Julith Murillo

Julith Murillo is one of the main pilots of the Ars Goetia in Paradise Lost. She piloted a mech that she has dubbed Rickrack, which is a close analog to the Samargantha frame of LANCER, and now pilot the mech known as Sameyaza.

She is an average sized woman in her mid 20s, with bright pink hair, and a preference for similarly bright colours for her clothing. She normally is wearing several space themed accessories, and is rarely seen without at least her star shaped hairclip. Jullith has a large scar over one eye, from where she was grazed by a a shot during an attack on her town, and several ear piercings. She is aggressively cheerful, prefers trying to cooperate with others to help maintain group cohesion instead of digging her heels in, and is willing to extend a hand of friendship to anyone willing to meet her even a quarter of the way. She is also capable of displaying a distinctly cold side, is quick to act when other people are in danger, and quicker to form a plan to get them out of it due to a highly accurate sense for tactical information and triage. Julith has a noted ability to make calls that others might hesitate to in order to keep people safe, even if they are to her extreme detriment, if she assesses the situation as requiring it.

Biography

Early Years

Julith was born in a town that barely escaped the worst of the wars, bordering between the outskirts of the United States' former territory and its southern neighbor Mexico. Her family was small, with all of her extended relatives long having abandoned the place when the war started to lay waste to their neighboring communites, calling it doomed and hopeless. Her parents stubbornly refused to, claiming that if the robots larger than their entire block weren't going to take them out of their homes by force, nothing would. It left Julith with very few friends her age: Many of the other inhabitants were older, equally as stubborn as her parents were, and most of the new blood were combat veterans who didn't want to return to the larger cities they had come from when peace was finally called. She spent most of her time outside of online learning courses reading the technical manuals laying around from abandoned outposts, carefully exploring some of the desert outside, or helping maintain her community's failing buildings. Her town was extremely isolated, with supplies rarely arriving from the outside: The closest other still inhabited community was approximately three hours away, and neither offered much incentive for a regular supply line to be established when so many places still were trying to recover.

Most of her childhood was uneventful, sparks of excitement only created when people seeking refuge would ocassionally stumble into the town, desperate to escape from either the heat of the desert or hostile mech pilots hunting them down. It wasn't an uncommon sight, growing up, to see groups of people on the brink of famine, or dying of thirst, or with serious wounds. Though the adults tried to shield her from the worst of it, their efforts were more focused on saving the people who needed it as opposed to keeping her from being underfoot or seeing an injury. As long as she wasn't in active line of fire during the few times someone got cocky, she was mainly free to do what she felt was best in those situations. This state of affairs continued even after the war was officially over, many cells not getting the memo for months afterward. She was taught to be thankful that despite that, that no one would be so cruel as to attack a town with literally no strategic advantage for no reason.

Though her community was poor itself and didn't have much to give beyond medical supplies and basic food, many of those troubled people would pay them back as they could, even if they couldn't immediately. This was one of the few things preventing them from entirely going under financially. It was still rough going, food being almost prohibitively expensive to import. In addition, almost all of their robotics and technology being either remnants of formerly state-of-the-art military tech that would be sold off if months were tighter than expected, or donations as thanks from grateful travellers, leaving them several years behind more metropolitan areas.

Early Adulthood

Julith briefly left her town to attend medical school at the age of 19, getting by due to an impoverished rural family scholarship plan. It was her hope that by getting medical training, she'd be able to alleviate the suffering she had grown up seeing. As an attendee of [INSERT FUTURE COLLEGE NAME HERE], she got by on midling scores in most subjects, only excelling at the actual biology requirements of her major, as well as her computer and technology courses. Though she understood the material, adjusting to the structure of school life, reading the social games of the much richer students around her, and the constant coursework were eventually too much. Her failing scores and mounting stressors caused her to end her school years early, and she settled for Registered Nurse certification instead of going for a full doctrate. Thus shamed, she returned home, only to find her town cheering for her successes as they had heard them, and secured her a job at the local hospital to help with their increasing load of patients from outside. In this time, she managed to excel in a crisis, and found great satisfaction in her ability to aid in emergencies surgeries and calm down people who were understandably panicked after their ordeals. She also became an asset to the hosipital in other ways, by manging to re-calibrate most of the accumulated technology in the hospital, and repairing a number of the security systems that had been built into many of the buildings. Though most people doubted they would be needed this far our from the war, Julith included, she felt it was worth it to actually use some of the skills she had picked up in college rather than waste them.

Acts of Defence

When she was 23, tragedy stuck Julith's town. After taking in what seemed to be a routine band of injured travellers, her town was invaded by a roving gang of disillusioned mech pilots.They had followed the reguees, who they had previously captured to sell to the highest bidder, and realised the much bigger prize they could easily take after hearing rumours of the very rural community. Most of them immediately set about to secure the place, taking whatever things of value they could from the residents, imprisoning the inhabitants themselves, and shooting those who resisted too much. Julith was on shift in the hospital's emergency room, and was alerted to this state of affairs when the leader announced his presence by kicking in the door over the corpses of the security detail, shooting the head doctor, and demanding her surrender and for their former prisoners to be returned to him and his lackeys behind him. She staunchly refused, directly putting herself between him and the patients cowering behind her. When the leader laughed and raised his gun, he made an off-hand comment on how much she would be worth once that attitude was beaten out of her, and something inside of her cracked.

In an extremely fast scuffle she wasn't entirely sure she was capable of, Julith wrestled the gun from the leader and dispatched the three of them before he could recover, though she was still injured in the process. Her next course of action was to stabalise the head doctor, get him onto a bench, and make him promise to not open the doors until she came knocking. She then left, and began to activate all of the hospital's security measures. This entailed locking all outside doors, bringing the various turrets that were relics of the military outpost the place had used to be online, and connecting to her home network to do the same. This had the side effect of running the few other raiders out of the building, if they managed to evade the unexpected flurry of bullets. As the chaos began outside and in, she slipped out, locked the front door behind her, and noticed that a few mechs were parked directly outside, with several piloted ones approaching. As a last ditch effort, she hopped into the nearest one and struggled to bring it online, barely managing it, and fumbled through the initial controls enough to be vaguely dangerous. Though deeply unsuccessful at taking out any of the other pilots, through the use of the onboard digital assistant, Julith led them on a chase, and caused enough damage to them that they abandoned their attempts to take over the town for at least long enough to take her out of the picture.

After several hours, the hostile pilots did manage to incapcitate her mech. As they encircled her, she could do nothing but watch as one levelled its weapon at her cockpit. When a shot rang out, however, the mech with the weapon raised exploded at its head from an unseen attacker. Almost immediately afterward, the rest around her fell simlarly, all with clean shots to where the pilots were that entirely obliterated those inside. After several minutes, an official Covenant mech entered her view and gave a wave, its frame gleaming in the sunlight. The pilot forced open comms and asked for her by name, to which she confirmed, still unsure she was alive. The pilot then secured her rescue by having her exit the mech to ride on its shoulder, and relayed the information to the rest of their squad who had been called in by one of the refugees in an emergency plea for help.

The situation when she returned was bad, with quite a lot of injured, several dead, and many more traumatised, but all still capable of speaking agreed it would have been worse without her intervention. The peacekeeping team, after establishing a baseline care and checking for any lingering hostiles, departed without ceremony. Her rescuer never left their mech, but offered a personal congraulations to her before departing, alongside a wish that everyone was willing to take such a stand to protect what they cared about. Her parents had miraculously survived, though were shaken up and deeply concerned about their daughter still being covered in blood, as well as how non-responsive she was. When she finally came back to herself, Julith immediately broke down crying and confined herself to her room for several days.

Convenant Pilot In Training

Shortly after the incient, Julith resigned from the hospital. Though she knew she had done real, true good there performing medicine, she could no longer reconcile that with the ease of which she had killed the people attacking her instead of attempting to simply incapcitate or wound. She spent several weeks soul searching to find what she really, truly wanted, until she hit upon an answer: She wanted the violence to stop. Attempting to only help those who had been harmed by the scars of war, and the various conflicts that kept popping up with increasing regularity, still meant those people were harmed in the first place. She hadn't failed to notice how many more people had arrived seeking shelter, either: The rates were almost identical to when the Material War had been in full swing when she was a child. If Julith wanted the suffering to cease, she needed to stop it at its source, even if that meant she had to participate in it. Thus committed, she applied to the Covnenant as a technical specialist, leaving her hometown behind for perhaps the final time.

Though it was far from her original field, she distinguished herself quickly by learning the ins and outs of the military technologies she was assigned to within hours, identifying their strengths and weaknesses with ease. Additionally, though Julith knew for a fact her town was practically unheard of during her college days, not even appearing on most maps, several pilots of a similar status to her seemed to recognise her upon hearing her name, and asked if she was "that one pilot with moxie". This was slightly disconcerting, but she adapted to it eventually. Beyond a quick show of recognition every now and then, she was treated as simply another fellow worker. She made friends easily with those she was assigned with, and established a solid personal reputation as someone who tried to keep morale up and cared about those around her to an uncommon degree. To her superiors, however, she gained a very different reputation for being very objective oriented and having a phenomenal sense for the flow of the battlefield when assigned as battlefield support.

Joining The Team

Some time after joining the school, Julith was ejected by her superiors after blatantly disregarding orders on a solo mission. Though she accomplished her mission objectives and kept casualties to a minimum in defying orders, her lck of remorse and argumenative stance on her desicions made it clear to Covenant there was not place for her there. Though she privately suspected both the mission and the ejection were orchestrated for one reason or another, the dejection after losing her place was extreme. Shame at failing yet another career choice of hers, one she was sure was the best path to acheiving peace, led to her using her savings to lease an apartment near her former base and pick up odd jobs to make ends meet instead of returning home.

Very quickly afterward, she was contacted by a mysterious client offerign her a more permanent job. The offer was rather vague, but the sender made it clear she was a known quantity, and her skills both on and off the battlefield would be valuable. Even more surprising, they knew she had been gifted a mech after her final assignment, which was a fact she had kept hidden from all but the person she was renting its storage space from. Intrigued, and also desperately needing the money to cover her upcoming bills, she ccepted the offer and resolved to investigate the coordinates given.

On the way to the marked location, several other pilots appeared on her radar, all seeming to converge on the same spot. At their destination, a distant island away from known civilization, three mechs were engaged in combat in a seeming two-on-one. After attempts from the other pilots on the standar operating frequency led to no response from any of the unknown mechs, Julith directly hailed the mech she viewed as "most likely to be in charge" to verify if they were her contact. She was then given the affirmative, alongside a request for help in fending off his assailants.

The engagement was very brief, with Julith shutting down one mech's capabilities entirely, and another of the newly arriving mechs firing off a missle shot which sufficed to scare off the two attackers. The remaining mech then turned to another of the newly arrived mechs, the one helmed by a 'Jenkins', proceded to eliminate him in a single shot, and exited his mech to properly introduce himself. Julith then raised her mech's weapon at him and demanded answers.

The pilot, now introducing himself as Johan, confirmed he was indeed the one who had hired all of them, and denounced the deceased Jenkins as a Covenant spy who needed to be eliminated. He further stated that he was offering them jobs in a revolutionary cell aiming to take down Covneant and put an end to the conflict the system had found itself in. After a back and forth of questions pertaining to what made this revolutionary group any different than the other failed attempts, Julith relented, and agreed to see where things were going. Johan then sent the three hired pilots coordinates, clarifying that it was a retrieval mission, and that if they chose not to sign on permanently that they would still be handsomely paid for their parts.

On the flight to their true destination, she and the pilot known as Corona briefly conversed. Coronoa seemed more apprhensive of working with Johan than Julith was, but both agreed this was at least worth checking out.

Their destination was a dig site within a cave manned by multiple Covenant mechs. Their objective seemed to be several large decerpit mech frames, half buried within the ground. The commander ordered the group to leave or face the consequences and, when those warnings were not heeded, engaged in combat. The battle was similarly quick, with no serious damage taken by Julith's squad. Post battle cleanup revealed that they were likely the Watchers themselves. This fact shocked the group, and Julith realised immediately that this was the edge the group would have that other ones hadn't. Thus resolved, she decided to throw her lot in with the new cell, come what may.

The revolutionary cell did arive to retrieve both them and the mechs in short order, though it quickly became clear that not even they understood the magnitude of what they had found. The ride to the base was brief, but gave the chance for each of them to introduce themselves. Corona revealed her name to be Renda, though chose not to divulge her last name. The pilot of "First Among Hounds" stated he was Hark Rayford III, which set Julith on edge immediately, feeling it was a "rich person's name", and his attitude did not help that impression. Johan needed no further introduction, and knew who they all were already.

Notes

• Julith loves kitschy, dorky jewlery and accessories. If there was a space themed Claires', she'd be their number one customer. Her best described out of uniform fashion sense is "Ms. Frizzle as an exclusively space themed teacher".
• Any mech she pilots, she insists has to have an inner compartment for passengers in addition to a place for the pilot. This is partially informed by how exposed she felt on her trip back to her hometown, but also just seems practical to her way of thinking.
• Julith's favourite colour is teal.
• Julith reportedly has never seen a live fish in her life.
• Julith is much better at communicating with people when not face to face. She does better over voice calls, text, and even video calls compared to being in person. She speculates this is because she's too tuned to actively reading body language from college for self defence, instead of passively, and the more input she has the more she gets concerned about minor changes to stance and movement.
• Julith enjoys crochet in her spare time, finding textile work in general relaxing.

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