The survivor of a car crash that took both her parent's lives, Jess spent her teenage years in and out of foster homes, living a good portion of her life on the Boston streets. Lonely and constantly sick from the internal injuries she'd received, she learned to steal and depend on others, doing what she had to for a night indoors or some pills for the pain when the free clinics were closed. It had all seemed bearable until an ER doctor told her that she was missing some of the organs she needed to have kids. That, on top of everything else sort of just broke her, making her realize just how immaterial her whole existence was. Wanting nothing more than to get wasted or high out of her mind, Jess snuck into a local club, said the right words to make a few drinks appear and found herself with the odd fortune of being there on the night an especially famous DJ was performing.

Sitting there, feeling like crap, the music had played along the edges of her brain, teasing out emotions and feelings she hadn't had in ages. Before she knew it, she'd started dancing, flirting just because she wanted to feel sexy, and actually enjoying herself. It was something beyond her, and as she'd looked up to the celebrity at the turntables, she knew exactly the sort of power she wanted. The power of beautiful lies.

One carefully calculated hookup later, she was dating a DJ. She said all the right things to be the center of his world, and learned everything she could about what went into the seemingly simple job of "playing music at a club". Chalk it up to enthusiasm or talent, but Jess picked it all up quickly, finding herself deeply engrossed in that world, until her partner had gotten too serious and it became time to move on. Step two had been talent nights at some of the cheesy top 40 places where her skills and 'stage presence' caught the attention of a geeky talent agent who wasn't great at keeping his hands to himself, but loaned her some equipment for a few low level shows. A couple months of keg parties, strip clubs and group events later, her manager landed her a solo event at a real club. She'd been both overjoyed and terrified beyond words.

On that fateful night, she gave her whole self to the simple possibility of success, casting aside for one moment all the crushing doubt and feelings of worthlessness that had settled onto her soul. When the power had died, she hadn't even cared. The universe was already against her, after all, so why on earth would she let a little thing like that stop her?

Why Sol Invictus had come to watch, she'll never understand. Perhaps it had amused him to see a worm pretending at personhood, and he'd simply taken pity. In any case, the big guy had asked her a few questions, apparently liked the answers, felt her up, and left, bequeathing to her unimaginable cosmic might. She'd given a lot more for less, so for its brevity, it was one of her better relationships.

Having responsibly used her great power to incite an orgy, Jess pinched herself, went to IHOP for breakfast, made peace with a lovestruck supernatural stalker and got the shit beat out of her by a well meaning tavern owner with a abs of literal granite. There had been lots of little adventures, friends made, experiments done, and an extended dry spout of her normal exercise routines as she struggled to take control of her strange new life.

It was the end of the world when Jess finally woke up from her dream, the ache near her stomach getting worse once more as she began to find her newfound friends dead, one after the other. She tried to fill that void with every little thing, to drive away all those little voices in her head she'd managed to keep quiet for so long since the crash. In those days she fought like a woman possessed against the great hordes, trying to strike back at all her mistakes and weaknesses, but their black hand reached ever further towards her, and eventually it was all she could do not to reach out for it.

The survivors and her compatriots see her as a hero for her actions during what is so generously referred to as a war. Jess for her part doesn't really understand it. She'd done what she had to and protected who she could, but ultimately she had failed to save everyone. When Last Refuge took flight, Jess nearly stayed behind, but... there was something nice about the way she felt when people pretended she was someone else. Their prayers to the woman they called Jess Maraud invigorated her and filled her with a sense of purpose. She had felt it during the fighting to some degree, but at the moment of escape, it had been intoxicatingly strong. Sure, it was stealing to take some of Jess' praise, but she had always been a bit of a thief.

The battles that followed had been unlike anything she'd imagined before, but battle, like music, had an odd sort of flow to them that you could learn. Once again, she proved a quick student, getting a feel for the life of death struggles and somehow managing to survive time and time again. It even began to annoy that other DJ who had coincidentally also become an Exalt around the time she had. She couldn't blame the girl, however, as Jess' big break had happened when her rival had gotten too injured to fight. It's, after all, a giant's right to be angry when it loses out to a worm.