Here we have the profile to a cunning new villain to the city of Colmaton. I hope you like, and be sure to keep an eye out for her! This character is a joint effort between myself and  wolfrider

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Name: Tapiwa Onyekani

Supervillain name: Sandstalker

DOB: April 12th, 1979

POB: Natal, South Africa

Age: 34

Gender: Female

Species: Walia Ibex

Nationality: South African

Height: 6’6’’

Weight: 190 lbs

Eye color: Hazel

Hair Color: Tawny

Physical Appearance: Sandstalker is tall and strong, built up through a life of outdoor hardship. Her hair flows down to her mid-back, and her antlers curl over her ears. She has thick powerful muscles that give her an edge in close combat as well as speed and stamina.

Outfits: Safari pith helmet, tan hunting vest, khakis, knee-high brown boots, brown gloves, leather belt with holsters. Wears a cluster of masks dangling from her belt, taken from heroes she’s captured.


Occupation:

- Purveyor of extraordinary hunting experiences to the rich.
- Hunts and captures heroes for sport and/or to add them to her infamous Marble Menagerie, where they are restrained and displayed as trophies.


Areas of Operation:

- Africa
- Europe
- Americas
- Colmaton


Weapons/items:

- Primarily uses a heavily customized rifle built on an 1874 Sharps frame, modified for semi-automatic fire and the incorporation of a quad-chamber rotating magazine.
- Custom cartridges developed for nonlethal capture, including: Bolas rounds, shock rounds, pepper rounds, net rounds, tranquilizer rounds, and .45-70 (only to take out tires, cover, etc.)
- Scoped Weatherby CFP loaded with tranquilizer or shock rounds for closer quarters.
- SW 686 .357 as a hold-out gun.
- Machete
- Whip
- Knapsack with provisions, including first-aid supplies, rope, extra ammo, water, and food.

Personal Transport:

- Custom Land Rover


Powers/abilities:

- Sandstalker’s skill and aim with firearms is masterful.
- She has been loading her own rounds since childhood and can design and build most any conceivable cartridge to suit her needs.
- Above average strength, enabling her to wrestle and subdue prey.


Strengths:

- Sandstalker is a fearless hunter, always self-assured of her dominance during a hunt.
- Her patience is legendary, able to stalk prey or remain hidden and watchful for days, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.
- Her wide range of lethal and non-lethal munitions makes her a versatile, unpredictable, and prepared foe.
- She considers others, especially heroes, nothing more than game to hunt and dominate. This makes her remorseless in her pursuit of and keeping of trophies. Her non-lethal ways may fool some into thinking her merciful, but she does not kill simply because a dead hero makes a lesser trophy.



Weaknesses:

- Sandstalker has no superpowers and must rely on her hunting prowess to overcome prey and ward off heroes. However, she does not desire superpowers. It wouldn’t be sporting.
- If she is disarmed, she only has her strength and basic hand to hand combat to wield. Though this is enough to hold her own against most people and some heroes, she is no match for superpowered heroes in these situations.
- Her arrogance and need for domination over her captives can leave her open to manipulation. She can sometimes be overconfident, leading to a captive escaping due to an overlooked detail of their restraint.

Bio:

From the moment she entered the world, Tapiwa Oneykani was unwanted. Born to a poor, struggling rancher couple and a capable brother in South Africa, she was seen as just an extra mouth to feed. Her parents tried to give her away, but the overcrowded orphanage in the nearest city would not take her. Had it not been for fear of divine wrath, they would have left her on the side of the road on the way home and let the elements claim her.

Her family’s disdain for her was not lost on young Tapiwa as she grew up, treated more as a household servant than a loved one. She tried everything she could to earn her family’s love and respect, but stuck out in the savannah with no opportunity and her life consisting only of her daily chores, she could not. Aside from what they grew, the family survived mostly on the meat her father and brother brought home from their hunts. Sometimes, her brother would kill an especially impressive prey and her parent would show their admiration by mounting the antlers or stringing the fangs. Tapiwa daydreamed of hunting as well and bringing back something worthy of their love and respect. She watched them practice their shooting, memorizing the techniques, envisioning herself in their place.

On her fifteenth birthday, Tapiwa expected no gift and received none. Mustering her courage, she asked her father as a treat to allow her three shots with his rifle. Though he initially declined, after further coaxing he agreed, if only for the entertainment of seeing the girl try to shoot. The family could only stare in surprise as Tapiwa expertly loaded the lever-action rifle and fired three quick shots, forming a single ragged cloverleaf hole in the plywood target fifty yards away. Exhilarated, Tapiwa expected congratulations but instead received two swats across the face for her brazen attitude. She was forbidden from ever shooting again.

Two years later, word circulated through the savannah properties that a vicious and aggressive lion was attacking livestock and had even killed two ranchers. Land owners in the area nicknamed the beast the Sandstalker. Many feared that the taste of furson flesh had turned it into a maneater. Local authorities had placed a sizeable bounty on the creature, a sum which grew as hunters tried and failed to kill it, some being mauled in the process. Tapiwa knew that this was her chance to prove her skill, an opportunity at last to prove that she could be a true hunter. Stealing away in the night with only her father’s rifle, ten cartridges, and three days’ rations, she set out to find and kill the lion.

For the first time in her life, Tapiwa felt at home, alone and silent in the wilderness as the predator. Pure instinct guiding her, she tracked the beast, never wanting this feeling of adrenaline and freedom to end. Fearless, she faced the Sandstalker down, shooting it three times and still taking a swipe to the shoulder before a fourth shot felled the gargantuan animal. The feeling of dominance and pride as she stood over the defeated foe was euphoric.

Her shoulder lacerations dripping blood and her muscles crying out, she dragged the animal five miles back to her ranch, enjoying the pain since it was hard-earned and gratifying. Once more, she expected admiration and respect from her family and was sorely disappointed. Locked in her room with thread and a rusty needle to sew her wound shut, she was helpless to speak up as her father brought the wardens out to confirm the lion’s identity as the maneater. She cried and screamed as her brother was given credit for the kill. She didn’t care about the money. She just wanted the recognition. And she received neither.

This betrayal was the final straw. Hatred for her family stewing in her blood, Tapiwa ran away that night, taking what food and clothing she could. Aimless and wandering, she decided to make the long trip to Durban and figure out her next move from there. However, before she could get past the fuel station near her ranch, she was confronted by a middle-aged British jaguar. Tall, well-spoken, and handsome in expensive safari clothing, he introduced himself with a deep bow as Lord Rupert Carrington. He’d arrived a week prior in search of the maneating lion, only to witness this young lady snatch the kill out from under him as he was about to fire from a distance. Far from upset, he was delighted to make her acquaintance. He knew she was the true hunter who bagged the lion and wanted to express his admiration of her natural hunting skill. He claimed to be a big-game hunter, seasoned and well-known in his social circle. Seeing that the girl had nowhere to go, he offered to take her under his wing and help her develop her skills to be a great hunter.

Over the next decade, Lord Carrington treated Tapiwa as her own daughter, acting as the loving father she never had. He gifted her an 1874 Sharps rifle and taught her to shoot masterfully with it before she could move on to more modern rifles and calibers. Through his tutelage, she could soon fell most any prey with a single shot, even at a weapon’s extreme distance against a moving target. Shooting was only a small part of her education, as she was also taught stalking and tracking, baiting and trapping, small arms, and live containment. She grew to love the attention she received when Carrington would announce her trophies at hunters’ society functions, and the rich life suited her well.

At age twenty-nine, while on a hunt with Carrington in Botswana, the Pretoria-based jackal hero Blister confronted them, aggressively disarming Tapiwa and knocking her mentor to the ground. The hero made all sorts of outrageous claims, accusing the jaguar of assassination, kidnapping, and now intending to train the oblivious young ibex to follow in his footsteps. Tapiwa could tell from Carrington’s expression that the claims were true. And yet, though Blister expected her to be enraged, she was not. Whatever his intentions, Carrington treated her with respect and affection, something she never got from her family, and she’d experienced enough disdain to know that he truly did respect her and want the best for her.

In a moment that shaped her life forever, Tapiwa pulled her .44 revolver and fired on the hero, striking him in the shoulder. Her pulse racing and her arm shaking, she fired again, piercing his heart.

The ill feeling that she’d killed someone quickly passed, replaced by the thrilling realization that she’d taken down a hero. For once, she had stepped up and refused to allow someone else to take from her, as her family always did. Though happy that his surrogate daughter had saved him from being arrested, Carrington was quick to become stern, chastising Tapiwa for shooting the hero like a common thug and not respecting him as prey. That’s what heroes are, he lectured, prey. The most dangerous prey the world had to offer. He himself had captured a few in the past, earning him the fame and respect that put him on the path to his current stature. It takes little more than a lucky thug to kill a hero, he claimed, but it takes a true hunter to capture a live hero as a trophy. Seeing that Tapiwa was not only fine with his criminal lifestyle, but eager to encounter another hero, Carrington continued her training.

When he received word that the cheetah heroine Oasis, a friend of Blister’s, was hunting them down, Carrington stepped aside and left the hunt to his pupil. Excited but nervous, Tapiwa laid an expert trap, baiting Oasis in with false rumors. Just as the cheetah stepped onto a snare, she fired a special tranquilizer round from a couple hundred yards away, striking her just as the snare grew taught around her ankles and dragged her to the ground. By the time she reached the heroine, the small tranquilizer dose was starting to wear off. She quickly bound the cheetah’s hands and strapped a muzzle over her mouth. The heroine fought and bucked, but could not break her restraints. Again, that euphoric feeling washed over Tapiwa, an intensity she hadn’t felt since defeating the Sandstalker. She understood why Carrington insisted on live trophies. The feeling of superiority and domination, standing triumphant over the captured prey, was unmatched in any hunt she’d ever done. For her entire life up until meeting Carrington, her family had taken from her and oppressed her and kept her under their heel.

Never again would she feel like that. Never again. From here on out, she would be the dominator. She would prove that she was the best. She would prove that even the supposedly most dangerous prey in the world were no match for her.

And she knew just where to put them.

With Carrington’s blessing, Tapiwa struck out on her own to build her trophy collection, after asking him to hold onto the captive Oasis for a while. Little is known about the elusive huntress known as the Sandstalker after this point. The Oneykani ranch no longer exists, the land converted to a hunting reserve with a large, lavish lodge where the old ranchhouse used to stand. No one ever saw the Oneykani family again. Over the next four years, cities all over Africa reported missing heroes. Sandstalker became an urban legend, a boogeyman, a story heroes told to each other. They claimed she kept a menagerie of captured heroes in her hunting lodge, where Oasis was still held as the first trophy. Any who went searching didn’t come back.

Soon, other regions experienced a spike in disappearances, both of unregistered heroes and Bureau of Superheroes agents. From Europe to the Americas, dozens of cities saw the whispers of Sandstalker spread through their ranks. Eventually, the rumors reached Colmaton. Word spread that the infamous hunter was poised to make the Heroine City her next hunting ground, and that she even planned to build a new hunting lodge there to house her acquisitions.

For now, those who don’t believe in Sandstalker wave the rumors off, and those who do wait with bated breath for the first disappearance, for they know that there’s a new predator in town with the skill, knowledge, and ruthlessness to accomplish her goals. A predator who believed that any who called themselves a hero was fair game, and fair prey, existing only to be claimed as a trophy.

After all, the new Colmaton menagerie was empty. And Sandstalker intended to rectify that.



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Personality:

Growing up repressed, downtrodden, and unacknowledged, Sandstalker is obsessed with proving her worth and dominance over others. She views heroes as the ultimate display of power, and to dominate a hero is to prove one’s strength and skill. Once a hero is taken captive, Sandstalker further degrades them, reminding them constantly of their defeat and her own superiority. Heroes are treated as nothing but trophies. Though Sandstalker is devoted to non-lethal measures of combat, she cares not for the lives of the heroes; she is nonlethal only because a live hero is a greater trophy than a dead one.

Sandstalker tends to work alone, preferring the solitary thrill of the hunt. She is dismissive of other villains, viewing them as criminals while she herself is a respectable hunter with purpose to her exploits. She in fact tends to respect heroes moreso than villains, if only as capable prey.

She appreciated the finer things thanks to her time with Carrington, and spares no expense when building her lodges and menageries. She enjoys hosting parties for fellow unscrupulous hunters and select villains, where her trophies may be displayed and even bought, if the right offer is given.

Sandstalker considers herself sporting and will not hunt a person she deems unworthy or below the necessary skill level to put up a fight. She can be hired to hunt a hero, but only if the hero is a worthy target.

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Sandstalker, Blister, and Oasis belong to me and  wolfrider
Colmaton belongs to  train
The BOS belongs to  mojorover