Bec Querel
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Bec Querel | |
| Player: @TalenLee | |
| Origin: | Mutation |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Controller |
| Security Level: | Full Clearance[1] |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Rebecca St. Claire Querel |
| Known Aliases: | Bec |
| Species: | Homo Sapiens Helios |
| Age: | 19 |
| Height: | 5'4" |
| Weight: | 95 lbs |
| Eye Color: | Green |
| Hair Color: | Flame red |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | French Canadian |
| Occupation: | Prefect, Full-Time Hero |
| Place of Birth: | Quebec City, Quebec |
| Base of Operations: | Paragon City |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Mother, Father (deceased) |
| Known Powers | |
| Thermonuclear manipulation of energy and matter | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Physics and mathematical savant | |
| Equipment | |
| Personal teleporter and thermal-shock resistant garb | |
| No additional information available. | |
- We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands. The loom of time and space works the most astonishing transformations of matter.
- - Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Contents |
Character
Before
Bec Querel lived the life - such as it was - of every child genius. Attaining truly prodigious achievement before adolesence, she burst onto the scene of national significance as a child prodigy and mutant, and just as quickly faded once it was realised that she wasn't going to do anything of particular noteworthy significance compared to the latest celebrity starlet inclined to lose her underpants in public. Furthermore, Bec realised that she was in possession of knowledge and understanding that was well beyond her means to communicate. Without a solid social grounding - she had blurred her way through her schooling in pursuit of more knowledge - she had realised she lacked a mature communication base. While in this state, she was approached by Dr Marion Shepherd of Project Corona, and asked to rejoin the project.
Seeing an opportunity to expand her skill base, and to perhaps use her mathematically-refined powers for some good, Rebecca agreed, and began her two-year journey through high school once more.
The Project
Rebecca was an imperfect student in the Project. Seeing it as her duty to maintain an illusion of approachability and normalcy, she deliberately maintained a grade average well below her means, deliberately missed homework, and generally used mathematical precision to achieve what most normal teenagers achieve through a few lies about the family dog. By positioning herself in the above-average but not-unapproachable orders of the school doing education she'd already graduated from two years prior, Rebecca was able to instead focus her attentions on developing the social tools that most girls develop as a matter of course in normal human interaction.
The mechanical soullessness she brought to bear on understanding the nuances of social strata and emotional distance was broken down in time, more due to her heroing work than to her concentrated study. Her work with the Project asked for her to work alongside Black Caiman and Thermal Sink as a public image, and to do that, she had to establish a working relationship with them. From her initial smug superiority and mathematical certainty while they worked in the Hollows to the much more chaotic perspective she owns as a matured young woman, these two agents - a 'normal' human and a completely uninhibited eating machine - showed her how different sentience could be, and how socialisation kept people defining one another.
Graduation
After her two years in the Project, however, Rebecca's studies met their end. By late December 2008, she had run out of courses to complete in the high school bracket, and her heroing work had become more and more of a priority in her life. After enjoying the trappings of her high school social circle, she had an extensive conversation with both Josh and Caiman regarding her future. The trio decided to throw a graduation party of sorts, whose net effect was a massive trawl through Peregrine Island's supernatural factions, including a number of Carnival of Shadows headwenches and eventually, falling into work for the former heroine Maria Jenkins. Coincidentally, this transpired on a peak weekend for criminal activity, and, going without sleep for almost three full days straight, the trio found themselves graduated to the state of Hero of the City, for their meritorious service defending the city during its darkest hours.
Rebecca has decided to stay on working for the Project as an astrophysicist and cosmologist, hoping to encourage thinktanks and research projects that seek ways to explore space.
Powers
Bec Querel is a living star, her biology somehow managing to overcome the herculean task of room-temperature fusion. She absorbs solar energy and emits heat, and her body operates like a nuclear furnace. Many of her internal organs are nonfunctional or vestigial, and her digestive tract is almost ornamental. Her body sustains itself through a superefficient permutation of breathing - as long as she has oxygen and carbon atoms to access, she can continue generating energy. Further, her cells emit most of their waste in the form of low-key emittant radiation, which she can focus into concentrated bursts and blasts.
Bec is from some perspectives the perfect life form. She doesn't need to eat[2], and she's capable of extremely slow existence in a vacuum provided she can internalise a fuel source she can burn slowly but produces high yield[3]. Able to project concentrated blasts of heat and radiation, she has at times considered how, in a more superstitious time, the sequence of genetic lottery that is her DNA might have led to the myths of sun goddesses. Compounding the supernatural image is that Bec has used mathematics to tap into a conceptual, quantum lifeform - effectively, creating a being of pure math, incarnated in the form of small, short-lived creatures made entirely of fire.
Limitations
Bec's powers are ultimately limited in their finesse. She wields radiation the same way one might wield a club, and lacking any good visual metaphor for the practice, she instead has to rely on fine-tuned processes and mathematical formulas that need adjustment on the fly. With this in mind, rather than causing irreperable harm, she has to keep her radiation tools somewhat inexact and imprecise - reducing people's reaction times and making them feel nauseated is often the limits of her radiant prowess. Further to that, her ability to use heat and light to blind and confuse enemies are fairly two-dimensional in their applications, meaning that most enemies who come prepared can best them, usually with heavy optic shielding[4].
Metatext
Themes
Perhaps the most obvious theme of Rebecca's story is the isolation of genius. Bec lived out a life of intellectual superiority, but reached the mental plateau of adults without the means to seriously interact with them. This represented very much how I personally felt after my own graduation, realising that I had become an adult without, at any point along the way, working out what that meant.
Secondarily, Rebecca is about friendship. She was my first established character on Virtue, and with her I brought two friends, two great friends who now seem to treat the server as their home. We started at 1 together, we levelled to 50 together, and barring for a few flashback-driven hunts in Dark Astoria for number comparisons, we've shared all the game with one another. We've travelled to new dimensions and slain AVs, we've done content so old that players seem to forget it's existed (the Unity Plague, before it gave merits, for example), and we've done the new content as it arrived. We saw inventions arrive and we saw debt almost leave. More proud than anything else, I am so glad that Bec and her two best friends hit 50 together...
... even if I did hit last. Stupid debt head starts.
Trivia
Meta
- Bec Querel was created during the Winter Event 2007, and hit 50 in the Double XP weekend of January 2009.
- Bec Querel was teamed with Black Caiman and Thermal Sink for the whole of her career as a hero
- Bec Querel used every Freespec she received in the issues since she's been created (late Issue 7), two veteran respecs, and one Terra Volta respec. Her final drop on her final mission before hitting 50 was a Respec recipe... which went to Carceri.
Character
- Bec Querel is a little uncertain as to her own sexuality. Not whether or not she's straight, but as to whether or not she has one.
- Bec Querel is a voracious reader, and since her graduation has taken to enjoying the simple connection of her mind to an author's. Unsurprisingly, she loves Carl Sagan's work. Surprisingly, she also likes Alan Moore's[5].
References
- ↑ A download link for the Mids file of Bec's current build is available here.
- ↑ Though she certainly enjoys it and chooses to do so as a social engine, her body burning away the resultant waste.
- ↑ Such as ethyne.
- ↑ Though malta troops, with their night vision goggles are often rudely surprised by how intense she can radiate.
- ↑ "Has he ever met a woman, you think?"
| - - Staff - | Project Corona | - The Quad - - |
| The Vanguard | ||
| Bec Querel | Black Caiman | Michiko Yamaguchi | Sahbra | Starbuster | Thermal Sink | ||
| Other Students and Associates | ||
| Acid Light | Backslide | Caer | Emblazoned | Gator Aide | Hyperbole | Jade Gargoyle | ||
| Junk Giant | Knight Rain | Kosava | Laurel | Max-Q | Moloch Tartarus | Prior | ||
| Quarter Note | Sabhail | Speedmetal | Silent Steel | Sortiarious | Steelcat | ||
