Silence was born in 1946 to a poor farming family in Niger, the fourth of ten children. Due to their poverty, the family was forced to travel a lot to find work, which occasionally led to problems in the more turbulent areas they travelled through. Since childhood Rose was very healthy and suffered from none of the ailments which often afflict small children, but she was just thought to be lucky in this. In 1959 her father made a business deal with a large landowner in Mali which would give the family a permanent place to settle. Part of the price of the deal was her becoming the landowners wife. Although Rose was opposed to this due in part to the landowners being old, fat and ugly, she didn't have any say and the marriage went ahead. On the night of the wedding she was terrified of what lay ahead, but eventually the time came for the marriage to be consummated. As things moved to their inevitable conclusion she suddenly changed into a jet black cat-woman and threw the landowner off. Both he and she were terrified at the transformation and the next morning, after she had equally suddenly changed back to normal, the landowner threw out her family, accusing her father of trying to trick him into marrying a monster. Enraged at what she had done, thinking it deliberate rather than an accident, despite her obvious disturbance over what had happened, her father beat her, disowned her and forced her to leave the rest of the family as they moved on. She never saw them again.
Heartbroken, she wandered off. In order to live as she drifted around west central Africa she was forced into prostitution and petty theft, but as time went by she also learnt the full capabilities of her other form, which enabled her to live without having to sell herself, especially after she was taught to dance by someone she met on the road. As time went by she became more and more confident in her own abilities, especially when she saw that she was superior to most normal people even in her 'normal' form. She began to use her abilities to help people in trouble, gaining quite a reputation in some areas and earning the enmity of several military and police commanders when she acted against the local government. She also became an object of hatred to many local Shaman's who condemned her an evil lion-man and on many occasions tried to rouse the local populace against her, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
Eventually she drifted into Nigeria and saw how bad the lot of the people, especially the Biafrans, was. She was persuaded to join the Biafran revolutionaries by several people, who saw her as a useful person to have around despite her being female, and it was there that she met Joshua Ogalu (Dr Biafra) for the first time.
Initially her feelings about him were fairly neutral, as although very clever he had none of her passion and fire, seeming fairly cold and emotionless - almost her exact opposite. However, the fact that they were the only two superhumans in the Biafran cause meant they were forced together for long periods in the course of their missions, and as time went by she gradually found herself falling in love with him, and he with her. With the ending of the revolution and the creation of Biafra and Neoteris they were married and have apparently been happy ever since. She and Joshua form a well-matched pair, their individual strengths and weaknesses almost exactly complementing each other.
Although now in her mid-40's Silence does not appear to have aged at all since she first appeared in the late 1960's. Her human form is a slender, very attractive black woman, apparently in her early 20's. Her cat-woman form is not quite as attractive but equally slender (though very muscular) with short black fur, pointed ears, no tail, and feline eyes, teeth and claws. Silence is very passionate and cares greatly for her people, her policies having caused many improvements in Biafra's social conditions. She also cares greatly for Dr Biafra, her husband, although many speculate on their future if she continues to show no signs of aging while he grows old. In human form she usually dresses in attractive formal clothing. In cat-woman form she generally wears nothing apart from any equipment she may need.
Silence in Champions terms.