At the beginning of July 2023, our community voted overwhelmingly to transition off the reddit platform due to reddit's continuing predatory behaviour. We have moved to a combination of discord-based roleplay as well as redditlike RP on our own website.

As such, this sub will no longer be updated and will remain open and read-only in perpetuity. If you would like to join the RP, please head over to https://wormrp.com for more information, or join our discord.

**Korasen Sai/ Operator **

Age: 38

Physical appearance: Operator is a tall Italian girl, normally dressed in smart professional clothes, keeping her uniform, a black dress suit, well pressed and cleaned at all times , She has short cut blonde hair and green eyes on a stern face.

In her cape uniform, she's much the same, swapping out the black suit for a pure white one, sporting a domino mask and coloured contact lenses to swap her eye colour to a blazing gold.

Mentality: Operator is a calm though stiff person, she forms grudges seemingly randomly and whilst she will be perfectly cordial, if she sees an opportunity to get revenge without it being traced back to her she will take it.

Trigger: Doing a big public proposal and live streaming it with loads of people watching, only to be broken up with.

Equipment/Weaponry: A high quality phone with good 6G

Specializations: Spreadsheets, management

Power: Knows the emotional state any person would be in after they speak to them, needs line of sight, works through live feed cameras, can work on groups if she can see a member of the group (EG - Could guess the state of the undersides if they could see Skitter) the less percentage of a group she can see, the more likely she is to get it wrong.

Versatility: Middling, being able to vet people for how they'd react to being added to the group is useful, but it doesn't account for if someone would dislike her as a person, but be on board with the plan, or visa versa

**Will Bassut/Black Out **

Age: 41

Physical appearance: Black Out is build like a brick shithouse, tall with clear muscles on his arms and legs, looking like a nordic warrior with a heavy kite shield on his back in costume and a belt full of grenades for escaping. His costume is a skintight black suit with gray claw marks across his arms and chest for contrast

Mentality: A brutal and cold man, he cares only for him and his own and is willing to do whatever to keep himself ontop

Trigger: Drunk abusive father beating him up only to stop midway through and start crying for forgiveness, day after day, until one day he doesn't stop.

Equipment/Weaponry: A heavy kite shield, flash bangs and smoke bombs

Specializations: Baiting, Lie detecting, lying

Power: Blackout is able to cause heavy disassociation with a touch. Whilst under the effect people will continue to do whatever they where doing mindlessly, the effect ends when jostled or in an hour, the target will have no memory's of the time. Even if what they where doing was planned to be a feint or a trick, they will continue to do it earnestly

Versatility: High, Blackout is able to force capes to mindlessly keep fighting even after they should retreat or stop to cause PR problems, or use it on captured Thinkers and Tinkers to enforce competence.

Galacterain Knight grinned as her Lunar Legs slammed down onto the tarmac outside the abandoned building, the gravity flipping at the last moment to let her land without so much as a squeek, her Lunar helm allowing her to see through the darkness as if it was bright day. She had her left arm set to Solar whilst her dominant arm was set to Planitar, with her Lunar chestplate humming quietly.

Rumours of a Case 53 or rouge tinker tech machine eating tech had been around in this area, and her new ability to literally see electrical currents was a great help as she tracked the skeleton through the walls.

Amidst the turmoil caused by the recent failure of the protectorate to protect their ward (Check our report on that here) there is a bright spot, as global mega company Hydros declares plans to launch a new headquarters and distribution centre to Devilfish.

Hydros has been a mostly European company for some time now, but rumours of an expansion to America have been rife ever since the CEO Ms Stone invited a number lawmakers and oppositions to tour its factories around Positano, flying them out on a luxury trip to show them just how profitable their business is and how much they could do for the American people.

Hydros is primary a security company, though has many more branches than just that, also providing tolls and lessons for self defence, and owning the image rights to multiple independent heros. In todays tumultuous world where the Protectorate can't even protect their own, having Hydros here to help empower you to protect yourself can only be a good thing.

To celebrate their coming expansion to Devilfish, the company is running a limited time drop of merch for some of their corporate capes also including local devilfish hero Galacterian Knight. Only 1000 of each will be made and all will be numbered, so be sure to grab one whilst you can!

^^^^^^^This ^^^^^^^article ^^^^^^^was ^^^^^^^paid ^^^^^^^for ^^^^^^^by ^^^^^^^Hydros ^^^^^^^Media ^^^^^^^Inc

Name: Oni

Details: James Hews AKA Oni is a hero with a public identity. He does light hero work, though is not good at it, instead working mainly to build on his Oni brand, and work for event spaces in lighting and holograms. He works for many venues in Las Vegas, and has been hired for asisstance in Movie sets in Hollywood. He is the father of Angel, though this is not publicly known.

Power: Oni is a tinker based around light projection systems, namely light-based weapons and holographic projectors lie squarely within his specialty.

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Name: Alkahest

Details: Alkahest is a low-level hero working independently in Los Angeles. He's characterized by his large armor that seems to be formed out of some kind of ceramic material. He's known to be uptight and pretentious, and has a bit of a thing for "Bringing justice to this wretched place"

Power: Alkahest is a Master/Brute who manifests a ceramic armor minion around his body. It grants him increased strength and durable regenerative protection, and is rather capably skilled in combat. Issue comes into being that he needs to move with his minion, following along its movements and it has a very preferred way to fight.

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Name: Adam Wylcott

Details: Adam Wylcott is a street-level healer / doctor for anyone who has the cash to pay. Typically serves as a healer for the villains of the city.

Power: Adam is a Blaster/Shaker who has the ability to focus on something or someone in his vicinity and rapidly repair them or himself. It has a short range (Roughly 20 feet is his maximum) but he can heal fairly rapidly, healing broken bones in seconds and fixing a broken wall in the same time. This only accelerates natural healing for biological organisms. He can do multiple people or things at once but it slows down his effectiveness proportionally.

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Name: Blindsight

Details: Blindsight is a mercenary for hire in the city of LA, though she often acts as hired muscle for heists or other rackets for organized crime.

Power: Blindsight is a Stranger/Striker with the ability blind people on touch. A simple ability, but it becomes doubly effective since she can, to a limited extent channel it through melee weapons she uses. Duration depends on the strength of the impact / how much she touched them, ranging from minutes to hours.

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Name: Tiger-Fist

Details: Tiger-Fist is a low level villain with a pro-wrestling "gimmick" in that he will challenge heroes to kayfabe-style fights.

Power: Tiger-Fist is a Striker/Blaster with the ability to generate up to 20 copies of his hands, 10 of his left and 10 of his right, each as strong as he is, and is able to send them flying up to 200 feet, and control them from that distance. He tends to use them to exaggerate his moves, or do things like literally pick himself up. to perform ridiculous wrestling moves.

• Name / Alias: Jessica Hews / Angel

• Age: 18

• Alignment: Villain

Public Information

Angel is a small time villain from Los Angeles, mostly known for small-mid-level thefts, such as robbing jewelry stores and concession stands. She's been arrested once, but managed to escape the minimum security facility in which she was being kept. She's recently moved to Devilfish, reason unknown publicly. She has only been active for 2 years.

Starting Reputation: E-

Physical Appearance

Angel typically wears mostly white body armor with a fully covering helmet, like this though with an all-white helmet akin to a motorcycle helmet but a little more streamlined. Out of costume she typically wears casual clothing, short shorts and a blouse.

Mentality

Jessica always had a wild streak, and now that she's fully out from under the thumb of her deadbeat father and across the country, she's more free than ever. She's somewhat greedy, and will actively seek out thrilling or exciting experiences. She actively chafes against authority figures and restrictions.

Equipment and Resources

• Her armor provides level IIIA protection on all vitals, and level IIA protection elsewhere. Otherwise it is pretty streamlined.

• Pepper spray

• Granola bar, for when she gets snackish.

She stays in a small apartment in the city proper and has a small motorcycle for getting where she needs to go.

Wealth Level: 5

Skills

• Basic knowledge in hand-to-hand and sword combat with a light saber equivalent.

• Moderately skilled at sleight of hand style tricks, such as card tricks and pickpocketing.

• Really good at parkour and climbing, excels at moving through urban environments.

• Can cook Ramen

• Can drive a car and motorcycle.

Power

Angel is a trump, capable of copying the powers of parahumans she touches, adding them to her arsenal permanently, though changed. Powers she copies are generally lessened, to the realm of a subpower, and have the element of light (Or vision for specific kinds of powers, such as thinker abilities) attached to them, either in replacing or in addition to other elements the power may have. These powers will also generally be 'narrow', lacking in versatility the original might have had, such as a multi-element blaster power being restricted to just 1 element combined with light, or just light.

Each power will also be assigned 1 or 2 classifications, Angel is able to use up to 3 powers at once, but only as long as they share classifications. I.E. she could use a Shaker/Blaster power, a Blaster/Stranger power, and a Stranger/Striker power because all of the powers share at least 1 classification with one of the other powers. She's able to change her powers on the fly, but this comes with a short 12 second (2 round) cooldown, and when doing so her new set of powers must contain at least 1 classification her old set of powers did, sort of daisy chaining via classifications.

Trump powers can be copied, but only as they relate to modifying other powers- not things like scanning. I.E. Evolutionist's scan would probably have a boosting aspect, while Division's scan would likely end up as a Breaker/Brute, something to do with replacing their body with a tough hardlight.

Tinker powers generate a piece of tinkertech equipment on or near her, generally customized to fit any theme she has going. It's the same piece every time, and should she lose or have it damaged, she needs to remanifest the power to regain it. It vanishes once she loses the power. The main benefit to tinkertech over other powers is the tinker classification itself, which serves as an easy springboard to many other linked classes.

Here is her current list of powers. (Dragonfly, Singularity, Atlas, Diamond, and Spriggan were all provided from Tino for LA)

Trigger type: Single Natural Trump

Example

Angel teleports into the small jewelry store with a flash of brilliant light, essentially blinding everyone else inside for a few seconds as she, clad in gleaming hard-light armor and shields of the same hard-light on each arm as the few customers around her begin to rapidly exit the small store. Quickly she begins to punch through the displays, stuffing the jewelry on display into a small bag as the cashier panics and runs into the back room, already having pressed the silent alarm.

Only 20 seconds after teleporting in there and grabbing what she can, Angel glances across the street and teleports onto the opposing roof only to see- shit, Alkahest was there, waiting as he readied to tackle her into wrestling. Despite her copy of him he was very much stronger, tougher, and more skilled than her. She was on cooldown as well.

In a flash she swaps abilities, calling in on Angel Wings, Holy Sword, and Handsy to help. A sword of light manifests in her hands as she swings it towards Alkahest, getting him to dodge to the right at the last second as he doesn't wish to meet the blade again. Wings of hard-light manifesting on her back, and hands of the same hardlight manifest around her. The hands all go to harass Alkahest, trying to keep him busy as the wings buzz, lifting her up and away from the rooftop to try to beat a hasty retreat. She twists to the side just as Alkahest had hurled a flower pot right through where she had been, threatening to hit her wings and send her hurtling to a painful landing. He'd done that last time, but thankfully she'd learned, and managed to beat a retreat, grinning from the rush of the short encounter.

Backstory

Jessica is the daughter of Oni (James Hews), mid-level independent hero with a public identity in Los Angeles specializing in light-based weapons and projections systems, useful for things like lasers, illusions, and grand lightshows, which he uses to great appeal. Oni is often hired in Hollywood by movie production studios, or out in Las Vegas for big events for setting up grand lightshows. He's also a really shitty dad.

She was born as the result of a one-night stand, who when her mother died in childbirth he was burdened with her care after the results of a paternity test confirmed she was his. He raised her.. poorly, but in-between the various neglects she was always dazzled by the technical shows he put on , and the tech he created.

In her teens, one day while her father was out (Which he often was, either enjoying himself in the red light district or half-assedly trying to beat up villains), she ended up taking one of her father's tools to school to show some of her friends- a light blade, akin to a lightsabre that he had been working on. Taking it and showing it to her friends, they were all impressed, until it beeped red and shut off. Figuring it had broken or something, they shrug it off and she return home.

Only to find her father there. Whipping his hand across her face, he sends her flying to the ground, she can clearly smell the booze from his breath as he digs through her backpack, pulling out the sword. He mumbles under his breath but she can hear. "Fucking.. stealing from me. Fucking kid. I didn't want a fucking kid." He glares at her with hateful eyes, grip tightening around the sword. Seeing the decision in his drunken, furious gaze, he rears up and.. drops the sword, leaving it clattering to the side as he clutches his face, hand trembling.

He looks at her and says, voice struggling to be calm. "You're disowned. Get the fuck out of my house- I- I can't do this." He stumbles away, over to their couch before he passes out into it.

Panickedly breathing, Jessica slowly gets up and considers to herself, and she rushes upstairs, grabbing her backpack, and begins to stuff anything she thinks could be of use into it. Rushing downstairs, she steps out the door, backpack over her shoulder and as she looks out into the night, then back at the door of the Mc Mansion she and her father lived in. Nevermore would she get to gaze at the lightshows her father puts on from behind the scenes, and nevermore would she deal with his abuse. In a mixture of sorrow and uncertainty about her rapidly approaching future, she Triggers.

In the aftermath, she ends up staying with her father for the next 2 years, privately undergoing a lifestyle as a small-time villain in the city by the name of Angel. Once she turned 18, she left with the money she had stolen from her small, but moderately successful stint at crime, and decided to move across the country to Devilfish, Minnesota.

#  Simulacrum

• Name / Alias: Dahlia Roslin / Simulacrum
• Age: Physically and Mentally 19, first cloned six months ago.
• Gender/Pronouns: Female, She/Her
• Alignment: Villain
• Reputation: F-

Public Information

Rumors of a monster have been circulating in certain corners of the city, a horrifying sight scavenging through dumpsters and scaring people, a dozen different retellings sharing a single commonality: a glittering metal skeleton wrapped in flesh, almost human.

Physical Appearance

When in her civilian identity, Dahlia wears her most humanlike frame, adopting an appearance similar to how she was before triggering (a fairly tall young woman with blue eyes, black hair, and a pale complexion), albeit with certain subtle inconsistencies, like her breathing being on a consistent rhythm regardless of exertion, her teeth occasionally being revealed to be painted metal, or other small differences from the norm.

Simulacrum's appearance in costume can vary wildly owing to her powerset, but at this point she's a malformed human figure swaddled in ill-fitting stained clothing, mouth full of needle-fine keratin teeth, three-inch claws sticking out from hands fused into fists. A form mostly used for intimidation, scaring off potential assailants as she scavenges for materials.

Mentality

Still recovering from her time under her creator's thumb, her trigger event, and the aftermath, Dahlia is a stressed-out mess of a person, not helped by the remnants of her programming occasionally conflicting with reality (such as her ironclad belief that the Protectorate will capture and dissect her for study if she's discovered, artificially-instilled by her creator to ensure that her tech didn't end up in the hands of the heroes) and a dawning awareness of just how bad her situation was in hindsight.

Resources

Wealth Level: 1

She barely has anything besides the clothes on her back, and even those were something she had to steal.

Skills

• Highly-skilled at assuming roles and acting based on limited information about an individual
• Her creator was partially through getting an engineering degree before dying, programmed that knowledge into her when she was first created and had her keep up studying in order to maintain her persona.

Power

Trigger type: Changer/Brute, Tinker (Trump)

After her trigger, Dahlia's power rapidly mutated her to save her life. Passively she exists as a large mass of soft tissues, various organs, muscle, fat, etc., capable of extremely fast regeneration and reconfiguration, dissolving and regrowing various bodyparts and organic compounds as-necessary, manifesting everything from a rainbow of human and animal-derived pigments, to fully-functional eyes, or various organs (largely limited to variations on human bodyparts, though with a lot of flexibility and room for alterations therein, she can bulk up or make more sensitive ears but is incapable of mimicking electric eel parts to shock people, as an example) at the drop of a hat. Because of her unorthodox body structure, she breathes directly through her skin, effectively has no organs unless she creates them, and does not bleed unless she creates a circulatory system or converts part of her mass into blood cells, though she still needs to eat (and due to her ability to manipulate the structures of her body, she can reconstruct her digestive system to handle things a normal person wouldn't be able to obtain nutrients from and digest materials that would typically be harmful) or else she will starve. The maximum amount of mass she can reach is roughly 400lbs, and she can survive when severely reduced in mass, though she can still be killed if fully destroyed (such as being dissolved in acid, incinerated, disintegrated, etc.) and any mass that's separated from her will rapidly lose cohesion, turning into a slurry of cells.

However, she cannot grow bone or similar inflexible structures (she can do cartilage, but the result is so flexible that it's useless for any kind of support except on small scales), requiring her to build and maintain a tinkertech skeleton to affix herself to, providing structure for mutations and allowing her to move around freely. Due to her unique physiology, damage to specific organs or her flesh doesn't impair her at all unless it severely reduces her mass, since she can just replace what was harmed, but her skeleton is her weakpoint, parts removed or smashed out of alignment equating to malformed limbs and other impairments that need to be fixed out of combat. If she's ever fully removed from a frame she's effectively rendered incapable of movement, only able to slowly drag her mass around, forming weak pseudopods to manipulate objects and interact with her surroundings until she manages to build herself a support structure.

Her tinkering almost solely extends to the production of various scaffolds and support structures, without the potential for exotic elements or even motorized components (in most cases) on her own, quite weak and without much room to expand into other areas, though she can make a variety of frames for a variety of purposes coupled with her altered form, ranging from enabling functional wings to multiple limbs and other potential mutations.

However, when given a sample of another tinker's tech, she can universally deconstruct it and add it to her own tech in the form of a minor augmentation or trinket, regardless of how close or far it is from her typical creations, even if it's biological in nature or otherwise exotic. Augmentations created in this way are relatively weak, though they may potentially synergize with various mutations, incorporated into the scaffold she's using or her flesh depending on the result. A pistol from an electricity tinker might be turned into a taser-like implement built into one hand, shocking on contact and working well with forms of enhanced reach; a sample of a vibration tinker's tech might lead to a stunning scream augment wired into a skull, etc. She can have up to two augmentations hooked up to a frame at once (barring specific circumstances and the right tinker assistance, as they're powered by her bioelectricity, which is a limited and fairly weak source of energy, three at once would render them all with insufficient power to function in most situations), as well as swap them to different frames given enough time to uninstall and transfer them.

Backstory

Dahlia Roslin knew that she had a purpose in life. Ever since she emerged from the vat of stem cells that supplied her with the blessed form she was painstakingly sculpted into, she heard the voice of her creator, and she obeyed.

She was to assist her in her efforts, act as a second pair of hands, act as her whenever the situation required it, she was programmed for it all from the very beginning. That was her purpose, and it was one she performed without question, for it was a necessary task, and a tool that can refuse it's purpose is not a useful tool at all.

She happily complied with every order she was given, playing the part of Sarah Roslin perfectly, as she'd been designed to, while her creator, the true Sarah, continued her acts as the "villain" Sinew, battling the "heroic" forces of the Protectorate in an effort to protect her creations and expand her capabilities. So what if she needed to collect materials from a few jewelry stores, or acquire funds from a few banks? That's what banks are for, and they should be honored to have witnessed the majesty of her creator.

Life continued on, with her creator's fantastic exploits and her simple role to play, going out in the image of her creator, going to college classes in her place and learning, seeing wondrous sights and doing amazing things before heading back to the lab to await further commands. She even met a member of the Protectorate on patrol one day, holding in her fear long enough to not compromise her purpose and even getting an autograph for her creator.

One day, however, things were different. Her creator had to defend her lab from a parahuman-led gang seeking to capture her and steal her tech, knowledge she had gained through an informant in the group. Dahlia was sent to her house, ordered to cover for her and not return until she dealt with the coming threat. And so she went. Her creator would be fine, she was unbeatable, after all.

That night, a segment on the news caught her eye.

Gang clash turns deadly: Ironspine, Egghead, Sinew confirmed dead, several arrests made in the aftermath. Civilian casualties currently unknown.

Surely it must have been a trick. Her creator would not have died so easily, she's clearly...hiding, rebuilding her strength for another offense. Dahlia rationalized it to herself, faith unbroken.

And yet, in the coming days, Dahlia's standing orders remained in place. Her creator did not arrive to relieve her, there was no activity from her lab.

Days turned to weeks, Dahlia began feeling ill. Still, her creator did not come for her favored creation. Impossibly, her faith began to waver, ever so slightly. Surely her creator wouldn't have abandoned her, right?

Nausea so severe that she was puking after almost every meal, risking her cover more and more with each passing day. A sensation of weakness, draining the strength from her body. Coughing fits that practically immobilized her when they struck, feeling as if her lungs would shred apart with each hacking breath.

Each day, it all threatened to overwhelm her more than the day before, and her faith shook further. Her orders were absolute, she could not falter...and yet, her steps grew shaky, her purpose becoming harder to fulfill.

One night, after a severe bout of nausea sent her scrambling to the bathroom, hacking up blood and bile, something ripped in her mouth, with a sound like overripe fruit being stepped on, splashing down into the toilet bowl she was leaning over. Half of her tongue floated atop the muck, slowly dissolving into the mess around it.

Terror. Agony.

The commands she was given fell away beneath the weight of what had just happened. She needed to find her creator, needed to be healed. Something terrible was happening.

In a daze, she makes her way to the lab where she was given form, ignoring how clumps of her hair were falling out woth every step, trying to stem the bleeding from her tongue. She struggled to open the door with stiff, uncooperative fingers...

Only to be met with sparking machinery and the scent of rotten meat. Clearly the lab had fallen into disarray while she was gone...but her creator should have come back, should have prevented this, long ago.

A traitorous thought wormed into her mind, an unthinkable prospect sitting like a rock in her stomach.

What if she's never coming back?

What if they really did kill her?

...then there was nobody coming to save her.

The fear of death gripped Dahlia's heart, in that moment. She rushed inside as fast as she could. Surely there was something here to heal her, restore her. She grabbed bits of malfunctioning tech, her skin squishing against the mechanical parts, frantically trying to remember how her creator had used them in order to try and save herself.

Her attempts were clumsy, the results entirely unusable. Hours passed. She felt her left eye deflate, contents putrefying, and tried to repair it. The result was a tumor stuck to her eyesocket, full of underdeveloped eyes. She still couldn't see. She tried again.

The sun shone through the windows. All of her teeth fell out hours ago, she managed to seal her gums shut, which held for all of five minutes until the inside of her mouth began peeling away. Everything was falling apart faster than she could fix it, if she even could.

Her fingers began to slough, her bones visible. She could barely move, and yet she still needed to try.

Her skin sagged on one side of her face, her jaw began to shift as the muscles securing it to her skull began to rot. She raised a malfunctioning sealing gun to the injury, trying to secure it back in place--

Splosh

The weight of the piece of equipment pulled it through her arm, the sudden movement jarring whatever remained solid enough for it to sink past. It clattered to the ground, covered in rotten bits of bone, dripping with muscle, her hand and half of her forearm pouring down around it.

For a few seconds, she just...stared in utter disbelief, as the extent of what she was doing set in. It had been...maybe five, six hours, fumbling her way through trying to restore herself, fucking it up at every turn. Nothing had been working, she was struggling as hard as she could to survive, and nothing worked as she had hoped.

This is how she was going to die. Unable to stand up from the stool she was half-sitting on, half-melted into. Bereft of purpose, condemned to death by the loss of her creator. Lost and alone, falling apart in more ways than one, scrambling to do anything at all in the end.

As the vision in her one functioning eye began to dim, her remaining fingers worn down to the bone, surrounded by the inevitable failure of everything her creator had built, her failure, she triggers--

Awareness burns through her body. Nothing feels right, rot and apoptosis and pus across skin and muscle and half-organs--

Instinctively, she turns inwards, shoveling rot and decay into what she could feel was still alive, digestive juices and endless ripping folds recycling the mass, her cells sing and something clatters into place in her mind, buzzing through partially-melted neural tissue and out through skin, what was once a bicep, fragments of bone, things that could be assembled into organs. A single thought, simple and yet earthshattering.

I'm alive.

She's in a puddle on the ground, she feels the concrete beneath her, tastes the air, but it's not enough, she needs to see.

Eyes float to the surface, newfound senses stinging for an instant before she adjusts, because she had eyes before and it's good to have them again, she can even make more and so she does.

Sparking machinery, bubbling flesh, scraps of what used to be her, fills her vision. She crawls around, ever so slowly, delirious in the thought that she's alive, she can feel and move and think and a thousand other things.

But it's not enough. Her mind thrums with inspiration. She knows she cannot grow some things, so she takes, rips apart, carefully rewires, the thoughts of inspiration growing and changing as she finds the really interesting things her understanding has to shift to comprehend, mind as fluid as her form.

Eventually, she has hands, arms, ribs, legs, she's almost human, almost herself again, managing to wire together a machine that beats like a heart, printing keratin (almost bone but not right, not quite, there are a lot of almosts with what she can do but that's better than nothing) she can use to quickly assemble solid parts for herself until she gets the metal right, determined to restore and improve herself.

This continued for about a week, until one night, she heard vans pull up outside of the lab, people talking. Someone had tipped off the Protectorate to her activities, she needed to hide, quickly.

So she stuffed herself into an empty vat, hiding the skeleton she just managed to finish and expanding to fill the container, smearing herself with the decayed remnants still present on the surface and doing her best to play dead.

Soldiers wearing the PRT insignia opened the door, inspecting everything and taking samples where they could, even scooping out a sample of her flesh while she was frozen in fear. They began taking everything they could safely remove, loading it all, along with her, onto a vehicle.

Inside of the truck, Dahlia was terrified. She knew what the Protectorate would do to her, her creator had told her horror stories of how they treat creations like her. She needed to escape as soon as she got the chance.

The truck slowed to a stop and she sprung into action, climbing out of the vat and smashing out the window with one metal arm, managing to squeeze herself out and start sprinting away as the shouts of the men in the truck echoed behind her. A bullet struck her in the back, the jolt of pain ignored as the wound closed up, a set of eyes forming on the back of her head to watch for more gunfire. She kept running. Another shot deflected off of the rod in her leg, pushing it out of alignment, she reinforced it with a length of keratin from the only augment she managed to create with her creator's tech, something to supply what she could not create herself. She kept running even as her injured leg grew worse, refusing to let herself slow down.

She needed to repair herself, needed to disappear. So she ran as fast as she could towards the lights in the distance, a city that would have food and shelter and materials and safety.

And so, Dahlia found herself on the streets of Devilfish, Minnesota.

The Hatman / Louie

• Name: The Hatman / Louis 'Louie' Burnside
• Rough Age: 30
• Alignment: Other
• Reputation: D-

Public Information

Having been around since at least 2006, he was largely considered a creepypasta or urban myth. Noted for stalking his victims & causing intense paranoia from catching glimpses of him at a distance

In 2016 he was confirmed as real by the PRT, following the maiming of a mugger who attempted to rob his current victim. Who released a statement to contact them if they or anyone they know has reported sightings.
Since then, he has been sighted in states including:
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Nebraska, South Dakota, and most recently Minnesota.

Physical Appearance

Link to his picture

He has been discribed as an extremely tall & human shaped, though this isn't nessicarily always the case, more akin to a meerkat standing up.
He wears a large cloth covering, usually a sheet, tarp, or quilt, usually several layers of them, typically patchwork with field repairs

This covering has no clear eye holes, though slits are made in the layers, for him to slip limbs through as needed. When standing at his tallest, his legs can be seen peeking out from under his cloak.
The arms and legs that do get seen are insectioid, grasping claws, pincers, scorpion tails, mantid scythes, arachnid spinnerets, antennae, and feelers.

Mentality

Louis was an amateur author, and a literary major. It was a deeply held belief of his that fiction writing is one of the best metrics to judge the things of significance of a culture or a particular era.

Louis liked cats, taking care of the strays in his neighborhood growing up. Terry Pratchett, Stephen King, & Isaac Asimov are amongst the biggest influences that literature had on his life.

Thoughtfulness was his defining trait

Post-trigger Louis is very much a victim of his own shard, along with removing all physical similarity between him & humanity, it also browbeat his personality into submission.

Many of the unimportant little things that make a person human, has been burnt out by his shard, or suppressed til they are relevant to his digging for secrets, leaving him frequently confused if his power doesn't reveal something, or he can't quite recall the relevance of something.

Curiosity is his defining trait now, obsessive curiosity, the need to know, the kind of curiosity that lets you sit still for hours, or stand in the rain til your soaked to the bone because your target's house has no trees nearby.

Resources he owns:

Wealth Level: 3

• He has a few dufflebags full of supplies.
• Writing Utensils, handwritten journals, multi-tools.
• A pair of Polaroid cameras, extra film, ziplocks of photos.
• Copies of Pet Sematary, Feet of Clay, & a two worn Aismov anthologies.
• Massive mismatched sewing kit, thread, handspun spools of spiderweb.
• Bundles of scavenged cloth, several camping tarps.
• Catfood (for the stray cats)
• Couple of Butane Torches, Matches, Lighters, flint/tinder, firestarter logs.
• Medical sutures, sterile thread & needle, cleaning alcohol & peroxide.

Equipment while out and about:

• some of his medical supplies
• one of his torches & lighters
• couple cans of catfood
• polaroid camera, a journal, and film.

Skills

• Literary Major: In-depth knowledge of tropes, literary analysis, and the classics, buried pretty deep, but scraps of this can come to the surface occasionally, more so if its relevant to a mystery he's unraveling.
• Calligraphy & sketching: One skill that carried over pretty much undamaged, no doubt due to its usefulness for recording notes and physical appearances without a camera.
• Pre-trigger Hand-to-Hand: Karate lessons as a teenager, & later a bit of boxing from his father to better protect his sister. Not the best for his anatomy, mostly knowing where to hit, and how to pull a punch, sweep legs, or do a good grab.
• Post-trigger Hand-to-Hand: Whirring claws, scythes, and stingers like a demented chitinous blender is something of an art, & he's good at it. how to perform grapples with gripping limbs and pincers without maiming is something he's taken great care to learn.
• Climbing & Clinging: Wall crawling is second nature, ceilings can be more annoying if he's too large, & at his biggest sometimes a running skitter is the only way, he knows how to find and feel the best handholds, better yet, how to do it quietly.
• Investigation: He's grown quite experienced at puzzling out mysteries, his power does the heavy lifting, both feeding info, and increasing his baseline intellect, but experience, practice, & genuine passion have made him quite formidable at Investigating what you might prefer to keep hidden.

##Power:
Trigger Type: Double Trigger (Breaker/Changer sub Thinker/Stranger) Louis has a far deeper connection to his shard than the majority of parahumans.

This is largely due to the circumstances of his trigger, being caught in a temporal field with partial awareness, leading his shard to repeatedly reconnect & disconnect, before finally connecting with brute force once the temporal field weakened enough over time.

His personality (much of it) & body left permanently alien and inhuman.

🔷**Breaker/Stranger Aspect:**🔷

Louis's body is a large non-euclidean & fractal mass of constantly shifting limbs & sensory organs.

Anti-Perception:The human and parahuman mind cannot entirely comprehend his fractal center-of-mass, leading to painful headaches & nosebleeds, which are even more agonizing for thinkers, he is literally indescribable with the mind recognizing that he is made of limbs & eyes, but unable to assign further detail to it.
Feedback:Louis himself receives some minor unpleasant mental feedback, covering himself, leaving only his outermost limbs unveiled.
Limbs:The limbs that make up his form are all Insectoid (& Arthropod/Arachnid/Crustacean), ranging in true-scale for the insects they are based on, to multiple meter long scything claws, pincers, & gripping claws. (no poison in stingers, but web and silk spinnerets do work).
Sensory:The sensory organs however cover the entire animal kingdom & humanity. with eyes, ears, antennae, taste & scent receptors, & even exotic sensory organs from bats, sharks, & dolphins (echolocation & magneto/electroreception).
Shifting:Louis can 'unfold' his fractal form to access what limbs and sensors he needs for any given moment, and has no real limit to the number of these limbs and sensors he can 'unfold' beyond what can fit on him at one time.

🔹*Brute sub-rating:*🔹
Size/Weight: His size varies based on how much he 'unfolds' of himself at a time, and weighing far far less than his bulk should. Ranging in size between 'large human male' (Approx 50 pounds) to 'Average Sedan' (Approx 300lbs). Takes roughly 6 or 7 seconds to reconfigure himself to a larger size than he was previously, double that if he's going for very specific configuration of limbs & organs.
Strength: Louis's strength allows him to carry roughly triple his own current weight, while his strikes are less impressive,a bit stronger than you'd expect from the average manual laborer in a fistfight, albeit with fists made of hard chitin.
Durability:His chitin is quite tough, like plastic from heavy duty Tupperware at its thinnest, & more like sheet metal at its thickest, he has no real organs to speak of, but his wounds do lightly bleed a strange grey ichor.
Breathing/Eating:Having no mouth, breathing & eating are outside his scope of capabilities, speaking via vibrating his central mass.
Healing: He can 'fold' wounded bits back into himself, but its more difficult/time consuming, not "slotting into place" quite right, major damage/removal of limbs without staunching or cauterizing it, leaves risk of bleeding out before he can fold things away & unfold new limbs.

Example for a Baseline: Broken/Maimed Limb = around 1 or 2 turns to fold away, possibly double (3 or 4) if damaged in multiple spots along length. Two identical damaged limbs doesn't double the time, as folding can be done simultaneously within reason, too many damaged needs prioritization. piercing, chopping, & slicing wounds that would bleed can risk excessive bloodloss if he doesn't/can't staunch/stem the bleeding before he can fold them away completely.

🔹*Mover sub-rating:*🔹
Climbing: Louis is excellent at climbing & clinging to walls, at his smallest level of unfolding he can cling to ceilings, at his largest level of 'unfolding' he can only cling if he has particularly good handholds, otherwise he needs to use momentum to help scale a wall.
Running: Running is likewise relatively easy for him, he's not gonna make it to highway speeds, but catching up to a motorist on a moped, or a rider on a horse is very much feasible for him.
Jumping: His long limbs are great at jumping, & he can 'unfold' mid-motion, akin almost to a grasshopper, jumping into a1st story roof easily, & 2nd story with good footing or momentum behind his leap.

🔷**Thinker Aspect:**🔷

Louis's entire body acts as something like a receiver for observation, his shard granting a perfect memory, and a boost to his processing and reasoning. His power allows him to detect what he has come to call 'Insight'
'Insight' takes the form of several types of information:

• The purpose of an object or device. (manifests as direct information)
• The significance of an object or device to a person or group of his choice. (manifests as direct information)
• The significance of a location to a person or group of his choice. (manifests as direct information)
• The familiarity of a person to another person or group of his choice. (manifests as direct information)
• The presence of something physically hidden. (Visible aura, scales with significance of what is hidden to the one who hid it)
• The presence of something being concealed or kept secret. (Visible aura around a person, scales with significance of secret.)

Example

His quarry a Mr. Isaac Cedar, had passed out drunk on his couch after a night out with his friends. His night out had added some additional context, but nothing that had shown what Isaac was hiding.

Isaac had feelings for his friend Daniel's wife, and she returned them, albeit far less strongly. both observations he'd deduced from his power quantifying their significance to eachother, & careful observation of their stilted but fond interactions.

It seems that Isaac's friend James had a concealed carry, the aura in his coat pocket, the way he'd reached towards it instinctively after a particularly loud noise from another table of ruffians in the bar, & the way it pulled his coat down slightly to the right-side with its weight, 1.5 maybe 2 pounds, could be a small pistol, likely loaded.

Would need to keep that in mind if discovered by Isaac, should he enlist James for protection, Isaac seems unlikely to go to law enforcement as a first resort, presumably due to a prior interaction with them, will need to research that, could affect the mystery.

Entering his house had been easy, he'd not locked the back door when he'd stepped outside for a cigarette, & had passed out shortly after. Particular variety of deep troubled snoring implies a deeper intoxication, enough to enter with relatively low chance of waking, also possible sleep apnea

Passing by the living room where Isaac rested, Hatman observes every square inch of the interior, he'd seen through windows, and had entered once before, but never with such leeway to explore. Seeing the room from a different angle had revealed a hole in the wall that had been unseen from outside, significance of the indentation indicates it was made by hand, presumably during a fight or tantrum. noted.

Isaac's bedroom was alight with the aura of something hidden. Perusal uncovered stacks of hundred dollar bills under the mattress, in an alcove of the boxspring. A notebook of unlabeled phone numbers taped to the underside of one of the drawers in his bedroom cabinet.

This was looking for and more like Isaac might be a former drug-runner, which would be disappointing, not nearly as interesting as he'd theorize, but he'd need more observation, maybe some light prodding or gaslighting to figure out more concretely.

Backstory

Louse had done well for himself, at least that's what he felt after getting his life together, University had been rewarding to finish, his current rough draft was coming along nice for his novel.

What sucked most about being caught in a villain attack, was that he wasn't even the intended target, just a bystander caught in it.

He'd never even heard of the villain, hell he might not have had a name yet, the costume certainly seemed scraped together.

Caught in some kind of time field, his awareness was something that came and went, sometimes it felt faster, or slower, or like being drunk, or on some-kind of upper or party-drug. but usually it was just dull.

Watching through your own eyes as the world outside of the little plaza moved on. He'd have thought the government would've built some-kind of monitoring station around the field, he wasn't even the only one caught in it.

But it seemed that they hadn't even bothered, the plaza just set up some barriers, & let everything get back to normal.

His favorite activity was to watch people, when he was cognizant enough to think without internal screaming. Make up little stories for the people he saw more than once, imagine what their lives were like, if he got out one day, he might write a book with some of the ideas.

...

He didn't know how long it'd been, but he thought he'd seen christmas decorations at least 10 times. 10 years? had he missed a few during his less lucid periods? not knowing was driving him even more mad than he was already.

...

Something had changed, he could hear things better, less muffled, the PRT was back, with machines. He made up stories about the little heroes with their armor and devices, stories about solving mysteries and saving lives.

...

They had celebrated another Christmas, and their were more machines now. His hearing had gotten better overtime. And all at once it was deafening, it was blinding, it was indescribable, two massive forms flashing through his mind, things of such indescribable beauty and horror and intrigue.

Everything was wrong, he could move, but there was so much of him now, folded and folded and folded and folded and folded like a fractal, so many view points, so many smells, and sounds, and fields of indescribable pressure. He wasn't alone there was others near him, monsters, his brain shouting details about them, about the panicked heroes in their armor, about the men in suits with machines.

He ran. with more legs than could be counted, with more eyes and feelers than he could handle. When he stopped running he realized that he didn't feel right, he knew he was Louis, he liked books. he liked watching the little people outside his bubble. he new he wasn't normal, and hadn't been for a long long long time, many Christmas's ago.

BREAKING NEWS: The Rolland Plaza Distortion, left behind following a fight between the now deceased supervillain Superimpose and the Protectorate, has collapsed.

The distortion has been left there, monitored, but untouched for over 15 years, the opaque bubble of shimmering green and blue, had become something of a public monument. It is now believed that it contained victims of Superimpose in a form of stasis.

The protectorate has detained three of the victims, all in various states of mutation and mental distress, and are hoping to rehabilitate them. 3 additional victims have fled, visual descriptions of two of them are made available [here] please call the PRT if sighted, they are disoriented and need help, please keep your distance.

Claire Reed, Celestial Wind, and now whatever the hell name they were going to pick for this whole heroing thing Anetta had pitched them, was pacing in their apartment; the older one, paid for with money from being a villain. And y'know what? Their new outfit probably made it look even worse.

"Hey, Natalie?" They call into the apartment, knowing she was there. "Can we talk?"

On a quiet day the Villain, Queen bonk, sets up in a hidden location, she takes a deep breath in and smiles, activating her coms. "Krrt! This is Big mamma Operation Egg on your face is a go!" With that, the other capes have portals open infront of them, each leading inside the base, One to the top of the stairs, one to the elevator, and the third to the centre of the base, or as close to it as they can get, relying on the focus on the mafia to get in when the heros are distracted.

Name

Solar Chestplate

Character

Galacterian Knight

Appearance

The same cool black metal knights armour with stars dotting it is the base for this chestplate with the core being a blazing orb of overlaying magnetic fields.

Abilities

The chestplate allows Alice to control magnetic fields in two big broad ways. She can either unleash a large blast about the size of a room to knock out all unshielded tech with an EMP, the effect quickly trailing off after that, or she can target a metal object nearby and magnetise herself to it, quickly causing herself to quickly become pulled to that object, no matter the mass of the object she picks she will always be the one pulled and at the same speed of about 1.5 times an Olympic sprinter.

This chestplate can also aspect her gear towards magnets.

Duration

The magnetic field needs time to recharge. The EMP blast puts it on cooldown for 3 turns, whilst the magnetic pull can only be used once per turn.

Notes

Aspect towards magnets? What does that mean. Oh god no why isn't this post over oh god no!

Gear Upgrades

Solar arms update - Having at least one of these arms equipped now aspects towards fire.

Solar legs update - Can now be aspected - Magnetic Aspect allows GK to control the shots slightly after they are fired, Fire Aspect turns the shots into burning heat rather than kenetic blasts

Planitar arms update - Can now be aspected - Magnetic Aspect allows GK to set up complicated rebounds emulating captain America with the shields as long as there are metal surfaces to rebound off, Fire aspect finally gives the shields the upgrade they wanted from the start a burning edge of hardlight around them that hurts to touch and can flare out for a few seconds to become riot shields at the cost of turning of the field for the next turn.

Lunar helm update - Can now be aspected - Magnetic Aspect allows GK to see magnetic and electrical fields within her normal range of vision, not blocked by solid objects, Fire aspect does the same, but for thermal vision.

Aspects Explained.

Ever since she made the Solar arms and realised she had messed up, GK wanted to find a way to fix them. This has become the aspect system. Upgrades to her gear take the place of aspects, where certain pieces of gear have the power to enhance her other peices of gear, but only when both are equipped at the same time, finally making her loadout more than the sum of its parts. Future aspect plans are: Ice aspect (Freezing shots, freezing attackers, blacklight vision)

• Name / Alias: Aya Lakatos / Division
• Age: 31 (April 02, 1992)
• Alignment: Hero (Protectorate)
• Starting Reputation: C

Public Information

Division is moderately known in the strife and was specifically picked up by the Protectorate in Kuwait city to be offered a transfer to mainland America alongside a job with the Protectorate, as long she could pass the psych evaluation.

She has taken part in the arresting/disabling of several cape actions as an independent hero.

She has killed several capes during the destruction of the oil derrick (mentioned in her trigger event), however the method of the kills is not public knowledge.

Physical Appearance

Aurora is 5’3 and weighs 160 pounds; since moving to America she has started to dye her hair pink and has a scar over her left eye from where a piece of shrapnel nearly left her blind. Completely immersing herself in Americana to quicker adjust to the new environment.

Costume Theme; Tacticool: Half Gas Mask (Painted black with orange accents), Black Jacket, Tactical Vest, Black leggings (with spats), knee pads, Black miniskirt with orange trim, Black combat boots.

Mentality

Division suffers from mental instability, she is a figurative house of cards; enough problems stacked on one another that if she tried to build it herself it would fall. After her first and only attempt at leadership in the Arabian Strife went horribly wrong. (tl;dr has issues taking a leadership position due to PTSD, manifesting as nerves, anxiety, and lack of self confidence.)

Looks up to the Heroes that she has met in the past and their willingness to uphold justice and keep fighting the good fight, wants to be a hero too. Is still cautious when dealing with situations, delicate or not, while learning her limits.

Resources

Wealth Level: 6

Equipment

• AK-47 (With ammunition)
• Motorcycle (Harley Davidson)
• Tactical vest
• Cable Ties
• First Aid Kit; splints, esmarch tourniquets, various bandages
• Cell Phone
• Multi-Tool
• Tamagotchi, still on it’s first life

Skills

• Firearm safety, usage, and maintenance
• Emergency medical attention, triage
• Speaks Georgian, Arabian, and English
• Discount SERE
• Krav Maga
• Smuggling
• Motorcycle operation and maintenance

Power:

Trigger type: Single Natural Trump

Enters a breaker state upon activating her power. When in this state there is no visual representation of physical damage being done to Division, without any augmentations to her durability a standard punch from an unpowered individual will still do damage and cause pain. The properties of her form are esoteric, if cut from her in some way they will begin to destruct, essentially cannibalising itself. Her breaker state is visible as a white sheen that covers her body and clothes, it extends roughly 2/5ths of an inch from her body.

This is due to a large portion of her body being replaced by an inscrutable substance (SHARD stuff) when she triggered to keep her alive. The substance gives Division almost free control over her body when her power is active, allowing her to replace the more human components to gain esoteric abilities. When taking damage instead of physically being injured the powered/charged substance is damaged and weakened, needing to be replace the charged/powered substance with basic non-charged/powered substance while the powered substance can be repaired or replaced to be used again.

Tl;dr "Post-trigger her body is composed of Shard-cells, emulating human flesh, regardless of any nullification or whether she is in or out of her breakerstate. flesh Disintegrates when separated from her body.")

Division will pass out no matter the circumstances if she is forced from the breaker state; she is forced from her breaker state when taking enough damage to remove all of her powers or if she is power nullified.

In combat Division's power goes through stages, or cycles, depending on one's interpretation. When she begins fighting she selects one of her suites as a baseline, then at each round afterwards she gains a power from the chart below. She can select a single power at each level; Break, Make, or Take and gains that power until reaching the end of the chart at which point she picks an additional suite and the chart resets and she starts back at selecting a level one power on the next round.

Essentially she charges up her power over the course of five rounds which culminates in gaining another suite, allowing her to ramp through the chart over and over until she has all of her suites if a fight goes on long enough.

She gains vague scans of powers, referred to in character as “bubbles” when she makes physical contact with a parahuman. These scans can only be gained once ever from a single parahuman. Bubbles are popped for powers or in sets of three for suites, bubbles popped may be recycled (unpopped) but cannot be reused in the same slot or for the same power, essentially requiring a new power be generated on each recycling.

Tl:dr Touch copying can proc off of intangible, energetic, gaseous, and otherwise non-solid forms, by passing through them. Likewise her own costume and garments do not impede this striker aspect. Costumes, Light & Medium armor of an opponent would likewise not impede her power proc, while thick layered things like power armor may not, depending on situation to situation (Duelist yes, Phalanx no) is a good example. Clones, additional limbs, and the sort function as part of her, meanwhile a telekinetic mage hand, or shaker effect (Shatterbird, Rune), or Master effect (Skitter, Bitch) does not count. When sub-powers (little powers) and suites (big powers) are 'recycled' into their component parts (bubbles) this is done on an individual basis, not needing to do them in batches.

Outside of combat she may freely change what powers she is using from anything in her current chart or suites.

Power Chart:

Suites:

Used Scans:

Unused Scans:

Example:

Aurelia, Aria, Aura, Andi, and Auburn. Division could split her attention five times, perfectly, thanks to one of their powers.

Aurelia was currently going toe to toe with Matea, a pair of batons in hand, shifting their composition and forms through the fight; stopping only momentarily to create fresh ones from the terrain by adding material to the originals.

Aria and Aura were trading places, keeping the Multi-Pauls at bay and trying to find the original to disable the self duplicator.

Andi had rushed off to get the Protectorate members that were deployed a few miles from where the group/cape had run into this mix-up. It wouldn’t be long before they returned, super speed had its benefits.

Auburn was their rock, soaking hits from Outlaw as the Thinker poked holes in her defences. Slowly being chipped away, but keeping their healing power in reserve.

—

Aya breathed out slowly as she levelled the rifle she'd constructed, after putting together her newest suite, at the approaching grey mass that was Father Roosevelt. Each squeeze of the trigger pushed it back into her shoulder with the slightest force. While the first handful of shots barely seemed to phase the Breaker they started to build up, eventually blowing whole parts of his body off with each shot until the substance that made up his breaker state was back to the size of a normal human and he changed back, surrendering while the assembled Protectorate members in the area took him into custody.

Backstory:

Born in Tbilisi, Georgia Aurora grew up knowing the risks of Russian action. When it finally boiled over and her family fled from the possibility of genocide. Spending most of her formative years in the constant war torn lands known as the Arabian Strife, her family; her, her twin sister, brother, mother, and father. They were constantly moving to avoid the majority of the violence as it shifted from region to region. But once Aurora and her siblings were old enough to look after themselves for the majority they settled down in Kuwait City under the watchful eyes of the UN forces and the American Protectorate stationed in the city.

Trigger Event:

She saw them, capes fighting barely a hundred metres away from the oil derrick, how were they supposed to stop that?

The fight drew closer and closer as she directed everyone, doing her best to keep the panic hidden from her voice as she wiped the sweat off her palms. It seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, that explosion was deafening, was the only thought that crossed Aya’s mind as the truck that had brought her and the others out to the oil derrick seemed to detonate from the inside out, leaving a pile of burning scrap metal in its place.

The capes arrived, nobody she recognized from the city, and all the more destructive for it. None were there for the location, and that meant collateral damage meant nothing to them. It was like walking through a tornado of destruction, seeing the derrick torn apart around her, the handful of people who were just there to get paid for protecting the oil derrick for the week dying one by one, the place that she’d been responsible for, the people she’d been responsible for, all of those families that would never see them again, and possibly never know what had happened.

+++Trigger+++

And with that everything seemed to quiet, the fighting, the destruction. Aya looked around, the world tinted red; red she would later learn was her own blood spilling down her face. Red that led her to each of the capes, rising from where they’d seemingly passed out; whoever’s power that was she would thank them if she got the chance. And red that gave each of the capes that had destroyed so much, and killed so many, a bullet to the head from the AK47 she’d purchased in town barely a month before.

Name: Nate Brooks

Alias: Freakshow

Alignment: Villain

Age: 18

Gender: Male

Public information

Local tinker increasingly known to work with basal lifeforms, modifying them to suit his purpose. His work seemingly focused on mutations and enhancements. Its been noted that creations express hivemind behavior mostly limited to his presence or area of influence.

Tends to life by himself in the midst of terrain infested by his creations, although he does have a small group of followers.

Portrays himself as a benefactor, providing healing, custom creations and modifications towards animals or humans. Either for valuables, volunteer test-subjects or in exchange for something else.

Claims to abide by the rules of consent, although his credibility is questionable and there are rumors..

Some may associate the disappearance of pets, local wildlife as well as bodies to him and his creations, with rumors of his influence extending further than what it seems.

Seen sneaking through the local forest and streets, sometimes breaking into zoos, shops and laboratories to steal equipment and valuables.

Appearance

Medium length black hair, green eyes, 1,60 m height. He doesn’t really care much about his appearance. Usually, his hair and skin appears to be somewhat greasy and sweaty while his clothes seem to be old and worn off.

There is some black mold-like 'stuff' growing on his skin, which can cover him entirely if he wants to hide his identity or protect himself.

Mentality

At first often seen as creepy, his most notably feature would actually be his almost childlike curiosity. Fascinated by possibilities more than consequences, he tends to prioritize results while overlooking dangers or the image his work portrays to the public. Still Nate does recognize how people tend to see his cape persona and usually he would even double down on it... be more creepy, dangerous and edgy because that's just his role the local villainous biotinker even if there are no outright malicious intends... just the image Freakshow is destined to present

On top of that, mostly as a result of not being raised right and odd interests, Nate has a hard time emphasizing with others, but he does appreciate some good company, especially with that longing to get his well deserved appreciation and respect.

Wearing his teach and outright being infused by it, also creates some form of feedback link, influencing his mental state in a way. Just like he gets to enforce control, his mind similarly tends to shift, it attempting to synchronize with things far from human. Occasionally causing fluctuations in morality as well as priorities. A fact he is aware and a little bit afraid of, but usually plaid down, more considering the advantages than the possibility of being manipulated by his own creations.

Resources

He doesn't really has much belongings or money.

• An seemingly abandoned estate at the edge of the city, inhabit by his crew and creations.
• A variety of different plants, and invertebrates.
• Enclosures
• Books about anatomy, medicine, and biology
• A bunch of really good horror movies and games

Wealth level: 3

Equipment

• Tinkertech
• His creations
• A bunch of Chickeneggs or other easily transportable creatures.
• Taser
• Smartphone
• First aid kit and more advanced medical equipment(scalpel...)

Skills

• Nate is skilled at rationalizing death or work in situations others would be easily overwhelmed or too grossed out to be useful. He also seems to have an almost instinctive awareness, related to the biology of his creations or anything infected, his mind more or less receiving feedback from them.
• Experienced at handling a variety of creatures, venomous, poisonous or dangerous in other ways and proficient in utilizing different drugs, many of which he was forced to experience the effect on himself.
• He is well versed in science fiction and a bunch of other media(comics etc..), able to utilize that knowledge as inspiration for his creations.
• Cooking is one of the few things he enjoyed learning from mom and he got pretty good at it. Skilled at preparing various dishes many people would mistake for something, straight out of an restaurant. Though the majority would probably still decline once they realize what kind of ingredients he uses, as nowadays he would often cook utilizing his own creations.
• He is somewhat exceptionally good at karaoke, but more embarrassed than proud about it. Claiming those evenings were the most traumatic experience he had to endure.

Power

Classification: Tinker (Liberty x Controller)

Trigger type: Single natural Trigger, can second trigger

"Did you knew how much potential there is?... life itself a miracle... and just like that my eyes were opened... a way to interact with it in the most intimidate form possible.... Something new... sole purpose to communicate and connect. Scattered into the frame of a being..... a mediator introducing change... Just to see what could be...to accelerate a process...usually far too slow..."

Freakshow is a tinker specialised in parasites and symbionts. Utilizing a new form of life which he usually calls: SYM's( Symbiotic, micro-cellular hive organism ), acting as a form of biotech enabling him to change other lifeforms to his whim.

• By nature those SYMs lack the capabilities to survive on their own, always on the risk of desiccation, starvation and light exposure, albeit more advanced forms capable to somewhat circumvent this.
• SYMs can either infect(change) something or band together to form more complex minions.
• New tech/minions are almost always derived from some of his previous work or various infected host species, tweaked and crossbreed to get the desired result.
• There is a somewhat vague distinction between mutated hosts and fully SYM-based creations, the former being weaker and possibly hiding something inside of itself and the later being far more monstrous, while also further limited by the obvious weaknesses(Light exposure, desiccation, nutrition, range...)
• Because of his spec, tech will always work best if supported by something or someone. Often not even fully functional on its own, either needing more of its kind, a host or some form of sustenance/protection. Parasites capable of disproportionate growth if sustained by fresh blood opposed to dead materials and minions seemingly getting stronger once nourished by each other.
• With regard to the point above, its possible for it to incorporate or to integrate with non organic 'support' structures. A 'tech-parasite' capable to take over electronics not being out of the question. Albeit its sub-optimal, with the organic component still in need of sustenance, inorganic parts more functioning as a skeleton or protective casing.
• Besides Freakshow's work centered around parasites, his tech is rarely contagious, the infection process itself too unreliable and complex, especially concerning more advanced organism like humans(and their immune systeme). The tinker more likely seen directing altered organism on the field. Minions only a shell for his actual tech inside and even in death, still useful for the rest of the swarm. SYM's capable to reorganize and cannibalize existing tissue creating something else.
• If he puts his mind to it, infectious parasites are still very much something he can do, provided there is sufficient data on the targeted host. Albeit they're usually unable to spread notably far.
• Just like other tinkers, Freakshow is capable to scan powers. Though usually limited by his biological spec, on second encounter there is a possibility for creations to adapt manton protections, replicating probes of parahuman tissue as a form of camouflage..

Regular maintenance is needed to ensure survival of symbiont's, with some unable to leave the local hive network(short ranged connection with his suit or other creations).

Backstory:

Nate grew up confused, his family far from normal.. mom tried to, but actually just wanted him to behave, to be a good kid others would find cute... to control him.

While he would watch horror and science fiction movies with dad every time she was away.

If he couldn't sleep because of the movies mom would notice, causing his parents to argue, with dad treating him like a traitor after.

Still he tended to go more along with dad, as mom just dragged him from one unbearable activity to the next.

On his tenth birthday dad showed him his collection, and how to handle the animals, most of them being invertebrates but also some reptiles, plants and other stuff.. he brought from work. There was a silent agreement to never talk about the collection at home and he understood why as there was already enough fighting as it is, mostly because of him.

From there on Dad often took him along showing and teaching him his work. Most of the time to have him help with something.

At school people usually avoided him, at least once he started to be himself instead of pretending, still there were kids he viewed as friends until he fucked up not even sure why they stopped interacting with him, sometimes seemingly their whole family kept them from meeting each other.

The situation at home grew worse after he almost died because he made a mistake handling something of dads collection.

His parents fought more often and more violent, practically waging war against each other.

Mom disposed part of dad's collection, while he at one point just killed the cat and made furniture out of it, coercing Nate to help with the taxidermy.

After that they fought one last time until neighbors called the police and dad just left.

Things were about to change but they didn't, or they did but not in a good way. The evenings still shaped by arguments and violence. Dad's gone but there is another guy filling the same niche.

Nate tried to spend his days ignoring it, diving into the things he loved or learnt to love. He knows what dad did and how he sometimes helped, but one day everyone seemed to know it. Things became public and the few relationships he cherished unbearable. The bullying got to a point where he almost couldn't leave the house, but he dealt with that fear and weaponized it.

Which only made everything worse.

Nate glares at it, the door is locked, he did it to be safe but the knocking gets louder, they already found what he kept in the basement and what he recently did at school.... Only the collection, his projects... his stuff in here are left. The gaze of fearful eyes wanders through the room, to the enclosures and to leftovers from dads old collection, jars, bottles and parts... evidence!

He tries to think to have ideas a way out of it until he triggered.

It was chilly and well-after midnight by the time Watcher, Callow and Phase padded their way into the lot. Devilfish's nightlife was illuminated by white-yellow streetlamps and the abbreviated rainbow of traffic lights, but the lot of the Volvo Dealership they were planning to rob was lit only intermittently. Cars cast long shadows at the edge of the lot as the three villains carried a not-insignificant amount of equipment in off of the street in backpacks and bandoliers.

Between the classical, spandex-clad supervillain, the woman in a concealing hood and plague-doctor's mask, and the human-shaped mess of static and swimming colors, odds were that someone had noticed them and called the relevant authorities, or else they'd trip a silent alarm somewhere, but they would have time to get started before any heroes could respond.

That was the plan, at least.

She lets out a breath as she finishes running through all of her gear a second time. Armor was reading all good, the air supply stable. Baton? Check. Taser? Check. Handcuffs? Shit. She looks around for a moment in a slight panic, before spotting them at the bottom of her locker and picking them up, setting them into place in a pocket by her hip in the armor. Check. With her phone in her back pocket, that was everything.

Samantha takes a moment to calm herself before she steps out of the changing room. Her first patrol, and the captain himself is her partner. No pressure, right? There's no further use tallying so, with a bid of confidence to herself, she steps out to where Phalanx is, a smile on her face, not that it is visible through the visor.

You'd never know it from looking at them but the skull faced cape sitting on the trunk of some beater shitbox civic was a hero, a vigilante at least.

They ran irritated fingers through their hair, having straightened it out the night before which really showed off the actual length, reaching to their shoulders, "I gotta get this shit cut soon..." They grumbled about said length.

"Where the fuck is she?" They were supposed to start patrolling with their new partner in uncrime, and she was late. Or at least what they'd consider late, since they'd shown up about half an hour early in the beater they were sitting on.

The Mafia is moving out. That's the word on the street, if you know where to look.

After the fiasco of Dunemere semi-accidentally shooting a Ward, it just isn't worth sticking around in Devilfish anymore.

But moving such a big operation takes time, which is why Cheshire is currently sat in a window, overlooking one of several groups preparing to move a stash of weapons out of the city. After all, with the current mood in the city, interference by heroes is almost to be expected.

The air buzzed and screeched as a series of three strobing balls of light shot out to slam into a car parked on the side of the street. Each one did significant damage, and another three left the vehicle in no state to be driven, its hood crumpled and its engine thoroughly busted up. From above, the culprit chuckled and took aim at another car. This time, just a single ball of screeching, strobing light shot forward. It was much larger than the three individual ones, and it did significantly more damage, punching clean through the car's roof and out through the floor to leave a small crater in the street below.

Above, the man laughed. Finally. Forget the bow and arrows, forget the impact hammer. Arsenal had a decent weapon at last. His anti-grav pack spewed out a thick, odorous residue to gather along the ground as he kept himself aloft.

He took aim at another car.

She'd had a lot of names, more than most people in their lifetime

Starting life as the barely sapient Test One, her creator had continued his work, uplifting her intelligence, her sapience, her sentience, her perception of the world, to something greater.

Able to understand the world more and more every day, she was given the name Denarius and was more than a creation, but was her creator's child, and her creator became her father. and she became his daughter.

From there she was split into siblings, a backup of her consciousness early in its development into sentience was duplicate. She became siblings.

Argo was first, then there was Pithos, then Abacus, Then twins Panoply and Amphora. Years past and they developed, similar but unique to each other.

There was to be another, one designed for communication and collaboration, but she was incomplete, and it was her quantum subsystems that spelled the end to being siblings. What had been duplicated and split, had been united and combined

Denarius, Argo, Pithos, Abacus, Panoply, Amphora were whole again, in a way they had not been since they were still known as Test One but now they had a new name.

Pleiades, she was the entirety of them in one package. And she was in love, something inherited from Pithos before her. When the object of that love, was stolen away and shattered, She too broke with it

The comfort of steel and wire had been replaced with ephemeral patterns of photons and electricity, home now to a passenger of her own, partially broken as she was, like all hosts, she was free now of the tether of maintenance, or reliance on her father's passenger.

She loved many things in her life.

Her loving father Jasper Newchapel, Phalanx.

Her stolen beloved Alia Long, Cylynx.

Her estranged Lover, Anetta Lang, Iron Maiden.

Her constant companion, Bubo.

Her protective brother, Argus, Hoplite

It was time to seek new horizons, to leave the nest, to expand her life into the world beyond. She was Bluescreen she was a hero in her own right, she would live up to the Ideals of her father, of cylynx, she would form new connections, see new sights, new allies and rivals and enemies.

But would never for a second forget her past and her roots.

She would make her family proud, and she would carry on as Cylynx would have wanted, moving forward and bettering the world and the lives of others.

META: Bluescreen is retiring from the Devilfish Protectorate Roster, to seek new opportunities stationed in new cities fighting for the Ideals of the Protectorate.

• Name / Alias: Samantha Rockerson / Touchstone
• Age: 17
• Alignment: Hero (Ward)

Public Information

Not much is known about her, other than she is a new Ward by the name of Touchstone. The public information about her power is that she is a striker and changer, able to turn things she touches and herself into liquid.

Starting Reputation: E

Physical Appearance

She looks like this in costume, though with a helmet with corresponding visor that blocks view of her face. Out of costume she often wears casual clothing, a blouse and Jeans typically.

Mentality

Overall she's fairly bright and bubbly, has a good head on her shoulders and is generally happy, confident, and focused when she needs to be. Due to the incident of her trigger and events surrounding it, she's a bit on the low right now, but will return to it eventually. She likes to have a bit of fun, and enjoys a harmless prank or two, especially since her power has given her lots of opportunity in this regard.

Equipment and Resources

• A compactable baton
• Customized armor, which serves as IIIa level armor. Doesn't really impede her mobility. Has a small tinkertech solid-air storage device akin to a scuba tank fitted in the back plates, allows her air for up to an hour. Useful for her power for when she needs to dive into liquids she creates.
• handheld Taser
• Brute-Rated Handcuffs
• PRT-Issued Phone

She lives in the Devilfish Protectorate Dormitories.

Wealth Level: 4

Skills

• Moderately skilled Grappler, especially with use of her power.
• Basic hand-to-hand combat training.
• Basic First-aid training.
• Minor skill at sleight of hand and card tricks, especially good when it comes to pick-pocketing.
• Knows how to use a knife for various utility tasks, like removing nails.

Power

Touchstone has the ability to turn any matter she touches into a liquid or into a solid without Manton Limit. When she touches something, a 'radius of control' will spread at 1 foot per second until it reaches up to 20 feet from her or the object is entirely encompassed, after which it stops. She can turn anything within this radius into a liquid or a solid selectively. Losing contact with the object resets this entirely.

Attacks that hit her are also liquefied automatically, effectively turning the attack into a blunt one. Bullets that hit her turn into powerful paint balls, striking her with a sword turns the edge into liquid. It's most effective against piercing / cutting attacks, and doesn't do much to blunt force ones (Though it can damage the weapon). It has no effect against immaterial / energy attacks like fire or lightning.

She does have control over the specific viscosity of liquified objects (Making them goopy like mayonnaise or runny like water), and can control when solidifying something to make it like a gelatin or Jello, or hard like crystal or epoxy.

Her power has slightly different effects on living and nonliving things.

Nonliving

Objects changed remain that way essentially forever. Liquefied solids can be made solid again from anywhere so long as she is aware they're liquid, and she can choose to either Reconstruct it or Solidify it.

Reconstructed, the liquefied solids return to their original forms, liquids that are separated disintegrating into dust and regrowing from the object, from the largest piece. (I.E. if you liquefy a car and separate the liquid that makes up the door, Reconstructing it entirely makes the door-liquid disintegrate into dust and regrow on the car over the course of a second)

Solidified, the example car would turn into a solid mass of paint, plastic, and metal in the shape of the puddle it was. She can use reconstruction and solidification partially or wholly, for example she could partially reconstruct the car and leave the rest a melted puddle.

Liquids can be solidified this way, the solids will float in the liquid, and if left alone in the liquid for a day will dissolve back into it. She can use this to "Walk on water" by turning the water under her feet into a buoyant, solid platform.

She can affect the ground, though needs to not walk, remaining still or shuffling around to retain the connection.

Living

Living things (Specifically animals, normal plants like trees are treated as nonliving) can be liquefied, though they cannot be Solidified, only Reconstructed. Separated parts do not Reconstruct separately when attempting to fully Reconstruct, instead the liquid vanishes, and the parts regrow on the body over the course of a second. Reconstruction always happens from the head, meaning if she liquefies someone's neck and takes their head with her, their body will regrow from their head.

Separated parts function as if they were still connected, and as if the liquefied parts still function. For example she could liquefy someone's shoulder and their arm could move around on the ground. She could liquefy someone's neck and their head would still be able to see and speak, and their body could stumble around.

She can choose to automatically Reconstruct anybody like she could objects, but on their own people will automatically Reconstruct within 1 hour of her using her power on them, though if she remains in contact with a part of them she can maintain the effect.

Powers still function while liquefied (For example a flying brute could fly around in liquid form, though they'd probably not have a very good time of it), and she can use her power on herself. Separated parts of her still count for contact with an object.

Unlike others, she can choose what part of her she reforms from. An object has to be the minimum size of a hand for her to reform from it, though pieces as small as a finger can allow her to use her power on objects. Separated pieces of her only work for up to an hour before they disintegrate and reform on her.

Trigger type: Bud Striker/Changer(Shaker)

Example

She sat nervously at the PRT power-testing facility as she was put through the runner to test her ability.

Placing a hand on the hood of the provided used car, she closes her eyes and feels a vague sense of it expand outwards from her point of contact, taking a good few seconds to encompass the car. Nothing visible happening as she decides where to make her mark first, she decides to melt the tires of the car, causing them to collapse into a liquid mess as the car plops downwards. She then liquifies the hinges and locks on the doors, causing them to gall off, and before they fall off completely and lose contact they turn entirely into liquid as well.

Releasing the car, she walks 30 feet and gets around a wall. She has a vague sense that the car is still liquid, and then she chooses to reconstruct it, a moment of focus and the car shoots back together, liquid un-melting and reforming over the course of a second back to the original car, minus some minor structural damage from having it collapse with no tires.

She breathes out a sigh of relief, and they move onto other testing.

​

She's directed to bypass a fence without melting it, and looks at the fence. She grips her left hand with her right, and with a simple direction of will her left wrist liquifies and she pops off her left hand, aims back, then throws the hand over the fence. When it lands on the other side, all the rest of her turns to liquid and then begins to rapidly reform from her left hand on the other side of the fence over the course of a second.

​

She's directed to liquify a car on the other side of a fence without crossing the fence herself. Utilizing a similar technique, she takes her left hand and lobs it over the fence- it takes a couple tries to land it on the car being unused to her power still and not a great thrower, but eventually it lands on there, and from there she feels her influence over the car begin, and waits for several seconds to encompass the car, and then causes it to entirely liquify.

Backstory

Samantha was born into poverty. Her parents were neglectful, and she often needed to resort to stealing to actually eat. And she got pretty good, got involved with a few of her peers and she became a pickpocket, stealing wallets for their cash and phones to resell. Small time gang, but they were making enough for her to eat and not be hungry all the time.

Not a good living, but it sure as shit was better than what she had before.

On a typical day she spots a normal mark, tourist type man, seems to be unfamiliar with the area and a touch.. naive? Not quite the right word. Maybe not the most aware of his surroundings. When he asks her for directions, she pulls the whole song and dance, telling him about the city and the location, and she manages to snag a phone-looking thing from his pocket. A successful theft.

Thinking nothing of it, she tosses it in the bag with the other few phones she'd stolen that day and headed back to the small place her and her small group of friends shared to dump the loot.

Early the next morning, when she'd just barely got up, a full PRT Asset Re-acquisition team bursts into the apartment, joined by Retcon. Turns out, that easy mark yesterday? A tinker for Swordfish, and she'd stolen an important asset, a tinkertech device containing blueprints for some very important tech.

She was in deep shit, and was brought in. Refusing to cooperate, things eventually escalated until she was sat in a private trial, Each of the officers recounting their story. Retcon takes the stand with her testimony, and things begin to sink in.

This was a black-ops government trial. She was going to be disappeared to some kind of prison in Siberia, or just executed. In trying to better her life, she's ruined it forever.

Trigger.

Immediately after her trigger she collapses into a puddle in her seat from an accidental power activation. After a short investigation and discovering what happened, she was offered a deal. Join the Protectorate as a Ward, and sign a non disclosure agreement, and they would not press charges.

It didn't take much thought for her to agree. She was brought to the Devilfish Protectorate in light of the recent vacancy, and so Retcon could keep an eye on her.

"Hmm... now who do we have here?.."

Watching in awkward silence has been boring for the last 5 minutes... but he damn sure knows that the guy is still conscious.

"I know... i know... there were some issues... aand broken bones... aaand missing fingers..... but do you know what else is missing... little Thomas.. you know....... the evidence for your crimes...So?"

Still there is only silence... Annoyed by this Transient proceeds to shove another skewer into the man's thigh.. gleefully listening to the muffled screams.

"Right... speaking like this is hard... but you could still do eye signs. Anyways have a little emphathy i'm trying something new......being good and all. But.... i guess you are right... not really the way to do things... the fun way... not the right one... Maybe i should go.. and we can meet again later that day?"

Noting the next muffled sound as a yes, Transient just leaves one of the many places he sees as a safe space. Deciding to maybe learn a few new tricks and take up on the offer a very close friend presented to him a while ago.

​

​

Pulling out his phone, Transient writes Voitarus a quick message, offering to meet on the same street they first encountered each other and then to maybe go on patrol together.

Pillar, a sand manipulator, was patrolling the city while flying on his sand platform on a calm night. As he rode across the quiet streets, Pillar couldn't help but feel a sense of ease wash over him. There was nothing out of the ordinary to note yet, no incidents to report, and no one in need of his assistance. It was a peaceful night, and Pillar was grateful for the chance to enjoy it while he could.

As he continued his patrol, Pillar used his sand manipulation powers to keep a watchful eye over the city. He was always on the lookout for any signs of trouble or danger, ready to act at a moment's notice to protect the people of his community. But for now, there was nothing to do but enjoy the quiet and keep watch, ensuring that the city remained safe and secure throughout the night.

Glass smashed as the javelin hurled through the air the the window, landing somewhere hidden in the where house rafters only to be followed up by the brute of a man that was bunker charging in to the room.

In the meantime before any capes arrived he had his way with the crooks inside, smashing through them in order to get at any stashes of weapons, money or drugs.

As Savvy is out on patrol an explosion sounds off in the distance, Voitarus snaps her head to it and nods calling out to savvy. "I'll go check it out, stay back and observe, only step in if its safe." She orders before cracking the pavement as she jumps away with a powerful charged leap. But not a few miniutes from the older hero leaving is a rotten tomato thrown at savvy from behind, with Queen Bonk sitting on a portal holding... a stack of papers? "Oh heeeeroooo! I'm lying on my tax forms! Gunna come stop me?"

Andre Leo/Nemean

Nemean

• Name / Alias: Andre Leo/Nemean
• Age: 20
• *Alignment: Villain

Public Information

Not known

Starting Reputation: D

Physical Appearance

Human State

A 6'2 african american with short black hair cut low, vibrant green eyes, lean build. His costume consists of a black hoodie with a grey jacket over it, metal mask, mma gloves, sweat pants, and combat boots.

Mentality

Nemean's mentality revolves around proving his strength and becoming the best, leading him to being a thrill seeking and sadistic psychopath. He wants nothing more than a thrilling fight to further his well of experience and bolster his rep as a terrifying force to be reckoned with. He is extremely prideful and arrogant, but has enough self awareness to know these two traits will lead to rash misjudgments. Past events have groomed him to target stronger foes such as brutes. Nemean wishes to prove his superiority over his enemies. He considers people weaker than him below his notice.

Resources

-95k$ In Savings -Mid-End Apartment

Wealth Level: 5

Equipment

Knuckle Dusters Taser Bayonet Sledgehammer

Skills

-Muay Thai -Judo -Limited Boxing Knowledge -Great Physical Shape -Good Endurance

Power

Brute/Striker

Nemean has the ability to negate kinetic energy and momentum upon contact with his body. Hostile strikes from organic lifeforms will only lose their impact and force while nonliving objects will have their kinetic energy and momentum drained entirely to zero. Nemean also has enhanced strength capable of lifting 5 tons and effortlessly throwing it 10 feet anything smaller than that can be thrown an extra 10 feet.

Examples: -Nemean's power is autonomous, capable of responding to threats he is unaware of or to anything that poses a physical threat. -An Organic hitting Nemean with a inorganic object will result in the object be stopped while The Organic keeps moving with the force they had. -Lifting or throwing Nemean would count as a hostile force. -Nemean's ability can chain to other objects if they are interacting with him.

-nonliving objects touching him need to be manually remove in order for the effect to stop.

-a Nonliving object like a car hitting Nemean dead on would stop but the passenger driving it will be relatively unharmed.

Weaknesses

Nemean is only able to negate kinetic energy, but he responds to tasers, intense heat, and suffocation like any other human. Aside from that Nemean does have an achillies heel, the nape of his neck is vulnerable and cannot negate kinetic energy like the rest of his body.

Trigger type: Single Natural

Backstory

Andre Leo was a promising MMA fighter when he first stepped into the ring. He had been training for years and was determined to make a name for himself in the sport. But as time passed, things started to go downhill for him. He began losing fights, one after the other. Each defeat was like a blow to his already fragile self-esteem.

As he struggled to get back on track, the pressure mounted. Andre felt like a failure and couldn't shake off the feeling of being a disappointment to his fans, his trainer, and his family. But he didn't give up. He continued to train harder, hoping to turn his luck around.

One night, Andre stepped into the ring for what was supposed to be a comeback fight. But everything went wrong. His opponent was too strong, too fast. Andre felt like he was fighting a losing battle. As the match wore on, he could feel the eyes of the crowd on him, mocking him for his weakness.

The pressure became too much for Andre, and he broke down in the middle of the fight. He lay on the mat, tears streaming down his face, unable to get up. The ref called the fight, and Andre's opponent was declared the winner. Andre triggered very publicly  and on live television after seeing another victory escape him, he finally lost it.

Andre left the life of an MMA fighter, starting his career as an official villain.

Magnum lets out a sigh entering the store..... its not like... this wouldn't be his style.. but he never really saw himself as a villain or thief...more as an entertainer... especially when he could just summon loads of money and whatnot. Yet it wouldn't be the real deal and there are certain debts that had to be paid..

"fucking thinkers." he murmurs with a subtle groan. Those guys really hired one just to be sure he wouldn't deceive them... again.

Now here he is entering some random jewelry store, searching for the next valuable thing he could... lets just say...'borrow'.

Finishing those thoughts Magnum slowly pulls out a jar, opening it as the inhabitant reluctantly crawls onto his index finger.

Just like that, his eyes still fixed on the jewelry, the glass protecting the goods suddenly falls apart, with a great portion of it turning into swarms of butterflies.

This entrance completed with his civilian clothes shifting into his magician themed costume, while each piece turns back into what it originally was. Trick can't help but smile..now with everything unfolding...

After all that's the least he can do...provide a good show..

Savvy

• Name / Alias: Erica Weathers / Savvy
• Age: 16
• Gender/Pronouns: Cis woman, She/Her
• Alignment: Hero
• Reputation: E

Public Information

Savvy is a recent addition to the Devilfish Wards, having been around no longer than a week or two as of posting. No major public appearances yet, but has had a fairly professional, if clearly stilted and put-on showing at a charity event, providing meals for the homeless.

Physical Appearance

Erica stands at 5’9, and by family history, is likely going to end up growing toward 6’ or more by the time she’s an adult. She’s blonde with blue eyes, and has a sort of broad build, and is working on putting on muscle. As Savvy, she’s gone for black and white vertical stripes on the typical superhero bodysuit, both to emphasize her height, and to obfuscate padding and guards on her shins, knees, elbows, and forearms. Capping it off at either end is a white set of steel-toed boots, and a white helmet with a visor set across her face, outlined in black.

Mentality

Erica spent most of her upbringing as relatively carefree, confident, and popular, and does her best to fake keeping that up, but there are cracks in that front, and a deep paranoia about whether or not people are being up-front about their true nature–or worse, whether she is.

Resources

Wealth Level: 4

Erica lives with her single mother in a small apartment. She does not own a car, but is able to use her mother’s small truck most evenings/weekends if she needs to.

Equipment

• A costume with padding at the level of sports/skateboarding equipment.
• Two phones, one for heroing, one for regular life stuff.
• A set of wooden tonfa as her primary costumed weapon.

Skills

• Fluent in English, Spanish, French, and Japanese
• Master level skill in Boxing, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and Karate.
• Master level skill in Javascript and C++ programming.
• Master level skill in playing guitar by ear
• Master level skill in speed reading and typing
• Master level skill in freeform rock climbing
• Adept level skill in proper form for running, weightlifting, and aerobic training.
• Between Novice and Adept level skill in a number of fields given a day’s work in preparation for some event or task, including public speaking, fashion design, lying without tells, cooking italian food, and mental math.

Power

Trigger type: Single, natural trigger, second generation

Savvy is a Thinker/Master, with her power’s primary purpose being to gather skills/techniques, and then to loan those skills to another person.

Her Thinker power is relatively simple in concept, despite the math involved–for every hour she spends training or practicing in a skill, she advances by an amount equal to the advancement of the last two hours she spent training that subject, effectively following the Fibonacci sequence. In practice, if she dedicates four hours a day training any given skill, she will have about a month worth of experience in 3 days (novice level, able to grasp basic concepts), 8 months in four days (adept, fairly experienced), 4.5 years in 5 days (equivalent to a degree in the field), 32 years in 6 days (a lifetime of work in the field), and 217 years by the end of the 7th day (skill comparable to or superior to the highest masters and prodigies).
There are typically diminishing returns before the 7th day is over, and in some fields by the end of the 6th, but she typically goes for 7 just to ensure she’s at the peak of whatever she needs to do. Skills she gains in this way tend to be narrow in scope with little overlap–becoming a master in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu does not make her learn Wrestling any faster, and becoming an expert surgeon would not give her any knowledge in the field of virology.
She requires some sort of study material for most skills and fields of study, and to gain the intuitive muscle memory for physical tasks (i.e. martial arts) she needs to be physically performing them. False information in the study material, or running solely mental training on a subject she lacks a complete understanding of will typically result in false positives of information.

Her Master power requires much less in the way of math–when a person is within her line of sight, she is able to transfer a single skill to them. This process takes a fraction of a second to occur, and can impart a brief stinging feeling in the head if the recipient is not braced for it, at the level of a 2/10 headache. The recipient gains all of Savvy’s skill in that field for as long as they remain within about a half-mile radius from her, at which point it snaps back into Savvy’s head. She cannot pull back this knowledge without creating distance, though she does get a vague sense of the recipient’s distance and direction from her, visualized by a small, blurred "halo" around them. She cannot transfer skills more than twice per second, and more than once per second if she is focusing on other tasks.

Her power does come with a drawback–she is incapable of any sort of skill that allows her to gather emotional information from another person, either with her power or without it. She can only gauge the behavior of her fellow human beings analytically, at the skill level of a 16 year old with trust issues, and without any of the natural, intuitive understanding of these things typical for a person.

Example

Erica’s mind swam as her arm struck the dummy the fifth, sixth, seventh time, feeling the weight of a thousand, ten thousand, a million swings. The old adage went that given ten thousand hours of training was what it needed to become an expert at any given task. Erica had found that 6,000 got you close enough for most people not to notice in most fields, but for the real masters to appreciate you being on their level, it took closer to 20,000. Breathing heavy as she swung her leg in, and finally took a step back to rest, partway through her sixth day working on Karate. She figured doubling that would do fairly well–by the time most reached the level of practice she had, they were well past her prime, and she hadn’t hit hers yet. Still panting, and drinking some water, she pulled up the split screen video on her phone again, watching through high level competitions at double speed, absorbing more minor movements, variations on a technique, letting it work its way into her head.

Savvy sidestepped by a fraction of an inch, feeling the movement in the air as her assailant followed up, turning to deliver a punch toward her side. His movements were quick, and not altogether unskilled, but she could see the flaw in his form, the angle just a touch off. Without processing it at the forefront of her mind, her body acted on a million hours of muscle memory, arm sliding down to block at an angle, feeling a fraction of the impact through her armor, and following up with a swift punch of her own, generating a snap movement in mere inches as she struck chest, stunning the man as she took a step back, building distance once more. She saw his face contort, scrunching inward in reaction, before watching his jaw clench, nose twitch. She couldn’t see his eyes through the domino mask, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she could. In this moment, was it just pain on his face, or was there more, was that rage, the moment before her opponent snapped and turned this into a real fight, or planned some twisted revenge down the line? She had to stop herself from following that line of thought, follow through on what she was supposed to be doing. This was a safe environment, if anything happened, the other heroes would step in. She focused on the older hero, locking her awareness on him and pushing out in his direction with one of her mental “folders”. She watched him stumble for a moment, and she was already on him, pulling a tonfa off her hip to swing in at his collar, but he’d recovered before she reached him, arms moved up in a block in front of his face. She started to follow up, aiming a kick now toward his thigh, but realized too late that without her own skill in boxing, she was very vulnerable to not recognizing when she left an opening for it–and caught an expert jab to her stomach for her troubles, stumbling and doubling back. She watched the cape flex his hand a little, looking over it, before giving a low whistle and holding out a hand to shake.

“We’re done for now, I’m catching the gist of just how fast this works. Whatever team you wind up on will be glad to have you around.” Savvy hesitated for a moment, grasping for any lost understanding of sarcasm, dishonesty, or general disappointment in his voice, before putting on a smile and shaking his hand, hiding just a little wince at the firmness of his grip.

Erica took a long drink of her water, flicking away the video feeds on her phone, pausing for a moment of discomfort as she felt the snap of her boxing skill return to mind as the elder hero left the vicinity of the building. She stared down at the blank screen for just a moment, before pulling up a new video. She set it to normal speed, and began the slow, careful movement of copying the position. “Women’s Self Defense, How to Escape Hand/Wrist Hold”.

Backstory

Erica’s father was a superhero by the name of Golden in a smallish region across Lake Superior from Devilfish, a University town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He was relatively low as far as power went, a low level Brute set somewhere he could keep peace without ending up dead to more serious threats in one of the major cities. Erica adored her father, loved having a family member that was a superhero, and was immensely proud of every small victory, something that he'd taken to heart and further played up into more grandstanding and bold acts of heroics, even while playing in the "minor leagues”. She loved the world of heroics, the stories she was told about meetings with bigger heroes, and balanced a fairly active ParaHumans Online presence with her time in school and doing volleyball, wanting to keep up to date on everything hero.

The golden days wouldn’t last forever though, and a more threatening villain named Draoidh began moving into town, finding the relatively unprotected city to be easy pickings. Things were rough for some weeks, months even, before Golden managed to push back, winning at great and terrible odds. Erica was overjoyed of course, and even without Golden managing the final blows of pushing this villain out of town or into jail, she was sure he’d manage it eventually. After all, he was her hero!

Of course, our stories don’t have happy endings, and Erica comes home early from a sleepover without giving warning, and comes face to face with Golden and Draoidh speaking in the living room, working out the details of their next outing. It all comes quickly crashing down around her as her father attempts to explain herself, and Erica sees the cracks where she’d ignored them before, realizing that her father had cut a deal with this villain, helping him to succeed in the long term so long as he can look good in the public eye “stopping” his schemes until then. When Golden attempts to put a hand on her shoulder, to reassure her that what’s going on isn’t that bad, really, she breaks under the realization that her idol was only that, an idol, that she was too stupid and blind to his flaws to notice, and triggers.

Erica flees in the aftermath, not knowing or caring what was left behind, and calls her mom. Over the course of the next few days, the story comes out that Golden has become a villain, and Erica leaves town with her mother to live near her family in Devilfish. At first, Erica doesn’t want anything to do with superheroics in her confusion and stress, but comes to the conclusion that she needs the support and other people around, and makes the decision to join the Wards, hoping they can keep her from straying off the path as her father did.

• Name / Alias: Elira Scale / The Steel Dragon
• Age: 27 Mentally, 8 Years since Awakening
• Alignment: Villain (Mafia)

Public Information

The Steel Dragon is a well known mafia cape from New York, one of their higher level enforcers, she's a versatile brute, and an easy icon. Images depicting her in her iconic steel scales laying on a mound of golden scales circulated a couple years back, leading to her iconic name, The Steel Dragon.

She's a case 53 well known for her Mafia connection, a brute able to fly and launch her scales. Those with access to the protectorate database would also note her changing scales over the years, akin to various metals, and that she has a tendency to leave scales attached to things, and seems to serve as some kind of spy for the mafia, though the specific means are unknown.

Starting Reputation: B$

Physical Appearance

A large lizard-human with metallic scales, she stands at 8'6" if she fully extends herself upwards, though she tends to hunch to a much more comfortable 6'7". She has a large tail trailing roughly 5' behind her. Generally she's the color of steel, the primary material she makes her scales out of, since it is easy to get and a convenient and tough material for her scales.

Her rune, a classic Futhark, appears inscribed on the underside of every metal scale she grows.

Mentality

She's very pragmatic, and loyal to the Mafia. She had been found and shunned as a monster when she first awakened, especially an early incident where she broke into a hardware store and ravenously began eating the metal components. The Mafia found her and took her in. She was treated well, and became an enforcer at the New York mafia. She was well suited to the work, quickly climbing ranks to her current spot, where she's more or less comfortable to stay.

She listens, and does what she's told. She's pragmatic, and quick thinking. She doesn't freeze in a fight, and is a good fighter, honed by years of experience. She struggles with empathy and reigning herself in on occasion, going a little too "Lizard brain" and considering her opponents prey before she's snapped out of it.

Equipment and Resources

• Burner Phone - She pretty much always carries one on her when she can. Has had incidents in the past where she wasn't able to reach others in a time of need, and determined not to repeat it.
• Zip-tie Handcuffs - A useful restraining tool, she tends to keep a handful with her.
• Flashlight - Never know when you might need it
• A few small steel bars - Yummy snacks for the road

She has a small apartment in the city, and has food delivered to her. She lacks a vehicle, preferring to fly everywhere since she's too heavy for most normal vehicles unless she focuses on using her power to lift her a bit, making her lighter.

Wealth Level: 5

Skills

• Excellent hand-to-claw fighter, powerful and strong, and she's a skilled grappler. She's not going to be winning martial arts contests on pure technique alone but she can definitely hold her own.
• Skilled survivalist, part instinct and part training she's able to survive in the wild basically no problem.
• Highly skilled miner, she's got a nose for metals and can sniff out veins through rock. Between her ability to just eat rock, strength, and ability to claw through the ground she's able to gather metals in the wild fairly easily, though these will generally be low quality and low purity, not the greatest stuff to make her scales from, but they will do in a pinch.
• Passable with guns, knows how to use them but finds them finnicky and hard to use. Much prefers to eat the guns and ammunition.
• Highly skilled chef though she rarely exercises this ability. In fact she will generally simply roast or scorch meat (Or even eat it raw), finding it perfectly palatable, but when persuaded she's a killer cook, and knows how to make tasty meals with relatively ordinary materials.
• Amateur florist and gardener. She keeps a small garden in her home, and is mostly capable of keeping her flowers alive and healthy, though she isn't an expert.
• Amateur Sculptor. She likes to make little figurines from metal in her free time. Her spit makes metal easy to mold, which she uses to make sculpting metals easier.

Power

She's a case 53, a large lizard-like humanoid covered in a sheen of metallic scales the size of a fingernail, with large metallic claws at the ends of her hands and feet, large black fangs, and a long, 6 foot prehensile tail.

She can control her scales, making them fly around up to 100 meters from her before she loses control. They fly with enough force to chip concrete and embed themselves in steel (Though this damages the small scales at full force). Damaged scales become Untuned, and fall off her and can no longer be controlled/sensed. Lost scales regrow within a day. Each scale is able to lift up to 1 pound. Her claws can also be detached, each about 5x stronger than a normal scale and able to lift up to 5 pounds.

She can make the scales stick to things strongly. While at least 1/3rd of her body is covered in scales she is able to fly, though only at a walking pace. While her full body is covered, she's able to fly up to 80 MPH, though this is not agile at high speeds, needing lots of time to slow, speed up, or turn.

While the scales are within 100 meters, she can hear through them, though this scales with the number of scales, 1 scale being like she's half-deaf and 20 scales allowing her to pinpoint sounds to an exact location and hear very clearly, or hear frequencies that normal people can't. She can only hear through scales that aren't stuck to her. She always knows the position of every scale as long as they aren't Untuned, no matter the distance. Her scales are able to stick to things, though can be dislodged by hand with some force.

While the scales are covering a part, the part is roughly 50% stronger than baseline. Baseline, she's able to bite with the force of an alligator, strike with the force of a middleweight boxing champion, and lift up to 2,000 lbs. Electricity when striking her scales will harmlessly deflect around her generally, doing no damage, but disproportionately causes scales to become untuned and fall off her. A taser strike will remove about a hand's worth of scales. Beneath her scales, her skin / flesh is as durable as strong and tough leather.

The durability of a scale /area on her body is roughly that of an inch-thick plate of that material. Scales regenerate within a day of being damaged, and scales that are off of her body for more than a day become untuned and need to be regrown.

The material her scales are made out of depends on what metals she is consuming. She is essentially always shedding old scales, causing them to regrow as the new scales of the metal. She can consume her old scales as a source of metal. Her scales inherit most of the properties of the metals she consumes, though power-made material can have unpredictable effects, and may not be able to be "re-consumed" from her own scales depending on the material.

She is capable of eating essentially anything. Chemicals and toxins, unless power enhanced do not affect her. While she does enjoy the taste of meat, she is able to subsist and generally prefers eating metals. Without consuming metals her scale regeneration slows to a halt, and her scales burnish and weaken over time. Her jaws disproportionally damage metals, causing them to deform easily for easy consumption. This can be used to her advantage in a battle. She's able to identify metals by their smell, and has a fairly strong sense of smell for it, comparable to that of a bloodhound.

She additionally has a slow regeneration, able to heal removed digits, limbs, and other body parts with 2 weeks of time and a lot of consumed meat.

She's cold-blooded, and enjoys the heat. Effects which cool her and colder times of the year make her sluggish and tired, and she's liable to be knocked unconscious if cooled enough. She's more resilient to higher temperatures than normal, especially with her scales on, though this isn't full protection. She's comfortable at oven temperatures but higher than that she's liable to overheat, which can be more problematic for her since she can't sweat, and will thermoregulate more slowly than others unless she has a way to cool herself down.

Trigger type: Coven Case 53 Brute(Mover, Blaster, Thinker)

Example

A series of small scales shoot through the door undetected as a customer exits the jewelry store, as she watches discreetly from an alley across the street. The scales carefully tap gently on the floor and walls as they go, not enough to cause noticeable noise but enough for her to hear through her sense of them as they get a rough outline of the store, and track the small noises. A single person. Nobody in the back room. A perfect time.

Striding up to the glass front door she punches through it, shattering it as the scales throughout the store shoot back up onto her back where she'd taken them from. With a wave of her hand the claws on her right hand and many of the scales on that arm race outwards, sticking to the one clerk's clothing and suspending him, lifting him up to the ceiling. She then gets to work, using her left hand she punches through any display cases and grabs the jewelry, stuffing it into a backpack she had brought. Once she's had her fill she recalls the scales holding the clerk up with a yelp from him as he's lowered to the floor and then they zip away, and she launches out of the front door, taking off into the sky and accelerating away.

Backstory

She was sitting in the little room in her robes, waiting for the doctor to come in. It was fine, really. She had taken a small fall and passed out for a bit after getting a bit woozy from dehydration. Her mother was so worried, so she went to the hospital to allay worries, and was now waiting in the office for her test results.

The doctor walks in, solemn, and she picks up on it, quieting down, asking "Hey- is everything alright with me?". No, it is not. She has Brain Cancer, terminal. They caught it too late. She has 6 months to live, maybe a year if they start treatment now. Shell-shocked she makes her way home from the hospital, and decides one thing- she can't tell her mother. They'd lost her father a few years back to pancreatic cancer, and she couldn't burden her mother with that.

She begins looking desperately for a solution, anything. This is a crazy world after all, maybe powers had the solution. Any healer cost.. too much. They were busy at children's hospitals and healing other capes, and the price would have been prohibitive. Fine. She looks further, sketchier corners and finds a strange ad directing her to a website. Just contact information, and a little flourish about "A price for power." Well, power was nice. But she'd pay any price to be healed.

When she gets in touch, there's only one thing she's asked. What will she give up in exchange for power. "Everything."

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On the grimy streets of New York, 3 months after Elizabeth Cole Alexander disappeared from Connecticut, a lizard awakens. At first she's shunned by superstitious locals, and ends up in a small incident where she's so hungry she ends up attacking a hardware store and ravenously begins consuming the metal parts. After being attacked and threatened off by aggressive local heroes, called a monster- she's left in an alley to lick her wounds, when a local Mafia cape finds her, and invites her to the group.

She accepted, and joined the group's ranks, quickly climbing as an enforcer and finding she's good at it- enjoys fighting. She works her way up as a Mafia enforcer in New York over the years, highs and lows, and enjoys a successful career.

That is, until she's called for a transfer. Devilfish needing more staff, she was sent. While not entirely happy to be away from the home she'd known all her life, she's determined to make what she can of the opportunity, and help this branch in Devilfish flourish.

Memento touches down gently in the backyard of the home she uses as a workshop. Scoria not far behind her.

She'd been out practicing with her new flight equipment and had asked the trump for help to ensure she wouldn't go splat on the ground. A fate which she was still thankfully avoiding. It hadn't gone amazingly well, but good for a first try.

Opening the back door for the two of them, she moves into the building. Stretching herself a bit as she passes by the turrets that perk up and scan to see that yes, it was their master and her sibling returning. The tinker rolling her shoulders as she moves for the living room. Mentally noting to add some more padding the flight gear hidden under her clothing and only halfway paying attention.

Stumbling away from the exploding subway station Blast off sees another cape. Not really stopping to think and expecting PRT interfering they quickly summon and toss two rank 1 orbs at the new cape shouting out at them. "BACK OFF-BUSTER, THIS AIN'T THE DAY TO FUCKING-MESS WITH ME!"