@Lewascan2 Yes, he's more likely to be the one to opt to work alone.
Honestly, we still don't really have an idea of what the main plot is. Despite all the innately powerful personalities of the characters, there's every possibility of them being initially confronted with a threat enough to actually keep them united... at least temporarily.
@Lewascan2 He can't enlighten her therefore either he doesn't see a reason to engage with her, speed is chaotic not orderly or understandable.
*Enlighten as in rip her soul from her flesh to be free of her prison.
I can already see we're off to a lovely start. So much team cohesion. XD
I'd imagine that would be quite the task for him. After all, he would be basically trying to rip a universe apart (though a small one, granted), which is essentially what her body is. In order to exist the way she does, she had to become her own sort of self-contained universe that contains and emits nothing but Speed, allowing her to operate as a sort of island in the normal timestream. It's the only way she can exist after literally purging her own past/history. Her body acts as a shell/shield from the effects of her own time travel paradox. Which is to say nothing of the difficulty of actually hurting someone that is... well, she ascended by time traveling after all. Light speed is a thing she can and casually does now. Basically, assume that if there is a speedster feat in comics, she can probably pull it off too, because "Speed given form".
@Lewascan2 You see to the Architect the world, no the universe is imperfect or even ugly. The flesh is barbaric, and obsolete. A world of perfection will only be capable of becoming reality once the new world is born.
Interesting. Then I wonder what he would think of my character, a human who ascended past flesh into a state more similar to being an elemental of the force/concept of Speed itself.
@Lewascan2 Not exactly, he's more a soul inside a metal body. And this is a better idea of what he's all about:
<Snipped quote>
Interesting... I was getting a more "steel dominator of the universe" vibe from him before than a "wants to enlighten the universe into the glory of steel" in your earlier posts. What, does he just want to turn everything into something straight out of Transformers/Cybertron? Is that the means or the end one wonders?
No time too soon I'd assume, since we don't really have any fully approved character sheets yet. I'd only worry about time crunch when we've got maybe 3-5 approved minimum.
As an aside (and as someone who collected and still owns some of those legos), you've been spelling Bionicle wrong. XD That said, basically running a Bionicle borg... thing? That's the concept? It's certainly distinctive amongst the character concepts we've got so far.
So what was that about Nessie not appreciating being princess-carried and handheld by Lumiere again?
I feel I'm as surprised as most everyone else, but the IC setup for said reaction makes it make sense. Whether or not that sort of reaction will stay consistent or was a result of her exhaustion is up in the air currently, but she seems rather charmed by all this honestly.
@Dead Cruiser Okay, made it about as brief as I could manage. I felt it would honestly be simpler to just go ahead and craft the CS outright, so here you go.
Very broadly summarized: Jen is a black-souled/Perceiver human, whose mostly White Arts based magic is over the manipulation of the forces of Speed, which allows her to also perform some connected space-time techniques. She had dipped somewhat into Red applications but didn't fully take the plunge until it was literally a matter of saving her world. At that point, she attempted (and succeeded at) the fabled speedster time travel ability with a twist, accidentally apotheosizing herself in the process and basically becoming the concept of Speed in a humanoid form.
She lost a great amount of her mortality, as her "perfect time travel" technique relied upon her sacrificing her history/past existence in order to avoid a paradox. In order to not fall apart and defeat her opponent in the meantime, she crafted a new body from the fundament of Speed itself to act as a preservatory pocket for her memories and soul. As a result of this body, she now exists as a self-sustained island of existence within the normal timestream, allowing her to explore the more exotic applications of her magic at far less personal risk going forward.
Name: Jen Shiragami
Titles: Flashpoint, Vanquisher of the Unspoken, The Hero Who Never Was, Fastest Woman Alive
Age: 21 physically... and a fair bit older mentally if one considers her living extended periods with an accelerated mind.
World: Earth Q is an Earth variant world once reduced to a post-apocalyptic wasteland by decades-long war with a Wuxia-style Invader, were it not for Jen's final heroic act during her ascension restoring it to a golden age of relative peace. Magic and supernatural abilities are a fairly new phenomenon on this world, barely 30 years old, and are thus poorly understood and with shaky foundations for training.
Race: A black-souled/Perceiver human(?), Jen developed from her youth a natural and intuitive connection to the forces of Speed. By all accounts she is otherwise a bog-standard human woman of Japanese descent... at least on the surface.
Form: Jen appears as a young human woman of what could be described as be Japanese heritage. As a result of her ascension, this appearance is more a thin veneer than anything. Having been forced to cast aside her mortal form in truth, the illusion falters when she uses her powers to any real degree, revealing a semi-ethereal blue humanoid being that appears to be more a living, moving galaxy than anything else.
Legend: Jen's world was woefully unprepared for an invader with the bullshit of a Wuxia protagonist behind them. A war of decimation with the goal of godhood was waged against her world, and Jen from the age of 11 found herself participating. The war went on for a full decade from her joining, and Jen's power over Speed was cultivated and mastered in that time, her personally confronting the Invader many a time and often being the only thing between her world and annihilation. She in many ways became the face of the resistance, and her very presence tended to at least guarantee that the enemy could not win outright.
Widely hailed as humanity's savior, she was a one-woman army, known to slay and save thousands in the blink of an eye, entire armies liberated or laid to waste at her leisure. Rumor said that should one have a way by which she may hear them and so much as call her name, she could cross the ocean to aid the besieged before the words ceased to flow. Her final battle with the Invader would see her finally initiating a last desperate stage of her personal cultivation, resulting in her victory, along with her ascension and removal from the entirety of her world's memory and history.
Will: Jen dedicated herself to heroism and war from a young age. Time and again she has fought for the sole purpose of saving lives and opposing an unparalleled tyrant of a madman. Despite having finally defeated said tyrant once and for all, she cannot lay such instincts completely to rest. That said, facing a new world with new people and evils, Jen can only feel a looming sense of... exhaustion. Having sacrificed everything for her world and spent half her life at war, Jen now desires to try living for herself for a change, to seek personal peace instead of peace for the sake of others. To that end, she intends to explore the new limits of her existence/body and shatter them all over again, to cast down any threat to her peace, and to finally have what she always reserved for others... hopefully without compromising her moral compass... much. It's time for the selfless hero to be a bit selfish for once.
Mastery: Jen has long cultivated a natural intuition for manipulating the primal forces of Speed, to a degree that steps even into the realm of space-time. Her mastery has seen her surpass even the speed of light and the flow of time itself, and her ascension has seen the obtainment of near-immortality through the stark transformation of her body to one more akin to an elemental of Speed than anything else. Broadly speaking, if one can so much as conceptualize a usage of speed, it's fair to assume she can make it happen -or figure it out if not; she is basically a living embodiment of Speed.
Ascent: During the Wuxia Invader's ascension ritual, a genocidal sacrifice was initiated, wiping out a large portion of the planet's population and ensuring the Invader's ultimate victory. Instead of allowing such an atrocity to pass, Jen was forced to use time travel. She was wary of causing a paradox, but it was the only thing she had left, and she had a theory about how she could make it work.
Speed of light remains constant irrespective of the observer. It is observed that as the speed of an object increases, time slows down. At the speed of light, time stops. And on further increment of speed greater than light, time reverses. Thus, to travel back in time we have to move faster than Light. And Jen's personal step: sacrifice her own timeline to ensure that her appearance in the past would not cause a paradox.
She didn't just erase the battle, the defeat. She reversed time all the way back to the exact moment the Wuxia Invader had arrived in her world years ago. As she did so, the disappearance of her very past caused her body to begin to come apart at the seams. In order to retain cohesion, she infused herself with the very concept of speed that flowed more freely around her now than ever before, crafting a new body from the fundament of the universe, a part of her mortality inextricably cast away to achieve a stable existence outside her own timeline.
She found the moment of the Invader's entry and attacked him with every bit of her fully cultivated power against his less experienced past self, a merciless barrage of high-speed vibrating attacks that reduced him forever to mere atoms. However, the Invader had still been resolving the effects of his dimensional technique when she struck. The combination of such a technique imploding and Jen's own state of still-resolving ascension and weakened grasp on her world's timeline caused her to be nicked by the collapsing technique and thrust from her world entirely, as her ascension solidified and completed in truth.
Arriving in a place unknown, she found that her very being had been fundamentally changed by the experience. In order to maintain her existence, she had not merely joined herself to the concept of Speed. No, for to join herself with her own universe's rules of reality would have resulted in her unraveling the moment she left. Instead, she had managed to transform herself into a sort of moving "universe of Speed" in the shape of a human. Her very being was a self-sustaining battery of an existence that molded and adapted itself to instead be fueled merely by Jen's own belief and perception of Speed.
Ephemera: The Speed Nexus is a self-sustaining existence within Jen's body of her own semi-unintentional creation. More accurately, her body is the nexus itself. In the course of her ascension, she erased her past and, thus, to continue existing, she had to transition into a form disconnected from the normal timeline, a body that contains a small pocket of her past in the form of her own memories and soul. Through this and her own perception of her power, her body has become essentially a walking physical expression of the fundamental force of Speed. This body is a magical nuclear power plant, constantly utilizing the forces of its own existence to generate and store further power, which is partially put towards generation, escalating the speed at which it generates more ad infinitum. This body doesn't possess an organic growth cycle and as a result is no longer is capable of aging. As a result of erasing her own history/past, very few from her home-world recall her existence, and she has been relegated more to myth than anything. That said, she is not the only being that can step beyond the reach of time, and several that remember cultivate her (presently false) image as a Goddess and search for ways to contact her or bring her home.
Okay, took me a while to come up with something that maybe works with this sort of vague and flexible "magic/cultivation/ascension" system, but here's the character concept I'd like to pitch before I go to all the work of making a sheet or anything.
Her world is a super-hero-type in the local cosmology. Basically just insert a random mix of any Marvel/DC or whatever tropes. It's got all you could want from such a setting. However, the main problem here is that for her world? Supers are a new thing. By whatever means they gain their abilities, they have appeared only within the latest 3 decades, and the local Avengers/Justice League has yet to form until the end of her Journey. Thus, on a cosmic scale, this makes them... vulnerable.
Jen is a black-souled human from this world, who was born with a connection to the White/Red concept of SPEED. If there's an absurd speedster feat in comics, you can bet there's a good chance she can pull it off using said magics. She was eventually forced to begin bettering herself and mastering that power very young when her world became a target for conquest by what was effectively a wuxia protagonist with a god-complex (which is basically all of them). Given that her world didn't have an established team to defend it, it quickly devolved from the golden age of supers into a mix of a deconstruction of a superhero world and the post-apocalypse.
Over time, as her mastery grew, Jen would end up essentially becoming the most famous "speedster" of her world, a dedicated hero who was often the only thing between the world and total conquest, despite her relative youth. Her sheer speed was simply something that the wuxia invader couldn't overcome without extreme effort. If she so much as heard of a battle, she could be there in minutes at the absolute most. Bases could be evacuated, injured rushed to medics and healers. If she was on the field, it was nigh impossible to make any lasting deaths happen among her fellow heroes and the world resistance.
The Invader soon realized he couldn't overcome her speed in a straight fight even with all his supernatural martial prowess; unfortunately, this forced him to fight smarter, to be subtle so that her interference was a nonissue. With bullshit determination and what could only be described as "basically plot armor" by those that fought him, The Invader sought godhood and made steady progress towards that goal, forcing the world's defenders to slowly but steadily give ground. After all, Jen couldn't be everywhere at once.
Eventually, the final battle culminated in the Invader achieving his goal, nearly cultivating his soul to a higher plane of existence. The ritual to achieve godhood was repurposed into a brutal sacrificial rite that would both herald his ascension and simultaneously kill the heroes that came to stop it, using them as the sacrifices. The ritual was an abhorrent success, wiping out a large portion of the planet's population, even as Jen herself vibrated her atoms and very soul enough to phase through the wave of annihilation.
By this point, Jen had achieved the peak of what could be had without taking a very dangerous step: time travel.
She was wary, and every possible bit of research, training and instinct within her screamed that attempting time travel was a fool's errand, more likely to cause a paradox than anything even remotely similar to what she'd read in comic books. That said, it was the only thing she had left, and she had a theory about how she could make it work.
Speed of light remains constant irrespective of the observer It is observed that as the speed of object increases, time slows down At the speed of light, time stops And on further increment of speed greater than light, time reverses Thus to travel back in time we have to move faster than Light
These were the steps, almost too simple to be believed. But in order to prevent the paradox caused by her own existence from occurring, Jen added one further: She would sacrifice her past in order to ensure that her physical appearance in the past as an adult would not cause a paradox or otherwise unintentionally screw over the universe. She'd never attempted time travel before, so she felt that this was a necessary step to cover for her inexperience. Perhaps if she had even further mastery, she could have pulled off flawless time travel, but for now, this would have to do.
As she ran, she went for broke, unwilling to let her sacrifice be in vain, knowing that everyone she knew and loved would forget her very existence -that she would have never existed to begin with. Thus, she didn't just erase the battle, the defeat. She reversed time by years all the way back to the exact moment the Wuxia Invader had arrived in her world. And as she did so, the disappearance of her very past caused her body to begin to come apart at the seams. Into order to retain cohesion and survive, she began to infuse herself with the very concept of speed, joining herself with a fundament of the universe, a part of her mortality inextricably cast away to achieve a status above human, that which would let her prevail. As she traced the Invader's path through time all the way back to the start, she readied herself for a battle that she would have never been able to give him decades ago.
She found the moment of the Invader's entry, reentered the proper time-stream, and then attacked him with every bit of her fully cultivated power against his far less experienced self. Despite being objectively far older than her when he arrived, his future self had learned how to fight a weaker her as they both grew and adapted to each-other in turn. To bring her strongest self to bear against him at his weakest after he had expended great power to cross the boundaries of worlds? In that moment, he was vulnerable, and she struck with blows faster than the flow of time itself, a merciless barrage of vibrating attacks that completely stripped him to nothing, reduced to mere atoms that would never be able to reconstitute, no matter his training.
However, there was a cost for this victory. The Invader had still been resolving the effects of his dimensional technique when she struck. The combination of such a technique imploding and Jen's own state of still-resolving ascension and loose grasp on the reality at hand caused her to be nicked by the collapsing technique and thrust from her world.
As she arrived in a place unknown, she found that her very being had been fundamentally changed by the experience and her sacrifice. In order to maintain her existence, she had not merely joined herself to the concept of speed. No, for to join herself with her own universe's rules of reality would have resulted in her unraveling the moment she left. Instead, she had managed to transform herself into a sort of moving "universe of Speed" in the shape of a human. Her very self was a self-sustaining battery of an existence that molded and adapted itself to instead by fueled merely by Jen's own belief and perception of Speed.
She had lost her world and saved it in the same breath. She knew that no-one would ever remember her, that no sign of her existence would or could ever exist. There was nothing left for her there. Perhaps, one day, she might find a way back, but for the time being? There was a new world to save and new evils to face. She had become something new, some more, and now that she had taken the final step of her prior journey, it was time to take the first step of the new.
EDIT: Will probably do a more summarized version (or just put the background in a hider) for the actual sheet, but that can wait till after feedback and/or approval.
From his place behind the rock, Hugh heard the Cleric’s shout and the crackle of magic resolve into a pair of muffled underwater-esce impacts, Pass Without Trace continuing to do its best work despite his current concealment.
As he nocked an arrow and peered back out, He witnessed Victoria’s nimble blade claim the life of an injured goblin, who was apparently momentarily startled by the harassment of her abominable porcine undead.
He could hear the Tiefling’s still thankfully somewhat muffled ranting starting up from above, she having apparently scaled their cover in order to make some nonsense speech. That said, for all the time she wasted, she still managed to claim a greenskin life herself with some remarkable flashy fire and an eye-searing golden light-beam, leaving the team with only three opponents left… opponents in fairly inconvenient positions at that.
Grimacing, Hugh darted from his cover and across the road to seek shelter behind the trunk of a sizable tree instead, a position which also afforded him a much more favorable shot at the remaining Targets, now that the low-hanging canopy and his own allies weren’t unintentionally shielding for his foes.
Nocking his arrow once more, he sighted over the top of Morty and released it at the scrambling goblin that was screeching things he decided he was perhaps best off not being able to translate. Unfortunately, between having to hurriedly reposition and lacking time to properly line up the shot before his erratically-moving drunken target could settle into a more predictable movement, his theoretically equally accurate shot ended up burying itself just slightly into the right side of the goblin’s chest, barely enough so that it seemed to have missed the heart and instead invaded a lung, judging by the bloody hacking his Target was currently doing.
Hugh scowled and set to knocking another arrow just in case, but it seemed like they had managed to solidly command the momentum of this entire fight. He quite suspected the remaining Targets would be dead long before he could even make up his mind on which to shoot next.
TheWendil,
Noctis,
Danyel,
thedarkness,
Reisling,
Guardian Angel Haruki,
Izurich,
4wheathRmany,
Aisede,
Aku the Samurai
