Garnett McAllister

Garnett has a lean, athletic build that is shaped by two very distinct phases of her conditioning. Her frame reflects both her desert origins and Archive military training. She's tall with long limbs that give her natural reach advantages in combat, but her muscle mass is dense and functional rather than bulky. Her body type mirrors the efficient conditioning that is built for endurance, agility, and precision, rather than raw power.

Her fitness level is exceptional, honed by Archive military protocols that have pushed her beyond her typical desert survival conditioning. She has remarkable cardiovascular endurance from high-altitude training simulations and can maintain peak performance in extreme heat due to her desert origins. Her reaction time and spatial awareness have been sharpened through tactical drills, making her movements precise and economical. As a result, Garnett has developed more core and lower body strength for practical combat applications.

Her skin still bears the deep bronze tan of the desert-born, but after two years of being predominantly underground completing Archive training, her sun exposure has been slightly. She maintains the calloused hands and weathered appearance of someone raised in harsh conditions, but her posture now carries the rigid discipline of military bearing. Her amber eyes have developed the same watchful intensity seen in other Archive operatives.

Remarkably, Garnett shows no signs of Spore Lung, despite her extensive exposure during the bloom front crisis in Espera. This resistance may be due to her natural desert-born constitution or possibly some genetic factor that made her valuable to the Archive. However, the psychological trauma of losing her father, Seamus McAllister, and the intensity of Archive training have left her with chronic tension headaches and a slight tremor in her hands when she's not actively engaged in tasks.

The Archive Collective has enhanced her natural agility with specialized training for desert warfare and Rimeblood encounters. She moves with controlled grace and is capable of sudden bursts of speed, but is also trained to conserve energy like all desert dwellers. Her reach and height give her advantages in close-quarters combat, while her conditioning allows her to operate effectively in the environmental extremes where Rimebloods are most commonly encountered.

Garnett's bronze skin carries a unique dual texture that incorporates the original weathered leather-quality of desert life layered with the subtle smoothness that comes from Archive conditioning. Her skin has an almost contradictory quality where patches of Archive-softened skin meet areas that were carved by wind and salt.

The most striking feature is her freckle constellation that is scattered across her nose and cheeks, cascading in dense clusters down her shoulders, forearms, and collarbone like rust-coloured stardust. These freckles have an unusual depth to them, with some appearing almost three-dimensional against her skin, as if the desert sun-branded each one individually.

Most unusually, she has developed what appear to be faint stretch marks along her inner arms and across her shoulders. This is not from weight changes, but from the rapid muscle development that occurred during her intensive Archive training. At first glance they might be mistaken for pale scars, but they have a silvery quality that catches light differently.

Her hands tell perhaps the most complex story because they have retained the original calluses from cricket farmin, but have been joined by new ones from weapons training. This has created an unusual pattern of toughened skin. Her fingertips retain unusual sensitivity despite the calluses, a remnant of her delicate work with small insects and mechanisms in Espera.

Unlike other desert dwellers, Garnett shows no signs of the chronic dehydration lines or sun damage that would be expected for someone her age. The Archive's controlled environment seems to have preserved some of her youthful skin quality while her genetics have protected her from typical spore exposure effects. This creates an unsettling contrast where she looks both older and younger than her years simultaneously.

Garnett's amber-brown eyes have taken on an almost crystalline quality, with flecks of gold that seem to shift and move in changing light. During combat training, other recruits noticed that her eyes appear to darken to burnished copper when she's completely focused, giving her an unsettling intensity that even Archive instructors have found remarkable.

She has strong, angular bone structure that suggests Celtic ancestry with high, prominent cheekbones that create dramatic shadows and catch light in a way that emphasizes her resilience. Her facial structure has a refined sharpness. The Archive training has honed away any remaining softness of her adolescence, leaving her with the lean, carved look of someone shaped by discipline and loss.

She has a broad forehead that is indicative of her natural cleverness and her capacity for the strategic thinking that the Archive has cultivated. Her eyebrows are distinctively thick and naturally well-defined, a deeper shade of auburn than her hair, with a slight arch that gives her a naturally skeptical expression even in repose. The brows frame her amber eyes dramatically, creating an intensity that makes people uncomfortable when she stares.

Her nose is straight and narrow, with a slight upturn at the tip that hints at her youthful origins. There's a very faint bump along the bridge from a break during Archive combat training that she never mentions, giving it character without compromising its elegance.

Garnett has a strong, square jawline that speaks to both her genetic heritage and her military conditioning. It is the jaw of someone who clenches their teeth and endures. The line from her ear to her chin is clean and definitive, giving her profile a classical strength. When she's angry or concentrating, the muscles along her jaw become visibly tense, creating a subtle but unmistakable warning sign.

Her lips are naturally full, but often pressed into a firm, controlled line as a result of a habit developed during Archive training where showing emotion was considered weakness. When she does smile, which is rare, it transforms her entire face, revealing straight, strong teeth that somehow survived both desert malnutrition and military rations. Her mouth naturally turns down slightly at the corners, giving her a perpetually serious expression that makes her occasional smiles all the more striking.

Garnett's default expression is one of watchful assessment where she learned early how to read situations and people for threats and opportunities. Her eyebrows often draw together slightly in concentration, creating a small vertical line between them that makes her look older than her years. When she's genuinely relaxed, which is rare, her features soften dramatically, revealing glimpses of the child she once was tending her cricket farm.

Garnett carries several distinctive scars from her experiences: a jagged mark across her left shoulder blade from debris during the bloom front escape, and systematic small scars on her forearms from Archive combat training with bladed weapons. Her ginger hair, now kept in a practical Archive-regulation style, has darkened slightly from lack of constant sun exposure, but still catches light like burnished copper.

Her ginger hair has developed fascinating variations in tone due to her time split between desert exposure and Archive underground living. The strands nearest her scalp have darkened to a deep auburn, almost brown in certain light, while the lengths still catch fire in sunlight with brilliant copper and gold highlights. The texture itself tells her story, where Archive regulation cuts have left it shorter and more controlled than her wild childhood locks, but it still springs into unruly waves that refuse complete submission.

Beyond her combat training scars, Garnett also carries several distinctive marks that set her apart. A series of small, perfectly round burn marks dot her right shoulder blade due to remnants from sparks during her cricket farmwork as a child. These form an almost decorative pattern that she's unconsciously proud of, since they represent her pre-trauma identity.

Her cheekbones are one of her most striking features. They are high, sharp, and prominent in a way that creates natural contouring. They're the kind of cheekbones that catch every flicker of firelight or harsh desert sun, making her face appear almost sculptural. Her cheeks are lean, with no softness remaining from childhood, creating hollow planes that emphasize her bone structure and give her an austere, commanding presence.

Garnett has developed a habit of unconsciously rolling her shoulders in a way that makes the burned cricket-spark pattern on her shoulder blade flex and shift, creating an almost hypnotic movement that draws attention during briefings or conversations.

She has developed the habit of tilting her head slightly to the right when she is listening intently, a gesture that combines with her sharp cheekbones to create an almost predatory alertness. When she's suppressing strong emotions, a small muscle near her left temple twitches almost imperceptibly—something only those who know her well would notice.

Garnett displays an extraordinary resistance to environmental hazards. She has complete immunity to Spore Lung despite extensive exposure during the bloom front crisis, suggesting either genetic resistance or early exposure that built immunity. The Archive has noted this trait and enhanced it through specialized conditioning, making her invaluable for operations in contaminated zones.

Her years tending cricket farms have developed an almost supernatural ability to read small-scale biological systems. Garnett can assess the health of any contained ecosystem instantly, from insect populations to plant growth to water quality. This extends to recognizing early signs of Verdant contamination, Rimeblood presence, or environmental toxicity, long before standard detection methods would register threats.

Three years of intensive military conditioning have sharpened her natural desert-born reflexes into something approaching preternatural. She can react to multiple simultaneous threats with calculated precision, making her exceptionally dangerous in close-quarters combat. Her reaction time is fast enough that other soldiers sometimes wonder if she's anticipating attacks rather than simply responding to them.

Growing up in scarcity and learning Archive efficiency protocols has given her an uncanny ability to maximize limited resources. She can make water, food, ammunition, or fuel last impossibly long, often finding ways to stretch supplies that confound even experienced Archive quartermasters. This isn't just careful rationing, as she seems to intuitively understand how to optimize consumption without compromising performance.

Her desert origins combined with Archive conditioning have given her unusual control over her body's thermoregulation processes and metabolism. She can function at peak performance in extreme heat or cold, requires less water than should be possible, and can slow her metabolism during resource shortages in ways that border on controlled hibernation.

The Archive has trained her natural analytical abilities to an extraordinary degree. She can read battlefield situations, enemy movement patterns, and environmental changes with an accuracy that seems almost prescient. This makes her invaluable for predicting Rimeblood behaviour and coordinating defensive strategies.

A combination of her childhood cricket-farming patience and Archive stealth training has made her capable of moving with complete silence across any terrain. She can approach within striking distance of most targets without detection, earning her the nickname "Cricket" among other Archive operatives - both for her farming background and her ability to appear and disappear like an insect.

Garnett wears a modified Archive military uniform that is adapted for desert and extreme temperature operations. Her base layer consists of a fitted, moisture-wicking undershirt in Archive regulation charcoal grey that is designed to regulate body temperatures during extreme weather conditions. Over this, she wears a tactical vest in muted olive drab that is lighter than standard Archive issue due to her desert specialization, but is reinforced with trauma plates at vital points for her protection.

Her pants are Archive-regulation fitted cargo trousers in desert tan, made from a specialized fabric that resists both temperature extremes and spore contamination. Unlike standard issue, hers have extra reinforcement at the knees and seat from her childhood habit of crouching while tending crickets, a practical modification that the Archive pragmatically allowed.

Her most distinctive piece is a modified Archive environmental suit jacket that can be worn open during normal operations or sealed for hostile environments. The jacket is a unique copper-bronze colour that is used as an Archive experiment in desert camouflage to complement her ginger hair. It features internal heating elements for Rimeblood encounters and cooling vents for desert operations.

She wears Archive-issued combat boots that have been modified with additional insulation and specialized grip plates for ice-covered surfaces. The boots still bear traces of salt stains from her Espera origins that she hasn't bothered to remove.

Around her neck, she wears a regulation Archive identification chain, but tucked beneath her shirt is a small vial of salt from Espera's flats; it is the only personal memento she allowed herself to keep. The vial is cork-stopped and wrapped in a piece of fabric from her childhood cricket-farming apron.

Her utility belt is Archive-standard but customized for her specialization. She carries Archive-issue tactical gloves designed for extreme temperature operations, with textured fingertips that allow for precise manipulation even when numb from the cold. The gloves can be heated internally or cooled as needed.

Despite Archive regulations, Garnett has made subtle personal modifications to her gear. The copper wire threading through her equipment harness is twisted in patterns that mirror the structure of cricket wing-cases, serving as an unconscious homage to her farming days in the form of a practical organizational system.

Her hair is kept in regulation Archive style , pulled back in a tight braid that won't interfere with equipment, but is secured with a small copper clip that she crafted herself: another subtle rebellion against complete institutional uniformity.

Garnett carries Archive-standard weaponry adapted for her specialization: a thermal lance for Rimeblood encounters, standard sidearm, and specialized throwing implements designed to deliver thermal or chemical payloads. Her most unique tool is a modified field scanner that can detect both Rimeblood thermal signatures and Verdant spore concentrations, which is essential for her dual-threat specialization.