Izurich
Lord Wraith
Crimson Flame
Mixtape Ghost N<Snipped quote>
...that would be my cue.
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| NAME(S): |Abelle D'Voire
| NICKNAME(S): |Belle
| ALIAS(ES): |Swarm
| D.O.B.:|07/18/1993
| AGE: |22
| SEX: |Female. She/Her//They/Them
| SEXUALITY: |Heterosexual
| APPEARANCE: |Belle stands 5'11 (relatively tall for her nature) with seemingly-unnatural long, slender limbs that threaten to be lanky but are instead co-ordinated into smooth, graceful motion. She weighs an ethereal 100lbs, has pale green eyes that almost seem amber in the right light, her hair turns a dark brown if she lets it grow out - not that it's been past its usual grade-1 buzzcut in 3 years - and her wide nose has a ring piercing through one of the nostrils. All of her quirks combined, along with her wide-set eyes, give Belle a kind of alien beauty that entrances some and repels others. She swings between light, natural-esque makeup or heavy, dark eyes and lips, and her clothing aligns similarly, but always seems well-constructed and cutting-edge.
| ABILITIES/SKILLS: |Abilities;
- Pheromone-based Insect Manipulation - Belle is able to secrete specific pheromones from the sweat pores of her body, creating an invisible beacon for all manner of insect, crustacean, and arachnid life to come crawling out of nooks and crannies of the world to seek the source - inevitable finding Belle herself - and then await further instruction. Belle's variety of pheromones are subtle enough in their distinctions to almost emulate telekinetic control, but in truth, Belle is simply signalling certain instinctual impulses in the swarms she can amass, which can range from complete aggression to total pacifism to absolute retreat.
The uses of her swarm are only limited by Belle's imagination, and her willingness to test the limits of her pheromone control. Only time will tell whether Belle's abilities will develop any unexpected advancements, or if her pheromones are limited only to bug-specific signals.
Limitations;
- Swarm Source: Belle cannot produce bugs, nor does she keep her pheromones in a permanent 'on-state', as this would lead to a bigger swarm than she can control, as well as massive ecosystem instability and a negative public reaction when she arrives on-campus with half a city's worth of bugs trailing behind her. As a result, Belle must preempt a situation in which a swarm will serve her, and then carefully amass such a hive with selective pheromones while also ensuring she does not let the size run amok. If there are no bugs in the immediate vicinity, Belle will have to wait longer and try harder to reach out further, and if there are no bugs at all, Belle will have no swarm.
- Swarm Size: As mentioned above, the larger Belle's current swarm, the more difficult it is to maintain pinpoint control as is possible with a smaller group. While she can use the swarm itself to proliferate her pheromones within itself for increased efficiency, the larger the swarm is, the more likely it becomes for sections of it to break away as the rest of it receives new or different instructions, resulting in a large chunk loss as half of the swarm begins leaving or even in-fighting due to the many different species of insect that can be co-habiting one of Belle's swarms at any given time. As such, Belle's pheromone control is a careful knife-edge game - enough to create a swarm and then make it large enough to allow it to govern itself, but not so big as to implode itself. It is far too easy for Belle to simply leave a pheromone lingering for too long, and a swarm to disappear as quickly as it arrived.
Weaknesses;
- Instinct Override: Despite Belle's pheromones, her control is not infallible. Strong enough instinctual responses in the insects that make up her swarm can override any existing pheromone commands and cause the insects to revert to their nature; as such, strong fear, hunger, or mating impulses can destabilize a swarm entirely.
- Insect Biology: The insects that make up Belle's swarms are just that: insects. While, in large numbers and under Belle's command, they are capable of inspiring fear and causing lasting damage to Belle's enemies, they are still subject to the frailty of their forms - any method that would normally disperse a large cluster of insects will work equally well against Belle's swarms.
| BACKSTORY: |Belle remembers very little of her childhood, and the fleeting snatches of imagery she does hold are all the same; clinical, white expanses of beds and linoleum floors, corridors alternating between concerned doctors and nurses and concerned sick people, some worse than others, many better off than Belle. She was born in Paris, France, and was out of hospital for eight months before she returned - according to her parents, they were the best eight months Paris had ever seen.
Belle was born with a debilitating neuro-degenerative condition that began to manifest a lot earlier than any pre-natal (or post-natal, for that matter) doctor had been able to predict at any point during her mother's term; doctors had given Belle five un-impeded years. She had lasted less than one. Grief-stricken and desperate for any help they could seize for their dying baby daughter, her parents quickly signed away Belle to an experimental trial run in by US Scientists. The D'Voire, minimal as it was, left its roots behind in favour of Belle's last gasp in America.
Belle's parents landed a week and four days after Belle had been taken to America, three days after she had been subjected to the first phase of the trial that was to save her life. Her parents had been given surprisingly little information about what the treatment entailed, but after they had been settled in to their new home, and their daughter had been returned to them, they were fully briefed on the trial. The few participants that had been selected had been given a treatment course of genetically altered genome tags that had originally belonged to a small selection of insects, which had been chosen for specific properties their species possessed that could possibly treat - or cure - the conditions of the trial's patients. It was a long shot, the scientists involved hoping that the tags would bind to the faulty DNA of the patients and fix - or override - the imperfect processes that caused the condition, but over several months, the treatment worked. Belle got better. Her parents counted their blessings, and began to move on with their lives. A long time later, Belle would inquire about the laboratories she had frequented during her initial years.
Belle's life after her initial crisis was relatively normal. Her parents were terrified of any illness, paranoid they would undo the treatment that had made her well, or introduce another problem that they would not be able to surmount; but Belle carried on through pre-adolescence into post-puberty with no troubling health issues, taking a keen interest in nature and insects in particular after learning of her condition and its cure. To this end, she eventually moved across states to Larissa at 19 to study at the college there, interested in the citie's history of flirtation with super-individuals, and attracted by the premium course they offered in Entomology. She now lives with two other students in The Sound.
Recently, Belle has been feeling something peculiar shifting within her body, though she isn't sure what.
| MOTIVATION/OBJECTIVE: |Belle's deepest desire, though she isn't truly aware of it, is to know everything about her body, and be in control of all its aspects; whether this be the neuro-degenerative condition she was born with, the insect genome tags that cured it still lurking in her DNA, or the new shifts in her body chemistry, she desires to understand it. She also wants to prove her early sickness has had no bearing on her mind in its maturity, and strives for academic greatness in that respect.
| REFERENCE POST(S): |Vigilance: Rise of the Mavericks - Aava Arkham - member of the Mavericks - comes home to Larissa.
Vigilance: Blood & Justice - Det. Rustin Wolfe picks up a new case.
PRCU: Institute for the Extraordinarily Gifted - Team Blackjack's wild card, Minnie Ripper, outdoes herself - to self-suffering results.
| NOTES: |
- You like characters (therefore you like me).
As always, I love your face claims. Perf. And like, 10,000 house points for slipping the word ethereal into that CS. I really love how you've done a good job at checking her powers and giving appropriate weaknesses.
I'd like to see something in terms of Applications for the powers. There's a shit-ton of applications that we've seen with those powers, but what is our girl Belle going to do with it? Also something in the area of personality as well. We get a little bit of who Belle is, but not much. I always like seeing a bit of that, especially for something Mavericks based.
The motivation is a little lacking. I like the "jumping off point" you give when you say she just wants to understand her body. So is this burgeoning vigilante life going to start off like an experiment to her? That could definitely be interesting. I'd just like to see something that would make her want to run off and join the Mavericks.
Overall, I don't really have any "problems" with the RP. Really just clean up those small points and you're good to go
That'd be @Stein's cue to go to work.
Guess that works out because that's where I've been.