Name: Ishtar

Civilian Name: Marlene Babylon

Species: Human

Age: 27

Powers and Abilities: Whenever she channels Ishtar's power, Marlene is able to gain the powers of flight, superhuman strength, speed, and agility, and heightened resistance to injury. She is also able to master any and all weapons, but primarily relies on the sword and archery. Ishtar is also, befitting her spheres of influence, able to strategize and seduce like no other. If any trope could describe her in any way, it would be that of the Xanatos Gambit - she has plans inside of plans inside of plans, and all guarantee that she is victorious in one way or another.

Weaknesses: Ishtar's primary weakness lies in her self-control. Given she inhabits Marlene's body whenever the former calls onto her, Ishtar is primarily fueled by the traits and emotions that Marlene represses (such as her lust, appetites for decadent foods and beverages, etc.); the stronger said emotion is, the closer Ishtar is able to fully manifest herself, not only at the risk of destroying Marlene, but the world potentially ending. Ishtar, above all else, wants power and dominion over all, so Marlene has to keep her emotions and stress levels under control in order to keep Ishtar in line.

Personality: In order to understand who Ishtar is personality-wise, we need to look at both Marlene and Ishtar themselves as both separate individuals and two halves of the same person. Marlene is, in her own words, a boring individual. She is no-nonsense, work-oriented, and has a generally "plain" demeanor. She is also rather anti-social and introverted, keeping to herself most of the time. When not working, Marlene often spends her time reading and with her cats.

Ishtar is a completely different story, however. Ishtar is everything that Marlene isn't. She's outgoing, boisterous, and gung-ho, going into whatever she does with a warrior's enthusiasm. She drinks to excess (and holds her liquor very well), has all sorts of liaisons with men and women alike, and loves to fight more than anything else. Beneath the surface of a seemingly-ditzy and impulsive brunette, however, is a calculating, manipulative, clingy and power-hungry goddess who is biding her time until she can be at her fullest extent of power and rule the world with her fellow gods and goddesses once more. In spite of her flaws, though, Ishtar does care about humanity on some level; in her eyes, humanity had a symbiotic relationship with the gods - they were created to serve and worship them, and in turn the gods provided for them. Mankind, according to her, has failed at taking care of itself (she isn't wrong - the five-way Cold War between the world's superpowers leaves a precarious situation that could very well spell the end) and now, more than ever, it needs protecting.

 Both Marlene and Ishtar are really two sides of the same whole: the person Marlene presents herself as, and the person she'd really like to be deep down. However, both need one another to survive. Marlene needs Ishtar to be a hero when the need arises, and Ishtar needs Marlene to keep her in check..

Appearance: Marlene is a brown-haired woman in her late 20s of German-American descent. She wears business casual clothing, keeps her hair in a ponytail, and generally wears lipstick and thick-rimmed glasses. She is neither particularly fit not overweight; not buxom but not flat-chested either. She is just a plain, boring archaeologist working in an equally plain and boring office. When in the form of Ishtar, however, Marlene undergoes a complete overhaul in appearance. She has the body and bosom of a Teutonic goddess, her eyes a vibrant green and hair long and raven-black. Angelic wings now sprout out of her back, and she wears a white skirt and top that show off her legs and midriff. Atop her head she wears a traditionally Sumerian war helmet, from which her hair spills out to her mid-back. Around her waist she wears a golden belt where she keeps her arrows; she keeps her sword and bow sheathed in between her massive wings.

Bio: Marlene Babylon was born out of a liason between a high-ranking member of the Nazi Party and a former female ambassador to the United States government who defected upon revealing her sympathies to the Reich. Raised in Berlin amongst the privileged and free upper classes, Marlene was instilled from birth with not only the racial ideologies of Adolf Hitler and the governing Reichsrat of Germania, but a love of archaeology and the occult. Upon graduation from secondary schooling, Marlene was recruited into the Thule Society, tasked with retrieving powerful artifacts in the name of the Führer. Spending the next 4 years as an adventuring archaeologist, it was at age 23, during an expedition into Middle Eastern ruins, when Marlene would encounter the Babylonian goddess Ishtar; said goddess, now but a weakened and possibly dying spirit from millennia of non-prayer, saw the chance to not only regain her former glory but dissuade Marlene of the idealized, "Aryan" viewpoints she was indoctrinated with. Upon bonding with Marlene and transforming them both into a divided yet singular being, Ishtar (once worshipped by East Semitic peoples) showed Marlene the true horrors the Greater German Reich was built upon. Horrified and angry with herself for the atrocities she took part in, Marlene's heightened emotions allowed Ishtar to take control of her for the first time, upon which she tortured and murdered every single person in the expedition party. Now declared any enemy of the state, Marlene fled to America, where she works from home as a proper archaeologist.