Alice paused behind a stall, her urge to throw up had only intensified since the entire fair had gone to hell. People were running screaming and a sniper had taken potshots at Deborah Jauvant. All in all, it was not a good day. Her head was pounding and her vision shaky, the explosions and clouds of metahuman gas were not helping her hangover, and she pushed her back against the flimsy wood and canvas construction to try and regain her senses. Her glock was in her hands, clutched in a ready position, though she hardly felt ready. She hadn’t fired, there were too many civilians, and her hands were unsteady enough that even if there was no danger of friendly fire she probably wouldn’t hit anything helpful anyway.
Unusually, she’d brought along her helmet, mainly in case someone got close enough to question her bloodshot eyes. She’d clamped it on as soon the first telltale cloud of metahuman suppressant had erupted amidst the RAVEN agents. At least her internal compass had still been bang on she’d extracted a handful of kids and put down one assailant, though more through luck than anything else. Now she was just crouching behind cover and waiting for the chaos to stop, hoping that none of her colleagues saw her and realised the reason for her lack of action.
She’d definitely be court-martialled if she was reported. She was hungover, sleep-deprived, and had a flask of whiskey in her pocket. She dreaded to think what might happen to her career. There’d be no more drinking after this, she’d stop, throw away the whiskey, empty out her cupboards, she couldn’t be on duty hungover or drunk.
She pulled out the flask, cocking her arm back to hurl it away, then stopped, ashamed. It wouldn’t work. She’d tried to give up drinking three times since the Eco-Natura attack, and each time it had only ended up getting worse. She slipped it back into her pocket. She’d just have to make sure she didn’t get caught then, she’d be damned if some pencil pusher was going to take her life away.
Alice pushed herself to her feet, and, gun extended, advanced into the swirling red mist. Her coms seemed to be out, but she could hear gunfire not far away, and shouts. She began to move faster towards the sound, gun held before her, hardly steady, but enough to hopefully dissuade immediate hostilities. She was wrong, it turned out, as she barrelled out of the fog and into the centre of a squad of heavily armed men. They weren’t in RAVEN uniform, and the way the guns were instantly trained on her revealed their allegiance. Alice vanished as bullets pockmarked the smoke behind her. She appeared behind them stumbling slightly, and fired a spray of shots. Only two found their marks, one man crying out and going down clutching his leg, another stumbling back as a round ricocheted off the plate in his back armour.
Alice swore, then emptied the entire pistol in their direction. Holding down the trigger until nothing but a hollow click emanated from the small, evil looking device. She vanished again, pleased to see when she reappeared that now two men were down. She reloaded, or tried to, her fumbling hands, normally so practised and assured, were far from adept under the influence of alcohol, and she dropped her spare magazine.
“Crap.”
She bent down to pick it up and met a boot coming the other way…
Seraphine had been on a date tonight, well, a ‘date’, fully bought and paid for. She’d been on the arm of some rich guys kid, a brat about twenty years old who clearly had been looked after by Daddy’s money since he was born, and would be until the day his scrawny ass died. He’d run screaming at the first sign of trouble. Seraphine would have done as well if she’d managed to get more than ten feet. She’d been knocked down by a group of fleeing carnies, and was now covered in mud, her hair in disarray and clothes ruined. All in all, it hadn’t been a great date. Fortunately, the Society was not inclined to give refunds due to events outside of their control.
Now all she had to do was figure out how to get out of here alive. She was the Prime, and she had no desire to experience death again, second-hand was bad enough. Worse, if she died, that was it, the end, it was a terrifying, but sobering thought. There were explosions and screams all around her, but the red mist ahead of her seemed to be clearing, and she knew better than to try and make it through the thickest parts of it.
Holding her breath as best she could, she plunged through the smoke, grateful that the wind was picking up and beginning to clear the ground. What she hadn’t expected was to run into the middle of a fight, a spray of bullets shot past her, making her scream in shock as they carved contrails through the clearing smoke. There was a RAVEN agent, helmeted, but apparently out of action on the ground, and two men looming over her. One kicked her in the side, prompting a groan and a contraction from the prone woman. Apparently she was awake then, although not for much longer as a gun was lowered to her head. There was a click, and the man swore, apparently out of ammo. He began to reload his rifle, and Seraphine, unwilling to watch murder, charged, all four of her.
It was unclear whether the man were more effectively taken aback by the surprise attack, or by the fact that the four girls who attacked them were identical in every single way. One of them went down with a cry as two clawed at his eyes, the other grunted and doubled up at a knee to the groin. And then everything went wrong at once, the man on the ground kicked out, knocking one of the clones off him, he punched the other in the gut, then dragged a pistol from his holster. He levelled it at the nearest girl, and fired.
They all dropped, instantly. It was unnerving, as if they had all been the same person who had just been shot. “Fucking duplicator.”
He helped his comrade to his feet, then turned to finish off the women. Something was missing though, his rifle, and the black clad form of the RAVEN Agent.
The alcohol had saved Alice, even if it had put her in danger in the first place. It had helped to numb some of the pain, just enough to allow her to get back to her feet while the soldiers were distracted, and retrieve their discarded weapon. She levelled it at them now.
So the connection through my phone isn't stable enough for Piratepad it seems, I'm going to have to get by with solo posts until I get proper broadband next week. Going to have something up in a couple of hours though :)
Seraphine relaxed in the sun, allowing the golden rays to caress her skin. She was nonetheless grateful for the cooling breeze that blew from the bay, robbing the glare of some of its punishing heat. She tapped her pen atop the heavy book before her. It was nice to get out in the sun, even if she still had to study while she did so. It was tempting to simply relax, the Society kept her well, and would likely have provided her with accommodation here in Spain, as long as she worked for them here as well. She had other plans however, Seraphine was not going to remain working as an escort until her beauty faded, she wanted more, and she intended to exploit her ability in order to get there. She was already part fluent in Spanish, and had nearly completed two years of her course here. At the same time she was currently enrolled in another two universities on the other side of the world, studying Medicine and Law in America. Achieving the grades needed for scholarships had been child’s play when she could revise for twelve different exams simultaneously. The work was tiring, and irksome, but it was a means to an end. Seraphine would not be a whore forever, one day she would have power and influence. She wanted to be someone, and this was what it took.
She was alone here, so to speak, Only the Prime could reabsorb a clone, and each clone needed food, and somewhere to stay. Sending yourself halfway around the world was expensive, and even with scholarships, maintaining three people in University was expensive, the Society paid extremely well, especially for those who were valuable to them, but even those funds were strained by the depths of her ambition.
She nodded and waved towards a classmate, he turned and made his way over to her as she closed the book. Ambition was all very well, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy herself along the way…
Alice Barrett
Alice was much more at home in Baybridge now than she had been some months ago. She’d already acquired a dozen boltholes in the city, places that she knew she would be able to teleport to in a fraction of a second if she was in danger. It had been a practice she’d maintained in New York as well, on the advice of an erstwhile colleague. They didn’t talk anymore, but it had been good advice. Loathe as she was to keep it.
Her phone rang, and she stared at the handsets screen for six full rings before denying the call. She’d been meaning to change her number, but somehow had never quite gotten around to it. The calls were getting less frequent however. It was getting even harder to simply ignore them. Especially considering everything else that had happened in Baybridge since. The riots, the Eco-natura attack, the death of Old Man Winter. Fortunately the cure for both was the same.
She rapped the bar, and her glass was swiftly refilled by the man behind it. This wasn’t a good bar, it was a dive, the kind of place you didn’t find until you’d already had a few too many. Alice was past caring about the quality of the alcohol she imbibed, as long as it meant that she couldn’t remember what happened at the end of it.
He drained the cup already, and tattooed the bar once more, the barman didn’t care, he knew she could pay her bill. He didn’t know she was a metahuman at least, she’d heard the conversations of some of the bar’s other patrons. Metahumans were becoming less and less popular, not that people had ever really been thrilled to see them. She stood, glancing at her watch, it was blurred, and swayed. She realised that in fact the room behind it was swaying, that then lead to another realisation, she was swaying. She blew it off, moving uncertainly to the door before making her cautious way outside. The street was spinning as well, but she began to walk home.
It took her two hours.
It was midday…
Ellen Nile
Academy 61, Roseview, was well equipped, every Academy was. They had expensive labs, complete computer suites, hi-tech classrooms and most importantly, in this case, a brand new, fully equipped gym. Ellen was there now, it was a recent interest of hers, a sudden recent interest. Since the Eco-natura attack she had spent a great deal of her spare time in the gym and the simulation room. It was already beginning to have an effect, her stomach had lost the paunch she had acquired on Academy food. Her limbs were becoming toned and strong.
She dropped the weights back into their rack, wiping sweat from her brow. She was exhausted, her limbs felt weak, and she walked on shaking legs towards the door, pausing only to retrieve her water bottle. It was like an elixir of life, quenching her parched throat. She sat down for a moment to regain some strength, and rested her head against the wall.
She could almost feel the case in her lap, though it rested hidden some distance away. She couldn’t risk bringing it into the Academy itself. After all, it was the property of Mannequin, and he was now imprisoned by RAVEN. She couldn’t imagine what they might do with the vials that he had given to her. They meant to much to her now. She’d used them twice, and each time they had worked. There hadn’t seemed to be any ill effects. He had given her a solution, it was imperfect, but it was the closest to an answer that she’d yet received.
She would have to use it tonight, because tomorrow she was going to engage in an activity she had yet to try in her time at the academy, thanks in part to the limitations of her abilities. Tomorrow she was going to fight someone…
@Nosuchthing NPC's powers and their weaknesses would be really helpful for me to come up with a sensible weakness for a character of lower power. I am not arguing with the fact that characters might and should be outclassed - there is always a bigger fish and the PC's are not gods after all - but it'd make sense for the NPC's to work by the same rules as PC's even if they are on a whole different level, no?
You don't need to know NPCs power levels, there are multiple characters already posted, and dozens, if not scores, hidden away in the older RPs that were accepted. Look at them, why do the NPCs (who your character will likely never meet) matter at all?
>They're only mediocre if you're applying DC/Marvel power levels instead of thinking about how they'd be in the real world. It's more "thinking about how characters of DC/Marvel power level would be in real world", really.
>about the characters themselves rather than their powers Not to say that it's a bad thing but i've always imagined that with superhumans, their powers often define and shape their characters and personalities to a great degree.
>The NPCs are just going to be side characters/villains to help advance the PCs. In that case could you perhaps help me understand this whole thing better by explaining (if it's not a spoiler) the weaknesses of Jade West, Mannequin, Bison, Toro and Phoenix, the guys who, at least from my point of view, seem to posess powers on a level quite different from the PC's? I think i can guess that Jade's primary weakness is that she refuses to use most of her powers, but that does not really relate to the power itself.
But they're NPCs. Their power level is irrelevant. The events in Verthaven were caused by a metahuman of godlike power, are you suggesting that the ultimate threat to human life on earth, a major plot point, should have an equal weakness?
It sounds like you're having a go at the GM for wanting to create a legitimate story, in which characters are frequently outclassed. I'd suggest you think carefully before continuing with the passive aggression.
Seraphine is just above the average height for a woman, though her willowy build contributes to the illusion of height that is only further supported by her preference for wearing heels. Slim and fit, Seraphine has the kind of body that men would, and do, pay money for. She turns heads as she walks down the street, and she knows it, and enjoys the power that comes with it. Her figure is a perfect hourglass shape, and her flawless skin is pale, setting off the red hair that waterfalls down her back.
Her fine features are elegant, beautiful even, with just that hint of sultry sexuality that makes her such a valuable commodity for the White Spider Society. High cheek bones highlight eyes with a strangely piercing gaze, though they only occasionally betray an intelligence one would not normally associate with a call-girl. This is only highlighted by the carefully and tastefully applied makeup. She may be a call-girl, but she’s an extremely expensive and exclusive one, and that means that she is far from out of place on the arm of a wealthy businessman. No heavy rouging and liberal foundation here.
Attire:
Seraphine wears what she is expected to. Frequently this includes short dresses, ones that cling to curves and leave very little to the imagination. Her body is a valuable commodity, and is dressed up in such a way to show it in its best light. A flair for the dramatic ensures that she frequently wears expensive designer clothes and expensive jewellery, some has been purchased on her own dime, but a great deal have come in gifts from her clients. Call them tips if you will.
Personality
Innate & Outward Personality:
For someone who is so adept at manipulating others, Seraphine is not very good at making friends. She doesn’t like trusting other people with her feelings, because it is so easy for them to take advantage of them. Emotions and lust and desire are all just weaknesses to be exploited, or at least that is what she tells herself. Seraphine plays at being the ruthless Machiavelli, but really is just a young girl who desperately wants to be something that she is not.
Somewhere beneath the façade is a young girl who is very out of her depth, but is determined to make the best of it now. She is frightened and lonely, but more afraid of letting others know that is how she feels than she is of the feelings themselves. Caring, she’ll take in strays when they wander by, for a while at least, until she remembers the person she is supposed to be. To sum it up, Seraphine is a good person who is trying really hard to be a bitch, and one day, she just might succeed.
Hobbies/Interests:
Optional
Skills/Talents:
Seraphine is a polyglot, and speaks half a dozen languages beyond English, French, ASL, Russian, Mandarin, Spanish and Arabic. Photography Observation Seduction
Goals/Motivation
Seraphine is headed right to the top, behind everything, behind the twisting of men to her whims, behind the sacrifice of her body for the purpose of business, behind the things she does for the Society lies a desperate ambition. Seraphine wants to control her own life, and in this world that means you need to control everyone else’s, or that’s how she sees it.
History/Bio:
Seraphine was not raised as a high society lady, or even as Seraphine. Sophie Jones was about as common as they come, her father was wealthy, but as a man who had worked his way up from the bottom, he wasn’t exactly welcome among the old guard of the wealthy. You could think that such prejudices were long since forgotten, but in the upper echelons of society there are still those who hold onto old and outdated sensibilities.
Her father was proud of his heritage, and refused to blend in with the circles he now moved among, still wearing old battered jeans and helping the hands on the ancestral family ranch. Sophie hated it, hated being looked down on and bullied by her fellow students at her private school, at home she had to carry out chores on the ranch, which would have been fine if it didn’t include mucking out the horses and throwing hay, giving her a more chunky and masculine physique than most teenage girls are comfortable with, particularly amongst peers who are spoiled rotten by their families from birth, not raised in a working household. She always wanted to escape that life, to be something more.
When her powers manifested things only became more complicated, they changed for the worse. Though it came with advantages, people were frightened of metahumans, and Sophie became even more ostracised than she already was, even her father, who had always been an honest, hard-working man, was ashamed of his daughter’s freakish nature. His daughter, his hard-working, honest daughter, was registered with nest, chipped, tagged, and suddenly an embarrassment.
Sophie ran away at fifteen, she stole a little money from her father and left town, left the county, the state. She changed her name, acquired a whole new identity, and set about transforming her life. Anyone else might have struggled, even most metahumans would have struggled in that position, but Seraphine’s ability gave her the unique ability to be in two places, or more, at once.
A year spent working long hours every day helped her lose the puppy fat, and a lack of proper nutrition ensured that her once chunky physique slimmed down a little more rapidly than was really healthy. It didn’t take long though, before she realised the power her new appearance gave her. She was lucky enough to have matured rapidly, and at sixteen, she looked old enough to be within the consenting age, but was ruthless enough to take advantage of the fact that she wasn’t, and extorted money from the men foolish enough to fall for her feminine wiles. Of course, it eventually meant she had to move on, and before long she found herself attracting the attentions of the White Spider Society. Attractive, and clearly already in the habit of using her sex and beauty to take advantage of men, she was picked up by a low level brothel swiftly, and put to work in the Society’s thriving sex industry.
Her abilities made her much more valuable than they were capable of dealing with however, and she was soon ‘taken off their hands’ by one of the more influential members of the Society.
Relationships
Family:
Alan Jones - Father Sharon Jones - Mother
Dynamics:
| Auri Auclair |
| Bad | Superior | "Quote Here." |
Seraphine has had to work for everything she has, once she had money, but she was never a member of high society like she has always dreamed. Auri has had that since she was born, and Seraphine is undeniably jealous of that. She’ll do what she is told of course, because she knows that causing trouble now will only cause her problems, but she will not do so gladly.
Abilities
Power Class:
Other
Power:
Seraphine has the potent gift of self-duplication, the ability to generate complete clones of herself. These clones share a limited empathic link, but are otherwise capable of acting and thinking independently, though the fact that they are the same person allows them to act with an uncanny unity of purpose at times. These clones are identical in virtually every way, impossible to tell apart for any but an extremely potent telepath.
This power is the secret to Seraphine’s many talents and vast experiences. Each clone, though tethered to the Prime, is capable of living an independent life, of learning and acquiring skills. Though there is no telepathic link between the Prime and the clone, upon reabsorption Seraphine Prime can absorb all of their memories, knowledge and skills. The clones otherwise can function independently.
Limits:
Though Seraphine can produce a number of clones, she is limited to a maximum of twelve, and she maintains three in areas around the country, including two in University, limiting her to being able to produce nine clones in her immediate vicinity.
Weaknesses/Drawbacks:
Reabsorbing a clone can have some adverse effects for some time after the fact. These can include personality defects, wild mood swings and occasional periods of exhaustion. These effects are magnified the longer the clone has been independent, a few weeks has little to no effect, while a few months or even years can have a much more difficult effect.
Though the clones can operate independently while Seraphine sleeps, forced unconsciousness for the Prime, through drugs or trauma, will force unconsciousness across the entire network, and trauma applied to them can be felt by the Prime, though she cannot use it to locate her clone, merely to experience (unwillingly) the pain the duplicate is experiencing. This empathy even extends to death, the clones can die, and they will experience death in exactly the same way as any other, and the reverberation of that experience can cause incredible psychological pain for Seraphine Prime. She will in effect experience death herself, without having to die.
The final limitation is simple, Seraphine is the Prime, the centre of the network, if she dies, so does every other Seraphine, like puppets with their strings cut.
Other:
Seraphine is currently a very valuable commodity for the White Spider society. She is young, beautiful, and has the potential to be anything from a date on the arm of a man of power, to his own personal harem, all for a not insubstantial fee.
Ellen is a slightly gangly and awkward looking teenager, with the long and clumsy limbs that result from a recent growth spurt that she hasn't quite filled out yet. She has the kind of form that could have made her an excellent long distance runner, if her ability hadn't made such a thing so difficult as to be impossible. She has small breasts, disappointingly so in fact, and in her mind it is not made up for by her not unappealing backside, that is again small, but at least nicely rounded and filled out.
Though she gets her figure from her mother, the rest of her appearance is clearly inherited from her father. Despite how little she knows about him this is obvious thanks to the fact that he was Native America, Cherokee to be exact. The first thing that people notice are the tell-tale almond shaped eyes, hidden beneath heavily lidded eyes, they are hazel, and despite the fact that she perpetually looks half asleep, the eyes beneath the lids are bright and aware.
Her cheek bones are high, defined, and a classic feature that sets off the rest of her face. If her nose could be called one thing, other than an embarrassment, it is proud, protruding forth like an eagle, and a constant source of self-esteem issues. The whole thing is further spoiled by slight buck teeth, though the lips around them usually suffice to draw attention away.
Attire:
Ellen wishes she was like every other teenage girl, so she dresses like them, t-shirts, jeans, shorts when she thinks she can get away with it. Her feet can usually be found clad in a pair of battered converse or Superstar sneakers and she's usually carrying a fairly new Adidas rucksack.
Personality
Innate & Outward Personality:
Ellen hates her ability, when it first developed she was a freak, ostracised from her school and forced to leave those who had been her friends, and even those who remained so in order to join an Academy. She tries to keep a positive outlook on life, hard though it may be, she’s had to, with the frequent spanners her ability throws into her life, from abilities that give her crippling migraines, to ones that leave her without hands or even any real way of communicating.
Positivity aside, Ellen can be prone to dramatic mood swings, even more so than most teenage girls, one moment she could be her normal sarcastic self, the next she could be grim and brooding. Her Academy Counsellor thinks that perhaps her ability could be affecting her hormones more dramatically than puberty normally would. She is good at distracting herself, most people aren’t capable of staying awake and alert for all hours of the day and night, so she is just as happy in her own company as in that of others, though she will frequently play Xbox to the early hours of the morning, or finish a book less than a day after she bought it.
She’s not the best listener, or friend to be honest, but it’s not from any real mean spiritedness, just an occasional habit to drift of daydreaming or get distracted easily when really she should be paying attention to someone else’s problems. When she isn’t caught up in a bout of melancholy she’s generally of the opinion that worries are for other people, and just tries to enjoy what little she feels she still can outside of her ability, on the occasion that she gets a power she really feels she can show off, she will do so at every opportunity, too often has she been stuck with slimy skin or uncontrollable telepathy. Her ability has taught her to live in the present, and enjoy what she has as much as she can.
Hobbies/Interests:
Gaming Reading
Skills/Talents:
Fast learner – Perhaps it is simply survival, or perhaps it is some strange quirk of her ability, but when you develop a different ability every week you learn to pick them up quickly, for fear of setting fire to your bedroom, as such Ellen can usually develop at least a beginners level of control in the first day, and moderate levels before she sleeps again.
Goals/Motivation
Ellen hates her ability, it is constantly robbing her of the normal life she once had, or still could have, every time she thinks she has a handle on the power it throws a curveball and she ends up as a creature with acid for skin. Right now she is caught up in the drama of High School life, and just wants to get the hell through the Academy.
History/Bio:
Ellen never knew her father, there is no great tragedy here, simply the eternal story of single mothers the world over. Neither her or her mother know where he is, what he does for a living, or anything more. She was the product of a brief, whirlwind romance, and her mother did not realise her pregnancy until long after the father had left her, but she never made an effort to get back in touch with him. Occasionally, when she has had a little too much wine, she will talk fondly of him, but she’s never really explained why she never sought to involve him in his daughter’s life.
She had a relatively average life for the first thirteen years, kindergarten, school, BFFs, her first crush, she was even doing well as an athlete, a potential rising star in the school’s track squad. And her life changed entirely when she developed abilities. She is hardly the only child who has had her entire existence spun on its head when she developed abilities, but Ellen has her life change every week, every time she developed new abilities she felt like it was happening all over again. By the time she realised that she wanted her ability suppressed it was too late, her brain had been permanently modified, and any attempt to suppress her ability led to far worse medical repercussions.
She was rapidly enrolled in an Academy, unfortunately it didn’t make things better. Kids are cruel, and kids with power aren’t much better. There are bullies in all walks of life, and with her unstable ability, Ellen was an easy target. After a few months she began to develop a knack for picking up her abilities quickly, and while she would never be as skilled as the other students, sometimes fortune would favour her with either an ability that was simply superior, or one that allowed her to get creative. She is now enrolled full time in the academy, no civilian household could possibly deal with the realities of her ability, she still visits her mother when she can, but spends most of her time at the Academy.
Relationships
Family:
Mother - Olivia Nile Father – Unknown
Dynamics: (Relations with other characters - You don't have to put relation with family here.)
| Cindy Keagan |
| Bad | The DOVE assigned to her case | "Quote Here." |
Ellen appreciates that Cindy just wants the best for her, but really, she’d rather that she didn’t have to see DOVE quite so often. It’s just another demonstration of how her power is ruining her life. Most kids see DOVE once a year, at most, Ellen gets to see her every month, and every time she insists that Ellen should see someone for psychological help, which doesn’t raise Ellen’s estimations of her at all.
| Lihua Zhao |
| Neutral | Just another Instructor | "Quote Here." |
Lihua is an Instructor at the Academy, and while there are some who fly by under the radar, Lihua is not one of them. She’s got a reputation among the kids there as the one Instructor you do not cross. Ellen has never actually met her, although she’s seen her from a distance, and really doesn’t see what all the fuss is about, not that she’s ever acted out when she is about.
| Wendy Lucker |
| Good | Friendly Acquaintance | "Quote Here." |
They aren't friends, but their relationship could be stretched to friendly acquaintances. They often find themselves sharing the library, Ellen might not quite have the same obsessive love of books, but she enjoys reading more than most. They talk a lot, when they’re both alone in the library or pass each other in the corridors, about books mostly, and the conversations have never really run deep enough for them to be considered friends.
Abilities
Power Class:
Power
Power:
Ellen has an extremely unusual and unstable metahuman ability, one that is constantly changing. Ellen does not need to sleep as frequently as normal humans, in fact, only sleeping once a week, for between twelve and twenty-four hours. To call this sleep would perhaps be inaccurate, in fact it is closer to hibernation, or even metamorphosis. It is nigh on impossible to wake Ellen during this period of sleep, to do so can have unpredictable effects.
At the end of this period of hibernation, Ellen will awake with a different ability to the one she fell asleep with. She has no control over what ability she gets, and she has never developed the same ability more than once, though she can develop powers with similar qualities. These abilities could even include physical changes, though such a development will lead to a longer period of hibernation. Clearly this ability leads to a creative and quick-learning mind, and some quirk of her power means that she usually picks up the basics fairly quickly.
Limits:
Though her potential repertoire of abilities seems to have virtually no limit, there is one quite specific one. Though she can develop abilities from Super-System, Cerebral, Elemental or even Other, she can never, and will never develop an ability with its roots in the power classification. This means she can never develop an ability that will boost or block abilities, that will replicate them, or manipulate them in any way.
The duration of her hibernation will also be directly linked to the ability that she develops. Any that leads to a change in her physical form will take longer, up to twenty four hours, and she will usually be ravenously hungry for some time afterwards.
Weaknesses/Drawbacks:
Ellen will have one set of abilities, or one ability, for a week, she may very well pick up how to use them quickly, but her talents will never match those of someone truly skilled with the ability they have, she is a quick study, but never a master. Also, while asleep Ellen is totally defenceless, she has no way of defending herself, and no way of surviving attack unless her metamorphosis has developed something that could protect her, such as armoured scales. Each ability will of course have its own weaknesses factored in.
Her power has also effected permanent changes in her brain chemistry, though her metahuman energy apparently sustains her throughout the week, without that energy she cannot sustain such a regime. And yet her brain won’t let her sleep. If Ellen were to wear a power suppressant collar she would still be unable to sleep more than once a week, but she would suffer the same levels of fatigue and exhaustion than any human would if they didn’t sleep for a week, leading to potentially serious health issues.
Finally, when she needs to sleep, she absolutely needs to, she can gain a little respite from copious quantities of caffeine, but can, and has, fallen asleep in awkward situations, only to remain asleep for the next day until her metamorphosis has concluded.
Power:
Ellen has the capacity to enlarge her suprachiasmatic nuclei dramatically, with the effect of accelerating her circadian rhythm exponentially. It effectively accelerates everything in her body, she can think faster, read faster and yes, run faster. Ellen can run faster than most family cars and even fast enough to run on water. She even heals faster, sealing cuts in a matter of hours, though with anything more serious it is likely that her ability will shift long before it could heal.
Limits:
Ellen’s speed is phenomenal, beyond what any normal human could ever achieve, but it does not increase her reaction times. Her reaction will be vastly quicker, but it will begin at the same point any normal human’s reaction would do. In addition, she will not get any physically tougher, she can punch someone at sixty miles per hour, but to do so would likely shatter her arm.
Weaknesses/Drawbacks:
Everything about Ellen’s body has been accelerated, including her aging process. As long as the ability only lasts for a week then it won’t take too much out of her life, but she could age one to two years in the matter of a few days. There is also the potential that it will temporarily accelerate the process of her natural ability, cutting down on the warning time she will get before the metamorphosis and even potentially moving up the event itself.
Abilities possessed during the RP: Power:
Tarsier Physiology – Ellen’s eyes are enormous, totally out of proportion to the rest of her body, and in fact the structure of her cranium has adjusted in order to compensate for the increased weight. Nearly the size of a grape fruit they grant her superb eyesight and far superior night vision to that of a human. Unfortunately she cannot move them in their sockets at all (that took some getting used to) her neck however, is far more flexible than normal, and not unlike an owl she can rotate her head up to 180 degrees.
Her fingers have also elongated, with slightly excessively proportioned knuckles, though they possess far more strength than their almost skeletal appearance would suggest. This change has also extended to her legs and feet, which are now dramatically elongated, enabling her to climb vertically and make leaps of up to twenty feet.
Limits:
Her eyes are fixed in her head, and that is a strange sensation for anyone accustomed to normal human vision, she still occasionally has to remind herself that she needs to turn her entire head in order to focus on things, which is distracting to say the least. Her jump is far in excess of that of a normal human, but is nonetheless limited to twenty feet at maximum.
Weaknesses/Drawbacks:
While she is now far more skilled at climbing than she was, walking normally is far less comfortable than it would be thanks to the change in shape of her lower limbs. In addition, her eyes are far more sensitive to light, and she is therefore far more likely to be affected adversely by bright lights.
Power:
Light Manipulation – Ellen’s latest ability is considerably different to the last one, and allows her to fiddle with certain things considered inalienable by physics. She now possesses photokinesis, the power to manipulate light. She can perceive light on any spectrum, which led to a number of migraine headaches at the beginning of her current metamorphosis. Now she simply blocks out what she can, though occasionally some slips through, causing confusion or discomfort when she observes things humans are not meant to see.
This also allows her to create strange effects in their air, literally bending light, or even preventing it from entering an area entirely. Though her powers are limited by her understanding and complete lack of practice. In a small area about herself, perhaps twenty feet, she can block out all light, creating what appears to be a black orb. This doesn’t stop anything else, bullets can still enter the area, and since the orb is centred on her it is not impossible to hit her. She can also perform the opposite, and magnify light, concentrating it in an area with such blazing brilliance that in can scorch retinas and cause temporary blindness.
She can even, with considerable concentration, generate illusions, although not quite. By manipulating the direction light travels she can slightly adjust the apparent locations of people. For the most observant of people there will still remain a slight shimmer at the true location of the person, but they will appear to be stood instead a few feet to the side.
Limits:
She can only manipulate light within about twenty feet of herself, beyond that she has no power over it, though if she stopped light travelling through that radius, it would not simply continue its travel on the other side.
Weaknesses/Drawbacks:
As already mentioned Ellen can perceive light on every spectrum, but has limited tolerance for it, having only just about got the hang of blocking out everything but the normal visible spectrum, as such, flooding an area with a wide variety of differing spectrums can put her in considerable distress.
Power:
Ellen, concerned with being found out, has developed the ability to simply fade into the background. She doesn’t turn invisible, has no power to bend light about herself, she can simply, at will, become almost unnoticeable. It is a predominantly passive telepathic ability that simply removes her from the list of people’s priorities. She can still be seen, even interacted with while unnoticeable, it simply requires far more concentration than would reasonably be expected from a conversation.
Limits:
Ellen is not invisible, she can still be seen, still picked up by cameras and other technology, it has no effect on them, or on people viewing her through them, at least, from a safe distance. People can also ‘see through’ the effect if they focus hard enough on looking for her. Doing something particularly out of the ordinary can draw attention to her as well, if she’s clearly committing a crime, her field will have comparatively little effect on the mind of the victim or a police officer. On the other hand, if she is just somewhere she isn’t supposed to be, she will rouse little interest unless it is an extremely heavily locked down area. Service areas she might get away with, but classified installations are definitely a no go.
Weaknesses/Drawbacks:
Though Ellen can make an effort to deactivate this power, it is passive, and as such she could literally become unnoticeable in the middle of a conversation, leaving the person talking to her extremely confused unless they have a rather sharper mind.
Thanks to the nature of her ability, Ellen has to be reassessed every week at the Academy, in order for them to monitor her progress with her ability. She also has far more frequent meetings with a DOVE agents than most metahumans, usually once every month or two.
Alice is slim and petite, standing a bare five foot two in height, and with little to her form in terms of weight. Her chest, always a source of embarrassment, is as flat as they come, and she frequently wears expensive push up bras in an attempt to make them look far more substantial than they actually are. The theme is continued elsewhere, and with her diminutive figure she could easily be mistaken for a boy at a distance.
She wore her blonde hair long in some attempt to preserve what little feminine appearance she had, but thanks to a rather heated encounter with a pyrokinetic metahuman she was forced to have what the stylist referred to as emergency hair surgery. As a result it is now cropped extremely short, and only highlights her boyish figure, much to her mortification.
Attire:
Though she tries to wear more feminine attire, her career as a RAVEN agent means that practical, hard wearing clothes are far more appropriate than dresses and skirts. In her off time however, she favours summer dresses and relaxed skirts, being extremely self-conscious about her boyish figure. Her skin is, or was, unblemished, apart from a large, vicious looking scar, still raw looking, as though fresh. The scar twists down and across her neck, interfering with her extensive tattoos, with two full sleeves that spiral and entwine across her chest and back.
Personality
Innate & Outward Personality:
Alice is a difficult person to get a handle on, a person full of contradictions. Perhaps one of her defining traits is her faith, it doesn’t quite fit, but it is irrevocably part of her, even if she occasionally struggles with the responsibilities and beliefs that come with it. She doesn’t force her faith on others however, or at least she tries not to, as long as they don’t bother her, she won’t bother them. That said, she is particularly uncomfortable around homosexuals, though she rarely expresses actual disapproval, anyone who knows her can identify her discomfort.
Mostly she is fairly easy going, and even tends to a slightly mischievous, if repetitive sense of humour. She has a habit of teleporting into close proximity of colleagues without warning, it hardly reduces her to uproarious laughter, but it usually brings a smirk to her face. She’s usually smiling, and finds herself comfortable amidst her peers, with thick skin and the ability to easily turn the other cheek. At least about most things.
She can be self-conscious regarding her appearance, she has an undeniably boyish figure, and drawing attention to that will only embarrass and anger her. She won’t hold onto her anger for long though, and is nothing if not forgiving. She has a lot of time for people, and despite her somewhat warped sense of humour makes friends easily. Perhaps in this quality she is developing the skills of a born leader, hardly honed, but someone who could easily take command of a difficult situation.
Hobbies/Interests:
Optional
Skills/Talents:
Make-up, seriously, Alice could be a make-up artist professionally, and has a knack for applying cosmetics with a touch that makes it near invisible, while also being capable of giving someone a complete makeover at the same time. Capoeirsta, Alice is a practiced and experienced user of Capoeira, primarily for its uses in combat, though she also enjoys it’s more recreational aspects. Drinking, so she’s five foot two and weighs 90 pounds, she’ll still drink you under the table without breaking a sweat. Cop Instincts, Alice comes from a family of police officers, has been brought up with, raised with stories about the people they dealt with on their beats, about raids, about crime and punishment. She has the kind of instincts you would find on a veteran beat cop, able to tell when someone is lying, or needs her to step in and help.
Goals/Motivation
Alice is, in her heart of hearts, a cop, and sometimes that's all she wants to be, to forget all the confusion that came with her abilities, albeit not directly linked to them. Part of her just wants to keep her head down, to forget about her partner and the things that happened in New York. There is an iron core of duty in her, and she wants to make her parents proud, and maybe, one day, look back at something she's done and be able to feel proud of that too.
History/Bio:
Mom was a cop, dad was a cop, it seemed that it was just a matter of time before Alice followed in the family footsteps. At least after her brief period of rebellion when she turned eighteen, time in her life that cost her several thousand dollars and left her with an exquisite set of tattoo, back, and chest tattoos. She regrets the decision, but is still oddly proud of the art upon her skin.
Only a year later Alice was enrolled in the NYPD Academy, and true to her roots, to her heritage, she proved to be a natural, being raised a cop probably had something to do with it. She graduated with honours, and was assigned a position as a beat cop at the tender age of twenty-one, and appeared in the accident and emergency room rather soon afterwards. Quite literally. A year after beginning her new job, she popped out of thin air into the middle of the accident and emergency room of Mount Sinai. One moment there was no one there, the next a uniformed patrol officer had collapsed, blood pumping from a vicious cut in her neck.
She was fortunate, had she been anywhere else, out on the street, any further than a minute from a hospital, then she would have died. As it was she was left with an eye catching, raw looking scar, and permanent damage to her vocal cords. DOVE visited her in hospital to register her as a metahuman, and to discuss her options now that she had developed abilities. It wasn’t long before she officially left the NYPD, transferred indefinitely to RAVEN, both for training in the use of her newfound gifts, and to put them to good use in policing those that normal police forces had to leave alone.
Though certain of her police instincts had to find a new home once she had formally joined RAVEN, she showed a talent for her duties, and was often able to talk down newly developed, or unstable metas from dangerous situations, as well as judging when those situations were about to go south rapidly. She was doing well, until her relationship with her last partner took a direction she wasn’t expecting, wasn’t prepared for, and was somewhat in denial of. She immediately requested a transfer to a different city, it was expedited, and she arrived in Baybridge only three weeks ago.
Relationships
Family:
Father - Sean Barrett Mother - Michelle Barrett
Dynamics:
| Cindy Keagan |
| Good | Friend | "Quote Here." |
Alice has not been herself since transferring to Baybridge, thanks, in part, to the events that led to her transfer. She's kept up her normal appearances but occasionally a darker mood shines through, even when she's with co-workers and friends. She's beginning to feel better, in part thanks to the efforts of Cindy to socialise with her.
| Maxine Diaz |
| Neutral | Co-worker | "Quote Here." |
Alice hasn't had time to get to know Maxine yet, she's only recently been transferred to Baybridge, so has mostly been preoccupied with induction, briefing, debriefing, and the myriad amounts of paperwork that come with dropping your life and moving to a new city at a moment's notice. She has picked up that Cindy has some misgivings about the RAVEN, though not due to Cindy's behaviour around Max in professional environments.
Abilities
Power Class:
Other
Power:
Alice has the ability to quite literally break the laws of physics, to bend the very fabric of space itself. Put simply, Alice can traverse great distances in the blink of an eye, or, in laymans terms, teleport. Effectively, Alice moves from one place to another without bothering to cross the space in between. This ability can displace liquids and gasses upon travel, though not solids. This ability has a potentially long range, and Alice can jump up to two miles at a time. Multiple short range jumps can be accomplished extremely rapidly and with pin point precision in line of sight.
Limits:
Alice can carry people with her, but only a maximum of two, any more than that and any attempt to jump would likely fail and end in a crippling migraine for Alice. Jumping with new passengers can also lead to a strong sense of nausea for the passengers, even vomit if they are particularly unaccustomed to it. They can grow used to this sensation after enough time and experience of it. Also, although Alice can jump by herself with ease, adding even one passenger can rapidly tire her out. Also, although she can displace gas and liquid when teleporting, solids are not nearly as accommodating, and if Alice does not already know an area well she could end up reappearing halfway into a wall, and the wall would win. Her current maximum range is two miles, but that would push her to her limits, exhausting her and potentially even making her throw up.
Weaknesses/Drawbacks:
Jumping takes a lot out of Alice, she is quite literally generating the energy required to leap across space in an instant, and she therefore burns energy and calories at an accelerated rate, and consumes copious amounts of greasy and fattening foods, without it having the slightest effect on her figure. She needs to consume somewhere in the region of twelve to fifteen thousand calories a day, more if it’s particularly strenuous. Her ability isn’t silent; displacing such a large amount of air makes a distinctive, solid, thump of suddenly compressed air. Long distance jumps take more out of her, with reaching her maximum range causing migraines, blackouts, and often vomiting. She also needs to be familiar with the area she is jumping to if it is long distance or a blind jump. She may be able to teleport with pinpoint accuracy if she can see her target, but teleporting to something she can’t see can easily end with her buried up to her waist in the earth or halfway through a wall.
She also maintains whatever momentum she has when she teleports, so if she falls off a building, she’d have to react pretty quickly in order to catch herself. Teleporting once she has acquired enough speed will still leave her travelling fast enough to leave her a smear on the pavement.
Other:
Alice was raised a strict Catholic, carries a Rosary and visits Church every Sunday.
She has some internalised homophobic views, partly thanks to her extremely strict Roman Catholic upbringing, and partly thanks to her own insecurities and fears about her own sexuality.
Alice suffered permanent damage to her vocal cords when she was attacked, and sounds perpetually hoarse, she also struggles to raise her voice above the volume of normal speech.
Vyri didn’t look behind her as they charged out of the building, though she winced at the sound of bones snapping and skulls exploding under the charge of enormous beetle. She would have shrieked in terror at its approach, but was too focused on getting as far away from the wights behind her as she possibly could. It was definitely friendly though. At least for now she mused as the crunching and snapping continued.
“Oh Ma’el thank you!”
She clambered awkwardly onto the coach beside a small and extremely elderly gnome.
“I thought those things were going to… going to…”
Exactly what those things had been going to do caught up to her, and she slumped in the seat of the coach, her face considerably whiter.
“Vara…”
She realised that one of the warriors was indicating the sky with the sword, and she looked up to see an enormous bird circling above them, except there was something strange about it, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
I haven’t seen one of them in a very long time, figuratively speaking…
“What?”
She’d almost forgotten about the old sage, and responded automatically. Fortunately she was staring at the creature and the swordsman was still talking. She could only hope that the gnome either hadn’t heard her or assumed that she was simply questioning the impossibility of the descending avian.
The fairfolk who was speaking had already started running before Vyri registered that she was in danger, the swordsman took off after her with the rapid reaction of a warrior. A simple servant couldn’t hope to move as fast, not when she nearly fell flat as she scrambled from the seat of the coach to crawl under it.
Follow them!
“Now?”
Once the monstrous flying beast had soared into the sky once more she scrambled on all fours across to the shop in which the party had taken shelter. Then the shock set in. She slumped down against the wall wrapping her gloved hands about her knees.
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