Bureau of Paranormal Investigationscharacter(s): Thea ZaneSex: Female
Age: 25
Species: Sky Siren
Additional Appearance: Thea has the
wings of a kestrel protuding from her back, with a wingspan wide enough to allow her to fly. When her wings are hidden she has what appears to be a tattoo like
this on her back and arms
Powerset: Siren
- Siren's Song (Class 3-4): The siren's ability to enchant others with their voice. Despite the name this ability is not limited to singing, and can be utilized through humming, whistling, or even speaking normally, and the effects can be increased through direct eye contact and physical touch. Once someone is under the enchantment of the song they are in a state of hypnosis and susceptible to the siren's persuasion and influence. There are limitations to what siren's can do with their song, and Thea is no different. Using the song requires energy and using it to influence and control a large group of people will quickly expend it. Even using it for an extended period of time on a single person can cost the siren energy. The stronger the mind of the person the siren is trying to enchant the harder it is for the song to remain an influence. It is also easier for a siren to use the song on a normal human than it is on a human with a paranormal ability or a fellow Otherkin. In fact it only the strongest sirens are able to maintain influence over an Otherkin's mind for very long. One of the biggest risks of a siren using their song on another for too long is something they call Sailor's Sickness, in which the effect of the song never leave the person even after the siren has lifted the enchantment. Although this is not Thea's strongest ability it is the one she is most skilled at.
- Siren's Call (Class 2): A supporting ability to the Siren's Song, the Siren's Call enables the siren to project and emit their voice farther than human capability, creating a hypnotic lure. The call can be also utilized to project the siren's voice to specific people of their choosing, as opposed to all of the people within earshot of the call.
- Siren's Wail (Class 5): A offensive/defensive ability of last resort which allows the siren to emit an extremely powerful, high pitched shriek that temporarily incapacitates all who hear it, giving the siren the chance to escape. By far a siren's most powerful ability, however the wail can only be used sparingly and drains the siren of nearly all of their energy in one go. Thea has only used it once before in her life.
Rogue power
- The Breath of Life: Thea possesses the ability to breath life back into the deceased. There are serious limitations to this ability, such as she can only revive someone who has been dead for a few days at most. She can also only revive them for a few moments before they return to their deceased state. While she cannot use this ability to save someone from the darkness if death, it does give her enough time for them to answer a few questions.
Personality Soft and delicate in appearance with a warm and unassuming disposition, Thea may appear to be in the wrong line of work. But despite the physical strength she may not possess she makes up for it with her strength in mind, will, and heart. She's clever with a quick mind and very adaptable, making her quite skilled in improvisation and character acting. She is observant, especially when it comes to people's body language and cues, and easy to trust. Off the clock Thea is naturally friendly and often humorous, enjoying a good laugh, and is usually found smiling. Despite that it can be fairly obvious at times that she has a large chip on her shoulder that haunts her, and that she's often sadder than she lets on. Still she hasn't let her past hinder her kindness or her determination. The girl is a survivor.
Her Siren persona while using her Siren's Song ability is very different from who she really is. She appears and sounds sultry, enigmatic, mysterious, and very femme fatale.
History
For about the first half of her life Thea Zane had lived a quiet, sheltered life with her Siren family, which included her mother, sisters, nieces, aunts, cousins, grandmother, and great-aunts in a large Victorian style house on the outskirts of a large human town. The house was a safe haven that her family had lived in for years, a place to raise their daughters and help them develop their abilities, while staying simultaneously close enough to and isolated from from the humans that surly wanted to hunt and eradicate their species. At the age of five Thea was the happiest girl in the world. Her mother was loving, there were so many other children to play with, their property was large and they were free to run and explore as much of it as they could. The lessons that the grown ups gave them to teach them control of their abilities, how to camouflage their wings, and of the dangerous world outside of their home could be tedious, especially to a child, but she attended them anyway and dreamed of the day that her wings were big enough so she could fly. But as she grew older the property seemed to get smaller and she began to realize that she wasn't as free as she thought she was. That they were all in hiding from some enemy she had never seen before, and almost didn't believe existed.
Her mother had always made her promise that she would never cross their property's borders, never pass through the forest and fields that separated them from the human town, and she always had. But as she grew up from a child and into a preteen she found the promise harder and harder to keep. Thea could see the human town in the distance from her bedroom window, could see the lights and night and dimly hear music in the distance, and she could feel a growing curiosity about everything outside of her little world growing within her. Her new curiosity was at odds with the suspicious nature she had been either born with or taught, and she began to grow frustrated and resentful of their property line and the cage she had always lived in. Of the loving women who were hiding them all away in fear of something that was probably only shadows. And of the way she was beginning to feel like a freak. It was a few weeks after she turned twelve when she finally broke the number one rule of her home and escaped into the trees that lined their property.
It was during her one single adventure that Thea met Will. He had been a human boy from the town that had been about her age and he had been exploring the forest that had separated from her home from his when he had heard the sound of her absentminded singing and had been drawn to it. Despite her blunder in accidentally luring him to her and of the suspicious nature she had always known, Thea found that it was easy to make friends with him and they talked for what had seemed like ages. They promised to meet each other again the next week before Will kissed her goodbye, and Thea, elated from the feeling of her first kiss, returned home, somehow managing to sneak in without anyone noticing that she had been gone. However she never got the opportunity to meet Will again.
It happened only a few nights after her venture into the woods. She was woken by the sound of a short scream that had cut off almost immediately, and the first thing she saw was the strange figure of a man standing over one of her sister's beds. She was unable to stop the scream, could not fight the instinct to run, but after she escaped the man in her bedroom she ran right into another man in the hallway. Thea's attempts to slip away from him were futile and he threw her over his shoulder as he laughed and called out to the rest of the half dozen men in her home that he had caught "the last little bird." When he threw her down onto the floor of the foyer she saw the bodies. Her grandmother, aunts, cousins, sisters, all of them were in a pile on the floor, glassy eyes staring at nothing and their clothes stained with red. More strangers entered, tossing more of her family members into this heap. But it wasn't until Thea saw a man carrying her mother's body that she started to scream like she had never screamed before. She barely heard it herself, and barely registered that the men, human hunters of Otherkin she would later learn, were writhing and convulsing from the sound. She could only look at her family. Thea Wailed for the first and only time in her life until she thought she would die, and it was only then that she noticed the perpetrators lying unconscious on the ground, and the sounds of her house collapsing. She manged to drag herself out in time before collapsing herself, half dead and wracked with sobs, and she remained there until the authorities arrived and found her.
It was then that BPI had first entered her life. They had been the ones to relocate her into an Otherkin community, and that's where she stayed for the remainder of her childhood. It took almost two years for her to process and heal from the devastation of losing her entire family, and during that time she had closed herself off from everyone, becoming introverted, angry, and sometimes aggressive. But eventually, with help from Otherkin who went through similar experiences and from the support of the whole community, she was able grieve and figured out how to move on and find happiness in her new life. Being surrounded by a number of new species reignited her curious nature and helped her overcome her renewed sense of suspicion and paranoia, and she was happy to find she was still able to make friends easily, despite everything that had happened. She wasn't able to fully go back to how she used to be, though, her rebelliousness replaced with caution and her naivety replaced with an iron will and a vow to never allow herself to be that helpless again. She spent much of her time over those years developing and learning to control of her abilities, as well as pursuing her new hobby of archery, which she found she had a real knack for.
When she turned eighteen the BPI reentered her life, telling her that they had been observing her ever since the incident and were impressed by her abilities. They told her that they might be in need of someone with her skills and offered her a job. Thea didn't even hesitate before accepting. If this new job would give her the opportunity to help people who had gone through the same sort of thing she had experiences, or even the opportunity to prevent something like it from happening to someone else, she was more than willing. Especially since, despite the genuine happiness she had found, she has always felt haunted by the massacre of her family. Particularly by the guilt that her trip across the property line and her meeting with Will may have caused it.
~~~~~Sirens of the SkyCan reproduce with humans? Yes
Physical abilities
- Avian Physiology: Although for the most part Sky Sirens externally resemble human women, they posses traits that sometimes indicates that they are closer to birds than humans. Some of these traits include feathered wings on their backs, lightweight bodies due to hollow bones, furcula bones in their chest, bird-like lungs, as well as enhanced reflexes, speed, and eyesight.
- Flight: Full grown Sky Sirens are capable of using their wings to achieve full flight. Younger Sky Sirens are able to are able to use their wings to glide.
- Wing Camouflage: Much like humans Sirens have adapted to survive. As the world modernized it became harder and harder for the Sky Siren race to remain hidden and unnoticed due to the wings protruding for their backs. Over time with with help from the more magically talented Otherkin races they were able to develop a way to hide their wings through the use of tattoo looking birthmarks on their backs and arms.
- Longevity: Sirens are by no means immortal or invulnerable, however they do possess longer life spans than humans, as well as longer youth.
Power set(s) CultureSirens are a rather secretive species and they seem to prefer to remain a mystery to the rest of the world, even to the rest of the Otherkin. However there are a few things about their culture that is common knowledge. The Sirens, both of the sea and sky, are all female, and this has a great influence over their culture. It was theorized that some of the reasons they once lured sailors to their islands was for food, to take lovers, or for the malicious intent of murdering them. Many Sirens, sea and sky alike, still worship the ancient Grecian goddesses, although there is no real organized religion among the specifies. Due to the fact that there are no males in the species Sirens must take on human male lovers in order to reproduce, and they give birth to human sons and Siren daughters (however a Siren giving birth to a son is an extremely rare occurrence). The lack of males in their species could play a factor into why there have always been a relatively small number of Sirens in the world when compared to other species of Otherkin. Sirens are not loners and are usually found living in groups, typically family units. Perhaps due to the devastation to their population in the past the Sirens have developed a paranoid and suspicious nature, preferring anonymity and as much isolation as possible, a large change from the Sirens that lived in Ancient Greece. They do not have much interaction with other species with the exception of humans, whom they live among for no other reason than the necessity for reproduction.
HistoryOne of the smaller but oldest Otherkin speices, there was once much mystery, myth, and fear surrounding the Sirens during the time of Ancient Greece, when mankind seemed to be very aware that there were monsters and gods living among them. All that seemed to be known of them was that they inhabited islands and lured passing sailors to their deaths with the sound of their voices. And for many years no one seemed to have a clear idea what the Siren species even looked like, some claiming that they lived in the ocean like fish, while others swore that they took to the sky like birds. What no one seemed to know was that there was not, and still is not, one race of Sirens but two, one in the sea and one in the sky. Sea Sirens resemble merfolk with their human-like torsos, arms, and heads and long scaly fish tails, which often leads to the two getting mixed up. Sky Sirens, on the other hand, appear largely human with the exception of the feathered wings on their backs. Despite the differences in physical appearances both races of Sirens share the same hypnotic ability to enchant others with nothing but their voices. Ancient Sirens used this gift freely and many times maliciously. As a result they were greatly feared during the Ancient Grecian times, being the cause of so many ship wrecks and deaths, and eventually the Grecian people began to hunt them in retaliation.
While the hunts were futile at first, a few men, armed with plugged ears, became successful at locating Siren families and killing them. It didn't seem to take long after the first successful Siren kill for the number of hunters start to expand and the number of Sirens, already small compared to other species of Otherkin, start to decrease. In order to protect themselves and the survival of their species the Sirens began to flee, leaving behind the homes that generations had made before them in order to find places more isolated and safe. Years began to pass, the ancient Grecian civilization came to an end, and Siren hunting became a thing of the past as the human race began to forget about the Sirens, writing them off as just a myth along with the gods and many of the other Otherkin species. It was only then that the Sirens, essentially endangered due to the devastation of the hunts as well as being isolated from the human males that they needed to reproduce, began to return from their exile. Now armed with the ability to camouflage their inhuman features, as well as with the caution against freely using their gifts, the Sirens began to assimilate themselves into human society in order to repopulate, hiding in plain sight.