Vendra

Current Reference

"***I wouldn't mess with that collar if I were you. It'll blow your goddamn head off.***"
—Vendra
**Vendra** is a fan character designed by Datholmzie, also known as AlyssaFoxah. Vendra resides in the *Voltron* universe, more specifically the *Voltron: Ultimate Defenders* incarnation.

Vendra is a human who grew up with no knowledge of her species or planet Earth. She was raised by a group of bandits/bounty hunters and lived a life of lawlessness. At age 17, she was captured by an alien race known as Goraqians and forced to fight in an arena for entertainment. She remained a prisoner for 3 years before being freed by two of the Voltron paladins, who then welcomed her into their ranks. She used this as an opportunity to reshape her life and atone for the wrongdoings of her past.

## Biography

Vendra has no idea where she truly comes from. She was either brought out into space as an infant or birthed in space. As far as anyone knows, she's never even seen planet Earth. She never knew her mother or father and has never been able to get any answers from anyone. She doesn't really remember life below the age of 3, when she was picked up by a man and his son, Ace.

As a child, Vendra worked with Ace's father's group of bandits. She was used as the "innocence" of the group to lure people into thinking the group was trustworthy, although she was unaware that they were committing any wrongdoing at the time. She was convinced that everyone was doing what they were doing and that their behavior was perfectly normal and acceptable.

As a preteen, Ace's father and his group were all captured and sent presumably to prison. Ace then formed his own team of rookie bandits to continue living the only life they knew. Vendra was also on the team, but by that point, she had begun to question the morality of their work. She started noticing that everyone else they met was willing to give up their time and resources to help them, only to be swindled and sometimes stranded as a result. Meanwhile, her group never answered any distress signals and never shared supplies or helped anyone but themselves. Despite this moral guilt, she convinced herself there was no other way to survive and thus continued working as a bandit/bounty hunter.

When her teamate Clik was captured by the aggressive Goraqians and taken to the Warplex, Vendra made it her mission to get him out. Despite all the bad deeds she'd taken part in, she held a strong sense of community with those she trusted. she got herself captured in order to help Clik escape, but at the moment of truth, Clik freed himself and left Vendra behind without a second thought. This event caused Vendra to develop abandonment issues and a general distrust of others.

### **Debut Story Arc**

The Castle received a distress signal from an unknown source and sent Keith and Pidge out to investigate. They were unaware that the signal was a ruse sent out by an alien species known as the Goraqians in order to lure in unsuspecting travelers, and thus the two paladins were easily caught with their guards down and captured. They awoke to find strange collars on their necks and were placed an a locked cell together along with a few other prisoners with a view of a massive stadium from their caged window. From there, they witnessed the carnage of the fights as a woman (Vendra) fought against waves of Goraqians and mutated beasts for her own survival. The paladins attempted to contact Allura and Coran, but discover that their communications are being jammed, which Pidge noted was likely because the entire Warplex Stadium must jam out all signals.

Not long after, Pidge was unexpectedly teleported into the Stadium's arena. She met face to face with Vendra, who immediately dropped her weapons. Vendra yelled at Pidge and told her to attack her regardless if she fought back. Vendra was then electrocuted by her collar as punishment for attempting to forfeit the fight. Pidge reluctantly charged after her and knocked Vendra down, but did no actual harm. A loud voice on a speaker demanded Vendra to fight back, and she still refused, which resulted in more electrocution. Frustrated, the Goraqians teleported Pidge back to her cell. Before they get the chance to teleport Vendra into solitary confinement, she threw her weapon at the teleporter meant to take her, making it unusable. This resulted in another shock, leaving her barely conscious when she was teleported away into the same cell as Pidge and Keith.

In the cell and half-concious, Vendra explains the collars to the two paladins. Misbehavior results in electrocution and attempting to tamper with it or remove it causes it to detonate. Not fond of having a bomb strapped to their necks, Keith and Pidge question how they're going to escape. Vendra explains to them her own escape plan, which involved obtaining a key to their collars to safely remove them and them re-lock them to their cell doors to use as bombs to break free. She also planned on hijacking a Goraqian cargo ship to make her escape off the Warplex. Before the plans can be discussed further, Vendra is physically carried off to solitary confinement.

The next day, the fights began again, only this time, Keith was the one fighting for his life in the Stadium. He took down waves of vicious Goraqians and war machines, and at the end of his battles, he was set to battle against Vendra. Again, Vendra laid down her weapons and told Keith to attack her so he wouldn't be punished. Keith went against her orders and laid down his own weapons, much to Vendra's utter surprise and dismay. The voices on the speakers demanded they kill one another or face worse pain, and both still refused. They both were then electrocuted, which nearly knocked Keith out immediately while Vendra took a few more.

Furious at their uncooperative behavior, the Goraqians had them both tied up and restrained in the center or the Stadium's arena. When the two of them awoke, the Goraqians claimed they were going to make an example of the two rebels in front of the entire audience and all the other prisoners. They then whipped the two of them with electrified whips repeatedly, telling Vendra that Keith's suffering was her own fault, since she was the one who influenced him to misbehave in the first place. After the two of them were already in sufficient pain, they were unchained. Before they could even say anything to one another, a giant mutated beast was teleported into the Stadium arena for them to battle with no weapons at their disposal.

The rabid beast charged after them, and Vendra shoved Keith out of it's path since she'd regained control of her muscles quicker after all the electrocution. She got the beast's attention and lured it away from him, doing everything she could to dodge it's ferocious attacks. Keith finally got to his feet and saw her being overwhelmed, and directed the beast's attention back to him. Vendra used this distraction to her advantage and leapt onto the giant's back. The Goraqians electrocuted her, and she clung to the beast, causing the electric shock to harm both the beast and herself. The beast became agitated and took it's aggression out of the audience and the Goraqians, busting through the glass barrier and destroying several rows of seating and causing a panic. Vendra started to lose control of the beast and jumped off. Thinking on his toes, Keith grabbed a sharp metal pole from the broken stands and launched it at the beast, directly hitting it's collar. The beast's collar then detonated, killing the beast and resulting in a massive explosion that destroyed a large portion of the Stadium. Before the two of them could take further action to cause damage to the Warplex, they were subdued by electrocution yet again and carried back to their cells.

With a large portion of the Warplex Stadium completely destroyed, the Warplex had to be temporarily closed down for repairs. Guests weren't arriving due to the rumors of beasts breaking free and everything was calm. This gave Vendra, Keith, and Pidge enough time to carry out their escape plan. The repairmen that arrived were very gullible and naive, and Vendra was easily able to coax one over to her cell with her false innocent, feminine charm (a skill she'd gained from her previous association with bandits). She convinced the technician to bring her a key to the collars in exchange for "favors," and he eagerly obliged. Once Vendra obtained the key, she knocked him out and tossed him aside. She and the paladins removed their collars and locked them onto the metal bars of their cell and used them as a bomb to bust out. They made their way to the hangar, collected their confiscated possessions, and hotwired a Goraqian cargo ship to make their escape (another skill Vendra gained from her previous work). They returned to the castle, where Vendra was introduced to everyone.

### **Haunting Past Story Arc**

Vendra felt immense guilt for all the innocent people her old group had swindled and stranded throughout her life. This was likely why she was so willing to put herself in harms way to protect the prisoners at the Warplex, who were mostly civilians who were answering the Goraqians false distress signal, which is what her group used to do to lure people in. She was trying to atone for all her wrongdoing in the Stadium by keeping the other prisoners alive at her own expense. Keith was the one who brought this penance to her attention shortly after she confided in him and admitted everything about her past due to the team encountering similar criminals. She also admitted that, given her past experiences, she was afraid no one ever had/ever will truly care about or love her. She felt a strong bond with Keith since he refused to fight her in the Stadium and understood the intense pain of the shock collars.

After Vendra confessed to her past crimes to Keith, he reassured her that he still trusts her and knows that she's not the same person she used to be based on what he'd seen of her in the Stadium and while working alongside her. He promised to keep quiet about it so long as she promised to tell Shiro as well, considering he's the leader. Vendra made several attempts to tell Shiro after this, though every time she tried, she backed out. This was due to a mix of cowardice and her personal difficulty trusting others due to having been betrayed by her previous teammates and abandoned.

Before she had been able to muster the courage to open up to Shiro about her past, it came back to haunt her. The Castle received a distress beacon from a nearby moon under the same signature of her old gang of bandits. In a panic, she warned Keith not to trust them. Keith told her to relax since both he and Shiro are aware of her situation already, to which Vendra reluctantly admitted she still hadn't told Shiro anything. The two got into a small argument about trust issues before aggravated Keith joined the other members of Voltron on the moon to meet the ones who sent out the beacon while Vendra stayed in the castle with Coran.

The team is met with Ace, and he fed them a story about their ship being shot down (which was actually true) and Ace's supposed "Little sister" going missing somewhere on the moon (this was secretly a ruse to try and lure the group away from the castle so the bandits could steal it for themselves and strand them). Keith tried to convince Shiro and the rest of the group that the people they met on the planet (Ace, Clik, and Rat) were bandits without letting on anything about Vendra's connections with them, but to no avail. Allura encouraged him to be more hospitable and Hunk was convinced that their claims of needing ship repairs were legitimate. While the team was bickering, Rat snuck onto the castle for some sabotage. Rat came face to face with Vendra, who easily stopped him and kicked him out in front of the rest of the team, thus showing her face to Ace. Confused, Ace said her name aloud. Everyone besides Keith wondered how they knew each other.

After Vendra convinced the team the group of people were bandits, they all left the moon and spared them. Vendra was interrogated immediately by Shiro and Allura on how she knew the bandits, and Vendra finally told them everything. This was not met positively, since she'd kept it a secret up until that point. Allura no longer trusted her, Hunk and Shiro were skeptical, Lance was neutral, and Pidge and Keith trusted her. Allura then kept her under surveillance for suspicion of being a saboteur, so she was not permitted to leave the castle and must have someone accompanying her at all times. She could no longer join the team in battle.

### **Missing Comrade Story Arc**

At some point during this time, the members of Voltron endure a great battle with a Galra commander that manages to capture the red lion and Keith. The lion is disabled and Keith is forcefully removed and kept behind bars. The other members of Voltron managed to free the disabled lion, but were unable to find and rescue Keith before the Galra ship escaped through a wormhole. Several days later, Keith managed to free himself from the Galra ship, but was stranded on a desolate planet with a wounded leg. The distance was too far for him to contact the Castle or connect with his lion.

Meanwhile, the red lion was returned to the castle. Everyone was devastated to discover that Keith wasn't within it and had no way of locating him. The red lion was repaired, but couldn't connect to Keith from that distance. Vendra started to panic as well, considering she felt a strong bond with Keith as a friend and he was one of the only people on the ship she truly trusted. She wanted nothing more than to find him and help him, especially since she knew how it felt to be abandoned in the past and she didn't want Keith to feel the way she did for 3 years. Thus, she made it her mission to track him down herself.

Vendra snuck around the castle to reach the red lion's hangar, despite knowing she was going against the surveillance orders placed on her by Allura and Shiro. Vendra desperately tried to let the lion invite her inside by proclaiming how much Keith's safety was important to her and how she'd do anything to get him back. The lion sensed that Vendra had a similar Quintessence to Keith and shared in its desire to reunite with him, and thus allowed her to pilot it. She flew the red lion around space for at least a day before the lion began to pick up on Keith's life force. The lion connected with Vendra's mind, allowing her to see through its eyes to spot Keith on the desolate planet he'd been stranded on.

Once they arrived to rescue him, Vendra ran to help him as she noticed he was limping and in pain. Keith was shocked to know that Vendra had managed to win over the testy lion, and Vendra explained that she'd never leave a teammate behind even if it meant breaking the rules. The two entered the red lion and headed back towards the castle. On the way back, they encountered the same Galra ship as before and were under attack all on their own in the middle of space. They fought for a while, but struggled since the Galra ship's attacks had been refined to be much more accurate with every shot. Even the speedy red lion had trouble evading their attacks. That's when the lion sent a message to its pilot, Keith, on how to win the battle. Keith complied and a second control panel pulled up alongside him that was meant for Vendra. If Vendra and Keith synchronized their control of the red lion, their speed and maneuverability would increase significantly, allowing them to easily evade enemy attacks. They used their newfound advantage and took down the enemy ship.

When things cooled down after the battle, the two of them started talking. Keith remarks how Vendra wanted to save him so badly most likely because she had been abandoned alone at the Stadium once before and empathized with him. Surprised at how easily he saw through her, Vendra agreed that he was most likely correct. Reluctantly, Keith also brought up her earlier statement about how she felt that, after all she'd been through, no one would every truly care about or love her. Keith simply states, "You're wrong about that," much to Vendra's surprise and confusion. After a moment of silence, she simply smiles and says, "Thank you, Keith."

Upon their return to the castle, Shiro and Allura apologized for keeping her under surveillance and not trusting her more. From this point on, everything went back to normal.

## Appearance

Vendra is a young woman with a freckled face and a light tan skin tone. Her eyes are golden brown and her long dark brown hair is worn either in a high ponytail or a loose bun while her bangs curl inward and frame her face.

Her casual attire consists of a tight black sleeveless shirt with a turtleneck collar and a gap in the chest area. She wears white shorts and a dark brown 3-buttoned corset with a sheer orange skirt hanging from it loosely. Her folded-down boots match her corset. Accessories include reddish-brown stockings under her shorts and on her arms that start at the biceps and end in fingerless gloves.

While imprisoned in the Goraqian Warplex Stadium, she wore her casual attire minus the black shirt, corset, and skirt. Instead, her torso was covered with a tattered orange shirt that fit loosely and hung off her shoulders. A large metal plate covered her chest with her prinsoner number emblazoned upon it. She also wore a red glowing metal collar around her neck.

Vendra's armor once she formed an alliance with the paladins of Voltron includes a black leather jumpsuit covering her entire body with an orange stripe at the turtleneck collar. White metal armor covers her chest, arms, and legs with orange accents at the rib cage, biceps, kneecaps, and thighs. Above her breasts is a large orange "V" insignia and the chest armor raises at the collarbone for added protection. She wears extra white armor on her shoulders and orange armor on her wrists. Glowing teal accents are located on her shoulder armor, collarbone armor, hips, and heels.

After escaping form the Warplex Stadium, she obtains an additional accessory in the form of a ring on her middle finger on either hand (she alternates it). This ring has a small orange button on it that, when pressed, sends a small electric shock throughout her body.

## Personality

During her time working with the bandits as a child, Vendra had a very skewed perception of the world. She was convinced everyone was a cold-blooded cut-throat and didn't realize her group consisted of criminals. She was very good at following orders and never questioned what her superiors told her.

As a teenager, she began to question the morality of their work and started to think for herself. She began developing a general distrust of authority and was more reluctant to follow orders blindly. She also began loosing trust in men due to the behavior of Ace and his family, as well as her comrade Clik, who had abandoned her in her late teens.

While in the Warplex Stadium as a prisoner, her mindset shifted and she became very self-sacrificial. In an attempt to atone for her past wrongdoings, she willingly put herself in harms way for others. She faced pain without a second thought with a complete disregard for her safety. However, she was still very determined to survive in order to assist the other prisoners.

After meeting the Voltron group, she was faced with another big change. She was surrounded by friendly people who were dedicated to helping others and Vendra had a hard time adjusting. She was a little stand-off-ish for a while, only opening up to those she felt particularly close to. While she became more of a hero in an organized group, she still maintained her reckless instinctual attitude in battle that she had developed over the previous years. She was a bit paranoid about being abandoned and definitely had several trust issues.

## Abilities

* **Bare-handed Combat:** A skill she developed mostly during her time in the Stadium, she is capable of taking down several foes without the use of her own weaponry OR by turning her foes weapons against them.
* **Disarming:** Vendra is skilled at disarming her foes to use their weapons against them or leave them vulnerable to further attack.
* **Resourcefulness:** A lifetime as a bandit has gotten her used to using her environment to her advantage in order to come up with clever ways to overcome challenges. This goes hand-in-hand with her instinctive nature.
* **Axe-Gun:** Her weapon of choice is a combination of a giant energy axe and a modifiable gun held on an extendable staff. The weapon retracts when inactive for added portability, taking on the form of a lightning orb blaster.
* **Voltage Endurance:** After years enduring electric shock torture in the Warplex Stadium, she's built up a strong tolerance to being electrocuted.
	+ **Shock Adrenaline:** After receiving a shock (particularly in battle), she feels a surge of adrenaline that increases her speed, accuracy, and overall performance in combat.
* **Deception:** Her years as a bandit made her very clever in being persuasive and telling convincing lies. She uses this to cause her enemies to drop their guard around her, though she is not proud of this ability and it puts a rift between her and the Voltron team when her origins are discovered.

## Relationships

### Allies

* **Keith Kogane (♂)**: Friend / Comrade / Love Interest
* **Katie "Pidge" Holt (♀)**: Friend / Comrade
* **Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane (♂)**: Friend / Comrade
* **Hunk (♂)**: Friend / Comrade
* **Lance (♂)**: Comrade
* **Princess Allura (♀)**: Comrade
* **Coran Heironymus Wimbleton Smythe (♂)**: Comrade

### Enemies

* **Emperor** **Zarkon (♂):** Leader of the Galra Empire
* The **Galra Empire**
* **Goraqians**
* **Aceano "Ace" Solite (♂):**  Former ally / Ex-boyfriend / Bandit leader
* **Cliktar "Clik" Umbris (♂):**  Former ally / Bandit brute
* **Rat (♂):**  Former ally / Bandit Saboteur

## Trivia

* Vendra had endured high voltage shocks so many times, she gained a tolerance to electric shock. After 3 years in the Stadium, the collar took 3 shocks to bring her to her knees, 5 or more to knock her out
	+ The years of high voltage shocks also caused her to have involuntary muscle spasms at random times.
	+ She's gained a bit of an addiction to being shocked, and thus has withdrawal symptoms (muscle spasms, shaky limbs) if she doesn't feel a shock for a long time. To combat this, she wears a ring with a button on it that sends a small shock through her body whenever she presses it.
* She has a habit of rubbing her neck when she's anxious since she lived with a collar on her for 3 years.
* Vendra's assigned prison number at the Stadium was NO.83. Keith's was NO.206 and Pidge's was NO.205.
* After being trapped in the Warplex Stadium for so long, Vendra built up and obsession with training and keeping herself ready for battle at all times. This initially made it difficult for her to bond with the other members of Voltron, but caused her to run into Keith (who also trained frequently) much more often, strengthening their bond.
* Vendra's bonds with Pidge didn't end in the Stadium either. The two often would talk about nerdy things and banter over Pidge's secret crush on Shiro (who is twice her age).
* The armor Vendra is provided once she arrives at the castle is not equipped with a jetpack, so Vendra remedies this with a custom-made hoverboard built by Pidge.
* Vendra's weapon of choice is a staff with an axe on one end and a modifiable gun on the other.
* Ace is not only Vendra's childhood friend, but also her ex-boyfriend. He had a bad habit of flirting with every woman he stumbled upon, which is a big part of the reason why Vendra isn't too fond of Lance.
* Vendra is the first known instance of a Voltron lion having a co-pilot/backup paladin.
* She is completely unaware of her true birth name, Deirdre Ventris. It is likely that Ace's father knows her true name, which could explain the similar phonetics in the name he gave her, Vendra.