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If you ask Kat Templeton to describe herself, the words she would probably use is that she's 'nothing special'. This is a lie.
Kat is, among other things, an amateur historian, a good first baseman, a technophile, an avid bookworm, a blogger, and a part-time philosopher. Her friends seem to enjoy her scribbles and musings, though she's not exactly sure why. Kat has somehow managed to talk UC Berkeley into giving her two degrees, a BA in History and a Masters in Information Management, and is currently doing the difficult task of attempting to find a job.
She's still not sure what she wants to be when she grows up, which causes her friends no end of amusement. Kat currently lives in Oakland, California, after escaping from her birthplace of Redding, although she talks of someday moving to Canada.
Katze is the epitome of the phrase "and some have greatness thrust upon them." She was raised in the small city of Chico in Northern California by her father, David. Despite a few rather odd incidents in her childhood, she believed that she was just as human as everybody else around her.
In the fall of 1995, at the age of 16, she headed off to college at the University of California, Berkeley. She joined the basketball team and proceeded to spark them to their best season ever. Katze ended up a minor celebrity for her part in this season.
The weekend the Bears played in the NCAA semifinals, a Jihad intelligence officer and Cal fan by the name of Miranda Delgado ended up recruiting Katze into the Jihad after B'harnate forces tried to plant a tracker on Katze. However, when Katze joined the Jihad, she couldn't hurt anybody, which caused fits in recruit training. To keep her busy, TRES loaned her to the DE as a supply clerk.
In recruit training, she met Ariana Mahtash, and in January, when Ari assumed command of the Blood Jihad, she brought Katze over to help reorganize. In the end, the Blood Jihad merged with Malaclypse's JAO, the Evil Geniuses, and became the Verthandic Rangers.
Soon after that, in the middle of a vacation trip to Chicago, Katze found herself kidnapped back to her native land of Marraketh -- one she didn't even know existed. Her fellow Rangers came to bail her out, and between that adventure and a second one that followed, Katze discovered a lot about who she really was and what she could really do, thus explaining a lot of oddities of her life to that point. (She also still calls the part about getting kidnapped "the most embarassing moment of my life," but hey, one can't have everything go right.)
After those adventures, Katze returned to the Jihad, in which time she's cemented her reputation as a competent administrator and leader despite her youth. She has also somehow gained the trust of most of her fellow Jihaddi, and is often called upon to offer an ear and a shoulder to her friends. She is known around the Jihad for being quiet and dependable, and for attempting to be "as mundane as possible, given the circumstances." While she still prefers not to hurt people if given the choice, she does have a mean aim with a bow and is competent with both swords and staffs.
Katze makes a rather imposing figure, as she stands six foot
three inches tall and tends slightly towards the thin side of a medium build.
Somebody who didn't know her heritage would probably guess that she's Irish,
as she has the fair skin that characterizes people from that island nation.
Her hair is a mousy light brown (she thinks of it as a dirty blonde), and
her eyes are blue-grey in shade. She wears glasses (and is blind without them).
When she's not wearing her everpresent Cal hat, the cowlick over her left
eye is apperant, but most of the time it's not noticible. Katze always is
either found in her TRES uniform or jeans and t-shirt -- she hates dresses
-- and is also known to wear Birks or
hiking boots.
At the time of the Jihad's disbandment in 1999, Katze served simutaneously and honorably in three different JAOs as well as being a Triumvir Adjunct to Captain Houben. After the disbandment, Katze returned to Berkeley and finished her undergraduate degree, and was accepted back into Berkeley to study for a doctorate in psychology.
When events pick back up in 2004, we find that Katze is about two-thirds of the way through her doctorate and has just gotten engaged to her old childhood friend, Josh Schnider.