Complexity: 3

Summary & Strategy: 

Backlash is a gambler through and through, but a pugilist right behind it - stacked enough to stack the odds in her favor, figuratively and literally. At the core of her style is risk versus reward, potentially bolstering plays into combo chains or amplifying their effects at the risk of damage or diminished effects for herself. To achieve this, you can fully embrace the odds and gamble blind - but for those inclined, there are further layers of play possibilities available.

Backlash has several means of setup which can skew the odds in your favor, such as Sleeveless Ace allowing you to pick a known-'trick' during a gambling check - but the most powerful potential lies in Deal With the Devil, which opens up the choice of declining to shuffle your deck when cards enter it. By doing so, you can essentially achieve perfect knowledge / ordering of cards, manipulating and thinning your deck to rig plays in your favor - and with the right setup, you can even weaponize what are typically Backlash's downsides by foisting them off onto villains!

Bio

Ever since she was a punky trouble-making teen, Zoe Barrett has been getting into scraps. Originally hailing from Perth, Australia, Zoe was always a boisterous soul and a tomboy through and through. Thick as thieves with her twin brother Zachary, he and Zoe frequently got themselves into no small measure of trouble - and once they'd cleared high school that turned to a fiery run of gambling and card-playing as a duo.

Together, the Barrett twins cleaned up across the tournament scene and achieved some measure of poker prominence, eventually making the jump to the United States. Duskveil Falls held great promise for card sharks in particular, leaving the Barrett twins rubbing elbows with ever-higher stakes. However, a reckless lifestyle saw their winnings going faster than they could rake them in - a path to inevitable bad circumstances.

Things went from bad to worse once Zach fell into a dark spiral with illicit substances - and before Zoe had fully grasped the extent of it, Zach had gambled his way straight into a debt deep in the pocket of Marley Brown, unwittingly on the hook with Duskveil's syndicate underworld. On the hook with less than savory company, Zoe redoubled her efforts at gambling in pursuit of claiming a large enough purse to buy her brother's freedom.

Zoe cheated. Often, in fact - and with alarming efficacy. Though she -was- quite good at cards in her own right, the wagers grew ever more high-stakes - and with it, her tenacity and boldness. Slowly but surely, she began cleaning out back-alley gambling dens running games and funds for the syndicate, but it was inevitable that their ire would turn on her in the end.

When Zoe's luck ran out, syndicate goons left her badly beaten and barely conscious in a rain-drenched back-alley of Butcher Boulevard. All throughout her life, Zoe had lived and acted with a devil may care attitude - but on this day, a devil -did- care.

Once she roused, Zoe found herself in a poker bout with a veritable fiend with as enticing an offer as there ever was: if she won, she and her brother would be in the clear and have everything they'd wanted. If she lost? Her immortal soul snatched away, of course, as these things were wont to go. Zoe agreed promptly to ante up.

What ensued was a long and precarious game - for her opponent cheated, of course, while Zoe fought against those steeped odds relentlessly. It seemed to be set for an even standstill between the pair until a crucial misstep was made.

Not a bad hand or play, nor anything of that sort: the fiend informed Zoe that her brother had perished in the interim at the hands of the syndicate, offering uncharacteristically saccharine apologies and the opportunity to bow out of the game, soul intact.

Zoe countered by upping the ante: wagering -both- the twins' souls. Double or nothing. He accepted.

With the stakes increased and the game renewed, Zoe matched and meted the devilish fiend at his own game: she cheated, outrageously so, with a skill sufficient to startle onlookers in the gambling den that was the Heaven's Hollow.

Zoe won, pot and all - and in the aftermath, had managed to con the fiend out of his own immortal essence, rendering him unmade in the process. Zachary was returned to her, in a manner of speaking - his spirit infused with hers in the process of her ensuing transformation - for the devil -did- care, and in the Backlash, Zoe became a devil herself.

When Backlash emerged from the depths of the city, her focus was clear: meting out vengeance against the syndicate and its heart - but even as a devil herself, she was just one individual. Her path crossed that of the vigilante Omen - and later, Lalin - and together they formed the foundation of the Twilight Vigil, kindred spirits in the moonlit sprawl of Duskveil Falls.