Luca Harsanyi

To know who I am, you should know where I came from.

Harsányi Luca - loo-tza - is a 23 year old woman from Szeged, Hungary. Raised in a prominent criminal gang and groomed to be its heir, her blossoming career was cut short by the gang's eradication 8 years ago. Orphaned and homeless, Luca fled and has had to rebuild her network from its ashes. Now a member of the Dragon, she maintains a strong prescence in both the Secret World and Szeged's underworld, where she intends to rebuild her father's empire as well as uncover those responsible for his death.

=The Családok=

Thicker than blood, stronger than kin. The Harsányi name has been known for generations. That the families began to forge their bonds during the reign of the last king is no more than romantic folk tale; the családok likely formed in 1920, after the devastating Treaty of Trianon, as Luca's great-grandfather strived for order and control in the ashes of his battered homeland. His son found the family bonds stretched to breaking points as his people's desperate attempt to reclaim lost territory under Hitler's thumb fail in slaughter at the river's edge, then endured a post-war era that brought no respite, as the Soviets marched in and the Red Hand ruled.

From father to son, each Harsányi dedicated himself to the családok's bonds, forged to ensure no member would ever be lost to a camp or a jail, that no one would disappear or be denied shelter in their darkest times. The családok was a rebellion against the dictators and tyrants that had crushed them for so long. The családok will protect you, for no one else will.

They are The Families. To one another they pledge undying loyalty; favours granted, oaths sworn. They are the protectors, the peacekeepers. To many they are justice itself. In exchange for your loyalty, rivals may vanish. A much-desired job will be yours. A sentence can be cut short, a judge paid to turn a blind eye, evidence can simply vanish. The police, the courts, the managing directors and the bank managers and the casino owners; all have nothing but glowing praise for their testvér, their brother.

József Harsányi, the third head of the családok, increased its power like never before. Small mobs and petty gangs were amalgamated into a many-headed beast: extortion, loan sharking, racketeering, blackmail. Procuring and trafficking; drugs, weapons, explosives. A sideline in art and antique forgery. They owned the casinos and nightclubs, a number of galleries, and had enough brothers and sisters inside banks and blue chip businesses to wield incomparable influence. Rivals were welcomed to the family table with open arms and home-brewed pálinka. Small groups were cultivated in Eastern Europe and began to spread West; France, Germany, Britain and, someday, America. He was the first to try to form closer ties with The Three, replacing their begrudging acceptance of one another's presence in Szeged with a number of cooperative schemes.

He knew they laughed at him, this gentle family man, who seemed more librarian than warrior. He knew they could not deduce how he got his results, how a man who carried photos of his wife and children in his pocket, not weapons, could have Szeged's criminal underworld quivering at the sound of his name. To everyone, he was testvér, a brother. No one had a bad word to say of him. Those that did were probably dead.

To the Three he was small fry. Intelligent, sensible and well aware of the value of secrecy, but still just a seed in the chaos, a cog in the machine. They fed him titbits and were pleased with the small tasks he performed.

But temptation is sweet and the fresh-sprouted collaboration unfurled leaves of curiosity and desire. József began to dig deeper into this alternate reality, this 'secret world'. Secret business trips. New associates. A shifting focus to a trade in ancient artefacts. József was particularly devoted to a project he called Zárba illő Kulcs, though he told no one of his work. ''Too soon, drágám. When I have finished. When I am sure. I cannot make mistakes where the Three are concerned.''

Within a month, the Harsányi family were eradicated, as well as the rest of the családok; the Juhászs, the Vargas, both branches of the Balázs clan, Szőke, Halász, Lengyel - shot in a coordinated attack on over thirteen locations. It was too open and bold to have been the Three, too shoddy, too messy, too loud. Cowering behind the desk her father spent his final moments upending and pushing her behind, before the silencer hissed three times and he fell, eyes open and secrets silenced, Luca knew then that her life would revolve around discovering two things.

Who did this.

And what her father had found to necessitate it.

To be continued

=Abilities - 'the Alchemist'=

She fights with fists and a blade in the scrappy street styles of her youth, cobbled together from various well-meaning relatives. Since joining the Dragon her mentors identified weaknesses in her style, requiring more restraint, incapacitation and joint-locks and so have trained her in eskrima, which allows her to strike and lock with a baton or similar implement.

Like many of the Gaia-blessed, the bee brought gifts. Luca's gift is one she calls 'alchemy', or molecular reconstruction. Far from turning metal into gold, Luca can alter the bonds between molecules to reshape matter, theoretically able to change anything into anything else. Realistically, she finds it an infuriating and impractical skill requiring too much energy and time to be of great use.

She requires the appropriate amount of base material and must maintain physical contact with it for some time - the more complex the task, the more time required. She has neither the skill nor time to craft the individual components of, say, a gun or a machine. Glass can be rebonded into steel, steel can be relaxed into plastic, and plastic toughened into Kevlar. Human flesh can be melted from the bone if she can maintain a grip for long enough. She can close a flesh wound by rebonding the edges, like medical glue or stitching, but cannot heal. The air is rich in molecular variety - she can turn it into pepper spray or a smoke-screen. She can create poison gases if necessary (though time consuming) and only if she has access to her gas mask and there are no bystanders to afflict. She cannot change states; solids can only be moulded into other solids, liquid to liquid and gas to gas. She cannot create food or drinkable water from base material, but she can see and feel the molecular components of them, which is handy for finding poisons, bacteria or toxins - she is able to remove molecules without affecting the overall structure. She can destroy or mesh together human flesh, but she cannot positively alter anything living.

Luca enjoys using her skills to strengthen her weapons and clothing. Bulletproof vests are made lighter and thinner, leather gloves are tempered at the wrist and knuckle, blades can be made paper-light and twice as sharp. She endeavours to create fabrics that remain soft and flexible but are as tough as steel.

=Personality, Strengths and Weaknesses=

Brash, confident and quick-tempered, Luca can come across as rather fearsome to the meek, but is all bluster and bravado to the Dragon, who are used to seeing small-time crooks struggle to accept their new role as a small fish in a big pond. Her successes lead to complacency, her reputation begets cockiness and her temper and passion for vivid insults makes her enemies where her father's calm, tactical nature made allies.

Luca does not form attachments to others easily - business is business, after all - and is fairly resistant to intimidation. Don't tell her she can't do something; she'll do it, shoot it and leave it tied up on your doorstep just to prove a point. Her manner of speech is rough and she is prone to bad language, with a fondness for lengthy, passionate Hungarian curses. Reluctant to hide her smoking, drinking, bad-mouthing and occasional slapping, she will not be infiltrating any manor houses or Royal palaces. Her English is good but her accent cannot be disguised. Despite her unladylike traits she prefers feminine clothing, wearing slim cut jeans, dresses, skirts and belts, and she is rather proud of her black, tousled curls (apart from in the al-Merayah heat).

Her molecular reconstruction is completely at odds with her old habits and she feels cursed with a skill that requires time, patience, scientific knowledge and logical thinking when she would much rather fill a problem with bullets and set it on fire. Her schooling was not extensive and her frustrated mentors hope to sharpen her intellect and drill her on her power's endless possibility, rather than a means to whittling a baston and hitting people or leaving signs of her presence by melting the locks off the doors. Luca wishes she had something impressive - fireballs, perhaps, or lightning bolts - and is irritated that her street-fighting skill and impressively dark resumé is practically worthless in the Secret World.

The death of her parents, siblings and családok still weighs heavily upon her, and her ultimate goal is to find their killers and avenge them. She is also determined to discover what it was her father had uncovered, and what he died for. With the power of the Dragon and Gaia behind her she intends to rebuild the Harsányi családok, reclaim her notoriety, influence and power and retake her position as head of the Families.