Post by Dakari Johessman on May 22, 2010 22:12:18 GMT -5
Rayleigh Johessman
Full Name: Rayleigh Ann Jael Johessman (née Johnsen)
Age: 46
Civilian or Special: Special
Currently Located: Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Affiliated with: Villain
Celebrity Claim: Bassett, Angela
Relation to You: Mother
Personality: Rayleigh is quiet but charming. She keeps to herself, and shies away from strangers. However, once she gets to know a person, she opens up, allowing herself to be more relaxed and expressive.
She is not easily angered, but her temper can be quite intimidating. She sometimes feels a need to prove herself to others, as she believes that others perceive her as being weak and frail. In reality, she is very cunning and has no qualms about using others for her own gain.
Like most of her family, she has a history of clinical depression. She has been working through it, especially as her life has improved, but she does occasionally take medicine to even out her moods.
Appearance: Rayleigh is five feet seven inches tall and weighs about one hundred forty pounds. Her skin is dark brown; her dark brown hair usually falls past her shoulders. Her eyes are also brown, though she must wear glasses or contacts in order to see. She has a shapely figure, which she has maintained well over the years. Her hair is natural, though she has taken to dying it lately to cover her graying roots.
She usually wears a thick layer of foundation on her face when she appears in public. Although the scars from her accident and surgery have faded considerably, she is still very conscious of them.
Ability: Xenoglossy is the ability to read, write, speak, and understand any language. In Rayleigh’s case, this includes traditional languages, such as those spoken by humans, as well as codes generated by computers, including scrambled words of any language. This ability results from a form of psychic intuition. She does not literally understand the languages as a student or native speaker might. Instead, her mind produces an instant “educated guess” at the meaning or appropriate translation.
Rayleigh can use this ability to communicate with others, whether they speak English or not. She can also crack any code she sees or hears. She can use the ability to help her hack computer programs, as she can understand encrypted messages easily.
Limits: While Rayleigh is very accurate, her lack of knowledge of the language’s culture causes her to misunderstand certain subtleties that come naturally to native speakers, such as slang or puns. Also, she cannot rely on her ability alone when hacking computers or websites; it only allows her to get around encryption and understand codes.
Additionally, when this ability is activated, she automatically perceives sounds and letters as occurring in the most sensible order; if a song were played backward, she would hear it played forward. This facet of her ability makes solving word puzzles quite unchallenging.
The ability is also not much help offensively or defensively. She cannot force others to speak or be enthralled or hypnotized by her words.
History: Rayleigh was born in Acacia, Georgia as the second of a pair of twins. She was underweight, even more so than twins usually are, and while her doctors tried their best to help her gain weight, they informed her parents that she would probably not live much longer. However, she did manage to pull through.
She met Shawn Johessman for the first time when she was two days old (not that she remembers it). Because Ray’s mother and Shawn’s aunt were good friends, Ray and Shawn grew up together, and soon became inseparable. When Shawn got involved in gang activity, Ray followed him into the fray, initially intending to him out of trouble. Instead, she wound up only getting them in deeper.
When she was fifteen years old, Ray was involved in a serious car crash that claimed the lives of her four best friends. She spent several weeks in the hospital, undergoing surgery for broken bones and skin grafting. Eventually, she recovered, but once she returned to school, her classmates picked on her because of her appearance. She found comfort in her new life of crime, and soon became the leader of Acacia’s notorious all-female gang.
Meanwhile, the City of Acacia began to crack down on the gangs, and Ray and Shawn found themselves being specifically targeted due to their positions. Additionally, they were set up by a rival (who Ray had thought was a friend) for the murder of the district attorney. Ray was tried for the murder but was found "not guilty"; officially, the case remains unsolved.
As they got older, Ray's and Shawn's friendship evolved into a romance, to the chagrin of their parents and Shawn's cousin, Jeremiah Duquesne, who had also developed feelings for Ray.
Despite her ties to crime, Rayleigh did well in school, and attended college in Atlanta with Shawn. She also became a singer and musician, signed to Shawn's record label. She and Shawn became moderately famous, and extremely successful financially. Ray's ability manifested early in her career, which helped greatly when she traveled for tours and promoting.
Shawn and Ray married while in college, and several months later, Ray gave birth to a set of triplets- Dakari, Shawn II, and Anastasia. Their marriage was rocky at first, due partly to the pressures of fame. Shawn cheated on Ray, and Ray found herself involved in a brief affair with Jeremiah. Ray and Shawn separated for a while, then reunited; both of them retired from performing to focus on their relationship and their children.
Ray's situation improved, but Jeremiah lost two wives in a row to a car accident and cancer, after having lost out on Ray also. Shortly after the death of his second wife, Jeremiah committed suicide, an event that still haunts the Johessman family. As requested in Jeremiah's will, Ray adopted his two daughters, Maori and Andrea, and raised them alongside her and Shawn's own five children.
Ray and Shawn now reside comfortably in Acacia, where they manage the record label as well as their other, less legal, business ventures. They have connections ranging from the criminal underworld to the highest government agencies, which they use to keep themselves sheltered from the law and to achieve their own ends. They have spoken out against Ark Industries for the mistakes that resulted in the April Fourth tragedies, and have developed a vendetta against the Company, which they know exists and (correctly) suspect of kidnapping a friend of theirs, Rayne Campbell.
Shawn is the more public face of the pair; Rayleigh prefers to work behind the scenes, using her knowledge, wiles, and abilities to help advance and protect her family. Rayleigh alone is able to control Shawn's temper, and he hers. They complement each other perfectly, and are sometimes referred to by the media collectively as "Shawna." Ray is generally perceived as the more gentle of the two, though, when provoked, she can be just as ruthless and vengeful as her more widely-feared husband.
