Poppy Kingston-Ford, hacker extraordinaire.

Poppy Kingston-Ford was a one of a kind prodigy when it came to computers.

Born in Kent to an aristocrat mother and a billionaire father, her early upbringing was one of privileged idyll.

As a toddler, she had enjoyed roaming the bucolic surroundings of the family estate as much as anyone.

That would change when, by random happenstance, her father left his office computer unlocked before leaving to attend to business in the city.

Poppy only had access to the computer for scant minutes, but she had made Swiss cheese of every security system before her.

Her father had written it off as typical kid stuff. The first time. But something had stirred in his precocious daughter, and soon, just hitting Windows+L wouldn't be enough to keep her out.

From that one incident, a wellspring had burst. Tea parties and secret dens soon made way for circuit boards and server arrays.

For their part, the Kingston-Fords where never less than encouraging of their daughter's passions, as unladylike as they deemed it.

It had been Poppy's schoolmates when she, as all children of her lineage are, was sent away to boarding school who truly made her life difficult. Her drive and obsession with technology made it hard for even the friendliest girls to befriend her. Most were content to snicker, or call her a swot under their breath.

As a result, Poppy spent the majority of her time outside of lessons in the computer lab, or her dorm room.

Her talent, combined with her family's considerable largesse, proved formidable, and Poppy had graduated from Oxford with a double Masters in Computer Science and Mathematics before she was twenty.

Unfortunately, Poppy's once-charmed life took a turn for the worse when, driving for celebratory drinks with her parents, a road traffic collision left her an orphan.

The sheer suddenness of the accident had damaged the brilliant young tech wizard's already fraying nerves. She withdrew into herself, developing symptoms in line with agoraphobia.

Purchasing a flat in London, Poppy left the managing of her father's company to an executor, and never ventured out, instead stretching out into the comforting remove of the virtual realm.

Seeing nobody but an endless stream of anonymous electronics, grocery and takeout delivery drivers, a couple of years went by.

Poppy expected the rest of her life to continue in the comforting but deadening routine. The tight embrace of her four walls, the sickly glow of the monitor screen.

Until the day she awoke on grass, beneath a blue sky.

Even after being returned to the safety of a hotel room by one of Sansa's people, Poppy had remained convinced she'd simply suffered a break from reality for near a week.

Until the reality of Tierra had continued unabated. As real as London, or Cheltenham Ladies College. Even someone as right brained as Poppy was had to admit something once thought outside the realm of possibility was going on.

Poppy had continued on, sleepwalking through her daily life, not leaving her appointed apartment, until her social worker had brought her a beat up old laptop and modem, saying being able to keep in regular contact with the other women of the fledgling kingdom, would do the shut in some good.

It had taken Poppy less than 24 hours to master the Blue Birds' network. She pulled apart their every secret, communication, all of it laid bare before the hacker's gaze. How easy it had been had her considering trying the same on the Carduelian networks.

Unfortunately... women in military uniforms had knocked on her door beforehand.

They'd brought her, kicking and screaming, from her apartment and into the light of day. **** into the back of a cop car, Poppy had been grilled at the capital's security station. At the end, an officer had presented her with an ultimatum:

What Poppy could do posed too great a threat to Tierra's safety. As a result, she could either accept a one-way ticket to Sansa's highly secure prison inside Mt. Catleyn, or she could go to work for Project Blue Birds.

Poppy chose the one that let her use a computer.

The set-up was about as good a life as Poppy Kingston-Ford could hope for in this strange place.

They had situated her in a nice apartment in the Queen's District. She had her every amenity provided for, and sat at the centre of Tierra's burgeoning information systems.

Officially, she couldn't leave without authorisation and a secure guard detail observing her every move, but Poppy found thst rather a moot point. She had no inclination to leave her apartment (and everything she heard about the Carduelians across the border made her more convinced she had the right idea.)

Every day, Poppy earned her keep. Repelling Carduelian data breaches, launching penetrative attacks of her own, upgrading the Blue Birds' IT infrastructure and even providing technical assistance to Sansa's teams and heroes in the field, never more than a voice in a speaker, and a blank profile pic.

Despite the war for womankind's survival the kingdom waged, Poppy went on much as she had in London. Save for a regular visit from 5an Army handler, Poppy worked with computers and stayed at home.