I'll be working on my first IC post. ^^
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In
Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)
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8 yrs ago
Forum: Advanced Roleplay
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Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)
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8 yrs ago
Forum: Advanced Roleplay
Character you have created: Ludovico Celeste
Alias: Condor
Age: 22
Speech Color: Pale Turquoise
Character Alignment: Walking The Line (Villain In Rehabilitation)
Identity: Secret
Character Personality: "Calm like a gentle breeze in spring" is almost but not quite how most people would describe Ludo, for it would imply to some that he is an aloof and rather unassuming young man. He is certainly gentle and quiet at times, and there is a hippie-like, avant garde artist's spirit to him, uniquely imaginative and broad-minded, fond of exotic herbs and vivid colors. But in no way could he be considered meek or shy, or someone who would blindly follow somebody else's lead, rather than be himself the heart and soul of the group. He is wont to spending a lot of time in others' company on the shore of the Nahuel Huapi lake, be it reading poetry aloud, playing his guitar, swimming, or just lying on the black sand.
Condor, on the other hand, could be fittingly called a "roaring gale of color." A one-man riot of exhilarating enthusiasm, Condor is candidly transgressive, a rock star in a world of boy scouts. Though he is occasionally as quiet and thoughtful as when he is just Ludo, bursts of sharp, rebellious words and quick, energetic action are constants in Condor's behavior. He defies authority with pride, and is specially happy to embrace his power as a tool to inconvenience the powerful. There is a chaotic cheerfulness to his fighting style, even when breathless and injured, and shows a goofy, almost bizarre sense of humor in the face of difficulty.
Although he despises cruelty and needless bloodshed, Condor finds no small amount of fun and satisfaction in using his abilities. Few things make him feel as fulfilled as the liberating sensation that comes with soaring like a bird and commanding the air around him.
Uninterested in conventional notions of chivalry, Condor is willing to deceive others for the greater good. His tendency to place his ideals before the very thought of compromise can make him seem unreliable, and his nearly single-minded idealism can at times blind him to the more immediately pressing. He can also get lost in the intoxicating haze of a good fight and make mistakes, and mindful as he is of other people's feelings and needs, it is that same sensitivity that often provokes him to put himself in harm's way.
His perspective on what today's heroes and villains are in reality, as opposed to what they should be, has been molded by his villainous past and its aftermath. It sets him apart from many of his peers, who hold a more simplistic view of the hero-villain dichotomy. When he was an enemy of the self-proclaimed "good guys", he saw that many villains were just trapped in a downward spiral of violence that was enabled in large part by their heroic nemeses. Once he was torn away from that world, he witnessed how many of those who put on a mask and fought crime did it for selfish or shallow reasons, how many just wanted to use vigilante justice to sate their thirst for blood, and how many turned out to be mere tools of oppression.
These realities he has encountered have kept Condor from adopting the typical heroic lifestyle, since he perceives many of those who have as hypocrites who only perpetuate the cycle of brutality with their antics. Yet despite this, his rehabilitation has bore fruit, and the new Condor seeks to do good on his own terms, repulsed by the idea of using his skills against the powerless.
He is at his best, in spirits and skill, when he gets the opportunity to use his abilities against mighty foes, when the stakes are high. Rather than be a self-righteous paladin of order and tradition, he has chosen to walk an alternative, kind of radical, trickier path: protecting people from the excesses of heroes as well as the cruelty of villains. In a sense, he has chosen to become the answer to the question of "who watches the watchmen?"
The anarchic Condor is not satisfied with just stopping everyday petty crime or foiling the latest criminal mastermind's bombastic schemes, nor takes such things too seriously. His visceral dislike for bullies extends far beyond just them, and into spheres oft neglected by superheroes, including the bullies within their own ranks and the tyranny of the various governments and corporations that sponsor them. And when it comes to bullies, Condor fights fire with fire.
All that asides, Ludovico Celeste is not a particularly abnormal young man. An amateur artist and musician with half a degree in environmental studies, he enjoys pop and rock music from decades past, loves nature and swimming, and is a staunch dog person. Though hardly a party animal, he is sociable and caring, if at times excessively so. Fiercely protective and even territorial, he dotes on his loved ones and has no qualms about confronting anyone who steps into his "turf", even if they are blatanty more powerful than him. He is also openly queer, insofar as his relationship with Puma was never as much of a secret in the world of masked heroes and villains as Puma would have preferred, and Ludo was awfully nonchalant about it.
Appearance and Costume:
Beyond any doubt, the most distinctive piece of Condor's costume is his cloak. Inspired by the plumage of real condors, and comprised almost entirely from fake but fully functional feathers, Ludo designed it to serve as his wings during spirarekinetic flight. Though it may look like a single piece when he is standing on the ground, the cloak is actually formed by three separate pieces that simulate his namesake's wings and tail.
Beneath the cloak, Condor conceals a full body armor, along with an array of weapons and gadgets. On his hands and feet, Ludo wears armored gloves and boots made to ressemble a condor's talons.
Condor's mask, in the beginning little more than a carnival half mask in the shape of a bird, has since been replaced by a sturdier, combat-ready combination of metallic half mask and computerized goggles.
Among his weapons of choice he includes a pair of pistols, which he sometimes but not always loads with non-lethal ammunition, a set of boleadoras, and a whip.
Origin Info/Details: He was twelve years old when he first flew, swept up and away from the deep dark chasm he had been falling into by a powerful gale that had not been there before.
For a few short, fleeting moments, as he soared high above the earth, he was like a carefree bird, unrestrained by the earth, and alone with the pale blue skies. And in that time he felt both liberated and strangely at home.
It all went downhill from there. Superpowers, as it turned out, were precisely what you did not want a rebellious and imaginative child to develop.
By then he had already become aware of how the air would act strangely around him, how strong winds seemed almost reluctant to blow against him, and how sometimes the intensity of the breeze appeared to reflect his mood. Cool stuff, all in all.
Ludovico Celeste was raised in the Argentine Patagonia, near the small city of Bariloche. His parents and two brothers were normal human beings, give or take the formers' history of experimenting with all manner of strange chemicals, and they lived in a large house near the Nahel Huapi lake, where the air was always calm and everything smelled of pine trees. It was a comfy, luxurious home, if you were able to ignore his father's and oldest brother's machismo and penchant for abuse and humilliation, or his mother's near fundamentalist brand of conservative snobbery.
The little whirlwind of a child that they uncreatively nicknamed Ludo found it to be an intolerable, asphyxiating setting to grow up in, and he wreaked some fairly creative havoc wherever he went. He got into fights with other children often, although not always unjustified, and disappeared for hours at a time, only to return well past midnight with a blank look on his face and a scowling police officer behind him.
An authoritarian Catholic education did little to change the boy's behavior and, if anything, it made it worse. Most of the other children at his school were not too fond of the weird boy with a precocious fascination for abstract art and music from the 1970's, and insanely good luck when it came to paper plane competitions. His teachers, on the other hand, were rather keen on him, despite his more unorthodox leanings, although that did not improve his popularity among his peers in the least. He got bullied a lot, and while others would have stood up to their bullies, or called on the help of adults, Ludo chose a different approach: he stole from some of them, framed the others for it, and enjoyed the chaos that ensued. He liked chaos.
That early mischief, however, would not influence his eventual embrace of villainy nearly as much as meeting a slightly older telepathic boy called Christian did.
Christian did not even go to his school. In fact, he lived in the shanty town that was growing in the city's outskirts. He just appeared on Ludo's doorstep with ice cream one day, but Ludo did not really mind. He liked ice cream, and he found he liked spending time with someone who did not wear a rosary around their neck at all times and had no qualms about listening to Freddie Mercury's heavenly voice. Also, Christian enjoyed causing people to hallucinate, and Ludo discovered that he liked hallucinating.
Was it love at first sight? No, but it was Ludo's introduction to the world of childhood supervillainy, and in hindsight that was even better. Christian told him about some of the great telepathic villains of the time, starting with Captain Phobetor, and all the amazing things they could do. And Christian was convinced that Ludo's powers were just a very biased form of telekinesis, and so he thought that maybe Ludo could become his very own sidekick.
Christian was wrong on both accounts. Ludo's parents, who knew nothing about superpowers yet knew a suspicious lot about chemistry and physics, were pretty adamant about his "spirarekinesis" having something to do with his genetic makeup, his nervous system's reactions to air and viceversa, and probably some powerful extraterrestrial or extradimensional entity's convoluted shenanigans. Nothing to do with telekinesis. Also, Ludo was terrible sidekick material.
The two boys did manage to get an early taste of supervillainy together in the years that followed, and grew very close because of it. As they entered their teenage years, their antics grew bolder and harder to keep secret, but they still got away with almost everything except adopting a huge litter of puppies. They also ended up sharing their first kiss, but it was a one time, heat of the moment thing, and they partially blamed marijuana and Freddie Mercury's heavenly voice.
Their cute little partnership in crime ended suddenly, a couple of months after Ludo turned fifteen. It was nothing tragic, yet it was nevertheless a bummer: Christian's parents decided to move across the border, to Chile, and so the young telepath was gone from Ludo's life, leaving behind his Queen albums and a whole life's worth of villainous plans.
This change did not turn Ludo away from his life of crime. He continued to get involved in all manner of incidents, ranging from assaulting a new generation of school bullies to stealing a car. If anything, his behavior worsened.
Almost at the end of their rope, it came as a relief to his parents when Ludo announced, at the end of his last year of secondary school, that he wanted to move to Buenos Aires and continue his education there. Trusting his word that he would try to be just another teenager, and avoid committing any other crimes, they happily sent him off.
Ludo, as it turned out, had lied through his teeth. Upon Christian's departure, he had soon come to the conclusion that being a villain, doing what Captain Phobetor and others did, was the only thing he was good for. And so, once he arrived in Buenos Aires, he immediately began to work on his masked persona, Condor, and set out to earn himself a reputation by terrorizing the heart of the city.
The villainous Condor mostly dealt in burglary at first, breaking into upper class apartments and office buildings in the middle of the night. He then moved on to kidnappings and smuggling, aided by a growing number of trustworthy urchins, and began to spend time in the villas miseria, the evergrowing slums of Buenos Aires. In there he made friends of sorts with those who benefited from his smuggling, and witnessed first-hand how the police and some costumed heroes openly mistreated the people in the villas miseria.
For four years, Condor was one of the most notorious young figures among Buenos Aires' costumed heroes and villains, which was not saying a lot, given how few there were at the time. While Ludo attended classes at the University of Buenos Aires, Condor's reign of crime caught the attention of a growing number of heroes, eager to take down the latest threat to public order in the Latin American metropolis. Among those heroes, few were as committed to taking him down as the group known as the Patricians, Argentina' s first league of heroes, and also the first league of heroes to be linked to police corruption and neo-nazi hate crimes. Led by a young shapeshifter called Puma, the Patricians clashed with Condor over and over, often foiling his plans yet never capturing him.
Now, Puma and Condor did not fall in love at first sight, but with every confrontation the two became increasingly fascinated with one another. In time their mutual interest transformed into something almost romantic, with some flirting and innuendo during their fights. It finally got outright sexual once they accidentally discovered one another's secret identities, having both been attending the same classes for months without noticing.
For a while, the two young men lived a triple life, pretending to be normal university students by day, acting as one another's nemesis during the nights, and occasionally being true to themselves and each other when they managed to be alone. It was an arrangement that was doomed by the laws of clichés and they knew it, but they had their fun while they lasted. Or at least Ludo did, while the extremely closeted Puma went out of his way to make a martyrdom out of the affair.
The demon invasion of Lost Haven and the Reign of Nightmare crisis changed everything, starting with the tolerance S.T.R.I.K.E. and their allies abroad showed towards uncontrolled supervillains. On the fourth year of Condor's career, a continental crackdown started, with the Patricians leading the efforts in Argentina alongside S.T.R.I.K.E. agents.
At first, Condor tried to remain neutral and just lay low, and urged Puma to run away to Patagonia with him. Puma being a goody two-shoes to the core, he instead begged his lover to surrender. Radicalized by the countless abuses of power committed by many of the heroes that now hypocritically persecuted him and his peers, Condor refused, and joined a haphazardly organized coalition of supervillains and crime lords in order to resist the crackdown. The two lovers only agreed to protect each other's secret identity and avoid fighting one another during the upcoming clash.
The battle for the streets of Buenos Aires began with an attack on the largest villa miseria, and it was brutal. Several people died on both sides, and civilians were caught in the middle, when not actively targeted by the more authoritarian heroes or the more malicious villains. The amount of innocents hurt by both sides drove Condor to fight heroes and some villains alike, earning him the scorn and a silent promise of retaliation from the coalition's leaders.
The conflict spread to other neighborhoods, but before long it was obvious to both factions that the heroes were winning, and those few villains that were able to fled. Condor was one of the last to do so, after leaving his first tornado ever behind to keep the pursuing S.T.R.I.K.E. agents and Patricians busy.
He returned to Bariloche and his family, and sent Puma a secret message, urging his lover to abandon his own allies as well and join him. In hindsight, he really should have known better.
Three days later, while Ludo was having a nice evening in the city centre, the heroes arrived in Bariloche in force.
Puma had yielded to peer pressure and betrayed him, and now they had all come to bring down one of the few remaning villains in the country. The latter did not trouble him an awful lot, but the betrayal would forever be one of the biggest disappointments of Ludo's life.
The final battle between Ludo and the heroes was, as far as Ludo was concerned, the most fun he ever had. At least up until it got serious. He was listening to his favorite music throughout the whole thing, and the variety in opponents meant he had to get really original with how he used his powers and training.
Within minutes, the city centre was severely damaged and several acres of nearby forest burned. That upset him, specially because it was not his fault and he had grown to like the forests while far away from them. Injured and losing control of his powers, yet still quite eager, Ludo lashed out. And it got ugly. Three heroes died, and innocents were endangered.
Eventually, one electrokinetic hero managed to give Ludo a nasty shock, which left him weak enough that his powers lost effectiveness, and a melee ensued. Outnumbered, the exhausted Ludo was finally subdued, and the heroes prepared to summarily execute him in front of Puma's eyes. Dumb move. And even dumber was their decision to delay it for a few precious seconds.
Puma struck with a properly feline growl, or so Ludo thought at the time, just as they were about to electrocute him to death. With much effort, Ludo took his opportunity to rejoin the fight alongside his former lover. Together they won, although Ludo would later claim that it was his wind blowing the heroes to the other side of the long and cold lake that did it, not Puma's kitty claws.
The two fled into the wilderness, and spent the aftermath of the epic battle apologizing profusely to one another, and making all manner of promises that they half-expected not to keep. Puma swore to abandon the Patriots and take his heroism abroad, admitting at last that he had blindly accepted others' atrocities in the name of heroism. And in return Ludo swore to abandon villainy and try to use his powers for good, admitting at last that he needed to change if he did not want to put more innocent lives in peril. The two parted ways soon after as friends with a handful of benefits.
Left entirely to his own devices from then onwards, Ludo eventually chose to continue living as Condor, but without pledging allegiance to either heroism or villainy. A couple of weeks later, with the worst of the crackdown over, he put his costume back on and returned to Buenos Aires, intent on keeping his word, but trying to still have some fun on the side.
The months since then have gone by slowly in Ludo's eyes, but definitely not because due to inactivity. While he still dedicates most of his efforts to persisting troubles in South America, the ground zero of superheroism and supervillainy that the United States appear to be has caught his attention. With stuff like the Umbraxis and Pax Metahumana crises revolving around Lost Haven and other American metropolises, Ludo cannot help but wonder what opportunities await for someone like him in a place such as that.
Hero Type: Elemental
Power Level:
B. City Level - Normal
C. World Level - Potential
C. World Level - Potential
Powers:
Spirarekinesis: The wind is Condor's to command. From changing the direction of a mere breeze to creating tornados, if it involves air he can manipulate it as he sees fit. Thus far he has not used this power on a massive scale, but in theory he should be able to control and even generate some of the most devastating wind phenomena imaginable, if he ever found himself in the extremely specific and statistically unlikely mental state that would allow it.
Spirarekinetic Flight: Condor has had enough experience using his artificial wings for him to ride any natural air current strong enough to carry him. His powers over the wind, however, mean that he does not depend on those natural air currents to take flight. He can always create his own air currents, and that is all sorts of fun.
Spirarekinetic Combat: It takes a lot of training and quick thinking to be able to use spirarekinesis to enhance your every blow. Condor may not always have the presence of mind to micromanage his power to such a degree, but he knows how to do it, and has done it more than enough times to be good at it.
Spirarekinetic Flight: Condor has had enough experience using his artificial wings for him to ride any natural air current strong enough to carry him. His powers over the wind, however, mean that he does not depend on those natural air currents to take flight. He can always create his own air currents, and that is all sorts of fun.
Spirarekinetic Combat: It takes a lot of training and quick thinking to be able to use spirarekinesis to enhance your every blow. Condor may not always have the presence of mind to micromanage his power to such a degree, but he knows how to do it, and has done it more than enough times to be good at it.
Attributes:
Height: 1.79 meters
Weight: 72 kilograms
Strength Level: Normal Human
Speed/Reaction Timing Level: 20
Endurance at MAXIMUM Effort: Normal Human
Agility: 5X
Intelligence: Average
Fighting Skill: Trained
Weight: 72 kilograms
Strength Level: Normal Human
Speed/Reaction Timing Level: 20
Endurance at MAXIMUM Effort: Normal Human
Agility: 5X
Intelligence: Average
Fighting Skill: Trained
Resources: Average
Weaknesses: Ludo's body is human and very much mortal. He knows for a fact that a bullet can wound him as easily as any other person, that illness can weaken him, and that he is only as strong as his human muscles allow him to be. Furthermore, the effectiveness of his powers is influenced in large part by his state of mind, and using his powers can be physically and mentally exhausting even while motionless.
Supporting Characters:
Marcos Celeste: Ludo's father. He has no idea his son is Condor. That is probably for the best, since he would certainly have something hurtful to say about all those feathers.
Lucía Celeste: Ludo's mother. She definitely suspects that her son is Condor, but she has spent over two decades pretending that there is nothing problematic to talk about in her family, and she is not going to stop now.
Nicolás Celeste: Ludo's older brother. He lives abroad and they don't talk at all.
Iván Celeste: Ludo's younger brother. Ludo actually likes him, dotes on him even, and he is the only person in the family that knows for a fact that he is Condor, because Ludo told him.
Puma: Shapeshifting superhero and Ludo's former lover. His real name is Felipe Massella, but Ludo hates it, so he refers to him exclusively as Puma. They have a long distance friendship with benefits going on.
Others: There are several other friends and acquaintances in Ludo's life, but it would be fair to say that they are not particularly relevant to his life as Condor.
Lucía Celeste: Ludo's mother. She definitely suspects that her son is Condor, but she has spent over two decades pretending that there is nothing problematic to talk about in her family, and she is not going to stop now.
Nicolás Celeste: Ludo's older brother. He lives abroad and they don't talk at all.
Iván Celeste: Ludo's younger brother. Ludo actually likes him, dotes on him even, and he is the only person in the family that knows for a fact that he is Condor, because Ludo told him.
Puma: Shapeshifting superhero and Ludo's former lover. His real name is Felipe Massella, but Ludo hates it, so he refers to him exclusively as Puma. They have a long distance friendship with benefits going on.
Others: There are several other friends and acquaintances in Ludo's life, but it would be fair to say that they are not particularly relevant to his life as Condor.
Do you know how to post pictures on RPG boards?:
Sample Post:
It was a lovely evening, in Ludo's opinion. The sky was clear and full of stars, which he liked, and the air had just a hint of a cool autumn breeze, which he absolutely adored. The soft music being played by a teenager with a guitar in a corner nearby was much appreciated as well, even if he was playing something by the Rolling Stones. He was not a fan.
Also, he was surrounded by a group of costumed heroes, including the one very handsome cat-guy who he really wanted to punch right then and there. But he was trying to be nice, and there were still some people in the square, apparently thinking that whatever came next would be worth the risk. At least they were not taking selfies.
"Condor..." Said Puma, his Puma, standing just two feet away from him, arms opened wide as if trying to suggest that this did not have to get violent. He had always been a bad liar, which Ludo thought was a bad trait for a masked vigilante, but a pretty neat one for a lover. Silver linings.
"You might as well call me by my actual name, since it looks to me like they know it already. And I'm not even wearing my costume." Said Ludo, smiling, as he took a step closer to the other man, hands inside his long black coat's pockets. "Also, I'm a dog person and you know it, so don't give me your sad kitty eyes. Just say you're sorry and we'll get on with it."
Puma moved forward as well, and Ludo was suddenly reminded of how much taller than him the shapeshifter was. "I promise I'll keep you safe if you just give yourself up."
Condor spared the rest of the heroes a glance. Ironclad, Blue Angel, Taurus, Night Lancer... Their expressions were not too difficult to read. Most of them wanted a fight, an opportunity to beat him to a bloody pulp, and maybe rid the world of a criminal if he resisted just a bit too much. They were the living embodiments of the generation of laughably grim heroes.
Things were going to get fun rather quickly if Puma did not up the ante.
"Did you guys tell him that this is supposed to be a summary execution?" He asked the others, nodding in Puma's direction, as he reached into his pockets and pulled out a small pair of headphones. "Or did you figure he would just go along with it if you kept it as a last-minute surprise?"
"Ludo, stop it." Growled Puma, placing a hand on the back of Ludo's head and pulling him closer, his breath ghosting on Ludo's lips. "I don't want you to fight. I don't want you to get hurt. I don't want it to end like this."
"Then you shouldn't have come." Ludo answered, his smile fading, as he put his headphones on. "Because I'm angry as shit right now, and there is not way I'm leaving this city, my home, without punching you in your amazing mouth."
He swiftly pressed his lips against Puma's, releasing a small sigh into the other's mouth as a surprised Puma kissed back, and only some of the emotion behind it all was anger. The punch that those same lips received as soon as they parted, however, as well as the sudden gust of wind that blew Puma several feet away and into the big bronze statue of President Roca, were definitely all anger.
For just a second, Ludo allowed himself to feel that anger, sighing again and closing his eyes, just feeling the cool autumn breeze on his face. He heard Puma groan in pain, and the prelude of violent movement among the remaining heroes, but paid no mind to either for just that moment. He tied his hair back, adjusted his headphones, and rubbed his hands together to keep them warm.
Opening his brown eyes again, he turned towards the others, and grinned as they charged at him, the night made suddenly brighter and colorful by their various powers.
And not a moment too soon, because his song had just started playing.
"Hail Hydra, bitches!" He shouted with a laugh as he jumped into the air and, pushed forward by another gust of wind, delivered a nice, hard kick to Taurus' face. He sent the bull-themed muscle hero staggering a few feet back, which gave him just enough space to give that same gust of wind a nice strong swirl that blew Night Lancer and Ironclad away.
Captain Metatron and Blue Angel took a bit more effort, but nothing that a cheap trick like tripping them over and hitting them with a flying bench could not solve. After that, he just had to avoid a recovered Ironclad's iron-clad punches, and the Night Lancer's obscenely long weapon, and hit back to the beat of Soda Stereo, which was fun.
For a couple of minutes, he almost forgot how angry and hurt he felt.
In
Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)
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8 yrs ago
Forum: Advanced Roleplay
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Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)
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8 yrs ago
Forum: Advanced Roleplay
Well, after a long while of thinking and lurking, here's at long last my application. :P
Character you have created: Ludovico Celeste
Alias: Condor
Age: 22
Speech Color: Pale Turquoise
Character Alignment: Walking The Line (Villain In Rehabilitation)
Identity: Secret
Character Personality: "Calm like a gentle breeze in spring" is almost but not quite how most people would describe Ludo, for it would imply to some that he is an aloof and rather unassuming young man. He is certainly gentle and quiet at times, and there is a hippie-like, avant garde artist's spirit to him, uniquely imaginative and broad-minded, fond of exotic herbs and vivid colors. But in no way could he be considered meek or shy, or someone who would blindly follow somebody else's lead, rather than be himself the heart and soul of the group. He is wont to spending a lot of time in others' company on the shore of the Nahuel Huapi lake, be it reading poetry aloud, playing his guitar, swimming, or just lying on the black sand.
Condor, on the other hand, could be fittingly called a "roaring gale of color." A one-man riot of exhilarating enthusiasm, Condor is candidly transgressive, a rock star in a world of boy scouts. Though he is occasionally as quiet and thoughtful as when he is just Ludo, bursts of sharp, rebellious words and quick, energetic action are constants in Condor's behavior. He defies authority with pride, and is specially happy to embrace his power as a tool to inconvenience the powerful. There is a chaotic cheerfulness to his fighting style, even when breathless and injured, and shows a goofy, almost bizarre sense of humor in the face of difficulty.
Although he despises cruelty and needless bloodshed, Condor finds no small amount of fun and satisfaction in using his abilities. Few things make him feel as fulfilled as the liberating sensation that comes with soaring like a bird and commanding the air around him.
Uninterested in conventional notions of chivalry, Condor is willing to deceive others for the greater good. His tendency to place his ideals before the very thought of compromise can make him seem unreliable, and his nearly single-minded idealism can at times blind him to the more immediately pressing. He can also get lost in the intoxicating haze of a good fight and make mistakes, and mindful as he is of other people's feelings and needs, it is that same sensitivity that often provokes him to put himself in harm's way.
His perspective on what today's heroes and villains are in reality, as opposed to what they should be, has been molded by his villainous past and its aftermath. It sets him apart from many of his peers, who hold a more simplistic view of the hero-villain dichotomy. When he was an enemy of the self-proclaimed "good guys", he saw that many villains were just trapped in a downward spiral of violence that was enabled in large part by their heroic nemeses. Once he was torn away from that world, he witnessed how many of those who put on a mask and fought crime did it for selfish or shallow reasons, how many just wanted to use vigilante justice to sate their thirst for blood, and how many turned out to be mere tools of oppression.
These realities he has encountered have kept Condor from adopting the typical heroic lifestyle, since he perceives many of those who have as hypocrites who only perpetuate the cycle of brutality with their antics. Yet despite this, his rehabilitation has bore fruit, and the new Condor seeks to do good on his own terms, repulsed by the idea of using his skills against the powerless.
He is at his best, in spirits and skill, when he gets the opportunity to use his abilities against mighty foes, when the stakes are high. Rather than be a self-righteous paladin of order and tradition, he has chosen to walk an alternative, kind of radical, trickier path: protecting people from the excesses of heroes as well as the cruelty of villains. In a sense, he has chosen to become the answer to the question of "who watches the watchmen?"
The anarchic Condor is not satisfied with just stopping everyday petty crime or foiling the latest criminal mastermind's bombastic schemes, nor takes such things too seriously. His visceral dislike for bullies extends far beyond just them, and into spheres oft neglected by superheroes, including the bullies within their own ranks and the tyranny of the various governments and corporations that sponsor them. And when it comes to bullies, Condor fights fire with fire.
All that asides, Ludovico Celeste is not a particularly abnormal young man. An amateur artist and musician with half a degree in environmental studies, he enjoys pop and rock music from decades past, loves nature and swimming, and is a staunch dog person. Though hardly a party animal, he is sociable and caring, if at times excessively so. Fiercely protective and even territorial, he dotes on his loved ones and has no qualms about confronting anyone who steps into his "turf", even if they are blatanty more powerful than him. He is also openly gay, insofar as his relationship with Puma was never as much of a secret in the world of masked heroes and villains as Puma would have preferred, and Ludo was awfully nonchalant about it.
Appearance and Costume:
Beyond any doubt, the most distinctive piece of Condor's costume is his cloak. Inspired by the plumage of real condors, and comprised almost entirely from fake but fully functional feathers, Ludo designed it to serve as his wings during spirarekinetic flight. Though it may look like a single piece when he is standing on the ground, the cloak is actually formed by three separate pieces that simulate his namesake's wings and tail.
Beneath the cloak, Condor conceals a full body armor, along with an array of weapons and gadgets. On his hands and feet, Ludo wears armored gloves and boots made to ressemble a condor's talons.
Condor's mask, in the beginning little more than a carnival half mask in the shape of a bird, has since been replaced by a sturdier, combat-ready combination of metallic half mask and computerized goggles.
Among his weapons of choice he includes a pair of pistols, which he sometimes but not always loads with non-lethal ammunition, and a set of boleadoras.
Origin Info/Details: He was twelve years old when he first flew, swept up and away from the deep dark chasm he had been falling into by a powerful gale that had not been there before.
For a few short, fleeting moments, as he soared high above the earth, he was like a carefree bird, unrestrained by the earth, and alone with the pale blue skies. And in that time he felt both liberated and strangely at home.
It all went downhill from there. Superpowers, as it turned out, were precisely what you did not want a rebellious and imaginative child to develop.
By then he had already become aware of how the air would act strangely around him, how strong winds seemed almost reluctant to blow against him, and how sometimes the intensity of the breeze appeared to reflect his mood. Cool stuff, all in all.
Ludovico Celeste was raised in the Argentine Patagonia, near the small city of Bariloche. His parents and two brothers were normal human beings, give or take the formers' history of experimenting with all manner of strange chemicals, and they lived in a large house near the Nahel Huapi lake, where the air was always calm and everything smelled of pine trees. It was a comfy, luxurious home, if you were able to ignore his father's and oldest brother's machismo and penchant for abuse and humilliation, or his mother's near fundamentalist brand of conservative snobbery.
The little whirlwind of a child that they uncreatively nicknamed Ludo found it to be an intolerable, asphyxiating setting to grow up in, and he wreaked some fairly creative havoc wherever he went. He got into fights with other children often, although not always unjustified, and disappeared for hours at a time, only to return well past midnight with a blank look on his face and a scowling police officer behind him.
An authoritarian Catholic education did little to change the boy's behavior and, if anything, it made it worse. Most of the other children at his school were not too fond of the weird boy with a precocious fascination for abstract art and music from the 1970's, and insanely good luck when it came to paper plane competitions. His teachers, on the other hand, were rather keen on him, despite his more unorthodox leanings, although that did not improve his popularity among his peers in the least. He got bullied a lot, and while others would have stood up to their bullies, or called on the help of adults, Ludo chose a different approach: he stole from some of them, framed the others for it, and enjoyed the chaos that ensued. He liked chaos.
That early mischief, however, would not influence his eventual embrace of villainy nearly as much as meeting a slightly older telepathic boy called Christian did.
Christian did not even go to his school. In fact, he lived in the shanty town that was growing in the city's outskirts. He just appeared on Ludo's doorstep with ice cream one day, but Ludo did not really mind. He liked ice cream, and he found he liked spending time with someone who did not wear a rosary around their neck at all times and had no qualms about listening to Freddie Mercury's heavenly voice. Also, Christian enjoyed causing people to hallucinate, and Ludo discovered that he liked hallucinating.
Was it love at first sight? No, but it was Ludo's introduction to the world of childhood supervillainy, and in hindsight that was even better. Christian told him about some of the great telepathic villains of the time, starting with Captain Phobetor, and all the amazing things they could do. And Christian was convinced that Ludo's powers were just a very biased form of telekinesis, and so he thought that maybe Ludo could become his very own sidekick.
Christian was wrong on both accounts. Ludo's parents, who knew nothing about superpowers yet knew a suspicious lot about chemistry and physics, were pretty adamant about his "spirarekinesis" having something to do with his genetic makeup, his nervous system's reactions to air and viceversa, and probably some powerful extraterrestrial or extradimensional entity's convoluted shenanigans. Nothing to do with telekinesis. Also, Ludo was terrible sidekick material.
The two boys did manage to get an early taste of supervillainy together in the years that followed, and grew very close because of it. As they entered their teenage years, their antics grew bolder and harder to keep secret, but they still got away with almost everything except adopting a huge litter of puppies. They also ended up sharing their first kiss, but it was a one time, heat of the moment thing, and they partially blamed marijuana and Freddie Mercury's heavenly voice.
Their cute little partnership in crime ended suddenly, a couple of months after Ludo turned fifteen. It was nothing tragic, yet it was nevertheless a bummer: Christian's parents decided to move across the border, to Chile, and so the young telepath was gone from Ludo's life, leaving behind his Queen albums and a whole life's worth of villainous plans.
This change did not turn Ludo away from his life of crime. He continued to get involved in all manner of incidents, ranging from assaulting a new generation of school bullies to stealing a car. If anything, his behavior worsened.
Almost at the end of their rope, it came as a relief to his parents when Ludo announced, at the end of his last year of secondary school, that he wanted to move to Buenos Aires and continue his education there. Trusting his word that he would try to be just another teenager, and avoid committing any other crimes, they happily sent him off.
Ludo, as it turned out, had lied through his teeth. Upon Christian's departure, he had soon come to the conclusion that being a villain, doing what Captain Phobetor and others did, was the only thing he was good for. And so, once he arrived in Buenos Aires, he immediately began to work on his masked persona, Condor, and set out to earn himself a reputation by terrorizing the heart of the city.
The villainous Condor mostly dealt in burglary at first, breaking into upper class apartments and office buildings in the middle of the night. He then moved on to kidnappings and smuggling, aided by a growing number of trustworthy urchins, and began to spend time in the villas miseria, the evergrowing slums of Buenos Aires. In there he made friends of sorts with those who benefited from his smuggling, and witnessed first-hand how the police and some costumed heroes openly mistreated the people in the villas miseria.
For four years, Condor was one of the most notorious young figures among Buenos Aires' costumed heroes and villains, which was not saying a lot, given how few there were at the time. While Ludo attended classes at the University of Buenos Aires, Condor's reign of crime caught the attention of a growing number of heroes, eager to take down the latest threat to public order in the Latin American metropolis. Among those heroes, few were as committed to taking him down as the group known as the Patricians, Argentina' s first league of heroes, and also the first league of heroes to be linked to police corruption and neo-nazi hate crimes. Led by a young shapeshifter called Puma, the Patricians clashed with Condor over and over, often foiling his plans yet never capturing him.
Now, Puma and Condor did not fall in love at first sight, but with every confrontation the two became increasingly fascinated with one another. In time their mutual interest transformed into something almost romantic, with some flirting and innuendo during their fights. It finally got outright sexual once they accidentally discovered one another's secret identities, having both been attending the same classes for months without noticing.
For a while, the two young men lived a triple life, pretending to be normal university students by day, acting as one another's nemesis during the nights, and occasionally being true to themselves and each other when they managed to be alone. It was an arrangement that was doomed by the laws of clichés and they knew it, but they had their fun while they lasted. Or at least Ludo did, while the extremely closeted Puma went out of his way to make a martyrdom out of the affair.
The demon invasion of Lost Haven and the Reign of Nightmare crisis changed everything, starting with the tolerance S.T.R.I.K.E. and their allies abroad showed towards uncontrolled supervillains. On the fourth year of Condor's career, a continental crackdown started, with the Patricians leading the efforts in Argentina alongside S.T.R.I.K.E. agents.
At first, Condor tried to remain neutral and just lay low, and urged Puma to run away to Patagonia with him. Puma being a goody two-shoes to the core, he instead begged his lover to surrender. Radicalized by the countless abuses of power committed by many of the heroes that now hypocritically persecuted him and his peers, Condor refused, and joined a haphazardly organized coalition of supervillains and crime lords in order to resist the crackdown. The two lovers only agreed to protect each other's secret identity and avoid fighting one another during the upcoming clash.
The battle for the streets of Buenos Aires began with an attack on the largest villa miseria, and it was brutal. Several people died on both sides, and civilians were caught in the middle, when not actively targeted by the more authoritarian heroes or the more malicious villains. The amount of innocents hurt by both sides drove Condor to fight heroes and some villains alike, earning him the scorn and a silent promise of retaliation from the coalition's leaders.
The conflict spread to other neighborhoods, but before long it was obvious to both factions that the heroes were winning, and those few villains that were able to fled. Condor was one of the last to do so, after leaving his first tornado ever behind to keep the pursuing S.T.R.I.K.E. agents and Patricians busy.
He returned to Bariloche and his family, and sent Puma a secret message, urging his lover to abandon his own allies as well and join him. In hindsight, he really should have known better.
Three days later, while Ludo was having a nice evening in the city centre, the heroes arrived in Bariloche in force.
Puma had yielded to peer pressure and betrayed him, and now they had all come to bring down one of the few remaning villains in the country. The latter did not trouble him an awful lot, but the betrayal would forever be one of the biggest disappointments of Ludo's life.
The final battle between Ludo and the heroes was, as far as Ludo was concerned, the most fun he ever had. At least up until it got serious. He was listening to his favorite movie throughout the whole thing, and the variety in opponents meant he had to get really original with how he used his powers and training.
Within minutes, the city centre was severely damaged and several acres of nearby forest burned. That upset him, specially because it was not his fault and he had grown to like the forests while far away from them. Injured and losing control of his powers, yet still quite eager, Ludo lashed out. And it got ugly. Three heroes died, and innocents were endangered.
Eventually, one electrokinetic hero managed to give Ludo a nasty shock, which left him weak enough that his powers lost effectiveness, and a melee ensued. Outnumbered, the exhausted Ludo was finally subdued, and the heroes prepared to summarily execute him in front of Puma's eyes. Dumb move. And even dumber was their decision to delay it for a few precious seconds.
Puma struck with a properly feline growl, or so Ludo thought at the time, just as they were about to electrocute him to death. With much effort, Ludo took his opportunity to rejoin the fight alongside his former lover. Together they won, although Ludo would later claim that it was his wind blowing the heroes to the other side of the long and cold lake that did it, not Puma's kitty claws.
The two fled into the wilderness, and spent the aftermath of the epic battle apologizing profusely to one another, and making all manner of promises that they half-expected not to keep. Puma swore to abandon the Patriots and take his heroism abroad, admitting at last that he had blindly accepted others' atrocities in the name of heroism. And in return Ludo swore to abandon villainy and try to use his powers for good, admitting at last that he needed to change if he did not want to put more innocent lives in peril. The two parted ways soon after as friends with a handful of benefits.
Left entirely to his own devices from then onwards, Ludo eventually chose to continue living as Condor, but without pledging allegiance to either heroism or villainy. A couple of weeks later, with the worst of the crackdown over, he put his costume back on and returned to Buenos Aires, intent on keeping his word, but trying to still have some fun on the side.
The months since then have gone by slowly in Ludo's eyes, but definitely not because due to inactivity. While he still dedicates most of his efforts to persisting troubles in South America, the ground zero of superheroism and supervillainy that Lost Haven appears to be has caught his attention. With stuff like the Umbraxis and Pax Metahumana crises revolving around that city, Ludo cannot help but wonder what opportunities await for someone like him in a place such as that.
Hero Type: Elemental
Power Level:
Powers:
Attributes:
Resources: Average
Weaknesses: Ludo's body is human and very much mortal. He knows for a fact that a bullet can wound him as easily as any other person, that illness can weaken him, and that he is only as strong as his human muscles allow him to be. Furthermore, the effectiveness of his powers is influenced in large part by his state of mind, and using his powers can be physically and mentally exhausting even while motionless.
Supporting Characters:
Do you know how to post pictures on RPG boards?:
Sample Post:
It was a lovely evening, in Ludo's opinion. The sky was clear and full of stars, which he liked, and the air had just a hint of a cool autumn breeze, which he absolutely adored. The soft music being played by a teenager with a guitar in a corner nearby was much appreciated as well, even if he was playing something by the Rolling Stones. He was not a fan.
Also, he was surrounded by a group of costumed heroes, including the one very handsome cat-guy who he really wanted to punch right then and there. But he was trying to be nice, and there were still some people in the square, apparently thinking that whatever came next would be worth the risk. At least they were not taking selfies.
"Condor..." Said Puma, his Puma, standing just two feet away from him, arms opened wide as if trying to suggest that this did not have to get violent. He had always been a bad liar, which Ludo thought was a bad trait for a masked vigilante, but a pretty neat one for a lover. Silver linings.
"You might as well call me by my actual name, since it looks to me like they know it already. And I'm not even wearing my costume." Said Ludo, smiling, as he took a step closer to the other man, hands inside his long black coat's pockets. "Also, I'm a dog person and you know it, so don't give me your sad kitty eyes. Just say you're sorry and we'll get on with it."
Puma moved forward as well, and Ludo was suddenly reminded of how much taller than him the shapeshifter was. "I promise I'll keep you safe if you just give yourself up."
Condor spared the rest of the heroes a glance. Ironclad, Blue Angel, Taurus, Night Lancer... Their expressions were not too difficult to read. Most of them wanted a fight, an opportunity to beat him to a bloody pulp, and maybe rid the world of a criminal if he resisted just a bit too much. They were the living embodiments of the generation of laughably grim heroes.
Things were going to get fun rather quickly if Puma did not up the ante.
"Did you guys tell him that this is supposed to be a summary execution?" He asked the others, nodding in Puma's direction, as he reached into his pockets and pulled out a small pair of headphones. "Or did you figure he would just go along with it if you kept it as a last-minute surprise?"
"Ludo, stop it." Growled Puma, placing a hand on the back of Ludo's head and pulling him closer, his breath ghosting on Ludo's lips. "I don't want you to fight. I don't want you to get hurt. I don't want it to end like this."
"Then you shouldn't have come." Ludo answered, his smile fading, as he put his headphones on. "Because I'm angry as shit right now, and there is not way I'm leaving this city, my home, without punching you in your amazing mouth."
He swiftly pressed his lips against Puma's, releasing a small sigh into the other's mouth as a surprised Puma kissed back, and only some of the emotion behind it all was anger. The punch that those same lips received as soon as they parted, however, as well as the sudden gust of wind that blew Puma several feet away and into the big bronze statue of President Roca, were definitely all anger.
For just a second, Ludo allowed himself to feel that anger, sighing again and closing his eyes, just feeling the cool autumn breeze on his face. He heard Puma groan in pain, and the prelude of violent movement among the remaining heroes, but paid no mind to either for just that moment. He tied his hair back, adjusted his headphones, and rubbed his hands together to keep them warm.
Opening his brown eyes again, he turned towards the others, and grinned as they charged at him, the night made suddenly brighter and colorful by their various powers.
And not a moment too soon, because his song had just started playing.
"Hail Hydra, bitches!" He shouted with a laugh as he jumped into the air and, pushed forward by another gust of wind, delivered a nice, hard kick to Taurus' face. He sent the bull-themed muscle hero staggering a few feet back, which gave him just enough space to give that same gust of wind a nice strong swirl that blew Night Lancer and Ironclad away.
Captain Metatron and Blue Angel took a bit more effort, but nothing that a cheap trick like tripping them over and hitting them with a flying bench could not solve. After that, he just had to avoid a recovered Ironclad's iron-clad punches, and the Night Lancer's obscenely long weapon, and hit back to the beat of Soda Stereo, which was fun.
For a couple of minutes, he almost forgot how angry and hurt he felt.
Character you have created: Ludovico Celeste
Alias: Condor
Age: 22
Speech Color: Pale Turquoise
Character Alignment: Walking The Line (Villain In Rehabilitation)
Identity: Secret
Character Personality: "Calm like a gentle breeze in spring" is almost but not quite how most people would describe Ludo, for it would imply to some that he is an aloof and rather unassuming young man. He is certainly gentle and quiet at times, and there is a hippie-like, avant garde artist's spirit to him, uniquely imaginative and broad-minded, fond of exotic herbs and vivid colors. But in no way could he be considered meek or shy, or someone who would blindly follow somebody else's lead, rather than be himself the heart and soul of the group. He is wont to spending a lot of time in others' company on the shore of the Nahuel Huapi lake, be it reading poetry aloud, playing his guitar, swimming, or just lying on the black sand.
Condor, on the other hand, could be fittingly called a "roaring gale of color." A one-man riot of exhilarating enthusiasm, Condor is candidly transgressive, a rock star in a world of boy scouts. Though he is occasionally as quiet and thoughtful as when he is just Ludo, bursts of sharp, rebellious words and quick, energetic action are constants in Condor's behavior. He defies authority with pride, and is specially happy to embrace his power as a tool to inconvenience the powerful. There is a chaotic cheerfulness to his fighting style, even when breathless and injured, and shows a goofy, almost bizarre sense of humor in the face of difficulty.
Although he despises cruelty and needless bloodshed, Condor finds no small amount of fun and satisfaction in using his abilities. Few things make him feel as fulfilled as the liberating sensation that comes with soaring like a bird and commanding the air around him.
Uninterested in conventional notions of chivalry, Condor is willing to deceive others for the greater good. His tendency to place his ideals before the very thought of compromise can make him seem unreliable, and his nearly single-minded idealism can at times blind him to the more immediately pressing. He can also get lost in the intoxicating haze of a good fight and make mistakes, and mindful as he is of other people's feelings and needs, it is that same sensitivity that often provokes him to put himself in harm's way.
His perspective on what today's heroes and villains are in reality, as opposed to what they should be, has been molded by his villainous past and its aftermath. It sets him apart from many of his peers, who hold a more simplistic view of the hero-villain dichotomy. When he was an enemy of the self-proclaimed "good guys", he saw that many villains were just trapped in a downward spiral of violence that was enabled in large part by their heroic nemeses. Once he was torn away from that world, he witnessed how many of those who put on a mask and fought crime did it for selfish or shallow reasons, how many just wanted to use vigilante justice to sate their thirst for blood, and how many turned out to be mere tools of oppression.
These realities he has encountered have kept Condor from adopting the typical heroic lifestyle, since he perceives many of those who have as hypocrites who only perpetuate the cycle of brutality with their antics. Yet despite this, his rehabilitation has bore fruit, and the new Condor seeks to do good on his own terms, repulsed by the idea of using his skills against the powerless.
He is at his best, in spirits and skill, when he gets the opportunity to use his abilities against mighty foes, when the stakes are high. Rather than be a self-righteous paladin of order and tradition, he has chosen to walk an alternative, kind of radical, trickier path: protecting people from the excesses of heroes as well as the cruelty of villains. In a sense, he has chosen to become the answer to the question of "who watches the watchmen?"
The anarchic Condor is not satisfied with just stopping everyday petty crime or foiling the latest criminal mastermind's bombastic schemes, nor takes such things too seriously. His visceral dislike for bullies extends far beyond just them, and into spheres oft neglected by superheroes, including the bullies within their own ranks and the tyranny of the various governments and corporations that sponsor them. And when it comes to bullies, Condor fights fire with fire.
All that asides, Ludovico Celeste is not a particularly abnormal young man. An amateur artist and musician with half a degree in environmental studies, he enjoys pop and rock music from decades past, loves nature and swimming, and is a staunch dog person. Though hardly a party animal, he is sociable and caring, if at times excessively so. Fiercely protective and even territorial, he dotes on his loved ones and has no qualms about confronting anyone who steps into his "turf", even if they are blatanty more powerful than him. He is also openly gay, insofar as his relationship with Puma was never as much of a secret in the world of masked heroes and villains as Puma would have preferred, and Ludo was awfully nonchalant about it.
Appearance and Costume:
Beyond any doubt, the most distinctive piece of Condor's costume is his cloak. Inspired by the plumage of real condors, and comprised almost entirely from fake but fully functional feathers, Ludo designed it to serve as his wings during spirarekinetic flight. Though it may look like a single piece when he is standing on the ground, the cloak is actually formed by three separate pieces that simulate his namesake's wings and tail.
Beneath the cloak, Condor conceals a full body armor, along with an array of weapons and gadgets. On his hands and feet, Ludo wears armored gloves and boots made to ressemble a condor's talons.
Condor's mask, in the beginning little more than a carnival half mask in the shape of a bird, has since been replaced by a sturdier, combat-ready combination of metallic half mask and computerized goggles.
Among his weapons of choice he includes a pair of pistols, which he sometimes but not always loads with non-lethal ammunition, and a set of boleadoras.
Origin Info/Details: He was twelve years old when he first flew, swept up and away from the deep dark chasm he had been falling into by a powerful gale that had not been there before.
For a few short, fleeting moments, as he soared high above the earth, he was like a carefree bird, unrestrained by the earth, and alone with the pale blue skies. And in that time he felt both liberated and strangely at home.
It all went downhill from there. Superpowers, as it turned out, were precisely what you did not want a rebellious and imaginative child to develop.
By then he had already become aware of how the air would act strangely around him, how strong winds seemed almost reluctant to blow against him, and how sometimes the intensity of the breeze appeared to reflect his mood. Cool stuff, all in all.
Ludovico Celeste was raised in the Argentine Patagonia, near the small city of Bariloche. His parents and two brothers were normal human beings, give or take the formers' history of experimenting with all manner of strange chemicals, and they lived in a large house near the Nahel Huapi lake, where the air was always calm and everything smelled of pine trees. It was a comfy, luxurious home, if you were able to ignore his father's and oldest brother's machismo and penchant for abuse and humilliation, or his mother's near fundamentalist brand of conservative snobbery.
The little whirlwind of a child that they uncreatively nicknamed Ludo found it to be an intolerable, asphyxiating setting to grow up in, and he wreaked some fairly creative havoc wherever he went. He got into fights with other children often, although not always unjustified, and disappeared for hours at a time, only to return well past midnight with a blank look on his face and a scowling police officer behind him.
An authoritarian Catholic education did little to change the boy's behavior and, if anything, it made it worse. Most of the other children at his school were not too fond of the weird boy with a precocious fascination for abstract art and music from the 1970's, and insanely good luck when it came to paper plane competitions. His teachers, on the other hand, were rather keen on him, despite his more unorthodox leanings, although that did not improve his popularity among his peers in the least. He got bullied a lot, and while others would have stood up to their bullies, or called on the help of adults, Ludo chose a different approach: he stole from some of them, framed the others for it, and enjoyed the chaos that ensued. He liked chaos.
That early mischief, however, would not influence his eventual embrace of villainy nearly as much as meeting a slightly older telepathic boy called Christian did.
Christian did not even go to his school. In fact, he lived in the shanty town that was growing in the city's outskirts. He just appeared on Ludo's doorstep with ice cream one day, but Ludo did not really mind. He liked ice cream, and he found he liked spending time with someone who did not wear a rosary around their neck at all times and had no qualms about listening to Freddie Mercury's heavenly voice. Also, Christian enjoyed causing people to hallucinate, and Ludo discovered that he liked hallucinating.
Was it love at first sight? No, but it was Ludo's introduction to the world of childhood supervillainy, and in hindsight that was even better. Christian told him about some of the great telepathic villains of the time, starting with Captain Phobetor, and all the amazing things they could do. And Christian was convinced that Ludo's powers were just a very biased form of telekinesis, and so he thought that maybe Ludo could become his very own sidekick.
Christian was wrong on both accounts. Ludo's parents, who knew nothing about superpowers yet knew a suspicious lot about chemistry and physics, were pretty adamant about his "spirarekinesis" having something to do with his genetic makeup, his nervous system's reactions to air and viceversa, and probably some powerful extraterrestrial or extradimensional entity's convoluted shenanigans. Nothing to do with telekinesis. Also, Ludo was terrible sidekick material.
The two boys did manage to get an early taste of supervillainy together in the years that followed, and grew very close because of it. As they entered their teenage years, their antics grew bolder and harder to keep secret, but they still got away with almost everything except adopting a huge litter of puppies. They also ended up sharing their first kiss, but it was a one time, heat of the moment thing, and they partially blamed marijuana and Freddie Mercury's heavenly voice.
Their cute little partnership in crime ended suddenly, a couple of months after Ludo turned fifteen. It was nothing tragic, yet it was nevertheless a bummer: Christian's parents decided to move across the border, to Chile, and so the young telepath was gone from Ludo's life, leaving behind his Queen albums and a whole life's worth of villainous plans.
This change did not turn Ludo away from his life of crime. He continued to get involved in all manner of incidents, ranging from assaulting a new generation of school bullies to stealing a car. If anything, his behavior worsened.
Almost at the end of their rope, it came as a relief to his parents when Ludo announced, at the end of his last year of secondary school, that he wanted to move to Buenos Aires and continue his education there. Trusting his word that he would try to be just another teenager, and avoid committing any other crimes, they happily sent him off.
Ludo, as it turned out, had lied through his teeth. Upon Christian's departure, he had soon come to the conclusion that being a villain, doing what Captain Phobetor and others did, was the only thing he was good for. And so, once he arrived in Buenos Aires, he immediately began to work on his masked persona, Condor, and set out to earn himself a reputation by terrorizing the heart of the city.
The villainous Condor mostly dealt in burglary at first, breaking into upper class apartments and office buildings in the middle of the night. He then moved on to kidnappings and smuggling, aided by a growing number of trustworthy urchins, and began to spend time in the villas miseria, the evergrowing slums of Buenos Aires. In there he made friends of sorts with those who benefited from his smuggling, and witnessed first-hand how the police and some costumed heroes openly mistreated the people in the villas miseria.
For four years, Condor was one of the most notorious young figures among Buenos Aires' costumed heroes and villains, which was not saying a lot, given how few there were at the time. While Ludo attended classes at the University of Buenos Aires, Condor's reign of crime caught the attention of a growing number of heroes, eager to take down the latest threat to public order in the Latin American metropolis. Among those heroes, few were as committed to taking him down as the group known as the Patricians, Argentina' s first league of heroes, and also the first league of heroes to be linked to police corruption and neo-nazi hate crimes. Led by a young shapeshifter called Puma, the Patricians clashed with Condor over and over, often foiling his plans yet never capturing him.
Now, Puma and Condor did not fall in love at first sight, but with every confrontation the two became increasingly fascinated with one another. In time their mutual interest transformed into something almost romantic, with some flirting and innuendo during their fights. It finally got outright sexual once they accidentally discovered one another's secret identities, having both been attending the same classes for months without noticing.
For a while, the two young men lived a triple life, pretending to be normal university students by day, acting as one another's nemesis during the nights, and occasionally being true to themselves and each other when they managed to be alone. It was an arrangement that was doomed by the laws of clichés and they knew it, but they had their fun while they lasted. Or at least Ludo did, while the extremely closeted Puma went out of his way to make a martyrdom out of the affair.
The demon invasion of Lost Haven and the Reign of Nightmare crisis changed everything, starting with the tolerance S.T.R.I.K.E. and their allies abroad showed towards uncontrolled supervillains. On the fourth year of Condor's career, a continental crackdown started, with the Patricians leading the efforts in Argentina alongside S.T.R.I.K.E. agents.
At first, Condor tried to remain neutral and just lay low, and urged Puma to run away to Patagonia with him. Puma being a goody two-shoes to the core, he instead begged his lover to surrender. Radicalized by the countless abuses of power committed by many of the heroes that now hypocritically persecuted him and his peers, Condor refused, and joined a haphazardly organized coalition of supervillains and crime lords in order to resist the crackdown. The two lovers only agreed to protect each other's secret identity and avoid fighting one another during the upcoming clash.
The battle for the streets of Buenos Aires began with an attack on the largest villa miseria, and it was brutal. Several people died on both sides, and civilians were caught in the middle, when not actively targeted by the more authoritarian heroes or the more malicious villains. The amount of innocents hurt by both sides drove Condor to fight heroes and some villains alike, earning him the scorn and a silent promise of retaliation from the coalition's leaders.
The conflict spread to other neighborhoods, but before long it was obvious to both factions that the heroes were winning, and those few villains that were able to fled. Condor was one of the last to do so, after leaving his first tornado ever behind to keep the pursuing S.T.R.I.K.E. agents and Patricians busy.
He returned to Bariloche and his family, and sent Puma a secret message, urging his lover to abandon his own allies as well and join him. In hindsight, he really should have known better.
Three days later, while Ludo was having a nice evening in the city centre, the heroes arrived in Bariloche in force.
Puma had yielded to peer pressure and betrayed him, and now they had all come to bring down one of the few remaning villains in the country. The latter did not trouble him an awful lot, but the betrayal would forever be one of the biggest disappointments of Ludo's life.
The final battle between Ludo and the heroes was, as far as Ludo was concerned, the most fun he ever had. At least up until it got serious. He was listening to his favorite movie throughout the whole thing, and the variety in opponents meant he had to get really original with how he used his powers and training.
Within minutes, the city centre was severely damaged and several acres of nearby forest burned. That upset him, specially because it was not his fault and he had grown to like the forests while far away from them. Injured and losing control of his powers, yet still quite eager, Ludo lashed out. And it got ugly. Three heroes died, and innocents were endangered.
Eventually, one electrokinetic hero managed to give Ludo a nasty shock, which left him weak enough that his powers lost effectiveness, and a melee ensued. Outnumbered, the exhausted Ludo was finally subdued, and the heroes prepared to summarily execute him in front of Puma's eyes. Dumb move. And even dumber was their decision to delay it for a few precious seconds.
Puma struck with a properly feline growl, or so Ludo thought at the time, just as they were about to electrocute him to death. With much effort, Ludo took his opportunity to rejoin the fight alongside his former lover. Together they won, although Ludo would later claim that it was his wind blowing the heroes to the other side of the long and cold lake that did it, not Puma's kitty claws.
The two fled into the wilderness, and spent the aftermath of the epic battle apologizing profusely to one another, and making all manner of promises that they half-expected not to keep. Puma swore to abandon the Patriots and take his heroism abroad, admitting at last that he had blindly accepted others' atrocities in the name of heroism. And in return Ludo swore to abandon villainy and try to use his powers for good, admitting at last that he needed to change if he did not want to put more innocent lives in peril. The two parted ways soon after as friends with a handful of benefits.
Left entirely to his own devices from then onwards, Ludo eventually chose to continue living as Condor, but without pledging allegiance to either heroism or villainy. A couple of weeks later, with the worst of the crackdown over, he put his costume back on and returned to Buenos Aires, intent on keeping his word, but trying to still have some fun on the side.
The months since then have gone by slowly in Ludo's eyes, but definitely not because due to inactivity. While he still dedicates most of his efforts to persisting troubles in South America, the ground zero of superheroism and supervillainy that Lost Haven appears to be has caught his attention. With stuff like the Umbraxis and Pax Metahumana crises revolving around that city, Ludo cannot help but wonder what opportunities await for someone like him in a place such as that.
Hero Type: Elemental
Power Level:
B. City Level - Normal
C. World Level - Potential
C. World Level - Potential
Powers:
Spirarekinesis: The wind is Condor's to command. From changing the direction of a mere breeze to creating tornados, if it involves air he can manipulate it as he sees fit. Thus far he has not used this power on a massive scale, but in theory he should be able to control and even generate some of the most devastating wind phenomena imaginable, if he ever found himself in the extremely specific and statistically unlikely mental state that would allow it.
Spirarekinetic Flight: Condor has had enough experience using his artificial wings for him to ride any natural air current strong enough to carry him. His powers over the wind, however, mean that he does not depend on those natural air currents to take flight. He can always create his own air currents, and that is all sorts of fun.
Spirarekinetic Combat: It takes a lot of training and quick thinking to be able to use spirarekinesis to enhance your every blow. Condor may not always have the presence of mind to micromanage his power to such a degree, but he knows how to do it, and has done it more than enough times to be good at it.
Spirarekinetic Flight: Condor has had enough experience using his artificial wings for him to ride any natural air current strong enough to carry him. His powers over the wind, however, mean that he does not depend on those natural air currents to take flight. He can always create his own air currents, and that is all sorts of fun.
Spirarekinetic Combat: It takes a lot of training and quick thinking to be able to use spirarekinesis to enhance your every blow. Condor may not always have the presence of mind to micromanage his power to such a degree, but he knows how to do it, and has done it more than enough times to be good at it.
Attributes:
Height: 1.79 meters
Weight: 72 kilograms
Strength Level: Normal Human
Speed/Reaction Timing Level: 20
Endurance at MAXIMUM Effort: Normal Human
Agility: 5X
Intelligence: Average
Fighting Skill: Trained
Weight: 72 kilograms
Strength Level: Normal Human
Speed/Reaction Timing Level: 20
Endurance at MAXIMUM Effort: Normal Human
Agility: 5X
Intelligence: Average
Fighting Skill: Trained
Resources: Average
Weaknesses: Ludo's body is human and very much mortal. He knows for a fact that a bullet can wound him as easily as any other person, that illness can weaken him, and that he is only as strong as his human muscles allow him to be. Furthermore, the effectiveness of his powers is influenced in large part by his state of mind, and using his powers can be physically and mentally exhausting even while motionless.
Supporting Characters:
Marcos Celeste: Ludo's father. He has no idea his son is Condor. That is probably for the best, since he would certainly have something hurtful to say about all those feathers.
Lucía Celeste: Ludo's mother. She definitely suspects that her son is Condor, but she has spent over two decades pretending that there is nothing problematic to talk about in her family, and she is not going to stop now.
Nicolás Celeste: Ludo's older brother. He lives abroad and they don't talk at all.
Iván Celeste: Ludo's younger brother. Ludo actually likes him, dotes on him even, and he is the only person in the family that knows for a fact that he is Condor, because Ludo told him.
Puma: Shapeshifting superhero and Ludo's former lover. His real name is Felipe Massella, but Ludo hates it, so he refers to him exclusively as Puma. They have a long distance friendship with benefits going on.
Others: There are several other friends and acquaintances in Ludo's life, but it would be fair to say that they are not particularly relevant to his life as Condor.
Lucía Celeste: Ludo's mother. She definitely suspects that her son is Condor, but she has spent over two decades pretending that there is nothing problematic to talk about in her family, and she is not going to stop now.
Nicolás Celeste: Ludo's older brother. He lives abroad and they don't talk at all.
Iván Celeste: Ludo's younger brother. Ludo actually likes him, dotes on him even, and he is the only person in the family that knows for a fact that he is Condor, because Ludo told him.
Puma: Shapeshifting superhero and Ludo's former lover. His real name is Felipe Massella, but Ludo hates it, so he refers to him exclusively as Puma. They have a long distance friendship with benefits going on.
Others: There are several other friends and acquaintances in Ludo's life, but it would be fair to say that they are not particularly relevant to his life as Condor.
Do you know how to post pictures on RPG boards?:
Sample Post:
It was a lovely evening, in Ludo's opinion. The sky was clear and full of stars, which he liked, and the air had just a hint of a cool autumn breeze, which he absolutely adored. The soft music being played by a teenager with a guitar in a corner nearby was much appreciated as well, even if he was playing something by the Rolling Stones. He was not a fan.
Also, he was surrounded by a group of costumed heroes, including the one very handsome cat-guy who he really wanted to punch right then and there. But he was trying to be nice, and there were still some people in the square, apparently thinking that whatever came next would be worth the risk. At least they were not taking selfies.
"Condor..." Said Puma, his Puma, standing just two feet away from him, arms opened wide as if trying to suggest that this did not have to get violent. He had always been a bad liar, which Ludo thought was a bad trait for a masked vigilante, but a pretty neat one for a lover. Silver linings.
"You might as well call me by my actual name, since it looks to me like they know it already. And I'm not even wearing my costume." Said Ludo, smiling, as he took a step closer to the other man, hands inside his long black coat's pockets. "Also, I'm a dog person and you know it, so don't give me your sad kitty eyes. Just say you're sorry and we'll get on with it."
Puma moved forward as well, and Ludo was suddenly reminded of how much taller than him the shapeshifter was. "I promise I'll keep you safe if you just give yourself up."
Condor spared the rest of the heroes a glance. Ironclad, Blue Angel, Taurus, Night Lancer... Their expressions were not too difficult to read. Most of them wanted a fight, an opportunity to beat him to a bloody pulp, and maybe rid the world of a criminal if he resisted just a bit too much. They were the living embodiments of the generation of laughably grim heroes.
Things were going to get fun rather quickly if Puma did not up the ante.
"Did you guys tell him that this is supposed to be a summary execution?" He asked the others, nodding in Puma's direction, as he reached into his pockets and pulled out a small pair of headphones. "Or did you figure he would just go along with it if you kept it as a last-minute surprise?"
"Ludo, stop it." Growled Puma, placing a hand on the back of Ludo's head and pulling him closer, his breath ghosting on Ludo's lips. "I don't want you to fight. I don't want you to get hurt. I don't want it to end like this."
"Then you shouldn't have come." Ludo answered, his smile fading, as he put his headphones on. "Because I'm angry as shit right now, and there is not way I'm leaving this city, my home, without punching you in your amazing mouth."
He swiftly pressed his lips against Puma's, releasing a small sigh into the other's mouth as a surprised Puma kissed back, and only some of the emotion behind it all was anger. The punch that those same lips received as soon as they parted, however, as well as the sudden gust of wind that blew Puma several feet away and into the big bronze statue of President Roca, were definitely all anger.
For just a second, Ludo allowed himself to feel that anger, sighing again and closing his eyes, just feeling the cool autumn breeze on his face. He heard Puma groan in pain, and the prelude of violent movement among the remaining heroes, but paid no mind to either for just that moment. He tied his hair back, adjusted his headphones, and rubbed his hands together to keep them warm.
Opening his brown eyes again, he turned towards the others, and grinned as they charged at him, the night made suddenly brighter and colorful by their various powers.
And not a moment too soon, because his song had just started playing.
"Hail Hydra, bitches!" He shouted with a laugh as he jumped into the air and, pushed forward by another gust of wind, delivered a nice, hard kick to Taurus' face. He sent the bull-themed muscle hero staggering a few feet back, which gave him just enough space to give that same gust of wind a nice strong swirl that blew Night Lancer and Ironclad away.
Captain Metatron and Blue Angel took a bit more effort, but nothing that a cheap trick like tripping them over and hitting them with a flying bench could not solve. After that, he just had to avoid a recovered Ironclad's iron-clad punches, and the Night Lancer's obscenely long weapon, and hit back to the beat of Soda Stereo, which was fun.
For a couple of minutes, he almost forgot how angry and hurt he felt.
In
Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)
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8 yrs ago
Forum: Advanced Roleplay
<Snipped quote by Celeste>
How well and do they have great balance because honestly, when you fall then you fall hard! :P
The wind manipulator would be trained, city level in practice, and very much a normal human physically.
The mentiferer would be very much an amateur practicing an awful lot of restraint.
In
Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 2- New Horizons (Closed)
→
8 yrs ago
Forum: Advanced Roleplay
@Celeste I see a lurker, come Join us! To the Dark side! We have cake on Fridays, it's not too late!
The cake is, by definition, a lie. :P
But yeah, been thinking of joining. Currently, I'm trying to decide if I go with my original plan of a bird-themed wind manipulator or the son of creatures from dark space who can do mentifery. Both would walk the line.
Unfortunately, college unexpectedly got in the way, and I'm not going to be able to participate in this RP for now. :/
@DeadBeatWalking Stuff's advancing at an okay pace. Sorry for the delay.
Short summary: the house's name is either Levican, Lienad or Leftray; centuries ago, they usurped the Juvellians, the local Ardacian dynasty; the kingdom's called Mirena; their seat is called Relmutray; and the whole thing is essentially a fantasy amalgamation of Mapuche and British culture in a land that's an upside-down Patagonia. Their knights are divided into two orders, the Condors and the Pumas. The house's themes are family, myth, survival, and trickery.
Short summary: the house's name is either Levican, Lienad or Leftray; centuries ago, they usurped the Juvellians, the local Ardacian dynasty; the kingdom's called Mirena; their seat is called Relmutray; and the whole thing is essentially a fantasy amalgamation of Mapuche and British culture in a land that's an upside-down Patagonia. Their knights are divided into two orders, the Condors and the Pumas. The house's themes are family, myth, survival, and trickery.
Just scrapped my original idea, and rebooted the whole thing. Brace for some weird Patagonia-like thing... with knights.
Working on that sheet.
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