Selene Korva // What Lurks in The Darkness

Physical Description

Selene is a female hyena in her late 20s, standing at about 5'10" with a physique honed by the grueling demands of Company salvage runs. Her body is built for endurance and strength—broad shoulders, muscular arms, and thick, powerful thighs carry her across the broken landscapes of abandoned moons. Her fur is a sandy beige, broken by scattered dark brown spots that ripple faintly in the dim light of her flashlight. Along her head and neck flows a wild mane of reddish-brown hair, often damp with sweat from exertion or clinging in messy tufts to her cheekbones.

Her face is sharp, angular, and expressive, framed by tall, rounded ears that twitch at every sound in the dark. Amber-gold eyes shine brightly against the shadows, wide and alert, betraying both her cleverness and the flicker of fear she tries to mask. Her muzzle carries the faint curve of a grin even in tense moments, lips parting to reveal white teeth and canines that glint whenever she whispers or laughs nervously.

Her jumpsuit, the standard Company-issued orange, clings tight in some places and loose in others, worn open at the collar for air. Black gloves hide calloused palms, while scuffed work boots are caked with dust and grime from countless missions. The smell of metal, sweat, and faint animal musk follows her, lingering like a beacon to anything tracking her in the void. Her tail, bristled and restless, often betrays her emotions—thrashing when she’s irritated, twitching when she’s scared.

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Personality

Selene lives on the fine line between bravery and recklessness. Her survival strategy is to joke, smirk, and taunt the darkness, even as her heartbeat drums like thunder in her chest. To her fellow scavengers she’s sarcastic and sharp-tongued, always ready with a quip to cut the tension—but when she’s alone, that humor cracks, and her instincts sharpen into something primal: a prey animal’s terror dressed in bravado.

She is curious to a fault, always the first to investigate a sound, pick through a pile of abandoned scrap, or slip into a room she should have avoided. This recklessness makes her an easy target for predators on the moons. Though she’s resourceful, using her wit to dodge danger when she can, Selene underestimates how fragile her life truly is in these environments.

When fear takes her, she laughs—the distinctive, raspy hyena cackle escaping involuntarily. It echoes in abandoned corridors, a sound that makes her easier to track and harder to forget. For a predator, it’s almost as if she announces her position with every burst of nervous laughter.

Deep down, Selene is haunted by the awareness that she’s prey. She pushes this thought away by keeping herself busy, scavenging and cracking jokes, but when the shadows shift and the air goes still, she feels the truth of it: that something is always watching her.

Selene is easy to notice—her scent, her nervous laugh, and the scrape of her boots on steel echo in the empty halls. She moves quickly but without silence, the shuffle of tools clinking against her jumpsuit as she bends and shifts through wreckage. Her golden eyes catch the light of her flashlight, glimmering like a lure in the darkness.

She is prey that thinks herself clever, masking her fear in banter. But the closer you draw, the more her defenses crumble—the smirk fades, her laugh breaks into shaky breaths, her ears flatten as instinct overtakes her mask. The predator doesn’t need to rush. Selene’s restless tail, her twitching ears, her darting gaze… they all betray her before she ever realizes she’s trapped.