he had some army training, Comprehensive Aard has combat experience in addition to his savage impulses. Classic Aard is more motivated by pure insanity.

Design
Overall, Comprehensive Aard is a significant departure in formula from Aard Prime. However, he and Aard Prime have in common the fact that they are struggling to maintain control of the human parts of their brains against gradual deterioration to an animal state. This gives Prime and Comp some drama to their transformation not found in Classic Aard. Not only that; but both of them are significant departures from Aard Prime's outfit.

In Gerosha Prime, Denny Levens was brainwashed into the evil Dr. Leone. Turning Simon into Capp Aard specifically was the goal all along, and Aard's only motivation for killing Denny was because the transformation was painful. The scientists in Classic Gerosha had no such deliberation, and were transforming him to follow orders. Therefore, his costume was made less like a pirate and more like a chaotic madman. Comprehensive Capp Aard takes his old boot camp clothes and re-purposes them, reliving his dream of his military training actually meaning something. However, his transformation makes it difficult for him to wield a rifle like he used to. On top of that, his increasingly animal-like impulses prevent him from having the patience to aim a gun.

He therefore uses his hand-to-hand combat training to his advantage whenever he can. In addition to this different interpretation of "Captain" in his name, Comprehensive Aard does away with the brown coat. It was originally part of his pirate outfit in Gerosha Prime. In Classic Gerosha, it was put there to deliberately knock off the green coat worn by Alfred Molina in Spider-Man 2. Comprehensive Aard's design has no intention of shouting out to any one previous movie or movie villain in particular, so the iconic trench coat is gone. His hairstyle change is there to serve as a reminder that he is no longer a parody of Alfred Molina's Doc Ock.

Catchphrases
As far back as Gerosha Prime Ciem 2, one of Capp Aard's defining characteristics was to scream "TERMITES!!!" to indicate his obsession with termites. As his parody of Gollum grew more emphasized in Classic Gerosha Ciem 2, he also began referring to Ciem as "Nasty Centipede," and to himself as "Aardie." His fascination with termites is played more dramatically in Nuclear Crisis. Also, his other phrases are toned down. "Nasty Centipede" is all but done away with. Even so, he continues to gaze at the Ming-Yo and proclaim: "Shine, pretty thing, shine!"

Gerosha Prime
Aard was originally designed based entirely around Gerosha Prime Ciem being a Sims 2 parody of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. The idea of his voice being Gollum-like as he obsessed over termites and Miriam was designed to be comedic, as the source material being spoofed was likewise corny. Since the midway cancellation of Despair Gerosha's version of Ciem 1, no experimentation was attempted to make a better Aard in that universe.

Aard Prime's outfit was a recolor of a default outfit for pirate Sims, made to fit his aardwolf color scheme. His sunglasses were made green to distinguish him from the black sunglasses worn by Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2.

Classic Gerosha
For Ciem 2, Aard was made an even more extreme form of his twin inspirations. It was ruled that a man losing his mind that quickly would not wear a pirate outfit like the one he was originally depicted with. Therefore, he was revised to wear his more savage brown sweatpants and brown trenchcoat. The pants were a Maxis default recolor; but the coat was a repaint of the Wearable With Anything Trenchcoat by GeneralZoi at Mod The Sims. His aardwolf fur was the result of repainting Abragon's Werewolf Warrior from the same site. His face was a repaint using a Maxis facepaint file. It was modified using a photo of an aardwolf taken from Wikipedia.

Comprehensive Gerosha
The new Capp Aard's design has so far only been explored with UGO's HeroMachine software. This version attempts to be a more sympathetic villain. He is focused and brutal; even stoic. But his stoicism is an outer shell to hide how hurt he is inside. He has low taste in women; but he is not particularly chauvinistic. Miriam is even able to converse with this one; but not break his determination. While resisting the inner animal, he remains somewhat more human. He is even somewhat caring for Miriam as he holds her prisoner, assuring her that Arfaas' plans for her beheading are punishment enough.

His brief military past gives him access to some military garb; so he dresses like he's in junior boot camp. The lack of a trenchcoat also makes him more maneuverable in the face of trouble; making it more credible that he and an flu-infected Ciem could be evenly matched.

Abilities and equipment
Vienna is skilled at donning a variety of disguises. She is also fluent in Russian and a few other languages. She bears a standard-issue pistol for a weapon, but prefers improvised weapons from her environment. She knows some martial arts also, as a part of her CIA training. She is asked in September of 2023 to hide in the Dirbine/Evansville area dressed as the type of woman least expected to be carrying a pocket-sized nuclear holocaust. Therefore, she dresses as a pink-haired prostitute / street punk. This look was devised for her in Gerosha Prime, and became iconic for the character since then.

Ciem 2 / Nuclear Crisis
Main articles: Ciem 2, Ciem: Nuclear Crisis

Vienna is sent to China with Betty Harmin to steal the Ming-Yo and Ming-Chos, respectively. The Mik-Non terrorist group steals them from the Chinese government, and it is up to Vienna and Dockler to intercept and destroy both devices before any other evil power gets their hands on them. However, that's when Vienna gets a call from her father to investigate a possible lead on Miriam Flippo and the Queen Illaka Ruby. Vienna expresses her concerns that it could be a set up. However, she complies with orders and hides in Dirbine/Evansville anyway. Little does she realize until too late that the city has been infiltrated with Mik-Non, who are working on cohorts with the Hebbleskin Gang. She was set up: countless enemies would be descending on that city to make trouble for her. Worse: General Xiang sets four agents up from the Chinese government to find Vienna and Miriam both. Those agents are Black Rat, Stung Hornet, Tin Dragon, and Teal Hog.

Chaos quickly ensues, engulfing the entire city. Right as Vienna is about to get a lead on Ciem and Miriam, following a leak of information by a mysterious "mosentipal182" of information from Andrew Tinsel regarding the likelihood that Miriam "Sniperbadger" Flippo was framed, Captain Aardwulf gets involved. He immediately sees Vienna with the Ming-Yo, and goes mad with envy for it. However, capturing Miriam becomes his first goal. His second goal becomes defeating Ciem when she repeatedly gets in the way. However, quick thinking on Miriam's part allows both her and Ciem to escape town. Capp Aard battles with Vienna unsuccessfully a second time. Having Aard down but not out, Vienna tracks the sisters down. However, her detective work at finding the Flippo girls' motel room was not able to keep her scent from being followed by Aard. He jumps Vienna and steals the Ming-Yo from her. Ciem pursues him, but is defeated.

Aard returns to the motel and captures Miriam. Vienna goes out in pursuit of Aard and Miriam, while an unconscious Candi is recovered by Betsy Stanson and the Tinsels. As Candi gains consciousness, Donte successfully reunites with her. Ciem and Emeraldon arrive with their own strategy to free Miriam and dispose of the Ming-Yo, while Vienna attempts to keep Aard distracted. She and Black Rat end up working together at initially distracting Aard. However, he quickly overpowers them and forces a retreat. Ciem arrives and attempts to free Miriam. Aard engages her in battle a third time. While he is distracted dealing with Ciem, Vienna frees Miriam. Emeraldon discovers that Aard has accidentally destabilized the Ming-Yo. He uses his powers to shield himself from its radiation, then flies out of the area with it. He heads for the Gulf of Mexico in order to detonate it. Vienna plays bodyguard to Miriam, while she takes revenge on Melvin Markus for framing her for the entire debacle. Miriam's work successfully leads to Lloyd Kolumn being indicted for treason and collaboration with Duke Arfaas, forcing Kolumn to retreat from Washington and into the arms of the Hebbleskin Gang. He leaves vowing revenge on Miriam and Ciem both.

Vienna soon after the mess is all over with contacts the CIA and alerts them to inform other branches of government as to what has gone on. Miriam's name is cleared, and Aard dies from radiation poisoning. News of the Ming-Yo's destruction soon makes the papers, with the Chinese breathing a sigh of relief. The Ming-Yo's destruction means it can no longer belong to anyone, nor further threaten anyone. Vienna is soon called away to investigate the possibility that her own father is a traitor.

Abolition
Main article: Abolition (Gerosha Chronicles)

When Judge Terry Beliah begins rounding up Phexos and Marlquaanites all across the world, Miriam decides to help her friends out by exposing Beliah's unlawful activities. She recruits Vienna's help in the initial exposure. However, this backfires when the lawyer that Vienna recruits is assassinated in the middle of a court hearing. Beliah's men then murder a woman who was a counselor both for Cupric and the Sapphire King. This leads to the both of them deciding to help the heroes out. However, Cupric foolishly tries to free Extirpon first. This leads to Cupric being captured. Sapphire King goes to find Vienna and get her help on what to do next. However, she is arrested on trumped-up charges and held at a maximum security prison with no trial or bond. Even so, Jordan infiltrates the building. Vienna decides to reveal her true identity to him, so that he may leak her secret agent status to the world. The hope in this is that the security breach will draw attention to the fact that Beliah is unlawfully locking up government personnel to protect himself. The Sapphire King does what Vienna asks, but is soon tempted to return to a life of crime. He is almost immediately captured by Beliah's men. Beliah tries to use Sapphire King and Cupric's captures as propaganda to boost his cause.

Vienna is eventually freed from prison, but only after Triste the Plant-Lady infiltrates and frees her. Vienna's fate after this is unknown.

Personality
While not always the smartest of her bunch, Vienna is useful as a government agent due to her willingness to do nearly whatever it takes to get a job done. Little is known about her life specifically, outside of the fact that she has a father in the CIA also and cannot trust him. She appears to be a somewhat modest judge of character, however; as she realizes in short order that the Flippo girls are not the enemy. Yet, she shows tremendous prowess in surviving Aard's onslaught in spite having no superpowers to counteract him with.

Concept
The inspiration for Vienna as a character first arrived possibly on Wednesday, April 6th of 2005. That was the airdate for "Nightingale," an episode of the TV series Alias. That episode became the inspiration both for the Ming-Yo and for Vienna's existence in Gerosha mythos. Ciem 2 was seen as combining the plot of Spider-Man 2 with that of "Nightingale" and Mercury Rising. Originally, the Dozerfleet founder misheard Jennifer Garner's character Sidney Bistrow as being "Sidney Porter." "Vienna Dockler" was coined in early September of 2005 for that version of Ciem 2 as a parody of this concept. The pink hair gave away what Valerie was spoofing. However, she went by "Vienna" rather than "Sidney" to play on the joke of "Austria, not Australia." And the "dock" part referred to "port." When he learned of Sidney's correct surname of Bistrow, the Dozerfleet founder decided to keep Vienna's erroneous surname anyway.

She was originally suggested to have two children, with her backstabbing father using them as leverage against her. Later versions of the character did away with that subplot entirely.

Design
Vienna's facial design was sculpted in The Sims 2 Body Shop initially to make her look like a Jennifer Garner knock-off, reinforcing the fact that she was a Sidney parody. Her pink hair was a custom recolor made with Photoshop Elements 1.0. Her suit was chosen from the stock available as of The Sims 2: University, since the Dozerfleet founder at that time was not able to afford Nightlife. There were some concerns that the model would look too much like Candi with pink hair. Those concerns were alleviated partially when Candi was redesigned to be more genetically accurate for Classic Gerosha. Vienna's Classic Gerosha sculpt varied from her Gerosha Prime one also, creating further character differentiation.

All models of Vienna were made with The Sims 2 and its expansion packs until artwork for Comprehensive Gerosha's Ciem: Nuclear Crisis picked up speed in the summer of 2011. A Sims 3 sketch was done for the first time. In July of 2012, this was followed by a sketch made mostly in MakeHuman 3D Alpha Build 6.0. That latter build, due to a Creative Commons Zero license, was included on the front cover for Nuclear Crisis.

Reception
Reception on Vienna as a character by test audiences was generally negative, leading to a scaling back of her as a character and finally to her being removed from further Gerosha continuities as of late 2012. Fans of Alias found her joke to be "very not funny." One demo scene of her and Betty Harmin stealing the Ming-Yo and Ming-Cho together featured her wearing a prom-style dress with some cleavage in the front amidst carrying out her theft, which did not go over well with Ciem 2 test screening readers in Missouri. One girl went so far as to accuse the Dozerfleet founder of altering the dress to make it more provocative, which he was able to demonstrate was not the case both from pixel analysis and from the fact that the "lewd" dress came standard with Nightlife.

By contrast, a minority of test audiences on Mod The Sims felt Vienna wasn't provocative enough. However, the overall reaction to her presence in the story was one of apathy. To that end, it seemed certain that a reboot of Gerosha continuity would not be bringing her back. Her partner, Betty Harmin, managed to survive the cuts being made; due to her being essential to the revised plot for Path of the Ming-Cho. However, Betty was rewritten to work alone.

Gerosha Prime
The revelation that Miriam Flippo was pregnant with twins convinces Steve McLaine that he'd rather live his life with her than with the Hebbleskins, and he turns on them by helping Miriam escape. He does reveal to her however that they were extorting him the whole time. He'd betrayed her Snipderbadger identity to an Arfaas loyalist named Melvin Markus, and that her identity would be misused to frame Miriam in a conspiracy involving the Chinese government.

Melvin finally shows up at the cabin, checking in on Steve. Miriam hides in the bathroom, and Melvin leaves thinking that Steve and the Hebbleskins are still in cohorts with each other. Melvin disappears shortly thereafter and is never seen again.

Classic Gerosha
Melvin manages to blackmail Steve into betraying a pin number that gives him access to Miriam's secret codes for her Sniperbadger activities. In order to keep her safe, Steve takes off with Miriam and heads for the nearest large commercial airport. Miriam finds herself on a plane for Dirbine almost immediately. Melvin arrives at the cabin with a team of Hebbleskin soldiers armed to the teeth; furious to discover that Steve and Miriam had already given him the slip. After this, Melvin disappears from the plot.

Comprehensive Gerosha
Melvin is one of the world's best hackers, and is also an Arfaas sympathizer. He discovers that a porn site owner has been stalking Miriam and spying on her home, capturing footage of her and Steve in their bedroom with a hidden camera and putting it on his site. The uncanny resemblance of "Mila Fila" to Miriam clues Melvin off. He breaks into the pornographer's house and shoots everyone there, finding the notes for stalking Miriam and using them to locate her workstation. Steve decides to work late before returning to the cabin; but overhears Melvin and other thugs breaking in to the lab. They find one of Miriam's laptops and Melvin soon cracks it. He hijacks the Sniperbadger identity, and brags to his Meethlite guards that he is going to frame Miriam for espionage against China.

Steve escapes the lab and heads straight to his cabin, alerting Miriam to Melvin's plan. Security forces show up and Melvin is soon taken out along with his followers. But the damage is done and they've already set the plot in motion. This actually makes things more complicated, as Melvin was supposed to be the one providing Captain Aardwulf with a stabilizer to avoid becoming completely animalistic.

Development
Melvin's design began with RCAgent at Mod The Sims. He originally set out to prove that he could re-create Claude Speed from Grand Theft Auto III for The Sims 2. And while the Dozerfleet founder was experimenting with creating unique henchmen to harass Steve and Miriam, an idea came to test out the Claude Sim. However, he needed to look more original to work for Ciem 2. Therefore, he was re-dressed in a red-striped shirt and given a hat to wear as well as glasses. His hair color was changed to red and he was given a beard. It was not long afterward that he began to take shape as Melvin.

Cataclysmic Gerosha
Main article: Cataclysmic Gerosha

A fancy ruby was discovered in Alaska once, and was believed to have been the prized possession of a female Inuit leader. It was dubbed the Королева Illaka, or "Queen Illaka" Ruby by Russians who later discovered it. The ruby went missing after after Illaka passed away, amidst a dispute between Inuit natives and Russian settlers over who should rightfully possess the ruby. Around WWII, Rebecca Volstika discovered it and claimed it for herself. She later returned it to Inuit possession after marrying Akiak "Anarteq" Sundue. It remains somewhere in Canada, heavily guarded.

Earlier versions
See also: Gerosha multiverse, Ciem 2

In Gerosha Prime, it was stated explicitly that part of why Steve McLaine and Miriam Flippo were in Alaska was because they were looking for the ruby there. Miriam had attended the college in Farrenville, and was only in Alaska to date Steve and find the ruby with him. Their plans are derailed in Ciem 2 when the Hebbleskin Gang sends Melvin Markus to frame Miriam for involvement in stealing the Ming-Yo, prompting her trip to Dirbine and thus, the entire plot. Since there was no Becky Ryba in these earlier renditions, the ruby's location remained hidden "somewhere in Alaska." Its plot relevance diminished by Classic Gerosha, and was almost completely non-existent in Comprehensive Gerosha's Ciem: Nuclear Crisis. By this point, much of Miriam's origin story had also undergone serious revision.

Inspiration
Steve and Miriam's quest to find the Queen Illaka Ruby, which was interrupted by the events of Ciem 2, served as an early intro sub-plot to bring readers up to par with what Miriam had been doing with her life since she and Candi both left Gerosha behind. In spite being mentioned both by Miriam and by Captain Aardwulf, the ruby itself never once visually appeared in any rendition of the webcomic nor in Nuclear Crisis. A look for it was finally figured out on October 27th of 2013.

Design
The ruby was made as appearing to be cut to one ruby wrapping around another, both initially of an "egg cut" influence, per the "egg cut" ruby option in The Sims 3. The base ruby is actually one inside the Triangulum's treasure room, as per the treasure Stan Flippo inherits from Henry Lohtz. It was one of several rubies designed off that base and modified in Photoshop on October 27th of 2013. Its appearance is retroactively applicable to every story that need make mention of it.

Gerosha Prime
In Gerosha Prime, Henry was alluded to as early as the first Ciem story. He didn't say or do much; but it was realized that he would not take kindly to his uncle Jeraime having been blinded by Ciem. That fact that L1 the Llama was a mass murderer appeared to be of no consequence to him. Back when Ciem 2 was aiming more at being a parody of Spider-Man 2, Henry actually showed up at the tail end. His streak as L2 the Llama in Ciem 3 was short lived, as he was voluntarily engaging in it. He was more interested at that point in settling down with his fiancee. That goal was soon cut horribly short when his fiancee Eileen Hurmell was senselessly murdered in the kitchen by Milp. After this, Henry more or less disappeared from the plot while he tried to raise his daughter Katrina Hurmell alone. There were plans to include him in Despair Gerosha, but those plans were cut.

Classic Gerosha
Henry is alluded to by Dolly Malestrom near the end of chapter 30 of Ciem, to let Candi know that Henry will not take kindly to Jeraime's new blindness and that he'd probably seek revenge on Ciem. Also, he is implied as having some sympathies for Duke Arfaas. He was set to appear towards the end of Ciem 2, being abducted from his home and turned into a new Musaran. His struggles with the AI in Ciem 3, and ultimate falling to his death, would serve to remind Dolly of how deadly and treacherous her own Earwig AI unit would be. This would provide her with an extra moral prerogative to destroy it once she'd fulfilled her mission of saving Candi's life. Eileen and Katrina functionally do not exist in Classic Gerosha.

Development
Henry Malestrom was inceived as a parody to Marvel's Harry Osborn, back when Ciem was an attempt to parody the Sam Raimi Spider-Man film trilogy as a way to promote the DSHW format. Alas, the DSHW format never truly caught on outside of Dozerfleet applications. His other namesake was Tom Ian Nicholas as Henry Rowengartner in Rookie of the Year.

When Ciem 2 and Ciem 3 were canceled, several desires to enhance Gerosha mythology led to the creation of an entirely separate universe dubbed "Comprehensive Gerosha." The new universe's format and rules would serve to make Ciem (and other characters) more original, and less dependent on spoofing their nearest equivalents in Marvel and DC. Therefore, characters whose sole purpose was to spoof Marvel and DC properties were quickly either rewritten or written out entirely. A few TV-show-spoofing characters like Vienna Dockler were allowed to remain. Henry, however, served no purpose in advancing the plot for Comprehensive Ciem. Even Pete the Shouter was ret-goned, and Nolle Barret's already-minimal role was downplayed even more in favor of introducing a blackmail ring for Candi to fight. (The all-female blackmail ring was inspired by an episode of CSI.) As such, Henry Malestrom is now a relic of Gerosha mythology.

Connection to Eqquibus
Brad was never entirely bright, but was able to avoid most trouble with the law for most of his life. He was often a thrill seeker in high school, and would pirate music in his spare time. He'd managed to get away with burgling a few homes in his day. He did not, however, ever have any real aspirations for his life. Brad attended the same college as Dereck Johnson. They met while at a frat party that they both crashed, and Dereck befriended him readily upon seeing how useful Brad could be as an accomplice.

The whole time, Dereck got on Brad's case about being undecided. Even so, they remained friends for a time. Dereck finally had an issue with a girl at school; and went so far as to talk Brad into helping him kidnap the girl. It was to Brad's understanding that they were merely going to wear horse masks and spook her; then dump on along the roadside with a story nobody would believe. Basic humiliation to a girl that deserved it. He had no idea how far Dereck was willing to go.

Before Brad even knew what hit him, Dereck had pulled out a pistol and shot him. Brad was hospitalized and placed in a coma. His family feared he'd never come out.

Life of crime
The same Marlquaan surge that created Gray Champion and Eqquibus also awoke Brad from his coma and healed his injuries. However, his guilt at being an accomplice to one of Dereck Johson's crimes resulted in him turning into a mule-like creature with wings. He adopted the nickname of "Foalesce," and tried to find a role for himself in society. Alas, a lot of the Phaelites' work had either been corrupted or undone by the rising Phaletori. Phexos and Marlquaanites alike that hadn't agreed to join the military (or the Phaletori's secret society) were finding themselves alone to face the world&mdash;including the wrath of their enemies in the Hebbleskin Gang. Darius Philippine was the only man in the world who could legitimize a Phexo/Meethexo/Marlquaanite support group, and was too busy fighting wars at the time.

Having nowhere to turn to for help, Foalesce soon found himself alone. He had to sneak into houses, find shelter, steal food, and do other things to get by. His life as a petty criminal and a fugitive was long and hard, but he found shelter wherever he could get it. His visual similarity to Eqquibus meant he was constantly being compared to his treacherous old friend, adding to the aggression with which authorities hunted him. Throughout it all, Foalesce made it clear that he had no intention of following in Eqquibus' hoofsteps. Both Cupric and the Sapphire King had tried numerous times to incorporate him into their plans. Each time, with limited-to-no success.

Eventually, Ciem succeeds at convincing Foalesce to turn himself over to Lex Philippine for help.

Abolition
Foalesce soon finds himself helping the other heroes out in their desperate attempt to avoid being snuffed out by Beliah's enthusiasts. His awkward encounter with the Gray Champion is brief, but Ciem ensured that Gray knows whose side Foalesce is on in the conflict. When Hea Pang offers to use Hester's Locket to change Foalesce back into Brad, he readily accepts the offer. Brad remains by Lex's side, knowing that only his new friends can erase his criminal history and ultimately rehabilitate him.

Development
Foalesce's name is a portmanteau of "coalescence" and "foal," indicating his equine nature. He was developed as a character in the hopes of creating a character similar to Eqquibus that would be more sympathetic and more capable of being crossover-friendly. While Foalesce did transfer over to Comprehensive Gerosha, he did not remain as useful a character as he would have been if Classic Gerosha had been retained. He was going to have a cameo in Ciem 2, but that ultimately never materialized.

Powers, weaknesses, and equipment
Being invisible, Jeff is not bothered much at the prospect of getting around naked. He does occasionally wear his standard-issue black trenchcoat, however. He also sometimes uses a cowboy hat. His primary use for his clothes is not usually to wear them, however. It's to create even more confusion as to his whereabouts. His one major weakness is any set of goggles capable of detecting his heat signature - or better capturing the light waves that are bent around him. This means that night vision and infra-red goggles pose a threat to him. He also has to watch his step, as he can track puddles with his feet. Unlike the Gray Champion, he is unable to make other objects he touches either invisible or intangible. This makes his invisibility at times more of a liability than anything else.

Character bio
Almost nothing major is known of Jeff, except for his name and his strong desire for wanting to kill Candi on a guillotine. He believes his invisibility allows him to get the jump on Emeraldon; but he underestimates how Candi's centuition allows her to stay alive. He also forgets when Emeraldon hands Candi his goggles. With the goggles on and her centuition, Candi sees him perfectly. She is able to subdue him even though he was able to take advantage of a confused Emeraldon just seconds earlier. He appears at the Stolly's Building's ruins one day while looking for a place to hide after committing a crime. Candi is there practicing her skills when the two confront each other and a fight ensues. Victory of Jeff, however, results in Candi growing overconfident when Don the Psycho chooses to fight her in the same location.

Personality
Jeff is a hardened criminal who is usually focused, determined, and goal-driven. His sadistic desire for Candi's head proves a blindspot, as well as his pride at the thought that he might defeat Emeraldon. The only one of Arfaas' underlings that wants to defeat Candi more at that point in time is Don the Psycho.

Development
In addition to being a minor villain to introduce the subplot of how Candi met Donte for the first time, Jeff was initially a way of toying around with two different custom skintones that had been downloaded from Mod The Sims.

One of these was a skintone by username Bink13y, and it allowed for characters to make Sims that were truly invisible. The other created a semitransparent "Soap Bubble Man," which made a perfect night vision double for the truly invisible man Sim.

Jeff's inclusion was inspired by the fact that when the Dozerfleet founder was working on chapter 2 of Ciem in February of 2007, he was also watching the Hollow Man film series for Philosophy 216 class.

Hollow Man 2 in particular proved inspirational on that front, to the point of becoming a paper for class. Nearly everything else about him was a case of testing out custom downloads to determine their usefulness. Successful tests were immediately implemented into chapter 2's plot, even when they made little sense together as a whole.

Ciem 2
Cupric's beginning in crime happened some time before the events of Ciem 2. Much like Rockpapsci, he based his crimes on a common motif. He was a chemistry student for most of his college career, making him familiar with the effects of copper in a lab. He finally settled on "Cupric" as a nickname, feeling it summed up what he did quite well. His calling card at crime scenes was often a pile of corroded pennies.

He is mentioned in passing in Ciem 2 as one of many villains, along with Jawknee and Rockpapsci, that Ciem and Emeraldon did battle with frequently.

Abolition
Katie Nassita had been devoting her life towards helping Marlquaanites and other misfits to rehabilitate themselves, including serving paroles Eric Copperton and Jordan Reddlewick. Katie ends up being murdered by some of Beliah's men when they try to get her to betray Eric and Jordan's locations. This causes them to violate their paroles and resume their activities as Cupric and Sapphire King. Cupric ultimately sacrifices his freedom to free Extirpon. His partner in the resistance, Sapphire King, reverts to being a criminal and is soon captured during a heist.

Sodality
Main article: Sodality (series)

Battle for Metheel
Main article: Sodality: Battle for Metheel

Cupric also appears in Sodality: Battle for Metheel.

Development
Like Rockpapsci, Cupric was forged as a villain in the hopes that he could be a chemistry-themed villain that would serve as a regular in case there were ever demand for a Ciem animated series. So far, he has yet to find much use outside of Abolition. Use of a chemistry-themed villain came from the fact that the Dozerfleet founder liked the sound of "cupric" used in high school chemistry class as a prefix for copper(II) oxide. A chemistry-themed villain had been used before in Replox: Abstract Foundations, named "Molarity."

Development

 * Named after Lex Luthor in DC Comics
 * Ciem Tomorrow behavior modeled after elderly Bruce Wayne.

Rise of the Phaelites
Main article: Rise of the Phaelites

Experiments and Offspring
Main article: Experiments and Offspring

When Tobey Met Alison
Main article: When Tobey Met Alison

Ciem / Ciem: Vigilante Centipede
Main articles: Ciem (webcomic), Ciem: Vigilante Centipede

Sodality
Main article: Sodality (series)

Ciem Tomorrow
Main article: Ciem Tomorrow

Skills

 * Sackcloth aptitude: Celia has found that wearing sack cloth enhances her sense of touch, a phenomenon she has never truly understood but one she discovered while wearing some for a church Christmas pageant.


 * Stealth: Celia has also learned as early as age 6 how to sneak about unnoticed. Only the most determined pursuers can still find her when she gets this way.


 * Enhanced infiltration: Celia is also skilled at breaking into physical places unnoticed in ways that rival Miriam's ability to break into websites without getting caught. The only heroine who makes a more skilled thief than Celia is Sarah Ruben, who can literally walk through walls.  Celia only seems to be able to, given her stealth.  Celia learned these talents on the street; yet she rarely ever stole anything from anyone.


 * Parkour skill: While she is not at the level of Tabitha Pang, she is more graceful at it than Candi. What Candi lacks in actual parkour skill, she compensates for with both brutality in combat and with centuition.  Celia has learned how to be talented without centuition to guide her.  And if Candi were to lose her centuition, it'd be harder for her to balance along obstacle courses with Celia's level of ease.

Weaknesses

 * Melee ineptitude: In spite being a very agile and skilled gymnast, a very talented financier, and an excellent cat burglar in spite her fondness for sackcloth; Celia has very limited upper arm strength. She has had difficulty gaining the forearm and wrist strength needed to throw a powerful punch, and her arms make her vulnerable to being captured by enemies.


 * Gigantasophobia: Aware of her melee ineptitude issue, Celia is hesitant to engage in physical combat directly with anyone taller or stronger than herself. The mere approach of someone significantly taller than herself is intimidating, and she can freeze up in fear if they have not prior earned her trust.  If the approaching taller party is clearly hostile, and she sees an escape route, she will aggressively secure her exit.  This problem was exacerbated after she was raped by Jim Oisdaat.


 * Vulnerable adult status: While cognitive enough to function as an adult factually, Celia's emotional intelligence stopped maturing around the age of 17. Delays in her ability to mature beyond who she was at age 17 were largely affected by the loss of her father and disappearance of her mother.  Being assaulted by Wayne the Vampire, abandoned by the Sodality, sexually assaulted by Jim Oisdaat, wrongfully imprisoned by Darius Philippine, and manipulated by Jordan only made it that much harder for her to mature.  While inside SCALLOP Women's Containment Center during the Beliah Amendment hearings, she began slowly reverting to an even more child-like state.  When transferred to Houston Women's along with Candi and Mingmei, she was assigned Mingmei as a cellmate.  She began to see Mingmei as her aunt.  While Mingmei was welcoming of the affection, given she was potentially on death row, she did advise that Celia receive counseling.  Celia's reversion to this state made her seem more innocent, which annoyed other prisoners.  As a result, Mingmei had to act as a bodyguard for her.

Equipment

 * Smoke bombs
 * Grappling hooks
 * Powder cases
 * Night vision goggles
 * Flash grenades
 * Communication devices
 * Improvised weaponry

For simple jobs, she relies on her wits and equipment to recover whatever treasure she is being asked to recover. Upon joining the Sodality of Florence and also being recruited by the Italian government for certain espionage-related jobs, Celia is usually fairly capable on her own. She is supplied with a bulletproof vest, Zeran teleporters, and Remotach pills as well, in the event that she should take gunfire. For especially dangerous jobs, she brings her virtually-bulletproof husband along. Her Zeran and Remotach accessories are courtesy of her being friends with Candi.

Early life
Celia was raised very differently from Candi, yet came to hold similar values and views over time. Whereas Candi was always fed the Flippo creed of "always live a little beneath your means," and learned early on to hide her actual wealth; Celia came to believe on her own that there was something of value to the Flippo creed. Her parents didn't set a very good example, flaunting their wealth often and spoiling her. In spite being spoiled, Celia never lost her humility. Madeline made sure that the beginnings of a spiritual core of faith and knowledge existed in her daughter. However, Will was often too distracted by his wealth and status. He tried to make this up to her by letting her enroll in gymnastics and parkour training, where she became fairly adept at it. Yet, Will was disappointed when she tried out for boxing and proved to have no talent for it. His grandfather, Orville Winehart, was a skilled heavyweight boxer.

When Celia's 15th birthday came along, Will's public opposition toward the Hebbleskins' influence on culture and politics led to him becoming a target. The Winehart family estate outside of Seguin came under attack. Will was butchered, and Madeline went missing. Fearing she was now truly an orphan, Celia took her financing skills that Will had taught her and used it to maintain a low profile. She feared that if she didn't find a job in the future, even her $5M net savings would eventually dry up. She adopted the Flippo ethos in that moment. Efforts to find friends amidst the turbulent times of Icy Finger raids and global warfare only led to her forgetting at times just how wealthy she was. She didn't always choose friends wisely. Some of them pretended to care about her and want a demonstration of her parkour skills. However, it turned out that this was so she could be manipulated into serving as a decoy for them to commit heists. After nearly getting arrested one time, she started being more careful whom she associated with. She longed to find the truth of what happened to her missing mother, to put her family back together if possible. She also vowed to make the Hebbleskins pay for what they'd done to her father. Understanding that the mean streets of Houston would not be a nice place for her if she dressed according to her economic status, she adopted a "ghetto chic" dress style. However, she was unwilling to adopt certain ghetto attitudes.

She learned of Wilbur Brocklyn and his sermons, and considered joining his Sodality Church experiment. However, she was also busy learning to live on the streets. Wilbur would later on be able to provide her a considerable amount of counseling. Around early 2020, Celia was finally able to enroll at the University of Houston, with an undeclared major. She sought at all times to remain in shape and undercover, hesitant to gain friends due to her bad past experiences. This put her unknowingly in the position she needed to be in to make decisions that would alter several others' lives forever.

Working for Veronica
Celia tried to get by for a time doing odd jobs for Veronica Pendelton, a classmate of hers that felt a strong urge to spy on and control other students and who needed expendable eyes and ears. Celia started getting wise to how dangerously she was being used when she tried to leave Veronica's employ the first time, only to be told that the reward for staying would be information about her mother's whereabouts. Celia was asked to use her parkour skills to spy on Veronica's boyfriend, Tom Arington, and find evidence of him cheating. Celia put on all of her Taterbug makeshift suit with the exception of her outer sackcloth robe and goggles, and went to spy dressed as what would otherwise be an ordinary cat burglar outfit. Instead of finding evidence of infidelity, she discovered that Tom's sister Regina was a Milthuen Prototype that had refused to be part of the Hebbleskin Gang - but was also being hunted for suspected ties by SCALLOP per the Kirby Act. She was sick with some virus unique to Milthuen Prototypes, and Tom was nursing her back to health. As Celia was about to leave, she witnessed the Hebblekins send Gunner Soorfelt in after the Aringtons. She further questioned being under Veronica's employ, and attempted to call the police about spotting Gunner. However, the 911 dispatch decided to hang up on her.

Tom's house exploded violently in a fireball, right after Gunner attacked. Somehow, Gunner survived and fled the scene. Celia observed from a nearby rooftop that Regina's severed head was among the debris flying into the air, and she reasoned that Tom blew up the house in retaliation for Gunner performing Decolarent eam, eviscerate eum. She checked her phone and found a tracking app on it that she never installed, realizing that someone in the police force was dirty and was about to punish her for snitching on Gunner.

She attempted to delete the app; but it locked up her phone. She noticed it was about to nab her phone's information and feed it directly to whoever installed the app, so she powered her phone down and abandoned it a block away in a dumpster. Around that same time, elderly police chief Merle Hourvitz staged an elaborate escape after being exposed as a spy working for Duke Arfaas. Alas, loyalists like Lonny Grivolt remained on the Houston police force undetected. Even so, Celia remained wanted for questioning. She made it almost back to her dorm, but was surrounded by police and forced to surrender.

After her arrest, she was interrogated about why she was at the scene. Police informed her that Merle was missing, but had been outed. He was the one that made the dispatch hang up on Celia. Unable to prove that Celia had successfully carried out any actual wrongdoing, they held her for the maximum of 72 hours before releasing her without further charge. Celia later confronted Veronica about the claims to have information on Madeline, and also told Veronica what Tom was really doing. Veronica tried to punch Celia for calling her a nasty woman; yet Celia dodged the attack. Veronica ridiculed Celia for lacking the ability to throw a decent punch. Celia retaliated by showing how effectively she could trip Veronica with surprise leg sweeps. Celia then kicked the desk, causing a paperweight too close to the edge to fall on Veronica and break her nose. Celia taunted Veronica: "Tell them you lost a fight against a wimp that can't throw a punch."

Celia walked away, using her new phone to warn others about Veronica's manipulative nature. Veronica reached for a gun and chased after Celia, but was intercepted by police in the nick of time as they were about to interrogate Veronica about stalking allegations in an unrelated manner. They ignored her allegations about Celia beating her up, due to her having a gun.

Attacked by Wayne
One one fateful evening, as Celia was doing research about one of Don the Psycho's latest victims for a friend, she came under attack by Wayne the Vampire. This was after Wayne had recently been chased away after a failed attempt to rape Candi. With Candi as Ciem in hot pursuit of him, he attempted to pin Celia down to sexually assault her. Celia got some distance away from him in a parking lot, and Wayne caught up to her. He attempted to subdue her and drink her blood, as she was somewhat tired from running. Dolly arrived on her bike and assaulted Wayne with it, buying Celia more time to run. Candi caught up to Wayne and fought him some more, but he was too strong to go down. He taunted the girls about their destiny, so Candi Zeran teleports him to the top of the College of Optometry building. Distracting him enough, she lures him across campus and town to an abandoned warehouse on Produce Row. Sunrise comes, and she is able to distract Wayne enough that he forgets. Ciem paralyzes Wayne after stinging him enough times, with the sunlight preventing him from regenerating and instantly healing from her venom. Celia and Dolly arrive in time on bikes to offer Candi a way out, while the sunlight slows Wayne down and burns at him. Instead of taking shelter, Wayne tries to pursue the girls. The sunlight finally proves too much, and he succumbs to it, burning to ashes.

Joining the Sodality
Celia tells Candi and Dolly about her story so far, and they share theirs with her. The girls decide that Celia's knowledge and skills would make her a great addition to the support staff. She is further joined by Laurie Pegol, who joined a bit earlier after Candi saved her from Don the Psycho. Laurie proved useful in helping Candi and Dolly take down Rockpapsci, in-between the Don and Wayne attacks of girls on campus. Together with Jack, they decide that the Sodality of Gerosha has finally formed in its infancy. Candi and Dolly were Team Ciem, the first Modality. The second would be Team Jackrabbit. Celia would fill in for Miranda Kanla as Jack's main mission control, and Laurie for Candi and Dolly's. However, Dolly would float between the two on missions too dangerous for her to join Candi and Jack in the field.

Since Celia is not very strong, she soon came to be viewed as the "Team Baby." She tolerated it for a time, since the Sodality (and Wilbur's church) gave her the sort of spiritual home she'd lacked growing up. As part of the Support Staff, she got very good at manning radios and assisting with behind-the-scenes issues they needed to have be taken care of.

Taterbug in a concrete sack
After Darius Philippine and Dolly Malestrom get into an ownership dispute over who owns the Earwig prototype armor, Darius decides to frame the Sodality for a non-existent conspiracy to steal the armor from him. He issues arrest warrants for Candi, Jack, Jeral, Laurie, Celia, and Dolly, with Dolly being the primary target. However, Jack and Jeral are out of town battling with SCALLOP against their common enemies. Therefore, Darius decides to capture the four gals and pursue the guys later on. Dolly and Candi are apprehended at a school cafeteria, whereas Celia is apprehended walking to her dorm from class later that evening. Laurie is apprehended by Oisdaat while at a worship group meeting on campus, and is taken to the SCALLOP facility in the same car as Celia.

Encounter with Jim Oisdaat
Candi is drugged with Bezeetol, making her unable to protect her teammates. Jim abuses the authority Darius gives him and looks for every possible way to mistreat the girls while he interrogates them. While Dolly proves to be the biggest irritant due to her defiant attitude, Jim tries to play Laurie against the other girls. Laurie's unwillingness to betray her friends irritates Jim further. However, he snaps when he is allowed alone in the room with Celia. Everything about her triggers the worst inside him. Unable to get himself under control and sensing she is the most physically and emotionally vulnerable member of the four girls in custody, Jim forcibly rapes Celia. Amidst the encounter, she discovers a tattoo on him that she knows to be associated with the Society of the Icy Finger.

The girls frequently attempt to draw attention to this, so that justice can be served for Celia's sake. Yet, Darius goes out of his way to protect Jim. Nothing devastates Celia more than to see that her friends have become helpless due to having trusted Darius and SCALLOP too greatly. She begins to wonder who can protect her if her friends can't.

Trial
Celia and her friends in the Sodality are eventually placed on trial over the Earwig armor scandal. She and the other girls defiantly go against Darius' wishes and threats, exposing as much as they know of what's really going on and offering their speculations. Celia frequently tries to bring attention to the rape; only to be shot down every time she brings it up. It fills her with bitterness that the system is so determined to ensure she never gets justice. Even so, she is eventually acquitted due to lack of evidence that she was collaborating with Dolly. Candi is also acquitted, but is placed on probation anyway after a reckless encounter to stop Musaran's latest city-wide rampage.

Agent of SCALLOP
Due to Darius' corrupt backdoor deals with Duke Arfaas, the Hebbleskin Gang is able to capture some SCALLOP agents and steal their uniforms. The infiltrators waste precious little time conducting a full-scale raid on one of the two main Houston bases of SCALLOP. Musaran is brought in to help with execution of prisoners. Candi is intercepted on her way to getting her civilian clothes back, and taken to a back room to be beheaded. She escapes, and puts on a Ciem suit to fight Musaran and rescue her friends. Celia and Laurie are also intercepted; when Musaran, Carlos, and Anders manage to get the jump on Agent Shaniqua Tamery. Ciem arrives in time to save Shaniqua from being beheaded by Musaran, then teleports her adversary out of the building. A battle ensues in the streets of Houston between Ciem and Musaran.

Shaniqua seizes advantage of the chaos to get the jump on Anders and blow him away with his own uzi. However, a war between true SCALLOP agents and Hebbleskin impersonators heats up. More Hebbleskins arrive, suggesting that the full-scale invasion rumored to be in Arfaas' itinerary is drawing near. As Ciem tries in vain to lure Musaran to a power substation and fry his circuits, Shaniqua decides the best way to protect Laurie and Celia is to give them SCALLOP combat uniforms and employ them in fighting off the invaders. Chad Orvain reprimands Shaniqua for this, as it is not protocol to recruit agents without a review panel.

Celia makes the most of her time as a SCALLOP agent by providing cover fire for Shaniqua during some of the conflict. Meanwhile, Laurie escapes back to campus to use the Sodality's private radio feed to contact the boys and alert them how out-of-control the situation is in their absence. Darius decides to cut Celia some slack after the invasion is over; but he insists she keep quiet about the rape and forbids her to remain an agent.

Meeting the Sapphire King
Celia's brief time as an agent re-invigorated her love of adventure. However, she also came to discover that Jim Oisdaat was continually stalking and threatening her. She finally starts doing some of her own research, and learns he is a double agent working for the Society of the Icy Finger, just as she suspected from the tattoo. Her friends, embroiled in the fallout of the First Battle for Houston and the rise of Captain Aardwulf as a serious terrorist threat, are too distracted to help her. She tries turning to Laurie to deal with Oisdaat stalking her and making her life miserable; yet Laurie refuses to be involved with the Sodality ever again.

Oisdaat's persistent stalking caused Celia to become depressed and paranoid, and she withdrew from communication with her Sodality friends - whom she reasoned were too busy for her anyway. An on-campus friend and former classmate, Ben Holmad, took Celia to a bar to have a fun time and to take her mind off of Oisdaat for a while. However, he convinced her to drink too much, then lured her to his bed while she was drunk. She awoke the next day to learn that he had taken advantage of her. Gloating over how easy it was, she warned him that he wouldn't get another chance. She later got herself tested for pregnancy and STDs, just to be safe.

Feeling alone with her pain and anger, she reaches out. It's revealed that Donte's rescue also resulted in Donte's childhood rival, Jordan "Sapphire King" Reddlewick, being rescued inadvertently. As a professional thief and sometime vigilante, Jordan agrees with the Sodality's goals but not with all their rules. He catches Celia off guard when she's asked by SCALLOP agent Mallorie Wade to locate him and argue with him. Instead of converting him right away to the Sodality's way of thought, he indoctrinates her into being loyal to him. Some attacks by Oisdaat's underlings further convince Celia that she belongs with Jordan.

Jordan and Celia begin having private meetings more often than required, until they begin falling in love. However, Oisdaat learns of the relationship and ramps up his efforts to make trouble for the new couple. Jordan also learns more about Oisdaat, vowing to offer Celia the protection and attention that the Sodality can't offer her. Celia's conflicted feelings come to ahead when Mallorie discovers how quickly Celia has become attached to Jordan, and tries in vain to talk Celia into taking another assignment. As a case that the Sodality is too busy for her unfolds, Jordan decides that they need his help. He starts training Celia to become better at being "the Taterbug," giving himself a much-needed assistant.

The Taterbug
SCALLOP officials show up at the scene of a recent raid on some Icy Finger spies, and are able to apprehend their main man easily. However, they find out that some of the goods they wished to confiscate had already been stolen by someone else. The apprehended villains argue that the Sapphire King couldn't possibly have battled them and stolen their stuff at the same time. They reason that the Sapphire King now has an accomplice. Oisdaat immediately suspects that this "Taterbug" that Jordan claimed would help him "clean shop" could only be Celia. He begins orchestrating a strike team to have the Sapphire King killed. Irritated that he cannot intervene to save Jordan, Donte instead alerts Jordan that an ambush is afoot. Jordan in-turn warns Donte about Oisdaat's Icy Finger affiliation. Donte alerts Lex, who establishes contact with Jordan upon finding evidence to further link Jim to the Icy Finger.

Third arrest
Oisdaat changes his plans behind Lex's back, and springs a trap for Jordan. However, his troops are caught off guard by Celia as Taterbug. She uses her various distractions and gadgetry to give Jordan a fighting chance at escaping. When Jordan is unable to get to Celia without risking being captured in an MPF generator's field, Celia tells him to find her later. She surrenders to Houston police. Oisdaat tells Houston police to hang on to her until a time when he will come to pick her up and take her to SCALLOP's jurisdiction. Members of the Sodality and police interviewers alike find to their dismay that Celia has become completely brainwashed into being Jordan's lover. Lex intercepts the case, informing Oisdaat that he's off the Sapphire King case for the time being. An infuriated Oisdaat abducts Celia from jail anyway, then takes her to a prison location that he controls. He contacts his friends at the Icy Finger, to let them know that loose ends need to be tied.

The Sapphire Gang made official
Celia is strapped to an electric chair. However, Lex and the Sodality begin deducing his whereabouts. Lex alerts Jordan secretly. Before Oisdaat can flip the switch on Celia, Jordan breaks into the building and begins killing off Oisdaat's men. Jim himself flees, deciding to let Celia live just a little bit longer in order to avoid being literally turned inside-out. Jordan and Celia flee into the desert, where they have sex on an abandoned road and decide they're partners for life. They eventually find some lodging in a ghost town, their only concern being keeping a fresh supply of drinking water handy. Celia cashes out most of her money before SCALLOP can have her assets frozen, and promises to help Jordan find a new place in the world where they can start their lives over. Jim sends a strike team consisting of Icy Finger agents into the desert to look for Jordan and Celia. He makes clear to his men that the plan is to have them both exterminated without mercy. Jordan intercepts this plan and alerts Lex. In order to not draw attention away from the Sodality's war on Capp Aard, Lex coordinates in private a way for SCALLOP agents to take down the Icy Finger team and isolate Jim in a building where Jordan could finish Jim off once and for all. Celia agrees to be the bait for this trap.

Ignoring her warnings, Jim rushes into the mostly-abandoned building where he finds Celia in a chair. This activates a gun turret, blowing Jim's head off. Jordan and Celia accept that they have to flee Toklisana, as regular authorities would most certainly suspect them of murder. Lex would not be able to vouch for them, as it would throw his own integrity at SCALLOP into question.

Second Battle for Houston
As Judge Terry Beliah and his minions begin creating problems galore for the Sodality, SCALLOP helps the Sodality coordinate an effort to recruit more heroes to its roster from Phexos and Marlquaanites it rescues. The Phaletori team up with Beliah when his daughter, Camille, returns from southeast Asia with the aid of Extirpon and helps build a case to press charges on Beliah. His Phaletori allies use the chaos happening in Texas to catch the Toklisanan National Guard off-guard, launching an army of True Centhuens. Jordan and Celia agree to head into town and help their old Sodality friends save the city from this menace, even at the risk of capture. Lex instead ensures that Jordan and Celia are able to escape after the battle is over and their Sodality friends have wished them a fond farewell.

Michelle "Feruga" Winston goes with them, promising to keep an eye on them for the Sodality and keep them out of trouble. She makes sure that any Ciem suits that weren't converted into Feruga suits are given back to Candi - along with some ideas on costumes for Candi's future children. Jordan and Celia eventually add another member to their fold: Chris "Purge-Flare" Kennal.

Sodality of Florence
Main article: Sodality of Florence

The Sapphire Gang gains some lesser recruits, and begins operating them as a support staff for Jordan and Celia. They declare themselves their own modality. Michelle and Chris take an interest in each other briefly, but then decide not to remain a couple. However, they are frustrated by the fact that they cannot operate full-scale without SCALLOP being ordered by the government to pursue them. Their friends in the Sodality of Gerosha are limited in what they can do to protect them as well. However, Angelo "Cocklebur" Abrami brings the exiled Gerosha heroes into his fold to help him defend Italy from Phaletori threats. The Sodality of Florence is born under protection of the Italian government, and receives a similar organization structure to its Gerosha counterpart.

Jordan and Celia remain a modality of their own within Angelo's new sodality. Michelle and Chris are each given their own modalities. It is in Italy that Jordan and Celia are finally able to legally wed, though their life of adventure gets in the way frequently of them leading normal married lives. The Italian government begins recruiting the Sapphire Gang periodically for special heist-related missions, thus allowing government personnel some much-needed relief. Celia's armor is frequently upgraded beneath her sack cloth, to deal with increasing amounts of danger she is in.

Battle for Metheel
See also: Sodality: Battle for Metheel

Jordan and Celia, realizing what is at risk, join their friends in the Sodality of Gerosha to take down King Morzhuk and reclaim Metheel from the forces of darkness. They are brought over by Desulon to assist Shabika, Pilltar, and Strawberry. However, their involvement with the Florentine Sodality in a mission in Italy delays them getting involved as soon as they'd like to.

The game proposal also relegates them to story cut scenes, with their gameplay existing only in 2-player versus mode. Apart from some espionage and sabotage, Taterbug does very little in Battle for Metheel that is story-relevant.

Vindication prison time
See also: Sodality: Vindication

During season five of Sodality, Celia finds that protecting Jordan from being captured by SCALLOP means going to prison in his stead. Several years have passed since season 4, and it's now 2026. Since she is already wanted for some petty theft as Taterbug (and her role in the death of Jim Oisdaat), she turns herself over to Italy's equivalent organization to SCALLOP. They send her to Houston per her viewing of Jackrabbit's recorded message, so that she can turn herself in. She also wants to help out with taking down Lionfish, and use her time behind bars during the Beliah Amendment hearings to lobby for information about her missing mother's whereabouts. She, Angelo, and Michelle find themselves saving the mayor of Houston from an Icy Finger terrorist attack on their way to the extraction point, defeating Lionfish in the process. They are cheered as heroes by the town, but SCALLOP officials arrive to arrest the three of them a short time later. Angelo informs the crowds not to worry; that all will be made right in due time. Celia encounters a woman in her cell in Harris County named Demara, whose daughter is a huge Taterbug fan. This compels her to want to set the best possible example under the circumstances for little Tammy. Demara takes note of Celia's advice, and promises to share it with Tammy so that Tammy won't make Celia's same mistakes in life. News coverage reveals that "Free Taterbug" fan clubs begin popping up, supporting a repeal of the Beliah Amendments and even the Kirby Act itself. They also call for Celia to gain a full pardon. SCALLOP initially intends to have Celia incarcerated at the SCALLOP Women's Containment Center third floor south wing, set aside for Sodality members for the full duration of the six-month stretch of Beliah amendment hearings in Houston. She is assigned to a radio for assisting Jordan and Chris on comms, and even teaches Mingmei how to use a similar one to assist Shing. Having Mingmei as a sometimes cellmate, Celia forms an almost mother-daughter bond with the Chinese superspy. She is brought before numerous court hearings and interviews with politicians and show anchors, each of them longing to know more about her. She uses the time to reconnect with her mother, who has been discovered as living in a homeless shelter.

After the Screwworm Network destroys SCALLOP Juvenile Containment Center, Toklisanan officials order SCALLOP to temporarily shut down all of its containment centers and defer prisoners to their respective states of origin. Lex Philippine lobbies for the Sodality members to get paroled, succeeding at securing parole terms and witness protection sponsor homes for all the men and all except for five of the women. Marge is sent to a minimum security center to serve her remaining time for public intoxication quietly. Tabitha is sent to a juvenile prison along with her new friend Sarah. Tobias Reno was to join them, but he escaped. Tiffany Sterlie is ordered to be sent to solitary confinement in a maximum security center, given the likelihood that a Navyrope Society affiliate might attempt a rescue. However, the Navyropes infiltrate the system with one of their own, who performs a covert rescue.

Celia and Mingmei are sent to Houston Women's Correctional for an additional two months, before Italian authorities ask for Celia back. She survives due to "Big Sisters" Mingmei and Candi constantly watching her back. Other women in the facility grow envious of who will get to be the "lucky" one to "squash the Taterbug." In spite the horrors of their environment, the three girls make enough friends among the guards to lobby to be let out and assist in defeating the Icy Finger and Cupric. They are allowed to do so on condition they wear tethers - and report back to the prison when their missions are complete. They do so, even though they nearly get stranded on Phaeleel during one mission.

Celia is later made aware of Mingmei's "execution," informed very quietly via Shaniqua Tamery that it was all a ruse to appease the politicians. Celia is transferred to share a cell with Candi, but is eventually deported back to Italy and sent to San Vittore for a month. Her original sentence of 2 years was reduced to 6 months by SCALLOP, yet she only served 4 months between SWCC, Houston Women's, and San Vittore total. She is released to serve the remainder of her time under house arrest. She spends the remainder of her 2 year time assigned by Toklisana being under probation under Italian authorities. Her mother is allowed to live with her after some discussions with immigration officials. Jordan is encouraged to take time off from the Sodality of Florence to take care of his wife and mother-in-law.

The Sapphire Gang rises again eventually, but primarily uses their gifts to perform missions approved of by the Italian government. They take pains to avoid traveling to Toklisana ever again, lest they should be at risk of further incarceration.

Percolation Warriors
Main article: Percolation Warriors Saga

The Earth-G7.2.1 version of this Celia briefly assists Team F-Pod in kicking various Triumvirate operatives out of Arkansas, although she triggers alarms from both SCALLOP and the Chrome Kite due to being in Toklisana. She is transported back to Menehune before she can be arrested by either faction, and returned home to Italy along with Jordan. The rest of Team F-Pod resumes their mission across the multiverse without Taterbug or Sapphire King.

Childbirth and retirement
Jordan and Celia resume being the Sapphire King and Taterbug and work for that state carrying out special operations. They also aid Angelo's Sodality of Florence a number of times. Ten years in, however, and Celia discovers herself to be pregnant. Jordan retains his job as the Sapphire King; but Celia retires as Taterbug to stay home and raise Wally.

Personality
Celia tends to be shy, reserved, and timid; but is not incapable of throwing rebellious tantrums if pushed too far. She loves to keep a close network of friends and delights in making costumes and trying new things. She becomes addicted to the adrenaline rush of being Taterbug over time.

In spite her conscience pangs and religious upbringing, Celia goes along with Jordan's criminal activities early on, ever longing for a way to set things right for the both of them. She has a strong sense of justice, and doesn't tolerate when the system treats dangerous sex offenders with apathy, as happened when Darius refused to discipline Oisdaat for raping prisoners. Given her inability to physically throw a punch with any credible force, Celia delights in using sabotage and distraction to punish enemies indirectly. She also tends to want to show gratitude toward those willing to protect her; but reserves judgment for those who maliciously disregard her needs.

Her favorite song is "Cecilia and the Satellite" by Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness. She also takes pride in knowing she was named after the character Celia Bradley from Disney's The Apple Dumpling Gang, as portrayed by actress Stacy Manning. Her middle name of Stacy is also an homage to that actress and role.

Characterization
In early drafts for Ciem 3, the Taterbug was a full time teenage rebel that Candi was trying to work with and reform. Candi is captured by Lloyd Kolumn before anything more can be done, and the whole Celia/Taterbug arc was abandoned. Celia was later revised in Ciem: Condemnation as having been captured by Kolumn and his goons. She is executed in front of Candi, while screaming out penance for how she lived her life and placed on the chopping block in tears. Candi is immediately placed on that same block, with Kolumn taunting her by making her believe falsely that she's about to be next. Kolumn uses this as a ploy to have a drugged Candi be caught off guard on the day she is to be actually beheaded; and to demoralize Candi by having someone she cares about die in front of her.

Candi herself is later beheaded, but survives because of Delusia's intervention. While Delusia sacrifices herself to use her powers to put Candi back together before Candi loses too much blood, and helps flood the facility; Celia's head is already delivered to the Hebbleskins' base on Metheel. Her body is tossed into the ocean. Candi, once saved and healed from her trauma, briefly takes time to mourn Celia's death before saving Kyle and Charlotte from drowning.

For Sodality, Celia was completely re-imagined. She was made shorter, to seem younger, and becomes Taterbug full time much later on. She also becomes a friend of Candi's rather than a problem child for Candi to attempt to reform.

Sims models
Celia is rare in that due to the cancellation of of Ciem 2 and Ciem 3 before her artwork could even be addressed, she was created during the era when Dozerfleet webcomics were made in The Sims 2, yet never received a Sims 2 visual interpretation. Similar circumstances led to her not receiving an interpretation in The Sims 3 for Ciem: Condemnation. Instead, her first-ever Sims incarnation was in the form of her Sodality self. A variation of this was later made for The Sims 4 in 2014, although her Taterbug costume didn't translate over between games. Photoshop edits of a Grim Reaper suit would be needed to come close. Her initial everyday outfit was that of a weak, spoiled rich girl. Reinventing her as a ghetto parkour ninja pre-Sapphire King encounter was officiated in 2018, when it was decided this made more sense with her arc than a lazy rich girl did.

Gallery

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Real-life models
As of February of 2015, Celia is portrayed on the wiki using modified fan art from the stock account of British photographer and model Bella Stanyer on DeviantArt. An offer was also made to YouTube user Kelsey Fang on February 25th of 2015 to portray Celia in a fan video if she wishes, in exchange for promotion on the Dozerfleet Web Network. She was chosen due to her visual similarity and due to her own experiences with being in jail, meaning she could relate somewhat to the character's legal dilemmas. She never responded to the offer.

Powers and weaknesses
Jawknee's half-Marlquaanite and half-Meethexo nature means her strength is enhanced enough to pose a credible threat to an average human adversary. She is also has pretty tough skin, able to endure a low-velocity bullet with little more than bruising. She can also heal very quickly from injuries, though not as quickly as Candi and Donte.

Her signature ability, however, is an ability to telepathically control chickens and other avian lifeforms. In some versions of the story, she can even make them talk. However, that power seems to be limited mostly to getting them to say her name. The downside to her mind becoming more chicken-like is that she begins to lose a lot of her own verbal skills. She is still capable of some strategy, but the human part of her mind is consumed with malice. The rest of her mind has become very animal-like. She only occasionally remembers how to operate machinery, and doesn't seem to be capable of a lot of higher critical brain function outside of plotting murder.

Jawknee
Jennifer Clankton was a country girl attending an ordinary high school in Ohio. She lived on the farm with her parents, and had a pleasant living in the country. However, she did feel uneasy around the chickens. They were often mean and pecked her.

One evening during the summer, she held a party with her friends from high school. They enjoyed their night on the farm; but all went home before 11:00. It wasn't long after the party left that a van showed up. Strange men in masks showed up and cut the phone cords. They broke into the house while Jen and the family were sleeping, killing her parents brutally and then dragging her from her bed into the barn. One horrifying night of screaming and agony later, Jen awoke in the hospital.

She found herself an orphan, living with scarring memories of her horrific night. She struggled to open up to her friends about what happened, barely able to spit it out. Jen tried to get herself prepared to enter a foster home; but found herself routinely revisiting her old home in spite it being a crime scene. For an unknown reason, she was drawn to the chickens. Her obsession with them became unhealthy, frightening her friends.

State authorities intervened, grabbing a hold of her and forcing her to watch as they butchered the chickens in front of her. They tried relocating her to another state. However, she broke free from her foster home. She noticed what appeared to be green feathers forming on her skin, and that her mouth was becoming more beak-like. She was slowly turning into a chicken. Attempts to say her own name morphed from "Jenny" to "Jawkneeeee!!!!" Birds started doing her bidding, and she embraced the fact that she could control their will. Jawknee brought herself back to the family farm, consumed by a sudden and uncontrollable urge to kill the new family that tried to move in. Chickens from nearby farms suddenly grew clever, and found ways to escape the farms until the Clankton barn was filled with chickens again.

A few of Jen's friends head to the farm to investigate, only to run into federal officials that are also investigating. Jawknee decides they have all betrayed her, and unleashes her full fury on all of them. There was but one survivor. She awoke to find the house burned down and the chickens all gone. Jawknee's career as a slasher film archetype and Mistress of Waterfowl had begun.

Post-Jawknee
After the first story's events, Jawknee went on a rampage terrorizing the country. Her victims oftentimes were random; but she seemed to target farms with large chicken populations. At one point, Ciem and Emeraldon have to save Evansville from her. The fight takes place over two nights, when she vanishes from town undetected and decides to ravage another population.

Abolition
Jawknee is finally hunted down and killed by the government; and Beliah uses the opportunity of her demise to push for his propaganda in outlawing Phexos and Marlquaanites in his ongoing effort to delegitimize Extirpon and the Gray Champion. This is so that they cannot push any valid evidence through the courts that might incriminate him, nor would they be able to find his daughter and get her to testify to his sex crimes.

Sodality
Main article: Sodality (series)

Events similar to those described above were incorporated into Jawknee's backstory for Sodality. In this series, it was the Hebbleskin Gang explicitly that turned her into what she was - in a joint effort with the Society of the Icy Finger to see if the Marlquaan could be used to make Aviatets. However, both Icy Finger and Hebbleskin representatives were later killed by Jawknee. The Icy Finger retreated after Halal Affadidah took control of what became "Ameristan." Duke Arfaas, now the leader of a nation called "Netheel," began making several barters and trades with Affadidah, and part of that contract included killing off all Phexos and Marlquaanites that posed a threat to either regime. Since Jawknee was a rogue abomination, they sought to kill her off as well. However, she and her army of mind-controlled fowl proved very elusive and deadly. She began to stalk farmlands, making them uninhabitable as rural residents became targets. When Candi and Dolly escaped from South Bend and made their way back to Evansville, one of their stops led them straight to an abandoned farm where Jawknee decided to bring herself and her army. The girls had to battle with Jawknee until they could lure her into a spotlight, at which point she battled Ameristani regime troops and the girls escaped on foot. Her fate afterward remains unknown.

Development
Growing up, the Dozerfleet founder's sister had acquired several nicknames. A mythology of "the Hen" soon developed. Later, it became that she could communicate telepathically with chickens.

The years went by and the jokes evolved. In September of 2006, the Dozerfleet founder realized that a premise like this could be tweaked into a cheesy horror film. That premise turned into the story Jawknee, after imagining a chicken trying to address the character of Jen Clankton by name: "'Jah-neeeeee!!!! Baaaaaaaaawwwwwwk!!!!'"

The character was later mentioned in passing in Ciem 2, as part of Ciem's battle history. She was selected to appear in Sodality.

Sub-abilities
"Centuition" was coined as a term for use in Gerosha mythos for an ability set that would be primarily used on Centhuens and Centhuen Prototypes, allowing for centipede-themed abilities in human characters. It is very similar to "spider sense," though it covers some grounds differently.


 * Bullet-time reflexes: These allow a Centhuen Prototype to move as though in The Matrix, more or less depending on version. Ciem uses it mostly for dodging bullets, but others have learned more creative uses for it.  This is the primary use for it by the enhanced 49 in Centipede + 49.


 * Danger sense: This power is most comparable to "spider-sense" in the Marvel universe, but operates a little differently. Instead of a tingling sensation in the spine, a "phantom scream" sensation is often heard that alerts the individual to threats in the environment.  These can trigger bullet-time reflexes, but if an individual's focus is damaged, their danger sense can fail.  Like with most of a Centhuen Prototype's near-supernatural abilities, this one is disabled in most pregnant females for the duration of most of their pregnancy.


 * Centi-prowling: This is a hunting instinct, a sort of "psychic radar," that gives the individual a limited ability to know where to find someone. Ciem employs this often, such as when she attempts to rescue Donte from Musaran.  In Ciem.  It works better when a Centuen/Centhuen Prototype has had recent contact with the intended target.  More time spend away means less effectiveness.


 * Deception detection: One of the weakest of powers in Centhuen Prototypes, this sub-ability gives them a weak means of detecting the nervousness of someone. It is a built-in lie detector of sorts, but only works when the Centhuen Prototype in question is undergoing an adrenaline rush.

Limitations
The centipede species that are used in experiments to create both Centhuens and Centhuen Prototypes isn't always used "according to spec." As a result, human by-products are sometimes "inferior."

Candi received her powers as effectively as they were largely because Stan was operated on to-spec. Others, however, were not so fortunate. Dagmar in Ciem chapter 21, for example, was able to use her centilegs against Musaran even while pregnant; but lacked sufficient centuition to dodge most attacks. Even if she weren't pregnant, she would have had inadequate centuition to have ever taken Candi's place as Ciem. Very few Centhuen Prototypes have every to-spec trait. It was with Bezeetol that the Hebbleskins and Nazis were able to team up against Centipede Charlie in Classic Gerosha. Ciem required similar assaults to be taken down.

History
Exploration into the possibilities began as early as the timeline of First Meethlites, and picked up speed around the time of Rise of the Phaelites. However, Centipede Charlie during the time of Experiments and Offspring demonstrated the masculine version of these abilities. Little about the ability was ever truly explored in Gerosha Prime nor in Despair Gerosha, though the Classic Gerosha version of Ciem touched on the topic quite often. Candi used it effectively when battling both Jeff the Invisible and Don the Psycho, even when weakened partially by the presence of Bezeetol fumes in her environment. She relied on it heavily to help her when Botan the Plant-Man first went rogue. It failed her as she began to realize she was pregnant in chapter 19, again while dealing with Botan. Dagmar was shown to possess in incomplete version of it. Candi later used it to great effect in her first outing as Ciem when battling Musaran for the fate of Maria Sanmarcos. It would fail her again a few times while battling Captain Aardwulf in Ciem 2. She gets punched by one of Korsigcht's men in the first chapter of Ciem 2, proving that her dodging abilities are not infallible. Bezeetol fumes are again employed to weaken her when Lloyd Kolumn has her captured in Ciem 3.

In Comprehensive Gerosha, the Bezeetol that helps overcome centuition powers is a drug rather than a rocket fuel with bad fumes. Candi is injected with the drug in Ciem: Condemnation along with birth control drugs to weaken her and make her body believe itself to be pregnant, essentially putting her in a trance and taking away her ability to fight back. If not for Delusia, she would not have survived being beheaded. Mukade faced a similar problem, though Kolumn was content to place her at risk of drowning. Both women would not have found their way to Evansville if not for Dolly Malestrom as the Earwig arriving to sabotage Kolumn's operations.

While Candi's centuition is strong, she can choose to force herself to ignore it. When testing out Remotach technology with Denny in Ciem: Vigilante Centipede, she deliberately forced herself to ignore her instincts when Denny chopped her head off the first time. She also asked that she be restrained slightly for the guillotine trial, so she would not be tempted to block the blade with her feet. She later took some sleep aid for the sword trial, she she would not instinctively dodge it.

In Sodality, Halal Affadidah trades resources with the Hebbleskin Gang to subdue Phexo threats similarly to how Kolumn did it in Condemnation. Candi faces a similar problem near the beginning of the series, when she is captured while exploring what remains of the Malestrom family home. Her centuition reactivates as the drugs in her system wear off, and she seizes the opportunity afforded her by the blackout to escape with Dolly from the execution camp where both were about to lose their heads. Her centuition allows her to fight off her would-be executioners in total darkness, as well as find Dolly and escape to a slightly-better-lit room. It continues to assist her throughout her career as Ciem throughout the series. She eventually joins the Sodality of Gerosha, and meets others like Mukade who also have her ability. In Centipede + 49, she meets 49 soldiers given centuition and no other Centhuen Prototype ability, and must help them reclaim Ameristan for Toklisana and rebuild a fallen America.

Classic Gerosha
Denny attended Perkins Elementary School in Farrenville before moving for a short time to Des Moines. In that city, he attended high school at Saydel High. He would eventually move to an apartment in Dirbine and commute to Viron University, where he would get his medical degree. Finally, he moved to Viron when he didn't like the direction that Dirbine was headed in, or the raise in property taxes in Dirbine proper.

Comprehensive Gerosha
In this version, Denny's origins have been simplified significantly. Denny's family lived in Milwaukee for many years, with Denny and his sister Jessie attending various Milwaukee schools throughout their lives. Following Denny's dangerous inventions and discoveries that drew the Hebbleskin Gang's interest, he eventually decided that moving to Viron was the only way for his family to be safe. Eric, Patti, and Jessie followed since they feared their lives could also be in danger. Denny finished up his bachelor's degree at Viron University, and remained in the area.

Around 2019 however, Hebbleskin activity around Evansville began to pick up significantly. His family considered relocating, but ultimately didn't. The Hebbleskins were only interested in Denny, as it turned out. Even so, Denny was careful to maintain good connections in Milwaukee.

Ethnicity and religion
Denny's family is entirely Caucasian, mostly of English descent. His father Eric, an agnostic, is descended from a long line of atheists who claim that an ancestor of theirs had actually run into Charles Darwin. Denny's rejection of the family lack-of-faith, and his religious conversion, shock his family, especially when they learn that it was none other than the Flippo girl Candi that had helped win him over. Eventually, this has an effect on Denny's sister Jessica, who also converts some time after Denny's death. Denny's parents stubbornly refuse the message, however.

Relationships
Compared to Candi's turbulent love life, Denny's is really quite simple. He has only had two girlfriends his entire life, and Candi was one of them. His first girlfriend, Michelle, left him when they graduated from high school. He was uncertain that he wanted to get involved with Michelle until he was certain that they stood a good chance at getting married. Michelle, wishing not to look like a "prude" in front of her peers, kept pressuring him to sleep with her. When he would not immediately give her what she wanted, even after graduation, she dumped him and immediately hooked up with someone else.

Denny confronted her briefly to ask her if she felt that the loss was worth it. Feeling guilty and with her pride wounded, she lashed out at him and threatened to call the police if Denny intervened further in her life. Her new boyfriend, Travis, even threatened to expose Denny's black market deals for his inventions. This was one of many motivations behind why Denny decided to move out of Milwaukee. When police could find no proof that Denny was running a shop, Travis' charge was dropped.

It was after moving to Viron that Denny met Candi. The two quickly became friends, and shared thoughts with each other warmly. Within a few months, Candi gave him her approval for them to publicly confess the two of them being in a relationship. Not quite a year later, the two of them would marry.

Denny wanted to have sex with Candi since the first night he'd lain eyes on her; but out of respect, restrained himself. However, Candi grew to desire sex with him. When the two decided they had waited long enough and that Donte wasn't coming back, they set to work planning their life and future together. Denny and Candi would both eagerly consummate their marriage the very same evening that they eloped. However, Denny soon discovered that he was not emotionally prepared to be a father. He nevertheless devoted himself to trying to maintain as much of a good public image as he could, to provide for his wife and future daughter.

Alas, his dreams would not reach fruition. He never got to see his child be born. Musaran murdered him on the evening Candi went into labor, and the Levens family house was bombed. Hours later, Angie would be born and would die from childbirth complications. This would make Candi officially the only survivor of Denny's household.

Nature of wedding
Gunner Soorfelt tried to ambush the couple at a summer cabin where the two were visiting, after having stalked them the whole way. Candi, being too quick for Gunner, got him to fall on his own knife. Candi and Denny cremated Gunner after disposing of his teeth (which could have survived a campfire.) While at the summer cabin, Candi and Denny were barely able to prevent each other from sexual intercourse. They realized they could no longer control themselves around each other, and that they'd waited long enough to get married.

Candi and Denny eloped inside the living room of Candi's apartment. The only one present besides the two of them was Rev. Wilbur Brocklyn, who agreed to let the couple wed because of his sheer respect for Candi. The couple's honeymoon was at a duplex in Milwaukee, where Denny went to visit a DJ friend of his. Angie was conceived while the couple was in a waterbed on the second-floor duplex.

Parents
Eric Levens, an agnostic who doesn't trust anything religious. He becomes relatively uninvolved in the lives of his children when they begin to have differing opinions. In spite Denny's marriage to Candi, Eric never truly embraced Candi as a daughter-in-law.

Patti Levens, a woman who is equally distrusting of religious individuals, is a little more open to the fact that Candi is a part of her son's life; but she is puzzled by Denny's choice. She shows some sympathy on the phone to Candi when she learns about Denny and Angie's deaths; but she only very slowly becomes an active part of Candi's life. Jessie's willingness to treat Candi like a sister helps Eric and Patti to become more accepting of her.

Through Candi, Denny's in-laws include Stan and Shalia Flippo.

Siblings
Jessica Levens is initially Candi's only friend in the Levens family after Denny's death, and the only one that approves of Candi's decision to keep the Levens last name until Candi's marriage to Donte is complete. In Classic Gerosha, Denny also had a little brother named Mark.

Sibling in-laws
By way of Candi, Denny is able to claim Reily Flippo as a brother-in-law. By the same virtue is he also able to view Ashlee Flippo as a relative. In Classic Gerosha, he also has Mike and Jeff Flippo for brothers-in-law. Tom Flippo technically counts also, though Tom is seldom seen. Erin Flippo technically counts as well. Ploribus Philippine / Darius Philippine counts as a half-brother-in-law, and Nancy Philippine counts as a half-sister-in-law. Miriam Flippo, Steve McLaine, Marina Baret, and Matthew Baret can also be said to be relatives.

Children
Before his death, Denny only fathered one child: Angie Levens. He never lived to witness her birth. Kirby, Larry, and Andy count as nephews with Lex as a half-nephew. Marie and Trina count as nieces.

Criminal history
Officially, Denny has no known criminal or arrest record. Nevertheless, Denny's past is seedy compared with Candi's. While he can honestly claim to have never killed anyone, he used to deal in underground, illegal sales of his inventions. He was not afraid to reverse engineer from parts without asking where the parts came from. However, he eventually discovered that Duke Arfaas of the Hebbleskin Gang was taking advantage of his system. Unlike Candi, whose killing of Don the Psycho was an accident; Denny was mostly apathetic about whether his inventions killed anyone or not.

Wishing to be known only for a clean operation of his business, he abandoned his black market life and sought in as many ways as possible to reform. While struggling with what he believed about life, Candi's influence on him resulted in him converting to Christianity fully; which prompted him even more to want to reform his life.

However, the Hebbleskins assumed him one of their own regardless his wishes. Due to his abandonment of them, they deemed him a traitor, and began stalking him throughout his life. Candi would continually try to defend Denny's honor, which would only result in action being taken against her for getting in the way.

Nancy Philippine

Nancy Philippine is...

Character bios
Some time after Erin was officially adopted by Stan and Shalia, Mike and Jeff were born as identical twins. They were soon followed by Vince (later renamed Tom,) as well as by Jason and Tanya. Finally, the triplets were born: Candi, Miriam, and Marina. They would grow up to run a party supplies store together, along with their wives. Since they would have nothing to do with Candi, little is known about their lives after Candi leaves Gerosha behind. In Ciem 2, Candi was to remark about how "useless" her brothers were, given their total unwillingness to be there for her.

Development
Mike and Jeff were several additional children given to Stan and Shalia as part of an attempt to fulfill Stan's Family Aspiration desire to "have ten children." The baby count ended with Marina, however, putting Stan's count at nine since Ploribus Philippine was deemed as "not counting." Little practical use was found for Mike and Jeff at all in Gerosha Prime, and that carried over into Despair and Classic Gerosha. In Despair Gerosha, their siblings Jason and Tanya were written out due to no idea of how to utilize them in-story. By Comprehensive Gerosha, Candi's siblings were reduced to a Reily, Erin, "Darius," Miriam, and Marina. Not only were Mike and Jeff written out, so also was Tom Flippo.

Even Marina barely survived into Cataclysmic Gerosha's continuity, nearly being written out and making Candi and Miriam twins rather than triplets.

Ciem: Vigilante Centipede
Main article: Ciem: Vigilante Centipede

Jessie was to be introduced as walking into Denny's house after opening the front door with her own key. She walks in on Candi and Denny as they are having sex in the living room, since Denny forgot that he had invited Jessie over. After Candi and Denny get dressed and get over the initial awkwardness, Jessie becomes supportive of them. She encourages them to consider getting married. After Denny's death, she becomes one of Candi's few friends in the world.

Ciem: Nuclear Crisis
Main article: Ciem: Nuclear Crisis

Candi visits the Levens home briefly towards the beginning of this story, as they're discussing her upcoming wedding to Donte. Jessie is doing dishes while Patti goes over things with Candi. Eric is in the other room, having mixed feelings about everything.

Ciem: Condemnation
Main article: Ciem: Condemnation

Upon learning of Candi's capture by Lloyd Kolumn, Jessie shows some level of concern. However, she is never shown actively doing anything beyond that point. What becomes of Jessie after this scene is unknown.

Personality
Jessie is usually shown to be bubbly in personality, if not oblivious to most things around her. In spite this, she is cheerful and loving. But inexplicably, she lives with her parents and has a hard time finding a job. She doesn't seem able to find a lover either.

Development
In the development process for Ciem, on nagging question bothered the Dozerfleet founder repeatedly: Where is Denny's family? Plans for Ciem: Vigilante Centipede were to develop a subplot of sorts to introduce them, as well as give them a small role in Candi's life both before she married Denny as well as after his death. Jessie was seen as the sympathetic Levens member, letting Candi know that she was at least somewhat welcome into Denny's family even if Eric didn't approve of her and Denny's marriage. When Denny was written out of existence in Cataclysmic Gerosha, his entire family save for Candi went with. Therefore, there is no Earth-G7 version of Jessie.

From forum
a classic gangster at heart, but he does have an appetite for adventure when it comes to Flippo hunting. No gifted one is gonna put him and the gang out of business! Yet, in his first major effort to kill the alleged Gifted Flippo (believed to be Miriam at first,) he succeeded only at killing Erin. Erin was adopted by Stan and Shalia, so offing her accomplished absolutely nothing.

But Gunner is not one to quit easily. Since Miriam's good at hiding, he concentrates his efforts on finding Candi instead.

Ciem: Vigilante Centipede
Main article: Ciem: Vigilante Centipede

Eric is established as having lived with his family in Milwaukee originally. At some point, they move to the Viron area. Denny stayed behind in Milwaukee the longest, before relocating to be closer to family. Eric is a very opinionated agnostic leaning toward atheist, and feels that Candi and Denny's choice to marry given their conflicting religious backgrounds was extremely unwise. He lectures Denny about it at length in Vigilante Centipede, while Patti gives Candi gentler advice.

Ciem: Nuclear Crisis
Main article: Ciem: Nuclear Crisis

Being slightly more accepting of Candi as a Levens following Denny's having been murdered by Musaran, Eric still harbors a grudge. He hides in a side room when Candi comes over, staring at his collection of globes and other artifacts from his past adventures as a globetrotter.

Personality
While not malicious or evil per se, Eric can be very cold and unresponsive to those he deems "unfit" for his presence. He harbors grudges and can be very short-sighted. He treats anyone of faith with suspicion and cynicism, maintaining a tradition of a similar attitude in the Levens family reaching back three generations before him. He is more tolerant of Denny's coming to faith and of his marriage to Candi than what his predecessors would be; and he also detests the modern ACLU declaring full-out war on Christendom; feeling it is disingenuous on multiple fronts. This is especially in regards to the fact that he observes their double standard in refusing to use the same harsh measuring rod on Islam, which he feels has committed atrocities far above and beyond what can be blamed on any Christian leaders. He can be proud and stubborn, but generally does not go out of his way to make trouble for anyone. He does, however, side with church leaders on one thing: the need to resist the Hebbleskin Gang at all costs. His anti-Hebbleskin sentiments intensify after Denny's murder.

Development
Back in Gerosha Prime, before Candi and Denny's self-control issues became a major plot, it was assumed that Candi and Denny innocently met at college and got married. Her love triangle complications involving Donte didn't come in until much later. This was reversed in the 2006 webcomic first, and intensified in 2010's Ciem: Vigilante Centipede. However, an off-hand comment by Denny states that he saw no value in going to church until he met Candi. The logical conclusion appeared to be to explore his motives for saying that. Therefore, it was drafted that his father was an avowed atheist or agnostic of some type. It wasn't until Classic Gerosha planning that Mr. Levens was given the name Eric, and the retired adventurer/explorer background. Eric was supposed to appear in Ciem, but was cut out of the process for time constraints. He was to appear again in Ciem 2, but that was canceled due to the author's poor health and lack of sufficient backup authors.

He was to return again for Ciem: Vigilante Centipede and Ciem: Nuclear Crisis. Those novels were canceled, however, in response to the 2012 election results. Therefore, Cataclysmic Gerosha was pursued. The new timeline and paradigm of an alternate history where America was destroyed by the Muslim Brotherhood - enabled to do so by Obama's policies in his second term - made the entire Donte-Candi-Denny love triangle plot seem implausible. Therefore, Denny was written out of continuity in Earth-G7. Since he does not appear in Sodlity, Denny's entire family except for Candi was also written out. This meant that Eric, Jessie, Patti, and even Angie were thenceforth to be treated as though they had never existed.

It was not until 2010 with the establishment of Comprehensive Gerosha, in fact, that the Gerosha Earth Number system was implemented. Before then, earlier versions of stories were simply ignored in favor of pretending the currently-active version of a story was the only version. This made discussing development history difficult, especially for characters with as rich a history as Candi's. Earth Numbers allowed for characters to be handled according to relevant version, with previous treading of feet not being disregarded.

Ciem: Vigilante Centipede
Main article: Ciem: Vigilante Centipede

Patti didn't appear in this story until after Denny takes Candi to Milwaukee and announces to his family that he and Candi are married. Eric doesn't take the news very well, as he feels everything about Denny's relationship with Candi was poorly planned. Patti arrives while Eric is lecturing Denny, offering Candi some small amount of assurance while admitting that she too feels the young couple is very foolish.

Ciem: Nuclear Crisis
Main article: Ciem: Nuclear Crisis

By this story, Patti appears to have accepted Candi's role in the Levens family. They have a brief discussion about Candi's plans to marry Donte. What happens to Patti beyond this point is unknown.

Personality
Pattie is shown to be reserved, and harkening to her own opinions on things. While she is as disapproving of Denny and Candi's relationship as is Eric, she is a little more social and tolerant of it. Little else is known about her.

Development
Patti was always to be Denny's mother, but little was explored with her for the longest time. Failure to include her in Ciem led to the Dozerfleet founder making sure that there would be a time slot devoted to her in Ciem 2. However, that time slot was canceled along with every other portion of the webcomic when the Dozerfleet founder had to put all Gerosha-related works production on hiatus due to poor health in 2009. Patti was to return in Ciem: Vigilante Centipede and Ciem: Nuclear Crisis. However, those novels were also canceled in favor of the series Sodality. Since Denny was written out of that continuity, his whole family save for Candi was also written out.

Character bio

 * Born: 1911
 * Died: 1972 (age 61) from liver cancer


 * Hero in WWII
 * Knew Centipede Charlie (in Experiments and Offspring)

Development

 * Named after Ashlee Simpson.

Plot
Not quite two years go by from the time that Candi and Donte reconciled and resumed their relationship. Donte struggles with a slow-growing cancer robbing him of his abilities as Evansville's superhero Emeraldon. He does, however, gain a powerful sidekick in the form of Candi's Ciem identity. Ciem has since abandoned her whips in favor of "dart shooters," which enable her to sting enemies with her venom without having to actually get close to them. The couple struggle with their continual desire to start a family, and begin discussing when they will marry. They also want to adopt young Charlie Wortell, before sexual predators Gary and Daryl can bribe a judge into letting them have the boy in the interests of political correctness. Meanwhile, Donte struggles to find a job.

As Donte heads off in early September of 2023 to receive cancer treatment, Candi begins to suspect that she may be pregnant again. Meanwhile, her sister Miriam discovers that she is pregnant - with twins. Her celebration is cut short, as her fiance Steve McLaine sends her on a plane to find Candi and hide with her. Steve vows to head to China and clear her name, after her Sniperbadger identity is compromised by the Hebbleskin Gang's rival hacker Melvin Markus. Melvin used the resources he stole of Miriam to peek at Chinese state department secrets, in the hopes of helping Duke Arfaas steal the Ming-Yo and Ming-Cho.

Both radioactive artifacts are revealed to have been stolen first by a terrorist faction called the Mik-Non, bent on spreading chaos all over the world - and on starting a war between the US and China. However, the Mik-Non are intercepted by CIA agents Vienna Dockler and Betty Harmin. The two women are instructed to hide in the Evansville area with their stolen items. Little do they understand that an NSA agent named Lloyd Kolumn tampered with their instructions. Lloyd Kolumn is revealed to be secretly working for the Hebbleskin Gang the whole time. It was his idea that Arfaas should have Melvin frame Miriam for everything.

Betty Harmin flees to Farrenville, where she ends up being killed after hiding the Ming-Cho in an old man's tire-filled backyard. Vienna, however, heads to Evansville itself. She plots to find Miriam, and get to the bottom of the whole Hebbleskin conspiracy. Elsewhere, Chinese officials send a team of four agents to Evansville to track down "Sniperbadger" and bring her in for questioning. These four agents turn out to be Black Rat, Tin Dragon, Stung Hornet, and Teal Hog.

To capture Miriam first, Arfaas abducts a military flunk-out named Simon Aardvin. He turns Simon into the horrendous Captain Aardwulf against Simon's will. Aard breaks out, and begins gradually going insane. He plots to abduct Miriam for his own purposes, and also steal the Ming-Yo. He reasons he can ransom them for his own kingdom - one where he will have servants to feed him termites.

Meanwhile, NSA operative Andrew Tinsel uncovers Kolumn's treachery. He pays for it with a hitman arriving at his house and killing his wife Maggie. Andrew responds by grabbing his daughter Sandy and trying to hide in Evansville. However, Kolumn's hitmen track him all the way there. Meanwhile, Angie appears to Candi in a dream and warns her about Miriam being in trouble. Candi awakes disturbed by the nightmare, and goes patrolling the night as Ciem to clear her thoughts. She ends up intercepting an assassination attempt on Andrew on Sandy, defeating the assassins and saving the family. Andrew rewards her by giving her some information on Kolumn to look up. As she starts fleeing the scene, her powers begin glitching for the first time. She starts seriously suspecting that she is pregnant.

Miriam arrives in Evansville around the same time. Later that same evening, right before dawn, she makes contact with the webmaster of the Mila Fila website. She warns him that his own life could be in danger if he continues posting porn of Miriam, due to the Hebbleskin Gang upping the ante. He begins to comply with her wishes that the site be taken down, only to be shot in the head by Hebbleskins who immediately peruse the files for confirmation of Miriam's identity. A gang war envelops in the streets, as the Mik-Non and local gangs clash. A stray rocket blows open the front door to Miriam's motel room, resulting in a deranged drug addict breaking into the room within seconds. He attempts to rape Miriam, but is immediately shot in the back and killed by Teal Hog. Since Teal Hog doesn't recognize Miriam as Sniperbadger, he lets her escape. She flees into the streets, only to be mistaken for a member of a gang and arrested.

Candi makes it to the lab to work with Laurie, and begins feeling under the weather. A man that Andrew mentioned had gone missing appears on an autopsy table as a cadaver, and Candi immediately suspects trouble. The lab comes under attack within minutes, as Kolumn's underlings plot to remove the cadaver. Candi quickly changes into Ciem, and beats up a few of the agents so that Laurie can flee safely. With Laurie out of the way, Ciem flees the scene also. Her powers begin glitching again. She decides to visit the police station and ask about Miriam, since her premonition said Miriam would be in the Evansville area. However, she changes back out of her Ciem suit into civilian clothes. No sooner does she end up in the interview room with Miriam than chaos ensues outdoors. Miriam learns that Simon had been turned into Captain Aardwulf. She also warns Candi of how overblown the entire situation has become. The police station is raided by Mik-Non terrorists, and the girls plot an elaborate escape. Vienna arrives at the station, hoping to intercept Miriam. Alas, she is knocked out by a Mik-Non terrorist and abandoned. She awakes to find the girls gone, but Captain Aardwulf wreaking havoc.

Vienna goes out to confront the monster, but is soon forced to retreat. Aard dodges a bullet by Stung Hornet, seizing his opportunity and killing her immediately. More chaos ensues, and Vienna is forced to abandon the fight. Meanwhile, Candi changes back into Ciem to be ready for any more threats the girls face. The downtown becomes a war zone within minutes, as the National Guard is called in to restore order. Aard makes his first attempt to capture Miriam; but Ciem intervenes. Her powers begin glitching again; yet she holds him off long enough for Miriam to steal a car and hit him with it. He goes flying.

Feeling sick, Candi is unable to keep fighting. The girls flee in the stolen car, retreating ito Latin Town. Miriam gets another hotel, and insists that both girls lay low. Maria Sanmarcos, now able to speak a little English, helps secure the girls in hiding. Vienna asks a few questions around town and learns of Candi's identity. She dials up Candi's cell phone, and asks to speak with Miriam. The three girls begin sharing information. Vienna agrees to meet with them, but states that it'll be dangerous for her to travel to their location. Meanwhile, Capp Aard deduces that Vienna has the Ming-Yo based on what he thought he saw in her pocket when they last battled. He raids a gun store to draw her attention; but she returns fire by driving a car right into the shop. She flees on foot to Latin Town. It is revealed that Aard survived a second time being hit by a car. Vienna meets up with Candi and Miriam, but is immediately assaulted by Tin Dragon. However, Capp Aard arrives and ambushes Tin Dragon, killing him. Candi becomes Ciem again in order to lure Aard away from Vienna and Miriam. A fight ensues, but ends when Aard tosses a dizzy Ciem onto a highway. She crashes into the front windshield of Betsy Stanson, who is shelting Andrew and Sandy. She takes the unconscious Ciem to her house to nurse her back to health. Aard immediately returns and abducts Miriam, seizing the Ming-Yo along the way. Vienna barely escapes the scene with her life.

Candi has a vision of her parents. In it, they help her come to terms with her feelings of guilt and failure. She awakes to find Donte hovering over her. Betsy, Andrew, and Sandy further explain the situation. Vienna leaves them a note, stating that she's gone after Aard alone. She also states Aard's whereabouts. Candi immediately insists a SWAT team be called to that industrial center. However, Aard has already killed the entire staff. He has tied up Miriam and taken her hostage, while he tries to unlock the Ming-Yo's secrets. Vienna breaks in, but runs into Black Rat. They quickly explain to each other what is happening, and Black Rat agrees that he and Vienna should work together. Aard smells them immediately, and loses his concentration. He ends up exposing himself to a deadly amount of the Ming-Yo's radiation, while going mad. The agents promise to keep him distracted so he won't hurt Miriam. Ciem and Emeraldon arrive. Ciem frees Miriam, then distracts Aard so the agents can get Miriam's help. She finds an unguarded computer, so she sets to work as Sniperbader to expose Kolumn and Markus. Emeraldon uses his powers to shield himself from the Ming-Yo's radiation, vowing to fly it over the ocean and destroy it. Black Rat initially objects, since it is Chinese government property. However, Vienna convinces him that it is the best for everyone to have it destroyed.

As Emeraldon makes his flight, he ends up having his own power glitches. He flies to the Gulf of Mexico, then drops the Ming-Yo in so as to set off a violent reaction. It explodes violently, and Donte loses his sense of direction. He flies as far inland as he is able, but begins to lose his flight ability before he can assess where he is. He ends up along the border with California and Mexico. Meanwhile, Ciem continues to distract Aard. Aard eventually melts into a puddle due to his having been exposed to the Ming-Yo's radiation. The SWAT arrives at the scene, only to find that the situation has been handled. Kolumn learns within minutes that he and his schemers have been exposed as Hebbleskin spies, and is forced to flee. Candi receives a phone call from Donte the following morning, explaining what happened.

Candi and Donte end up getting married in Vacaville, in a double-wedding with Miriam and Steve. Marina and her family are invited. Heading home, Candi and Donte are able to successfully beat Gary and Daryl in line to adopt Charlie. The latter duo vows revenge, only to be killed by Extirpon a few weeks later when they're caught trying to corrupt young children. Candi reveals to Donte that she is indeed pregnant, and that they'll have to consider retiring from superhero work soon to focus on their growing family. Donte reveals that he is willing to go along with that plan.

Building and background
The book cover for Nuclear Crisis was shot in front of the Ledge Craft Center Ltd. Art Center building in downtown Grand Ledge, MI. In keeping with the tradition started in August of 2009, it was deemed possible to use parts of downtown Grand Ledge as a geographical double for Evansville.

Modeling
Being the last appearance of Vienna before being written out of continuity, her first appearance ever outside of a Sims-related game was her appearance on the book cover for Nuclear Crisis. Her model was made in MakeTarget's MakeHuman 3D Alpha Build 6.0 software, much like the model used for both Ciem and Miriam. However, all models were initially rendered as nudes. Clothing was not initially implemented in MakeHuman software. The book cover's elements strived to achieve as much photo-realism as possible. Numerous lighting tweaks were attempted on the 3D models to make them more life-like to begin with. The nudes were each given an overlay of censor-square underwear and bras in Photoshop, before further work was attempted.

Ciem had her suit painted on first, since the main outfit's skin-tight molding meant that simple recolors of skin covered a majority of the needed effects. Suit details were added next, with weaving being saved till near the end. Very careful inspection of the model's wrists reveal that dart shooters were intended to be designed for the model, doing away with whip mechanics almost entirely. The dart shooters' places on Ciem's costume were made more obvious for Sodality.

Miriam's outfit was the second to be designed. While the shirt was mostly painted on from imagination, her pants were modified from a photo. Actual female khaki shorts were stuffed with pillows and shot against a mostly-neutral background. Her shoes were likewise painted in from modified photos of real shoes. Her socks were painted from imagination. Similarly, her baseball cap was painted in from imagination. Her shirt design was meant to be consistent with the running gag that she is a fan of Snakes on a Plane. However, a custom design related to that was put on her shirt; to avoid infringing on any trademarks. This was also the reason that the "D" in her Detroit Tigers baseball cap was missing. It re-appears in concept art for Sodality, since the concept art is never intended to be for sale. The book cover, however, was intended very much to be sold on book shelves.

Vienna's hair, being the most prominent and least covered, took the most effort to paint in. Her clothes, particularly her gloves, took the most effort to draw in place. The girls' outfits were modeled as closely as possible after their iconic appearances from various Sims games. Burn marks and other dirt was painted on to give the impression that they had been in a war zone for a period of time. Smoke and fire effects were painted all around them and the surrounding city, so as to produce a Transformers-style urban war effect. The Ming-Yo, for the first time ever, was played by an actual rock. The rock was wrapped in aluminum foil, and its blue-glowing effects were painted in later. Captain Aardwulf is overlayed above the girls, partially in the skyline. His near-ghostly imposition into the frame was to represent him as a looming threat in the background for all three gals, even as more obvious threats surround them.

Title
Nuclear Crisis was originally going to be dubbed merely Ciem 2, consistent with the fact that bare-minimal effort had been put into making it any different from its webcomic predecessor. However, it was decided in late 2010 that the story should have a meaningful subtitle consistent with how its predecessor had been given one.

The original title of Ciem was Ciem: The Human Centipede. The subtitle was dropped in early 2010 to avoid confusion with The Human Centipede. It was determined from that point onward that the novelization would be re-dubbed Ciem: Vigilante Centipede. This is similar to how Marc Webb's Spider-Man movie was re-dubbed The Amazing Spider-Man to avoid confusion with Sam Raimi's Spider-Man.

The decision to have Vigilante Centipede have a sequel titled Nuclear Crisis was to play on the double-meaning of that phrase. While trying to prevent a nuclear war, Candi Levens must also decide how to secure her family planning from a world bent on tearing apart the little family she has left.

Cancellation and recycling of elements
On November 6th of 2012, Comprehensive Gerosha as a continuity was canceled. The entire future of The Gerosha Chronicles was thrown into question, as it was deemed unlikely that the Ciem era plots as they were written would even be possible after a second Obama term. Instead, it was deemed likely that the United States would very likely go over the fiscal cliff and deteriorate into utter chaos. Based on a prediction that the Muslim Brotherhood and China would begin fighting each other for the rights to the US economy, Cataclysmic Gerosha was proposed as a "What If?" continuity. Work on this continuity recycled components of the plot for Nuclear Crisis to compose the third season of Sodality, an ambitious series project on par with Stationery Voyagers that would explore what the Gerosha protagonists would do to function in a post-America world. Due to the toss-up of plot details, a lot of plot elements did not translate over well.

Vienna Dockler began as a part of Gerosha mythos in 2005, and was originally a parody of Jennifer Garner's Sidney Bistrow character from Alias. However, the old joke didn't seem to fit anywhere in the new continuity. Lloyd Kolumn was a parody of Alec Baldwin's "Kudrow" character from Mercury Rising, and also served little purpose in the new narrative. The spin-off, Path of the Ming-Cho, was only barely allowed to continue. However, several details needed to be re-written to make sense. The original plot to that story dated back to 2006, in Despair Gerosha. That line of logic made sense under the Bush Administration, when a United States economy thriving in the year 2023 seemed plausible.

The Wall in Sodality becomes a major plot point, one which would have made the original journey from Indiana to Nevada near-impossible to pull off due to the way borders were re-drawn. Capp Aard was also made more intelligent in the new series than in Nuclear Crisis or any continuity before that, in keeping with the fact that he'd need to pull more of his own weight to keep the season three plot arcs interesting. Characters like Black Rat, Tin Dragon, Teal Hog, and Stung Hornet were introduced earlier than before, and given different backstories to explain why they'd be working with Miriam rather than against her.

The plot of Nuclear Crisis otherwise was to transplant in as much as possible the plot that was to be used for Ciem 2 in the final 2009 webcomic draft. It desired to keep intact the webcomic's plot; one which spoofed those of Alias, Spider-Man 2, and Mercury Rising by merging them into a single story. Characters' obsessions with the Ming-Yo were to make it a MacGuffin similar in nature to the Pink Panther diamond, with the exception that it's radioactive.

Phaelite experimentation
Around the same time that Candi battled Jeff the Invisible in the Stolly's Building and met Donte, Jeral was kidnapped by some Phaelites who violated conduct code. The Phaelite scientists who supervised Jeral's abduction were looking to create a race of plant-men that they could use in battle against the Hebbleskin Gang. It was believed that Centhuen Prototypes might fail to produce the "pure" Centhuen race that the head powers that were in Phaelite command believed were necessary to advance their agenda. With advancements being made in Meethlite technology, the Meethlites were coming very close to having the technology to advance Milthuen Prototypes like Milp into full-fledged Miltheuens. Rumor even spread that a formula existed which could mutate Milthuen Prototypes into giant millipede-like monsters called "milliblobs," that could take an entire city hostage.

With some research, the unethical Phaelite scientists decided that a race of plant-men were the only things that could hold their own against such monsters. Several attempts were made on kidnapped humans to mutate them into plant-men, but there was very little success. Most of the victims reverted to their original forms. Others were curable with a potion. With Jeral, however, one scientist skirted even the code of conduct of the others and changed the mutation formula for Jeral's experiment to require Milthuen Prototype blood for the reversal potion to be permanent. The others supplied Jeral with several pill forms of the cure before sending him on his way and informing him that they'd eventually expect a phone call from him if he decided to take them up on their offer to fight the Meethlites with his plant-man form.

Aftermath of the experiments
When Jeral was leaving the lab, he stumbled upon the victims of several kidnappings who died as a result of the experiment - including a small child! Because of this, Jeral became convinced that the Phaelites were just as evil as their Meethlite counterparts, and developed a strong hatred and mistrust for both.

Jeral returned home to his wife, only to discover that the cure was temporary. When he transformed into his plant form, Gvadouin grew terrified of him and began to avoid him. Jeral would get a job at the Hazy Eighty's Bowling Alley under the supervision of then-owner Cladeus Hutchins. He kept gradually exhausting his cure packs as the effects would only last a few months. Too proud to return to the Phaelites for more, he believed he could get by for a while before coming out to his boss and co-workers about his condition.

Betrayal by Gvadouin and Katalina
At home, his situation continually frustrated his wife Gvadouin to the point that she considered threatening to throw away the pills and expose him to the world. After being backed into a promise he had no intention of keeping, Jeral decided to get smart and hide the pills where Gvadouin wouldn't find them. Gvadouin, feeling deceived, decided to manipulate Jeral further by reason of an affair. Feeling unloved, especially when his parents rejected him after he used his botanokinesis to help their garden grow; he began seeking comfort in an affair of his own. His lover, Katalina Tse[See note, 1], soon left him when she too could not reconcile with the reality that Jeral was botanokinetic.

Divorce from Gvadouin
Securing herself in the opportunity, Gvadouin finalized her betrayal of Jeral by confronting him with divorce papers. After a heated argument, Jeral signed the papers. Gvadouin then proceeded to take nearly all of the home assets and left Jeral with nothing but an empty house and his misery. Nearing the end of the duration of the most recent pill, Jeral decided to take a two-week vacation from work and head out to the forests of Kentucky to experiment with his new-found botanical powers.

Ultimate rejection by parents
He began developing for himself an ideal of a persona as "Botan," a demi-god in control of plant life on Earth. However, he decided that while he enjoyed his powers, he would have preferred a normal life with a normal family. His attempts to reconcile with his parents fail when they begin opening fire on him. He begins summoning weeds to defend himself, and virtually destroys their entire house in his attempts to get away from them. It is then that he realizes that his loved ones believe he is a monster. Not ready to accept that he truly is a monster since he never asked for his condition, he begins to obsess with finding a way to make his cure permanent.

Betrayal by second post-Gvadouin girlfriend
He ends up having a brief fling with a sinister woman named Marie Tan. However, this affair ends when he discovers that she is intending to cut him up and use him for research to manufacture new drugs for a friend of hers involved in pharmaceuticals. Jeral manages to escape from Marie, but not without using his botanokinesis to summon weeds from the ground to stop his assailants.

Relationship to co-workers
After this betrayal, Jeral grows extremely bitter and spiteful against all of society. He continues his job at the Hazy Eighty's; yet he all the time fears the day will come when he will have to give up the one stable thing in his life. It is working there that he meets Candi Flippo, who is working under the alias of "Candi Stevens." Candi initially doesn't know of Jeral's condition, and so she is reluctant to share it with him or with anyone else at the alley. She fears that if she reveals her secret to anyone, the Hebbleskins will be able to find her and exact vengeance on her for the death of Don the Psycho.

Early search for a cure
Comic: Jeral lost his job at the bowling alley after suffering a meltdown of his powers that caused him to attack patrons with animated plants inside the building. Candi intervened to try to stop him, and he escaped the building in shame.

Novel: Jeral grows really sick one day in December, so Candi and Denny take him to the hospital. Once in the hospital, he transformed back into his plant form. Chaos and terror soon ensued as medical staff acted in fear and tried to kill him. He ultimately flees the hospital, with Candi and Denny feeling let down that they couldn't save him.

He fled to the nearby city of Farrenville to start investigating what was needed to make his cure for his condition permanent. He learned that a student at the Farrenville Community College and an acquaintance of Miriam Flippo's, Emily Astair, was investigating the Phaelite experiments on creating Plant-Men. The two strike up a relationship. However, the Phaletori experimenters grew terrified that Emily would expose them. They arranged to have her kidnapped, hoping that would solve their problems. Not able to stop the kidnapping, Jeral grew enraged. After several failed attempts at a heroic rescue of his new girlfriend, he grew even more bitter and spiteful than he had been previously.

Botan the murderer
Emily's captors take her to a lab in Florida, where they force her to serve as their lab assistant. Jeral begins searching some more in vain for a cure without her. However, his luck grows worse when one of his last possessions in the world - his car - gets stolen by a man who was recently involved in some drug dealings and robberies.

Jeral, now fully manifested as Botan, goes out in pursuit of the robber. He catches up only to find that the robber had completely demolished the car in a failed effort to get away from Candi in an early version of her Ciem suit. Still being controlled by his anger, Botan attacks the robber and forces a tree to grow around the man's body and devour him. Candi objects to this blatant act of murder while agonizing over her own guilt in Don's death.

Comic: He attacks Candi in a blind rage. He only relents because she reveals she is pregnant, and he will not let himself kill an unborn.

Novel: He gains control of himself before the two actually fight.

He leaves the Dirbine/Evansville area in shame, vowing to return when he has answers. In the mean time, he finds shelter in a Florida home.

The Stibbs family
Jeral escapes from Dirbine/Evansville right as the police begin to suspect him in the death of the robber. However, the charges are dropped when they are unable to provide solid evidence to a judge of any wrongdoing. Jeral assumes the alias of "Derrick" and tries to start his life over in New Port Richey, FL. While down there, he befriends a young girl named Tabitha who helps him find a place to live.

Initially, Jeral is able to disguise himself by day in the back yard garden of Tabitha's single mom, Sheryl Stibbs. However, Sheryl begins to grow suspicious as to how Tabitha could have grown such as large sunflower. She grows mad when Tabitha, teary-eyed, insists that the sunflower is really "Mr. Derrick." In a rage, Sheryl traumatizes her daughter by attacking the sunflower. Jeral, infuriated at Sheryl's unbelief and insensitivity to Tabitha's feelings, manifests himself as Botan and confronts her. Sheryl retaliates by physically assaulting Jeral.

She reaches for some weed killer and tries to spray Jeral in the face with it, but he regenerates through plant life in the earth. He grows as tall as a tree and ties her up in several branches, lecturing her about her vanity. Realizing that she is failing to get the message and cares at that point only about herself, he ponders killing her. However, Tabitha's tearful begging for "Mr. Derrick" to spare her mother's life touches a sensitive string in Jeral's heart.

He remembers how he felt when his own parents attacked him with shotguns for turning into Botan. He decides that he has to show his current family the same mercy that his last family failed to show him. This leads him to instead of killing Sheryl, sending her flying through a window and into the house. He threatens her more harm if she does not learn to trust her daughter more.

TV show
Jeral tries to get a kids' show for himself, as "Derrick of the Dandelions." At first, a local studio in Tampa approves of his idea. However, after the terrorist attack on Dirbine/Evansville, Sheryl Stibbs begins to wonder why her daughter is so cheery. Vainly envying her daughter and being spiteful to her for being happy when Sheryl cannot, Sheryl demands of Tabitha an answer for her happiness. Tabitha replies that Mr. Derrick is "all better," and that he now has his own TV show. Sheryl drops off Tabitha at the grandparents' house, and proceeds to buy a sniper rifle. She revokes Tabitha's TV viewing privileges, and won't explain to the grandparents what her reason is for this.

Sheryl tracks Jeral down to Tampa; and attempts to have him assassinated right outside of the studio where his show takes place. Jeral fakes his own death to escape from her, leaving behind a shell of himself that she repeatedly shoots at and finally, starts pounding into with her fists. A security officer near the building manages to restrain Sheryl long enough to get her in cuffs. When her hatred for Jeral and her emotional abuse of Tabitha are revealed in court, she is denied the insanity plea. She is sentenced to life in prison for attempted murder with a firearm.

Rescuing Emily
The Phaelites responsible for Botan's creation are later exposed by Ciem and Ploribus/Darius Philippine. This sends them into a fit of desperation about what to do next. Frustrated with the eternal conflict between Phaelites and Meethlites, some Phaelites begin to plot a coup against the other Phaelites both on Earth and on Phaelon. This small band joins the researchers responsible for Botan's creation, and begin to band together. Having already called themselves the Phaletori, they divorce themselves from mainstream Phaelites. Mutating themselves slightly to look a little different than their normal Phaelite counterparts, they set themselves up as a clinic that vows to "fight the oppression of scientific progress" of the rest of Phaelite society, which has condemned them for their unethical experiments.

At this point, Jeral, having faked his own death; resumes his persona of Botan. With no Ciem in the way, however, he feels free to take on the role of an anti-hero as opposed to a villain. Emily then sneaks into a room while her captors aren't looking and discovers what happened to Jeral: his formula was altered to require the blood of a Milthuen Prototype to reverse his condition! She immediately begins to formulate a plot to escape from the clinic and tell Jeral. Her plans are to capture the Meethlite-faithful Kimiyato Hiriyama and extract her blood to cure Jeral with it. However, the Phaletori decide that Emily's usefulness to them has expired.

The majority of them take off, leaving a few in charge of the Tampa clinic where they tie Emily up. When they learn of her plot, they decide to strip her naked and torture her before killing her. Just as their sadistic ritual on her leads to the guillotine blade's descent, however, a tree branch pops out from the ceiling and blocks the blade!

Botan begins to extract horrific amounts of violence on his girlfriends' captors, eventually freeing her from the apparatus and then using it to behead Phaletori with. Growing into a giant, walking redwood tree; Botan chases the remaining Phaletori from the lab down the streets of Tampa. Every chance he gets, he crushes them. He finally chases one of them to a highway, where he ties up a Phaletori in a tree-like bush and forces him to meet an untimely demise during a collision with a semi truck.

Escape back to Dirbine / Evansville
Jeral and Emily begin to fear that they will be blamed for the collateral damage of Jeral's assault on the Phaletori. Emily decides to write in to the Tampa police with a letter that informs them that a group of rebel Phaelites have mutated themselves into Phaletori and have been staging a rebellion against Earth's Phaelite defenders by creating plant monsters. Alas, her letter is not taken seriously and she is assumed crazy.

The two of them secure some masks and makeup to help Jeral disguise himself and they head back to Dirbine / Evansville to find Ciem. At this point, Jeral is willing to seek help from Candi.

Temporary alliance with Ciem
Finding it all-too-easy to locate Candi investigating at a local bar in an effort to collect a sample of murder suspect Terrence Frintz's DNA, Emily reveals to Candi that she knows about Candi's double life as Ciem. She arranges for Ciem and Botan to meet in secret, where they will reveal to her what their plans are and ask Candi if there's anything she can do to aid them in their quest.

Candi decides to go see them anyway, against Laurie's wishes. True to their word, the couple make no attempt to ambush Candi and Laurie. They reveal that Kimiyato is still alive, and ask Candi if she can arrange for them to meet with Ploribus / Darius about capturing Kimi. Candi agrees to talk to him, although he is preoccupied upon learning that Lex's girlfriend and son have gone missing.

However, the three of them don't realize that Kimi herself, having acquired a Milp costume, is already in town and is already spying on all of them! Milp attacks along with Lobe while the mayor is at his birthday parade in downtown Dirbine / Evansville. He was about to award Ciem for her efforts to keep the city safe. Candi almost didn't go, being too humble and paranoid to go in costume and accept an award. However, her son Charlie urged her to go; making her feel compelled to show up anyway.

She warns the mayor that she is not confident showing up in public and in-costume with no major disaster to stop. However, the mayor and the townsfolk ignore her sensation of a bad omen in the air. Telling them "I told you so," she goes to investigate a recent explosion. It ends up being Milp, who challenges her to a duel on a highway bridge. Ciem is able to easily block Milp's sword attacks; and even causes Milp to lose the sword that was her one advantage over Ciem in battle.

Milp vows revenge, and then leaves Lobe to fight her. Taking advantage of the distraction, Milp sneaks off to Candi's house and kills the babysitter that was paid to watch Charlie. After beating Charlie some, Milp then takes off. She does her best to make it look as though Candi had been abusing him, but leaves behind evidence of a break-in. Nevertheless, some nurses at the downtown hospital decide to accuse Candi of beating Charlie, ignoring Charlie's story and telling him to shut up about the "woman in black."

Charlie, enraged at the injustice being committed against Candi, attempts to run away. However, the nurses take advantage of Charlie being weak from his beating and have him sedated. As Ciem is battling Lobe and trying to get him to calm down so they can talk, Lobe makes a false move and falls to his death. Ciem jumps off the highway and Zeran-teleports to a building top.

She gazes down, horrified at what happened. Jeral, believing it was Candi's fault and an accident, decides to provide her with a cover story by turning himself into a giant weed and swallowing up Lobe's corpse to destroy the evidence. He then pretends to be a villain again and has Ciem feign a fight with him as he disappears underground. Candi walks away, confused and covered in wet leaves.

From there, she finds herself wrapped up in the conspiracy of false police working for Kolumn, who further convince the nurses to call them in and have Candi arrested. Candi immediately gets clairvoyant vibes from Charlie that the whole thing is a setup, via her centuition. She calls the event for what it is; but the nurses initially don't believe her and threaten to call a psychiatric ward on her. As she exits the building, she is surrounded by Kolumn's forces in disguise as a SWAT team. The real police are called to a distraction created by other forces of Kolumn's, so that they won't interfere with the false bust. Candi is then "arrested" and shipped to Kolumn's facility in California for execution.

Return as a villain
With Candi out of the way, Botan begins to fear that Ploribus / Darius won't help him. He makes a desperate plea for help, but to no avail. Lex discovers that the reason for this depression is that the formulas Ploribus/Darius is using to keep himself young aren't working anymore. He fears aging and dying, and has slowly descended into cowardice. Still angry with Lex over the Yvette/Mallorie and Silo Wade affair, he is reluctant to listen to Lex at first.

Milp takes advantage of the situation and begins a reign of terror over Dirbine/Evansville. Frustrated with Ploribus'/Darius' inaction, Jeral Cormier and Dolly Malestrom decide to take matters into their own hands. However, the Earwig costume which Dolly steals has a flaw in its AI, which was modified from Meethlite backvisor AI. The helmet begins to awaken Dolly's darker personality traits and sends Dolly into a rage, as she heads about town trying to kill Botan.

She almost succeeds, save for the combined interference of Milp and Emily. Milp, however, attempts to kill Emily and then steals the weakened branch that is all that remains of Botan. Emily survives, but the sight of her injured forces Dolly to decide that Emily's life deserves to be saved more than Botan and Milp's lives need to be ended. By the time Dolly returns to the cave, both Milp and Botan are gone.

Milp realizes that Botan is the only being powerful enough to stop her. Armed with a backup AI backvisor similar to the one used to create Musaran, she allows Botan to regrow his strength only until he has formed a head. She then quickly slips the visor on the back of his head so she can control him. She reveals that she has the potion needed to transform herself into a giant, dark-purplish monster, and drinks it up after a monologue about how her life up until then had been a failure. Botan continues to regenerate his plant tissues and begins working for the Milp monster.

As Milp's mind slave, Botan shares in her campaign to terrorize the city. She learns that she can use her main underground, giant millipede self to generate attached blob manifestations of her former self that, as long as the connection to the root is not lost, may terrorize as many locations as possible. In this manner, she is able to rob several banks at once and tear apart the center of town. With Botan's help, she forms the Forest Funnel Town in the center of Dirbine/Evansville and uses Botan's structure and Botan himself to protect herself from the National Guard.

Emily makes her way back to Ploribus'/Darius' hidden lair for treatment for her wounds, but Dolly goes off to rescue Charlie with the help of Lex. Candi makes new friends in the jail complex in California, and escapes after a new friend thwarts Kolumn's attempts at beheading her. Ploribus'/Darius' base is raided by Botan's weeds, forcing most of the survivors out. Ploribus/Darius, staying behind, decides that Lex was right. He mans a mecha that he built for himself, and races off in it to battle Milp. He decides that his era has ended; so he may as well compensate by honoring his family's wishes.

Dolly makes her way to California, after having witnessed the deaths of Nolle and even her own nephew Henry (in the comics.) Losing her sanity to the helmet, she begins battling Candi and the other survivors of Kolumn's prison. However, she loses the helmet in battle and is able to regain her sanity. She becomes emotionally scarred at the realization of all the bad things the helmet made her do; and she agrees to join Candi, Kyle, and Charlotte in taking back the city.

Ploribus/Darius manages to get his mecha inside the funnel that Botan created, and sacrifices himself and the mecha by self-destructing while the Milp root is covering the mecha. The explosion injures Milp, allowing her to bleed slowly, but does not inflict enough damage to kill her. She tries hard to disguise her battle wound, in spite the continual bleeding. She also orders Botan to try hard to keep his most important structures away from her blood, fearing it would cure him.

Final redemption
When Candi and the others arrive in the following afternoon to battle the Forest Funnel Town, they learn what Milp and Botan have done to the city. Lex touches base with Dolly to assure her that he and Donte as well as Jeraime and Frank are all okay. With a few frantic news crews still left over in the desolate town, Ciem returns to the scene with her friends Mukade, Meerkat, and Earwig. Because Dolly lacks the helmet, she is asked by the other three to head to ground level and do some reconnaissance.

As Milp battles the other three inside the Forest Funnel Town, easily getting the jump on all three of them when she sends multiple manifestations to attack them, Dolly finds a pistol lying on the ground and shoots the AI backvisor off of Botan when he is not looking. This is done in front of a British journalist covering the scene, who is appalled at the violence.

When Jeral snaps out of his trance and regenerates his damaged tissues from the gunshot wound, he sees Dolly there and initially panics. Dolly, however, apologizes for trying to kill him earlier and negotiates with him that they can all end the violence very easily - by Jeral killing Milp. She argues that this may be the very reason why he was allowed to become a Plant-Man in the first place.

At the same time, Milp makes numerous taunts to Candi. She tears the Ciem suit into so many pieces, so that Candi is left with just her belt and a few shards to accompany her mask and cover her bra and underwear up. She then beats Candi bloody, taunting her about her personal moral failures and her sexual exploits with Donte. Candi replies as best as she can; and the other two take advantage of this distraction to stop Milp from killing Candi.

However, their efforts turn out to be in vain. Just when the Milp blob decides to wrap around them and suffocate all three of them, Botan turns on her and starts generating weeds to rip into her battle wound from her fight with Ploribus/Darius. Hungry roots begin absorbing her blood, which is then fed into Jeral. Finally, the plant structures tear the Milp blob to pieces; and the creature dies in screams of agony.

Jeral relaxes himself from his assault, and immediately feels a calm come over him. He passes out, only to wake up and find himself human again. The journalist, hearing the screams, panics and flees the scene. Emily arrives with Lex to greet the heroes. Jeral awakes to realize that he is human again; with his powers as Botan completely gone. He and Emily embrace each other, knowing that they can at last have a normal life together. Candi, Kyle, and Charlotte walk away from the battlefield and join the others.

They all lament together on how the mistakes they've made over the years have resulted in countless deaths and the near-destruction of Dirbine/Evansville; and make commitments to themselves and each other not to let it happen again.

Post-recovery
The Meethlites have lost the last of their Earth leadership with the demise of Lloyd Kolumn and company. They predict another 30 years before they can return to Earth to terrorize some more. The Phaletori are officially deemed outlaws, and the legitimate-ruling Phaelites offer their condolences to Jeral for his grievances.

Kyle and Charlotte marry and retire to Louisiana to start a family together. Candi and Donte move to Kentucky to raise their sons Frank and Charlie in relative peace. They would eventually have two more children. Lex moves to Gerosha, where he continues his search for Yvette/Mallorie using resources he acquires from his father's lair to set up a new one in the Gerosha Cemetery.

Jeral and Emily move to Viron permanently, and begin raising a family without further major incidents happening in their lives. He and Emily proceed to live happily in Viron and have a son named Harvey.

Early life
Zeras Carpathius was born in 61 AD, to a family of low rank within Roman society. As Christianity spread throughout the empire, his family was among the first families to be converted from amongst the Roman population. His eventual wife, Catalina, was born in 64 AD. She was also converted, but in secret. Catalina was from a family of much higher prestige, and her father feared and distrusted the growing movement of Christianity. As such, she and Zeras shared a forbidden love. But when she would not abandon him, he was made into a slave to punish him for being an influence on her.

Fugitive
With Catalina's help, Zeras flees from the city of Rome in 96 AD and heads into the countryside. The two are married, and word gets back to Rome that Catalina married Zeras. Her father decides to put out a hit on both her and her husband, and hires a sadist named Markus Mortikus to track them down. Markus eventually does track down the couple, and then holds them in a jail center of his own making. Instead of returning them to the authorities in Rome, he decides to murder them his way at his leisure. He has them chained and whipped, torturing them in multiple ways. He even begins torturing them sexually, as they are left bleeding for the flies to find. Zeras vows to find a way to escape, if only to avenge his wife. She begs him not to be ruled by vengeance, but he can barely contain his hatred for Markus.

The following morning, just as Zeras manages to get his bindings loose enough to almost be able to escape, Markus has a man with a sword come in and behead Catalina slowly right in front of him. He seizes advantage of the swordman being distracted to free himself, right before he is to have his guts sliced open. He then proceeds to murder the guard, Markus, and most of Markus' men and prostitutes. Still raw from all his open wounds and sores, Zeras flees into the countryside with only a sack as a pair of makeshift shorts serving as his sole garment.

He is immediately declared a wanted fugitive, and flees towards the Alps. However, he is struck by the Marlquaan upon reaching a steep hill that he climbs to evade capture by Roman dogs. He is transported to Metheel, where his wounds are healed. He gains super-intellect, and becomes the inventor of Zeran wardrobes and Zeran teleporters. He discovers how to harness electricity, and more. But having an entire planet to himself isn't enough. He uses his Marlquaanite abilities to travel back to Rome. From there, he gathers an army of those willing to flee with him to Metheel. At one point, that army raids the house of Catalina's father, murdering him and many of his associates. They also track down and kill many of Markus Mortikus' still-living associates. But rather than conquer all of Rome, they decide to merely claim as many as are willing to leave Earth behind.

Legacy
From there on out, Zeras Carpathius becomes known as Lord Zeras, the ruler supreme of Metheel. His followers become known as Meethlites. His fascination with the Marlquaan, and with technology, leads to him and his Meethlite civilization becoming very advanced in their technology, but with a rule that they do not share much of it with Earth. He takes Markus' creed, and applies it to only the most loathe of criminals: Decolarent eam, eviscerate eum ("Off with her head, out with his guts.") Little does he know this will become a tool for the Hebbleskin Gang to terrorize their enemies and the general public with. Some time after his death, Lord Zeras is hailed as a patron saint. It is during the time frame in which he is given sainthood by the Catholic bishop on Metheel that Marlquaanite rubies are first discovered. Several of these end up on Earth through a series of complicated adventures, including the dangerous Beamer's Ruby.

His fascination with the boundaries between man and animal, and with how to alter the human condition, led to the unfortunate mad science that would come to define both Meethlite and Phaelite civilizations, as a cross-species engineering arms race would develop between the two. This would begin when a man named Shortimo would take it on himself to make Meethlites distinct from their Earth cousins in appearance. The result would be the graphite-colored skin that would make Meethlites, and later the green-colored skin that would make Phaelites, seem truly alien.

Powers and equipment
Lord Zeras can teleport and create quantum storage, due to his bond to the Marlquaan that allows him to do this. He can heal faster than normal, but is not immortal nor invincible. He he also has enhanced intelligence, allowing him to create the Zeran technology that allows others to do what he can do. He can also, when enraged, generate yellow lightning surges.

Personality
Zeras is not entirely mentally stable, as a result of his unquenchable thirst to avenge his murdered wife Catalina. He is socially awkward after her loss, and withdrawn from the social functions of his peers. As a ruler, he is calculating but generous. He helps set up a system that allows him to do minimal as king to actually rule over Metheel, trusting that the populace can be self-governing. This proves true until a few generations after his death, when a moral decay brought on by the madness of unrestrained scientific exploration leads to a more-authoritarian ruler taking the throne.

Development
In Gerosha Prime, there was some talk of "Zeran holes," as a way to explain both Zeran teleporters and Zeran wardrobes. Zeran technology in general became a large part of Candi Levens' arsenal. This allowed for Ciem to teleport and store her clothes in convenient quantum storage. Both accessories proved useful, since Centhuen Prototypes cannot normally fly, climb walls, nor generate webs.

In Despair Gerosha, the need first arose to state the origin of the term "Zeran." This became the first known instance of a Lord Zeras character. His origins were expanded on slightly more for Classic Gerosha, as Erin Flippo explains to Candi and Miriam a little bit about how Zeras' legacy ties in to the girls' lives.

In 2009, a movie came out called The Human Centipede, thus forcing Ciem to drop its subtitle. This, along with other issues, resulted in the abandoning entirely of Classic Gerosha in favor of a continuity reboot in the form of Comprehensive Gerosha. Ciem was dropped in favor of Ciem: Vigilante Centipede. That latter work would begin with a chapter called "20,000 Legs into the Backstory," which dealt with Zeras' escape - and how his legacy tied all later events in the Gerosha universe together. It ended on discussing how everything led up to Candi having centipede powers, how Donte had to go away to war, and Candi's difficult decision to break the rules of Erin's house, by having sex with Donte, even against her own conscience. Also in that year, the Dozerfleet founder saw Underworld: Rise of the Lycans in theaters, and was inspired by it.

Comprehensive Gerosha
Main article: Comprehensive Gerosha

It was decided in October of 2010 that Zeras and Catalina had an interesting enough story of their own, that a story separate from the beginning of Vigilante Centipede was warranted to tie the greater Gerosha continuity together. To trace things all the way from Zeras' time to the times of The Battle for Gerosha and 90 Has No Secant, several stories were inceived as narrative stepping stones.

The Tragedy of Lord Zeras served to tell the story of Zeras directly. First Meethlites was then inceived as a way of explaining how Meethlite civilization adopted the graphite-colored skin seen by Hebbleskin Gang members in the Ciem trilogy and The Battle for Gerosha. Rise of the Phaelites then served to show how the Phaelites rebelled, and the green-skinned aliens from The Battle for Gerosha came to be. Wealth of a Seashell explained where Stan and Shalia Flippo's treasures came from: from a pirate named Henry Lohtz. A So-Called Heretic sought to explain the origins of John Domeck before he became the Gray Champion. Vile Magenta Cloak then served to provide a prequel to The Meshalutian Trilogy, with A Miner Named Sam providing the backstory of Honeybee Samuel before his appearance in Cursed is the Ground. Also, it was to show how his evil legacy of rape led to a family curse, one which would be made manifest through Dwayne Lloyd and would lead to Candi and her sisters suffering from nymphomania.

Experiments and Offspring was intended initially to be a story about when the Phaelites and Meethlites on their respective worlds first began making Phexos and Meethexos. It later became a story about how, after some of these experiments had reached adulthood on Earth, they were put to the test during WWII. Therefore, it became the story of Centipede Charlie and his friends. It also transitioned somewhat smoothly into When Tobey Met Alison, providing a drop for Tobey to age gradually into his role in The Battle for Gerosha. What is Nin-Chyo? was also created; as a way to explore the origins of the nin-chyo substance that would form the Ming-Yo and Ming-Cho devices that were the MacGuffins of Ciem 2, Ciem: Nuclear Crisis, and Path of the Ming-Cho. From there, the only origin story left to cover was that of Emwaults. The two most prominent of them are Emeraldon and the Sapphire King, so Of Emeralds and Sapphires served as their origin story.

Cataclysmic Gerosha
Main article: Cataclysmic Gerosha

Sodality, in abandoning the narrative from Vigilante Centipede to explore a worst-case scenario of the outcome of Obama winning the 2012 election cycle, solidified the place of the Gerosha universe as an alternate history. Its retroactive effects on the timeline meant that Sam Wrikon never became a supernatural Honeybee Samuel, and that the Flippo sisters' nymphomania would be toned down significantly. Also, it meant that Denny Levens never existed in the same context as before. With Denny effectively removed from existence, Candi never has Angie Levens as a daughter. This also erased the Meshalutian Trilogy from existence, rendering 90 Has No Secant, Cursed is the Ground, and The Natural Logarithm as being divorced from Gerosha. As such, Vile Magenta Cloak never happened either.

Surprisingly, little was retroactively done to affect Zeras' part of the narrative. What was affected most by the change was the sorting order for stories.

While the volumes about Extirpon, Navyrope, Pilltar, and the Gray Champion are still collectively referred to as the "Gerosha Legends Pack," their stories are considered separate volumes in Cataclysmic Gerosha. Through it all, Zeras' life as described in Comprehensive Gerosha remained firmly canon for Cataclysmic Gerosha, making him as much a cosmic keystone to the narrative as Stan and Shalia meeting and marrying.

Character bio
In "Building a Better Centipede Trap," Duke Arfaas and Harga Hebbleskin discuss the issue of how they are going to catch what the believe is "the elusive Gifted Flippo." They also note that there appear to be a lot of Centhuen Prototypes forming a community near Viron University. Having found a man named Justin who is apparently "not able to hurt a fly," Harga tests an aggressive AI backvisor program on him and gives him a prototype suit. They test the AI's ability to enhance Justin's combat ability and aggression levels. However, Justin demonstrates that the AI is only able to make him capable of fighting and following orders. Otherwise, he is a fairly mindless drone taking orders. It is ruled that Justin is horribly inadequate for the type of psycho assassin that Arfaas wants in his employ while taking over Dirbine. He therefore resolves to use Justin to abduct a new test subject capable of more aggression.

The Hebbleskins eventually settle on targeting the Weiss clan. However, the most prominent anti-Hebbleskin activist in the Weiss family never had any sons. Her daughters were Dolly and Lindsay Weiss. Lindsay had married Khumar Hamilton, the half-brother of Donte "Emeraldon" McArthur.

Dolly, however, had married a man named Jeraime Malestrom. Some careful scouting reveals that all four are at the Malestrom home for Christmas Eve in 2019. In "Corrupting of the Shrew," Arfaas determines to turn Jeraime into his "Musaran," as a "shrew-themed" villain that will wipe out the Centhuen Prototype community and rid the world of any Phexos that are part-centipede transhumans.

Justin manages (barely) to abduct Jeraime, though much of the initial sequence of abduction happens offscreen. Khumar escapes by sheer determination, but the girls are taken captive. Due to Justin's lack of focus, dozens of Hebbleskins zero in to carry out the raid. However, only two are shown initially being with Justin during the raid. No sooner is Jeraime attached to the backvisor than he immediately shows signs of increased aggression several-fold.

Meethlite scientists test out the difference by having Justin and Jeraime fight each other in their suits. All Meethlites present, especially Harga, are horrified by how efficiently and violently Jeraime murders Justin, as it appeared to take him no time at all. Justin is left bleeding to death on the floor, eventually dragged away and removed from his suit for burial. Spare suits are repainted with the Musaran color scheme, and a helmet is given to protect the backvisor. They decide that Jeraime as Musaran will be their new hitman.

Development
For the 2007 Ciem webcomic, the Dozerfleet founder wanted to get inventive. L1 the Llama had been a disaster as a villain in both incarnations. There was also no logic behind a llama and a centipede being mortal enemies. It was merely taking advantage of The Sims 2 and all the conveniences in that game. So for the 2007 remake, a new villain was proposed that would appear more threatening. The idea came along after some research to make the new villain shrew-themed. However, there was already a villain named "Shrew" in Marvel Comics.

Therefore, the Spanish word musaraña became a base for the new villain. Just as "Ciem" was short for ciempiés, "Musaran" became shorthand for Jeraime's new alter-ego. This created a new problem: there was nothing "shrew-like" to be found anywhere on Mod The Sims that could be used as an outfit. A "shrew-like" outfit would need to be kitbashed together from various other downloads, slightly modified in Body Shop and Photoshop.

From there, a Magneto helmet was downloaded and recolored to go with some facepaint to make what would in-Photoshop become the Musaran mask. The body needed to be a full-body suit mesh for Jeraime's Sim to be wrapped in. This led to downloading BrassTex's MechMale Mesh and testing it. Justin Hogan was created with the Tombstone of Life and Death test object; and got to be both a meta and in-universe prototype. Seeing how he looked and moved in the game proved that the "MechMan" suit worked. Therefore, Jeraime's version was repainted to create the Musaran look.

Gerosha Prime
Following the deaths of Stan and Shalia Flippo, Candi is placed in the care of their friends Dominique and Tracy McAuley. She spends some time with her sister Erin Flippo as well. However, Erin is murdered one day by the Hebbleskin Gang. Candi manifests her centilegs, which freak out the McAuleys. She flees their home in embarrassment. The McAuleys are not seen or heard from ever again.

Despair Gerosha
Dominique was not to be found in this version, except in brief mention. Tracy was originally to appear as well, but ultimately didn't. This version of the story changed a lot of details around. Marina was expressly stated as having moved out and married Matthew Baret. Jason and Tanya were written out of canon, due to a lack of proper place for them in the narrative. Mike and Jeff were hand-waved as having grown up and started a party store business together. Reily Flippo was re-written to be a bit of a jerk who didn't want anything to do with his own sisters. This left room for Imaki Izuki to become (slightly) more important in Candi's life. However, Erin Flippo was made into Candi and Miriam's primary caretaker. Much of Candi and Miriam's modern personalities were also defined in this version. However, this delegated Tracy to a background character who was somehow friends with the Flippos. The Sanchez family inexplicably was no longer around, limiting the Flippos' actual friends in town to surprisingly very few. Tracy is mentioned as having helped Candi move away from Gerosha - offscreen. Otherwise, the McAuleys may as well have not existed in this version.

Classic Gerosha
Main article: Ciem (webcomic)

In chapter 6 of Ciem, Candi goes directly to Tracy's house after killing Don the Psycho. She learns the horrible news that Erin was murdered, and that Miriam is in jail. Miriam was arrested "for her own protection" while at a pool party. Dominique was officially renamed Dominick, to sound less feminine. In this version, Tracy was a friend of Erin's and even went to college with her. However, Erin could be very strict. This was part of her training given the college she went to. Tracy mellowed considerably over the years, making her more accessible. She became a sort of surrogate aunt to Candi. Dominick is defined as being a scientist, though he is never seen doing anything. Tracy helps Candi cover up the mess made, and to help her disguise herself as "Candi Stevens" so she can start her life over in Viron. The McAuleys quickly vanish from the story afterward.

Comprehensive Gerosha
Main article: Ciem: Vigilante Centipede

This version made Dominick even more explicitly a scientist. But instead of Tracy being Erin's old college friend, Tracy is merely the Flippo family's lawyer. She astonishingly approves of Darius Philippine's efforts to knock Candi out with gas and then dump her in the woods behind a waterfall. They reason that by setting Candi up on a scavenger hunt to make her way back to civilization and forge a new identity for herself, they can stage her death and fool the Hebbleskin Gang into abandoning their pursuit of her. The plan backfires, and Arfaas seeks revenge on Gerosha and Evansville alike for not bringing him her head like was requested. Candi is even advised, after getting her money, to find a new lawyer to further dissociate herself with her old life. A lack of ideas for what to do with Tracy after this point largely resulted in her not being a major role in any Ciem-related media again.

One thing that did stand out about this version was that Dominick got to do something for the first time since Gerosha Prime. He was limited, though, to offering counseling to Miriam - and aiding her in fleeing to Alaska. But once she was there and had her money, she was abandoned there. The resulting loneliness led to her making numerous bad decisions in life.

Cataclysmic Gerosha
Main article: Sodality (series)

The McAuleys become two of many millions of casualties of the Affadidah regime in Ameristan. They were the Flippo family's lawyers once upon a time. However, they are slaughtered without mercy by the regime. Dominick is captured and immediately disemboweled. They try to capture Tracy, but she flees on foot. She is shot and falls into a river, where she gets carried away by the stream. Her drowned body is later recovered and cremated. The one consolation for Dominick and Tracy is that they are not completely made non-canon. However, they are demoted to extras much the way Maria Sanmarcos was.

Role in Ciem Tomorrow
When Silo and his mother go missing, Lex makes it part of his life's mission to discover their fate. Silo's existence is the beginning of a breakdown in Darius' ability to have full faith in Lex. When Lex gets older and runs his own operation in Gerosha similar to Darius', he remains haunted by the thought of never seeing Mallorie or Silo ever again. Dana McArthur, daughter of Candi McArthur, vows to help her cousin Lex in his search.

Powers
Much like his siblings John and Dana, Frank has all of Donte's abilities and all of Candi's. He can fly, smash through walls, resist bullets, fight off almost any illness, cannot get HIV, possesses centilegs (which he seldom utilizes,) etc. However, his abilities being identical to those of his parents means he inherits nearly all of their weaknesses also.

Equipment
Frank's equipment is virtually identical to that of Donte. However, he does eventually upgrade his suit to include centileg patch areas, allowing him to utilize his Centhuen Prototype nature as well. Since he and his siblings have near-identical powers, their suits become a matter of style preferences more than actual functional differences. Frank and John are Emwault-dominant, where as Dana is Centhuen Prototype-dominant. Dana's suit requires her to utilize more of an orange glow, resulting in Jordan Reddelwick nicknaming her "the Citrine Queen." Both John and Frank, however, glow green like their father. This results in the only major differences in their eventual costumes being John adopting a lighter color trim and wearing a helmet rather than a mask.

All three of the children utilize Zeran wardrobes for storage of their suits. But only Dana utilizes Zeran teleporters like her mother. This is because her centipede-like nature being dominant means she is willing to resort to more stealth missions than her brothers. The result is putting herself in more situations where she is likely to get crushed, or may need a way out of something that's quicker than flight. Frank, however, doesn't utilize stealth as much. He also seldom finds himself in any situation where teleportation would prove more advantageous than flight.

Weaknesses
Being a Phexo hybrid of an Emwault and a Centhuen Prototype means that Frank is subject to Bezeetol, though his skin is harder to penetrate than Candi's (or even Dana's.) He is even more susceptible to Marlquaanite prison suspended animation chambers than his father, given that he is a double-Phexo.

However, being a masculine hero means that he does not have his sister Dana's additional weakness of dealing with feminine biology. No pregnancy ability means no child-bearing adverse effects that could dampen his abilities. Birth control pills have little effect on him either, whereas they would significantly interfere with Dana's abilities. However, his strong desire to find a girlfriend and marry young - as his parents once plotted doing - becomes a blind spot that interferes with his sense of focus in life.

Character bio
Exact details of Frank's biography vary depending on the version of Candi being discussed. Therefore, Frank's bio is addressed here as accurately as can be ascertained by universe.

Gerosha Prime


Frank made his debut in November of 2005 in the Gerosha Prime version of Ciem 3, subtitled: "Curse of the Millipede." While he was never actually shown on screen, he was alluded to in the story text. It would become a plot point from then-on that Frank existed as Candi and Donte's first child together.

Despair Gerosha
Frank was set to return in either the Despair Gerosha version of Ciem 2 or Ciem 3, but his arrival was cut short when the 2006 Ciem webcomic's development was canceled due to technical problems.

Ciem 2
Main article: Ciem 2

While a variety of off-the-wall explanations were offered in previous versions of Ciem 2, the Classic Gerosha version was the first to take the radical simple step of arguing that Candi had conceived Frank shortly before the story began. Her discovery of pregnancy alerts her to the reason why her powers are suddenly dampened when battling Captain Aardwulf. Once she and Donte are able to reunite, they defeat Capp Aard and are married a short time later. Candi announces her pregnancy at the story's end.

Ciem 3
Main article: Ciem 3

By Ciem 3, Frank is a toddler in Candi and Donte's care. However, Donte needs to go to Ploribus Philippine for more treatments for the cancer he got from being a prisoner of Duke Arfaas. Donte takes Frank with him, while Charlie stays behind with Candi. This results in him being attacked by Milp, which is then used to set a trap to capture Candi. Frank remains safe in Donte's care the entire time, while Lex Philippine puts his safety on the line to rescue Charlie after Candi's capture.

Ciem: Nuclear Crisis
Main article: Ciem: Nuclear Crisis

Nuclear Crisis repeated Frank's element in the story almost verbatim to Ciem 2.

Ciem: Condemnation
Main article: Ciem: Condemnation

Frank's situation is repeated almost verbatim to Ciem 3, only Milp very nearly destroys the base where Donte is staying, endangering Frank a little bit more. Donte at this point has no powers left with which to fight.

Abolition
Main article: Abolition (Gerosha Chronicles)

Frank was to be a minor character growing up in Kentucky when his parents are forced to help the Abolished battle for their right to exist when Judge Terry Beliah challenges them on that. Little else is said of him, other than Candi's desire to keep him and Charlie safe.

Ciem Tomorrow
Main article: Ciem Tomorrow

Frank is depicted in this version to have grown up and married Chantell Tambell. He becomes Emeraldon II to carry on Donte's legacy, as Donte no longer has access to his abilities as an Emwault. However, he dies some time shortly before the series begins. His father dies of cancer, and mother is beheaded by the Hebbleskin Gang. The Gray Champion comes to Dana's rescue, allowing her to become the new Ciem. Frank himself once again seldom features, though his children and surviving wife were to become occasional plot points.

Cataclysmic Gerosha
Main article: Sodality (series)

In season 3 of Sodality, as the Sodality of Gerosha prepares to battle Captain Aardwulf, Candi discovers she is pregnant with Frank. The pregnancy begins interfering with her abilities, and she is forced to go on maternity leave. The Sodality becomes strong enough at that point to not entirely need her, so they wish her well. She does return in season 4 after Frank is born, but she is never on the team in the same full-time capacity as before. Frank is raised in Waco under the assumption Candi and Donte have that they will one day see him replace both of them in the Sodality's roster. To their benefit, he fulfills their dreams. However, he doesn't do it alone. He eventually has siblings John and Dana joining with him. The three and their other new additions on the Sodality roster do in the Sodality Second Generation what the Elites and Legends of the First Generation could not: rebuild Gerosha. The Sodality is then able to relocate; partially to Gerosha and partially to Evansville. The Gerosha Gaming Universe title Centipede + 49 explores the possibilities in more detail, while the main Cataclysmic continuity keeps the exact details open-ended in case of developments which might end up contradicting the games' narratives.

Battle for Metheel
Main article: Sodality: Battle for Metheel

Frank does not appear in this game, but is alluded to briefly by Candi when she complains about the difficulty in finding a babysitter.

Centipede + 49
Main article: The Gerosha Chronicles: Centipede + 49

Frank is one of many members of the Sodality that is called away to aid China in protecting Chimerica from the Phaletori. He and Donte go together, so the team will have two Emeraldons. Dana joins Andy and John in Alaska while Frank and Donte are in California. While he is gone, his mother Candi is experimented on and made physiologically younger. She is recruited as the original Ciem to a team with 49 enhanced soldiers to take over Ameristan and help Toklisana rebuild the United States.

After Candi and the 49 have managed to save Gray Champion Next and annex Ameristan to Toklisana, Frank elects to move to Evansville and rebuild it. Lex moves to the very top of SCALLOP, and puts John and Dana in charge of overseeing events in Gerosha during its reconstruction. Andy Baret joins his cousins. However, John soon feels crowded by having too much of this family to deal with. He decides to join Frank in Evansville. Devin Spanz begins dating Dana, and he joins Dana and Andy as part of Team Ciem. Candi is happy for her children, but elects to stay behind in Texas with Donte. The kids restore the Triangulum to its proper honors as a beacon of hope and symbol of the pride of Gerosha. Meanwhile, Candi and Donte grow old together in the Texan Triangulum.

Dana eventually marries Devin, and the two of them are able to take over the Triangulum from the city and make it a private residence once more. The Gerosha Stone is returned to its proper home inside the Triangulum. The Sodality of Gerosha eventually relocates to a rebuilt Evansville, along with SCALLOP relocating to to a rebuilt Louisville.

It remains open-ended at the moment if this continuity will become canon to Cataclysmic Gerosha (Earth-G7.0) proper as well, or will remain exclusive to the Gaming Universe (Earth-G7.2.)

Personality
Unlike his father, Frank is far from melancholy and reflective. He instead tends to be very optimistic and open to adventure. He doesn't like to feel too tied down, and prefers to be his own man whenever possible. When he does commit to something, however, he commits to it fully.

Development
The idea for Frank first came about as a plot device in the 2005 version of Ciem 3. His existence was merely to show that Candi and Donte were attempting to move on with their lives after the events in Ciem 2. He also proved to be a way of demonstrating that Candi and Donte had more to lose than each other. The idea that he was part of Candi and Donte's chance at a new life was going to also be carried over into Despair Gerosha, but that universe ended abruptly when the 2006 version of Ciem was canceled. In Classic Gerosha, the move was made to have Candi's pregnancy with Frank be the reason her powers started glitching in Ciem 2.

He naturally carried over into Ciem 3 afterward. The cancellation of Ciem webcomics and arrival of Comprehensive Gerosha with the Ciem novel trilogy changed little. Frank's roles in those stories were carried over nearly verbatim for Ciem: Nuclear Crisis and Ciem: Condemnation. He was likewise to be a minor character in Ciem Tomorrow as was envisioned at the time.

The cancellation of Comprehensive Gerosha and arrival of Cataclysmic Gerosha in 2012 came with the series Sodality being proposed. Frank became Candi's reason for maternity leave in the third season, allowing for her to be gradually transitioned out of the show's foreground. This in-turn made room for the Legends to take the forefront as they would be introduced throughout season 4. From there, it seemed the logical choice to leave open-ended what the possibilities would be for Frank.

The Gerosha Gaming Universe offers a vastly reinterpreted version of events for how Frank returns to Evansville and becomes Emeraldon II, in the premise for the aftermath of Centipede + 49. It's established that at some point, he marries Chantell Tambell and has three children: Lucy, Dylan, and Cindy. However, more was done to explore that in the Comprehensive Gerosha version of Ciem Tomorrow than in any Cataclysmic Gerosha variant. Little else has been established about Frank, since he was always intended to be a minor character.

In Sodality: Battle for Metheel when Frank is still a small child, Candi alludes to him by claiming that it was difficult to find a willing babysitter amongst SCALLOP agents. This is as Candi and Donte are joining Mukade and Meerkat in New Orleans to battle Milp II and Cupric, all the while aiding the National Guard in defending residents from the invasion of King Morzhuk's forces.

Ciem: Vigilante Centipede
Main article: Ciem: Vigilante Centipede

Little is known of Charlie's early life, except that his father went off to war alongside Donte. Donte was good friends with the Wortells, though they were never actually shown on screen in the Ciem webcomic trilogy. Ciem: Vigilante Centipede would have been the first appearance for Darrin Wortell. However, that novel's cancellation removed what would have been his first and only appearance in an Ciem-related media. Before dying, Darrin made a promise that if he and his wife both died, they wanted Donte to be first in line for considerations as someone who could adopt Charlie. He even wrote that into his will. At some point, his wife is killed by the Hebbleskin Gang. This leaves Charlie and orphaned infant.

Ciem 2 / Nuclear Crisis
Main articles: Ciem 2, Ciem: Nuclear Crisis

By this point in time, Candi and Donte are considering adopting Charlie. However, a judge rules they have to marry before the end of 2023 to get Charlie. A homosexual activist pair named Gary and Darryl, meanwhile, try to put pressure on the city to give them adoption privileges in spite of Darrin's will. The judge is considering violating the will and pandering to Gary and Darryl, but is reluctant as a new group arriving in town is threatening to lobby for his impeachment if he does so. Gary and Darryl meanwhile taunt Donte about how they intend to molest Charlie, resting assured that the judge will throw out Donte's commentary on their remarks as being "all hearsay." They begin stalking Donte around town, and even actively getting him blackballed from finding jobs. They nearly push Candi over the edge by taunting her over Denny and Angie's deaths, baselessly accusing her of being responsible.

After the events of this part of the timeline, Candi and Donte are able to marry successfully and adopt Charlie. Gary and Darryl discover that it was finalized too late for them to intercept, as they were out of town encouraging terrorist attacks on pro-family groups' buildings. They try to sue to gain custody of Charlie, and have the adoption overturned. When their suit is thrown out of court, they attempt to kidnap Charlie outright. The kidnapping is thwarted by Extirpon, who has no mercy on them.

Ciem 3 / Condemnation
Charlie is about ready to enter kindergarten when the scourge of Milp arrives in town. Donte, having lost the last of his abilities as Emeraldon, goes to visit Darius Philippine for cancer treatment. He takes Frank with him, and leaves Charlie behind with Candi. Milp uses an elaborate strategy to get Ciem distracted, then attacks Charlie. She makes sure to keep him alive, but murders the babysitter. She puts some of Lloyd Kolumn's plants in the hospital, who feebly try to twist Charlie's words to frame Candi for child abuse. However, Candi arrives in time and hears Charlie's rebuttal of their claims as he defends his mother's reputation. Confused social workers at the scene suddenly find themselves assaulted with tear gas as the plants set to work capturing Candi. Charlie is left in the hospital to recover from his injuries.

However, Lex Philippine realizes that it is all a trap. When his father won't act to stop the upcoming disasters, Lex heads to the hospital to recover Charlie on his own. He is the first to report back that Dolly's actions led to Milp using an AI backvisor to gain control of Botan the Plant-Man. After the events in this part of the timeline, Charlie is eventually reunited with his family. They move to Kentucky to start their lives over, confident that they can finally move on after both Duke Arfaas and Lloyd Kolumn are confirmed as dead.

Abolition
Main article: Abolition (Gerosha Chronicles)

Charlie was to appear briefly in Abolition before it was canceled. He was to be shown with Candi and Frank at home, working on schoolwork and wondering what all the fuss was about amongst the adults.

Ciem Tomorrow
Main article: Ciem Tomorrow

By the Ciem Tomorrow timeline, Charlie had managed to take his share of money from his mother and turn it into a super-successful business. He has since become a billionaire, and has a family of his own and mansion to live in. He does try to stay somewhat under the radar and not live too extravagantly, however. He fears that the Phaletori will want his company's inventory for their evil purposes, and hires his younger brother John "Verdecent" McArthur as a glorified security guard - one that is free to leave the grounds in pursuit of thieves if necessary. He also financially backs Lex Philippine's operations in Gerosha, which includes Dana's efforts to free Gerosha from its dome.

Personality
While Charlie received very little development overall, he was revealed to be very optimistic child and a bright thinker. He is only shown as being fearful after being attacked by Milp. He remains fearful until after the events in Ciem 3 / Ciem: Condemnation. Afterwards, he grows up to be a man of intellect and confidence. He is even at times skillfully manipulative. However, he keeps his pride in check so as not to become like the villains he crusades against.

Concept
Feeling that Candi and Donte's lives were too trivial, the Dozerfleet founder decided to give them something to do to make them important contributors to the world around them outside of superhero work. Various experiments with gameplay led to a child Sim in Donte's family. So the Dozerfleet founder decided to have Donte adopt the child. This led to the Classic Gerosha version of Ciem 2 retconning Charlie into the story. He was little more than an additional subplot to add stress in Candi's life. Plans soon surfaced for his being attacked by Milp to be a catalyst for the plot of Ciem 3.

The part about Milp using his injuries as a way to frame Candi for child abuse was inspired by The Ring Two, in which Samara possesses Aidan in order to tempt Rachel into accepting her desire to murder everyone in town and make Rachel a surrogate mother. In that movie, the town's nurses and social workers mistake Naomi Watts' character for a child abuser. When the Ciem webcomic trilogy was canceled in favor of a novel trilogy, the plot for Ciem 3 was almost verbatim copied over to Ciem: Condemnation. Both versions were later canceled in favor of Sodality in Cataclysmic Gerosha. In this version, Donte's life situation and physiological differences combine to ensure he never meets and befriends Darrin Wortell. As a result, Charlie effectively doesn't exist in that continuity.

Design
Much like with Tom Rintel, Charlie's design was modeled after three major inspirations. The first was David Dorfman as Aidan Keller in The Ring. The second influence for both characters' designs was the character of Charles Wallace Murry from Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, as depicted on the book's front covers for 1991 and 1996 as published by Dell Yearling. . The illustrator who depicted L'Engle's Charlie for that particular book cover was Jody A. Lee. Finally, the Red Planet miniseries adaptation that first featured on Fox Kids in 1994 had the character of PJ, whose blond hair and innocent stares became an inspiration for young Charlie McArthur and Tom Rintel alike.

Character bio
Catalina was born in 64 AD to a wealthy patrician family. In her teen years, however, she converted to Christianity. She kept it hidden from her father for years, but things fell apart after it was discovered that she wanted to marry a plebian by the name of Zeras. Around 96 AD, after Zeras had been made a slave to punish him for the "crime" of loving Catalina, he was rescued by Catalina. The couple then wed in secret, and fled north. Catalina's father was outraged by his daughter's successful rebellion. Not wishing to let the young couple find peace and prosperity anywhere, he hired Markus Mortikus to hunt them down, even telling Markus that he should leave "no square inch" of the planet's surface unturned until they were found - and slaughtered in the most horrific way imaginable.

Markus eventually succeeded in his goal of finding Zeras and Catalina, and made sport of torturing and murdering them. He even had Zeras' eyes pried open to force him to watch as Catalina was brutally decapitated with a sword. Her death drove Zeras insane, leading to him breaking free and murdering Markus. Zeras then went on and murdered all of Markus' foot assembly, and most of his prostitutes.

From there, Zeras fled towards the Alps and was struck by the Marlquaan. He eventually became the founder of Meethlite civilization, and used his newfound position of power to slaughter nearly everyone in Rome he deemed even remotely responsible for her death.

Personality
Catalina was not one to hesitate to do what she felt was right, even if it would cost her everything. But before her father's insane hatred for Zeras drove her to make an extreme choice, she was otherwise a very loving and obedient member of the house. She was kind to nearly everyone she met, a sweetheart's sweetheart. Even in the throes of being slaughtered, she would beg her husband not to be ruled by vengeance. Alas, that was a request he could not heed. Not even for her sake. Her death led to a massacre, as those responsible were given nowhere to run when Zeras returned in power to seek revenge.

Development
Catalina's name was chosen based on the name being one of many in J's Latin class books at Michigan Lutheran Seminary. She was not created as a formal character until the first draft in October of 2010, during an early draft of what was going to be "20,000 Legs into the Backstory," the first chapter of Ciem: Vigilante Centipede. This was so that her death would serve as a catalyst for Zeras' roaring rampage of revenge, one which gave rhyme and reason to his being a fugitive on the run from Rome. In turn, this was motivate him to put himself in the right place at the right time to end up being struck by the Marlquaan.

Her presence recursively led to John Domeck and Kicked Deer having a near-identical dynamic in their marriage: determined warrior man, with a wife who is sweeter than she has any right to be.

Otherwise, Catalina has nowhere near the same impact on the greater Gerosha narrative that her husband Zeras has. However, she does become the inspiration behind the Hebbleskin Gang's creed of Decolarent eam, eviscerate eum. When Shalia Flippo frustrates their plans one time too many, they vow to have all her future daughter's heads as trophies. In Classic and Comprehensive Gerosha, they go to ridiculous lengths to make good on those threats, even going so far as to eventually also have Dolly Malestrom die this way. In Cataclysmic Gerosha, the threat ends up being rendered hollow by the Hebbleskins' defeat. Only Erin ends up dead in a manner even somewhat similar.

Character bio
Little is known about General Xiang, except that he was to lead a team of covert agents into China to intercept the Ming-Yo and recover it from whoever currently possessed it. He proves as confused as anyone else when it is revealed that neither Vienna Dockler nor Miriam Flippo has it. He loses his best men to Captain Aardwulf before Ciem and Emeraldon are able to retrieve and destroy the Ming-Yo. As Emeraldon disposes of it, Ciem battles Aard to distract him. It is not revealed if Xiang ever learns the full truth. But word of a nuclear explosion in the Gulf of Mexico catches Xiang's attention that the Ming-Yo may have been destroyed. He remains on high alert for the Ming-Cho, convinced it too will eventually turn up somewhere.

Development
Xiang was first envisioned in September of 2005 as a minor background character. He was to be mentioned periodically, but with no real plan for how often he would actually appear. His placement in Ciem 2 was to show someone that Black Rat in particular could take orders from. Otherwise, he remains one of many supporting roles for Ciem 2 and Ciem: Nuclear Crisis that was not thoroughly developed.

Skills
Mingmei is a sharp-shooting agent with quick wits, who knows when to use force and when to use persuasion - but can hold her own in a physical brawl if she has to. Her team considers her seductive capabilities to be her greatest strength; since she's an even better negotiator than Black Rat - and can work with clientele that he can't. However, her need to control a situation has led her to work undercover, often posing as a prostitute in order to gain information.

Weaknesses
Having a wild side, she has quickly earned a bad reputation on the force for the underhanded methods she has pursued in order to first seduce and then subdue targets.

Due to her risk-taking, and lack of pregnancy, she has often feared that she might be sterile. In spite her bad reputation, she was able to begin dating her fellow team member Black Rat - himself notorious for his conquests. Tin Dragon, ever the hothead, had reservations against that arrangement. He believed it to be a violation of the line of separation between business and personal matters. The burns she sustains during her battle against Captain Aardwulf leave her psychologically damaged; humbled, but still capable of putting up a fight if she needs to. This leads to her desire to retire.

Early life and career
Mingmei, born in 1986, grew up as a sweet child; but was constantly mistreated by her peers. The irony of her codename was intended originally as an insult. A hornet that is itself stung is supposed to be an epic fail.

When her uncle was murdered, she tracked down the killer by seducing the killer's brother - while posing as a prostitute and convincing him to get careless with information about family. Police readily identified her in spite her initial attempt to escape. She used her brief time as a fugitive to track down the killer and gather more evidence against him. Eventually, police identified her as the prostitute that had eluded them. She was quickly arrested, but used the opportunity to serve as an informant. Police were able to catch the killer using all the insights and evidence she provided them. Her detective skills and inherent knack for espionage impressed an official with ties to the Chinese MSS, who had her employed as a honeypot spy working for the government in 2005 at the age of 19.

She was determined to prove wrong all those who ridiculed and belittled her as useless in her old life, and soon proved to be worth her salt. A few of those girls that taunted her were later caught with various contraband stolen from US firms; and it was none other than Stung Hornet who led the charge to have them arrested.

She did not, however, let her new-found power get to her head. Her father had a wise old friend whom he kept around, who became a mentor to Stung Hornet in her younger years. He taught her to always be ready to show compassion, and to not let her heart be ruled by prideful vengeance. After around 30 missions as a honey trap and after demonstrating herself a skilled combatant and a kindhearted figure with some skill in leadership, she was promoted to a position where she got to keep her clothes on.

Sodality
Main article: Sodality (series) The combined effects of the Hebbleskin Gang and the Obama White House's policies dissolved the United States into four countries in 2018. Chaos ensued in the Western Hemisphere. Once-great nations disintegrated. Madness, calamity, and evil were soon everywhere. Beijing colonized one whole section of the four splinters of what was the US, forming "Chimerica." Stung Hornet suspected she would be reassigned to the colony at any time. In the mean time, she was put in charge of patrolling Shanghai to keep the Hebbleskins out. It was this patrolling of Shanghai that led her to discovering Miriam Ann "Sniperbadger" Flippo, who revealed herself after hiding in Hong Kong under the alias "Haishui."

After an unpleasant encounter with Meethlites that smuggled themselves into Hong Kong, Miriam decided to betray her secret identity in exchange for protection by government officials. She turned herself in, and Stung Hornet was assigned to the case. Mingmei immediately realized that Miriam was a broken soul, and set to work acting as a surrogate mother figure given they had some common ground. In this way, she quickly gained Miriam's trust.

Miriam agrees to work for the agency as a hacker, at least for a time - provided they only assign her to cases involving the Hebbleskin Gang. Mingmei takes her role as Miriam's supervisor very seriously, often protecting her from Tin Dragon's brash, demeaning, ethnocentric remarks. This causes Tin Dragon to ridicule Mingmei, accusing her of "adopting strays." The criticism - and Tin Dragon's racist remarks - intensify when she allows Miriam to begin dating their other ex-American, gang-pressed operative: Guan. "Guan" turns out to be the codename of a scientist whose real name is Steve McLaine. In season one of Sodality, Mingmei is introduced to Miriam. They work together with the other agents to fight back against the Hebbleskin Gang's push to take over Hong Kong. Their quest continues in season two, although they are eventually reassigned to an outpost in Alaska. Here, they have to deal with Russian spies that want to take Alaska back for Russia. A hacker who rivals Miriam's skills, known as Melvin Markus, vows to crack the code of Sniperbadger's security measures, spelling jeopardy for the whole team. In season three, Stung Hornet must put her life on the line to help Miriam, Steve, and Black Rat defeat Captain Aardwulf. This results in Miriam's friends having to team up with Candi's. Stung Hornet does not play a major role in season four.

Undercover as an inmate
When the Kirby Act was passed, it made it illegal for SCALLOP to create new Phexos. This created a lot of problems regarding the rights of pre-existing Phexos. During his tenure, Judge Terry Beliah made illegal amendments from the bench to the Kirby Act that introduced special exemptions for Meethexos whilst blatantly calling for the trampling of rights of Phexos, their blood relatives, their friends, and any past sexual relations of them as well. Marlquaanites were placed under the same restrictions. To protest the Beliah Amendments being enforced, SCALLOP lobbied for the rights to apprehend all known Phexos and Marlquaanites in their database and place them in protective custody away from the state. From there, they'd lobby for those individuals to be interviewed by politicians and the media about how the Act has affected their everyday lives. The state responds by ordering SCALLOP to arrest the entire Sodality of Gerosha - while it works with the Italian government to get the Sodality of Florence into SCALLOP custody.

Around the same time, the Society of the Icy Finger begins putting plans into motion to eradicate both Sodalities by force - using information relayed by Jim Oisdaat before he was killed by the Sapphire King. Word reaches Beijing that SCALLOP's orders include invading Chimerican Alaska and abducting Miriam McLaine and her family. However, authorities there decide that they would rather sacrifice an MSS agent to Toklisanan politics than risk losing Sniperbadger. They instead ask Shing Xu to surrender Mingmei to SCALLOP. Shing and Mingmei have sex a final time, and then agree to part ways. Shing vows to hunt down the Icy Finger, so that her sacrifice isn't in vain. Mingmei vows to use her time in the Toklisanan prison system to weed out Icy Finger recruiters. Shing and Mingmei arrive a short ways away from the science base, and discover Brian Mizgel. Mingmei wastes little time turning herself in. Brian initially hesitates about arresting her. However; she reminds him that she's still wanted for theft, prostitution, and espionage dating back about ten years prior when she was still working as a honeypot for the Chinese government. The two remark on how ironic it is that Miriam originally came to Mingmei as the vulnerable and broken heroine willing to give up her freedom to fight for a cause, while Mingmei was in a position of power - only for Mingmei to be doing almost the same thing as Miriam a mere seven years later - and with all that power gone. Brian promises not to send anyone after Shing or Miriam. He drives Mingmei to the nearest police station, then waits for a flight to take her to the SCALLOP Women's Containment Center.

Inside the prison, Mingmei proves really effective at assisting guards in maintaining order, as the other Sodality women trust her judgment as a shot-caller. However, she does steal a Zeran teleporter to assist Keet Kabo in escaping. She also forms close bonds of friendship with Candi and Celia. Brian and Mingmei begin having an affair, though she calls it off when her visions of Hell begin intensifying. She finds herself transferred, along with Celia, to Houston Female Correctional after the Icy Finger gets SCALLOP's prison system shut down. It isn't long afterward, that her request is honored to share a cell with Celia - allowing her to protect Celia from physical harm that could otherwise be inflicted by other inmates.

The two girls, sure enough, do manage to locate Icy Finger recruiters. However, they also manage to convince other inmates to aid the Sodality's cause. Police fear that Sodality sympathizers and Icy Finger sympathizers could collide in a giant riot. Mingmei demonstrates enormous bravery helping the facility's security maintain order when Cupric raids the prison and sets female convicts loose on the public. Police are surprised to find that the Sodality sympathizers complied with Mingmei's leading them to not take advantage of the chaos by escaping. She is temporarily removed from her cell to aid in tracking down the fugitives. This results in her working with the eventually-paroled Founding Elites to reclaim Texas from the Icy Finger and Cupric. She is sent back to prison afterward; but her 3-year sentence is reduced to a single year.

Faked death and staged funeral
The diplomats she'd seduced and robbed are furious to learn that Stung Hornet is now viewed by the public as a hero - with some even advocating for her to receive a full pardon. They instead advocate for her to receive the death penalty for all the other crimes to which she'd confessed. After borrowing some Remotach from Candi, Mingmei fakes her own death on the guillotine in a SCALLOP facility. The video of her execution - and a lock of her hair - are given to said political officials as "proof" that she'd paid the price. She is secretly escorted back to Alaska, where Shing is able to return her to China alive and well. Miriam is most of all grateful that the video was a hoax.

To keep the public in the dark about Mingmei's rescue, SCALLOP has the Sodality stage a public memorial ceremony for her at a local park. A tombstone for her is purchased and placed in a cemetery in Waco.

Semi-retirement
Shing and Mingmei's romance begins to bud like never before after she is set free from the Houston facility in 2027. The MSS grants her and Shing permission to marry. The couple don't take long to celebrate their union, as missions could await. However, Mingmei conceives a child before too long. She decides to be less active in the field in order to tend to her maternal duties. She makes Miriam and Steve the godparents of her son. The new Xu family is eventually allowed a vacation to Alaska to visit their Sodality friends. Wilbur baptizes all of them in Alaska. She considers the child to be particularly a gift from Heaven, since she feared beforehand that she was sterile.

Personality
Mingmei tends to be very charismatic and friendly; but knows when to be tough and use force. In spite her exterior charm, she does have a very strong sense of the seriousness of the situations she gets into. She is driven by the loved ones in her life and principles she adheres to; but is also saddled with a lot of guilt and shame over the moral compromises she's had to make to complete missions. While longing to have children, she doesn't have one until she turns 43; fearing herself sterile before that. Shing, the father, proves to be very grateful and relieved. Her guilt over her past conquests leads to her making self-deprecating jokes whenever her past comes back to haunt her. When captured by SCALLOP, a foreign dignitary she'd seduced and stolen documents from discovers her in a jail cell. She laughs about it, and assures him not to worry - that she's right where she feels she belongs.

She strongly believes in protecting her native country of China from Hebbleskin and Icy Finger threats; but will quickly put herself on the line to protect her personal loved ones even over national interests. Her maternal instincts make her an effective mentor to a broken Miriam Flippo as well. She carries this over in season 5, becoming a mentor to Celia Winehart when they are both captured by SCALLOP following the Kirby Act debacle. After the Icy Finger attacks SCALLOP's Juvenile Containment Center and massacres several of the underage inmates, the state of Texas determines that Lex Philippine can no longer protect prisoners effectively. Since Mingmei and Celia have actual criminal records, they are sent to the Houston Female Correctional center. Mingmei becomes Celia's unofficial bodyguard and cellmate. Regardless of setting, Mingmei knows how to be sweet while also commanding respect and order.

Marvel: Avengers Alliance Fanfic Universe
Stung Hornet has been proposed as a sprite for Marvel: Avengers Alliance on Facebook, a game made by Playdom. An event described as "the Percolation" makes a carbon copy of her inside Earth-12131 some time after the Earth-G7.2.1 Percolation story arc proper, along with many of her other teammates and other Geroshans as well. On The Marvel: Avengers Alliance Fanfic Universe Wiki, she is presented as being capable of being offered inside the game as one of three sprites.

Her Instigation trenchcoat that she wears while interrogating Miriam is described as her "Classic" outfit, given that it harkens back to her appearance in Ciem 2. While not the true Classic Gerosha look nor her Comprehensive Gerosha counterpart from Ciem: Nuclear Crisis, the sprite's "Classic" outfit variant is generated from a modified outfit in The Sims 4. It is rendered post-Photoshop to closely resemble her true Classic look.

The second outfit available to Mingmei is her "Summer Fling" outfit, which she wore when she was arrested for prostitution early in her career. Shen Ke, in the infobox image above, is shown in a variant of the Summer Fling outfit.

The final outfit on her is a variant of her winter gear outfit from the "Cold Day in Harbin" concept still on DeviantArt, thus described as her "Cold Day in Harbin" alternate uniform.

Prior continuities
Continuities: Earth-G5, Earth-G6

Early renditions of Stung Hornet possessed very little background and character development for her. She was one of four agents who were sent as spies into the US to hunt for Miriam Flippo, who was wanted for questioning in connection to a Hebbleskin Gang infiltration of Chinese state department security. Their quest to find her, however, led them straight into the crossfire of the terrorist group known as the Mik-Non; which was planning to spread mayhem all over Dirbine/Evansville.

Making matters worse, Captain Aardwulf was on the loose. His reign of terror led directly to the murder of Stung Hornet and Tin Dragon. Black Rat was spared, albeit briefly; and only by way of a Classic Gerosha and Comprehensive Gerosha ret-con. In Gerosha Prime, where Black Rat debuted, he too was killed. The only other agent to survive was Teal Hog, who debuted in Classic Gerosha along with Tin Dragon and Stung Hornet.

Earlier versions
Stung Hornet's real name was not deduced until shortly before the initial work had begun on creating Ciem: Vigilante Centipede. Before that, she was known only by her codename. Stung Hornet was never intended originally to be more than a joke character, thrown into Ciem 2 just so that Captain Aardwulf could rack up a body count. Her appearance wasn't finalized until concept art was made for her in 2011, when preliminary work was being done for Nuclear Crisis. Since then, her appearance changed fairly little.

Cataclysmic Gerosha
For Sodality, it was decided that she was to be given an in-depth backstory. She also became a main character, as opposed to a one-off cameo. No longer confined to just the quest to recover the Ming-Yo from Captain Aardwulf, Mingmei took on a life of her own as Miriam's mentor. She was given a detailed history, particularly about her origin and criminal record. It was originally planned that she would play a very minor role in the story after season 3 ended; but she was determined in 2015 to have enough popularity potential to warrant being returned to the limelight for season 5. As other characters have grown tired of the business or else are leaving regular duty to raise families, Mingmei's importance grows. She was reimagined from a one-off support character, to a Dozerfleet analog of Marvel's Black Widow.

Virtual dolls
Mingmei's first-ever appearance was brief, and she was an assistant to Black Rat in Ciem 2 rendered in The Sims 2. For Nuclear Crisis, she got a makeover in The Sims 3. As of 2015, her season 5 self is also prominently featured in The Sims 4 as an inmate at the SCALLOP Women's Containment Center.

Real-life models
Her look was unofficially put up for a casting call on DevianArt in the late fall of 2012. On December 19th of 2012, DeviantArt artist Maleica agreed to a deal to be advertised on DozerfleetWiki in exchange for the use of modified versions of his work. This made the Stung Hornet article the first to feature an approved image by the actual artist to feature a real-life model double for the character. That same day, the Stung Hornet article became the first to implement anaglyph glasses icons on the wiki, to indicate links to DeviantArt-stored, 3D versions of images. This was to help promote the series' concept art, which was made in 3D as well as 2D. While anaglyph, and therefore not in keeping with the best 3D technology out there, the move into 3D at all became a major milestone in Dozerfleet history.

On Wednesday, March 4th of 2015 around 2:02 PM EST, Mingmei's model was replaced with a stock photo of Chinese model Shen Ke, who goes on DeviantArt by the username "Kizysem." The background of her original photo was replaced with a Grand Ledge apartment hall photo from the Dozerfleet Grand Ledge Stock Photos library.

Character bio
Markus was born a few years after Zeras and Catalina. But unlike them, he never encountered the First Century Church as a child. He grew up to become a sadist, often kidnapping those that higher society officials didn't like and torturing them until the time came to murder them outright.

When Catalina and Zeras run away together, Markus is hired to hunt them down to the ends of the Earth and punish them. He manages to capture them at one point, and revels in whipping and sexually abusing them, all while celebrating the night away with prostitutes. However, he overestimates the security of Zeras' bondage. When he pries Zeras' eyes open to force Zeras to watch as Catalina is beheaded right in front of him, Zeras snaps and breaks free. Markus is killed in a fashion every bit as horrific as that he had in mind for Zeras to endure. The murderous rampage Zeras embarks on afterward leads to him becoming a fugitive from Rome, leading to Zeras fleeing toward a hill at exactly the right moment to get struck and bonded with the Marlquaan. From there, Meethlite civilization is born.

Markus had but one major creed regarding how he executed prisoners: Decolarent eam, eviscerate eum. This creed is then adopted by Zeras for how to execute only the most horrific violators of the law under Meethlite society. However, it eventually becomes a tool of terror; utilized by the Hebbleskin Gang when dealing with their political adversaries.

Development
Markus was designated to be the most evil, cruel character that could possibly result in Zeras' rampages, and would explain Zeras' motivations for fleeing towards the Alps, ending up in the right place at the right time to become the first ever Marlquaanite. His name also made him into a sort of precursor to Melvin Markus, a cruel adversary of Miriam Flippo who rivals her abilities in hacking.

Markus' first official mention was going to be in the Classic Gerosha remake of The Battle for Gerosha, but that was abandoned when the Classic era continuity was. Instead, his first official mention was in the first draft of the Ciem: Vigilante Centipede first chapter "20,000 Legs into the Backstory;" which was written in October of 2010. Just like with Catalina, plans were in 2010 to have a story separate from Vigilante Centipede that would eventually expand on his role in Gerosha mythos. That story premise became The Tragedy of Lord Zeras. In addition to becoming an excuse for Zeras' fugitive status, Markus became an excuse for why Duke Arfaas is so obsessed with collecting the Flippo Triplets' heads as trophies.

Character bio


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Ciem 2 / Nuclear Crisis
Word slips to Kolumn, an Arfaas sympathizer from the very get-go, that China has mastered the art of exploiting nin-chyo radiation. It has confined its supply of the substance into the Ming-Yo and Ming-Cho capsules, and plans to keep it stored in case they ever have need of it. However, a terrorist faction within China called the Mik-Non has also taken an interest in the projects. To keep China from posing a threat, the CIA sends agents Vienna Dockler and Betty Harmin to steal these "blue rocks." Vienna has stolen the Ming-Yo and Betty the Ming-Cho, and the two girls are in different parts of southern Indiana hiding with their loot. Kolumn seizes the opportunity to win favor with Arfaas. He reveals that a team of his which includes Melvin Markus may have located the whereabouts of Miriam Flippo. All that is needed is to frame her Sniperbadger online persona for the Hebbleskin Gang's espionage in China, and then they'd be guaranteed that nearly the whole world would be out to snuff Miriam. In the mean time, Kolumn uses his position of authority to ensure that Vienna is hiding in Evansville.

An inquisitive Andrew Tinsel, however, discovers that his boss Kolumn is a traitor working for Arfass. He copies for himself immense amounts of incriminating evidence of the plot against Miriam Flippo also. This compels Tinsel to quit his job suddenly and without explanation. Kolumn immediately suspects that Tinsel knows about his ties to Arfaas, and sends in a team of Meethlite assassins with military-grade equipment to take out Tinsel and his entire family. They manage to murder Andrew's wife, Maggie Tinsel. However, Andrew is too smart for the trap set for him at home and escapes the house with his life and several dead Meethlites. He flees with young Sandy Tinsel to Evansville, hoping he can make the right connections in time to get Darius' support.

Kolumn ups the ante, however, sending even more Meethlites and one liaison to them into downtown Evansville to watch Andrew's every move. They finally discover that he and his daughter Sandy are aboard a bus trying to appear inconspicuous. Kolumn's methods of tracking and targeting victims prove to be far more effective than Arfaas', and a trap is set so that a Meethlite with a bazooka can blow up the bus when it turns a corner. Intervention by Ciem results in the Tinsels' rescue and escape into the home of an elderly woman named Betsy Milston. The Tinsels give Ciem a USB drive containing copies of the incriminating evidence against Kolumn. Candi goes home to sleep on it; but is awakened by a terrible nightmare.

Miriam, Steve, and Andrew prove to be Kolumn's undoing. Steve finds out what the Hebbleskins are up to; and gets Chinese intelligence to focus more closely on the Hebbleskins. Miriam takes Andrew's USB drive data and uses it to hack several databases, deleting all the work done to frame her and correctly implicating Kolumn and Arfaas for everything. This results in Kolumn having to hop into a helicopter and fly away to safety with Arfaas as his former agency begins a hot pursuit of him. Realizing that Ciem lives in the area around Evansville somewhere, he vows to destroy her and her loved ones.

Ciem 3 / Ciem: Condemnation
Following Arfaas' death, Kolumn becomes one of several candidates to replace him. He feels the need to prove himself, however. He manages this by rounding up Marlquaanites and Phexos into a prison facility that the Hebbleksins built along the side of a coastline cliff in California. One edge of it was built into the cliff side, with the other end a rectangular metallic tube jutting out into the sea. Kolumn had decided he would capture Ciem and a few other enemies, behead some of them, and then drown all the rest by flooding his own facility.

With a little help from Delusia however, Candi is able to survive her execution and help the other captives escape. Delusia traps Kolumn and others in the execution room, then makes the illusion of decapitated Candi disappear. Kolumn's prior mad ecstasy at utter victory over one of Shalia's daughters turns to blubbering panic; himself and the execution crew trapped in the room and left to drown. He all the while completely ignores the fact that Dolly Malestrom has attacked on the surface and gone on a killing spree against Kolumn's loyalists. He dies still believing that Candi is the "liPo" of prophecy; never learning the truth that it was Dolly all along.

Personality
Kolumn begins as an arrogant mole within the NSA, abusing his position to gain intelligence for Arfaas to aid the Hebbleskin Gang in plotting attacks on cities. Some other moles in cohorts with him are even able to manipulate the CIA, giving the Hebbleskins access to useful international insights. Kolumn had been around performing these duties since before Candi left Gerosha. However, he was revealed rather quickly in September of 2023 when he underestimated Steve McLaine and Miriam Flippo's resolve.

Being exposed led to his partners from within being exposed and forcibly removed, some even convicted of treason. Kolumn's increased loyalty to Arfaas and dependence for survival led to him becoming both bitter and a tad unhinged. His mental and emotional health started declining from the moment he fled in his helicopter. His sadistic side began to take over; and he reveled in the torturing and executing of female prisoners. He set his sights on capturing Ciem when Arfaas reveals that to be his second-top priority right after finding out who the Gifted Flippo is. It is not long after Afaas' death that Kolumn deduces it to be Candi. He uses his training at the NSA to do what Arfaas couldn't&mdash;directly pinpoint Candi's location and lifestyle. He sends in Milp to create a diversion, while he sets the real trap for Ciem. Believing himself successful at Candi's execution creates an exhilaration that wipes out the last ounce of sanity in him; and he is reduced to a blubbering idiot.

Development
Ideas for creating Lloyd Kolumn as a character came around 2007-2008. It seemed very odd that in the Gerosha Prime version of Ciem 2, Arfaas was able to frame Miriam all by himself. An inside government connection had to explain how it worked, even if minimally. It would also show how Arfaas infiltrates societies and puts his loyalists in charge.

Mercury Rising influence
It was around that time that the Dozerfleet founder rented Mercury Rising from Family Video in Big Rapids. So compelling and convincing was Alec Baldwin in his role as Nicholas Kudrow in that movie, that it only seemed logical to include a tribute/parody in Ciem 2. The name "Kolumn" is thus a deliberate misspelling of "column," the opposite in a database table from a row (as in Kudrow.) Far from being a patriotic extremist in Kudrow's sense, Kolumn tends to be as corrupt as possible.

The parody element is made even more deliberate; in that Kolumn attempts to assassinate the Tinsels for knowing too much in the exact same way that Kudrow orders the Lynch family to be killed. However, he fails to murder Andrew Tinsel&mdash;the only one he would have had any need to assassinate. Andrew hides on a bus (rather than the train Bruce Willis' character tried to hide on), with his (very much non-autistic) daughter Sandy. And while Kudrow is willing to send a nigh-invulnerable giant hitman to make sure only intended targets are killed, Kolumn seems to delight in causing as much collateral damage as possible by sending in Meethlites with RPG launchers.

Exile from canon
The in-jokes of his being a parody of Kudrow wore thin, and his overall role no longer made sense in the Sodality timeline. Therefore, Kolumn is not returning.

Trivia

 * Kolumn's name, for example, is a deliberate mis-pelling of "column," the opposite organization field type of a row. Kolumn as a character is a parody of Alec Baldwin playing the character of Kudrow in Mercury Rising.
 * Ironically, Steve McLaine's last name was in no way inspired by John McClane, the character Bruce Willis plays in the Die Hard film series. This was discovered later to be a pleasant coincidence.

Early life
Kyle was born in 1996 to Michael Freneti and his girlfriend Gina Winston in Baton Rouge. His early life consisted of his father avoiding Phexos like the plague. In fact, Michael had a tendency to claim that they "did something to us," without explaining to Kyle what that meant. He would often refer to them as "the Rumpelstiltskins" to rub in that they were out to collect him - or Kyle. When Kyle turned 11, he decided to start working as an apprentice to an alligator hunter named Bobby Sorghal. Gina left Michael to pursue a wealthy local man who was not an alcoholic. Therefore, Kyle looked at his apprenticeship as a way to get away from all the drama at home.

Becoming the Meerkat
Eventually, Kyle moved to New Orleans to try to find work. He found a job as a security guard for a storage center. However, he also discovered how high he could jump when he foiled a murder attempt that was about to go on somewhere on the property at night. The villains tried to flee, but a really-high-jumping Kyle was able to catch up to them and subdue them. He soon checked their IDs to see why they were so ruthless when pushing other pedestrians out of their way as they attempted to flee: they were Gleeful-N-Young affiliates with ties to a taken-down Sleet Mountain bottling plant. Storage center assassinations were a common practice for that crowd.

Kyle returned after subduing the fleeing would-be killers and making them easy for police to find. He manages to free the captives from their ropes. However, his heroics meant he left the grounds. Therefore, he was fired from his job. As he searched for another job, a date pointed out to him that he looked "kind of like a meerkat" when he stood up alert. His Good Samaritan antics around town, utilizing his jumping ability, increased from then-on. He was soon known all over town as Kyle "the Meerkat."

Moving to Slidell
Kyle's limited education outside of alligator hunting led to him being turned away for most jobs, even when he exercised more common sense on the job than a lot of his colleagues who had far superior educational backgrounds. Repeatedly being rejected in New Orleans for work led to him eventually moving to Slidell. He took shelter in the swamps there, and even built his own house. He began alligator hunting as a way to make money, so that he could pay his bills. He also became a "prepper," anticipating that the country was on the brink of collapse. His predictions became true when Affadidah's regime took over a quarter of the United States and renamed it "Ameristan." The Meerkat was soon literally jumping into action to protect his friends and neighbors from invading Ameristani forces.

He discovers a Japanese exchange student who is trapped amidst the chaos. The woman, Charlotte Yamamura, has an interesting history of her own. It only takes about a year of adventures together before the pair decide to marry. Kyle immediately takes Charlotte back to his swamp to begin starting a family. She uses here more-educated background to assist him in catching up on what he was missing out on earlier in life.

Sodality
Main article: Sodality (series)

After protecting several other friends and neighbors several times, Kyle and Charlotte get word that the thief Cupric that had been causing them so much trouble has surfaced in Texas. They team up with the Sodality to defeat him, but nearly run afoul of Botan the Plant-Man. They are able to sort their differences and send Botan on his way. However, they soon learn that Milp has is in Texas. They also learn that a "Sodality of Gerosha" is there fighting the menace. They head to Texas to join the Sodality, given Charlotte's past experience with Kimiyato. They later help Ciem, Earwig, Botan the Plant-Man, and Jackrabbit to defeat Musaran and rescue Emeraldon and the Sapphire King. Doing so results in ruining Duke Arfaas' plans to take over Houston. The couple later helps the Sodality take out Captain Aardwulf, and even assists with defeating Judge Terry Beliah and the Phaletori's invasion of True Centhuen soldiers. Their adventures also allow Kyle and Charlotte to become aware of Extirpon, Gray Champion, Navyrope, Pilltar, and others.

After their main tenure finishes with the defeat of Beliah, Kyle returns with Charlotte to their home in the swamp. They give birth to Ron Freneti shortly thereafter. Kyle lets it be known he is eager to rejoin the Sodality if ever they should be required to join forces again.

Battle for Metheel
Main article: Sodality: Battle for Metheel

Kyle and Charlotte are celebrating a re-dedication of New Orleans after it is rebuilt in the wake of frequent Ameristani invasions. However, the ceremony is interrupted by the arrival of King Morzhuk's forces. Kyle and Charlotte begin fighting off those forces. When Milp II is defeated by Mukade, Meerkat notices the full extent of the invasion. He gets in touch with Lex and SCALLOP to unite the Sodality. But communications immediately come under attack. He continues fighting until Ciem and Emeraldon arrive. He manages to fight off Cupric all the while. Before too long, the Elites learn what Jack Mercreek discovered for himself apart from them: that the entire raid was a ruse to keep the Elites distracted.

The Legends were Morzhuk's real targets, and his forces make off with them. Meerkat later joins the other Elites in heading to Metheel with Desulon's help, so the Legends and rebellion can finally put an end to Morzhuk's rule. Kyle is sent back to Louisiana with Charlotte after everything is said and done, where the two of them become cautiously optimistic about starting their lives over.

Personality
Kyle has a very laid-back attitude about most things, similar to another Leaper. However, he also has a very strong sense of morals not commonly seen in Leapers. When Jack was running around and breaking hearts all over Apacheland, Kyle was very cautious about how he treated his dates. He remained upright and chaste right up until he married Charlotte. Kyle is also willing to put himself in danger to do what he feels is the right thing. He knew that chasing down the Sleet Mountain-affiliated goons could cost him his job, but didn't see it as right to let them get away when they were about to murder someone. He also shows incredible bravery as part of the Sodality. His flexibility and jumping power are about his only power set, meaning he is still vulnerable to bullets and virtually any other concern that anyone else would have. He has very little to no healing factor beyond normal human biological healing rates. However, he doesn't seem to let the fact that he is far less durable than his teammates interfere with him doing the right thing.

He is surprisingly very dry for someone living in the Louisiana swamps also. His father's alcoholism led to him rejecting alcohol at an early age. Kyle often made it his goal to prove he could be a better human being than his parents were. Kyle also has had issue with finding a church that he fully felt he could trust. He did, however, keep a Bible handy at home to double-check the claims of any preacher he encountered, either at a church or on TV. One very important feature about Kyle is his preference to keep things simple and lead a simple life. He finds Charlotte's origins and Japanese sophistication an amusing contrast from his "down-home" happy living. Fishing and subsistence gardening are activities Kyle is very partial to.



Development
Kyle was first developed as a way to include a Gerosha universe counterpart to Gambit, although it didn't take long for the character to deviate considerably from that template. He was given the name "Meerkat" due to the fact that he was originally going to have a lot more body hair than his eventual Cataclysmic Gerosha form. His brightly-colored hair and body hair, along with his body shape beckoned the imagery of a meerkat. He was also given a calm temperament to resemble the personality of Timon.

Of all the Sodality of Gerosha elite founding members, Kyle is one who has had some of the least overall character development. The first mention of him was in planning notes for the 2009 canceled Classic Gerosha version of Ciem 3. An almost entirely unaltered version of Kyle and his story of how he meets Charlotte was then directly transplanted into the Comprehensive Gerosha canceled novel Ciem: Condemnation.

His entire life story was altered for Cataclysmic Gerosha and Sodality, into its present form. The general outfit that Kyle wears is meant to convey someone who is easygoing, under-educated, and not very formal. In spite of his lack of education and slacker attitude about dress, he has shown himself to at times be wiser, more virtuous, and more common sense-prone than his more-schooled associates.

Ciem 3 / Condemnation

 * The Battle for Gerosha
 * Ciem
 * Ciem 2
 * Ciem 3
 * Ciem: Vigilante Centipede
 * Ciem: Nuclear Crisis
 * Ciem: Condemnation
 * Sodality
 * The Gray Champion: Freedom's Apparition
 * The Gray Champion: Chillingworth's Revenge
 * Percolation

Ciem 1 / Vigilante Centipede
In every version of Ciem and in Ciem: Vigilante Centipede, he plays the role of mentor to Candi in Imaki's absence without every truly discovering the fact that she's Ciem. He also comes to Candi's defense numerous times when other members of Viron Community begin propagating unfounded rumors about her and doing further damage to her reputation than the slander she's faced at school. This puts him at odds with Pete the Shouter and Nolle Barret.

Ciem 2 / Nuclear Crisis
In Ciem 2 and Ciem: Nuclear Crisis, Wilbur plays a counselor to her after she and Donte are no longer able to control themselves around each other. He urges them to put all their other plans aside and get married, arguing that their common goals and service to God and country should not continue to be jeopardized by their insatiable lust. Candi is not aware at first in September of 2023 that she is pregnant, as the most obvious signs of it don't become obvious to her until early October.

Things improve for all parties after Candi and Donte get married in California, which they do alongside Steve and Miriam in a double wedding with Marina and Matt in attendance. Wilbur was invited to the double wedding; but was unable to attend.

Pilltar
Main article: Pilltar (story)

Ron is a former US Army Ranger, who has suffered a mental breakdown after witnessing a skirmish in Ethiopia involving the Hebbleskin Gang and the Janjaweed with US forces. When he went to get treatment, he was turned away. He sought help from a chaplain about his problem, but the chaplain was court-martialed for refusing to say anything positive about Leon Panetta's plans to force chaplains to conduct gay "weddings." Ron was instead dismissed with pay and sent back to Iowa. His episodes of instability and lost concentration led to him being placed on disability and forced to return to Iowa. His wife Theresa, in his absence, got lured into the very legalistic church-school that she wound up sending Stephanie to. Ron wanted to point out how many things were wrong with both attitude and teaching at that place, but figured Theresa wouldn't listen to him. As a result, the two were separated but not technically divorced. Stephanie's involvement with Seth Lambrelli, however, led to Ron gaining a new sense of focus. Seth gets to meet Ron, then promises to offer him the counseling he needs. He also takes a look at Ron's skills, and offers him a job at Lambrelli Labs.

Ron ends up playing bodyguard for Seth in the hospital while Stephanie tries to pilot Pilltar to defeat a local cannibal cult led by the ruthless and demon-possessed Scott Morrisson.

Pilltar 2
Main article: Pilltar 2

Ron remains mostly in the background, working on his marriage with Theresa and the two of them receiving therapy. However, he gladly pitches in to help his daughter and her employer in defeating the Screwworm Network. He learns that he was chosen to be the heir to Seth's Pilltar program, and is in shock as he fears he won't be able to do it. Stephanie, however, promises to teach him when the time comes how to be Pilltar.

Pilltar 3
Ron's resolve and new skills at controlling Pilltar are put to the test when Scott Morrisson returns as Stagtar. Ron and Stephanie try in vain to protect Theresa from being killed by Stagtar. Afterward, they move to Oklahoma in order to start their lives over in the wake of Iowa falling under Muslim Brotherhood occupation. Ron discovers the courage he once had anew when Stagtar threatens both him and his daughter.

Sodality


The actions of Judge Terry Beliah force the Sodality of Gerosha to take desperate action in order to get him exposed and removed from the bench - before he has all of them captured and delivered to their enemies. They also need help rescuing his daughter Camille Beliah, who can testify against him.

However, they need the help of Extirpon and the Gray Champion to pull it off. Beliah's threats to enable frivolous lawsuits on trumped-up charges threatens the future of Lambrelli Labs. When one of Beliah's followers sends a band of ne'er-do-wells to violently attack a Lambrelli factory, Ron is forced to bring Pilltar out of retirement to counter-act the threat. Stephanie and Ron rebuild Pilltar and Strawberry into their Mark II forms.

However, the revelation that Pilltar and Strawberry have returned results in Beliah and his forces of corruption declaring war on them just as much as on all mainstream-Phaelite-loyal Phexos and Marlquaanites. Pilltar and Strawberry end up joining forces with the Sodality to free Gray and Extirpon, turning the tide in their fight. Ron remains a lifelong member of the Sodality afterward, as it gives him and Stephanie a sense of community. With the help of Pilltar and Strawberry, the Sodality is also able to rid the streets of Houston of the Phaletori's army of True Centhuen warriors.

Battle for Metheel
Main article: Sodality: Battle for Metheel

By the point in the timeline that this video game pitch happens in, Ron has started to grow into his role and Pilltar's primary pilot. He also manages that along with helping his daughter move up in Lambrelli Labs, where she is about to finish college and become a strong contender for becoming the company's new president. However, he and Stephanie find themselves with the experimental Mk. III units of Pilltar and Strawberry on Metheel; where they are recruited by Shabika and a rebel alliance that has formed to overthrow the evil King Morzhuk. Ron uses Pilltar briefly to visit Phaelon and go back in time via Desulon's machine to rescue Hea Pang from the Society of the Icy Finger. Ron is grateful to be returned home to Oklahoma after his adventure.

Personality
Ron has those he cares about, and he has those he knows are a target. He has a bit more hesitation to strike than Seth, in spite having formal military training. His breakdown in the military made him claustrophobic and fearful of flying objects. He also began to have doubts about his commitments when he felt that his own government had deserted him in a time of need. He is smart mechanically, able to learn how to use Seth's devices. However, he hides behind a veil of being clueless about life. He tries to play peacekeeper whenever possible, and suffers from a lack of confidence. However, he will revert to the brave soldier he once was if a loved one is threatened seriously enough. His self-confidence issues initially hamper his ability to bond his mind with that of Pilltar, a complication he has to overcome.

Development
Ron's appearance wasn't decided until about March of 2013, though there were plans for him to be a part of Pilltar mythos since the beginning. Early draft concepts of what he was had him as a more stable version of himself than what he later became, but as a man much more understanding of the conflicting emotions and loyalty inflicting Stephanie than what Theresa would be. He needed to be a foil of Seth's, physically capable but mentally weak, as opposed to the mental fortress but that the otherwise frail Seth was. That began to shine more and more as he came to be defined more.

Pilltar
See also: Seth Lambrelli history in Pilltar, Pilltar (story)

Stephanie was always a happy child, one who wished her father Ron Barrin could be around more often. Ron was an army ranger, who eventually had a breakdown when on a "peacekeeping" mission. Events leading to the breakdown led to disagreements between Ron and his wife Theresa, and resulted in Ron having to live somewhere else. Theresa tried to make the most of it by getting involved with a school in the area that promised to be a good place for Stephanie. However, Stephanie was turned off by the school's legalism and questionable religious teachings. Even so, they made her do canvassing in the neighborhood for them. That was when Stephanie met Seth Lambrelli, a wheelchair-bound man who seemed to be busy about tinkering with things. As Stephanie grew curious about the man who had an answer for everything she threw at him, she began to find herself drawn more and more into his world. She decided that working for him would give her a better education than the school she was attending. This caused friction between Stephanie and her mother, but Ron eventually got involved and took Stephanie's side. Theresa was heartbroken at first, but changed her mind about things after Stephanie was abducted by some of the teachers at her school. It became the largest alarm bell to the Barrin's that there was something really not right with that school. Stephanie was fearful at first, but was then rescued by Pilltar.

Stephanie began working for and learning under Seth full time, and soon discovered that there was a sinister cannibal cult at work in town. Seth's efforts to use Pilltar to defeat Scott Morrisson and the cannibal cult were met with some frustration, as the cult was somehow heavily armed and Scott had a demon-like ability to fight. At one point, Seth gets injured by the Morrisson goons that break into his home. While Seth is in the hospital under Ron's protection, Stephanie tries to man a Pilltar unit to avenge her mentor. However, she soon finds out that she is no match for Scott's ingenuity and brutality. She has some difficulty interfacing properly with Pilltar, as the Pilltar unit was wired for Seth's brain. Right as Scott destroys her Pilltar, Seth recovers just enough to attach himself to a control device for another Pilltar. The two are able to defeat all of the present cult members except for Scott, who flees the scene to join his remaining members at another location. Seth agrees with Stephanie that they need a new version of Pilltar that will interface with Stephanie more easily.

Pilltar 2
Main article: Pilltar 2

Stephanie finds herself able to test out the Strawberry unit interface in field battle for the first time. She reveals herself to be quite skilled at it, but is somewhat distracted by the family politics involved in her parents reconciling their marriage. This proves an awkward time for her, as she also is sent to jail for two days for confessing to being Strawberry to a judge in order to avoid Seth being needlessly legally penalized when he is sued for stopping a knockout game. She is issued a restraining order to not use Strawberry to stop knockout games, for fear of the city being sued by major political figures in Washington. While unable to get the absurd conviction off her record, she does have the moral support of her family. They agree with her that the reason for her going to jail is "stupid." Seth promises her that her job performance rating will not be affected by her having been arrested.

She does at one point fly one of her Strawberry units a little too close to the ground during an EMP blast event caused by the Screwworm Network, leading to her Strawberry shorting out mid-flight and nearly putting Stephanie herself into a coma. She is able to recover from the shock and get herself into another Strawberry in time to help Seth and Roger take out the Screwworms. News of Seth dying, however, causes her to realize that she will have to be fully committed to training her father to become the new Pilltar.

Pilltar 3
Main article: Pilltar 3

Stephanie's hopes for a normal graduation fall apart in 2018 when the US collapses on itself. Affadidah and his regime create their own nation dubbed "Ameristan," which employs a scorched earth policy to take over as much of America as it can. It's blocked by a freedom resistance that becomes known as "Toklisana." China invades the west coast, and creates "Chimerica" to further block the efforts of Affadidah's regime.

Lambrelli Labs begins the process of transitioning more and more of its stock to Oklahoma. However, Stephanie and Ron find themselves to be among the last to be allowed to leave. They must carry with them enough to start their lives over - but also a good many of their Pilltar and Strawberry units. Scott Morrisson resurfaces, having stolen parts from damaged Pilltars to create his own monstrosity: Stagtar. Morrisson vows the agonizing deaths of Ron and Stephanie both, as they dared take on Seth's legacy while protecting him so that Scott could not dispose of Seth his way. Stephanie ends up traumatized for years by her experiences in trying to get away from Stagtar, especially after Theresa is murdered. Stephanie fights long and hard, but is eventually separated from her Strawberry unit and left with only a gun to defend herself from the then-Stagtar-less Morrisson. When the gun reveals itself unable to have much immediate effect, Stephanie panics. Ron rises to the challenge, letting Stephanie serve as a distraction long enough to merge with a damaged Pilltar and finish the fight.

After finally making it to her new home in Oklahoma, Stephanie decides to be a normal college student for a time, putting her remaining Strawberry units in storage.

Sodality


A calmed-down, more-financially-and-emotionally-stable Stephanie is considering dating a man she has met: Jonathan Tannuli. However, her love life is cut short when her and Ron's company is under attack by goons that are linked to the Phaletori and Judge Terry Beliah. Investigation into the matter reveals that he was after Pilltar and Strawberry, lest the two robots should be able to pose a threat to his agenda of cultural rot in Toklisana. It's also revealed that he had been targeting various Phexos and Marlquaanites for imprisonment in Marluqaanite prison field containers, placing them in suspended animation. Stephanie's personal world becomes threatened enough that she decides to resume being Strawberry for more than test runs. Her Strawberry units have been updated at this point to Mk. II specification.

Stephanie's experience as Strawberry is put to the test when she must help Candi escape from Senator Gobar's assassins into protective custody. The girls both use their tools and their wits to avoid being killed; but have some share of luck on their side. SCALLOP agent Brian Mizgel arrests both girls with the aid of a state trooper at a laundromat in Waco. Candi spends the next three weeks in protective custody, where as Stephanie is allowed to go home after one evening and most of the next day in jail, but with the need to return after getting some business attended to. She is asked to remain in custody until the black box from her most-recently-destroyed Strawberry can be recovered - to prove that the deaths of those SWAT members were self-defense rather than murder. Her name is cleared within a month.

When the Phaletori unleashes an army of True Centhuen warriors to help it and Beliah stage a coup on Houston, Strawberry and Pilltar end up joining the Sodality of Gerosha to stop him. They earlier assist the Sodality in rescuing the powerful Marlquaanites Extirpon, Gray Champion, and Mapacha. They are assisted by Ciem, Navyrope, Emeraldon, Mukade, Botan the Plant-Man, and more. After deciding to pursue a romance with Jon after all, Stephanie prepares for the possibility of training her own eventual replacement as the pilot of Strawberry.

Battle for Metheel
Main article: Sodality: Battle for Metheel

After surviving and getting over a traumatic rape on campus, Stephanie is poised to graduate ahead of schedule. She is in line to become the new president of Lambrelli Labs. However, she and her father Ron are abducted by King Morzhuk's forces. She is freed by Yemodan; but gets separated from the group headed for Phaelon. Instead, she and Ron find themselves on Metheel. They join Shabika and the resistance to overthrow Morzhuk and restore freedom to Metheel. Unlike Ron, who travels with Pilltar to Phaelon to rescue Hea Pang from the time stream; Stephanie and her Strawberry units stay behind on Metheel to aid Shabika's rebellion. Strawberry proves useful in the final battles to oust Morzhuk from power. After the adventure, Stephanie returns home to achieve her life goals.

Battling the Kirby Act
Main article: Sodality: Vindication

Following events in season 3, Stephanie can no longer operate Strawberry freely and openly. She is also under constant surveillance, though that has been compromised with the Icy Finger having attacked nearly everywhere at once and SCALLOP resources spread thin. Due to Jim Oisdaat selling out SCALLOP to the Icy Finger, they now know who Stephanie is and where to find her. They send some Screwworm operatives to her house to apprehend as much of her tech as possible. Having gotten married merely 13 days earlier to sweetheart Jonathan Tannuli, this was not the sort of honeymoon Stephanie was looking forward to. The couple only just discusses the possibility of children before they receive Jack's distress message. The Screwworm agents attack the house, and Stephanie tells Jon to get to safety. He worries about the Kirby Act, as he could end up also going back to jail if not careful. She assures him that if he runs to his family for help, they'll ensure he lays low enough to stay out of the limelight. He embraces her for her courage in being willing to take the heat for him, then runs to safety while she provides cover fire.

Her desperation to ward off the attack leads to her ignoring her terms of parole and activating a Strawberry unit. She escapes the house as well while her Strawberry provides cover fire. Once safe, she attempts to kill every last intruder in the home. They activate an MPF generator in the hopes of damaging Strawberry and then capturing the Tannulis. Repeated attempts to get the upperhand on the intruders lead to Stephanie making the desperate decision to detonate her Strawberry's self-destruct on the MPF generator and destroy it. This synchronizes with a self-destruct system she builds into the house itself, killing all the Screwworm agents but also blasting the house to smithereens. The fire spreads, setting a neighbor's roof on fire.

Using the clues given to her from Jack's distress message, Stephanie heads to Jack's hidden Sodality headquarters to meet up with the other members of Team Caged Dove. Lex gives her instructions on where to go to peacefully turn herself in. However, she gets distracted by a boy being attacked by some bullies. She uses her wits to save the boy as the bullies flee the area. However, the police locate her. She identifies herself and admits to being wanted under the Kirby Act, begging that the boy she saved be given protection from the bullies. She is assured he will receive that protection, and is then immediately arrested.

Efforts to repress her feelings of guilt over the neighbor's roof catching fire begin to wear on her sanity. As she is sent to trial, she attempts to distract herself by looking for ways to make sales pitches. She is sent to the SCALLOP Women's Containment Center with the other Sodality women, often sharing a cell with either Emily Cormier or with Dolly Malestrom.

Stephanie spends her days advocating in court against the Beliah Amendments, or manning the comms for Team Spaghetti Liberation when she is granted permission to. She also assists Emily and Dolly with their inventions, and catches up with Candi on old times. She and Dolly co-invent a new line of robots that could effectively merge Lambrelli Labs and the struggling Malestrom Industries into a single company. They decide that given their lack of faith in the state, and given the fact that SCALLOP's personnel are being spread thin, they will invent their own parole officers. They realize they would have to install several safety protocols into the AI to prevent it from going excessively haywire.

From prison to mental institutionalization
However, Stephanie's psychological and emotional problems begin taking a toll on her as she becomes obsessed with inventing things. Pregnancy hormones take an even further toll. She volunteers to fix the plumbing at the Containment Center, while pointing out all the items that are broken - and how outdated and ineffectual the entire system's security measures are. She is left alone in the cafeteria one evening, and invents an AI program dubbed "G.E.O.R.G.E." She installs him inside the cafeteria ceiling fan, along with a variety of upgrades to the fan itself.

Her invention of GEORGE is later discovered when a fight breaks out between Marge and Maria "Peeping Squaw" Blacklake. The two activate their powers, and Marge accidentally sets off GEORGE's sprinkler system. GEORGE puts out Marge's flames, then gives a status of the room and an external weather report. Everyone in the room, astounded, sees a crazed-looking Stephanie cheering on her creation and announcing his name. Marge and Maria are taken to their cells, and Stephanie is pulled aside to be studied. She is quickly determined to have suffered a severe mental breakdown, and is sent away from the prison to be hospitalized.

Post-Vindication life
After the SCALLOP Juvenile Containment Center is destroyed by an Icy Finger agent raid, all of SCALLOP is placed on notice that it must parole its prisoners or else have them transferred to a Texan state-run correctional facility. Stephanie, now in a mental hospital, is given special arrangements so she can eventually return to live with Jonathan and Ron. However, the crisis on Phaelon results in a need for her to return to battle. Since her terms of release forbid her to pilot another Strawberry, she builds a taller, sentient version dubbed "Strawcenary" to go to Phaelon and self-destruct without her piloting the droid. Ron and Jon are likewise forbidden from piloting Pilltar into battle, and Stephanie is given the tools via Lex to build "Pillcenary" as Pilltar's replacement. Both sentient beings are the result of her work with Dolly at the SCALLOP Women's Containment Center. She also rebuilds GEORGE, albeit with a thick Yooper/Wisconsin accent.

After Stephanie's release from the hospital, Ron and Jon help her build a new house with improved security systems - and ensure that she is not as likely to burn it down. Her high-tech house comes equipped with the tools to build robots; though she is forbidden for several years as a term of her parole from piloting Strawberry outside the house's perimeter. Her work with Dolly had also resulted in her inventing Strawforcer. This new machine finds work as a bodyguard/parole officer to assist Lex in addressing the issue with SCALLOP personnel wearing thin. Like with Candi and Donte, Stephanie is issued a SCALLOP-custom ankle monitor in the event that she should ever come under Icy Finger or Screwworm attack again - and to ensure she doesn't leave her neighborhood.

An exception is when she gives birth to her son Ricky. Ron moves in with the Tannulis temporarily to help out with the baby, befriending Strawforcer along the way and also teaching Jonathan how to pilot Pilltar just in case they should ever need a regular Warrior Class Pilltar again. Stephanie is required to visit regularly with a therapist. Her therapist winds up being Hadley Mint, who had herself gone insane back in 2008.

While she nearly gets charged with parole violation for it, Stephanie upgrades GEORGE to version 2.0 and installs him in the computer systems of her house; adding voice boxes for him into the ceiling fans. The state, overrun with Icy Finger sympathizers, hijacks the Strawforcer program from SCALLOP; and demands Stephanie turn Strawforcer into a lethal weapon like Strawberry was in order to hunt down Tabitha Pang. By that point in time, however, Tabitha and the Swappernetters have convinced Team Gray to join forces with them, the Navyrope Foundation, and Team Extirpon to start a revolution in Arkansas and eradicate the totalitarian Icy Finger sympathizers from power.

Stephanie refuses to put her skills to use to assassinate a former Sodality member like herself - especially one whose cause she agrees with - and is nearly sent back to prison for her refusal to take Tabitha's life. The threats to her safety are interpreted as a declaration of war, resulting in the rest of Lambrelli Labs' staff siding with Tabitha's revolution. Once her parole terms are over post-revolution, Stephanie's tether is removed. Strawforcer is once again put under SCALLOP control, and is assigned to another parolee. Stephanie finds a young new recruit at Lambrelli Labs to replace her as the pilot of Strawberry, taking on a role in the company and retiring from superhero field work completely to focus on her job and her family.

Personality
Stephanie is portrayed to be very curious about the world around her, and very dutiful to what she believes is right. She aims not to be rebellious, but will challenge an authority figure that she believes to be plainly in the wrong. She has a fine grasp of justice and kindness, and is quick to point out abuse when she sees it. She is also a quick learner, becoming adept at Seth's mechanical schemes with very little training. She has always been more emotionally fond of her father Ron than her mother, Theresa Barrin. However, she fears that neither of them will ever be truly successful in life. She looks at her encounter with Seth as having been God sending Seth her way to give her a chance at a better life than the cards her parents were dealt.

In spite of what she is capable of while piloting Strawberry, she can still be quite feminine and shocked by violence when operating outside of those confines. She has a regard for life even in the interface that bothers her when she sees innocents get hurt, whereas Seth appears a tiny bit more desensitized due to the horrors he has encountered in life. This desensitization begins to take hold in Stephanie after she is forced to kill some of Senator Gobar's men in order to protect Candi. Attempts to repress her feelings of shame over having to destroy her own house also cause her to start losing her sanity. Being in the SCALLOP Women's Containment Center during the Vindication timeline also wears her down mentally, until she becomes a depressed shadow of her former self. The stress of life on parole - added to the stress of childbirth - eventually leads to her becoming too traumatized to operate Strawberry effectively. She and her eventual husband Jonathan go on only a few more missions together as Pilltar and Strawberry, before training their replacements at Lambrelli Labs. Once she trains this final replacement, Stephanie abandons the Strawberry alter ego completely to focus on family life.

Children and inventions
Stephanie conceives Richard "Ricky" Amadeaus Tannuli just five days before she and her long-time boyfriend Jonathan Tannuli elope. The couple are married for 13 days before the Icy Finger-affiliated Screwworm Network attacks her home. During her first month in prison, pregnancy hormones contributed to her already-deteriorating mental state. She is able to give birth 8 months after her transfer to the mental hospital takes place. Her son was born healthy.

In addition to Ricky, Stephanie is considered the "mother" to several mechanical "children" of (mostly) her design.


 * Strawberry Mk. I: Stephanie's first major invention. Based on Seth Lambrelli's original design of the Pilltar Mk. I., Strawberry threw better punches and had flamethrowers inside her forearms that were not present in the original Pilltar design.
 * Strawberry Mk. II: A slight upgrade with solar panels on the head. This unit is tougher than the original Strawberry, but also can move faster.  Unlike the Mk. I, this unit doesn't use Marlquaan bonds to place the soul of the individual inside the machine.  It is more of an AI system that interacts with neurons and voice commands to function as a sort of remote-control, making it safer to operate in the event of the need to self-destruct.
 * Strawberry Mk. III: This version uses fuel more efficiently, and also has a better self-destruct sequence built in should that be necessary. Communications devices are enhanced to send its blackbox feed to interested parties quickly.  This version has also shown itself to be highly useful on Metheel during the fight against Morzhuk.


 * Strawcenary: A sentient, tall variation of Strawberry that uses AI rather than avatar-like interfacing to operate the droid. Strawcenary was designed to be suicidal, so that she'd most likely destroy herself during the Second Battle for Dephinapolis rather than live long enough to become bitter and resentful of her creator.  Stephanie modeled Strawcenary's body modifications on some of Dolly's ideas for an improved Earwig armor.  She modeled Strawcenary's personality on her own, to further decrease the likelihood of the AI rebelling.


 * Strawforcer: A sentient, tall variation of Strawberry that was flightless. Functioned as her parole officer / nanny when she was given a new house to live in, in order to prove that she would neither be piloting Strawberry units during her terms nor starting fires.  She was also allowed very-limited contact with the Sodality, and was not allowed to leave the neighborhood most times.  Her own invention would come after her if she suggested anything that would break the rules.  In spite tough protocols, Icy Finger sympathizers in the government did manage to abduct and attempt overrides of most of Stephanie's programming to make Strawforcer a killing machine.  However, Stephanie refuses to put the finishing touches on this; as she would have no part in the plot to murder Tabitha Pang.


 * Get Every Odd Reference Good Everyday ("G.E.O.R.G.E.") Mk. I: An AI with the voice of a NOAA weather radio announcer, built into the SCALLOP Women's Containment Center prison cafeteria ceiling fan. He could control the fan blades, vary their spin, learn everyone's name, and contained a smoke detector and a sprinkler system.  He also came equipped with an air freshener and satellite WiFi.  His discovery is what leads to Stephanie being committed to a mental institution.
 * GEORGE Mk. 1.5: A sentient ceiling fan built into the ceiling of Stephanie's room at the mental institution. He possesses all the same features as the original 1.0 version, but has a Yooper-Wisconsin thick accent and various verbal tics.  He also is fascinated with sports game results, and has a knack for missing the point in conversations.
 * GEORGE Mk. II: A complex AI that is interwoven into Stephanie's new house after she gets out of prison. While he has run of most things in the house, he still primarily communicates via speakers located on the ceiling fans throughout the house.  He is given an Australian accent, as Stephanie and her house guests often find this more pleasant than the Mk 1.5 and his accent.

Characterization
Stephanie was actually thought through as a character even before there was a clear vision of what Seth Lambrelli was going to be. It was originally envisioned that she'd be an angry and insecure girl sent out by a legalistic school she didn't entirely agree with to canvas in her neighborhood for them. She'd get the usual door-to-the-face from neighbors, until she'd meet a wheelchair-bound man that would instead convert her. As ideas bounced around for the direction this story would take, it eventually evolved into a plot where Stephanie would team up with Seth to remote-pilot a robotic pill bug avatar and defeat a cannibal cult.

The concept of Pilltar developed a short while later. It was competing for time with the first draft of "20,000 Legs into the Backstory," the first chapter of the since-canceled novel Ciem: Vigilante Centipede. All Comprehensive Gerosha continuity for Pilltar was then transferred in late 2012 to Cataclysmic Gerosha.

Stephanie begins as a lowly teen looking for a purpose in life and wanting to find a religious school that she not only feels is telling the truth, but will also appreciate her tech talents and offer her an outlet for them. She evolves quickly into an inventor after Seth's own heart, in love with all things related to Lambrelli Labs and easily a potential heir to the company. However, her family relations are strained by her job. She attempts to reconnect with her family by the Pilltar 3 timeline, and to reconcile family and job and education responsibilities throughout most of Sodality.

By season 3, however, she makes a desperate decision in order to save Candi's life that causes her to question her sense of direction in life. She began to reflect on everyone who has ever died either directly or indirectly as a consequence of her being too close, and the guilt begins to damage her psychologically. Being dragged into more and more battles against her and the Sodality's common enemies also takes its toll, and she begins showing some of the same PTSD-like symptoms that her father struggled with. Her first time in a SCALLOP jail shows the early beginnings of her eventual descent into clinical madness.

By the Vindication timeline, she has become obsessed with her work almost to the breaking point. Her attempt to move past it by getting married proves futile, as the Kirby Act puts a price on her head and her fugitive status forces her to accept a role in Team Caged Dove. This snaps her sanity past the breaking point, and she becomes a full-blown mad scientist. Her increasing willingness to crack inappropriate jokes, make inappropriately-timed sales pitches, and celebrate her inventions whilst seemingly in a trance, reveal the extent to which she starts losing her mind. SCALLOP personnel show particular interest in repairing the damage to her mind when she is revealed to be pregnant, as they feel her illness is taking the child hostage.

Finally, Stephanie is able to calm down and settle back into civilian life. She takes great pains to stop herself from ever being tempted to become Strawberry again. She grows to accept a less-busy work life, so she has more time for family. Time with family - especially after she gets off parole - accelerates her healing and shows her take on an interest in religion again. She is brought full circle, but with wisdom to tackle the facets of her life more insightfully.

Visualization
Stephanie was little more than an idea all throughout 2010-2012. In the early spring of 2013, however, Stephanie was finally visualized for the first time in The Sims 3. Her utility belt accessory would also prove to be useful for Sodality first season Dolly Malestrom. While her hair was made red, her facial expression was modeled to be like that of The K.A., a member of the Dozerfleet founder's graduating TVPR 499 class.

For the Vindication timeline, she was allowed to have brighter red in her hair and wear it more recklessly. This is to show the stress of her life wearing her down psychologically. In 2015, DeviantArt stock model Patrycja Dorynek lent her likeness to the character. The Sim was re-designed slightly to ensure she would look less like the KA, and more like Patrycja. Due to this, Patrycja's friend and Polish model Klaudia Piszczek was offered the chance to portray Michelle Winston on this wiki and on the DeviantArt account on May 20th of 2015, though she declined the role in a Facebook message.