bio.

[cardinal]

BASICS

name
Ophelia Hunter Cardenal Roy

alias
She LOVES cute lil derivatives of her name. Fee? Fifi? Lia? Anything, as long as it's precious.

division
Research / medical

occupation
Research technician (focus on biochemistry) / phlebotomist

age & dob
36 & March 3rd (Pisces)

pronouns
She/her

family
John Mark Cardenal (father)
Ellen Roy (mother)
Orlando Cardenal Roy (brother)

CONCEPT

Human designer drug attempting to find balance in chaos.

POWERS

hallucination inducement;
The ability to activate serotonin receptors the same way psychedelics do, triggering hallucinations similar to those experienced with LSD or psilocybin. The caveat here is that Ophelia can only induce these trips, not control them—just like any other experience with psychoactive drugs, it's up to your own body and mind to determine how the experience goes. As far as she can tell, there's no way to fiddle with the amplification of this power.

inhibition suppression;
Subtle manipulation of "happy chemicals" in the brain, leading to lowered inhibitions. Ophelia has more control over this ability, finding it increasingly easy to finesse with practice. The result can be as simple as feeling awash with relaxation, but it can just as easily make a target unquestioning and open to suggestion in a way that's perhaps a bit unsettling. It's a spectrum.

caveats;
Ophelia can't lower her own inhibitions, nor can she manipulate brain chemistry outside of the scope of the above abilities. Overuse of her abilities typically manifests as cluster headaches and nausea; both for her and whoever she's using her powers on, so it's a great incentive not to overdo it.

PERSONALITY

is

→ flush with sentinel intelligence.
→ compassionate, sentimental, empathetic.
→ excitable, at times single-minded, and in need of sporadic redirection.
→ playful.
→ adventurous, experimental, and always curious.
→ perceptive and intuitive.

isn't

→ a workaholic.
→ as vegetarian as she would like to be (full dairy ice cream = <3).
→ a fan of being interrupted.
→ shy.
→ unkind.
→ the most coordinated.

will

→ blush at the slightest provocation.
→ borrow (read: misuse) gen z slang.
→ respectfully pressure you to do the right thing (for you).
→ bend but not break her morals.
→ ALWAYS try something new!
→ be on her silly goose nonsense.

won't

→ hold others to her own personal standards.
→ keep a grudge.
→ tell you 'i told you so'. even if she did tell you so.
→ take you to the airport. so sorry! there's a line! it involves traffic!
→ try to make your day harder.
→ raise her voice out of anger; she just gets quieter.

likes: aliens/space, animals (capybaras are her fave), the impressionist movement, cool facts, journals/day planners, arts & crafts, museums, ice skating, green smoothies, star wars.
dislikes: litterers, silence, injustices, most people with podcasts, stickiness, closed spaces, any creature with 8+ limbs.

APPEARANCE

🍄 5'9" & slender.
🍄 Attractive, stylish, and expressive. Big ol' eyes.
🍄 Often seen wearing a fox bracelet.
🍄 Most of her clothes are thrifted, but Ophelia falls victim to the fast fashion machine in the form of funny/stupid t-shirts.

HISTORY

Money was tight for Ellen and John Mark from the very beginning. Sure, not getting married was a way to say up yours! to patriarchal cultural norms, but it also saved them a ton of money. They were fine being semi-starving activists entrenched in the local underground scene, but once a baby was thrown into the mix they were fine selling out a little if it meant little Orlando got to be a chubby, happy baby. Fast forward to kid number two, a bouncing baby girl they named Ophelia, and those parents were ready to go full on corporate. It wasn't so much an abandoning of their values as a refocusing of them: damning the man was great, but their purpose now was to build the foundation of a good life for their kids.

Needless to say, Ophelia had a safe and happy childhood. While there wasn't an abundance of everything, there was plenty where it counted. Hugs. Laughter. Bedtime stories. Food.
There was almost always an extra seat available at the Cardenal Roy table come dinnertime, and failing that—well, their vintage tupperware got a lot of travel time.

It was all very idyllic, which translated to boring after a certain point. This is something that Ophelia never voiced for several reasons—among them not wanting to hurt her parents' feelings or undermine how fortunate she was—but it might've been spoken through her actions regardless: leaving home was stupidly easy for her. Making a new life in LA after being accepted to UCLA was just as easy, and for a time she simply didn't think much about her origins. It wasn't until after her freshman year, during one of her routine summer nose bleeds, that she was forced to look back; her newly purple blood had Ophelia flashing back with great intensity to the rifts just beyond her neighborhood.

She registered, of course, despite not knowing what her powers were. It took some testing and examination of anecdotal evidence, but they were eventually identified. For someone who had been largely straight-edge up until that point, it was kind of funny to Ophelia that she was basically a drug. And no one is saying that she took this as permission to begin experimenting with mind altering substances, but no one's not saying it either. It only seemed appropriate for her to take a year off to figure things out, but that year out of school only seemed to further unmoor her. It was a feeling Ophelia hated, and she knew beyond certainty that as much as she loved being a wild child, she needed discipline and schedule to balance it out.

A return to UCLA felt like another fresh start for Ophelia, but this time she wasn't so quick to abandon her past. This particular year of her life felt like a year of learning balance, and while it was overall a positive experience for her, the unfortunate truth was that her grades suffered. This wasn't a huge blow to her or even her GPA, but it did mean that she lost scholarship opportunities. Part of Ophelia's attempts to ground herself involved working through a phlebotomy certificate alongside her classes, but finding a job was hard and even when she did the money wasn't actually enough to live in LA and pay for classes. It was fortunate, then, that around this time her best friend had an… interesting ideas.

Her best friend was absolutely the reason why Ophelia had an interests in the arts—single-minded since childhood, the intensity of her interest in biology and other sciences could've very well kept her in one lane, but Cole's gentle lessons and general existence made her a more well-rounded individual from the get go. All that being said, her part in the "little" forgery business they got going had nothing to do with art, and she still couldn't tell you the first thing about forging art. No, her skills were more interpersonal in nature; saying no to a pretty face is hard to begin with, but when she used her inhibition power? Ophelia could sell just about anything.

Her side hustle life of crime was fun! It was interesting. It paid the bills! It wasn't even that morally egregious to her due to the quote-unquote victims. But after a fashion, it seemed like they had met the mark on making do and were straying into a dangerous territory of simply doing too much. It was with this in mind that Ophelia brought up her concerns to their group and graciously bowed out, telling her best friend he should do the same. And he was going to•but then he disappeared.

Losing Cole was hell. Working through the latter half of her masters degree while he was missing seemed impossible, but she pulled through. For him. She went back to Spokane more often to visit his mother in assisted living, seemingly relieved that she wasn't there enough to have conversations about where he could be—if he was alive at all. And honestly? Grieving Cole as if he was dead was easier for Ophelia in the end, as macabre (and perhaps selfish) as it was.

She hadn't had much interest in Enodia when he'd mentioned it to her before, but hearing about the blip jostled a train of thought within Ophelia. There were mysteries in life that were much less painful than her best friend's disappearance, and it might help soothe her to be a part of solving them. So she applied for employment there both as a researcher and (as a backup) a phlebotomist, and accepted the station's offer for both positions as soon as they were given. It's another new start, and she's ready for it.

NOTES

🍄 Hometown: Spokane.
🍄 Absolutely cannot cook. However, she did learn how to bake specifically to gift her bestie with the ugliest but tastiest cakes in all of creation.
🍄 Always needs to have her hands occupied. Knitting during meetings is a go-to for Ophelia.
🍄 Keeps a crystal or two in her bra. It's her crunchy college roommate's habit, but Ophelia can't shake the superstition.
🍄 Has ADHD. Being a woman in her 30s, the diagnosis as a child was missed!
🍄 Pets: Pete the pistol shrimp (2.5) and Toaster (4).

OOC

rhia . PST . shay mitchell . dropbox / discord

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