Maria de Wilden

Captain Maria de Wilden was an Alliance N7 Commando (and later a Cerberus operative) who became a freelance vigilante and mercenary. Her various exploits have attracted countless admirers and enemies.

Early Life
Maria was born in 2150 CE on Luna to Claudia de Wilden, the head of a successful law firm, who had gotten pregnant by a male prostitute. She lived a life of luxury until age seven, when her mother and her stepfather were killed by a man who was distraught over losing a lawsuit against one of Claudia's clients. Maria was taken to Earth to live with her grandparents in South Africa, but in her teen years, she grew to resent the safety of her grandparents' home, and at age fourteen, she ran away and ended up in a gang known as A34, where she became the favored "pet" of leader Anthony Maseko. The degenerate Maseko took advantage of her, introducing her to anal sex and rohine, but when she turned fifteen, his interest in her waned, and in order to stay in the gang, Maria became a footsoldier. Operating throughout Africa, she killed over eighteen individuals in three years, but as she moved up in the ranks, she found her assignments increasingly distasteful. One day, when she had been sent to neutralize a A34 member who was attempting to usurp Maseko, she passed by an Alliance Navy recruiting station, and on a whim decided to join.

Service with the Alliance
In the navy her skill with a gun got her far, and after only two years she had been accepted into the N7 Academy. She trained as a commando for a year before her first major operation, the Liberation of Mindoir. While on patrol duty, then-1st Lieutenant de Wilden was on an Alliance Patrol ship near Mindoir when it was raided by batarian slavers. She led one of nine ground teams to aid the colonists. Assigned to help take a batarian fortified position she was pinned down for hours as her team watched batarians beat, torture, and kill the colonists. It was eighteen hours before she saw a break in the batarian defenses, a small brick wall that was out of a batarian gun nest's way. Eager on saving as many colonists as possible she led her team to rush it.

Once inside the batarian defenses, she proceeded to flank them from the left while leading them into the scopes of one of her sniper teams and into an ambush she had set with her 3rd recon team. The batarians were decimated but had still managed to kill dozens of colonists. De Wilden was awarded the Gold Star for heroism, but she viewed the operation as a mess, and much to the Alliance Navy's embarassment, used an interview to berate the Alliance brass for being slow to react, especially after another batarian raid ravaged the colony world Cailloux.

She continued to take part in raids against batarian pirates and slavers for six more years, but grew more irritated with the constant red tape that her job entailed, and finally requested a transfer to the Corsairs, a group of ostensibly privately-owned vessels who performed black ops for the Alliance. The brass, eager to get her away from impressionable recruits, granted her request, and she was assigned to the MSV Oswald. During her time on the Oswald she killed over eighty batarians and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander.

Her next large assignment was aboard a frigate, the SSV Alamo. She was deployed to the Skyllian Blitz, where she lead a team of six commandos to aid the colony's defenses with sniper and missile support, as well as an all-out assault on the attacking forces' right flank. She managed to kill eighteen batarians with her sniper rifle, but as she attempted to chase down a batarian commander, he doubled back and struck her from behind with the butt of his rifle, stunning her. He then proceeded to beat her senseless, striking her in the nose, kidneys, and stomach and stomping on her hands. Luckily, her team appeared and killed her assailant, then carried her back to the ship. For her actions, she earned the Silver Star, a promotion to Staff Commander, and a purple heart, but it took her nearly two years to recover from her injuries. She also developed an addiction to rohine.

Eden Prime War
After two years of recuperation, de Wilden was declared fit for service in 2178 CE. Her next deployment was to Operation Huntress where she earned her callsign by leading it. The operation was to eliminate a Blue Suns red sand-producing facility on Jamone. She succeeded, with her forces killing a combined 143 Blue Suns mercenaries.

Only a few months later she participated in the siege of Torfan. Launched in retaliation for the Skyllian Blitz two years earlier, the battle was intended to destroy a major base used by batarian smugglers, but things went horribly wrong. A few of the commanding officers were determined to wipe out the batarian presence at any cost, and pushed their men deeper into the underground strongholds, which resulted in heavy losses for the Alliance. One officer, Cmdr. James Skinner, actually set off bombs and buried many of his fellow soldiers under rubble in order to block a crucial escape route and trap the batarians in their own stronghold. De Vilden and her squad happened to be on the other side of the rubble, and with their escape route blocked, they were forced to fight their way out through a squad of batarians. Thirteen of her men died in the resulting carnage.

Saddened and believing herself to blame for the loss of her squadmates, she requested transfer to the human embassy on the Citadel, where she worked as a bodyguard for Alliance politicians and aided in a few C-Sec operations. She found this work distasteful and 'boring', but continued, as she still suffered from depression and survivor's guilt, haunted by nightmares of her squad dying and believing she could have saved them.

She stayed on the Citadel until 2183 CE, when, intent on taking a break, she took shore leave to the colony of Eden Prime. During her time there, the geth invaded the colony and she aided in evacution of civilians, killing two dozen geth and husks and taking photographs with her helmet camera, an act that helped Alliance intelligence officials greatly. She even recovered a 'Dragon's tooth' impaling device, but this was later stolen by Cerberus while in transit aboard the SSV Pearl Harbor.

After Eden Prime, she worked on the Citadel again, and was present during Sovereign's attack on the station. Aiding the defense of the shady bar, Chora's Den, de Wilden was defending the main entrance to the bar when her commander, Capt. Dane Russell, was killed by a geth grenade. She personally lead the defense there, after losing only twelve of the thirty-eight men and killing a combined ninety-seven geth by using the main entrance as a chokepoint. The action got her the Star of Terra and a special recommendation for an officer's commision by her relieving officer, Capt. Bishop Hunt; this recommendation was carried out by the Alliance military and earned de Wilden a promotion to Captain. However, her actions also attracted the attention of Adm. Evelyn Gargosh, a recruiter for the covert-ops program called the Office of Alliance Territorial Hegemony. He convinced her to join the program, promising that it would allow her to work with fewer restrictions.

Service in OATH
Maria's time with the Office of Alliance Territorial Hegemony was brief. She rose quickly through the Office hierarchy, reaching the point where she reported only to Adm. Gargosh. Gargosh abused his power, however, forcing her into a sexual relationship. She put up with it, reasoning that she could always blackmail him if she got tired of being used.

Later that year, the newyly-minted Capt. de Wilden went to Halumie, a desert colony in the Terminus Systems. She and her contingent of OATH operatives were present when it was hit by a Collector attack, and were captured by the Collectors' seeker swarms. Luckily for her, a Cerberus strike team lead by Cmdr. Bryan Cody intervened and rescued her, bringing her aboard upon Cody's frigate, the Bloody Harvest. She was freed, and was to be transported to a Cerberus research station, but she sabotaged the engines and forced the ship to stop at Illium for repairs, where she jumped ship.

With the aid of information broker Farouk Amanesu, she contacted Gargosh and attempted to reveal the truth. However, Gargosh at that time was seeking information from the Shadow Broker for one of his side projects, and the Shadow Broker happened to be working with the Collectors. De Wilden was tricked into boarding a Shadow Broker transport that she believed was taking her to the Citadel. She realized it was a trap, however, and killed the entire crew. Believing herself betrayed, she turned to a new organization for work - the human survivalist group known as Cerberus.

Joining Cerberus
Despite their previous attempt to capture her for experimentation, de Wilden decided to risk contact with the Illusive Man by using a transponder she had stolen from the Bloody Harvest. When she made contact with the Illusive Man, he initially displayed skepticism, believing that Maria had been sent as a deep-cover agent by the N7. But after using contacts and learning what had happened, he agreed and let her join.

She started working as a Terminus Operative, a group of Cerberus commandos in the Terminus system with the intent to help destabilize the systems for human invasion and colonization. She started working against batarian control, conducting raids on batarian vessels and settlements in batarian space. Much like her time on the Oswald, she was noted by her men as a brave and fearless warrior with no equal on the battlefield. She quickly gained the respect and fear of all before her, and was applauded as one of the best in Cerberus.

Betrayal of Cerberus
After six months in Cerberus, she took part in a special operation raid on a batarian slaver ship. The ship contained thirteen human slaves, whom Cerberus believed were captured operatives in their organization, but upon realization that the captives were actually Alliance N7 commandos, Cerberus executed them immediatly. Enraged and furious to learn that one of the soldiers was an old friend, Lt. Joseph King. Maria proceeded to contact the Alliance and betray Cerberus by leaking over thirty-two thousand data files. The Alliance proceeded with a two-month campaign that obliterated Cerberus bases over half the galaxy.

Now running for her life, Maria went to the Citadel, where she tried to rejoin the Alliance, but her history with Cerberus prevented her reinstatement and warranted an arrest. However, one of her guards, Chuck Derof, who had served under de Wilden in the Skyllian Blitz, saw her as a hero and let her free. Though it was treason and he knew he would die for it, Derof still got her on a shuttle to Omega and was executed a day later.

Omega
Now being chased by both the Alliance and Cerberus, she fled to Omega, where she started fighting against the Eclipse and Blood Pack in an attempt to help an Alliance front mercenary organization gain control of Omega. She still believed her duty was to aid the Alliance and humanity. After a month she had eliminated thirty Eclipse and fifty-six Blood Pack using sniper rifles, mechs, car bombs, and poison to elimate her targets.

However, her rohine addiction was getting worse, causing her to take risks that made her increasingly visible. Her past caught up with her when Bryan Cody showed up on Omega, having been sent with the express purpose of taking her down. Maria fled for two weeks, barely avoiding him until she led him into the Afterlife night club. Disguising herself as a prostitute and even gaining a temporary tattoo of a nude asari that covered both of her exposed breasts, she pretended to know Cody, his goals, and where Maria was. She tricked him into buying her services and led Cody into an apartment.

Cody was overjoyed with his night with Maria, and the fact he would soon have knowledge of her made him let his guard down. This proved to be a fatal mistake, for in the apartment Maria had placed three incendiary charges that would engulf the room in two million degree temperatures. After spending two hours in bed engaging in sodomy with Cody, mainly for her personal pleasure, she left the room, saying to Cody that she was getting rohine from another room for the two. However the apartment had only one room; Cody did not realize this fact until she was a step away from the door.

Before she left, she revealed her true identity to him and showed Cody the detonator. She then left the room, locking him in and activating the charges. With Cody dead, Maria used his datapad (which she had pickpocketed earlier) to mark herself as dead in the Cerberus logs, and began planning to retire on Noveria, where she would live under a false name. However, with no knowledge of how to proceed to Noveria, she stalked the streets of Omega for two months.

Bad Bust
"Shouldn't have come after me, little muffin. If you were just another carl, I might have just killed you. But you're such a goddamned hard little item, and I'm really in the mood for some fun. Tell me, muffin... do you like anal?"

- Maria de Wilden, to Emmanuelle Sharon, before sodomizing her.

Needing funds to get off-world, de Wilden decided to continue posing as a prostitute, approaching both men and women in order to steal credits, clothes, and (when possible) weapons. Though she was able to pull off several thefts without trouble, a string of bad dates ended in bloodshed, and soon word began to spread througout Omega of a prostitute who was killing her clients. The entire red-light district on Omega came to an abrupt halt, and Omega's "Queen", Aria T'Loak, began looking for a solution. She put out a bounty, and soon attracted the attention of Adm. Gargosh, who was distressed to learn that Maria was still alive.

Three years earlier, Gargosh had blackmailed Cmdr. Emmanuelle Sharon, a soldier in the Alliance Navy who happened to have had an affair with his estranged wife, into working for OATH, hoping to gain leverage that he could use to get revenge against her. He thus contacted her, promising to let her out of her contract with OATH in exchange for killing Maria.

Sharon went undercover on Omega, posing as "Amalie Dreyfuss", a petty officer from an affluent family on shore leave. After several nights, de Wilden decided that Dreyfuss was a safe target and picked her up.

Maria led the disguised Sharon back to her apartment, where she began to undress and ordered her new companion to do the same. Realizing that this would reveal her weapon, and determined to avoid killing de Vilden if possible, Sharon revealed her identity and declared that she intended to take Maria into Alliance custody for her previous crimes, which would almost certainly mean a lengthy sentence, but also some protection against all of the other factions that sought to have her captured or killed. De Wilden merely laughed at the offer and attacked Sharon.

The fight was long and hard. Maria had four more years of combat experience than Sharon, but Sharon was agile and resourceful. Eventually, Sharon managed to grapple de Wilden and tried to slam her against the door to the apartment, causing the cheap old door to be torn off its hinges, and thus their battle spilled out into the hallway, down the stairs, and onto the street, all while the two combatants were dressed only in bra and panties. On the street, de Wilden finally gained the advantage and managed to incapacitate Sharon with one punch to the stomach and another punch to her face, and dragged her unconscious body back up to the apartment.

Convinced that Sharon had been sent by the Alliance and sexually aroused from the leftover adrenaline from the fight, de Wilden decided to have sex with Sharon instead of simply killing her, and then stole her "Amalie Dreyfuss" identity to contact Aria and inform her that the killer prostitute problem had been eliminated (not being completely heartless, she also claimed that she had been injured during the fight, and requested that Aria send someone to get her to a clinic.) After collecting the bounty that had been offered to Dreyfuss, de Wilden slipped off-world. Sharon woke up two days later in a clinic, where she was picked up by her lover and taken back to her ship.

Noveria
Maria lived on Noveria in peace for two days before running into an old friend, Corporal Louis Gates, with whom she served on Mindoir. Gates was working as a mercenary for Devlon Industries and, knowing about Maria's status, he threatened to expose her if she did not aid him in his latest job.

Gates had been ordered to destroy a business office of a rival company, the krogan weapons company, Tuchanka Forges. He had concocted a plan to overload a gas valve used for heating the offices to make the complex explode, but the offices were guarded by multiple krogan soldiers. Gates intended to send Maria in to the offices and have her charm the guards. However he forced her to wear a stripper's outfit for his pleasure and the hopes the guards would let her pass. Maria would have to infiltrate the compound and vent the valves to stop and build up until they caused an explosion. She would have three minutes to escape and have Gates in a vent providing her information and help.

Maria got in by knocking one krogan out and stabbing the other with a neurotoxin dart. She then got on the terminal and vented the heated gas to Gate's vent, roasting him alive and causing an explosion on the other side of the compound. She escaped and went to revisit her past on Torfan. There she retrieved N7 weapons and armor from a hidden cache she had made when she participated in the battle there.

Illium
Maria went to Illium where she got a job as an Eclipse heavy, mainly to aviod risk of detection, as Eclipse mercenaries were feared and respected on Illium and were rarely messed with. Maria saw this as the best way to conceal her identity. She worked there for two weeks before she was led by Cmdr. Aldor Sedulos in the shooting at the Ten Crowns Bar. She found the shooting distasteful and wrong; even after all she had done, she was still unwilling to murder innocents.

De Wilden spent several weeks pondering her next move, but her contemplation was interrupted when she was attacked by Lucy Oberoi, a disgraced former Alliance soldier now operating as mercenary, who had been hired by Siani T'Nair, Cmdr. Sharon's lover, to avenge de Wilden's brutalization of Sharon months earlier. They fought, and once again, de Wilden seemed to gain the upper hand, but Oberoi managed to get off a shot that tore clean through Maria's chest. As she lay in the hospital recovering, Maria's past deeds caught up with her, and she found herself on trial for her involvement in the Ten Crowns shooting. She managed to strike a plea bargain by offering testimony against Eclipse, but was sentenced to ten years in the most brutal prison that the Asari Republics had to offer - L'Shero Correctional Station.

Penance
L'Shero was colloquially known as "the Blue Hell", and for good reason. The population of the space station was about 85% asari and 15% human, and xenophobic gangs were rampant. Prisoners were kept naked at almost all times, and the guards were authorized to perform cavity checks on anyone suspected of concealing a weapon. The handful of human women who were imprisoned there had very few means of defending themselves against the asari majority.

During her time at L'Shero, de Wilden befriended a young Alliance officer, Justine Marsters, who had been sent to L'Shero after getting mixed up in Cerberus.

Death?
When the Reapers invaded the galaxy in 2186 CE, L'Shero was attacked by Reaper forces seeking to convert the asari prisoners into banshees. De Wilden formed a temporary alliance with Vatra Alirr and together they escaped. They stole an escape pod, and were eventually picked up by the SSV Vukovar, the mobile base of operations for Czernobog Squad.

Appears in

 * OATH: Disgraced
 * NairidaCorp: Bloodlust
 * Zana Squad: Containment
 * Zana Squad: Nos Morituri

Trivia

 * Maria has a fondness for Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera, and has been known to sing her own mangled versions of "Pirate Jenny" and "What Keeps Mankind Alive" during her sociopathic rampages.