Culluket

The Elder Scrolls: Rage of the Waves

*drives a loaded cart over the drawbridge at high speed right as it's being raised and careens through the closing gate on two wheels, sending chickens and NPCs scattering as cheese wheels and whole melons fall out of the back and bounce in every direction due to broken physics* I HEARD THERE WERE HAGRAVENS!?!

Ex Libris

Name: Nyssa, witch of Mora

Race: Breton (Reachman)

Family Origins:

"Yes. Good. You are such. Pretty. Soft. Meat."
-Llyra of Redfeather Rock

Born among the Forsworn of the Reach and showing a strong aptitude for learning in her early life, Nyssa reached her adolescence confined within one of the Reach's many ruined towers, handed willingly over by her parents as offering and appeasement in enforced apprenticeship to a clutch of witches and their Hagraven sisters. It was not exactly slavery. But nor could it be called anything like freedom. Hours spent at the lectern were enforced with an iron chain around her ankle, and disciplinary action was firm: More than one night was spent hanging in an iron birdcage with an empty stomach.

Her old name was sacrificed and forgotten, and she was called Nyssa, with the understanding that one day she, too, might aspire to become one of the repulsive avian monsters.

The girl, of course, had other aspirations.

Appearance:

Nyssa

Nyssa is sharp-featured, her cheeks pinched and face strongly set, her deep red hair tangled and voluminous. Her narrow eyes and full lips are painted a dark, charcoal gray in the tapered, ritual style of the Reachmen, and there is something of a hard-bitten cast to her, her mouth always turned down at the corners by default. She most frequently wears a rich, toughened blue robe and gloves woven from leather and velvet, wrapped with strips of calligraphy-inked parchment and embellished with light, piecemeal ceremonial armors in false gold. The gown is beautiful in an alien way, tight-fitting and opulent, but has become well-worn from travel and conflict; The thin metals are chipped and tarnished, the fabric stained and cut in places.

Beneath her clothing, should anyone ever see it, her skin is inked with twisting, cephalopodic patterns and arcane calligraphies that coil around her body.

Age: 28

Equipment:
Blue robes of Change (slight Alteration enhancement), clawed ritual gauntlets, light ritual sollerets -- A striking, if disturbing ensemble that would catch more eyes were it not becoming as dishevelled as its mistress.

Opaline crown (slight magicka boost) -- A tiara set with a trinity of polished opals. Old and impressive, but of symbolic value more than anything; the stones bear a tell-tale lack of color, and the metal lacks the glitter of true gold.

Steel ritual dagger -- more a tool than a weapon, the blade has nonetheless claimed more than one unsuspecting life, and its toothed, twisted edge appears to never have been cleaned.

Miscellaneous:
Pen, ink and parchment; Indigo Grimoire (locked); A number of red candles; Assorted minor soul gems.

Favored Skills:
Expert: Destruction
Adept: Alteration, Enchanting, Mysticism
Apprentice: One-handed, Mercantile, Light armor

Crime Committed:
Daedra worship -- "Caught red-handed, m'lud, in the midst of some perverse Daedric rite. She and all her kind mean us naught but ill. Let the people see that they are protected from this foulness."

Murder -- "A number of good men were slain before the coven was overcome and this last craven witch surrendered, m'lud. Only just it is that she pay for their lives."

Character Background:

"So this is how my trust is repaid."

"This is how all trust is repaid."

Most of young Nyssa's childhood time was spent in the dingy stacks of the tower library, cataloging, retrieving, and endlessly copying magical and ritual manuscripts. It was repetitive, dark and thankless work, but also formative -- Nothing holds a tome in a young girl's memory like being forced to ink out its every page -- and the library contained other, stranger books not commonly available to conventional scholars or college mages. More intriguingly, some contained scrawled notes in their margins, each in a different hand yet all enigmatic and tantalizing glimpses of some greater, grander truth. Slowly, over whole years, the young scribe began to piece together whispers of the secret places of the world outside, and other, more rewarding destinies that might await a girl with a strong will and a thirst for learning.

Almost as if the trail had been set that way.

As her age and understanding grew and her blood began to heat with a growing rebellion, apathy toward her people, resentful disgust for the Hagravens and the lure of hidden knowledge drove Nyssa to slip her leash, killing two of her self-absorbed 'siblings' and taking the more relevant tomes for herself as she fled into the night. She traveled, moving through the border of Cyrodiil to Hammerfell, following one connection after another before falling in with a secretive cult of Hermaeus Mora and gravitating at last to High Rock. The Prince's sphere suited her ambitions perfectly, and she embraced the cult's bargains enthusiastically, blossoming from an obedient, dead-eyed girl into a power-hungry, dead-eyed woman.

Til now, she has lead something of a double life, finding work as a hireling scholar and scribe while quietly working to serve her own ends and those of her unearthly master; both a free agent and a loose end. Alas, her searches and manipulations were finally put to a stop when a covert summoning ritual was stormed by the faithful of Stendarr, and all its participants put quickly to the sword.

All except one.

Fighting Style:
Though not the fittest or the hardiest (she needs to catch her breath after a moderate run,) Nyssa is as mentally accustomed to conflict as any veteran battlemage and employs her destructive power without flinching, comfortable at a nearer range to combat than many of her kind. Though very proficient at what she does, formerly-trained mages or the faithful of the Divines may see her magic as corrupt, and there's no denying it's... weird. The fire is off-color in a way that sickens the eyes, the lightning writhes in thrashing, obscene tendrils, and the ice glistens in a way ice should not.

Trusting no one to watch her back, she generally works to secure herself before engaging foes, calling up her invisible armor, ensuring her concentration is unbroken and her exits clear before she blankets the battlefield in chaos and death. Should magic fail and flight become impossible, she fights like a cornered beast, stabbing, slashing and shrieking like a banshee. There is no honor between animals, no code or concord to be had within the red crucible of violence. If she can tear her opponent's throat out with her teeth as they struggle in the mud, she will.

Personality:
Nyssa firmly believes that information is power, and she hungers for knowledge like a wolf hungers for meat. She is tenacious almost to the point of monomania, sleeplessly burning candles over a crumbling stack of ancient scrolls, delving willingly into forgotten pits, scorning any law which thinks to bar her way and dogging paper trails halfway across the world if she has to. Of course, everything has its price. There is such a thing as learning too much too quickly, and there are some things the mortal mind was never meant to contain. She sleeps little and fitfully, her rest plagued by feverish nightmares and wordless answers to unthinkable questions.

She is acutely intelligent and highly literate, but her upbringing has left her socially stunted and apolitical, indifferent to the wider concerns of the world. As a result, she is tactlessly blunt, getting to know people only through necessity and speaking with little regard for delicate feelings. Moreover, there is something feral in her; some dead place in her mind that the comforts of civilization and the warmth of companionship can never reach. She looks at people as though they were things; objects, means to an end rather than living beings, and she lacks even the first shred of empathy, seeing everything as an accounting of values. Nyssa doesn't understand the concept of "friends": But fortunately for those around her, she does understand the value -- and rarity -- of competence.

Font Colour: Cornflowerblue

*I took Light Armor rather than Unarmored because I figured narrating the metallic parts on the robe classed it as something heavier than basic clothing and I don't want to be a cheese wheel.

*Mysticism because I remember Mysticism with a wistful smile and was sad when they took it out.

*Enchantments on her gear are really just for flavor more than anything else.

*~HAGRAVENS~

Mass Effect: Brink

Carpe vorcha.

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG (Closed)

I wonder if Lekh and Babel will ever meet. Their powers are incredibly similar, so it could be interesting.

@MelonHead

I certainly hope so! It'd be a team-up to remember. For those who were actually able to remember it afterward, that is.

Plus their names are Babel and Silence. It's like if the Wonder Twins really hated each other.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

Gobskag already making mad bank.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

Gobskag stared, frozen mid-chew as everything that was once Chengizz exploded across the surface of the table. Half a potato dripped out of his mouth before he had the presence of mind to scoop it back in and swallow, nervously.

"Eennnhh.... Yeeeees," he croaked, working his hands together and darting his eyes from the smoking carcass to the Lord of the house, "Dat's us. Here ta help. Right helpful, is what we are, isn't we, lads?" He appealed to the others with a note of desperation in his reedy voice.

"Ennh... here, let helpful old Gobskag clean dis mess off da table. Oh, poor, poor... ehhmmm... Grindlesticks," he wailed, picking a name at random as he dragged the perforated corpse off the table, sending a few cups and plates clattering to the ground, "Took from us too soon, 'ee was..."

_{"Just a bit to da right and he would of got da stunty..."} he muttered vindictively under his breath, grunting as Chengizz finally thumped onto the stone floor.

"Out, out, brief wossname!" Long green claws fished expertly through the hobgoblin's possessions as he tugged the body into a corner, covertly snagging a few stray coins and a fat, glittering red ruby. Gobskag leered from the privacy of his tatty hood. Mad humies with guns or not, this day was already off to a right good start. "But, enhh, life goes on, nehh?"

He helped himself to another drumstick without bothering to pick bits of Chengizz out of it, eyeing the others warily.

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG (Closed)

Character you have created: Caroline Lewis
Alias: Babel
Speech Color: DeepPink
Character Alignment: Villain
Identity: Known
Character Personality:
Babel is entropy in action: a disaffected, destructive adrenaline junkie who now finds herself with the ability to fulfill every whim, appetite and revenge fantasy she ever had. There's no plan, no grand ambition, no long-term goal other than burning through life like a roman candle and tearing down the comfortable little illusions of a broken society. She's a one-woman circus, and everyone's getting a free ticket.

Uniform/costume:

Hider

_{Ruthlessly butchered from the original by Fukari}

Caroline herself is thin, her face long and a little too pale, crowned with a punkish, neglected mess of bright pink hair and glittering with a number of cheap piercings. Most of her life til now has been spent comatose in thrift store throwouts, threadbare stockings and hoodies and bad heavy metal t-shirts.

In contrast, her 'working' costume is a well-tailored carnivalesque outfit that was intended for an upmarket casino hostess: A glossy lycra catsuit the same deep, lurid pink as her hair, belted at the waist and stitched with six black diamonds in a playing card style, the ensemble completed with shoulder-length gloves and heeled over-the-knee boots in matching black patent leather. You know, like a comic book. Not practical? Maybe. But when all you have left is making an impression, why stop at the ankle?

She keeps two Glock-18 automatic pistols tucked into the belt, the slides repainted in pink and engraved in silver glitter -- one reading 'Eat Me', the other 'Drink Me'.

Origin Info/Details:
Babel was an experiment that both succeeded and failed. First a happy accident; then an unhappy one. Remember Darrow Engineering? They may be a lot of things, but they're not quitters. The loss of Dr. Gaster and xenohybrid experiment BPE-45A (Yeah. Her.) was a setback to their psionic tinkering, but while they lost the subject, they'd learned a lot. They still had a wealth of research, a clear agenda, considerable resources and powerful backers greedy or frightened enough to want that power in their hands.

With stakes that high, "ethics" is just a word.

And that's how we got the Babel project: a grand attempt to create organisms that could access and influence what they called the noosphere -- informational space. A tall order, and one that required raw material. A lot of raw material. Living material. Recidivists, junkies, the homeless; people nobody would care about or miss, supplied in secret to covert facilities by shadowy third parties or corrupt law enforcement. Deniable. Disposable. And Caroline Lewis was all of these things. A deeply troubled young woman who had lost the battle against her inner demons a long time ago and finally fallen so far down her own spiral of substance abuse and self-hatred that even the thugs she'd found shelter with had left her to overdose or die in a drunken fistfight with a moving train.

Despite her penchant for self-destruction, tests showed Lewis as one of the most promising specimens by far: in fact, she was a latent natural psychic in potentia, who only needed a touch of biological coaxing to blossom into rich, useful material for the project -- material that would then be harvested, cultured, and put to better use.

But history has a way of repeating itself. Impossibly and for no understandable reason, the subject activated before the altered brain could be removed. The half-baked specimen was unleashed, and the facility was burned out to the last living thing.

Guess they didn't learn as much as they thought.

The final punchline to this bitter joke is that the source of the girl's psychic potential is a small, anomalous brain tumor, inoperable and steadily growing, which allowed the unnatural treatment to take root, almost seeming to welcome it. By degrees, it is both twisting her brain into increasing states of mental power and ever so slowly killing her. She has a limited, stolen supply of an experimental medication, Noussphairaretroamphetamine 44 (abbreviated to Nupharamine, or just "Noose" on the black market) that stabilizes her condition and allows her to exert greater control over herself, but in one last, cruel twist of irony, the tablets are damagingly addictive when taken over an extended time, taking a toll on her even as they ease her burden.

Hero Type (Select one): Psychic
Power Level (Select one below): Street/City
Powers (Be Specific):

Psychohazard:
Babel radiates madness like an isotope. Where she goes, a whirlpool of psychic chaos goes with her, and unlike most metahumans, she doesn't so much employ her powers as try with all the willpower she can muster to keep it under control. Restrained, her influence manifests as overexposed vision and chromatic aberration, images splitting apart into flickering red, green and blue planes like a malfunctioning LCD monitor. Unleashed, her presence dramatically warps the perceptions and sanity of those around her, its intensity ranging from confusion and disorientation to mass hysteria. People collapse, scream, hallucinate, attack one another, and gradually lose control of language, regressing into an odd form of glossolalia. The closer to her epicenter one draws, the worse it becomes.

As if this weren't enough, she is vulnerable to rare, psychoactive seizures which tremendously swell the power of her abilities while completely incapacitating her control over them. Paradoxically, it is at her most vulnerable that she becomes the most dangerous.

Hallucinopath:
When in control of herself, Babel can influence the nature of the illusions she spawns, and through that, the people experiencing them. In accepting the evidence of their senses, people find themselves playing by her rules.

1.5 Second Sight:
Babel's affliction dilates her perception of time, allowing her to instinctively 'see' 0.5 to 2 seconds into the future. While so short as to be useless for planning, this expanded awareness has a critical effect on her aim, physical instincts and reaction time, giving her the appearance of having superhuman reflexes when in fact her physique is normal, and she's simply started moving a second before a shot is fired.

White Noise:
It's not that Babel is immune to mind reading; It's just that attempting to mentally probe or restrain her is like flying a light aircraft into a hurricane. To a psychic or sensitive, her mind reads as raw, lurid chaos, a raging pink vortex that doesn't repel them, but rather tries to drag them in and eat them alive.

Attributes (Select one at each category):

Strength Level: Normal human
Speed/Reaction Timing Level: Normal human speed/Uncanny reflexes (precognition)
Endurance: Normal human
Agility: Normal human/5x depending on illness and drug use.
Intelligence: Average.
Fighting Skill: Somewhat trained

Resources: Minimal -- if she wasn't able to take what she wanted, she wouldn't know where her next meal was coming from.
Weaknesses:
Pyrrhic Victory: Babel's greatest strength is also her most dangerous flaw: Her own power is slowly killing her. Restraining her psychohazard ability taxes her greatly, even painfully, and though rare, her random seizures can leave her hemorrhaging, crawling on her hands and knees.

Addict: A dependance on experimental, psychoactive medication to stay in control is its own set of problems.

How Can You Challenge a Perfect, Immortal Machine: Since Babel's abilities are almost exclusively mind-affecting, robotic adversaries, drones or those otherwise completely immune to psychic influence naturally counter her main advantage, leaving her to rely on her precognition window and her capable but limited combat skill.

Supporting Characters:

Cheshire Cat: Only Babel can see or hear this taunting, elusive monster. It has to be a figment of her fevered imagination, yet it sometimes knows things it shouldn't possibly know...

Rabbit Hole gang:
The Rabbit Hole is a seedy "villain bar" frequented by C-list bad guys unlikely to ever make the big time.

Tommy Trollface: A former mob triggerman, Tommy's life was changed after an accident during a shootout in a chemical plant with a vigilante hero left his face permanently twisted into an uncanny replica of the Trollface meme. Though initially embittered, Tommy has since embraced his new persona and is even considered something of a folk hero amongst the bulk of internet culture. If he had a voice actor, it would be Gilbert Gottfried.

Professor Amstrad: After being diagnosed with terminal cancer during the height of the cold war, this brilliant scientist replaced most of his body with mechanical parts, attempting to future-proof himself using the finest cutting-edge computer technology 1981 had to offer. The result is now something both impressively ahead of its time and laughably obsolete. Though something of a laughing stock amongst the meta community, it's never wise to underestimate the old professor. He may be a stubborn traditionalist, but he is still a genius, and his assault robots are no less lethal for being made of ribbon cables and cheap plastic.

Killa Deth: A hereditary metahuman and rap artist who inherited abnormal size and comparative super-strength from his father, an unnamed superhero who didn't stick around to pay child support. Despite his name, Killa Deth is actually a chilled-out vegetarian and not given to violence. Unless you badmouth his mixtape, in which case he'll pulp your skull with his bare hands.

Do you know how to post pictures on RPG boards?:

Hider

Sample Post:

It was a warm and sunny day in the garden maze. Insects chirped happily in well-tended flower beds. Birds sang from hidden perches amongst shady trees. Dandelion blossoms floated gently on the still and breezeless air. And for mile after mile in every direction, the maze stretched out, a deep, shady labyrinth of tall, green hedges, walling it all safely in.

It was a very calm and peaceful place.

At the center of the garden, on the trim, green grass, sat a long, low table draped with a white cloth, set as though for a tea party. At its head sat a dark-haired young girl of perhaps seven, dressed in blue and white frills, the other seats filled by a number of floppy, friendly-looking stuffed toy animals arrayed in their own little chairs.

With practiced manners, the girl picked up the teapot and poured, a stream of milky, violet fluid that smelt of hospitals and antiseptic bubbling from the spout. Setting down the pot, she took the lid from the sugar bowl, which was filled with small, plastic medical tablets, pink at one end, blue at the other. She dipped her spoon and emptied the pills into her cup, stirring vacantly. It was better to have one spoonful, but sometimes she needed two, for that was simply how things were done. She took a small sip, swallowing it down. It tasted like nothing at all.

The girl, whose name was Caroline, kicked her legs under the chair, back and forth, her thoughts empty. There was no bother to think of anything. It was a lovely day and she had only to wait here until her mother came for her, which would surely not be long now.

She had just started taking another sip when there came floating through the still, warm air a smooth, beguiling voice that didn't sound like anyone she knew. Caroline looked up, blinking as surprise slowly surfaced from beneath her placid thoughts.

"Though thy slumber may be deep," it crooned, "Yet thy spirit shall not sleep; There are shades which will not vanish; There are thoughts thou canst not banish..."

The girl's head tilted curiously as a wide, bright, toothsome smile appeared at the far end of the table, bobbing along the edge of the cloth.

"...By a power to thee unknown..."

Around the smile, a cat's head faded into view, followed by a long, plump body and a swirling, question-mark tail.

"...Thou canst never be alone."

"What a curious song," observed Caroline, blinking slowly. Though she had been content here with her tea and her dear animal friends, her thoughts now felt clouded and suddenly unquiet. She struggled to speak. "Wherever did you come from, mister cat?"

"Why, nowhere." the cat replied, smiling, "The same as you."

"Oh." The girl's eyes dropped. She stared vacantly down into her rippling cup of violet liquid. Her stomach rebelled, gurgling and twitching. "I feel... ever so queer, of a sudden." she said, softly. "Not well at all."

"Truly?" the cat paced sidelong in front of her, brushing her comfortingly with its tail, in the manner of felines. "Perhaps you would feel better if you drank a little less tea."

"But it's a tea party. One must drink tea at a tea party."

"Ah? But are you drinking tea because it is a tea party, or is it merely a tea party because you are drinking tea?"

Caroline's brow creased as she wrestled with the odd question. She went to take another sip, but faltered, held back, something nagging at her fogged mind.

"...Do you suppose mother will come soon?" she asked the cat, "I must wait here until she comes to collect me. But..." she trailed off.

"Perhaps we should go and find her?" the cat got up, stretching its forepaws and arching its back contentedly. "The Caroline I know was never much fond of doing what she was told."

"But I don't know the way through the maze." the girl protested.

"But I do." the cat declared. It coiled its way around the teapot, drawing close, eyes luminous above its glowing grin. "Come with me, Caroline. The way is simple, if you know it; Not out, but through. All you need do is open your eyes, and wake up."

"I can't wake up if I'm not asleep!" she admonished.

"Well then," grinned the cat, padding right up and smiling into her face, "You must be asleep."

The girl stared.

The teacup slid from her fingers and shattered, pink and blue tablets scattering across the tablecloth.

Whoah, is it supposed to light up like--

EEG just--

The girl's eyes fluttered open.

Oh sh--

LOCKDOWN LOCKDOWN START THE BAFFLERS

There was a horrific noise, like a detuned string section being slammed into an active microphone. Pain burst through her head. A woman started screaming into an intercom. A mirror-faced hazard suit standing over her swore and staggered backward, spinning cranial saw in hand, overturning a metal tray full of vicious stainless steel instruments with a tremendous crash that didn't stop but grew louder and louder and louder, joining the tumult of shouting and the pandemonium of warped, deafening noise.

The girl sat bolt upright, tearing a respiration mask from her face and dragging a ridged rubber tube out of her mouth, retching as she felt it come up her throat, trickling violet fluid. She heaved down breaths, facing her pale, pink-haired reflection in a mirrored observation window, coughing and blinking in the sterile glare of blinding hospital spotlights. No longer a child but a young woman, slumped upon a molded surgical table in an enclosed, glistening cell of shining white tile, air thick with the overpowering smell of antiseptic, surrounded by glowing readouts that flickered on wall-mounted machines straight out of a science fiction film.

"What the f..." The room heaved to one side and she slid from the table, falling heavily to her knees, fighting the urge to throw up. "What the fuhhh..."

Everything lurched and spun. Caroline clutched at her head, choking back a scream as her brain throbbed, burning in her head and swirling outward, thick and sticky like candyfloss and fallout. One of the machines sparked and went black. Alarms started blaring from outside.

A gloved hand grabbed hold of her roughly, the faceless, white-suited surgeon pulling at her, the electric saw still whirring in his other hand. She kicked, struggled, cried out, threw the bedsheet at him in an irrational, desperate reflex. The figure panicked, shrieking and flailing at the white fabric as though it were a scorpion, driving the whining saw through it and into his leg, stabbing again and again, yelling get it off, get it off GET IT OFF ME. Blood sprayed like sawdust from a mill, painting the pristine tiles red, and still he kept slashing, hacking and babbling until he sheared through the tendons of his leg and collapsed, thrashing helplessly in a spreading scarlet pool.

Caroline struggled to get to her feet, trying to raise herself from the blood-slick floor on shaking, nerveless arms. It was happening everywhere, now. The intercom filled with bellowing, panic, madness. Facility staff were attacking one another in the corridors, shooting at things that weren't there, doubled up on the floor in fits of hysteria. The men in the security station were laughing and slapping each other on the back, convinced they were watching cartoons. The walls seemed to melt, to run like quicksilver. Her head was pounding like a cheap apartment over a shitty nightclub and she could feel her poisoned mind spilling over, expanding like a nuclear accident, contaminating every living thing it touched.

one and two are overloaded--
--cinnamon the cinnamon we have to--
Go near that door son and I will put you down without a second--
/It's on fire it's burning--
MY BABY, MY BABY'S IN THERE--

She heard gunshots, saw silhouettes in the dark mirror with each muzzle flash, bodies slumping and falling as they ran for the door to her room. There was another shower of sparks and an electronic screech before the monitors blanked out and the room was plunged into pitch darkness, bathed in red emergency lighting a second later. The corridors outside rang with tinny, hysterical laughter, clunking metal and unhinged, animal howls that couldn't have been human but were. Caroline slumped on the wet floor, laughing weakly along with them, pushed beyond endurance as her mind continued to seep like radiation out of her skull. She was Chernobyl. She was Babel. She was Babylon. It was a horror movie, and everyone was the monster.

Fala la lan-

BURN IT TORCH THE FREAKING WING IF YOU HAVE TO JUST KILL IT KILL IT NOW KIT IT RAW KOIL LO L̶A ̨X̨F͡I Ļ̨́͢͠À̡̛͡ Z̧͞O ̴̛͠͝F̴̵͏H̕̕G̨̀̕̕F͡͠í͝͠͞I̴͘͘͡į̛͢͞͞i~̴̕

There was one final gunshot.

---

She stood in the pouring rain and watched it burn, barefoot in a backless hospital gown, soaked to the skin. Gun in one hand, plastic bottle in the other, coastal winds beating at her remorselessly. It all looked so small from outside. Just another ugly warehouse in a row of ugly warehouses. Nothing to suggest the six levels underneath it that were now going up in greasy, colorful smoke. Nothing to hint at the shrink-wrapped bodies and the floating brains.

Caroline tore her red-rimmed eyes away from the roaring inferno, staring off into the vague glow of night. The cat's smile beckoned from a streetlight far ahead, its tail flicking idly below, and she followed, as though in a trance.

What else could she do?

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG (Closed)

@Culluket I'm stealing that Spider-Man picture, by the way. And there's nothing you can do to stop me.

@FacePunch

FAPPO!

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG (Closed)

Oh snaaaaaaap it's a thing! A thing it took me forever to post because I wasn't happy with it over and over again. I haven't 100% decided on a starting city, but I'm considering dropping her in Pacific Point, like a lurid hydrogen bomb.

Babel

Character you have created: Caroline Lewis
Alias: Babel
Speech Color: DeepPink
Character Alignment: Villain
Identity: Known
Character Personality:
Babel is entropy in action: a disaffected, destructive adrenaline junkie who now finds herself with the ability to fulfill every whim, appetite and revenge fantasy she ever had. There's no plan, no grand ambition, no long-term goal other than burning through life like a roman candle and tearing down the comfortable little illusions of a broken society. She's a one-woman circus, and everyone's getting a free ticket.

Uniform/costume:
Caroline herself is thin, her face long and a little too pale, crowned with a punkish, neglected mess of bright pink hair and glittering with a number of cheap piercings. Most of her life til now has been spent comatose in thrift store throwouts, threadbare stockings and hoodies and bad heavy metal t-shirts.

In contrast, her 'working' costume is a well-tailored carnivalesque outfit that was intended for an upmarket casino hostess: A glossy lycra catsuit the same deep, lurid pink as her hair, belted at the waist and stitched with six black diamonds in a playing card style, the ensemble completed with shoulder-length gloves and heeled over-the-knee boots in matching black patent leather. You know, like a comic book. Not practical? Maybe. But when all you have left is making an impression, why stop at the ankle?

She keeps two Glock-18 automatic pistols tucked into the belt, the slides repainted in pink and engraved in silver glitter -- one reading 'Eat Me', the other 'Drink Me'.

Origin Info/Details:
Babel was an experiment that both succeeded and failed. First a happy accident; then an unhappy one. Remember Darrow Engineering? They may be a lot of things, but they're not quitters. The loss of Dr. Gaster and xenohybrid experiment BPE-45A (Yeah. Her.) was a setback to their psionic tinkering, but while they lost the subject, they'd learned a lot. They still had a wealth of research, a clear agenda, considerable resources and powerful backers greedy or frightened enough to want that power in their hands.

With stakes that high, "ethics" is just a word.

And that's how we got the Babel project: a grand attempt to create organisms that could access and influence what they called the noosphere -- informational space. A tall order, and one that required raw material. A lot of raw material. Living material. Recidivists, junkies, the homeless; people nobody would care about or miss, supplied in secret to covert facilities by shadowy third parties or corrupt law enforcement. Deniable. Disposable. And Caroline Lewis was all of these things. A deeply troubled young woman who had lost the battle against her inner demons a long time ago and finally fallen so far down her own spiral of substance abuse and self-hatred that even the thugs she'd found shelter with had left her to overdose or die in a drunken fistfight with a moving train.

Despite her penchant for self-destruction, tests showed Lewis as one of the most promising specimens by far: in fact, she was a latent natural psychic in potentia, who only needed a touch of biological coaxing to blossom into rich, useful material for the project -- material that would then be harvested, cultured, and put to better use.

But history has a way of repeating itself. Impossibly and for no understandable reason, the subject activated before the altered brain could be removed. The half-baked specimen was unleashed, and the facility was burned out to the last living thing.

Guess they didn't learn as much as they thought.

The final punchline to this bitter joke is that the source of the girl's psychic potential is a small, anomalous brain tumor, inoperable and steadily growing, which allowed the unnatural treatment to take root, almost seeming to welcome it. By degrees, it is both twisting her brain into increasing states of mental power and ever so slowly killing her. She has a limited, stolen supply of an experimental medication, Noussphairaretroamphetamine 44 (abbreviated to Nupharamine, or just "Noose" on the black market) that stabilizes her condition and allows her to exert greater control over herself, but in one last, cruel twist of irony, the tablets are damagingly addictive when taken over an extended time, taking a toll on her even as they ease her burden.

Hero Type (Select one): Psychic
Power Level (Select one below): Street/City
Powers (Be Specific):

Psychohazard:
Babel radiates madness like an isotope. Where she goes, a whirlpool of psychic chaos goes with her, and unlike most metahumans, she doesn't so much employ her powers as try with all the willpower she can muster to keep it under control. Restrained, her influence manifests as overexposed vision and chromatic aberration, images splitting apart into flickering red, green and blue planes like a malfunctioning LCD monitor. Unleashed, her presence dramatically warps the perceptions and sanity of those around her, its intensity ranging from confusion and disorientation to mass hysteria. People collapse, scream, hallucinate, attack one another, and gradually lose control of language, regressing into an odd form of glossolalia. The closer to her epicenter one draws, the worse it becomes.

As if this weren't enough, she is vulnerable to rare, psychoactive seizures which tremendously swell the power of her abilities while completely incapacitating her control over them. Paradoxically, it is at her most vulnerable that she becomes the most dangerous.

Hallucinopath:
When in control of herself, Babel can influence the nature of the illusions she spawns, and through that, the people experiencing them. In accepting the evidence of their senses, people find themselves playing by her rules.

1.5 Second Sight:
Babel's affliction dilates her perception of time, allowing her to instinctively 'see' 0.5 to 2 seconds into the future. While so short as to be useless for planning, this expanded awareness has a critical effect on her aim, physical instincts and reaction time, giving her the appearance of having superhuman reflexes when in fact her physique is normal, and she's simply started moving a second before a shot is fired.

White Noise:
It's not that Babel is immune to mind reading; It's just that attempting to mentally probe or restrain her is like flying a light aircraft into a hurricane. To a psychic or sensitive, her mind reads as raw, lurid chaos, a raging pink vortex that doesn't repel them, but rather tries to drag them in and eat them alive.

Attributes (Select one at each category):

Strength Level: Normal human
Speed/Reaction Timing Level: Normal human speed/Uncanny reflexes (precognition)
Endurance: Normal human
Agility: Normal human/5x depending on illness and drug use.
Intelligence: Average.
Fighting Skill: Somewhat trained

Resources: Minimal -- if she wasn't able to take what she wanted, she wouldn't know where her next meal was coming from.
Weaknesses:
Pyrrhic Victory: Babel's greatest strength is also her most dangerous flaw: Her own power is slowly killing her. Restraining her psychohazard ability taxes her greatly, even painfully, and though rare, her random seizures can leave her hemorrhaging, crawling on her hands and knees.

Addict: A dependance on experimental, psychoactive medication to stay in control is its own set of problems.

How Can You Challenge a Perfect, Immortal Machine: Since Babel's abilities are almost exclusively mind-affecting, robotic adversaries, drones or those otherwise completely immune to psychic influence naturally counter her main advantage, leaving her to rely on her precognition window and her capable but limited combat skill.

Supporting Characters:

Cheshire Cat: Only Babel can see or hear this taunting, elusive monster. It has to be a figment of her fevered imagination, yet it sometimes knows things it shouldn't possibly know...

Rabbit Hole gang:
The Rabbit Hole is a seedy "villain bar" frequented by C-list bad guys unlikely to ever make the big time.

Tommy Trollface: A former mob triggerman, Tommy's life was changed after an accident during a shootout in a chemical plant with a vigilante hero left his face permanently twisted into an uncanny replica of the Trollface meme. Though initially embittered, Tommy has since embraced his new persona and is even considered something of a folk hero amongst the bulk of internet culture. If he had a voice actor, it would be Gilbert Gottfried.

Professor Amstrad: After being diagnosed with terminal cancer during the height of the cold war, this brilliant scientist replaced most of his body with mechanical parts, attempting to future-proof himself using the finest cutting-edge computer technology 1981 had to offer. The result is now something both impressively ahead of its time and laughably obsolete. Though something of a laughing stock amongst the meta community, it's never wise to underestimate the old professor. He may be a stubborn traditionalist, but he is still a genius, and his assault robots are no less lethal for being made of ribbon cables and cheap plastic.

Killa Deth: A hereditary metahuman and rap artist who inherited abnormal size and comparative super-strength from his father, an unnamed superhero who didn't stick around to pay child support. Despite his name, Killa Deth is actually a chilled-out vegetarian and not given to violence. Unless you badmouth his mixtape, in which case he'll pulp your skull with his bare hands.

Do you know how to post pictures on RPG boards?:

Hider

Sample Post:

It was a warm and sunny day in the garden maze. Insects chirped happily in well-tended flower beds. Birds sang from hidden perches amongst shady trees. Dandelion blossoms floated gently on the still and breezeless air. And for mile after mile in every direction, the maze stretched out, a deep, shady labyrinth of tall, green hedges, walling it all safely in.

It was a very calm and peaceful place.

At the center of the garden, on the trim, green grass, sat a long, low table draped with a white cloth, set as though for a tea party. At its head sat a dark-haired young girl of perhaps seven, dressed in blue and white frills, the other seats filled by a number of floppy, friendly-looking stuffed toy animals arrayed in their own little chairs.

With practiced manners, the girl picked up the teapot and poured, a stream of milky, violet fluid that smelt of hospitals and antiseptic bubbling from the spout. Setting down the pot, she took the lid from the sugar bowl, which was filled with small, plastic medical tablets, pink at one end, blue at the other. She dipped her spoon and emptied the pills into her cup, stirring vacantly. It was better to have one spoonful, but sometimes she needed two, for that was simply how things were done. She took a small sip, swallowing it down. It tasted like nothing at all.

The girl, whose name was Caroline, kicked her legs under the chair, back and forth, her thoughts empty. There was no bother to think of anything. It was a lovely day and she had only to wait here until her mother came for her, which would surely not be long now.

She had just started taking another sip when there came floating through the still, warm air a smooth, beguiling voice that didn't sound like anyone she knew. Caroline looked up, blinking as surprise slowly surfaced from beneath her placid thoughts.

"Though thy slumber may be deep," it crooned, "Yet thy spirit shall not sleep; There are shades which will not vanish; There are thoughts thou canst not banish..."

The girl's head tilted curiously as a wide, bright, toothsome smile appeared at the far end of the table, bobbing along the edge of the cloth.

"...By a power to thee unknown..."

Around the smile, a cat's head faded into view, followed by a long, plump body and a swirling, question-mark tail.

"...Thou canst never be alone."

"What a curious song," observed Caroline, blinking slowly. Though she had been content here with her tea and her dear animal friends, her thoughts now felt clouded and suddenly unquiet. She struggled to speak. "Wherever did you come from, mister cat?"

"Why, nowhere." the cat replied, smiling, "The same as you."

"Oh." The girl's eyes dropped. She stared vacantly down into her rippling cup of violet liquid. Her stomach rebelled, gurgling and twitching. "I feel... ever so queer, of a sudden." she said, softly. "Not well at all."

"Truly?" the cat paced sidelong in front of her, brushing her comfortingly with its tail, in the manner of felines. "Perhaps you would feel better if you drank a little less tea."

"But it's a tea party. One must drink tea at a tea party."

"Ah? But are you drinking tea because it is a tea party, or is it merely a tea party because you are drinking tea?"

Caroline's brow creased as she wrestled with the odd question. She went to take another sip, but faltered, held back, something nagging at her fogged mind.

"...Do you suppose mother will come soon?" she asked the cat, "I must wait here until she comes to collect me. But..." she trailed off.

"Perhaps we should go and find her?" the cat got up, stretching its forepaws and arching its back contentedly. "The Caroline I know was never much fond of doing what she was told."

"But I don't know the way through the maze." the girl protested.

"But I do." the cat declared. It coiled its way around the teapot, drawing close, eyes luminous above its glowing grin. "Come with me, Caroline. The way is simple, if you know it; Not out, but through. All you need do is open your eyes, and wake up."

"I can't wake up if I'm not asleep!" she admonished.

"Well then," grinned the cat, padding right up and smiling into her face, "You must be asleep."

The girl stared.

The teacup slid from her fingers and shattered, pink and blue tablets scattering across the tablecloth.

Whoah, is it supposed to light up like--

EEG just--

The girl's eyes fluttered open.

Oh sh--

LOCKDOWN LOCKDOWN START THE BAFFLERS

There was a horrific noise, like a detuned string section being slammed into an active microphone. Pain burst through her head. A woman started screaming into an intercom. A mirror-faced hazard suit standing over her swore and staggered backward, spinning cranial saw in hand, overturning a metal tray full of vicious stainless steel instruments with a tremendous crash that didn't stop but grew louder and louder and louder, joining the tumult of shouting and the pandemonium of warped, deafening noise.

The girl sat bolt upright, tearing a respiration mask from her face and dragging a ridged rubber tube out of her mouth, retching as she felt it come up her throat, trickling violet fluid. She heaved down breaths, facing her pale, pink-haired reflection in a mirrored observation window, coughing and blinking in the sterile glare of blinding hospital spotlights. No longer a child but a young woman, slumped upon a molded surgical table in an enclosed, glistening cell of shining white tile, air thick with the overpowering smell of antiseptic, surrounded by glowing readouts that flickering on wall-mounted machines straight out of a science fiction film.

"What the f..." The room heaved to one side and she slid from the table, falling heavily to her knees, fighting the urge to throw up. "What the fuhhh..."

Everything lurched and spun. Caroline clutched at her head, choking back a scream as her brain throbbed, burning in her head and swirling outward, thick and sticky like candyfloss and fallout. One of the machines sparked and went black. Alarms started blaring from outside.

A gloved hand grabbed hold of her roughly, the faceless, white-suited surgeon pulling at her, the electric saw still whirring in his other hand. She kicked, struggled, cried out, threw the bedsheet at him in an irrational, desperate reflex. The figure panicked, shrieking and flailing at the white fabric as though it were a scorpion, driving the whining saw through it and into his leg, stabbing again and again, yelling get it off, get it off GET IT OFF ME. Blood sprayed like sawdust from a mill, painting the pristine tiles red, and still he kept slashing, hacking and babbling until he sheared through the tendons of his leg and collapsed, thrashing helplessly in a spreading scarlet pool.

Caroline struggled to get to her feet, trying to raise herself from the blood-slick floor on shaking, nerveless arms. It was happening everywhere, now. The intercom filled with bellowing, panic, madness. Facility staff were attacking one another in the corridors, shooting at things that weren't there, doubled up on the floor in fits of hysteria. The men in the security station were laughing and slapping each other on the back, convinced they were watching cartoons. The walls seemed to melt, to run like quicksilver. Her head was pounding like a cheap apartment over a shitty nightclub and she could feel her poisoned mind spilling over, expanding like a nuclear accident, contaminating every living thing it touched.

one and two are overloaded--
--cinnamon the cinnamon we have to--
Go near that door son and I will put you down without a second--
/It's on fire it's burning--
MY BABY, MY BABY'S IN THERE--

She heard gunshots, saw silhouettes in the dark mirror with each muzzle flash, bodies slumping and falling as they ran for the door to her room. There was another shower of sparks and an electronic screech before the monitors blanked out and the room was plunged into pitch darkness, bathed in red emergency lighting a second later. The corridors outside rang with tinny, hysterical laughter, clunking metal and unhinged, animal howls that couldn't have been human but were. Caroline slumped on the wet floor, laughing weakly along with them, pushed beyond endurance as her mind continued to seep like radiation out of her skull. She was Chernobyl. She was Babel. She was Babylon. It was a horror movie, and everyone was the monster.

Fala la lan-

BURN IT TORCH THE FREAKING WING IF YOU HAVE TO JUST KILL IT KILL IT NOW KIT IT RAW KOIL LO L̶A ̨X̨F͡I Ļ̨́͢͠À̡̛͡ Z̧͞O ̴̛͠͝F̴̵͏H̕̕G̨̀̕̕F͡͠í͝͠͞I̴͘͘͡į̛͢͞͞i~̴̕

There was one final gunshot.

---

She stood in the pouring rain and watched it burn, barefoot in a backless hospital gown, soaked to the skin. Gun in one hand, plastic bottle in the other, coastal winds beating at her remorselessly. It all looked so small from outside. Just another ugly warehouse in a row of ugly warehouses. Nothing to suggest the six levels underneath it that were now going up in greasy, colorful smoke. Nothing to hint at the shrink-wrapped bodies and the floating brains.

Caroline tore her red-rimmed eyes away from the roaring inferno, staring off into the vague glow of night. The cat's smile beckoned from a streetlight far ahead, its tail flicking idly below, and she followed, as though in a trance.

What else could she do?

---

Mass Effect: Brink

As many as would make an entertaining workout before lunch.

Mass Effect: Brink

Here are the VORCHA you ordered.