Fanon:Tessa Swanson

Tessa Swanson, born February 25, 1996, is a member of the Church of Alexandros, training to be its first intelligence operative, something that Kallisto found needed ever since Antigone's maverick departure to Appaloosa Plains. Tessa is only superficially flirty: the trait was a trained one to facilitate intelligence gathering operations. In reality, Tessa is more of a romantic, something that Kallisto notes and wants to suppress.

As a newcomer, Tessa is in training, and is trained according to the Church doctrines, learning skills as required by the Church before being assigned any role. Logic was of course emphasized, but as an intelligence officer, Tessa's training focused on Writing, and since the Union had no skills in Photography whatsoever, Tessa was to develop the skill on her own, the only support given by the single elementary level Photography tome.

Tessa is reasonably skilled, and unlike other members, is expected to train on the job, somewhat necessary due to the lack of higher Photography skill tomes. Tessa however is reasonably skilled, having 8 points in logic, 6 points in writing (to write reports back to the Church), 4 points in Martial Arts and Gardening, 3 in Handiness, Charisma and Painting, and one in Photography and Inventing. Tessa is of blood type B (Nicole A, Rachel AB)

China
The Union demand for exotic tomes eventually led them to travel overseas, and Tessa would accompany them for the sole reason of using the vacation days to train, and succeeded for the most part, now having a level 8 logic skill along with other supplementary skills, and Tessa was also given opportunities to adventure by the locals, and Tessa was able to complete one of the easy Chinese tombs.

First Assignment
After some basic training, Kallisto deemed Tessa ready for her first assignment: Kallisto dispatched Tessa to Appaloosa Plains, where Tessa was to gather and report public activities undertaken by Antigone: Tessa's primary objective was to verify that Antigone was not doing anything that was heretical to the doctrine of the Church, that is, having romantic affairs. There, Tessa met up with her estranged sibling Nicole, who was quite eager to hear about Tessa's experience with the Greeks. There Tessa started to show her true flavor as a romantic just like her estranged sibling Nicole, and despite that, dutifully went on gathering intelligence for the Church.

Antigone did not have any suspicion that Tessa happened to be a member of the Church: after all, Tessa was not Greek, and most of all had quite a bust and rather stylish outfits, multiples of them. And so Tessa was able to see what Antigone did without much difficulty, although Tessa could not find any data about Antigone's activities that are religion-related. Tessa's information network only yielded one unusual act: Antigone visited the Parrots house, and that was it. And so, Tessa writes her first reports to Kallisto:

"To the Excellencies of the Church,

Kataskopos Tessa Swanson reports 5 days after deployment to Appaloosa Plains.

I have met up with one of my estranged relatives, and now live in a proper dwelling as ordered by Church orders. With my relative, I am training on the job, and my relative is also gaining skills that may be useful to the Church. Regarding the target Antigone, I have detected Antigone in the library, the junkyard, stadium, and at the back side of the City Hall: at all cases has Antigone has not committed any heretical act as stated by the Codex. The information network has found that Antigone has visited the Parrots house, but it is very doubtful that Antigone has committed any heresy there.

The training on the job has been quite successful: currently my Photography skills has been decently honed, and my logic level is high enough to warrant me a Law Enforcement Job, and to fulfill my wish to become an agent, I shall need to hone my athletic skills. Financially, I have little trouble: I am paying my bills, and the available funds should be enough for me to train well enough before I enter the labor market.

This is Kataskopos Tessa Swanson, testifying that all the data has been gathered properly and no deception has been added intentionally.

Kataskopos signing out."

However, here Tessa (and Nicole) started to develop the symptoms of narcolepsy (or so it seemed), and they often felt the urge to sleep for no apparent reasons in many cases. Little did Tessa knew that Antigone already had a boyfriend, and got the boyfriend to move into the house. Kallisto eventually saw this through the UAV system, and couldn't really blame Tessa, although Kallisto was sorely disappointed with Antigone's fall from grace. However, Kallistrata suggested another use: if Tessa was not so effective at intelligence gathering, then Kallistrata suggested that the Swansons be used as guinea pigs for her latest project, the body snatching project. Kallisto found that idea very appealing, and recalled the Swansons back to the Chapter main building. Kallisto (and Kallistrata) found it an convenient excuse to wear relatively fashionable clothes as well as boots, something that they personally could not touch due to how their bodies were wired. And thus Tessa was summoned, and Tessa gladly took Nicole with her, and as soon as they entered the house, they were immediately greeted, and not long after that, Both Kallisto and Kallistrata possessed the Swansons, possessing Tessa and Nicole respectively. However, Kallisto and Kallistrata quickly released them, since their plan wasn't to possess them, but merely to test their potentially powerful abilities.

Duties and Desires
As a kataskopos, Tessa was to spy on the population without getting her affiliation discovered. To increase security, Kallisto provided funds for Tessa and Nicole to move to a different residence to ensure that they are not seen together with the core Church members too frequently. Kallisto was well-aware of the risks of allowing them room to seek their heretical desires, but Kallisto knew that it was one necessary to take nonetheless if Kallisto was to maintain a plausible deniability should the Church be attacked by opposition on charge of black operations and espionage. One way of keeping the cloud of deniability was to get Tessa to join up in the Law Enforcement as a Vice Squad, while Nicole was initially signed up as a Wiretap Reader that was eventually promoted as a Sketch Artist, so that they would be writing reports without people suspecting it, since report writing was part of their jobs.

One of Tessa's favorite place was the Gymnasion located in the lower nome, and due to the low population of Hekatonschoinos, Tessa was often left to her own when training physically for her job. Tessa still possesses the Camera, and having taught Nicole some of the basics, was more than happy to take pictures of scenery, people, and other things, some for the church, some for herself. Tessa (and Nicole) still wanted romance, but there were few available prospective candidates.

Betrayal of the Church and the Puppetmaster
Tessa and Nicole were soon contacted by their cousin, Rachel Swanson, who had rushed into marriage with Aneirin oi Lugos. This thrilled them into no end: the Swansons had good figures and thus more than enough in both skills and looks to get a suitable mates, as Tessa and Nicole believed the case with Rachel proved. As they chatted, they did not suspect that Kallisto was tapping into the conversation, which suddenly shifted Kallisto's focus back on Appaloosa Plains, as Rachel dragging Aneirin into the fray would do the Church little good. Kallisto and Kallistrata always had plans to dispatch clones, focusing on vampires whose Vampiric Vigor would greatly facilitate learning and thus play their ambitious natures to the Church's benefit. Little did they know that Tessa had been spying on them, and little did they know that Tessa had defected to the romantic cause.

However, that was a lie.

In truth, Tessa and all 3 of the Swanson girls had become puppets ever since Tessa first set foot upon the Hekatonschoinos Chapter house. Initially, the influence was subtle and the Swansons maintained at least a semblance of free will. But by the time Kallisto recalled them, the influence was strong as to a point where even the defection was a lie: Kallisto used that to throw Antigone and Achaia off guard, using the Swanson girls' romantic nature to her advantage, and it was the Church that reunited the estranged Nicole and Tessa together. Having said that, Kallisto staged an attack on the Swanson house and "took control" of the Swanson girls at Hekatonschoinos which was already done quite some time ago. Having been subverted by Kallisto, Tessa and Nicole return to Appaloosa Plains to meet with their cousins Rachel and Louis and to strengthen the Church's psychic control over Rachel (although psychic meddling would become minimal as the Swansons move into Hekatonschoinos). When they returned, Antigone and Achaia knew that something was wrong, and before long, Tessa, Nicole, and Rachel were compelled to apprehend both Antigone and Achaia, effectively squelching the Populist movement. As for Rachel's husband Aneirin, Kallisto made a deal with him, and Aneirin presumably gained something from Kallisto, as Aneirin leaves Appaloosa Plain afterward in search of Cocolitanos.

Repositioning
However, Tessa's training had put her far ahead of the average, even outdoing most of the Attalids (well, with the obvious exception of Stratonike). Having the human capital, Kallisto found it fit that Tessa be given a greater role in the development of the Church: Kallisto was too focused on redevelopment to bother doing any more psychic power tests on her and the rest of the Swanson sisters, and as such, Kallisto sent the Swanson sisters to Sunset Valley to serve as advisors and informants to the stewards there. Kallisto gave them explicit order to especially pay attention to the Patriot Party and the Al-Dar, and commanded that reports on both be provided at biweekly basis. Because Tessa was still a kataskopos, Kallisto arranged for them to occupy the former Wolff residence away from the Sunset Valley main chapter building at the center of the Greek enclave. In fact, Kallisto sent an executive epistle to Esomena to make sure that the stewards deny any connection to the Swansons, and also provided a secret frequency to coordinate their activities, ensuring that Tessa et al. will make contact with the main Chapter as little as possible. They were temporarily recalled to Hekatonschoinos for retesting, and would stay in Hekatonschoinos after.

More Inquisitorial questioning
Tessa and the others were notified of this, and Tessa was quite worried: Kallistrata took Nicole's DNA as a basis for the Deutarchon Helle the Engineer. Unfortunately enough, Helle had the big flaw that all the 3 Swanson sisters had: Basically Helle ended up being a half-failure of a sort, being a huge sleepyhead as well as being vulnerable to heresy, almost too much like Achaia except that Helle replaces artistic streak for machine mastery. Because of this, Kallisto et al. included Helle in the list of test subjects, while including two new methods, both involving messing with the one being questioned. Ironically, Kallisto largely had Kallistrata make Attalos, Helle's companion Deutarchon, to test one of the new methods of questioning, although Attalos seemed to have more fun using it for fun. As such, Kallisto ensured that the testing on the Swanson sisters will go flawless.



However, real trouble set in when one of the Swansons got impregnated with one of the African Cleruchs. Although Kallistrata was able to reverse the damage, the Big 6 became more scrutinous when dealing with the Swansons. Thankfully the Swansons had no happenings up of the hopefully final renovation of Hekatonschoinos ever since, and Kallisto believed that they were only in need of some mechanical or psychic improvements.

Trivia

 * Unlike most of the fanon sims, Tessa's name was wholly randomly generated by the game. Similarly, Nicole's name is also generated as well, although the surname is kept the same as Tessa to keep with the setting that Nicole is Tessa's sibling.