gifs credited to @rampldgifs
Name: Ishani Zahara Garcia
Faceclaim: Pooja Hegde
Gender & Pronouns: CIS-woman & she/her
Age: 34
Birthday: January, 31, 1990
Occupation: Owner of Soundwave Nightclub
Neighborhood: Carriage Falls
Does your character have a secret? While doing inventory in Soundwave's storage room, the door's faulty mechanism jammed shut, leaving Ishani trapped in the darkness when the motion sensor lights time out. She was found an hour later by an employee and has since kept the reason a secret for her breakdown.
Would you be willing to have this secret used against them at some point in the future? Yes
Biography
Ishani never knew her birth parents. Her earliest memories were of life in a crowded orphanage in Delhi, India. The orphanage staff had a soft spot for the little girl with the chubby cheeks and sparkling eyes, but the other kids weren't so nice. They picked on her constantly. By the time she was four and got adopted by Adela Garcia, she barely spoke or smiled anymore. But her new mom showered her with so much love that within months of moving to Wilmington, SC, her bubbly personality came right back. When her mom adopted Donnie Paak, Isha was over the moon—she finally had the sibling she'd always wanted. She jumped right into being the protective big sister, and the two of them were inseparable, always getting into some kind of mischief together.
High school was pretty normal for her—decent grades, nothing spectacular. She kept busy though, singing in the choir and playing volleyball on the varsity team. After graduation, she bounced around a bit trying to figure out what she wanted to do. She started out studying business at Seattle Pacific University but realized journalism was more her thing. She switched majors in her second semester and never looked back. After graduating, she landed a job as a field reporter at a local news station. At first, she let people push her around a lot. Then she met this hotshot reporter she'd always looked up to who told her she needed to stand up for herself. That advice clicked something in her head—she started holding her ground and not letting anyone walk all over her. Her career took off after that.
By 28, she was working as a foreign correspondent, traveling to all sorts of dangerous places around the world. Her mom and Donnie worried, but they were proud of her too. She had always managed to stay safe, until that assignment in Bangladesh five years ago. She had been covering the devastating monsoon floods when the building she was in collapsed. For 5 brutal days, she was trapped in this tiny pocket of space, barely able to move. The only thing keeping her sane was recording messages to her family on her phone—she had been pretty sure they'd be the last words her family would ever hear from her. She could still remember how the concrete dust made it hard to breathe, how the darkness seemed to press in on her from all sides.
When the rescue worker finally broke through and pulled her out, she had thought she'd be fine once she got home. But those 5 days changed her. She couldn't handle small spaces at all—even elevators freaked her out. She got panic attacks when she felt trapped, and sometimes anxiety hit her out of nowhere. After getting back to the U.S., she had kind of lost her way for a while. She would disappear for months at a time, traveling anywhere and everywhere because staying still made her feel trapped again. Somehow she had gotten really good at poker during all that wandering and made decent money from it.
Eventually, she just got tired. Tired of running, tired of being alone, tired of trying to outrun her memories. So she came home to Wilmington to open Soundwave. She’d even started seeing a therapist. But about five months after returning, everything she'd been pushing down finally caught up with her. She had a complete breakdown and had to be hospitalized. Her recently release was cathartic, but it also meant she had to try to piece her life back together. Rainy days were still tough though—the sound of water hitting windows took her right back to those dark days in Bangladesh. But unlike before, she now had the tools to deal with her anxiety.
tl;dr
Ishani spent the first four years of her life in a Delhi orphanage and was adopted by Adela Garcia. It was then that she was brought to Wilmington, SC. She grew up there with her adopted brother Donnie, got into journalism, and made it big as a foreign correspondent. But things got rough when she got stuck in a collapsed building for five days during a flood in Bangladesh. It messed her up badly. She had claustrophobia and PTSD because of it. Feeling lost, she went off the grid after that, just traveling around and playing poker to cope. In July 2024, she finally came back home and opened Soundwave. Months flew by. Things were going alright until one night she got trapped in a back room at Soundwave. It took an hour for an employee to realize she’d been shouting out for help. She had a pretty serious breakdown that landed her in the hospital. She was released on November 1st, 2024—hoping to resume her life now that she has her PTSD and claustrophobia under control.
Wanted Connections
Brother: He’s brother that Isha dotes on—she’ll protect him from anyone who tries to hurt him. Donovan Paak
Friends: Self explanatory
Neighbors: Same here
Employees: People who work at Soundwave
Best Friend: They grew up together and are as thick as thieves. Camila Moreno
Enemies: Could be a competitor or just someone she doesn’t vibe with
Yoga Friends: This person goes to yoga with Ishani. They could have met in a class one day
Poker Buddies: She's a poker champ and would take your money




























