Name: Verity Ryder
Age: 18
Looks: Verity is tall, thin, and athletic. She has long blonde hair and sharp blue eyes. She also looks a lot younger than she is, which is the bane of her existence.
Personality: Verity is sarcastic and feisty, but she has a squishy center. She never keeps her mouth shut when she has something to say, and that’s most of the time. She likes people, but at the same time is nervous around them. She can’t abide being touched.
History: Verity grew up in the capital of the Alliance planets, Capital City. The oldest of five children, she is a born genius, and harbors other special gifts, including a heightened response to people’s emotions and an ability for telekinesis. Her family, however, is exceedingly poor, so they felt no qualms about sending her off to the academy for the gifted at the age of thirteen, where she met River. Much to her dismay, they sent her youngest brother Samson to the Academy a few years later.
At first, she and River were roommates, until the Alliance started the experimentation on their brains. As with River, they exploited her gifts, and made her a weapon. Though she isn’t a reader, she felt the fear that ran through the ship after River’s escape, which gave her hope. One day, they pushed her too far, and she telekinetically destroyed the room and all that were in it, then managed to get away. Though unstable and terrified, she managed to feed off other’s emotions long enough to send out a call to River.
She’s not as badly damaged as River was, mostly due to the natural emotional stability an empath garners from birth. But, above all things, she can’t stand to be touched; even a friendly brush on the arm or pat on the head sets her off. She also has a hard time controlling her telekinesis during times of heightened emotional stress.
How Came on Serenity: She sent a distress call to River, using her empathic abilities to reach out to her former roommate. River forced the Captain to bring Serenity and find her. They got her off the planet just before the Feds came for her. She has being living on Serenity ever since.