The shepard, Eileen

Eileen is someone who has been powerless all her life. Her mother died when she was very young, leaving her grief-stricken father to care for her alone. Things were not made any easier by the fact that they lived as impoverished Backstreets dwellers. Eileen's father worked a blue-collar job for a shipping company, specifically in a warehouse that housed dangerous and/or fragile freight. And he worked like a dog to provide Eileen the best life he could. Because of that, she was able to get a meager education, something that many Backstreets dwellers can't say. When she was a teenager, she entered the work force as soon as she could to support her father. Good-looking, charming, intelligent, and somewhat educated, she was able to get a decent job in retail, which helped significantly. Unlike her father's dead-end job, there was a real chance she would be able to work her way up the ladder. Things were finally looking up for the family by the time Eileen was a young adult. And then everything fell apart again. Due to some corporate intrigue that neither Eileen or her father were privy to, the warehouse her father worked in was sabotaged—likely by a rival company—and a good chunk of its freight made to explode, collapsing the building and killing everyone inside. While doing nothing out of the ordinary, Eileen's father was killed in a horrifying way—for no reason, to no one's particular surprise and upset. Eileen could not endure it. She nearly broke down entirely in the face of this uncaring world, but one thing kept her going: the need to know why. Why did this happen? Why does the City work this way? Why must humankind suffer so? Is there such a thing as free will in a world like this? She pondered those questions as she dragged her depressed self along through life. And she finally came to a conclusion: There is no answer to why the City is like this, there can be no such thing as freedom within its walls, and that's okay. "We are all gears within the City, and all pain stems from denial of our identity, of struggling to escape the flow." That was the conclusion Eileen came to, and with this internal transformation came an external transformation as well: Eileen Distorted. And since that day, she's been trying to get people to see the same "truth" in her in a misguided attempt to end people's suffering. She would persuade lost and desperate people to her ideology, offering to take their pain away by "showing them their proper path." Eventually, she grew her following enough to start the Church of Gears, and she has been steadily expanding it since.

The Church of Gears is—quite frankly—a cult, with Eileen as the cult leader, known in the group as the Shepherd. It is a pseudo-religious organization that meets multiple times a week to hear sermons (and receive personal advice and directions) from the Shepherd and socialize with one another, serving as a community. The Church follows Eileen's distinct, deterministic philosophy which all members must adhere to, recognizing themselves as gears within the great machine that is the City, and that the root of suffering comes from two things: denial of one's identity as a gear, and failing to find the purpose one was born to fulfill. The Church of Gears supports its members (materially and otherwise), which further deepens the bond—and dependence—between members of the Church as well as with their Shepherd. Given that one must accept the ideology of the Church to be a member, one must "heed the wisdom" of Eileen so that one can "fulfill one's true purpose," which essentially means obeying the Shepherd's instructions in all aspects of life, from relationships to career choices. As this is a cult, the life choices that Eileen will make for her members tend to isolate them outsiders and other such things that make them dependent on her and the cult. Of course, this starts subtly and gradually increases in severity until every aspect of a persons life is dictated by her. Eileen believes this to be not only morally acceptable, but virtuous, seeing it as a kindness that she "alleviates her flock of the burden of decision." The Church of Gears now numbers several dozen members including the Shepherd. The members meet in an old, abandoned warehouse that they have purchased and refurnished into a place fit for congregation; they call this building their "temple." As the Church of Gears is not a religious organization (merely a pseudo-religious one), they do not worship any god in particular—though they do make frequent use of religious-sounding language; Eileen's sermons are of a philosophical and moral nature rather than a religious one. Eileen keeps her flock unaware of her nature as a Distortion.

Eileen is a Distortion, a very rare one in the fact that she can both take a human form and has human intelligence. She can transform from her human form to her true form and vice versa at will. In her human form, she has merely the powers of an un-augmented human and nothing more. However, in her true form is when she can use her supernatural abilities. While just as fragile and weak as a normal human in this form, her evasiveness compensates tenfold. Capable of flight using her wings and very agile, she is already very difficult to hit. However, her powers go beyond that: She can see seconds into the future as well as transform people into golden gears, add them to her wings, and add their intelligence to her own by doing so. To do this, she must envelop someone in her wings and embrace them with her arms (of course, she can do this and not transform them if she chooses), after which the embraced will begin to glow a faint golden light. After a few minutes of this, the person will be transformed into a gear and added to Eileen's wings (given the length of the process and that Eileen's true form isn't any stronger than an un-augmented woman, the victim must either be unconscious or willing.) When this happens, the person's intelligence is added to Eileen's, and the length of time she can see into the future is increased (right now, it is two seconds.) The transformation process is painless, perhaps even pleasant: A numbness and warmth spreads through the victim's body and increases until the end of their transformation. The gears are semi-sentient, and Eileen does not feel guilty about transforming people into them, as she sees that as a pure, fulfilling and happy existence. Between her agility, flight, and future-sight, Eileen is extremely difficult to hit in her true form. Of course, her true power comes not from anything physical, but from her words. In her human form, she lacks the agility, flight, and the ability to transform others, but she retains her increased intellect and future-sight. Given her status as a Distortion, she doesn't need to eat or sleep.

Eileen's human disguise takes the form of a young woman standing at a tallish height of five feet and nine inches tall. She possesses a completely hairless, voluptuous, hourglass physique with soft, fair skin. In this form, she has long, golden-blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. Her hands are soft and without callouses. She has soft, delicate facial features. She possesses a distinctive yet gentle rose-like scent. She usually moves with a fluid grace. Her true form, however, is far more monstrous but no less beautiful. Standing at six feet and five inches, this Distortion towers over most people. Its "flesh" is composed of a snow-white, hard, porcelain-like material with streaks of gold through it, akin to kintsugi. This material is hard to the touch, yet Eileen is able to move as if she had normal flesh. Covering this "flesh" of hers is a pure-white dress embroidered with gold, which closer inspection reveals to actually be apart of her body, even though the cloth-like texture of it differs from the porcelain-like texture of her "skin." Her head is completely featureless—no features or hair, like a mannequin—and where her face should be is instead a gaping hole, allowing one to see all the way through her head. Despite this, she has no issues seeing, hearing, or speaking—though, her voice has an echoey quality to it when she speaks in this form. Upon her "feet" are high-heels of shining gold, which are also merely apart of her body. Extending from her scapulae are large, angelic wings covered in soft, white feathers. And from under these feathers extend many rotating golden gears. These are the gears that were once people. Overall, her appearance in this form presents a distinctly angelic quality to it.

Eileen is—in summary—a charismatic, intelligent, misguided, and manipulative cult leader who genuinely believes in her cause. Of course, people are always more complicated than a single sentence. She has a gentle, sweet, patient, and motherly personality, sometimes even saccharine. A skilled orator, she is very charismatic and persuasive. She is highly empathetic and prodigious at reading people, something she takes advantage of. She truly is a kind person, genuinely caring for others—her flock especially—but she is horribly misguided as to what's best for them. She was always a smart girl, but given the gears added to her Distortion form, her intellect has risen to that of a genius. It's this personality of hers—her kindness, her patience, her ability to make people feel understood—that make her so magnetic to hapless people who are accustomed to the cruelty of the City. She uses that magnetism for her own ends—i.e., spreading her ideology and growing the Church of Gears—and she thinks she doing good by doing so. She has a deterministic philosophy, believing that there is no such thing as free will in the world and that the root of all suffering is the denial of that. To her, all people are gears in the great machine that is the City, where every rotation of the gears is dictated by outside circumstance. She often manipulates others, but she sees it as justified because it's "for a good cause." She has a tendency to think she knows better than others, and she will remorselessly violate someone's agency "for their own good." She preys on the vulnerable, offering support for the impoverished, guidance for the lost, comfort for the pained, and community for the lonely—all to grow her Church and advance her cause. While she genuinely believes in what she preaches and is doing this for the good of others, she secretly enjoys being a cult leader, relishing the feeling of control in an otherwise powerless existence. She has a flowery diction, making frequent use of metaphors and euphemisms. While she feels no guilt for transforming people into gears—because she sees it as a pure and happy existence—she does not transform members of her flock for two reasons: Such a loss would be noticed by other members of the Church of Gears, and consuming her followers is a waste because they are more useful as humans than gears. Instead, she transforms outsiders. When giving sermons or otherwise interacting with her flock in the temple, she wears a robe-like white dress. However, she wears more casual clothing outside of that (in her human form, that is). She is not employed because she doesn't need to eat or sleep, and she spends all of her free time advancing her cause, whether that's recruiting new members or just cleaning the temple. Though she doesn't visit it often, her home is within the temple, which she calls a cell ("cell" like where a nun sleeps, not a prison cell). She mostly just stores personal belongings in it, using it for little else.