Player —

Player Name: Ken
Pronouns: They/them
Are you over 18? Yes
Contact: june_bug
Current Characters: none
Who Invited You?: korel

Character —

Character Name: Cassandra Cain-Wayne
Character Canon: Detective Comics
Character Age: 20
Canon Point: After Red Robin #17
Link to History: DC Wiki entry
Inventory:

Batsuit
Utility belt
Batarangs
Grappling hook

Powers —

Skills: (some descriptions have been taken/modified from the DC wiki)

Peak Human Condition and Mental Coordination: Through continuous intense training Cassandra represents the greatest fighting weapon ever conceived. She possesses peak level strength, stamina, speed and agility comparable to the finest human athlete.

“Well, her individual moves are borderline human. It’s her aggregate speed that’s metahuman. Look— humans can throw a 100 miles-per-hour fastball, smash concrete blocks with their heads, and run 4.2 forties. What they can’t do is all of that at once. It’s not so much physical as… as mentally impossible. Too much to coordinate.”
-about Cassandra Cain

Martial Arts: Due to her lifelong training Cassandra has a master level knowledge of all fighting arts known and unknown and continues to learn with every new opponent she faces. She was trained by her father (David Cain), along with several other members of the League of Assassins, including Bronze Tiger, Merlyn and Alpha. Upon taking the mantle of Batgirl, she was trained further by Batman, Oracle, Black Canary, and Lady Shiva. She received supplementary instruction from Onyx. She has also invented her own styles and techniques. She is one of the only people in the world to have defeated Lady Shiva in direct combat (twice!)-- something that Batman himself has never done. Her skills includes the use of melee and thrown weapons.

Body Reading Ability:

“David Cain… had some unusual ideas about combat. He experimented with infants. Trained them in insolation and deprived them of human speech. The goal was to adapt the language center of the brain to interpret physical movement as language. She can… read you. Your body. That’s why she understands what you’re saying when she doesn’t know the words. It’s why in combat, she knows what you’re going to do before you do it.”
-Batman

“Batgirl reads body language like you read the newspaper. She sees everything Shiva does. Every detail, every nuance of her perfect technique. Batgirl could watch Shiva stand still and know she’d lose the fight.”
-Batman

“I would’ve surveyed the room before charging in. She didn’t have to. Her strange training enables her to… read opponents. ‘Body language’ is a real language for her. Her only language. With one glance she already knew what they’d just started to think about doing. The fight was over before her feet touched the ground.”
-Batman

“A special ability. To predict my opponent’s moves. That doesn’t begin to describe it. Time… ran together. The future… blending… into the moment. A blink of an eye… the knife thrust that follows… both one. It was like… like I could predict my opponents moves. Okay, that does describe it. But it doesn’t do it justice. All this knowledge. No substitute for knowing.”
- Cassandra Cain

Investigation: She was trained in detective methods by Batman and Tim Drake. Traditional investigation is still a weaker point for her (especially compared to the rest of the Batfamly), but she excels in the field of forensic pathology.

Stealth: Due to her excessive training she is also a master of stealth. This ability was furthered during her time undercover as The Nothing and Kasumi. She has been show to be able to sneak up on the Robins and Oracle, as well as capable of sneaking through highly advanced security systems or even rooms full of people without detection.

Pain Tolerance: Due to the training she went through, Cassandra can withstand incredible amounts of pain. She is able to withstand getting shot without flinching.

Empathy: Because of her body-reading ability, Cassandra has a unique capacity for empathy. She cares about everyone, even the people she fights against, and believes they all have the capacity for change.

”You saw him die… as he saw it"
- Lady Shiva

Superpowers: (Non-Canon)

Shadow Stealth and Teleportation: The ability to melt into and travel between shadows. The ability to move unseen and without making sound while in darkness.

These abilities are best suited to shadows that the user can see, but can be used to travel between shadows that the user has seen/used before, but that takes more energy, concentration, and has the potential for complication (such as objects being where they weren't before or injury similar to "splinching" in Harry Potter.)

The user can bring others along when traveling between shadows, but this also takes more energy. The person must be in contact with the person/thing they're trying to teleport with them. They cannot teleport an object or person independent of themselves.

Limitations: (some descriptions have been taken from the DC wiki)

Illiteracy/Dyslexia: Due to her training using the language centers of her brain to read body language, Cassandra has extreme dyslexia, making it very difficult for her to read and write.

“The language centers of your brain are all over both hemispheres. Not centralized like with most people. When you try to read or write, your brain doesn’t know how to keep it cohesive.”
-Oracle

Selective Mutism: Cassandra did not start learning how to speak until she was at least 17 years old (unsure of exact age because comic book timelines). Due to interference from someone with psychic powers, Cassandra was forcibly given the ability to understand and speak English, but she is still limited. She does not speak unnecessarily and tends to use short words and sentences. This can manifest in selective mutism and speech impairments.

Over-Reliance On Body Reading Ability: While a definite strength in combat, Cassandra's ability to read body language can work against her when she can't properly discern the intent of the opponent's actions based on body language. Generally this can be happen when an opponent is very good at disguising their intent like Slade, who can keep Cassandra distracted with subtle body language that could hint at many possible actions (Cassandra stated that when Slade moves, his body "sings like a chorus. Too fast with too many voices to pick up accurately".) In another instance, it could be that an opponent isn't thinking or focusing on their movements as they make them like when Cassandra tried to stop a gunshot from a cybernetically enhanced assassin but couldn't because his cybernetics took over the aiming for him independently of his movements. The last way in which this weakness manifests is when Cassandra is facing an opponent who is mentally unstable or ill. Such an opponent is simply too unpredictable to anticipate. When Cassandra fought the Joker, the Joker had an edge at the beginning of the fight because she couldn't understand the Joker's body language or as Batman put it "she can read his body language too, but his body language just comes out as gibberish".

Stubbornness and Pride: Cassandra can be stubborn, prideful, and independent to a fault. She feels responsible for taking a man's life when she was either years old, despite the fact that she had brain-washed, abused, and didn't understand what she was doing. After she was freed from being drugged and manipulated by Slade Wilson and David Cain she attempted to stop their plans without any outside help, especially from Batman or his associates. She has a just as strict, of not stricter, ethical code as Batman himself.

Defensive Ability: Cassandra takes "offense is the best defense" to an extreme. She has no defensive skills outside of her ability to predict her opponent’s moves. In any situation where she’s unable to do that, she’s still a fantastic fighter, but cannot avoid or redirect blows the way a more traditionally trained fighter can.

Personality —

What were your character's most formative experiences?:

As part of her training Cassandra was raised without any exposure to written or verbal language, leading her to develop a unique understanding of body language.

Cain made her to kill a man when she was eight years old. She ran away once she realized what she had done. She spent the next nine years on the run from the man who raised her.

At age seventeen, when she was trapped in Gotham during No Man's Land, she met Barbara Gordon and became Batgirl.

A psychic forcibly changed her brain so she could suddenly understand verbal language. This took away her natural ability to read body language. Struggling with the loss of her abilities, she made a deal with Lady Shiva. Lady Shiva would help her regain her abilities and at the end of one year Cassandra would fight her to the death.

Due to intense guilt from having killed a man when she was a child, Cassandra became passively suicidal. When she went to fight Lady Shiva at the end of her year, Shiva easily beat and killed her. Shiva then resurrected her and challenged her again. This time Cassandra was able to beat Shiva.

A gang war broke out in Gotham. Cassandra's best friend, Stephanie Brown aka The Spoiler, was tortured and killed.

Cassandra became obsessed with finding her birth mother. Clues from her father, David Cain, led her to Lady Shiva. She found Lady Shiva working with the League of Assassins. She tried to stop the League, but was killed and resurrected by the Lazarus Pit in the process. This ended with her fulfilling Shiva's death wish and hanging her above the Lazarus Pit so she would eventually fall and be resurrected.

Cassandra was drugged and brainwashed by Deathstroke and David Cain to take over the League of Assassins, tries to kill multiple heroes, and is eventually given the antidote by Tim Drake. In the aftermath she planned to track and kill Cain herself, but in the end couldn't follow through with it. She is then officially adopted by Bruce Wayne

After Batman's supposed death, Cassandra gave the Batgirl mantle to Stephanie Brown and left Gotham. It is later learned that Bruce asked her to do this.

What values, morals, and/or philosophies does your character live by, and how are those beliefs demonstrated? What happens when they have to compromise what they believe in?

“Those people were scum. Cold-blooded killers. They’d fired at women and children, killing dozens. Batgirl knew this. She also knew how I felt about it. How little I’d have minded any extra… zeal… on her part. But… there wasn’t any. At her speed it must’ve been difficult, but did just enough to take them out. No more. She was… it wouldn’t have looked this way to anyone else, mind you, but she was… gentle. Even with them.”
-Batman

Cassandra has just as strong, if not stronger, of a no-killing rule as Batman. Where his is made from needing a line he can't cross, hers is from the horror of having killed when she was a child.

Cassandra is a firm believer in second chances. If she was raised from birth to be an assassin and was able to change, anyone can and should be given the opportunity to change. In her eyes, no one is beyond saving.

What is your character afraid of? How does avoiding or preventing these fears influence their actions and decisions?

She is most afraid of herself and what she is capable of. She was raised to be in complete control of her body-- the idea that that control can be taken away is terrifying.
She's also scared of failure. Failure to save people, failure to live up to the Bat. In her childhood, failure meant punishment. Now failure means losing trust and responsibility. So much of her identity and self-image depends on being a hero that a failure to do so can lead to genuine crisis.

What goals does your character have right now? What do they want, and how do they go about getting it?

Right now Cassandra is trying to find her identity outside of Batgirl. She did not choose to give it up, but enough time has passed and she has grown in ways that means she does not necessarily want it back. Right now she is trying to reconcile who she was, what she's done, and what she wants to be. She wants to find a place in the world that she fits, and she's worried that isn't Gotham anymore.

Gameplay —

Areas of Interest / Brainstorming:

Cassandra is a new character for me, so I'm pretty much open to whatever! I'm excited to explore canon relationship dynamics as well as building new ones.

Samples: TDM #4