Motley (as she now calls herself) was born in 1971 in the Chilean Empire to a family of rich Chilean bastards. This is all she really knows of her parents.
At the age of two routine genetic screening revealed that she had an active supergene and she was dragged off by the government, with her parents full consent, and taken to an isolated lab in the Andes. She was then subjected to a long regime of extremely unpleasant experiments and abuse designed to bring out her super powers. This they did by the age of four. Her brain was altered to make her forget her native Spanish and learn English as her native tongue instead.
She was trained to use her powers as a spy/infiltration agent. At the age of twelve she was assigned to Internal Security and started to be sent on missions against dissidents and resistance people. Several times she worked with the Chilean superhuman Poinsettia, who is a Nazi bitch.
As time passed her subconscious resistance to what she was being forced to do grew stronger. She started to question orders, and was viciously punished. From then on she used her acting skills to conceal her growing hatred of what she was doing, and planned instead.
From age 15 to 17 she planned her escape and when she was 17 she ran from a mission and swam out from the Chilean coast as a dolphin. She had no idea of geography so she just swan roughly north west. Eventually she spotted a ship, swam up and stowed away as part of a bulkhead. The ship was a tramp steamer from Columbia which headed up the coast then through the Panama Canal to Jamaica, where she got off.
For a while she travelled around in the Caribbean. It was all an absolutely new and eye-opening experience - she had no idea it was even possible for people to live like this. She mellowed out considerably and worked as a bar person in order to learn about people and society, and to make some money to live. Eventually she travelled to the U.S.A., taking a boat to New Orleans.
In New Orleans, under the name of Amanda Hogan, she became involved with a theatre company which moved to New York then folded two months later. Since then she became involved with another company, and at the same time became something of a superheroine in order, in her own mind, to try to make up for what she had done in Chile. She joined the Guardians, and after various escapades with them was involved with the ending of the Minervan Civil War. Due to the effects of this she retired from the group and left for Tibet in order to get her head together...
Motley's costume is dull red jesters motley. Other than that, her appearance varies greatly.