Lena “Cuts” Barlow is a player character who was played by Homeside 6.

Lena “Cuts” Barlow
Species:	Nepleslian
Gender:	Female
Age:	26 years old
Height:	178cm (5' 10“)
Weight:	63.8kg (143lbs)
Organization:	ISC Chimera / Independent
Occupation:	Chef / Baker / Pirate
Rank:	Independent
Current Placement:

• Voice
• Themes

Preferred Plots:

1. ISC Chimera

• Height: 178cm (5' 10”)
• Mass: 63.8kg (143lbs)
• Measurements: 34C-32-36

Build and Skin Color: Born to a rich lifestyle with the benefits of modern advanced medicines and healthcare, Lena is a tall, curvaceous, and healthily fit young woman. Where some have the sleek tone of military fitness, she instead has the gentle curves of her past lifestyle with her family. Her skin is a richly tanned color as a side-effect of her home-world and she has a wide variety of colorful tattoos on her body.

Eyes and Facial Features: Lena sports the same soft features and heart-shaped face of her mother, with gentle curves, a slender and thin nose, and large light blue eyes. Yet a break from this comes in the two side-by-side piercings she has on the left of her bottom lip, though these are often removed when cooking – in a professional environment, anyways.

Ears: Sans the piercings, normally simple dark-colored metal rings or studs unless she is feeling more “dressy”, her ears are just like any other average Nepleslian woman.

Hair Color and Style: Lena's hair is a deep red color and long enough that it reaches her waistline. Because of the demands of her chosen profession it is most often seen tied back in to a rather intricately braided ponytail, or some other fashion to keep it out of her face.

Distinguishing Features: Along with her ear and lip piercings, she has a number of of various fading scars on her from times when she has partied perhaps a little /too/ much.

She also has tattoos that start small on the back of her hands before quickly turning to sleeves at her wrists, up her arms, across her shoulders, down the entirety of her back and most of her sides, on to her stomach, and ending in an intricate pattern below her waistline that few ever actually get a chance to see. She also has tattooed on the outside of her left calf, a VCBS in its sheath done in such a way to look as if it's strapped on to her leg, with “CADET BARLOW” in black stenciling on the sheath in dedication to her younger brother.

Personality: Lena is some odd mixture between a party girl, an angry chef at times, and the closest thing equatable to our Southern Belles that one would find in a kitchen as anything less than a gourmet (though she would argue she is one, no matter where she is cooking or what's being served). She's rather hard to pin down with an Old Money family childhood, a party-girl's blaze attitude about care-free sex and drinking, and a well-trained chef and baker who takes her job /very/ seriously. Her friend and warm, smile-cracking way of greeting strangers is more along the lines of her party-girl nature than with her cultured upbringing despite some slang she might slip in, and occasionally her “refined manners” peak through to remind people she talks to that despite her attitude and appearance that she did come from a very civilized and cultured youth. When meeting new people she is always smiling and friendly, and hospitable to the point when they finally push her in to believing they don't deserve it . . . which some have found can take quite a lot of dedicated work.

When she is with those she knows, her more “free” side comes out. She starts to drink more, “lets her hair out” as it were, and acts far more energetic than she would normally have people believe her to be in passing. She has a love for loud, fast, bass heavy music which is not something one might suspect when she first opens her mouth. She's at her best, some would say, at the clubs and bars her travels abroad have allowed her to experience. This is also when her apparent flippant attitude about sex seems at it's most relaxed.

In the kitchen she is another two-sided story. She is always wanting to help, always hospitable enough to want to ensure everybody she's serving is well-fed and enjoying the meals, as well as ensuring that everybody who might be helping her in the kitchen is getting everything they might need – as well as ensuring that anybody who has decided to take on the very dangerous mission of trying to “help” her when the cooking is being done in any environment other than a professional resteraunt has done their job without getting in her way. If they mess things up, get in her way, or cause trouble then she has a habit of getting very angry. Yelling, profanities, thrown cookware, and in the worst episodes threats of bodily harm with various cutlery have been made to some unfortunate souls who were in the kitchen with her.

With the topic of her brother, she is always willing to tell of how much she admires her younger brother for the things he must be doing in the Nepleslian Navy, and she's always equally warm with discussing her thoughts on her family.

Yet the surest way to bring her to silence is bringing up her travels abroad that brought her to the UoC and the time during which the Mishu attacked. She doesn't like to talk much about what happened to her then and very few souls have been privileged to be trusted with even the smallest of details.

• Likes: She loves anything one might think to do in a kitchen (baking, cooking, other . . . things). She also enjoys drinking with friends, loud music, tattoos, sending messages back home to her family, cherries and anything flavored as such, the colors pink and blue, and occasionally reading a good book.
• Dislikes: One thing she hates more than anything else is people getting in her way or purposefully causing trouble in the kitchen. She also doesn't like people who want to flirt with her but who suck at it, people turning off her music when she's in the middle of enjoying it, and men who either don't take relationships seriously or read too much in to a one-night stand – depending upon which she had intended.
• Goals: She hopes to some day become a famous chef known throughout Yamatai, Nepleslia, and elsewhere.

• Canum Heath Barlow - Father
  • 67 y/o, [ALIVE]
• Kerstin Abend Barlow - Mother
  • 60 y/o, [ALIVE]
  • Maiden name, Mehler.
• Cadet Ryan Wells Barlow - Brother
  • 25 y/o, [ALIVE]

For as long as any of it's descendants can remember, the Barlow family has grown as an “Old Money” name on Deslauria since it was first founded in earnest by the Nepleslians. Years ago three Barlow brothers came to the planet with a loan from an uncle to invest in to the local business prospects. Carefully thought-out investments in development projects in both space tech research and colonial development technologies brought back well-earned returns for the three brothers that they began to put back in to the local economy in order to further establish themselves. While far from the most powerful of the local families that established themselves on the planet in the early days of colonization, the Barlow family had ties firm enough that they have been an “Old Money” family on Delsauria to this very day. While their “reach” and influence may not extend very far out of the planet's orbit, few with the last name Barlow have ever known a world of poverty growing up there. That was the fortunate sort of life that Lena grew up in to.

Lena's father Canum worked as a stock trader, mainly dealing with the family line's own stocks, but also making profit in managing those of other far more wealthy families. He was a rather stoic-faced man, so it was surprising to some that he had found the love of his life in the energetic Kerstin Mehler: a spit-fire of a woman moved fresh from Funky City with her parents. The two were a happy and loving couple who had Lena (who had a first name more in line with her mother's side, at her mother's insistence) and a year later her younger brother Ryan (who had a name more to his father's side, also at their mother's insistence). While the nature of their father's work meant that he wasn't home quite as often as he might have liked, their mother had no such job, and so while the children did have a nanny while growing up they were no strangers to the love of their own birth-parents.

Lena's early childhood was an entirely normal one at such a young age, and in to private schooling things progressed normally. While she was not an “all-A” student her grades were respectably high, she got along well with her fellow students even as a young child, and it was at a very young age when one of the things that would soon become a love of her life would show itself in the form of helping her mother and Nanna Helen with cooking meals and deserts out in the kitchen. Aside from this and early schooling, a lot of her time was spent learning to play musical instruments such as the guitar as well.

For most of her childhood, she was a refined young lady, raised in the ways of “proper manners” and refined etiquette as her father would wish. As the onset of the teenage years came in, more of her mother's side came out. She and her younger brother had always been close in life. Playmates and best friends soon turned in to best friends and a source of secrets and gossips as one, and eventually both of them hit their teenage years. Few people know as much about the late-night clandestine calls or time spent text-messaging her friends, the talk of cute boys (and not longer after, the musings on girls), and other little “secrets” of Lena's life more than her brother does. To this day because of their early childhood and teenage years, there are things she turns to him for she has yet to ever tell their parents. While things such as her love for cooking alongside her mother and Nanna didn't ever really fade, she started taking up other interests. While she did her best to keep up her grades, late-night parties, and going out with friends started becoming another outlet of her energy and source of her attention. She has quite a few stories of her life as she grew older. Getting drunk and jumping off the roof of a hotel in to the swimming pool, or sitting around a campfire made by a tree that somebody had gotten their hands on somehow. She also has simpler stories like sitting with Demi, her first girlfriend, on the hood of Demi's car, smoking her first cigarette in her life at the age of sixteen, and listening to the sounds of the glass hail outside the garage.

After graduating with her diploma, Lena used her grades to get scholarships, and her parents' backing to pay what those wouldn't cover so that she could go to an accredited school to be come a fully trained and certified chef. She dug in to the work and scored high grades in culinary arts. Yet at the same time she maintained her lifestyle of partying: underage drinking, sordid one-night-stands, and being just careful enough to not cause so much trouble as to make the police come cracking down on them all. During this time her father, while always wishing his daughter would live a more reserved life, was held at by by her mother who felt that their children should be left to express themselves. Even the beginnings of the tattoos she now has were taken with graceful styles from her loving parents. Yet as time passed, as all children must do, she sought to move away from her home, and seek her own life. She packed up several of her belongings and set out to travel away from her home planet to see other places. She traveled from Nepleslia to the outskirts of Yamatai, and a variety of other places in various nations. Eventually she found herself in the UoC where she found residence on the planet of Jiyuu while further studying culinary arts for her “inspiration” to come to her for starting her own venture. She was nearly twenty three years old when the UoC was attacked in full force by the Mishu. She also wasn't among the first waves of refugees off the planet.

It was four days surviving virtually by herself before she managed to reach an evacuation center. She doesn't talk in too much detail about what happened, but it wasn't some sort of exciting tale of bravery. Most all of her time was spent scared, cold, hungry, and terribly alone with nothing but the comfort that she was enough of a self-respecting Nepleslian that she made sure to carry her Styrling .45 with her wherever she went. On what was looking to be the fifth night she finally stumbled upon a Yamataian patrol that managed to get her to an evacuation zone. From there she was put on a shuttle for Leo station. It was there where she gave herself a guiding purpose by starting to do what she could to help fellow refugees with what talents she had to offer.

It was the best way she could think of to try putting what had happened over those days behind her and she knew that for many others a warm meal in their bellies would be a good place to start as far as that was concerned. Once things settled down over the years she took up work as a chef, using her frankly over-qualified skill-set to secure a job as a cook at a restaurant on the station while perusing the possibilities laid out before her now.

Her birth on Delsauria means that Lena is fluent in Nepleslian and the trade language in all ways that the term entails. From speaking, to writing, to reading in a wide array of both stressful and non-stressful circumstances. Travels abroad have given her an often broken and rather rough understanding of Yamataian as well as an even more sparse “understanding” of Seraphim. If one considers “understanding” an absurdly large number of profanities.

Manifesting itself as a love of helping her mother in the kitchen at an early age, what was first instructed under the tutelage of her mother and nanny has since seen the guidance of instructors many years her senior in a variety of styles and techniques. She is versed in a variety from simple home-cooked meals, to baked confectioneries, and more gourmet dishes one might find in high-society establishments. Her skills around a kitchen are hard to beat and she pursues the various facets of the craft (art, she feels) with a passion.

Raised in a rather “traditional” household, even if as much was not said by her father, it wasn't hard to infer that she was expected to grow up in to the role of a stay-at-home wife like her own mother. While she has no taste for that kind of lifestyle, she still knows how to handle a household. Cleaning, cooking for a family (obviously), taking care of small children, paying bills, and keeping things around the house relatively organized.

Like any truly self-respecting Nepleslian, while not trained on the level of a professional soldier, Lena is familiar with the handling and maintenance of various small-arms. She is capable of handling and maintaining most Nepleslian pistols, shotguns, and rifles with relative ease. She also has some knowledge in basic hand-to-hand self defense and martial arts should she need to get in a close-in fight (though she tends to be more of a “scrapper” in less life-or-death situations).

Early mentoring and lessons in guitar playing and singing have stuck with Lena. While nowhere near the caliber of professional musicians, she's capable enough of strumming or singing a tune while sitting in the galley of a ship or around a campfire on a beach. She also has lessons in ballroom dancing from a young age, as well as many years of dancing in many clubs. On top of all of that, however, is another set of skills brought by more carnal experiences starting in her later teenage years.

Lena “Cuts” Barlow has the following items:

• 1x Hoodie, zip-up, neon pink w/ white pull strings.

Lena “Cuts” Barlow is currently an Independent in ISC Chimera / Independent plots.

The resident cook designed for the ISC Chimera plot.