Harper Essen
Image Confidential (in front of "no" sign)

Harper Essen

Known Aliases: Nyx
Species: Sigil-Bearer
Age: 26
Height: 5"7"
Weight: 122
Eye Color: Green
Hair Color: Dark Brown
Nationality: American
Occupation: Assassin; Assistant Judo Instructor (former)
Education: Some college (2 years), Police academy (4 years)
Place of Birth: Augusta, Maine
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: Det. Michael Essen (father, deceased), Laurel Essen (mother, deceased)
Powers/Abilities: Shadow Manipulation (Shadow control, Create Darkness, Infravision, Sensing Shadows)
Played by: Mackinzie
Model: Jaimie Alexander

Harper Essen is a sigil-bearer created by Mackinzie.


Harper is an extremely quiet person, but she is not shy. She prefers to take in everything, like a vacuum, processing the world. She is a dedicated individual to whatever endeavor she takes upon and will put her all into it, for better or worse. She can be secretive and prefers to get to know a person better before she talks to them about herself. She has a sense of humor, however it is hard to tell given that she doesn't talk much. She will talk more to a person one on one than in a crowd. She has an incredible amount of discipline and focus. As her mind has been messed with she is difficult to read and generally comes off as cold, aloof, and impassive. Her people skills are left to be desired.

Killing is as easy to her as breathing, and she has learned to hone her skills. Despite her natural "talents," Harper does maintain her own code of morals. She will not kill children. Adults, however, are a different matter.


Harper is a sigil-bearer and has the ability to see in darkness, sense shadows, create and manipulate shadows and turn into a shadow, allowing her to move quickly and twist, bend, and narrow her body while in that form (given that she is transparent and practically weightless). She has sensitivity to bright lights and tends to wear either sunglasses or a pair of goggles, or stays out of the sun. If she is exposed to too much light it will give her a severe headache. If she is exposed to light while in shadow form (or even most of the time in regular form) she will immediately try to retreat to some form of darkness. If she cannot, she will return back to normal form. The longer she is in the presence of too much light, the less she is able to concentrate and risks damaging her corneas, becoming blind.

She can create darkness, which she calls "calling the shadows." Currently she can only fill a room with darkness but is practicing on expanding it. If there is a lot of light present in the room, the harder she can create it. She finds it harder to turn into a shadow than create and manipulate darkness and prefers to stay "solid" when possible. She cannot pass through objects. If there is a narrow space she may be able to fit through it, but only when there is room.

The shadows are alive to her. She is drawn to them and they to her.

Over the years she has discovered the ability to "sense" shadows, which allow her to determine who or what something is by ascertaining its shape and/or movement subconsciously without having to see it as long as they are nearby via the shadow's connection to that being or object. This is very limited by the "strength" of the shadow and has a range of about a mile at best. For example, if she were in an alley way and a person were coming she would be able to sense they were coming without seeing or hearing them by that person being connected to their coming shadow. She would sense there was a light post nearby by the shadow it created.

The limits to this are that unless she knows how a person moves she will not know who they are, just that someone is coming. The more people there are in a crowd, the much less chance there is of her knowing who's who (even if she did know) due to the amount of people, unless she concentrated on one specific 'familiar' person and recognized people one at a time. The stronger the light and/or the weaker the shadow, the less probability she has of sensing who or what is around her or guessing wrong. It would be like trying to make out what a blurry object was, as the shadow would be diffused. She would see it with her eyes but not sense it. As for objects, she must have seen an object first to even know what it is. If she had never seen a car before and sensed it coming, she would only know that it was "big" and "fast" but not that it was a "car."

The sensing of who a person is takes a combination of her abilities plus her own natural skill, something she picked up by taking Judo and Hapkido classes, which require studying an opponent.

If she were in a completely dark room, Harper would be able to sense things best. It would be like one big shadow linkup. This power is always on, as everything casts a shadow. The more she uses her abilities repeatedly such as creating darkness or turning into a shadow, however, the more chance she has of burn out, especially by creating darkness. This can give her a headache and forces her not to be able to use her powers (or at least want to use) for a few hours.

Her sigil is located at the base of her neck.


Harper has experience from 15 years of martial arts classes, more specifically judo and hapkido starting at the age of 10. Being a student of hapkido, she is proficient in the use of certain weaponry such as short stick, cane, rope, and sword. She has also taken some ballet classes, which give her added flexibility. After being taken by the organization, she has extensive knowledge in the use of firearms and gymnastics.


Harper Essen was born an only child to Detective Michael Essen and his wife Laurel, an investment analyst. Her parents had their arguments but they loved each other quite dearly. Harper always wanted to be like father, though her mother encouraged more feminine activities for balance. After school activities were filled with alternating days of ballet and martial arts classes, the closest thing a young, over-imaginative mind could get to what she believed was what her father did out on the streets.

When Harper was 13, her father was transferred to New York City and she and her mother followed. Harper's parents tried to shield her when they could throughout her life but it became harder to do so when they moved to New York City. Though Harper soon realized that her father's world was not as glitzy and high-octane as the movies, she stuck to the martial arts classes, finding a focus there. The classes became as normal to her as the video games and endless TV shows of others her age.

In school she was not popular, but she was not completely outcast. She had a small circle of friends, some who took the same after school classes as she, some from a wider net. She dated boys, she broke up with boys. She went to movies, she laughed with the girls. She stayed out late, she got the occasional looks of disapproval from her mother. But her discipline always lay under the surface and returned every time when the judogi came on. Sometimes she would take a break from her classes but she always returned, enjoying the rush competitions brought and even took up another discipline in addition to judo: hapkido. She won a few regional titles over the years, which her father would boast about to his friends. He was a proud father and she was a proud daughter.

But a month shy of her 17th birthday, Michael Essen was killed in the line of duty. Devastated by her husband's death, Harper's mother became irrevocably depressed and soon quit her job, turning to alcohol to try to alleviate her pain. It did not work. Eventually, she placed a gun in her mouth. Harper found the body.

A few of Harper's parents' friends and co-workers banded together to try to help her get things in order after her mother's death. The remaining members of her family on both sides ranged from the estranged, chaotic side of her mother's family to the non-existent side of her father's and were less than helpful. After selling her family's apartment, which was too big for her to afford paying the bills on, Harper moved in a friend of her father's and his wife for almost a year until she was a little over 18, the legal age to be on her own.

Soon after, she got a job as an assistant instructor to teach some area judo classes, moved into a studio apartment and started college, majoring in criminal justice. Her goal was to eventually join the police academy. Her father's death had not changed that dream. She enrolled in the academy by the age of 19. The instructors said she had a while to go before she could be an officer but she had promise.

About two weeks after the anniversary of her father's death at the age of 22, Harper committed suicide by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. Her suicide note cited a deep depression compounding with the death of both of her parents and repressed feelings coming to the surface. Her body was never found.

But Harper did not die, she was found by an elusive organization who saw her potential from a young age. They took her and molded her into a weapon. Whether or not they knew of her abilities when she was taken remained to be seen, but their emergence was an added bonus.