Name: Gabriel Agreste
Nicknames/Titles: Shadow Moth (or, sometimes,
Hawk Moth)
Age: ~35
Gender: Male
Affiliation: Villain
Personality: Gabriel is a cunning, manipulative man, doing whatever needs to be done to reach his goals. He tends to keep people at arm's length, preferring to be a strict, secretive sort, rarely appearing anywhere in person and using the weight his name carries to his advantage, not that either means much on the station. He does what he does out of a deep care for the people that are close to him, namely his family and closest confidant, being very adverse to hurting them... though he still isn't afraid to use those same people for his schemes, whether they realize it or not.
Biography: Gabriel Agreste, top fashion designer of France, lost his lovely wife Emilie in a tragic accident more than a year ago, leaving him to look after their son, Adrien, by himself. In truth, Emilie had fallen into a deep coma from a misuse of a magical item known as a Miraculous. Gabriel is fully aware of this fact - he has Emilie kept safely away in a secret chamber beneath his mansion - but pretends she has truly passed in an effort to obfuscate his goal of reviving her. To this end he donned a Miraculous himself, becoming the supervillain known as Hawk Moth, and using its powers to draw out two heroes who are themselves holders of two special Miraculous; Ladybug, holding of the Ladybug Miraculous, and Chat Noir, holder of the Cat Miraculous (who also happens to be Adrien, neither of them realizing their relation), as with those two Miraculous combined gives the user the power to rewrite reality with a single wish.
Gabriel has challenged the heroes time and again and always seems to come up short, even with the help of his assistant, Natalie, the sole person aware of his double life and a frequent collaborator in his plans. Natalie at one point wielded the same Miraculous that almost killed Emilie, the Peacock, only to end up in worse health because of it. Since then, Gabriel has managed to fix the broken Peacock Miraculous and used it in tandem with his Butterfly Miraculous, becoming Shadow Moth, and much fiercer opponent to the pair of heroes, and from whence he has been taken.
Powers/Skills: On his own Gabriel is a simple human of average strength, slightly above-average intellect, and an eye for design - he
is a fashion designer, after all. But with his two Miraculous - the
Butterfly and the
Peacock - he can turn into the supervillain known as
Shadow Moth, substantially increasing his strength, agility, and stamina, as well as giving access to several powers unique to each Miraculous.
The
Butterfly Miraculous grants
Akumatization. The main power of the Butterfly Miraculous, it allows Gabriel to imbue a butterfly with magic energy (the 'Akuma') and send it off to another individual, giving them their own super abilities ('Akumatizing' them). As he's using these powers for evil, the targets are turned into supervillains themselves. There's a few specifics on how this works...
- an Akuma is drawn to strong emotions, such as joy, depression, rage, etc. Due to Gabriel's use, they tend towards negative emotions rather than positive ones. If a person's negative emotions are dealt with, the Akuma won't Akumatize them and fly off, either to the next nearest source of strong emotion or simply roving around the area in search. People can be willingly akumatized if they catch one.
- Akumas must possess and item the person is contact with, be it a piece of clothing, a held object, a vehicle or part of one, and so on. The Akuma remains in this item post-Akumatization, and breaking the item holding it will both release the Akuma inside and de-Akumatize the person it belongs to.
- once an Akuma inhabits an object, the emotion it was drawn to increases in intensity, and allows Gabriel to speak to them from afar. Gabriel has limited control over Akumatized people, only able to cause them pain and de-power them at will, so he employs a healthy dose of manipulation to convince them into accepting the powers.
- an Akumatized person has the same increase to physicality as a Miraculous user, but the nature of their specific powers vary wildly. Typically they revolve around the emotion being felt, the goal they wish to accomplish, the nature of the akumatized object, or some combination therein. Their appearance can also vary, be it turning into a giant monster, being made out of paper, shrunken to an inch tall, becoming invisible entirely, looking exactly like another person, etc, which also depends on the exact circumstances. (take a wiki dive to check out how weird they can get)
- Akumatizations persist indefinitely, even if Shadow Moth turns back into Gabriel. The only way for them to return to normal is to free their Akuma or, in rare case of extreme willpower, renounce the powers on their own. It should also be noted that if an Akuma isn't dealt with once it's free, it has the potential to multiply by the hundreds and spread the Akumatization to multiple other people at once.
- Gabriel is only able to manifest one Akuma at a time, and so can typically only akumatize people once at a time. Multiple people can, however, be akumatized together; if multiple people feel a similar emotion and are in contact with the same object, then they can be Akumatized together, resulting either in multiple separate Akumatized villains or a singular, more powerful one. Groups of people are also able to be akumatized using just one object between them, even without direct contact, should the object hold special value to them (ie, a friendship bracelet for a group of friends)
- Akumas, and by extension anyone who gets Akumatized, lose their connection to Gabriel a certain distance away from him, leaving him with no way to talk to them or see through their eyes. The distance this can be is fairly large, roughly a decent chunk of a city, but that can be more clearly defined in RP terms should it need to be
The power of the
Peacock Miraculous,
Amokization, is very similar to Akumatization; the user takes a feather from their fan, imbues it the same as they would a butterfly (making it an Amok), and send it towards a target to possess. There are several key differences, though:
- Amokization does not directly alter the recipient, instead forming a separate entity, known as a Sentimonster, from the specific emotions the target has. A Sentimonster can take any form and have any sort of power, with much more variance than an Akumatized person.
- Sentimonsters can be controlled by whoever holds the object the Amok is inside of, not just the person it was manifested from. This also includes the Sentimonster itself, granting it free will.
- a Sentimonster can't be dealt with in traditional fashions - any attempt to destroy it will cause it to go berserk instead. The only way to deal with a Sentimonster is releasing the Amok from its object or for the Peacock Miraculous holder to banish it themselves.
One last power these Miraculous grants are the ability to
Sense Emotions in the same radius one can still control an Akuma. Gabriel can use this to hunt for specific emotions that benefit his plans, as well as simply see who he can use at any given moment.
Other: Three things of note: first, the Miraculous can be wielded by anyone, if they got their hands on it. Second, there are these things called Kwamis in the Miraculous that are the source of the powers and they have their own personality and will only they're currently enslaved by Gabriel and to actually use the powers you need to say a special phrase and just roll with it ok there's a lot of rules here. And third, each Miraculous has a special tool, a cane-sword for the Butterfly and a feathered fan for the Peacock, which can both be used as weapons, locators, and Gabey can even store a lil Akuma in the cane for emergencies.
Oh, and I'd like to fly. Save on gas, never need to worry about height. Living the dream.