threetoads

Rise of the New Heroes

Kestrel

Still trying to catch her breath, Kestrel was dumbfounded by the scene that unfolded in front of her. In just a few short minutes the mostly empty lobby had filled with an assortment of other people and...A mannequin? It would've made less sense if she hadn't spent the last week trying to figure out why she could manifest objects made of energy through thought alone (and occasionally hand motions, if precision was involved). No, this particular situation seemed almost deliberate. From the meteor that made mostly minor waves in the media to the realisation that not everyone with superpowers succumbed to the virus.

“Hey Chinaman, I can do that too. Ching! Chong! Ping! Pong! Ding! Dong!”

Kestrel didn't have enough time to absorb the sheer absurdity of what had just happened in front of her, from the mannequin to the hulking man announcing his arrival as the elevator stopped by the lobby. The sparks crackling suddenly towards her cut that time shorter still. The electricity, seemingly aimed at the man that attacked Thundercloud first, spread throughout the room and forced her to dive out from behind the pillar. With her presence now revealed (though she suspected it wasn't as well concealed as she initially hoped) and panic kicking in she gestured with her hands.

With little time to concentrate, she put up several barriers around the lobby, hoping they would protect some of the other arrivals from damage or at the very least, possibly, absorb some of the energy. She knew from her week of testing her powers that objects disconnected from her would not last long but given the speed of Thundercloud's attack and the frantic situation unfolding before her eyes that may not have mattered too much.

"I really hope none of you are with him!" She yelled. Unaware that the blast from the storm in a jumpsuit was strong enough to fracture the pillar she had just hid behind.

Rise of the New Heroes

To @Zapdos and everyone whom it may concern,

Keeping in short, I have decided to rescind my participation from this roleplay.

As I haven't made any IC posts, I'll proceed to soft-delete my CS from the Characters sub-thread.

I wish you all great fun in the roleplay, do write awesome stories.

With regards,
Izurich

@Izurich

That really sucks, I hope we meet in other RPs though!

Rise of the New Heroes

Kestrel

In the week she had spent trying to get to grips with her powers, nothing seemed stranger to Kestrel now than hearing about what should be a ghost robbing the Precious Metal Vault. Thundercloud was dead, after all. He had to be. When the virus decimated the superhero population everyone mourned and no one expected the virus to have been selective about who it took.

And yet there it was. Kestrel bolted upright on her couch when the news broke. She turned up the volume on the TV as the murmurs of other concerned students filled the corridor outside of her dorm room. Was this a nightmare? Her sleep had been disturbed since the meteor fell but this felt all too vivid. She watched intently as news anchors argued over how this could be happening, interspersed with helicopter footage that didn't show much of anything beyond the initial encounter the authorities had with an armed force storming the building and the briefest glimpse of a rotund man dressed like a thunder cloud.

She stared at the TV and her mind filled with static. All the superheroes were dead. The supervillains, or at least this supervillain, was not. Thundercloud was no joke and a handful of beat cops didn't stand a chance against him. As far as Kestrel knew, she was the only other person with superpowers right now. New, fledgling, barely explored superpowers but superpowers all the same. The feeling of responsibility crushed her, the voices of her parents in her head telling her not to go crushed her even more. But they were several hundred miles away and safe, Lafayette Financial Tower was 10 minutes away from her dorm, 5 if she ran fast. She had to go.

Pushing her way out through the corridor took some effort but once she was out and wriggled her grey jacket on, Kestrel ran straight for the tower. She was never exceptionally athletic but the faster her heart pounded the more grateful she was for never skipping physical education. The closer she got to the building the more precarious her run became. Crowds of people were either forming or fleeing, local bars overflowed with people piling inside for safety or just to watch what was happening on the news.

Lafayette Financial Tower loomed over her. The same crushing feeling kept eating away at her but it was far too late to back out now. She would never forgive herself. A cursory glance at the entrance of the building revealed that the local authorities were still locked in a standoff with the Storm Troopers. With any luck, the rest of Thundercloud's force would be down in the vault and not in the lobby and with that haphazardly formed plan she ventured forth. She pushed her way through the crowd that formed in the surrounding area and put up the hood on her jacket. The crowd was large enough to have spilled over near the side of the building, she figured that without attracting too much attention she could make it from the edge of the crowd to the side entrance into the lobby with a very brisk walk in just a few seconds. No one would notice her while they were too busy watching the main performance and even if they did she doubted that they would call out to her.

And she did just that. In what felt like one swift move she broke away from the crowd, made her way towards the door and entered the lobby, expecting to find it empty or patrolled by one of Thundercloud's lackeys. Instead she witnessed the man himself. A man in a jumpsuit that inexplicably did not burst at the seams, gorging on chips. While she concealed herself behind a pillar, her eyes quickly darted to the sight of another young woman who looked as though she had arrived just moments before. The "Oh no." she uttered told Kestrel enough to go on, and she quietly conjured a vest of energy beneath her clothes.

Rise of the New Heroes

Kestrel Beringer, The Conjurer

Name: Kestrel Beringer

Hero Name: The Conjurer

Age: 24

Gender: Female

Family: The only daughter of two loving if overprotective parents, both of whom have been devoted school teachers. Kestrel's parents fostered a love of reading and seeking knowledge while their overprotective nature resulted in her always pursuing her curiosity at any cost, to their chagrin. Their relationship remains good, if a little strained.

Occupation: History Student

Appearance: Her auburn hair is complemented by her light green eyes. A faint splash of freckles covers a small portion of her nose and cheeks. She doesn't stand too tall at 5'5" though her blue and white sneakers give her an extra inch or two. Kestrel's typical attire includes the aforementioned sneakers, dark jeans, a light blue t-shirt with an abstract print and a grey jacket.

Superpower: Kestrel's superpower manifests itself with the ability to conjure ethereal objects though currently no larger than half her size. These objects dissipate not long after losing physical contact with her meaning they are only occasionally viable as thrown weaponry, and objects which 'make use of' other objects can be created but their 'secondary' objects cannot be, meaning that guns or bows would be functionally useless. This superpower is, essentially, fuelled by dreams. Meaning that prolonged use can cause bouts of insomnia, hallucinations and in extreme cases, the manifestations of nightmares.

Skills: As a student of history and the daughter of parents who took pride in imbuing their child with knowledge, she has plenty of information on a broad range of subjects and can pick up new skills with some degree of efficiency.

Equipment: None to speak of.

Personality: Kestrel is a little shy thanks to her parents' overprotective nature though her curious side tends to shine through often. She's approachable, if somewhat reserved and while her intentions are always good and she enjoys helping others, the clash between her own personality and what her parents instilled in her can sometimes result in her locking up, unsure of how to act.

Biography: It came to her in a nightmare. A vision of a meteor splitting the sky and reducing the city to ashes. The sight of only impossibly dark shadows where buildings, and people, once stood. The reality was much different, of course, yet when she watched the news that morning the feeling of unease she felt after the nightmare turned to panic. It wasn't until she got to class and someone commented on her "cool new pen" that she realised something was truly wrong. She remembered then that in her panic she had left her backpack at home and the pen she was using was little more than slowly flowing blue energy taking on the shape of a pen, and it produced no ink...The week only got weirder from there and she realised quickly that the more she experimented with her newfound power the less she slept. Nights became exercises in simply laying there, half awake, praying for sleep.

Anything Else: Electric Pokemon

Rise of the New Heroes

@threetoads regarding her general aptitude, I think that's fine.

Regarding her powers, I'm not sure if you're limiting yourself here or what, just because it's very unique. How would it be usable in combat? How does she recover from overexerting herself if she can't sleep? And how much or what usage causes her dreams to be limited? Is it based on the size of the object, the utility of it, or something else?

I'm just trying to understand here so I can give the proper feedback.

@Zapdos

I think it's a fun limitation to work with, not entirely sure where I want to take it yet but I suppose it's something to work out naturally in time? It's usable in combat via the ability to manifest melee weapons, shields, lockpicks...Whatever happens to be useful? I suppose you could argue it's very Green Lantern-y just with a considerable drawback and consequences. Of course she's not trained in martial arts or anything of the kind so at least at the stage where the story begins it would at best be very archaic 'street fighting' if that. But I can also imagine she could fit into some support scenarios by conjuring objects for others though this again, is limited and has drawbacks. Objects that do not have physical contact with her don't stay around for very long unless that's where she focuses her power and even then that's an exceptional 'exertion' at this stage, so something like conjuring pieces of armor for someone else in order to protect them could be life saving but not without risk.

As for recovery it's more of a time based thing. Being unable to sleep means she's somewhat less effective and has to be more useful as a 'competent normal person' as opposed to straight up superhero in the moment. At the same time I view the recovery 'meter' on a sort of 1 to -1 scale. 1 being fully capable and at 'maximum capacity', 0 being in a sleep deprived state where using her abilities starts to be actively risky and -1 being at a point where hallucinations and nightmare manifestations happen, I imagine those as 'rogue powers'. Objects created more on subconscious instinct versus thought out planning. Objects that aren't fully being controlled or less conventional things like tendrils of energy.

In terms of how the usage drainage works I imagine it to be more based on volume and focus currently? (Unless that's too vague?) So to conjure a crate for example that would be fully within her current limit of an object that's about half her size wouldn't result in too much exertion, but to conjure about a house or two worth of crates over the entire day would be quite a lock. Similarly, conjuring and maintaining for example a weapon or two for the entire day wouldn't be very detrimental, but keeping someone else on the team equipped with a set of weapons for the entire day would be far more costly in terms of energy.

Does that help at all?

Rise of the New Heroes

I'm on my phone right now, so apologies in advance for any spelling or grammar errors.

<Snipped quote by threetoads>

I'm kind of confused by Kestrel's powers. So she dreams of an object and then can create it the next day? And if she uses them too much, she can't sleep and suffers as a result? Also, I'm wondering how this would work in combat as a hero. If she can only create what she saw in dreams, that could leave her with a narrow amount of choices.

This is a very unique power you've chosen, but I just want to be sure it's something that is also usable in practice.

Also, for her skill, can she learn all new things equally quickly? I feel like it would take more effort to learn something like metalworking than, say how to use a new computer program.

@Zapdos

I guess I screwed up on explaining it adequately but I meant it quite literally when I said the power is fuelled by dreams. It's not a matter of dreaming an object and then being able to use it, it's just that the cost of materialising an object (whatever it is that she imagines, within the specified limits) is the ability to dream/sleep which in turn has increasingly debilitating effects depending on how much and how intensively the power was used.

Her skill was more of a general aptitude for picking things up so of course I'm not going for some kind of OP Matrix-level skill learning that might as well be like injecting a program right into the brain. It's all proportional really so a difficult skill to pick up would still be a challenge, just somewhat less so?

Rise of the New Heroes

God it's been forever since I did forum RP.

Here goes nothing

Name: Kestrel Beringer

Hero Name: The Conjurer

Age: 24

Gender: Female

Family: The only daughter of two loving if overprotective parents, both of whom have been devoted school teachers. Kestrel's parents fostered a love of reading and seeking knowledge while their overprotective nature resulted in her always pursuing her curiosity at any cost, to their chagrin. Their relationship remains good, if a little strained.

Occupation: History Student

Appearance: Her auburn hair is complemented by her light green eyes. A faint splash of freckles covers a small portion of her nose and cheeks. She doesn't stand too tall at 5'5" though her blue and white sneakers give her an extra inch or two. Kestrel's typical attire includes the aforementioned sneakers, dark jeans, a light blue t-shirt with an abstract print and a grey jacket.

Superpower: Kestrel's superpower manifests itself with the ability to conjure ethereal objects though currently no larger than half her size. These objects dissipate not long after losing physical contact with her meaning they are only occasionally viable as thrown weaponry, and objects which 'make use of' other objects can be created but their 'secondary' objects cannot be, meaning that guns or bows would be functionally useless. This superpower is, essentially, fuelled by dreams. Meaning that prolonged use can cause bouts of insomnia, hallucinations and in extreme cases, the manifestations of nightmares.

Skills: As a student of history and the daughter of parents who took pride in imbuing their child with knowledge, she has plenty of information on a broad range of subjects and can pick up new skills with some degree of efficiency.

Equipment: None to speak of.

Personality: Kestrel is a little shy thanks to her parents' overprotective nature though her curious side tends to shine through often. She's approachable, if somewhat reserved and while her intentions are always good and she enjoys helping others, the clash between her own personality and what her parents instilled in her can sometimes result in her locking up, unsure of how to act.

Biography: It came to her in a nightmare. A vision of a meteor splitting the sky and reducing the city to ashes. The sight of only impossibly dark shadows where buildings, and people, once stood. The reality was much different, of course, yet when she watched the news that morning the feeling of unease she felt after the nightmare turned to panic. It wasn't until she got to class and someone commented on her "cool new pen" that she realised something was truly wrong. She remembered then that in her panic she had left her backpack at home and the pen she was using was little more than slowly flowing blue energy taking on the shape of a pen, and it produced no ink...The week only got weirder from there and she realised quickly that the more she experimented with her newfound power the less she slept. Nights became exercises in simply laying there, half awake, praying for sleep.

Anything Else: Electric Pokemon

I hope it's acceptable. It really has been a while.

New Superhero RP (Title is a Work in Progress)

Basically registered just to join this because the premise seems really great. Can't wait for it to start. Time to start hammering away my CS.