Admiral Moskau

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Posted, thanks to Bork for providing some Dakota City lore. :)

On the road so will probably edit my post a bit later tonight.

Absolute Comics - Season Two: The Monster Within

Absolute Comics: The Vixen, Issue 4: Second Skin

---

I need a second skin
Something to hold me tough
Can't do it on my own
Sometimes I need just a little more help

"What the fuck are we even doing, Nancy?" Mari asked. The green park bench she was sitting on was uncomfortable and covered in a layer of filth. She hoped it was only food. Between her hands she cradled a cup of coffee. It's warmth was the only thing keeping her alive. The hint of Styrofoam that she tasted with each sip was a reminder that she was living the high life. She'd been sitting there in the cold for hours, a maroon hoodie pulled tight over her head and tunes blasting into her ears. She was bored out of her mind and the talking spider sitting next to her wasn't helping.

"Following the plan, we're following the plan," Nancy said. All eight of his compound eyes remained focused on the bank. He had been sullen all morning. Mari suspected it was because she'd thrown a pillow at him. She did not believe in early mornings or mornings, the opinions of talking spiders be damned.

"What plan?"

"My plan."

"And who the fuck are you supposed to be?"

"Don't worry about it."

"We're casing a bank. You're telling me to rob a bank. I’ll fucking worry about it."

"A bank that's being used to funnel money."

"Oh great, so that makes bank robbery legal, yeah?" Mari scoffed. "I thought I was a hero Nancy, but clearly, this was all a get-rich-quick scheme masterminded by a diminutive arachnid."

"Think. Think for just a moment. This is a bank that is being used to funnel money to a pack of gangsters and the politicians they have purchased. It is a corrupt institution that is complicit in the violence that has overwhelmed this city. Greed and human weakness cast in tasteful stone. It needs to die, just like Wall Street, fuck what the laws says about it," Nancy added, glowering right back at her.

"Sure, fine, let’s burn the motherfucker down then."

"Rob not burn. Did you even listen to my briefing? We need this place standing, but emptier. We need the Blood Syndicate to retain some power. We can’t destabilize the system too much, not right now. Dakota City wouldn't survive it, not yet."

"The Blood— What?" Mari sputtered, choking on her coffee. "Don't tell me there's a coven of vampires in Dakota City? That's way above my pay grade."

"Vampires? Don't be ridiculous," Nancy hissed back. "Vampires. Vampires. Have you been drinking?"

"Forgive me, oh wise one," Mari replied. "Then who are these jokers?"

"The Blood Syndicate are OGs. They were here before the Big Bang. Although they were two gangs then. The Paris Island Bloods and the Force Syndicate. They've been running the show for almost two decades now. Long enough to acquire quaint ideas of honor. They're some proper kitted up street samurai is what I am saying. They're ready for a long war and they're used to taking losses. They're going to put up a fight. A big fight."

"They got guns?"

"Yes, lots of them. Chrome enough for a small army and bullets to spare."

"They have any metahumans?"

"They do indeed. They've got several. Some of the strongest ones. Real monsters."

"Great," Mari sighed. "I'm going to need some second skin to deal with these assholes."

"Dragon scales should suffice. Just reign fire down on them from the sky."

"What?"

"Never mind. We'll talk about it later."

"Fine. Who's in charge?"

"Now?"

"Yes, now."

"Right now, a chap by the name of Holocaust. He's a brutal fellow. Built like a German tank. Big, large, and with far too much steel. Burns his enemies alive. A veritable cremation machine. Nasty stuff really."

"Wonderful."

"He's got a talent for it. Leadership that is. He's exactly the type needed to keep a group of marauding brutes like the Blood Syndicate under control. They're a fractured bunch, old, bitter sets smashed together in the name of profit. Lotta bad blood, lotta festering hatred there. They fight each other almost as much as they fight the other gangs. Holocaust keeps them in line with violence. It's hard to rebel when you're on fire, after all," Nancy mused with a tone of appreciation in his spidery voice.

"So I wreck their bank and then what?"

"We leave a message."

"A message for who?"

"For Static. We need him to know he's not alone."

R E D U X .// 2047 //.

The voice grew in strength, sounding alive again.

"Hex wouldn't. Not like that. Not like that."

The voice grew softer, taking on a decidedly feminine timbre. Momentarily vulnerable as it shook with newly remembered anger. Taking several steps forward, Spellbound stopped dangerously close to Agent Reynolds. She didn't care about the other superheroes. Not even Eli. They were unimportant. They were dying. They were already dead and they just didn't know it. Agent Reynolds knew. She had to know. Dead eyes burned through tempered glass, trying to the divine the soul of the worn down police officer. Reynolds was crumbling, she would not last much longer. But there was strength, there was determination. She reminded the dead wizard of Hex. She was just as hopeless. She still had hope.

"He wouldn't touch the stuff. He was too full of himself. He was too good, he was always too fond of his damn morals," Spellbound said with fresh venom, casting a slow accusatory glance at Reynolds and the gathered superheroes. She hated him. She hated him, but she would not let them believe the lies about him. Hex was not an addict. He had never been. He had never been so weak. Not even at his lowest. Not even at his worst.

With a simple nod, Nina bent down over the box, a lithe hand taking hold of a pager. Tracing the edges of the ancient device, she slipped it lightly beneath a layer of her fabrics, revealing the faintest hint of alabaster skin before she readjusted her costume.

"I owe, Hex," Spellbound mused, letting out a sigh of irritation. "I don't care about this city. I don't care about you. But I owe, Hex. He cared. He deserved better. I'll help you. I'll help you find this Reality Bringer. I'll help you kill this villain."

Terrenum: The Great War (Fantasy/Realistic/Dice - Recruiting Applicants)

Nemeia

---

Unwilling to let the walking disaster that was Ezlan cause another incident with the locals, Nem moved with the speed of a predatory cat as she shifted from her spot at the end of the bar to a seat next to Ezlan and the new arrival.

In passing she'd managed to tap Eomer's shoulder, before nodding in the direction of the Caerbean. She knew Eomer had been drinking, more than she had, but she hoped he was sober enough to understand her gestures. They couldn't leave the poor wretch alone with the sailor.

"What my friend meant to say was, where's Maddox?" Nem interjected, rolling her tongue with great difficulty over the word friend.

R E D U X .// 2047 //.

We Are Entranced, Spellbound

"Cats. Cats are nice."

Name: Nina Nikolayevna Noskova. // Nina to her friends. // Ninenka to her intimate friends.
Alias: Spellbound
Age: Nina was in her mid-twenties at the time of her death some twenty years ago. If she were still alive she would be in the middle of her forties.

Powers: Undead Physiology, Regeneration, and Limited Resurrection

Neither alive nor truly dead, Nina is an undead creature trapped in an unwelcome cycle of reincarnation by Hex's powerful but ultimately flawed ritual magic. Gifted with an undead physiology, Nina has superhuman strength and stamina. Lacking the physiological needs of a living, breathing human being Nina is highly resistant to physical damage. She possesses a healing factor and has gained a measure of immortality thanks to the elemental energy that imbues her form with undead life. Wile Nina has been destroyed a number of times, she always returns to life after some time, reawakening restored in her crypt in Cormack Historical Cemetery. However, each time that she is resurrected Nina is touched by the magic woven through her soul and she is irrecoverably changed. With each new life, her powers, memories, and personality have been twisted, leaving Nina unsure if she's even the same person that she was before her death.

Weaknesses:

In her current incarnation, Nina lacks any ranged abilities. This presents some problems as throwing a car or concrete road barrier at a bad guy is all well and good, but it's not nearly as effective as shooting beams of lasers, covering your foes in molten plasma, or exploding your enemies into a million smaller pieces. The lack of variety in her repertoire of abilities means that Nina is an exceedingly predictable, if unnerving fighter. Following in the footsteps of legendary comic book superheroes like the Dr. Hulk, Nina's solution to most of her villainous problems is simply to punch very hard.

A lack of tactical flexibility is however a small problem in comparison to the state of the necromantic wizard's mind. Altered by the magic that keeps her among the living, Nina is slowly losing herself to the powers that Hex accidentally gave her with his flawed ritual. The magic surging through her have stripped her of not just her mortality but her very essence of being. Her memories have begun to change, fading into the darkness. Her personality and her form have been gnarled and reshaped into something that she can not recognize. Power, dark, unbidden power pools within her.

Cursed in more ways than one, Nina struggles to find peace even when she manages to avoid the company of prattling mortals. Standing between the living and the dead, she is almost continually troubled by the voices of the recently dead. Less often, she finds herself drawn to unwelcome communion with long dead spirits that still cling to the powers they commanded when they walked among the living. Having spent a good decade mastering the art of telling the dead to shut up, most of the time Nina can easily ignore the rasping requests for attention that assail her ears. However, when distracted or in the presence of places with long, intimate histories with death she finds herself struggling to contain the desperate demands of the literal underworld. Talking to beings most people can't see is not a great party trick and in her brief interactions with other superheroes Nina does her best to not make it obvious that she sees dead people.

Appearance:

A recovering devotee to the Goth aesthetic, Nina is exceedingly pale, less in an unhealthy manner, and more in a vaguely spectral sort of way. At a glance, Nina appears to be in her mid twenties, certainly no more than twenty eight. She has an elfin build unburdened by the weight of her true years and untouched by the passage of time. She has serious pale gray eyes, splashed with a hint of green that offers a promise of grim deeds to come. She keeps her hair cut just above her shoulders and it is painted a shade of brown that seems to shut out light, appearing far darker than it really is. Her lips move little and are often simply pursed in a gentle frown, as if existence is a burden she only barely chooses to suffer.

For all her polite mannerisms and soft visage is there is something unsettling about the young woman. She looks tired, exhausted even, like she hasn't slept for the better part of a century. And there is something forced about the way she smiles, the way she moves, and the way she breathes. It's like her movements are merely habits that she remembers and reluctantly performs for the benefit of those around her. When she does move with some expediency she practically floats above the ground, moving like some sort of specter.

Typical Clothing: Generally uninterested in clothing, Nina owns a modest collection of dark suits in varying degrees of disrepair that suggest a growing disinterest in her own appearance. Second hand acquisitions sourced from thrift shops and estate sales, the suits, though expertly tailored to her figure, reflect the weariness that she feels in her undead bones. Beneath her jacket, Nina favors monochromatic dress shirts and simple ties of a similar vintage as her suits. She is exceedingly fond of leather boots and rarely leaves her crypt without a pair adorning her feet. In short, she far from a dashing figure, she comes off as deeply tired and not at all that concerned about whatever it is that forced her to leave the comforts of her crypt.

Costumed Appearance: As Spellbound, Nina wraps herself in a coarse funeral shroud that she has fashioned into a hooded cloak and several layers of black clothing. Over her hands she wears gel-lined fingerless gloves that protect her hands and wrists from the immense forces she generates with each punch. In a professional capacity, she wears black leather boots. The most modern aspect of her costume is her helmet, a tasteful number in black with darkened glass that casts shadowy reflections of all that she sees.

Back in Black

Spooky Costume

Equipment:

Beyond her costume, Nina carries only a simple handgun. A venerable CZ-75, an all-steel nine millimeter Czech demigod dating back to the early months of 1975. Wildly out of date and considered something of a relic in the current year, Nina maintains that the pistol still does the job well enough. Reasonably sized, reliable, and heavy enough to be used as a hammer it gives Nina an additional bite. It would be a safe bet to assume that Nina does not have a gun license. When asked she maintains that being dead, she is well outside of the jurisdiction of traditional law enforcement.

Origin:

I:Into The Light

Into The Light

"Standing in the light
I never wanted to be right
Now I'm attracted by the light
And blinded my the sight"

Nina Nikolayevna Noskova was born to a family of unremarkable nobodies in Boston-Atlanta sometime in the early 2020s. Her parents were third generation Czech immigrants and strictly working class. An unremarkable child, Nina appeared to be destined for nothing more than a high school diploma and maybe cosmetology school if she played her cards right. The great cybernetic revolution came for the rich and the comfortably upper middle class, it certainly did not come for those at the bottom of society. By sixteen she wasn't pregnant, like many of her classmates, but she had managed to rack up a respectable criminal record largely due to minor drug related offenses.

She was a difficult teenager with a disdain for authority and an inability to keep her mouth shut. Her parents were frequently at their wits end and threatened to send her back to the Old Country or to a much hated uncle, Gabriel. In between screaming matches with her parents and running from the police, Nina managed to find some happiness in the Goth subculture and quickly made all the wrongs friends. Pictures from back then show that she wore a profusion of black velvet, lace, fishnets and leather tinged with purple, accessorized with tightly laced corsets, gloves, precarious stilettos and silver jewelry depicting religious or occult themes. The very same pictures also suggest that she used criminal amounts of eyeshadow and white powder.

Teenage rebellion eventually gave way to an early adulthood of slight responsibility and by the time she turned eighteen Nina had a job working in the kitchen of the local dive bar scrubbing dishes. She spent what little money she earned on cigarettes and booze, managing to move out of her parents apartment only after several months of half-hearted saving. Her average life of mundane debauchery was forever shattered when an encounter gone wrong with a former paramour led her to discover that she could cause frost to appear in the middle of July. What followed was a storied tale that saw Nina threatening to turn half a city block to ice, destroying one police cruiser, and leaving one Roger Thompson with frostbite over most of his body. The incident and Nina remain infamous within the 77th precinct of the Boston-Atlanta Police Department.

However, before things managed to spiral completely out of control and Nina was thrown in a jail cell or put down as a magical arbitration, a local, well-respected witch, the retired Superhero Zita the Wise, stepped in and offered to train the young, untamed magical prodigy. The wizened Slovak witch was her teacher for many years and taught Nina most what she knew and knows about magic. Nina was a contemporary of the superhero Hex, that is, until he killed her several years later.

But that comes later.

Where were we, again?

Ah yes!

Magic!

II:The Arcane

The Arcane

"Here in the garden of the arcane delights,
Dark shadows overwhelm us and we become blind.
Blind to the needs of those who would be free
From the grip of fear and the prisons of the mind."

Mastering magic at a marvelous rate, Nina quickly became a powerful practitioner of the magical arts. A rebel at heart, she nonetheless managed to maintain her own brand of modern magic. An idealist with a penchant for do-it-yourself magic, spray painted graffiti rituals, loud music, and magical orgies she was a disruptive force of mostly good in the Boston-Atlanta area. Zita the Wise guided her as best she could, always cautioning her to respect the great powers that she commanded and the spirits that she often meddled with. However, Nina was talented and young enough to happily ignore the hard-earned wisdom of many older magicians and she indulged in a number of vices that more conventional wizards would stay far away from. Designer drugs infused with magic were for many years a beloved interest of the young wizard.

Once she was certain that she had learned what she could from Zita the Wise and chafing just a bit under her increasingly serious tutelage Nina declared herself a full personified master wizard at the impressively young age, for a wizard, of twenty two. Confident, arrogant, and not a little full of herself Nina was convinced she was destined for greatness. A fact she felt was confirmed by the bitter jealously of the older wizards that surrounded her. Bored to tears with the idea of spending the next several decades in the academic pursuit of arcane knowledge, Nina decided soon after that she would become a hero, a superhero even. Looking to stretch her wings, she decided that she had to strike out on her own, she had to find a place that needed a real hero, and somewhere that was far enough away that Zita the Wise wouldn't come knocking if she made some noise.

Nina met Hex soon after she relocated to New York City and came out as a proper anonymous hero called Spellbound. In his youth, Hex was as good as he was in his old age. But he was more handsome then. He was a younger man, a more reckless warlock who had yet to be burdened by his own flaws and failures. He had not learned the price that had to be paid. The pair were brave, wonderful heroes. They were children playing at a game they did not fully understand. They could see other heroes, one after another fall in the fight for good, but they continued to play anyhow. They were convinced that they were better and that they were smarter. They knew that they would be different. And they believed that things would end differently for them. They would not lose and they would not lose their way.

For nearly a decade Hex and Spellbound protected New York City together as a team. They became household names, with action figures and a Netflix show. They fought demons, necromancers, and arcane antagonists that threatened not just the city, but the nation, and sometimes even the world. They grew together and they grew apart. A budding romance evolved into a respectful friendship with clear boundaries and an arcane golem or two to keep the peace. Hex grew a beard. Nina developed an interest in horticulture. She even made efforts to reconcile with Zita the Wise, now a retired old woman who spent her days beekeeping in upstate New York. She mostly forgave Nina for stealing the Eye of Odin when they had last met.

It all fell apart when the pair of magical superheros confronted a group of cultists attempting to open a portal to a dimensional of unspeakable evil. It wasn't the first time they had fought a group of cultists. Necromancers, blood mages, and cults trying to bring about the apocalypse were dime a dozen. They weren't anything special. At least, they weren't supposed to be anything special. That time things were different however. Nina had felt it as they climbed down into the basement the cultists had excavated to reach the catacombs that lead to the temple. The air was heavy with magic, dark, repulsive magic that reeked of death. Everything had started so well. After a short jaunt through a gloomy series of passageways, Hex and Nina had burst into the temple and sent the nearest cults crashing into the nearest wall. They had offered some witty comment in the direction of the abomination of flesh and viscera that appeared to be leading the gaggle of cultists. It had roared something about "interruptions" and "sacrifices" but Nina didn't pay much attention. She didn't put much stake in the rambling of mad monsters or their threats. She'd heard them all before, after all.

Everything was going well until Hex took a blow to the head. He was dazed and Nina could see the blood that began to pour down his face. His magic faded, it grew weak. The cultists rallied and the monster laughed or at least Nina thought it was laughing, it was hard to tell. The young wizard used all the magic trickery that she knew to keep them alive. She stalled for time and she fought the wave of nausea that told her she was reaching her limit. Hex recovered, but he recovered slowly. They were in over their depth. They were in trouble. When Hex finally stood again, tossing curses all around him, Nina already knew it was too late. They were surrounded by cultists and they were running low on magic. They were trapped and it was only a matter of time. It was hopeless, she knew. She was powerful, Hex was alright, but they were outnumbered and they were outgunned. They would be torn to pieces and that would be the end of the dynamic spell-casting duo.

Left with no other option, Nina did the one thing that she had known she was never, ever, allowed to do. She summoned her own horror, she summoned her own special brand of eldritch horror from some abyssal plane. Hex told her to stop. She didn't listen. He didn't understand. He never would. She had to save them. As the spell reached it's apex and the horror began to substantiate, Nina broke the final rule. She summoned another dimensional portal and smashed the two together using all the magic she could muster. For a brief moment, she brought the two impossible realities together over the cultists and the abomination that commanded them. She could feel as the doorways to the planes ceased to exist, each rejecting the reality of the other. She watch the master and its servants disintegrate in a shower of sparks as the arcane energies tore them into pieces. She heard them scream. She heard it scream. She heard it curse her very name.

Hex screamed and she screamed too as the arcane light danced in front of them. She was not ready for the the sudden force that cut through her. It sent her falling into a helpless heap on the now dusty floor. Hex screamed again. She found it very annoying. She shouted at him to shut up, but he pointed at her chest, and he looked afraid. She hadn't known that it was possible to be alive without her heart or rather with her heart replaced by some shadow of magic. It was in that terrible moment that she remembered why it was wizards did not make a habit out of smashing dimensional portals together. Creatures beyond the veil did not take kindly too being used as improvised explosives. They became very irritate at the very notion of a broken summoning contract and they demanded revenge. The connection was all that they needed to find her. It was all they needed to mark her and to doom her.

She could feel herself dying. Dying faster than a normal human being that is. She told Hex, but he already knew. She could see it. She could feel it. He'd had another one of his damn visions. He knew. He knew all along what would happen!

They stumbled out of the catacombs and were greeted by a crowd of New York City's finest boys in blue. An entire city block had been leveled. Several people besides the cultists were dead, dozens more were wounded. They were still heroes to the city, but Nina could see the fear in their eyes. They finally knew what she could do. They finally saw and they were afraid. She had sacrificed herself for them, for Hex, and they were afraid. They were afraid of her and she would die. She would die for nothing. In the span of a month, Nina went from powerful wizard moonlighting as a superhero to mostly dead girl slowly fading away. There was nothing she could do about it. She had tried. She'd poured over all the books she could find, she'd sought out all the experts, and she'd even talked to Zita the Wise. There were no good news. There was no easy answer. There weren't even any hard answers. There were just terrible answers, sad looks, and deep, heavy sighs of uncertainty.

When Hex finally visited her he came with a plan. He had found something he promised. A real chance, not a great chance, but a chance. A chance to fix her, a chance to bring her back, and a chance to make things right again. She didn't want to die. Not yet. Not for several decades. Not in some shitty hospital bed under an anonymous name. Forgotten. Feared. Hated. So she agreed. They'd try, they'd try it together. Hex had found a loophole. He'd reverse engineered a curse, a terrible curse, the worst sort of curse that was never to be spoken of. It had taken him weeks of painstaking work and it had almost cost him his mind. He'd had to deal and wheel with several demons, but he had prevailed, he'd found out what he needed, what she needed.

Hex would save her.

He promised.

III: Now I'm feeling zombiefied!

Now I'm feeling zombiefied!

"Some present you gave me, the bitterest pill
My eyes is all grey
And I haven't slept in days
Locked up in your dungeon
Running around in your maze
Now I'm feeling zombiefied"

The ritual worked.

It worked exactly like it was supposed to. There was only one small problem — the ritual didn't save Nina, it killed her. Hex had made a mistake. In his desperation to find an answer, he'd been sloppy. He had committed the gravest of sins for mathematicians and wizards alike; he had neglected to double check his math. He'd saved Nina from one curse with another refashioned by his own infernal magic. He had never considered that the two curses would interact. He spared her from death by separating her from life. Hex had trapped her between life and death. He had had changed her. She could feel it, she could feel the wrongness of her new existence, she could feel how it pushed back against the reality of the material plane, and how it crackled against the veil. Dead magic flowed through her. Energies that should not have been possible, energies that should never have been, and energies that kept her in a new state of unlife.

Hex was afraid of her, but worse, he was ashamed. He was repulsed by her, he recoiled from her touch, and he locked himself away in his study. He buried himself in his ancient tomes and his work. Nina knew that she had become a reminder of his greatest failure. She was a reminder that no matter how pure his intentions were, the consequences could be unbearable, and the results horrific. Months of arcane research and experiments proved futile. Nothing worked, nothing restored her, and nothing brought her back. She gave up long before Hex did, but eventually even the Warlock lost what little hope he had managed to save.

Hex never managed to forgive himself for what happened to her and neither could Nina. She blamed the Warlock more than he blamed himself. He had damned her and he had cursed her. He had failed her. Love tore them apart and sent them along different paths. Nina was merciless and Hex found his own voice. He would not suffer the hysterics of a scorned wizard for eternity. He had a duty, he had others to protect. She did too, he begged, but Nina ignored him. She had given enough she shouted. What more did he want her to give? What more could anyone ask of her? What more could be taken from her?

Hex didn't have any answers.

She called him a coward. She called him a fool. And then she left.

IV: Haunted

Haunted

"Of freshly dug grave and death and night
These things are her essence"

Cursing her own fate, Nina fled back to Boston-Atlanta. Hiding away in a forgotten cemetery, she settled in an abandoned mausoleum content to await eternity by herself. When the loneliness of her stone crypt finally drove her close to madness she began venture out into the city. For a time she became the mysterious protector of the Autumn Hills. She patrolled at night. She kept the streets safe. She fought off criminals and supernatural creatures. Underneath the neon lights of the city she found a new purpose. She found a calling. She claimed the neighborhood as her own. She enjoyed watching over the living. She felt pride. They feared her, but more importantly they respected her. They spoke fondly of the reverent that protected them. They believed in her.

Then the voices started. At first they were nothing more than whispers. She convinced herself she was simply imagining them. She could ignore them. She could silence them. They recoiled when she shouted at them. And then she saw them. She saw all of them. She saw the ghosts that surrounded her, that begged her for a voice, and demanded she act for them.

In her madness she found herself in conflict with the police and with other heroes. They began to question her. They doubted her. She felt hatred for the first time in years. She felt rage, so much rage. She fought them. She fought the criminals and she fought the cops. She fought everyone that stood in her way. And then she died again. Some hotshot hero had buried her in a tomb of lava. It was the first time she had burned. It was the first time she had melted. Yet there was no peace, there was no rest for the wicked. She awoke again some time later in her crypt. Restored, but still dead, and different. She realized with great alarm that she was different. She had changed. Her magic was gone. Her spells forgotten. The voices were louder, they were a torrent of pleading screams. She couldn't remember her parents. She couldn't remember her home. She remembered only darkness and her regrets.

New fears coursed through her as she learned more about her affliction. She would not risk herself again. She would not risk her memories, she would not risk herself, and she would not risk what little remained of her soul. The city was no longer her concern, the citizens could rot, and the government could crumble. She would remain. She would silence the voices. She would wait. She would rest.

With each passing year, a torpor has grown inside of the unliving wizard. The world seems less interesting. Matters no longer concern her. People are no longer important to her. She no longer understands them. They are violent, impatient creatures, full of emotion, and life. Sometimes she hates them. Sometimes she misses them. But most of all she feels tired, so very tired.

Nina isn't sure how the letter from Special Agent Reynolds reached her. She hadn't expected a crow to be able to find her. She had already known. She had felt it when Hex died, the magic of the ritual had still bound them together. It had hurt. For the first time in years she had felt something. But it did not make her happy. What use was weeping? What use was feeling sorrow and loss? She had to go. She owed him. She owed Hex. He had always been better than her. He had always known she realized. He had always known she wouldn't let him down in the end.

Personality: Bitter, jaded, and angry; Nina is all of these things in great abundance. The grand adventure of being a wizard and superhero has trapped her in what she perceives to be her own personal hell. She is slowly losing herself and her memories to the eldritch energies which swirl through her. Beneath the fearless confidence of the undying, Nina hides all that she has lost and all that she desires. Memories are twisted, memories fade, and with each passing moment Nina despairs that she is losing more of herself.

Nina can no longer deny what she has become. A monster, something less than human; a creature of the night. She can feel her emotions unraveling, becoming undone, and she no longer knows how to change or return to the woman she once was. She struggles to resist her darkening thoughts and can feel a gnawing hunger, inhuman desire, unhurriedly consume what little remains of her soul. She can sense the fractures that deepen within her, slowly tearing her apart. Weakness and fragility that can only be mended with further lose of her humanity. Another heavy price to pay.

As Spellbound, Nina has retreated from humanity and other superheroes. Long since divorced from her humanity she cares little for the laws of men or the lofty morals of other superheroes. Instead, she acts of her own violation, following what she can remember of her own conscience. Withering with the dying light of her own spirit, it is becoming increasingly hard for Nina to call upon this inner voice. In Boston-Atlanta, Spellbound has become a legend, a mysterious vengeful spirit that once kept a nightly vigil over the neighborhood known as Autumn Hills. Boston-Atlanta Police Department database files detail Spellbound's activities protecting the residents of Autumn Hills, but also note several encounters with the vigilante that devolved into violence when officers attempted to impede her efforts. While rarely violent, Nina's encounters with other heroes have been sparse, terse, and full of otherworldly tension. Those that have met her, remember only a faint whisper of a voice that offered nothing more than a few cryptic words in parting. In recent years, Nina has withdrawn even further, letting the city stand alone and largely fading into nothing more than an old story.

However, despite her reclusive nature, Nina sometimes seeks the assistance of mundane mortals, supernatural creatures, and superheros to fulfill her enigmatic goals. Further, having spent too long languishing in the crypt that she calls home, she has unintentionally adopted some of the mannerisms ascribed to ancient undead creatures and to those that provide her with a service of some kind she will return the favor by allowing them to call upon her in times of great need using grim magical charms carved out of bone.

Misc Facts: Following her death in 2027, Nina has acted as the protector of the Autumn Hills neighborhood in Boston-Atlanta. Private, bordering on isolationist, she has largely avoided interaction with all other heroes or vigilantes since the start of her unlife.

As an undead creature, Nina does not have any of the physiological needs of a base human being. She doesn't need to breath, eat, or sleep. She has no pulse and her skin is as cold as the grave to the touch.

Relationship with Hex: Hex had promised. He had promised to help her. He had promised that he would find a way to save her. He was wrong. He made a mistake. He didn't save her. He cursed her. He bound her. He trapped her between life and death. He failed her. When she learned the truth she ran away. She ran away from Hex. She hated him. He had damned her. For all his ideals and good intentions, he'd sealed her fate. He'd turned her into a monster. He'd made her into a creature of the night. Far from the neon lights of Fort Cedar she found a new place and a new purpose. The Autumn Hills belonged to the Spellbound. She kept them safe. She was a monster, but not a villain.

With the passage of time, her hatred for Hex tempered. It was so hard to remember what it was like to be alive, to be so full of feeling, and life. She didn't need to see the encrypted video message from Special Agent Reynolds to know that Hex was dead, she had felt it. She had to act. She owed Hex that much, for all that he had done for her and for all of his failures.

-

Autumn Hills

Settled in the early 1700s by Eastern European immigrants, Autumn Hills, is one many ethnic neighborhoods found in the urban sprawl that was once Boston. Tinged with a darker reputation it is rumored to be home to organized crime elements and occult spirits that tend to discourage outside visitors. Which is a shame, because Autumn Hills is heaven for any visitor who likes charming and/or cluttered curiosity shops, spicy pierogis, or fresh, flavorful pirozhki just out of the oven. Night falls early here though, and Autumn Hill's mystic and crime-ridden reputation keeps most non-residents away after dusk. Brave souls may venture out at night to try to catch a glimpse of Spellbound, the mysterious guardian of Autumn Hills that was once said to haunt the neighborhood.

Adjoining the neighborhood is the Cormack Historical Cemetery. Largely abandoned, the once sprawling cemetery has slowly turned into a dark, twisted forest as the landscape has been relinquished to nature. The grand mausoleums and elaborate tombstones of a bygone era remain standing, crumbling slowly as they lay hidden beneath years of foliage and dust.

R E D U X .// 2047 //.

"I want to know⁠—"

A voice said, beginning as a weak rasp.

"I want to know what Hex saw."

Withered biological machinery lurched back to life, rusted cogs rattled into motion, and the voice became an audible whisper. A shroud of midnight drew closer. A figure cloaked in black stepped into the light. The void was a mirror that reflected the faces of the gathered heroes. It watched them. It lingered. Indifferent, unmoved, and unafraid. Strangers. Faces from pixelated screens. Names splashed across headlines. Radical anarchist painters engaging in artistic terrorism beyond modern art. Poorly drawn pictures plastered across the seedier parts of the cyberspace. Something about British twins and private commissions. Rumors traded for digital credits. Conspiracy stories about cops with super suits and sentient AI. Badly written fan fictions involving love quadrangles and Stardust.

She did not know them. She had never known them. Save for one.

"You."

The voice said.

A hand formed into a gun with the barrel pointed at Eli. A thumb moved like a hammer, sending an imaginary bullet racing into his skull with only a modest recoil. The phantom nodded, satisfied.

"I know you."

The voice said growing stronger.

"I know your black heart."

It had been an unpleasant death she remembered. But it was a distant memory. Fragmented, faded, and corrupted by pain. She had been different then. So much wisdom had coursed through her. So much experience. Now she could not remember all the things that she had known. She could only remember that she had once known them. She had been so much more.

She remembered Hex, though. He had killed her. She felt a stirring in her stomach. Butterflies. Dull sensations she had long since banished. Feelings. Embers of emotion glowed dimly within her, slowly thawing the ice that surrounded her heart. Sorrow followed. Unbidden memories escaped past a soul too weak to contain them. She saw his eyes. She saw his smile. Harrison, she thought, wishing that she could forget. She had allowed herself the smallest ration of hope. She had trusted him. She had believed in him. Now she was a prisoner of their dreams, living in a world of ghosts. She would return to the ice. She would kill Hex. She would banish his spirit. She would be free. She would rest.

She remembered the old man standing in front of her, too. He had been younger then. He had killed her. He was cruel. Impassive. He had played a bloody game with her. He hadn't flinched. It was the first time that she had burned in a chemical fire, her own flesh used for fuel. Blood turned base decomposed proteins, deconstructed lipids, and dissolved her. He had melted her into a puddle of boiling blood. There was no joy in his eyes, only purpose. Cold determination. Then he had screamed. He had cowered. He had run. He had lost. She had destroyed the item. She had protected Autumn Hills. A mortal would have cared, would have wanted vengeance, and would have reacted. She did not. Eli looked old. He looked haggard. He looked weak. The memories of her past made no demands. Remembered pains were only curiosities. Reminders that she was no longer alive.

"But no matter. Best not to think on the past too much."

The voice concluded fading into focus.

She buried her memories. She kept the voices at bay. She willed herself to breathe. To move as they did. To care. To feel. To live.

"Tell us what you know, Agent Reynolds."

The voice said, alive again and full of lies.

R E D U X .// 2047 //.

Draft 2:

We Are Entranced, Spellbound

"Cats. Cats are nice."

Name: Nina Nikolayevna Noskova. // Nina to her friends. // Ninenka to her intimate friends.
Alias: Spellbound
Age: Nina was in her mid-twenties at the time of her death some twenty years ago. If she were still alive she would be in the middle of her forties.

Powers: Undead Physiology, Regeneration, and Limited Resurrection

Neither alive nor truly dead, Nina is an undead creature trapped in an unwelcome cycle of reincarnation by Hex's powerful but ultimately flawed ritual magic. Gifted with an undead physiology, Nina has superhuman strength and stamina. Lacking the physiological needs of a living, breathing human being Nina is highly resistant to physical damage. She possesses a healing factor and has gained a measure of immortality thanks to the elemental energy that imbues her form with undead life. Wile Nina has been destroyed a number of times, she always returns to life after some time, reawakening restored in her crypt in Cormack Historical Cemetery. However, each time that she is resurrected Nina is touched by the magic woven through her soul and she is irrecoverably changed. With each new life, her powers, memories, and personality have been twisted, leaving Nina unsure if she's even the same person that she was before her death.

Weaknesses:

In her current incarnation, Nina lacks any ranged abilities. This presents some problems as throwing a car or concrete road barrier at a bad guy is all well and good, but it's not nearly as effective as shooting beams of lasers, covering your foes in molten plasma, or exploding your enemies into a million smaller pieces. The lack of variety in her repertoire of abilities means that Nina is an exceedingly predictable, if unnerving fighter. Following in the footsteps of legendary comic book superheroes like the Dr. Hulk, Nina's solution to most of her villainous problems is simply to punch very hard.

A lack of tactical flexibility is however a small problem in comparison to the state of the necromantic wizard's mind. Altered by the magic that keeps her among the living, Nina is slowly losing herself to the powers that Hex accidentally gave her with his flawed ritual. The magic surging through her have stripped her of not just her mortality but her very essence of being. Her memories have begun to change, fading into the darkness. Her personality and her form have been gnarled and reshaped into something that she can not recognize. Power, dark, unbidden power pools within her.

Cursed in more ways than one, Nina struggles to find peace even when she manages to avoid the company of prattling mortals. Standing between the living and the dead, she is almost continually troubled by the voices of the recently dead. Less often, she finds herself drawn to unwelcome communion with long dead spirits that still cling to the powers they commanded when they walked among the living. Having spent a good decade mastering the art of telling the dead to shut up, most of the time Nina can easily ignore the rasping requests for attention that assail her ears. However, when distracted or in the presence of places with long, intimate histories with death she finds herself struggling to contain the desperate demands of the literal underworld. Talking to beings most people can't see is not a great party trick and in her brief interactions with other superheroes Nina does her best to not make it obvious that she sees dead people.

Appearance:

A recovering devotee to the Goth aesthetic, Nina is exceedingly pale, less in an unhealthy manner, and more in a vaguely spectral sort of way. At a glance, Nina appears to be in her mid twenties, certainly no more than twenty eight. She has an elfin build unburdened by the weight of her true years and untouched by the passage of time. She has serious pale gray eyes, splashed with a hint of green that offers a promise of grim deeds to come. She keeps her hair cut just above her shoulders and it is painted a shade of brown that seems to shut out light, appearing far darker than it really is. Her lips move little and are often simply pursed in a gentle frown, as if existence is a burden she only barely chooses to suffer.

For all her polite mannerisms and soft visage is there is something unsettling about the young woman. She looks tired, exhausted even, like she hasn't slept for the better part of a century. And there is something forced about the way she smiles, the way she moves, and the way she breathes. It's like her movements are merely habits that she remembers and reluctantly performs for the benefit of those around her. When she does move with some expediency she practically floats above the ground, moving like some sort of specter.

Typical Clothing: Generally uninterested in clothing, Nina owns a modest collection of dark suits in varying degrees of disrepair that suggest a growing disinterest in her own appearance. Second hand acquisitions sourced from thrift shops and estate sales, the suits, though expertly tailored to her figure, reflect the weariness that she feels in her undead bones. Beneath her jacket, Nina favors monochromatic dress shirts and simple ties of a similar vintage as her suits. She is exceedingly fond of leather boots and rarely leaves her crypt without a pair adorning her feet. In short, she far from a dashing figure, she comes off as deeply tired and not at all that concerned about whatever it is that forced her to leave the comforts of her crypt.

Costumed Appearance: As Spellbound, Nina wraps herself in a coarse funeral shroud that she has fashioned into a hooded cloak and several layers of black clothing. Over her hands she wears gel-lined fingerless gloves that protect her hands and wrists from the immense forces she generates with each punch. In a professional capacity, she wears black leather boots. The most modern aspect of her costume is her helmet, a tasteful number in black with darkened glass that casts shadowy reflections of all that she sees.

Back in Black

Spooky Costume

Equipment:

Beyond her costume, Nina carries only a simple handgun. A venerable CZ-75, an all-steel nine millimeter Czech demigod dating back to the early months of 1975. Wildly out of date and considered something of a relic in the current year, Nina maintains that the pistol still does the job well enough. Reasonably sized, reliable, and heavy enough to be used as a hammer it gives Nina an additional bite. It would be a safe bet to assume that Nina does not have a gun license. When asked she maintains that being dead, she is well outside of the jurisdiction of traditional law enforcement.

Origin:

I:Into The Light

Into The Light

"Standing in the light
I never wanted to be right
Now I'm attracted by the light
And blinded my the sight"

Nina Nikolayevna Noskova was born to a family of unremarkable nobodies in Boston-Atlanta sometime in the early 2020s. Her parents were third generation Czech immigrants and strictly working class. An unremarkable child, Nina appeared to be destined for nothing more than a high school diploma and maybe cosmetology school if she played her cards right. The great cybernetic revolution came for the rich and the comfortably upper middle class, it certainly did not come for those at the bottom of society. By sixteen she wasn't pregnant, like many of her classmates, but she had managed to rack up a respectable criminal record largely due to minor drug related offenses.

She was a difficult teenager with a disdain for authority and an inability to keep her mouth shut. Her parents were frequently at their wits end and threatened to send her back to the Old Country or to a much hated uncle, Gabriel. In between screaming matches with her parents and running from the police, Nina managed to find some happiness in the Goth subculture and quickly made all the wrongs friends. Pictures from back then show that she wore a profusion of black velvet, lace, fishnets and leather tinged with purple, accessorized with tightly laced corsets, gloves, precarious stilettos and silver jewelry depicting religious or occult themes. The very same pictures also suggest that she used criminal amounts of eyeshadow and white powder.

Teenage rebellion eventually gave way to an early adulthood of slight responsibility and by the time she turned eighteen Nina had a job working in the kitchen of the local dive bar scrubbing dishes. She spent what little money she earned on cigarettes and booze, managing to move out of her parents apartment only after several months of half-hearted saving. Her average life of mundane debauchery was forever shattered when an encounter gone wrong with a former paramour led her to discover that she could cause frost to appear in the middle of July. What followed was a storied tale that saw Nina threatening to turn half a city block to ice, destroying one police cruiser, and leaving one Roger Thompson with frostbite over most of his body. The incident and Nina remain infamous within the 77th precinct of the Boston-Atlanta Police Department.

However, before things managed to spiral completely out of control and Nina was thrown in a jail cell or put down as a magical arbitration, a local, well-respected witch, the retired Superhero Zita the Wise, stepped in and offered to train the young, untamed magical prodigy. The wizened Slovak witch was her teacher for many years and taught Nina most what she knew and knows about magic. Nina was a contemporary of the superhero Hex, that is, until he killed her several years later.

But that comes later.

Where were we, again?

Ah yes!

Magic!

II:The Arcane

The Arcane

"Here in the garden of the arcane delights,
Dark shadows overwhelm us and we become blind.
Blind to the needs of those who would be free
From the grip of fear and the prisons of the mind."

Mastering magic at a marvelous rate, Nina quickly became a powerful practitioner of the magical arts. A rebel at heart, she nonetheless managed to maintain her own brand of modern magic. An idealist with a penchant for do-it-yourself magic, spray painted graffiti rituals, loud music, and magical orgies she was a disruptive force of mostly good in the Boston-Atlanta area. Zita the Wise guided her as best she could, always cautioning her to respect the great powers that she commanded and the spirits that she often meddled with. However, Nina was talented and young enough to happily ignore the hard-earned wisdom of many older magicians and she indulged in a number of vices that more conventional wizards would stay far away from. Designer drugs infused with magic were for many years a beloved interest of the young wizard.

Once she was certain that she had learned what she could from Zita the Wise and chafing just a bit under her increasingly serious tutelage Nina declared herself a full personified master wizard at the impressively young age, for a wizard, of twenty two. Confident, arrogant, and not a little full of herself Nina was convinced she was destined for greatness. A fact she felt was confirmed by the bitter jealously of the older wizards that surrounded her. Bored to tears with the idea of spending the next several decades in the academic pursuit of arcane knowledge, Nina decided soon after that she would become a hero, a superhero even. Looking to stretch her wings, she decided that she had to strike out on her own, she had to find a place that needed a real hero, and somewhere that was far enough away that Zita the Wise wouldn't come knocking if she made some noise.

Nina met Hex soon after she relocated to New York City and came out as a proper anonymous hero called Spellbound. In his youth, Hex was as good as he was in his old age. But he was more handsome then. He was a younger man, a more reckless warlock who had yet to be burdened by his own flaws and failures. He had not learned the price that had to be paid. The pair were brave, wonderful heroes. They were children playing at a game they did not fully understand. They could see other heroes, one after another fall in the fight for good, but they continued to play anyhow. They were convinced that they were better and that they were smarter. They knew that they would be different. And they believed that things would end differently for them. They would not lose and they would not lose their way.

For nearly a decade Hex and Spellbound protected New York City together as a team. They became household names, with action figures and a Netflix show. They fought demons, necromancers, and arcane antagonists that threatened not just the city, but the nation, and sometimes even the world. They grew together and they grew apart. A budding romance evolved into a respectful friendship with clear boundaries and an arcane golem or two to keep the peace. Hex grew a beard. Nina developed an interest in horticulture. She even made efforts to reconcile with Zita the Wise, now a retired old woman who spent her days beekeeping in upstate New York. She mostly forgave Nina for stealing the Eye of Odin when they had last met.

It all fell apart when the pair of magical superheros confronted a group of cultists attempting to open a portal to a dimensional of unspeakable evil. It wasn't the first time they had fought a group of cultists. Necromancers, blood mages, and cults trying to bring about the apocalypse were dime a dozen. They weren't anything special. At least, they weren't supposed to be anything special. That time things were different however. Nina had felt it as they climbed down into the basement the cultists had excavated to reach the catacombs that lead to the temple. The air was heavy with magic, dark, repulsive magic that reeked of death. Everything had started so well. After a short jaunt through a gloomy series of passageways, Hex and Nina had burst into the temple and sent the nearest cults crashing into the nearest wall. They had offered some witty comment in the direction of the abomination of flesh and viscera that appeared to be leading the gaggle of cultists. It had roared something about "interruptions" and "sacrifices" but Nina didn't pay much attention. She didn't put much stake in the rambling of mad monsters or their threats. She'd heard them all before, after all.

Everything was going well until Hex took a blow to the head. He was dazed and Nina could see the blood that began to pour down his face. His magic faded, it grew weak. The cultists rallied and the monster laughed or at least Nina thought it was laughing, it was hard to tell. The young wizard used all the magic trickery that she knew to keep them alive. She stalled for time and she fought the wave of nausea that told her she was reaching her limit. Hex recovered, but he recovered slowly. They were in over their depth. They were in trouble. When Hex finally stood again, tossing curses all around him, Nina already knew it was too late. They were surrounded by cultists and they were running low on magic. They were trapped and it was only a matter of time. It was hopeless, she knew. She was powerful, Hex was alright, but they were outnumbered and they were outgunned. They would be torn to pieces and that would be the end of the dynamic spell-casting duo.

Left with no other option, Nina did the one thing that she had known she was never, ever, allowed to do. She summoned her own horror, she summoned her own special brand of eldritch horror from some abyssal plane. Hex told her to stop. She didn't listen. He didn't understand. He never would. She had to save them. As the spell reached it's apex and the horror began to substantiate, Nina broke the final rule. She summoned another dimensional portal and smashed the two together using all the magic she could muster. For a brief moment, she brought the two impossible realities together over the cultists and the abomination that commanded them. She could feel as the doorways to the planes ceased to exist, each rejecting the reality of the other. She watch the master and its servants disintegrate in a shower of sparks as the arcane energies tore them into pieces. She heard them scream. She heard it scream. She heard it curse her very name.

Hex screamed and she screamed too as the arcane light danced in front of them. She was not ready for the the sudden force that cut through her. It sent her falling into a helpless heap on the now dusty floor. Hex screamed again. She found it very annoying. She shouted at him to shut up, but he pointed at her chest, and he looked afraid. She hadn't known that it was possible to be alive without her heart or rather with her heart replaced by some shadow of magic. It was in that terrible moment that she remembered why it was wizards did not make a habit out of smashing dimensional portals together. Creatures beyond the veil did not take kindly too being used as improvised explosives. They became very irritate at the very notion of a broken summoning contract and they demanded revenge. The connection was all that they needed to find her. It was all they needed to mark her and to doom her.

She could feel herself dying. Dying faster than a normal human being that is. She told Hex, but he already knew. She could see it. She could feel it. He'd had another one of his damn visions. He knew. He knew all along what would happen!

They stumbled out of the catacombs and were greeted by a crowd of New York City's finest boys in blue. An entire city block had been leveled. Several people besides the cultists were dead, dozens more were wounded. They were still heroes to the city, but Nina could see the fear in their eyes. They finally knew what she could do. They finally saw and they were afraid. She had sacrificed herself for them, for Hex, and they were afraid. They were afraid of her and she would die. She would die for nothing. In the span of a month, Nina went from powerful wizard moonlighting as a superhero to mostly dead girl slowly fading away. There was nothing she could do about it. She had tried. She'd poured over all the books she could find, she'd sought out all the experts, and she'd even talked to Zita the Wise. There were no good news. There was no easy answer. There weren't even any hard answers. There were just terrible answers, sad looks, and deep, heavy sighs of uncertainty.

When Hex finally visited her he came with a plan. He had found something he promised. A real chance, not a great chance, but a chance. A chance to fix her, a chance to bring her back, and a chance to make things right again. She didn't want to die. Not yet. Not for several decades. Not in some shitty hospital bed under an anonymous name. Forgotten. Feared. Hated. So she agreed. They'd try, they'd try it together. Hex had found a loophole. He'd reverse engineered a curse, a terrible curse, the worst sort of curse that was never to be spoken of. It had taken him weeks of painstaking work and it had almost cost him his mind. He'd had to deal and wheel with several demons, but he had prevailed, he'd found out what he needed, what she needed.

Hex would save her.

He promised.

III: Now I'm feeling zombiefied!

Now I'm feeling zombiefied!

"Some present you gave me, the bitterest pill
My eyes is all grey
And I haven't slept in days
Locked up in your dungeon
Running around in your maze
Now I'm feeling zombiefied"

The ritual worked.

It worked exactly like it was supposed to. There was only one small problem — the ritual didn't save Nina, it killed her. Hex had made a mistake. In his desperation to find an answer, he'd been sloppy. He had committed the gravest of sins for mathematicians and wizards alike; he had neglected to double check his math. He'd saved Nina from one curse with another refashioned by his own infernal magic. He had never considered that the two curses would interact. He spared her from death by separating her from life. Hex had trapped her between life and death. He had had changed her. She could feel it, she could feel the wrongness of her new existence, she could feel how it pushed back against the reality of the material plane, and how it crackled against the veil. Dead magic flowed through her. Energies that should not have been possible, energies that should never have been, and energies that kept her in a new state of unlife.

Hex was afraid of her, but worse, he was ashamed. He was repulsed by her, he recoiled from her touch, and he locked himself away in his study. He buried himself in his ancient tomes and his work. Nina knew that she had become a reminder of his greatest failure. She was a reminder that no matter how pure his intentions were, the consequences could be unbearable, and the results horrific. Months of arcane research and experiments proved futile. Nothing worked, nothing restored her, and nothing brought her back. She gave up long before Hex did, but eventually even the Warlock lost what little hope he had managed to save.

Hex never managed to forgive himself for what happened to her and neither could Nina. She blamed the Warlock more than he blamed himself. He had damned her and he had cursed her. He had failed her. Love tore them apart and sent them along different paths. Nina was merciless and Hex found his own voice. He would not suffer the hysterics of a scorned wizard for eternity. He had a duty, he had others to protect. She did too, he begged, but Nina ignored him. She had given enough she shouted. What more did he want her to give? What more could anyone ask of her? What more could be taken from her?

Hex didn't have any answers.

She called him a coward. She called him a fool. And then she left.

IV: Haunted

Haunted

"Of freshly dug grave and death and night
These things are her essence"

Cursing her own fate, Nina fled back to Boston-Atlanta. Hiding away in a forgotten cemetery, she settled in an abandoned mausoleum content to await eternity by herself. When the loneliness of her stone crypt finally drove her close to madness she began venture out into the city. For a time she became the mysterious protector of the Autumn Hills. She patrolled at night. She kept the streets safe. She fought off criminals and supernatural creatures. Underneath the neon lights of the city she found a new purpose. She found a calling. She claimed the neighborhood as her own. She enjoyed watching over the living. She felt pride. They feared her, but more importantly they respected her. They spoke fondly of the reverent that protected them. They believed in her.

Then the voices started. At first they were nothing more than whispers. She convinced herself she was simply imagining them. She could ignore them. She could silence them. They recoiled when she shouted at them. And then she saw them. She saw all of them. She saw the ghosts that surrounded her, that begged her for a voice, and demanded she act for them.

In her madness she found herself in conflict with the police and with other heroes. They began to question her. They doubted her. She felt hatred for the first time in years. She felt rage, so much rage. She fought them. She fought the criminals and she fought the cops. She fought everyone that stood in her way. And then she died again. Some hotshot hero had buried her in a tomb of lava. It was the first time she had burned. It was the first time she had melted. Yet there was no peace, there was no rest for the wicked. She awoke again some time later in her crypt. Restored, but still dead, and different. She realized with great alarm that she was different. She had changed. Her magic was gone. Her spells forgotten. The voices were louder, they were a torrent of pleading screams. She couldn't remember her parents. She couldn't remember her home. She remembered only darkness and her regrets.

New fears coursed through her as she learned more about her affliction. She would not risk herself again. She would not risk her memories, she would not risk herself, and she would not risk what little remained of her soul. The city was no longer her concern, the citizens could rot, and the government could crumble. She would remain. She would silence the voices. She would wait. She would rest.

With each passing year, a torpor has grown inside of the unliving wizard. The world seems less interesting. Matters no longer concern her. People are no longer important to her. She no longer understands them. They are violent, impatient creatures, full of emotion, and life. Sometimes she hates them. Sometimes she misses them. But most of all she feels tired, so very tired.

Nina isn't sure how the letter from Special Agent Reynolds reached her. She hadn't expected a crow to be able to find her. She had already known. She had felt it when Hex died, the magic of the ritual had still bound them together. It had hurt. For the first time in years she had felt something. But it did not make her happy. What use was weeping? What use was feeling sorrow and loss? She had to go. She owed him. She owed Hex. He had always been better than her. He had always known she realized. He had always known she wouldn't let him down in the end.

Personality: Bitter, jaded, and angry; Nina is all of these things in great abundance. The grand adventure of being a wizard and superhero has trapped her in what she perceives to be her own personal hell. She is slowly losing herself and her memories to the eldritch energies which swirl through her. Beneath the fearless confidence of the undying, Nina hides all that she has lost and all that she desires. Memories are twisted, memories fade, and with each passing moment Nina despairs that she is losing more of herself.

Nina can no longer deny what she has become. A monster, something less than human; a creature of the night. She can feel her emotions unraveling, becoming undone, and she no longer knows how to change or return to the woman she once was. She struggles to resist her darkening thoughts and can feel a gnawing hunger, inhuman desire, unhurriedly consume what little remains of her soul. She can sense the fractures that deepen within her, slowly tearing her apart. Weakness and fragility that can only be mended with further lose of her humanity. Another heavy price to pay.

As Spellbound, Nina has retreated from humanity and other superheroes. Long since divorced from her humanity she cares little for the laws of men or the lofty morals of other superheroes. Instead, she acts of her own violation, following what she can remember of her own conscience. Withering with the dying light of her own spirit, it is becoming increasingly hard for Nina to call upon this inner voice. In Boston-Atlanta, Spellbound has become a legend, a mysterious vengeful spirit that once kept a nightly vigil over the neighborhood known as Autumn Hills. Boston-Atlanta Police Department database files detail Spellbound's activities protecting the residents of Autumn Hills, but also note several encounters with the vigilante that devolved into violence when officers attempted to impede her efforts. While rarely violent, Nina's encounters with other heroes have been sparse, terse, and full of otherworldly tension. Those that have met her, remember only a faint whisper of a voice that offered nothing more than a few cryptic words in parting. In recent years, Nina has withdrawn even further, letting the city stand alone and largely fading into nothing more than an old story.

However, despite her reclusive nature, Nina sometimes seeks the assistance of mundane mortals, supernatural creatures, and superheros to fulfill her enigmatic goals. Further, having spent too long languishing in the crypt that she calls home, she has unintentionally adopted some of the mannerisms ascribed to ancient undead creatures and to those that provide her with a service of some kind she will return the favor by allowing them to call upon her in times of great need using grim magical charms carved out of bone.

Misc Facts: Following her death in 2027, Nina has acted as the protector of the Autumn Hills neighborhood in Boston-Atlanta. Private, bordering on isolationist, she has largely avoided interaction with all other heroes or vigilantes since the start of her unlife.

As an undead creature, Nina does not have any of the physiological needs of a base human being. She doesn't need to breath, eat, or sleep. She has no pulse and her skin is as cold as the grave to the touch.

Relationship with Hex: Hex had promised. He had promised to help her. He had promised that he would find a way to save her. He was wrong. He made a mistake. He didn't save her. He cursed her. He bound her. He trapped her between life and death. He failed her. When she learned the truth she ran away. She ran away from Hex. She hated him. He had damned her. For all his ideals and good intentions, he'd sealed her fate. He'd turned her into a monster. He'd made her into a creature of the night. Far from the neon lights of Fort Cedar she found a new place and a new purpose. The Autumn Hills belonged to the Spellbound. She kept them safe. She was a monster, but not a villain.

With the passage of time, her hatred for Hex tempered. It was so hard to remember what it was like to be alive, to be so full of feeling, and life. She didn't need to see the encrypted video message from Special Agent Reynolds to know that Hex was dead, she had felt it. She had to act. She owed Hex that much, for all that he had done for her and for all of his failures.

-

Autumn Hills

Settled in the early 1700s by Eastern European immigrants, Autumn Hills, is one many ethnic neighborhoods found in the urban sprawl that was once Boston. Tinged with a darker reputation it is rumored to be home to organized crime elements and occult spirits that tend to discourage outside visitors. Which is a shame, because Autumn Hills is heaven for any visitor who likes charming and/or cluttered curiosity shops, spicy pierogis, or fresh, flavorful pirozhki just out of the oven. Night falls early here though, and Autumn Hill's mystic and crime-ridden reputation keeps most non-residents away after dusk. Brave souls may venture out at night to try to catch a glimpse of Spellbound, the mysterious guardian of Autumn Hills that was once said to haunt the neighborhood.

Adjoining the neighborhood is the Cormack Historical Cemetery. Largely abandoned, the once sprawling cemetery has slowly turned into a dark, twisted forest as the landscape has been relinquished to nature. The grand mausoleums and elaborate tombstones of a bygone era remain standing, crumbling slowly as they lay hidden beneath years of foliage and dust.

Veritas Lux Mea

Teg (Cora)

---

"By the way, how is our mechanic -Mister Staudinger- faring? Based on what little info I’ve collected, I assume the blast came from the engine room, so I should check up on him presently. One could never imagine what toxic fumes might be circulating after a shockwave such as that."

Kai’mos

"Well, if you're not going to bleed out, then let's go!" Teg interjected impatiently as soon as Kai had finished chattering over the comms. "We have to see an angry engineer about an exploding space ship. Socket promised I could take a look and I'm not sure how long he'll wait before he makes a mess!"

Full of cheer, too much cheer, an alarming amount of cheer that was probably dangerous, Teg could not help but be swept away by her emotions.

In a flury of sudden motion, she grabbed hold of Kai's hands and pulled him closer. Guiding Kai's right hand to her back, Teg placed her left hand on his shoulder as she clasped his left hand tightly in her right. Humming loudly she danced towards the corridor, practically forcing the Itho into an impromptu waltz consisting of several elaborate twirls. She had no idea if Kai could dance, if Ithos danced, or even if they could dance. She didn't care. She was positively giddy with excitement. She was hopped up the adrenaline of almost dying, yet again. It was going to be another great day on the job she thought with a low laugh.

Releasing the Kai in a fluid motion, she curtsied and flashed her best smile. "I'm hoping it was something cool, something new. Maybe the Verrens have developed another proprietary plastic explosive? I'm tired of all this amateur stuff. I need something new and shiny, something that will go boom in all the right ways. Something that will reduce a space station to rubble with barely a trace amount!"

"We'll save your herbs for another time," Teg added wistfully as she marched out of the medical room, indicating with a wave of her hand that Ithlo should follow her. The freshly stacked cabinet of herbs called out to her and reminded her of all the previous times that she had convinced the Ithlo to part with his wares. Recreational use of controlled substances made the more boring aspects of space travel so much more palatable.

R E D U X .// 2047 //.

Apologies again for redoing stuff, but I keep on getting caught up on wanting to implement Hex in my character's background. This concept is really based on the idea that even someone as lawful good as Hex as to have made a mistake at some point, with the best intentions in mind of course (*cue spooky arcane rituals*).

We Are Entranced, Spellbound

"Cats. Cats are nice."

Name: Nina Nikolayevna Noskova. // Nina to her friends. // Ninenka to her intimate friends.
Alias: Spellbound
Age: Nina was in her mid-twenties at the time of her death some twenty years ago. If she were still alive she would be in the middle of her forties.

Powers: Undead Physiology, Regeneration, and Limited Resurrection

Neither alive nor truly dead, Nina is an undead creature trapped in an unwelcome cycle of reincarnation by Hex's powerful but ultimately flawed ritual magic. Gifted with an undead physiology, Nina has superhuman strength and stamina. Lacking the physiological needs of a living, breathing human being Nina is highly resistant to physical damage. She possesses a healing factor and has gained a measure of immortality thanks to the elemental energy that imbues her form with undead life. Wile Nina has been destroyed a number of times, she always returns to life after some time, reawakening restored in her crypt in Norwood Cemetery. However, each time that she is resurrected Nina is touched by the magic woven through her soul and she is irrecoverably changed. With each new life, her powers, memories, and personality have been twisted, leaving Nina unsure if she's even the same person that she was before her death.

Weaknesses:

In her current incarnation, Nina lacks any ranged abilities.

Altered by the magic that keeps her among the living, Nina is slowly losing herself to the powers that Hex accidentally gave her with his flawed ritual. The magic surging through her have stripped her of not just her mortality but her very essence of being. Her memories have begun to change, fading into the darkness. Her personality and her form have been gnarled and reshaped into something that she can not recognize. Power, dark, unbidden power pools within her.

Standing between the living and the dead, Nina is troubled by the voices of the recently dead. Less often, she finds herself drawn to unwelcome communion with long dead spirits.

Appearance:

exceedingly pale, unhealthy pallor to her skin
elfin build
average stature
moves with an inhuman grace, practically floating above the ground when she moves
serious eyes that offer a promise of grim deeds to come
brown hair that reaches just above her shoulders

Typical Clothing:
leather boots
formal dresser, prefers a good suit

Costumed Appearance: As Spellbound, Nina wraps herself in a coarse funeral shroud that she has fashioned into a hooded cloak and several layers of black clothing. Over her hands she wears gel-lined fingerless gloves that protect her hands and wrists from the immense forces she generates with each punch. She wears black leather boots. The most modern aspect of her costume is her helmet, a tasteful number in black with darkened glass that casts shadowy reflections of all that she sees.

Back in Black

Spooky Costume

Equipment:

Origin:

I:Into The Light

Into The Light

"Standing in the light
I never wanted to be right
Now I'm attracted by the light
And blinded my the sight"

Nina was born to a family of unremarkable nobodies in Cedar Fort sometime in the early 2020s.

A middling student, she stood out only for her magical abilities at a young age. She was a contemporary of Hex, that is, until he killed her.

She was initiated into the magical arts by the Witch Zita. The wizened Slovak witch was her teacher for many years and taught Nina most what she knows about magic.

II:Arcane Delights

Arcane Delights

"Here in the garden of the arcane delights,
Dark shadows overwhelm us and we become blind.
Blind to the needs of those who would be free
From the grip of fear and the prisons of the mind."

- Becomes an arcane hero
- Meets Hex
- Budding friendship/team-up
- Several years in, she is cursed/gravely wounded fighting some BBEG of a magical sort.
- Realizing that she is slowly dying, she attempts to find a cure/solution.
- Hex manages to come up with a plan, suggests using an old occult ritual to heal her.

III: Now I'm feeling zombiefied!

Now I'm feeling zombiefied!

"Some present you gave me, the bitterest pill
My eyes is all grey
And I haven't slept in days
Locked up in your dungeon
Running around in your maze
Now I'm feeling zombiefied"

- Hex's arcane ritual ends up being flawed. Perhaps, Hex made a mistake. It is also equally possible that the ritual was tainted by the dark eldritch energies already affecting Nina (this is something that Nina refuses to entertain)
- Nina ends up neither alive nor fully dead (undead/unlife)
- The magic ritual rather than heal her twisted her into an undead creature. Caught between life and death, she was also imbued with additional powers. Most of these powers/changes would only become apparent with time.
- Predictably Nina and Hex have a following out. She accuses him of turning her into a monster. Hex is distraught and unable to accept that his magic could have done this (and the implication that a good deed or good intentions can result in greater tragedy)
- Nina leaves

IV: Haunted

Haunted

"Of freshly dug grave and death and night
These things are her essence"

- At first, Nina simply hides out the Cormack Cemetery of Autumn Hills. Cursing her own fate, despairing, and generally throwing a super great tantrum.
- Eventually, Nina decides that she will keep Autumn Hills safe and become the protector of the neighborhood.
- Nina spends the next 20 or so years protecting Autumn Hills
- Fights criminals and supernatural spirits that encroach upon her domain
- Occasionally ends up in conflict with the police, but largely they come to learn when Autumn Hills is "off-limits" to them
- Runs into other superheroes ever so often. Talks little, reveals less, and generally most of them will know nothing more than maybe that she goes by Spellbound.
- Thanks to a residual connection to Hex (stemming from the magical ritual which created her) she feels his death and also receives the recorded message.
- Fighting off a growing torpor, she decides that she owes Hex. Her anger/feelings have faded somewhat and her memories themselves have become disjointed.

Personality: Bitter, jaded, and angry; Nina is all of these things in great abundance. The grand adventure of being a wizard and superhero has trapped her in what she perceives to be her own personal hell. Slowly losing herself and her memories to the eldritch energies which swirl through her. Beneath the fearless confidence of the undying, Nina hides all that she has lost and all that she desires. Memories are twisted, memories fade, and with each passing moment Nina despairs that she is losing more of herself.

Nina can no longer deny what she has become. A monster, something less than human; a creature of the night. She can feel her emotions unraveling, becoming undone, and she no longer knows how to change or return to the woman she once was. She struggles to resist her darkening thoughts and can feel a gnawing hunger, inhuman desire, unhurriedly consume what little remains of her soul. She can sense the fractures that deepen within her, slowly tearing her apart. Weakness and fragility that can only be mended with further lose of her humanity. Another heavy price to pay.

As Spellbound, Nina has retreated from humanity and other superheroes. Long since divorced from her humanity she cares little for the laws of men or the lofty morals of other superheroes. Instead, she acts of her own violation, following what she can remember of her own conscience. Withering with the dying light of her own spirit, it is becoming increasingly hard for Nina to call upon this inner voice. In Cedar Fort, Spellbound has become a legend, a mysterious vengeful spirit that keeps a nightly vigil over the neighborhood known as Autumn Hills. Cedar Fort Police Department database files detail Spellbound's activities protecting the residents of Autumn Hills, but also note several encounters with the vigilante that devolved into violence when officers attempted to impede her efforts. While rarely violent, Nina's encounters with other heroes have been sparse, terse, and full of otherworldly tension. Those that have met her, remember only a faint whisper of a voice that offered nothing more than a few cryptic words in parting.

However, despite her reclusive nature, Nina sometimes seeks the assistance of mundane mortals, supernatural creatures, and superheros to fulfill her enigmatic goals. Further, having spent too long languishing in the crypt that she calls home, she has unintentionally adopted some of the mannerisms ascribed to ancient undead creatures and to those that provide her with a service of some kind she will return the favor by allowing them to call upon her in times of great need using grim magical charms carved out of bone.

Misc Facts: Following her death in 2027, Nina has acted as the protector of the Autumn Hills neighborhood in Cedar Fort. Private, bordering on isolationist, she has largely avoided interaction with all other heroes or vigilantes since the start of her unlife.

As an undead creature, Nina does not have any of the physiological needs of a base human being. She doesn't need to breath, eat, or sleep. She has no pulse and her skin is as cold as the grave to the touch.

Relationship with Hex: Hex had promised. He had promised to help her. He had promised that he would find a way to save her. He was wrong. He made a mistake. He didn't save her. He cursed her. He bound her. He trapped her between life and death. He failed her. When she learned the truth she ran away. She ran away from Hex. She hated him. He had damned her. For all his ideals and good intentions, he'd sealed her fate. He'd turned her into a monster. He'd made her into a creature of the night. Far from the neon lights of Fort Cedar she found a new place and a new purpose. The Autumn Hills belonged to the Spellbound. She kept them safe. She was a monster, but not a villain. Her hatred for Hex tempered. It was so hard to remember what it was like to be alive, to be so full of feeling. She didn't need to see the encrypted video message to know that Hex was dead, she had felt it. She had to act. She owed him that much, for all that he had done for her and for all of his failures.

-

Autumn Hills

Settled in the early 1700s by Eastern European immigrants, Autumn Hills, is one Cedar Fort's many ethnic neighborhoods. Tinged with a darker reputation it is rumored to be home to organized crime elements and occult spirits that tend to discourage outside visitors. Which is a shame, because Autumn Hills is heaven for any visitor who likes charming and/or cluttered curiosity shops, spicy pierogis, or fresh, flavorful pirozhki just out of the oven. Night falls early here though, and Autumn Hill's mystic and crime-ridden reputation keeps most non-residents away after dusk. Brave souls may venture out at night to catch a glimpse of Spellbound, the mysterious guardian of Autumn Hills, on one of her nightly patrols.

Adjoining the neighborhood is the Cormack Historical Cemetery. Largely abandoned, the once sprawling cemetery has slowly turned into a dark, twisted forest as the landscape has been relinquished to nature. The grand mausoleums and elaborate tombstones of a bygone era remain standing, crumbling slowly as they lay hidden beneath years of foliage and dust.