Claire
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Claire is a researcher of section 9, a neuroscientist, and one of the two closest friends of Kurt; the third of the group is Nikau, whom she brought together with Kurt in a random recreation many hundreds of cycles ago. Cheerful and stubborn in equal measure, she wears a green silk scarf as her [zeichen].
In Descent (2258)
Background and personality
Claire is the one in the group with the most initiative and curiosity, and the most aggressive in an argument. As a teenager she took part in a research project on monozygotic twins, Obi and Ekon, who came to see her as an older sister and later as lovers. With Kurt she shared an uprooted recreation in a lonely lighthouse, where they fell in love; they kept the memory by reviewing it afterwards.
Aboard the ship
Claire feels that Kurt is drifting away from her, and his interest in Aditi makes it worse: when she overhears it, she leaves coldly to "connect with the twins". Under Aditi her neuroscience department receives fewer shifts and less energy. In the "Battle for Draconis" she carries an incendiary antimech missile launcher from the start of the game and uses it on Kurt's mech.
After the crash
With research outside genetics and cloning ignored, Claire decides to help by catching animals. She studies old hunting and tanning techniques, takes her first Kutsanp with a pit trap and begins to teach others; within days the Hunters number fifty, and they become the survivors' source of food, clothing and materials. Saving an inexperienced hunter from a Vaghadata, she is left with a large claw scar from temple to back, and her followers' admiration turns into devotion.
She stays one of them, living in the same tent she built with her first skins. Now with a shaved side and a braid, she wears a bandana of green athale fibre in place of her old scarf. She makes Kurt a set of clothes and a wooden Mjölnir, and sends him a message warning him not to trust Aditi.
The expedition and the split
After the sunken attack and Aditi's flight, Claire follows Kurt to the pool on the periphery and tells him that she loves him and wants to face the future with him. She has already planned the rebellion: some 300 hunters, who have stockpiled equipment since Ifiok's death, will spread through the rear half of the migration, turn on its few guards and offer everyone the choice of marching east with them.
The guardians discover the plan. Claire is captured, beaten and left with a broken leg, and is lying at the soldiers' feet when Kurt confronts Wang. She leaves on a cot, tended by Nikau, and tells Kurt that they will solve it together.