Editing Eclipse Fate: Gravity's Rainbow: Skadi (section)

== Character History ==

Hunter (born Kathyayani Nayar) was born to a hard scrabble life of asteroid prospecting--the sort of life you're not likely to ever do well at. Seeing how people just walked all over her parents made her seethe with rage. She was also determined to live a life where no one would boss her around or mistreat her. Her parents, devout Hindus, tried to raise her to be compassionate to all beings, but Hunter, while loving them, didn't listen to their lessons, at least not at the time. As far as she could tell, it hadn't gotten them anywhere but exploited by hypercorp mining concerns that lacked any sense of compassion at all. As far as Hunter could tell, the only way out of the life her parents lived and into something better was to be ruthless. The Night Cartel saw potential in her and took her and molded her into an enforcer, starting her with small hits and slowly she worked up the organization.

While working for the Night Cartel, Hunter also found herself becoming an agent of Firewall. She was working for the Night Cartel in their territory on the asteroid belt, when a new group called End Game began horning in on their territory, selling previously unknown drugs that were quite potent and addictive and caused people to engage in sometimes truly bizarre behavior. The higher-ups within the Night Cartel initially tried communicating politely, telling End Game that this was the Cartel's territory and that they should leave and take their drugs with them. Hunter was not privy to the response from End Game, but gathered that it was ... very strange. So the Cartel sent her out at the head of a team, to locate End Game's leaders, find out where they were getting their drug supply from, and take them out as completely as possible. Hunter did so, in the process discovering that End Game was not just another organized crime group, but TITAN-worshipers seeking to bring about the Singularity--and the source of their drugs was out-of-system, being smuggled in through a legitimate scientific operation exploring an exo-planet through one of the Pandora Gates. Having dealt with the mess handily and passed the information up the line to her bosses, Hunter was contacted by Firewall--either one of her bosses was part of Firewall or Firewall intercepted the information (Hunter was never told). Firewall liked how she had performed on the mission and wanted to recruit her for side jobs. In those days, Hunter was always eager for another chance to prove herself, so she quite willingly signed on.

And then something happened that pushed her to leave the Night Cartel. They sent her to do a hit against the leaders of a union of asteroid miners that the Night Cartel was trying to extort money from and take over their claims, making the miners effectively the Cartel's employees--but the miners were fighting back, influenced by anarchist and technosocialist ideals. The Cartel had assassinated the leaders before, but they had apparently not learned their lesson, continuing to fight after being uploaded to new bodies. So Nayar (as Hunter was still known back then) was sent to not only kill their morphs, but destroy their cortical stacks. But these people reminded her too much of her parents and she couldn't do it. She killed the morphs, but smuggled the cortical stacks to safety, then egocast the contents to a place where she thought they might be safe from the vengeance of the Night Cartel. Then she jumped on the nearest scum barge, paying not only to switch morphs but to have a hacker set her up with a new identity (Cat Hunter) to make it harder for the Night Cartel to trace her. Without any funds, she left the scum barge when they parked at an anarchist habitat orbiting Jupiter, since you don't need credits there ... and became part of the community. Here she found a community where nobody would boss her around--but that she didn’t need to be ruthless herself to achieve that. Hunter felt like she had found a home. When an organized crime syndicate came into conflict with the habitat, Hunter reluctantly left her quiet life and offered her expertise in security dealing with them. She discovered that there was actually a place for someone like with her talents to do something constructive in an anarchist habitat and joined the local militia, soon becoming a respected figure in it.

Despite having found a home where no one will boss her around and she doesn’t have to prove herself to maintain her independence, Hunter still burns with the rage that afflicted her as a child and drove her to work for the Night Cartel. She’s also proud of her skills--more than, she likes using them, enjoying the hunt and the violence. While she thought little of this while she worked for the Night Cartel, these aspects of her personality now scare her. As a result, she took to studying Chinese and Japanese philosophy, looking for a route to self-control, and began practicing Zen meditation and following a form of the code of Bushido (modified to fit an anarchist belief system). It serves as a restraint on her own worst impulses--but can mean she's also sometimes very rigid in her behavior. Other anarchists may find her following of this strict code a little peculiar, but it's not as if eccentricity doesn't thrive in a lot of anarchist habitats.