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Marissa Smith
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Hair:
......
#a92f00 .... Eyes: ......
#a20909Alias:
Arise
Territory: Memorial City, East Industrial District
Background
Marissa was, undoubtedly, born with her ability. She claims to have always known; felt it like an instinct, known how to use it just like a baby knows how to open their eyes. By her toddler years she was already showing use of it: every minor childhood scrape mended perfectly, within hours. With the ability, of course, came the instincts, the knowledge of others like her, their presences an irritation that she was yet too young to do anything about.
This did not stop her for long. The area where she lived was contested at the time, and the other metahumans squabbling over it had more interest in each other than an infant that they could undoubtedly shove out once their hold was secure. She was four when one of them showed up at her family's apartment to encourage them to find somewhere else to be; four and with four years of pent up impotence and the knowledge that they were out there and she couldn't do anything about it - so when someone presented themselves, it was only natural that she go on the attack.
Being a small child, it did not go particularly well. Being gifted with a potent regenerative ability, Marissa picked herself back up after it was over with, once more unharmed, seething more at the indignity than the injury. Her parents, choosing not to base their decisions on the whims of a child, chose to find a new apartment elsewhere, in a place that their little daughter assured them was comfortable - meaning unoccupied. It had the advantage of being closer to Marissa's uncle, a former ring fighter who was willing to teach her a few things. The fighting, it seemed, was going to be an inevitability, and the best outcome was to teach her to do it properly.
This was not to say the transition was entirely idyllic.
Family Issues
Marissa's mother worked as a psychiatrist, and is unfortunately not uncommon, therefore held to a steadfast belief that there could not be anything wrong with her daughter. Every failing, therefore, was something worthy of blame. Who or what to blame was variable: Marissa may have been showing early signs of autism, but these were buried, deliberately, beneath the blame of the meta-disorder. Her hypersensitivity could be blamed on the presentation of her meta-ability, her difficulty interacting with others could be blamed on the aura-awareness, her combativeness could be blamed on that being how it was for metas. Everything had a reason, and the reason was either the ability disorder or a personal failing on Marissa's part: not trying hard enough, not applying herself enough. Marissa was expected to cope, and while her mother might have taught her a number of valuable coping strategies, the strictness and insinuations that she had better fix herself left her hard, but brittle. The strategies she developed worked up to a point, but could not account for everything. Her relationship with her mother deteriorated, swiftly, paving the way for other influences.
Marissa began spending more and more time away from home, often with her father at work. An animal testing lab for pharmaceutical testing was not necessarily the ideal place for a small child, but Marissa took to the tangential lessons in anatomy and dissection with a zeal that, to some, implied that she could be doing much better in school if she just applied herself.
School remained a struggle. Marissa was a dispassionate learner about many things, and her odd behavior and lack of academic success put her firmly in the category of bully or be bullied. Marissa chose the first as often as the second, though she had no real interest in going after those she perceived as weaker, she was all too interested in fighting the stronger and bigger of her peers. Zero-tolerance policies put her on the path to further academic challenges. The only person who seemed to show any interest in her fighting other than telling her not to do it was her uncle, who trained her to get better at it with brutal efficiency. Incumbent CTBI and a vicious alcoholic streak meant that he tended to focus more on the brutality than the efficiency. Marissa alone remained unbothered by this relationship, her bland statements of injuries sustained during this training a constant source of worry to her parents.
The school systems remained unknowing of what to do with her, and she was requested to move from one school to another on a regular basis. By eighth grade, Marissa had been relegated to alternative schooling, and her mother had refused to deal with the situation any further. Marissa moved in with her uncle, against most advice.
She may not have thrived academically at the time, but the rich grounds for fighting played well to what she considered her strengths, and she was cultivating these rather than education. By this time, it was also well known that she was getting into fights outside the school grounds, with any other metas she could get close enough to given her limited ability to travel, largely based on where she could get her uncle to drive her. Surprisingly, not only did she seem to do well in this environment, but her uncle's condition seemed to improve markedly as well, perhaps due to having somewhere he could consistently direct his violent tendencies, or perhaps just due to having someone who could push back against him.
To no one's surprise, Marissa dropped out of school at sixteen, picking up part time warehouse work that would eventually turn to full time work. She moved out at twenty, when her uncle got married - a decision that would prove fatal, though not for either of them. Bereft of a conveniently regenerating target for his aggressions, her uncle started taking out his violent tendencies on his wife, which would eventually lead to her death a year later, and his subsequent imprisonment.
Marissa still visits him, though his dementia has progressed to the point where he rarely recognizes her any more.
Sensation and Perception
Marissa has heightened senses and sensitivity. It's not entirely certain whether some of these things are based in a meta-ability or whether they're just neurodivergence signifiers. Since she doesn't have a proper diagnoses, it's not likely that anyone will ever know.
Her senses of touch and smell are particularly sensitive, and her hearing is very good as well. She definitely has a lot of tactile issues going on, she can tell a lot just by the feel of something, which can be either a good thing or a bad thing. She's very picky about clothing as a result. The scent-sensitivity is also one of those things that works against her more often than not, she gets really bothered by smoking particularly, as well as strong perfumes. She can identify quite a lot by scent, as long as there's not something else overriding it.
Her hearing sense is both acute and precise, she has both perfect pitch and rhythm. She likes music, even when it's badly played. Knowing that it's off pitch doesn't actually bother her the way some of her other senses do. She tends to find sounds more interesting than overwhelming, but prefers when they're from an outside source. She'd rather be quiet, and listen. Her vision is more trained than extraordinary; she's very good at picking out details and spotting movement but she doesn't have anything super special going on there that wouldn't show up in a professional athlete or anything.
She has a lot of food issues, more with texture than taste. She doesn't like combined food: sandwiches should be deconstructed and eaten one part at a time, things should not be mixed, most sauces are anathema.
Moreover, Marissa seems to have a particularly strong aura perception when it comes to other metahumans, both in that she is more aware of them than many report, at a farther distance, and also that it seems to bother her far more than it often does other metahuman individuals. She guards her territory aggressively, and has been consistently picking fights with other metahumans since her childhood.
Regenerative Ability
Marissa possesses what seems to be, for all purposes, a complete regeneration ability. It is not instantaneous - it is something that needs to be triggered, either by her own will or by sustaining so much damage that her body goes into its regenerative state on its own. While the regeneration itself takes some time to complete - usually around 20-30 minutes - once completed it is a full restoration, including repair or replacement of damaged limbs or organs. It is theorized, and even somewhat tested, that she can shake off anything that doesn't kill her outright within 20 minutes, even from the depths of a comatose state.
The specific segmentation of her ability seems to be as follows:
Initial state: loosening of ligaments and tendons in preparation for regenerative shift. This lasts about 8-10 minutes, and she is capable of movement during this phase, but due to the interior complications she essentially has inflected hypermobility/Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, making it very easy to dislocate joints.
Second stage: muscles change from strength and support to pure elasticity. This is where weakness kicks in, as she loses the ability to move around. Skin and cardiovascular systems also become elastic during this preparatory phase. Due to the inadequacy of the blood systems at this point, anemic reactions may occur especially if low on blood to start with. This phase generally lasts about 2-3 minutes.
Third stage: Strengthening of muscle tissue including heart, increase in soft tissue density and blood present in the system. Repair and recovery of any damaged muscle and soft tissue, regeneration of damaged or absent soft tissue, sealing of external wounds, production of enough blood to recover from anemia. This stage lasts another 3-4 minutes, and after it is complete, she is once again able to function to some degree.
Fourth stage: recovery and regeneration of any damaged or missing organs, as well as recovery and regeneration of brain and neural tissue, ocular tissue, and anything else that may have been missing. Duration may be determined somewhat by amount of damage.
Current Status
Marissa has carved out her territory - in all meanings of the word - in the East Industrial District of Memorial City. Largely composed of factories and warehouses, what housing is available is not of particularly high quality, and the people who have their homes there often tend towards the downtrodden. Gangs are common, gang violence is equally common. Marissa doesn't choose sides, but will often step in to level things out if she feels like things are getting out of hand. This is her place, after all, and she intends for everyone to know it.
Despite all of that, she holds a steady job in one of the manufacturing plants, even having acquired the role of shift supervisor. She doesn't have any aspirations to higher management, preferring to stay on the floor where she's needed. She has a good eye for which machines might be likely to act up, and a tendency to take those stations for herself so that when they do, the inevitable workplace injuries end up being on her rather than on the other employees. Her metahuman ability is an open secret at work: not discussed with management, but those who work the floor with her are all aware of it, plenty of them having witnessed it first hand - particularly because if one of them is doing something unsafe, Marissa will step in and show them why they shouldn't, in the most graphic way imaginable.
She lives alone, if one can call it living. The apartment she claims as her own is a place to sleep, but she spends almost all of her waking hours outside it - looking for trouble, most of the time, and if she can't find any, she'll start some of her own.
She is extremely volatile with respect to the area she deems her own. She doesn't tolerate the presence of other metahumans, and will provoke skirmishes along her borders, either to renegotiate the lines or just to see where everyone stands in terms of strength, and whether she can edge them a little further away from herself.
Despite her dislike of other metahuman presences, though, Marissa is careful - she rarely kills. It's entirely possible that this is less about altruism and more about the fact that if she started killing the competition, she wouldn't have anyone to fight.
ASTRAEA
MATTHEWS
MATTHEWS
Age: 26, December 12th
Gender: Female
Hair: Black
Eyes: Hazel
Alias: Starry Knight
Territory: Memorial City, Northeast Shopping District
THE
PSYCHIC
GIRL
PSYCHIC
GIRL
From a young age, Astraea was able to do things that others couldn’t. Her ability to talk without moving her lips had manifested first. By the age of four, she was projecting her voice into people’s heads rather than verbally speaking. Her parents weren’t too concerned– until she started to make things move without touching them. Her aversion to normal childhood things bled into her strange abilities, and her parents, well. They didn’t quite know what to do. So they left her on the doorstep of her aunt and moved far away.
As she got older, her powers only became stronger, and she started to learn how to do other, unique things. She became aware of the fact that she always understood what other people were saying, despite the language, when she was about fourteen. By sixteen, she had learned how to disconnect her consciousness from her body and move around without it.
Astraea is a telepath. She can speak into the minds of others in a two-way communication stream. She can read surface level thoughts, especially those thought with intent. She can identify people based on their “aura”, which are especially strong in other inhumans. While it’s not improbable that she could do more with this ability, it’s not the one that she focuses on most. Excessive use of this power leaves her with nosebleeds and eventually bursts smaller blood vessels, causing visible bruising on her face, especially around her eyes.
Astraea has telekinesis. The primary focus of her abilities and training is her telekinesis. She can move objects with her mind in varying ways. She uses this ability to carry herself in her armor, in addition to her morningstar that she wields. She can catch falling objects at up to forty miles per hour. Her comfortable carry weight is roughly four hundred pounds. Her maximum weight, at this time, is about nine hundred pounds. In addition to being able to carry things (up to fifteen unique small items or five larger items), Astraea can also manipulate objects in other ways. The easiest is what she jokingly refers to as “the Force”. She can channel all of her energy into a build up, which can be used to explosively shove an object up to one thousand pounds away from her. Distance ranges, based on weight, from forty feet to ten. Overuse of this power takes a toll on her whole body, leaving her weak, shaking, and unable to move for a period of up to several hours. Her current “overuse” limit is roughly six hours or continual use, or three hours of extreme use.
Astraea can astral project. So long as her body is in a safe location, and she remains undisturbed, Astraea can disconnect from her body and venture out into the world. Without her body to burden her, she can project herself anywhere, including to people she has previously met, by means of following their auras. This ability only lasts as long as she sleeps, and her body must remain undisturbed, or at least stay within the room it was left in. If her body is removed, there’s a possibility she will be unable to find it again.
Astraea knows every language. Possibly a quirk of her main powers, of her ability to read people’s thoughts, Astraea can understand every single language after hearing it once. Her brain interprets all languages the same, and she develops the ability to speak said language extremely fast, making her an excellent choice for her translator job at the public courthouse.
THE
VOLATILE
GIRL
VOLATILE
GIRL
Astraea’s Aunt Florence was a cruel woman. That’s really all there is to say about her. She’s dead now, of course, and her death meant freedom for Astraea at the age of sixteen. Astraea wasn’t responsible for the car accident that had killed her aunt but had spared her. She did wish she had been the reason, however. After the years of verbal abuse and the years of cruel punishments for simply being different– Astraea did not mourn for Florence.
At fourteen, shortly before her aunt’s death, Astraea had been attacked by a different inhuman. A man in his thirties, maybe, who had blinded her with light and tried to suffocate her. And acting on instinct, she’d drawn the closest form of protection forward, slamming a suit of armor around herself, and retaliating. The sword was unwieldy, but she’d managed to stab him through the side, driving the blade into his spine at an angle. A lucky strike that had saved her life. After that, though, she’d found the others were much more likely to come after her.
After her aunt’s death, she stopped hiding. She donned pieces of custom armor, including a helm to obscure most of her features, and took to carving out a “district”. It was easy enough to beat back some of those who challenged her– she had spent her whole life learning how to control her powers, so learning to strengthen them was easy. Few other inhumans posed much threat to her.
That cockiness almost got her killed more than once.
Still, she was standing. Still, she was here. Even teetering on the edge as she was, the rage and violence always boiling just beneath the surface. Just as it always had as a child, it now overwhelmed her. As a child, powerless to do anything against those who she could feel around her, powerless to stop the abuses being carried out against her– powerless.
Never again would Astraea be powerless.
THE
TERRITORY
TERRITORY
The North-East Shopping and Residential District of Memorial City belonged to Astraea. Her home, her favorite cafés, her favorite shops– they all exist within her territory. It’s not the most high scale area in the city, but it’s recently gentrified, and so is home to lots of small, ever-changing shops. It’s still close enough to the eastern district that police are in short supply, but far enough north that gangs aren’t as much of a problem. No, the biggest issues that her territory faced were thieves and assaults of a personal nature. And Astraea was more than happy to pick those people off as she saw fit.
It wasn’t about the fact they were doing bad things. She couldn't care less about things like a moral compass. What she was looking for, and often found, was a fight. She wanted to fight anything and everything that gave her the chance. Death wasn’t out of the question, and she did nothing to mitigate the damage she caused. If someone died, well. Seemed like a them problem.
Despite holding the territory she does, Astraea doesn’t work at any of the little cafés or boutiques. Instead, she works down at the courthouse, as a translator. Because of this, she works in many of the various departments, serving as both a verbal translator, and a document translator. Her job is safely centered in the heart of the city, a neutral territory where all the other inhumans seemed to have an unspoken agreement that no one owned it.
In addition to her job at the courthouse, Astraea has one other hobby that leads her out of her territory. As the primary cellist for the Memorial City Symphony, she spends much of her free time that isn’t spent patrolling her streets practicing her music. Raised from a young age to hold an instrument, music is likely one of the few things holding her together at this point.
And no one wants to see what happens when she breaks.
—
Hugo Bertram
and Martina Alvarado
and Martina Alvarado
Age: 50 years [looks barely 19], birthday 5 June
Size: 6’1”, 160lbs; generously limbed.
Size: 5’2” and weightless.
Face: long, with high cheekbones; deep blue eyes with dark circles; aquiline nose; straight teeth, natural lips; and a visible mole under his right eye. Framed by wheat-blond hair worn mid-length and left down.
Face: like a diamond, baby, and white as a saint; eyes like glass, lips like a princess.
Style: Dark academic prep. Primarily wears collared shirts, but not white or black – either light, or jewel-toned deeps. Slacks and brown oxfords complete the appearance.
Style: Washed-out glam goth. Turns out the only thing with less color than black is blanca.
Possessions: Kafka (West of England Tumbler pigeon); replica Russian dragoon sabre (2lb 6oz/38”) and scabbard (hung on his studio’s wall); advanced student viola; dull red Toyota FJ Cruiser; $5500 in savings.
Possessions: The dead don't own much, sadly.
Territory: 1833 Maryanne Crossing, Apt. 408. Eastside Memorial City, just south of the industrial districts.
Territory: Didn’t have any. She had other issues to focus on.
Powers: De Potestate Spirituum
Powers: last holder of De Potestate Spirituum
Necromancer Nouveau,
Musa Muerta
Musa Muerta
Such a shallowly byronic lifestyle is hardly the best way for anyone to find their way into the strange world of the inhuman.
For anyone, that is, except for our Hugo.
He found it after hours, about six weeks before his story begins. The book that would change his life was an old, worn, leatherbound Latin codex that had been left with a sheaf of current legal documents regarding the accidental death of one Martina Alvarado. The case had been temporarily re-opened, then closed again just as quickly. Hugo’s intentions had been professional, at first. Return De Potestate Spirituum to its place with other ancient, delicate texts, and find out the next day where it had actually come from. But there was a little worm that lived in Hugo’s heart. A hungry little thing named curiosity. And so, while walking back to the correct section, book in hand, our Hugo found himself opening it and skimming the passages. Despite a title that resembled an early Christian lecture on the nature of the spirit, the layout was more akin to a recipe book or some other instructional manual.
He put it away, of course. Archival texts weren’t to be taken out of the library for obvious reasons, and that little worm was no reason for him to lose his job. But Hugo didn’t put the book away without scanning the barcode on the inner cover of the book, with its identification and an online PDF format, so he could translate it in his free time without disturbing the old volume any longer.
It took two weeks to make sense of it. From what he can tell, the book is back-translated to Latin from some other language, and very poorly at that. Just well enough to get ideas across. What he found was that the book’s nature was that of an arcane grimoire, a kind of spell book with (somewhat) clear instructions for testing its abilities.
That aroused something a little bigger than the worm in Hugo. What had started as idle curiosity was growing into something a little more active. Not much more, not at first. He took his first day off and began to translate the easiest-looking recipe, and then, of course, he followed it. Step by step he laid the groundwork, practiced the motion of the hands as best he could, and spoke the spell’s name: portā.
And it worked.
He reached across his studio apartment for a book on the shelf, and the book came as commanded. It was terrifying, of course. He repeated the action again. And a third time, to be sure. And slowly the fear turned to elation. Because while that little worm had been satisfied, who knew what else was in that wonderful book? Yet when he turned to face the page again, he was startled to find someone else there, standing beside his phone. A young woman of pure white light, hair flowing around her shoulders, eyes aglow. Tina, she said her name was – after Hugo had finished screaming – and she told him she was a muse, a being of light who smiled upon those intelligent enough to unlock the book and its secrets.
At first Hugo believed her. Why wouldn’t he? He could carry things across a room without even standing up. He had a book full of power at his fingertips, and Tina had promised to guide him through the right pattern of spells. She was the one who insisted that inlīde be next – “to defend yourself,” she’d told him. From what, she didn’t say. He still doesn’t know. But he learned pretty quickly that Tina wasn’t a muse. It’s only been a few days since he actually confronted her about being just a little to vain, a little too in-the-know with modern culture, to be some ancient ephemeral muse, and made her admit to instead being the book’s last bearer with some unfinished grudges to fulfill. He has no intention of seeing those play out.
Instead, he plans to keep going about his life, with his pigeon, his friends, his apartment, his library – and of course, his PDF copy of
De Potestate Spirituum
The book Hugo found is a grimoire containing numerous spells, which can be learned (like many more mundane subjects) at the cost of time and money. It is divided into six chapters, the spells organized primarily by difficulty to learn or to cast. Hugo has figured out that the chapters also scale in cost: a first chapter spell takes an uninterrupted day and about $50 in materials to learn; the second, two days and $100; the third, three days and $200; the fourth, four days and $300; fifth chapter, $400 and five days; and finally the sixth chapter spells should, by his calculations, take almost a week and $500.
According to Tina, the spells will also have an increasing energy cost as he progresses, but he will also gain power the more spells he learns, like exercising a muscle and becoming stronger. The spells he currently has, and the other first-chapter spells, have no energy cost at all. They are basic commands for self-defense or ease of daily living. After that, however, he will have to expend energy both to learn and to cast certain spells, which despite not having much of a head for numbers he’s divided into a scaling system: if second-chapter spells would be worth 1 energy, then third chapter spells are worth 2, fourth are worth 3, fifth are worth 4, and sixth are worth 5. The number of energy points he’d have at his disposal in a day will be determined by the spells he’s learned, which might eventually become an incentive for him to expand his repertoire.
As for the chapters, the Table of Contents has them thus arranged:
Liber Primus: Inceptor…….1
Adripe…….2
Contego…….4
Inlīde…….6
Portā…….8
Liber Secundus: Tirō…….10
Ægrōta…….11
Servā…….16
Terr…….21
Liber Tertius: Medius…….26
Cædo…….27
Morere et Vige…….38
Transmitte…….49
Liber Quartus: Opifex…….60
Appare…….61
Gradare…….77
Narra…….93
Liber Quintus: Provectus…….109
Ostende…….110
Salvifica…….135
Torre…….170
Liber Sextus: Gnārus…….185
Exple…….186
Preme…….219
Tripudia…….242
Index…….275
Adripe…….2
Contego…….4
Inlīde…….6
Portā…….8
Liber Secundus: Tirō…….10
Ægrōta…….11
Servā…….16
Terr…….21
Liber Tertius: Medius…….26
Cædo…….27
Morere et Vige…….38
Transmitte…….49
Liber Quartus: Opifex…….60
Appare…….61
Gradare…….77
Narra…….93
Liber Quintus: Provectus…….109
Ostende…….110
Salvifica…….135
Torre…….170
Liber Sextus: Gnārus…….185
Exple…….186
Preme…….219
Tripudia…….242
Index…….275
From this list, he currently knows the following spells and their rituals:
Portā, his first spell, involves the gesture of grabbing at thin air and the invocation of the spell’s name. When this is done, he can pick up one small object, ten pounds or less, from a distance of ten yards or less, and call it to his hand. This effect lasts for about five minutes before he has to repeat the casting – less, if he’s under duress and his concentration is forced to shift elsewhere.
Inlīde is the defense spell that Martina insisted he learn shortly after she first appeared. With the recitation of its name and a pointing gesture (he typically uses a finger-gun for precision), Hugo can strike an opponent up to 40 yards away with enough blunt force from the front to knock them backward about 3 yards.
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