Invented Original Characters: Cassandra Calimeris

Growing up my dream job was to be a comic book artist/writer. But with very little artistic talent that dream died pretty quickly. Now I do my best to bring my characters to life using apps like factory of heroes, swordmaker, armormaker, you doodle and photo cutout. They don't always turn out looking very good but I get more excited about the concepts and stories behind the characters than how well I can make the character look good. Sometimes my characters are from cultures I am not a part of because I think it fits their story or other aspects about them. I am not a cultural expert but at the very least I hope no one is upset by me using aspects of cultures I'm not a part of and find interesting. That said below is my original character Cassandra Calimeris.

Raised in a small town on the coast of Greece Cassandra Calimeris was once just a normal woman. But as members or her community started disappearing Cassandra's strange dreams seemed to hint at their fates. Nearly every night Cassandra dreamt of strange sea creatures she at first thought she had never seen before, until she recalled dreaming about them as a child. This brought Cassandra to the sea she had swam in a thousand times but never in the dead of night. And there she saw one of the creatures from her dreams what she would soon know as a lamprey vampire. A culture of once human sorcerers who used their magic to live in the seas surrounding Greece and feed on humans. Unsure of who to tell or if she would be believed she slept on the idea of what to do next and in her dreams she dreamt of slaying a lamprey vampire with a hunting knife made of silver. So a week later with her custom made silver knife she inched her way to the edge of a fisherman's dock in the middle of the night. And when a creature sprang out at her she plunged her dagger in its heart. From then on Cassandra has been dedicated to hunting lamprey vampire until the world is safe from them.

As Cassandra killed more lamprey, they began to know her. She could no longer wait at the edge of the dock and stab them as they lunged at her. Instead she was diving in after them. This went well until Cassandra's first encounter with a "leviathan", a bigger stronger, more ruthless subcategory of lamprey vampire. Nearly drowned and nearly devoured Cassandra lost a hand and her first silver knife stabbing the beast in the eye and frantically making it to shore. From there Cassandra improved her arsenal and refined her techniques.

Currently Cassandra's primary weapon is a a spear gun she nicknamed her "trident". This gun uses compressed air to fire different types of silver spears that imbed in lamprey vampires and are very hard to remove. Then the back of the spear inflates a thick rubber balloon creating enough buoyancy to make it hard for most lamprey to swim, sometimes dragging them nearer to the top of the water. Her "trident" also has a monitor on it that can show approximately where lamprey vampire are and a powerful flashlight to help her see on deeper dives. As her dreams imply Cassandra seems to have a low level of telepathy as she at times has successfully used her "trident" and its monitor to shoot lamprey who are deeper in the water than she is willing to go with shots that seem unnaturally lucky. Similarly she has so far seemed immune to the mind control spells lamprey sometimes use to lure humans into danger. While the "trident" is her primary weapon since her first encounter with a leviathan she still relies on silver knives for close combat as well as her robotic hand she built since her first leviathan encounter. Cassandra is an expert swimmer and diver and occasionally inhales pure oxygen for longer dives. She predominantly hunts lamprey as they swim in shallow or medium depth open water or shelter in coastal underwater caves but eventually she hopes to build a large mech for purging the sea of lamprey even at extreme depths she can't dive to. She suspects there may even be more dangerous types of lamprey she is yet to discover.