New thing for me, I've gone ahead and made a genuinely nice character.
I'm a little unsure about the power level, I may have made him too strong (I've put him in the 'world' power level, which is where I want him, but he might be too strong, though the weaknesses section does hopefully account for that), but we'll see.
I also now see that many people have chosen Mystics, I have a different concept that I can use if that is a problem.
Character you have created: William Viridian
Alias: Manticore
Speech Color (Actually say what you're using, don't go "Like this", or what not): Light green
Character Alignment: Hero
Identity: Secret
Character Personality (Give information on how your character acts, what he/she believes in, how they handle situations):
William lacked any sort of unusual challenges or traumatic situations growing up; the most difficult thing he had to do was moving house as a child. In that regard, he was fairly lucky. He grew up in the United Kingdom, and was relatively carefree for much of his life. Nothing dramatic happened to change this attitude, though; he simply started caring about school. Will is very ambitious and driven, rarely doing the best or scoring the highest, but always close and among the best, and at least a bit envious. He tends to be reclusive, shying away from interactions unless he knows he won't be seen as strange for interacting; initiating conversation with a new person is hard, but helping someone who clearly needs it, or making a presentation that he has been told to, is not. Even before his pact was made, William was generally sympathetic towards his friends, and especially now attempts to help whoever he can. In a strange blend of naivety and realism, he acknowledges that the world is not fair, but at the same time strives to fix this, despite the general impossibility of the task.
Always plays as the medic types in video games, is a Paladin in D&D, and Scyther is his favourite pokemon, confusingly.
Uniform/costume:
When actively going out to fight with his abilities, Will can sheath himself in a layer of barriers that, while not providing the same protection as his normal walls of force, function as mirrors to anyone looking at him. It is worth noting that these barriers can be seen through by him.
Origin Info/Details:
He is currently in Lost Haven City, while taking a gap year from studying Aerospace Engineering at the Imperial College of London. In New Haven, he is using his gap year to work as a part time assistant for maths and physics courses in a few different schools in the area, as part of a programme ran by New Haven University.
Will has always been slightly magically attuned, however, this never manifested as the ability to, for example, shoot fire or transform into animals. He can't cast spells. Instead, he could sense and communicate with spirits and minor deities, and derive small amounts of power from them. For the longest time, these spirits had been deprived of ways to interact with the mortal world, as only recently did people with his ability begin to appear. As such, they had as much to learn from him as he did from them. William ended up communicating regularly with a small group of these beings, befriending the entities and trading knowledge about his world in return for knowledge about their realm, which he studiously recorded. One in particular that he became the most attuned to, was a spirit that named itself either 'Champion' or 'Shield', and represented the tendency for (some members of some) sapient races to act selflessly in the defence of others. This attunement manifested in Will being able to sense the emotions of people around him and to conjure defensive shields. As time passed, he stopped deriving any powers from other spirits, until eventually the spirit and the mortal were able to enter into a 'pact'. The pact allowed Will to take a much larger of the spirit's power, in return for certain restrictions. Their goals were already aligned, and to a degree their personalities were starting to blend, making this a mutually beneficial arrangement. This resulted in a semi-permanent binding of the spirit to Will and vice-versa. Will could still commune with other spirits, but no attunement at all would occur unless he separated himself from the spirit, who had taken to calling himself Aegis. The restrictions and powers are all detailed below in the weaknesses and abilities sections respectively.
After the battle with the trilobite demon, Will was able to trace the cult that summoned it by the magical signatures the summoning left. With this significant lead, he began to hunt down and eliminate branches of the cult. With teleportation, a versatile set of powers and back-up from friends, he destroyed roughly a quarter of the cult; however the upper echelons are relatively untouched, and rather than stopping their only-vaguely-understood plan, they have been galvanised into more rapid action. The brutal nature of the cult's activities, combined with Will having to go days without sleep to hound them, led to him fighting more and more in anger. This came to peak in a mission 8 days after the trilobite; where he destroyed a business being used as a front, killing large numbers of cultists but also dozens of uninitiated, innocent new recruits. As soon as he returned to safety, Aegis and Will split, his anger and killing of innocents was unnacceptable to Aegis, while Will could not work with a spirit that gave no leeway for exhaustion and desperation.
It was only a few hours before Will chose a new spirit to merge with; forgoing the slow process with Aegis. This time Will was more jaded and angry, and terrified of what the cult might do. Manticore, a spirit naming itself after the mythological beast, could sympathise with this, as it was a spirit of revenge, heroic violence and ruthlessness- at least, in its own opinion.
Hero Type (Select one):
Mystic
Power Level (Select one below):
C. World Level (Ex. Flash, Superman)
Powers (Be Specific):
Will, as Manticore, has the choice to fully activate his powers and turn into a more powerful form. This takes roughly 15 seconds, spending more than an ~hour in this form causes him to become fatigued exponentially. He must rest outside of this form for at least half the time he spent in it to fully recupertate.
Powers when not in Manticore form-
Minor super strength (specified below).Night vision, wide spectrum EM vision (can be 'tuned', letting him see radio or microwave communication, or infrared heat, etc, overlaid on visible light), electroreception, ability to detect emotions in a wide (i.e. city block) area around him, and echolocation.Minor healing factor, allows healing from a stab or bullet wound in ~10 minutes, ~30 if in a vital region.Ability to secrete extremely powerful corrosive acids or bases from pores on hands.Can breath fire, altering between a plasma-cutter like flame extending about a foot from his face, to a flamethrower fit to roast the front of a house. Either of these extremes will tire Will out quickly, a solid minute of breathing fire would use up his capability for roughly an hour.Massive heat resistance, anything less than a lavabath is only a problem for his clothes, significant poison, venom, irritant, sedative, general toxin, radiation and pathogen resistance.Minor resistance to injury via durable skin and bones, effectively always wearing a full-body kevlar suit, while his bones take ~5 times the stress to break.Minor enhanced reflexes (specified below).Identical boosts to memory and intelligence as before.Not so much a power as an alteration, but Will now possess two small boney horns at the crown of his head, these grow during transformation, and are quite well covered by his top-heavy curls.As Manticore:
Major super strength (specified below), durability (can safely run through gunfire; a tank cannon, train or moderate explosion would be equivalent to being punched hard as a human), reflexes (specified below), healing factor (wound equivalent to a gunshot on a human would heal in roughly half a minute, 2 minutes in a vital region) and toxin/EM/pathogen resistance.Major increase to how long he can breath fire, and minor increase to maximum temperature and range.Ability to breath smokescreens, could comfortably release enough to match a smoke grenade every few minutes. Gas can be corrosive, choking or an irritant if desired. The gas is heavier than air, and quite difficult to blow away, is effective at blocking all wavelengths of light, has minimal affect on echolocation and little impact on fires.Strength allows him to jump clear over buildings as high as 5 stories, and is generally tough enough that his terminal velocity isn't fast enough to wound him, at least on earthHorns grow to a foot in length, tapering and curving slighty from ~5cm wide at the base to a sharp point. Will grows from 5,11 to 6,3 experiences rapid, visible muscle growth, teeth become sharper and canines enlarge, pupils dilate, facial features become sharper, ears become pointed, his skin takes on a greyish tone and, if he's especially exerting his power, illusory wings on flame appear at his back.Can sprint at 120kmph for up to 10 minutes, or run at 80 for 2 hours.Can punch holes in concrete walls and sheet metalUntil recently, Will was attuned to the spirit Aegis, and his powers were the following:
His first, and most minor power, is the ability to passively sense the emotions of those around him. This doesn't function to make him experience these emotions, but essentially lets him know the state of everyone within a few hundred metres at all times. If he focuses, he can extend this range to a specific area or person. The primary function of this is to let him find people in need of help.
He has a selection of powers that let him protect or heal people directly. He projects an aura of healing around him at all times (30m radius sphere), this does not mean that anyone with a wound within this area automatically is healed, but rather, if he entered a section of a battlefield or a disaster, nearby wounded would stop bleeding out and toxins would be massively slowed or stopped so long as he remains. He effectively can stabilise wounded within this aura, and heal minor wounds. He can heal people to a much greater extent and much more rapidly if he can make contact with them, being capable of stitching together flesh, re-setting and mending bones, expunging illness and poison (but not malfunctions native to the body, i.e. genetic diseases or tumours) and even fixing brain damage (though not necessarily restoring memories). He has the ability to isolate as many as ten individuals if there is great need, causing them to temporarily be placed in a pocket dimension where they are in perfect stasis. He can keep as many as ten people in this space for as long as ~ten minutes. Though various magical or technological or otherwise means do exist to remove a person from this stasis, in most cases it allows him to take someone out of harms way- may they be a hostage or an innocent bystander- for a short while. This power will not work on anyone hostile towards him, and people entered into stasis can leave whenever they wish, regardless of Will's desire.
William can conjure up barriers of energy, which can have grey, blue or silver colouration (the colours have no significance, however). These can take on any shape he desires, though more complex shapes require more concentration. The barriers are entirely non-flexible, they do not bend or yield before the break, and they are stationary (relative to the core of the earth); they either absorb the damage being thrown their way or they shatter, fading to faintly glowing dust. The more he wants to summon and the bigger he wants to make the barriers, the more effort is required. In general, the maximum that he can do with these, while still being strong enough to move around and use other powers, would be to make enough barrier to cover four reasonably sized houses. If he was okay with having to contribute nothing else, he could probably cover a tower block, but would effectively be incapacitated while doing so. These barriers can be conjured anywhere that he either has a line of sight upon, or anywhere that is within 15m of him. He cannot summon barriers inside living beings. Directly in front of them while they are travelling at speed is perfectly acceptable, however. He can stop attacks as powerful as a tank cannon, but generally not more than once, though bullets or speeding cars can be blocked more comfortably without him becoming overwhelmed. Telekinetic (but not telepathic) attacks are blocked by these barriers, attempting to attack something behind the barrier will instead cause you to attack the barrier, and it must first be broken.
His only offensive power that isn't less-than-lethal, is the ability to summon a swarm of 'shards'; diamond-shaped ~12cm long objects. These manifest in the air around him, as few as one or as many as 120. He can accelerate them to great speeds, though normally he won't have reason to move them faster than a bullet. He can let them fly around him and direct their path, though once they are outside of his healing aura, he can't control their velocity, and as they are not acted upon by gravity, they will continue to fly until they impact against something or leave the atmosphere, at which point they disintegrate. They are extremely hard, sharp and dense. He very rarely uses this power, for obvious reasons.
For transport, William can create 'gates' to any location he can clearly visualise, though looking at a photo is generally less risky than using his memory. With full concentration, a gate takes half an our of uninterrupted work to create- this is not a tactical power- and functions as a two-way portal. Larger gates are harder to create. He can also create permanent gates, though this takes great familiarity with both ends of the gate, and multiple hours of work. Closing these permanent gates is also nearly as time consuming as making them. The non-permanent gates last for a third of the time he spent creating them, and can be closed at will. These non-permanent gates can also be made in as little as a minute if they are being used to travel to somewhere he can extend his ability to sense emotions to, though gates made by this method last only for a second or two.
Will can attempt to mentally 'dominate' hostiles within his healing aura, though in general, anything above baseline human- whether magical or superpowered- will be resistant to this, any actual telepath will be able to easily block him out and protect others from him. He can affect multiple in-range hostiles at once, and if successful, he can inspire incapacitating levels of fear and panic.
Finally, with eye contact, Will can either calm people or reduce them to a gibbering wreck. This is harder to resist than the mental domination, though again, most superpowered individuals will have a chance at resisting this, plus sunglasses (or visors or smoke or darkness et cetera) entirely block it.
Other more minor powers-
Enhanced reaction speeds and intelligence, improved general health, can generate a barrier coating that serves as a mirror (and not as a shield) around him, to disguise himself when active (this mirror is a magical effect, it doesn't block light coming in to Will, so light still hits his eyes, but just stops it bouncing back more than a few inches from him, so light from him doesn't reach anything else).
Attributes (Select one at each category):
Strength Level:
Will- 10, tons
Manticore- 90 tons
Speed/Reaction Timing Level:
Will- 20 MPH
Manticore- 80 MPH
Endurance at MAXIMUM Effort:
Will- 2
Manticore- 5
Agility:
Will- 5X,
Manticore- 5x
Training: Untrained
Resources: Minimal
Weaknesses:
Only has normal defence against mental attacks i.e. telepathy, no defence against incorporeal foes (aside from outrunning them and hoping he can grab a hostage they care about before they catch up), rapid fatiguing in Manticore form after an hour of activity, stands out very visibly in terms of magical signatures.
Supporting Characters (Does your character have a significant other? A mother? Friend? Who are they, what do they have to do with your character?):
While William did have a old friends and was dating before moving, for all practical purposes those people can't be supporting characters, so he is quite limited in this regard. However, there are some.
Connor Cobbler-
Friend, maybe a criminal? Frequently acquires new and expensive items while being very vague about his job, and Will distinctly remembers getting one of his friends arrested. Still reliable, in his own way.
Jonathon Mautner-
Leader of a local Synagogue; known via Will's D&D group and various charity events. Useful for connections, plays a more than decent Barbarian and cooks well.
Luke Stitch-
Roommate, friend, frequently confided in (Luke is the only one who knows Will's other identity, Will is the only one who knows that Luke can't ride a bike).
Mahakali Guneta-
Known via the programme through which Will is a TA. Studies Chemical Engineering, not much else to say.
Cedric Agyeman-
Ghanan medical student, part of a group of four (including Will) magically attuned or capable people who managed to locate each other. They small group has only detected one other similar group in the city (though there are many other magically capable individuals), and as such take it upon themselves to try and combat astral or magical threats to the city, or mortal threats to the various spirits that reside in the area. The essentially try to ease any friction between mortals and spirits in 'their' area.
Do you know how to post pictures on RPG boards?:
Sample Post (Minimum Four paragraphs containing dialogue. As this is an Advanced Level game, Sample must also meet the RPG forum's minimum requirement of 12 lines):
Disjointed thoughts floated about, colliding and combining; the back of Will's mind was allowed free reign over the figurative front while he slept.
A white light cut through the hazy chaos of the dream, quickly pushing away everything else and snapping into focus. The light came from a lightbulb, attached to nothing and held in a hand- Will then realised he was looking at Cedric.
'...Why are you projecting here? Something important, right?'
'I don't tend to invade dreams without a good reason, so yes.'
'You don't need to be so curt, do you know how tired I am? I'm literally asleep.' muttered Will.
'Everyone is but me. Anyway, we've not much time, and you'll be the most useful for this. Wake up, I'll explain.'
'Sure.' Will raised a hand to say goodbye, as the world fell away from them, and he found himself back in his bed. He had hoped for a moment to collect himself, but his phone was already ringing.
'Okay, explain now please.'
'Remember two weeks back, when we detected a load of Hate spirits drifting into the area, and we managed to seal them to that painting in Gary's apartment? Yeah, he's been burgled, and I can feel the seal weakening.'
'Ah. That's- yeah. If we can locate it, I can gate in and get it back- plus I can justice the guys who took it and the rest of his stuff, if they're there. Any idea why it is weakening? Do you think they just damaged the painting, or is it deliberate, or did we just seal it poorly?'
'I think a bit of all three. If they get out, we'll have a set of misanthropic spirits running around in the city with hosts to let them cast from, as they'll likely immediately possess the criminals.'
'Mmm, and if it is being weakened in part intentionally, from the outside, then they have at least one magically attuned person. No matter what happens, that guy will be a threat when possessed.'
With nothing more left to say, Cedric merely nodded in reply, accompanying the head motion with the words 'I'm nodding', to account for the fact that they were calling each other. 'Considering you know the item you're looking for, and helped give it the astral signature it has, you should be able to get there immediately, right? Good luck.'
'Yeah. Hopefully before the spirits get out, take control of random people nearby and start killing people.'
With that, Will hung up, moving quickly to put on some shoes before walking to an empty stretch of wall. He reached out for the signature of the binding painting, and found it, and started to trace an archway on the wall.