Adrianne grew up in Chicago, Illinois, born to a middle-class family with a homemaker mom, a father in the Airforce and a brother who had a thing for motorcycles and disappointing people. She never really got to know him — at age six, she would attend his funeral. Dead at seventeen. It would create a cloud over the household that she could escape simply by not being as emotionally invested in the disaster of a young man's death, but family life was distanced and mediocre.
Love was rated mostly by achievement, and Adrianne was always a pretty bright student and bizarrely charismatic despite the fact she was pretty much a bitch the whole time. Preferring the physicality of sports such as basketball and endurance activities like track, her focus was possibly too outdoors to be a shining star in the classroom, but she kept her head above the water and did better in history and social sciences than she did in math and art. She made allies rather than friends, and shed no tears when she was not homecoming queen, nor when she graduated and plunged straight into college.
By the time she was twenty-one, she'd achieved her degree in international relations, maintaining an active enough lifestyle with college sports that it wouldn't have surprised anyone if she continued on to be an academic at the same time. But rather than go on to higher level courses, she went and joined the Air Force, under the rationale that she'd rather be out in the world than behind a desk.
And 'cause jumping out of planes and kicking international relations in the balls is awesomer than writing about it.
For all that Lancaster had her quirks — a bizarrely acidic personality, her quick temper and scathing remarks — she also happened to be fiercely competent and tenacious. Smart. Possibly a result of being a woman in a military setting, the harder edges of her personality became more pronounced throughout her training and eventual recognition as a combat controller. Her job had a lot of parachuting and invading enemy terrain before the major assault forces could get there, guiding air strikes and setting routes, relaying information back. She took part in Operation Urgent Fury and Operation El Dorado Canyon as well as some humanitarian efforts.
Rather than going back to civilian life to pursue her academic career as she'd contemplated doing after gaining some worldly experience, Lancaster was more intent to continue doing what she was doing. The Gulf War, however, would be her last engagement as a member of the United States Airforce.
As someone who worked within the Special Forces branch of the Airforce, her work had gone noticed, and during her downtime in the early 90s, she was approached by the CIA to join the Special Activities Division as a paramilitary officer. Lancaster won't deny to this day that the prestige of what she was being offered is what had her switching teams, and she has no regrets. Joining a unit known among them as the Royals, she took the call sign the Queen of Wands, and took to the job like a duck to water. That could have been an interesting typo.
As for the other members, the other Queen, the two Kings — it's possibly one of the few times that Lancaster ever got along with others. To a degree. Jensen was probably the easiest to talk to, as a general rule as well as Lancaster's own preferences. She'd hit that. Epstein was pretty much a dick, which she could tolerate, and as for Kershner, well. Lancaster would cite her own dominant alpha female animal magnetism as TOO MUCH!! for Sarisa to handle, even if her dislike for the younger woman was more overt than the other way around.
In a professional capacity, there wasn't much of an issue, but as she told the guys once — despite Sarisa sharing the table — there's just something creepy about her.
Meanwhile, the job showed her the world, but it was during Afghanistan that things really started to get fucked up.
It was during the battle of Tora Bora and the hunt for Osama bin Laden that Lancaster found herself in the Safed Koh mountain range wounded, alone and without ammo. Three things she doesn't like being even when pooping (well maybe being alone is acceptable in this case), let alone being hunted by Taliban soldiers. Despite her attempts at evading until someone could get off their ass and provide some support, a bloodhound team caught up with her and attempted to take her prisoner.
When their leader burst into flames beneath the weight of Lancaster's glare, she was left wounded, alone, without ammo and with her hands tied behind her back. And very fucking confused.
When found later by friendly forces and reunited with her unit, Lancaster would simply claim to Raith, to Epstein, to Kershner in her usual calm matter-of-fact manner that she devoured every single one of them, but beyond this, she held her tongue on what happened, her official report stating something along the lines of the enemy abandoning her when help was arriving. But her report omitted the headache that grew and the bizarre feeling of burning just beneath her eyes until some sort of release was triggered, forced to either escape or ignite within her. Blood loss and dehydration can have odd effects such as hallucinations and fevers, but only on mortal beings, of which Lancaster is not.
Through a lot of self-discipline and careful compartmentalisation, Lancaster managed to keep this secret to herself — for a time. It was Kershner, naturally, who would discover the truth, though her means were unclear to Adrianne, at first. As much as they didn't completely get along, Lancaster disliking people was a pretty standard global truth — the fact that Sarisa had this secret over her only put a nail in the coffin. Lancaster managed to convince Kershner to keep her mouth closed about it, through intimidation, an appeal to their camaraderie, threats and finally, one wildly aimed but very accurate jab about discovering how exactly Kershner got this information.
It worked. Right up to 2007 until a New York senator went and made any kind of secret keeping impossible. But until then, it was almost useful to have someone to share the burden of a secret — something Lancaster would resent to this day.
Despite the fact that she was dutifully quick in volunteering the fact that she was an Evolved (before Sarisa could throw caution to the wind and do it for her), Lancaster was fairly raked over the coals for lying by omission about what happened during the Battle of Tora Bora. Things started falling apart, too — the King of Swords went missing, vanished like poof, and Lancaster was suspended from her duties until her power could be assessed and her professionalism reviewed. The next six months was an arduous and boring process of those who would not see an Evolved remain within the Special Activities Division, and looking back, Lancaster would probably be able to say that she was lucky as hell to not get Tier 3 stamped across her forehead and blackholed.
Her military history kept her around, however, and those brownie points she earned in coming clean quickly came in handy when it came to reinstalling her in the CIA despite the Royals unit being scattered. She undertook some official training and testing in her power, becoming adept at it enough to be slapped with a Tier 2. Her next mission? The Vanguard.
A global anti-Evolved terrorist organisation with more variation in its operations and agendas than Lancaster had ever seen. Her initial brush with them was the raid on the German Vanguard stronghold that was keeping the nuclear weapons, and in the wake of this, she was sent to China, where she was involved in the gathering of intel and monitoring of an alleged Vanguard cell there. It took some months of investigation and by the time they had some solid facts and figures, the world was about ready to end in flooding, nuclear glory, and suddenly Lancaster's backwater intelligence operation was important when Team Delta of Operation Apollo was dispatched to Shanghai.
That it didn't exactly go as planned was incidental, the scuffle going wrong when the PLA got involved. If you ask Adrianne, that's what happens when you appoint Kershner over her.
In the wake of the world not ending, Lancaster assisted in wrapping up the last loose threads, notably the Vanguard terrorists from Russia that did not get killed, but this remained under the realm of both FRONTLINE and Kershner's authority when it was clear their fuckery was remaining on American soil — she was more concerned in bringing to justice the last of the foot soldiers overseas. But these sure aren't the golden days, with Avi unattractively losing it, Jensen off being a terrorist and Sarisa in charge of actual people — and the U.S. is more concerned with what's going on with its own turf that overseas engagements aren't getting the funding and attention that they used to.
Fresh from a last foray through Argentina and currently taking something of a break, Lancaster finds herself living in New York City, a location more politically charged than D.C. could ever be these days, if you asked her. The sweeping visions that occurred there during June, 2010, have encouraged her to remain in the country and hold out for a command position in the FRONTLINE branch — or better. Right now, she's a self-styled CIA advisor who liaises with the DoEA, the DHS, and the FBI accordingly.
She also wants to see what her old team is up to now that they don't have her around to keep them in line.