Selena Cross
A Heart of Tarnished Gold
There are people out there doing some real bad stuff! Dorian is trying to summon some gribbly monster, Masters is trying to overthrow the government, Millicent ... Millicent literally eats people. She eats them! She EATS PEOPLE! And you're after me? Really? I'm just trying to dig up an ancient machine army and steal peoples' valuables with it. Can't you go bother one of them? Oh well, your funeral.
The Cross family has always been one that looked at the laws passed down by Ironrise and their native Nightfall as really just a set of optional suggestions. They've been thieves, con artists, strong men if the price was right. Their mantra has always been "survive and thrive" and little things like who's the rightful owner of what don't really matter to them. Selena is the product of her family's upbringing. Wandering from Hamlet to Hamlet, taking what they wanted, cheating whomever they pleased leaving as soon as attention turned their way.
Time took its toll on the Cross family. One by one their crimes caught up to them until only Selena and her brother Sebastian remained. Sebastian's freedom ended when his black market for ancient relics and enterprising thieves was broken by Bennett Creedy's Black Nine. The elite team, led by William Buckthorp at the time, captured Sebastian and his thieves. Sebastian vanished from that point on and Selena assumes he's rotting away in one of Creedy's black sites or that he's long dead. However, he left something for her that would change her life. A map. That map led to forgotten ruin in the faraway corner of Nightfall's forest. There she found hundreds of derelict, crumbling Silver Ghosts all mired in the overgrowth. And she found her Arc Glove. A device capable of harnessing dangerous levels of Arc energy which she could unleash as devastating blasts or filter into the dead machines to return them life and under her control. Soon, she would master Arc sciences and resurrect a legion of the Silver Ghosts to serve her every whim.
Selena has no interest in destroying nations, murdering Heroes or unleashing terrible entities. She has no real desire to hurt any. However, Spirel is full of wealth and luxuries that she can't help but crave. The army of dead machines and her Arc Glove make it impossible for her to live outside her means now. Everything is just one politely presented threat away from being hers for the taking. She just wants to survive and thrive
Closest Allies
Selena is just as horrified by the other Villains as Heroes are. All the good real estate will go right to hell if Dorian Loeb gets his way. If Masters and the rest of Kraken overthrow the governments of Spirel she can't imagine life would suddenly get cushier. She suspects many of the horrific rumors about the true nature of Millicent Shaw and Prime Minister Beckett Blackwell to be terrified of them. That being said, each of those Villains is more than capable of putting forward an offer that's lucrative enough to warrant a brief partnership. Money, new relics, new sciences, all of that is deeply appealing. In the case of The Prime Minister or Bennett Creedy both are capable of brute force coercion or threats aimed at her missing brother.
Archenemies
Katherine Harrington is always getting involved in Selena's search for more ancient relics to "repurpose". And where Katherine goes so to does her cousin Rose and Rose's friend Grace Saxford. She holds a particular grudge against William Buckthorp for taking her brother away and it makes her particularly happy to see that he's a target of Creedy's now.
Playstyle
Selena Cross is an Optimizer character. Her Special Ability, The Deactivated Shall Rise, is all about getting the most out of her card draw during the start phase. By being able to draw up to two cards from the discard pile she's able to really batter the Heroes with powerful cards that came up in her ally's turn. It also gives her some additional benefits when Laying Low. If she uses a Savvy chip to look at the Hero Asset Deck prior to Laying Low she can ensure that a good card gets discarded entirely and poor value cards remain on top. Conversely, she can also remove a poor value card from the top of the Villain Asset Deck as well.
Selena's greatest ability is making use of the Villains' discarded cards. If nothing particularly useful is on top of the pile than the majority of her usefulness is neutralized. She also has a very generalist stat line and a poor Resource stat which force her to rely even heavier on top quality Asset cards.
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