Deborah Rye

"*I’m sorry. I have no idea how that must’ve felt…I…I know now that that was unfair and cruel, and purely out of grief.*"
—Deborah to Matt and Amelia[src]

**Deborah Rye**is a strategist conductor for the Crimson Raiders, former lawyer and mother of Matt and Amelia Rye. She worked for the Acropolis Unity Courthouse for twenty years, and was exceedingly effective in winning cases, regardless of whether the accused was innocent or guilty.

Deborah spent more time earning enough money to support her family than paying attention to them, and as such did not raise her children properly. Matt believed that she might have tried to establish a bond once she had made enough money to last them for life. However, Amelia objected to this as they refused to connect with him whilst he was risking his life during the Third Darosian Civil War, as part of the Krolantian Military Order.

## Early Years

Most of Deborah's past is unknown, as she is mostly spoken about by Matt and Amelia, who never learnt things about her prior to their births due to her neglect of her children. Deborah does not tend to disclose her past, likely because there is not much to tell. She was born decades after the conclusion of the Second Darosian Civil War, where peace was more common.

It is unknown who her parents were, if she had any. Whoever they may have been, they are likely dead. It was stated that Deborah's maiden name was Burke, so their names seemed to have been Mr and Mrs Burke.

This led to her moving to Acropolis at some point in her early twenties, due to the encouraged atmosphere of leisure and relaxation present throughout the city. She began working at the Acropolis Unity Courthouse, indicating towards some kind of previous history in law that warranted her choice of occupation in the city. Deborah slowly worked her way up the ranks, efficiently working through cases at the expense of her social live and the cost of alienating others, especially those who opposed her on cases.

Deborah met her future husband, Nicholas Rye, during a break-in at the courthouse whereupon DNA evidence was stolen from the storage vaults to prevent the incrimination and imprisonment of an accused being prosecuted for murder. Nicholas and a group of police officers worked to find out the perpetrator, who targeted Deborah, the lawyer for the opposition during the case. Nicholas intervened in a murder attempt against her, but the malefactor escaped.

While the Escudo Police Force searched for the attempted murderer, Deborah was placed in Witness Protection and Nicholas was assigned as her safe-keeper. They grew close during this time, and fell in love, starting a relationship once the criminal was caught and imprisoned.

They were later arranged to be married, following years of dating, and then had their first child, Matt .

## Parenting

Deborah's 'parenting', if it could even be called that, consisted of neglect and apathy. Deborah's job as a lawyer had groomed her to be more ruthless, with no limits to how far she would go to win a case, and this unfortunately extended to her treatment towards her children. While she was never outwardly cruel to them, nor did she abuse them, Deborah worked harder to earn enough money to support them, or so Matt conjectured.

There is evidence that Deborah cared about her children at some point, such as when she at first prevented Amelia from leaving Acropolis, as she believed she might get herself killed. However, eventually she stopped bothering and only told them to stay alive but made no effort to ensure they did. Deborah aspired for her son to be a lawyer, the only interest she took in him, and attempted to influence him once or twice when he was younger to do so, but Matt wasn't interested so eventually the woman stopped trying.

At some point, Deborah became aware of her daughter's aspiration to be a lawyer, but she did not inspire her to pursue the career, likely still bitter from Matt's disinterest in the occupation.

Eventually though, she stopped caring about Matt altogether, not even if he was alive or not, although the lawyer still expressed a desire to keep Amelia alive. Deborah didn't care that her son had pursued a military career and joined the KMO, dismissing Matt's actions as his own, even if it meant that he may die. When Amelia attempted to convince Deborah and Nicholas to establish a familial bond with Matt, before it was too late, Deborah refused almost instantly and instead focussed more on Amelia's wellbeing.

She forcefully moved Amelia to the Acropolis bunker, or evacuated her from the city entirely, in order to keep her safe and under her control. Deborah purposefully avoided contact with Matt once he joined the KMO, and ignored him when he joined Gemini, not attempting to stop him, although she displayed disapproval of his penchant for the military.

## Disownment of Matt

When Amelia was murdered by a Hyperion assassin, Deborah took to blaming it on Matt, causing him immense survivor's guilt and claiming he had "the face of the Devil" and was a "danger to himself and others". To some degree, Deborah blamed herself, wondering how she had given birth to such a "reckless idiot", although she still focussed the intensity of her furiosity at her son.

This led to her disowning Matt, alongside Nicholas, who abused Matt for his supposed deed while she merely watched. Matt was subsequently thrown off Darios, with the aid of a mob of Acropoliptan citizens who had come to hate the Gemini Corporation. Both of them expressed hate towards their ex-son, although Deborah hated him much less than her husband.

## Divorce

Not long after Matt was exiled from Darios, Deborah began to regret her grief-fuelled actions against her own son, and began to think over the situation objectively. Eventually, she realised that Amelia's murder was not really Matt's fault, understanding that Hyperion  assassins were extremely effective in tailing their targets, and that Amelia would have sacrificed herself to protect her beloved brother.

She attempted to convince her husband of the same, but Nicholas strongly objected, calling her a "stupid, apologetic idiot" and thus worsening their relationship. Their marriage deteriorated over the course of a week, until Deborah ultimately demanded a divorce, when Nicholas refused to help her at least look for Matt.

Separated, Deborah and Nicholas both left Darios. Deborah then went to search for Matt.

## Searching for Matt

### Breaking into the CCG

Spending years researching Gemini, Deborah finally discovered the secret co-ordinates of their main base of operations, Central Capricorn Galactica. Using her talent for manipulation, Deborah successfully persuaded a lackey of Gemini, who was disgruntled with his treatment, to let her into the base if she provided him somewhere to live. She gave him the deeds to her old penthouse home in Acropolis in exchange for free access to the CCG.

There, Deborah gained access to the Gemini database, using stolen access codes provided by the disgruntled employee, and learnt that Matt had been pronounced dead at the time following his escapade with the Vault of the Dreamer. Additionally, she learnt that he had become a Vault Hunter, the Anomaly, and had left Gemini and went to work for the Crimson Raiders.

This prompted Deborah to look for the Crimson Raiders, trying to find some way to get to Pandora until she was eventually caught and brought to a prison planet.

### Imprisonment in the Gemini Menagerie

After some time on a prison planet, implied to be at least a year, Deborah was transported to the Gemini Menagerie on Pandora so that more high profile prisoners could be kept on the Gemini prison planet while more unimportant subjects like her would be kept in secret. There, she was imprisoned and tortured for information on how she managed to break into the CCG and her reasons for doing so. Deborah refused to provide this information no matter how many times she was electrocuted.

On one particular torture session, she was rescued by Fiona, and reluctantly Gaige, and freed from her chains. She questioned why they rescued her, to which Fiona replied that she just couldn't bare seeing her tortured any longer. While thankful for her rescue, Deborah criticised her overly-emotional and reckless thinking, as she did not know who she was or what she whether she was an enemy to them or not. This prompted Fiona to ask, and Deborah explained that her son was a part of the Crimson Raiders, and later died, which she found out at the CCG, and she joined the Raiders to honor his memory. She didn't mention her son by name.
The escape attempt immediately resulted in alarms throughout the Menagerie, greatly frustrating Deborah, who had been planning her own, more silent escape. Gaige however managed to reprogram a nearby ESDD, teleporting her and Deborah away in the process.

### Joining the Crimson Raiders

Deborah and Gaige returned to Sanctuary, where Deborah was introduced to the leader of the Crimson Raiders, Lilith. After the Mechromncer had explained what happened at the Menagerie, the Siren demanded who Deborah was and what she was doing here. Deborah reiterated the story she had told prior, although Lilith was immensely critical of this and did not trust her at all. She explained that she had information on Gemini, and was also an adept tactician, so could be of use to the Raiders.

Lilith reluctantly granted her a spot with the Raiders, but did not trust her and subsequently warned her that if Deborah attempted to betray them, then the Siren would not hesitate to kill her. Deborah accepted these terms calmly and then visited Tannis in the Sanctuary Science Department and was provided a preliminary position with the Sanctuary Strategem Department.

## Meeting Matt and Amelia Again

An hour or two later, Deborah was called to the Sanctuary HQ by Lilith, to assist with the clean-up of the Menagerie, following the taking of it by the Raiders. She arrived at the top of the stairs, mouthing off about how she was required to follow orders after Lilith thanked her for coming.

Upon reaching the top of the stairs, Deborah immediately noticed Matt, but not Amelia. She cut her own sentence off and ran to the Anomaly to hug him. Matt staunchly refused the hug and explained who Deborah was. She told him that she believed he was dead, and was about to compare it to her daughter, but she then spotted Amelia behind him, asked her in disbelief if it was really her. Amelia replied that she was.

Deborah made a move towards her, to hug her, but Amelia refused and told her that she knew Deborah had disowned Matt and kicked him off his home planet. Deborah apologised sincerely for this, only to be criticised by Gaige for not realising the error of her ways sooner. In response to Gaige's mention of her husband, Deborah corrected her and told them they had divorced not long after Matt left Darios and that Nicholas now resided on Teleptia Major.

It was then that Deborah revealed that Darios had been obliterated by Gemini during the turmoil of the Associated Constellations, and that Matt, Nicholas, Amelia and herself were last Darosians in existence.

Matt eventually accepted her stay with the Raiders when she revealed that she had vital knowledge of Gemini, and was an adept strategist, although he informed her that this did not mean he forgives her for her actions or would ever actually like her.

## Personality

Deborah grew up on the war-plagued planet of Darios, and as such was battle-hardened over time, although she expressed no interest in the military or its numerous operations. Her job as a lawyer eventually led her to embrace a fierce stubbornness, bordering on ruthlessness, and this spilled over into her real life and as such stopped displaying love towards her husband, who proceeded to do the same. Deborah didn't care much for her children, or at least did to a degree, but was more focussed on making enough money for them to live off, so did not form a familial bond with them, not that she particularly wanted to.

Her care for her children was eventually shown, when her daughter was murdered, Deborah was stricken with grief and disowned Matt for getting his sister killed. Her later guilt over this action, and allowing her husband to harm her son, also showed that Deborah did indeed possess a semblance of care for her children, although repressed by the concept of her work. These repressed feelings emerged from these events and spurred her on to searching for Matt and trying to honour his memory when she believed him to be dead.

Deborah was extremely remorseful of her actions and accepted that Matt could never truly completely forgive her.

Her occupation as a lawyer also meant that she was extremely effective even under pressure, and was very calm when threatened by people she was fully aware was a threat, like Lilith. Deborah is analytical and methodical, able to quickly figure out what to do in certain situations, and could effectively use her own experience of emotive thinking to deduce why Fiona rescued her.

## Powers and Abilities

### Abilities

* **Master tactician/strategist:**Deborah's time as a lawyer has led her to be masterful in strategy, enough to warrant a position on the Sanctuary Stratagem Department. She was extremely effective at winning cases because of this, able to employ multiple different methods to convince the jury of her client's innocence or guilt and implore the judge to take more drastic punishments against the accused (if she was the opposition).
* **Extensive knowledge of law:**Being a lawyer, Deborah possesses an exhaustive bank of knowledge about law and its numerous applications, sanctions and guidelines. She used this to take advantage of technicalities in Acropolis's law system and thus ensure the winning of her case under such bases (when not in a magistrate's court).
* **Master of persuasion:**A trick of the trade when it comes to lawyers, Deborah has an impressive talent to persuade others to do what she wants, often implying that, to some extent, what she wants, they want. She used this in court effectively, and later relied on this ability to convince a disgruntled Gemini employee to help her get into the CCG, despite the latter not wanted anything to do with Gemini or its enemies any longer.