River Tam

> Guys I think I literally just ran into River Tam.
>
> Wyvern, Water Main

## Background

River Tam is a central character to the alien invasion story of PACYOA: TE. Introduced in the very first mission, she played a critical role in Armor Corps' war against the Vannai. Her actual name has never been revealed, having been first identified as River Tam after the character of the same name from the overrated cult-classic Sci-Fi TV show "Firefly" by Wyvern, the Armor Corps operative who stumbled across her during Water Main. She is the only known person to have come into direct contact with AO-BASE and survived.

She has a tattoo of Benedict Cumberbatch on one of her arms, the face partially missing from when she attempted to flay off her skin prior to Water Main.

### History

River was a typical American teenage tumblr girl before the invasion, complete with all such a label entails.
The details of how she came to be on the oil rig Armor Corps found her on are not known. In the three weeks that passed between the start of the invasion and the commencement of Water Main she was either captured by controlled Tumblr Armors and brought to the rig or was already one herself. There, she and many other civilians were administered AO-BASE, and proceeded to go into a berserk killing frenzy, brutally slaughtering one another or otherwise tearing at their own bodies to try and remove the alien substance. River wound up as the sole survivor of the incident, left alone in the heart of the oil rig amidst piles of torn up bodies. She was discovered by Wyvern and Ronin barely alive and well in a state of shock, her circumstances not helped by Wyvern's panicking and firing tranquilizer darts at her until she became catatonic. Thoroughly spooked by what they had found, the Mythbusters team took anything that looked important with them, including Tam, and destroyed the facility and all AO samples there.

Despite their initial feigned disappointment with the Mythbusters' failure to recover the AO-BASE sample as intended, Armor Corps Command would turn out to be quite pleased with Tam's recovery from the oil rig. As the only known person to come in direct physical contact with AO-BASE, she was an incredibly valuable keystone to unraveling the mystery of what exactly was going on in the world, revealing that the mysterious alien controllers of the TA purposefully wanted the Armor Corps to fight back against them.

River would be taken into Armor Corps custody and not be seen again until she made a brief appearance at the end of Operation: Skeleton:Brine and Blood almost exactly a year to date later, where she was revealed to be the cargo on an Engineer flying armored transport, which had been shot down during the battle in Salt Lake City. She was discovered in the aircraft's sealed cargo bay by Catmachine, wired into a machine which was itself powered by a dedicated nuclear reactor. Whether as a result of the crash or her circumstances, she appeared to be delirious, slipping in and out of consciousness and rambling about hearing things. Only Lightning Knight recognized the girl for who she was, and with the nuclear reactor about to go critical, she was subsequently strangled into unconsciousness by Charlotte and taken by Armor Corps back to New Zealand.

River would next be seen in Operation Fastball seven months later, this time on her own two feet and working alongside Armor Corps against the Vannai. She wore her own special suit of power armor during this operation outfitted with an inhibitor typically built into the suits of pilots considered dangerous and at risk of falling victim to their nanites. The device was implied to be actively suppressing her. At the end of Fastball, she revealed her purpose by removing the restraining device and interfacing with the Vannai technology that had been left there despite sustaining severe wounds, connecting psionically with the alien hivemind. She retrieved the sum of Vannai knowledge through this connection and implanted it into Tommy Wilder's AI, Editi. After accomplishing this feat, she collapsed once again, slipping in to shock from her wounds and asking to be left to die. Tommy and Editi insisted on saving her nonetheless, and she was quickly recovered and taken back to AC territory once again.

She is not seen again afterwards in-game, but is mentioned in the Faction Summit prior to Operation Unity as still being in TE custody, undergoing treatment to return her to a normal human before being finally being released back into society. She was kept in a psychically-shielded facility to prevent any possible feedback that might occur from the success of Operation Mothership and was presumably released afterwards.

### Personality

Having spent most of her time in the limelight either unconscious, delirious, or in some state between the two, not much of River as a person is actually known. Most of what can be said of her character is taken from her actions during Operation Skeleton, where she showed considerable bravery and determination in risking herself on a battlefield to recover information that would give the Armor Corps a significant edge in their war against the Vannai. Whether due to feeling some kind of guilt for the actions of the TA or simply due to intimidation from her time spent with the AC, she pushed through life-threatening wounds to accomplish her given objective, and, having played her part to the end, was insistent on ending her story with her own death.