Esprit de Lion
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Esprit de Lion watching over Talos Island | |
| Esprit de Lion | |
| Player: @Fractured | |
| Origin: | Mutant |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Psi/Mental Blaster |
| Security Level: | 24 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Rene Laurent |
| Known Aliases: | None Known |
| Species: | Human Mutant |
| Age: | 24, born May 1, 1984 |
| Height: | 6'2" |
| Weight: | 210 |
| Eye Color: | Dark Brown |
| Hair Color: | Sun bleached Blonde |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | Citizen of Monaco, Legally Resident in the US |
| Occupation: | FBSA Registered Hero |
| Place of Birth: | Monaco |
| Base of Operations: | Confidential |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Emilie Laurent (mother), Jacques Rousseau (father, deceased), Rebecca Rousseau (aka Redeemed, half-sister) |
| Known Powers | |
| Telepathy, Telekinesis, Minor Pyrokinesis, Superhuman Physical Attributes and Tissue Regeneration | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Rene is a skilled amateur surfer and diver (skin, scuba, free). | |
| Equipment | |
| Standard issue FBSA communicator. | |
| ' | |
Esprit de Lion is the creation of Fractured, who can be reached in-game at @Fractured or on the CoH boards at the same name. He was planned between the announcement of the Psi Blast primary and the release of I12.
Contents |
Affiliations
While Rene is an FBSA Free Agent, he is loosely affiliated with The Legion, Incognitus and S.T.O.R.M. in that he is one of the free agents with whom those groups graciously share their facilities and equipment. ((These groups along with the other free agents together make up the in game SG The Paragon Universe))
Personality
In a world of Ants, Rene is the Grasshopper. Nothing he does is 'work' and he spends no time in worry. He encapsulates every challenge in life, no matter how grave, between the two phrases 'All we have to do is ...' and 'What could be simpler?'.
Like Will Rodgers he never met a man he didn't like. He laughs easily and his wit is never biting, just an invitation to laugh along. He says that good company is the sauce that brings out the taste of life.
There's no deception in him and he doesn't indulge in the polite disregard of uncomfortable truths. He won't just refuse to ignore the elephant in the room, he'll walk up and shake its tail.
Despite his easygoing good nature, it was not by mistake he calls himself Lion-spirited. He's fearless, resolute, protective of his own and lethally vicious in a fight where a quick and decisive victory becomes his sole focus.
Powers
Telepathy
In contrast to his easygoing nature, Rene is a literal born predator, a psychic vampire.
His touch on the surface of a mind is gentle, almost imperceptible, like a lion stalking in tall grass. When he reaches deeper into someone's mind he does so with a psychic presence that roars, claws and tears, grievously injuring both mind and body.
This intensity and power is not without price. Rene consumes himself in the use of his abilities, burning up his own psyche over time. His mind and body are so connected that in the extreme, he can physically cripple or even kill himself. No rest, relaxation or nutrition can replace even the smallest part of this lost energy. He does not 'recover over time' from this particular consumption of his psyche and health.
His only natural recourse is to drain the health and psychic energies of those around him to replenish his own at the cost of their wholeness, or even their lives.
There is one last aspect of his telepathy. Inhibitions are psychically reduced in his presence. It's not something he does, per se. It is intrinsic to his nature. It's the predatory lure that draws the prey near and puts them at their ease. It is subtle, but observable. Lovers will be more demonstrative toward each other around him, drinkers will reach for another drink, enemies will come to blows more easily, the shy will speak their mind. When he himself joins in fully, a simple party can turn bacchanal.
Telekinesis
Like his telepathy, his telekinesis is forceful and indelicate. He can tear a door off of its hinges with his mind, but he can't fetch his glass from across the room. Not unless he's interested in hurling it through a wall.
The only thing he can move telekinetically with any degree of fine control is his own body, allowing him to fly.
Pyrokinesis
His pyrokinesis is a small thing at this point, capable only of lighting a candle or other small flammable item. Ironically, causing things to burst into flames is the most subtle thing he does.
Superhuman Physical Attributes and Tissue Regeneration
Rene's close mind/body connection has resulted in increased physical strength, speed, endurance and durability. He's immune to normal illness and his tissues are phenomenally regenerative unless he overtaxes himself (at which point he becomes a near cripple in danger of losing his life). ((Without quantifying the above, all game mechanics of motion, strength, toughness and rest are played as being literal. He can run indefinitely without tiring, wreck a car with his bare hands, shrug off small arms fire, recover any injury that doesn't incapacitate him in just moments, etc.))
Character History
Monaco
Rene was born to seventeen year old Emilie Laurent, her love child with a much older married man, Jacques Rousseau. Throughout their affair Emilie had taken an innocent romantic delight in being 'the other woman', but once she knew she was pregnant she refused to be 'the other family'. Without revealing her pregnancy, she told Jacques she never wanted to see him again. Jacques would die some years later never knowing he had a son. Emilie took a job as a masseuse in a casino hotel and raised her son in a one room apartment in Old Monaco. When Rene was old enough to ask questions, his mother gave him a photograph of his father, but never revealed his name.
Rene grew up knowing what it was to live in the lap of luxury with empty pockets. Still he was happy. Sun and sea and sand were free and there were yachts and princesses and the Grand Prix to watch. Life was good and it got even better when at the age of ten his psychic gifts began to reveal themselves. He could only hear the most surface of thoughts, the mundane internal dialogue of everyday life, but it seemed to him like the whole world wanted to whisper its secrets in his ear. He'd grown up watching royalty through his window and now life had made him a prince.
Everything was perfect until Rene pushed hard for a classmate's secret, dipping below the surface of the mind and innocently tearing into the boy with his devastating psyche. The boy collapsed into seizures with blood spilling from his nose. Rene was terrified and nauseated what he had done. Worse he felt empty, burned up, like he was falling into darkness and every one of his classmates who rushed to help the boy looked like light and life and every good thing. Instinctively he reached out and took that light for himself leaving half a dozen other children on the ground before he blacked out himself from shock.
He was young, and his gifts weren't fully developed, and by some grace he wasn't yet capable of hurting anyone badly. All of the students returned to school within a few days, having recovered from what doctors were calling a particularly virulent and contagious flu. All but Rene. He told his mother everything and she pulled him out of school for good, for everyone's safety and his own peace of mind.
He didn't dwell much on the incident, or think of himself as a monster. In his mind he was a prince still. He was a guileless child who saw things in simple terms. He could hear thoughts, but if he tried to look for deeper secrets he would hurt someone, and it would make him sick, and then he would make other people sick. As long as he never asked for more than he was given, life would always be as good as it ever had been.
One Perfect Moment
Rene lived the good life for seven years. 'Home schooling' wasn't really necessary. He learned more walking around the city 'listening' for an hour than other children learned in a month of school. The rest of his day was given over to playing and fishing and swimming and surfing. When his friends got out of school in the afternoon he'd take them to see all of the best things he'd found during the day. He had good friends, a succession of sweethearts and got into all of the best kinds of trouble. Wherever Rene was, there was the party.
One night when he and all his friends were old enough for crushes to become first loves they robbed their parents' liquor cabinets, built a bonfire on the beach and had the party to end all parties. Something happened that night all around Rene, and to him. Everyone forgot to be afraid, forgot to worry about the consequences. In innocent abandon his friends let all inhibition slip away, and so did he.
He awoke just before dawn, barely able to move. He didn't know what he'd done the night before, but he knew all of his friends sleeping around him were safe and sound. Young lovers lay in each other's arms, young enemies slept side by side with matching black eyes and the remnants of the bottle they'd shared after the fight and Rene lay dying on the sand. In some way that he couldn't remember, he had completely expended himself in the night. Breathing was hard, moving was harder. Every muscle was weak and his left leg dragged uselessly behind him. His options were clear. He could reach out and take the life and health he needed from his friends sleeping around him, or he could just let go and die. He chose to die, but he chose to do it on his own terms.
He dragged himself over the sand to his board and paddled doggedly out for one last sunrise in the surf. He paid attention to things that hadn't been important before: the taste of the salt spray, cool on his skin, the sight of the gulls wheeling in front of the rising sun, the dawn light dancing on the water, from the docks the good natured jibing of the commercial fishing crews beginning their day, the sudden memory of having made love for the first time the night before. That's when the wave began to swell, and he pulled himself one-legged to his feet and rode into all of it, the great perfect melange of everyday life.
There is such a thing as a perfect moment, a moment where everything connects and a man's whole universe comes into crystalline focus that he can feel in the deepest part of himself. They can be as profound as the exchange of wedding vows or the birth of a child or as simple as the burst of joyful laughter at an unexpected surprise. Perfect moments heal the soul, and this was the most perfect moment Rene Laurent had ever lived. It flooded through him and filled up the empty places inside him, made him whole again. In being willing to give up everything he'd found a way to become more than he'd ever been. The boy prince came into his throne.
His mental energies remained destructive, but from that one moment Rene was free to use his gifts as much as he liked, the only cost being the discipline to take time each day to seek out the moments that fed his soul. It became a reason to stay out late just to watch the stars, or to go home before any of his friends just to spend time with his mother. It was the reason he'd spend two-hundred dollars on the perfect bottle of wine when he only had two-hundred dollars and thirteen cents to his name. It was a reason to discover symphony and opera and fine art. It was a reason to cherish company and a reason to seek solitude. Some nights the perfect moment wouldn't come, and they rarely came the same way twice, but if he was diligent in making space in his life for momentary miracles he could always find enough of them to fill the places in him that his power burned empty.
If before Rene had been the life of the celebration, his newfound freedom and perspective made him the celebration of life.
Paragon City
Shortly before his twenty-fourth birthday Rene's mother gave him a newspaper clipping from an American paper. It was a picture of a young silver haired man and his dark-eyed date. The caption read 'Philanthropist painter Thomas Cross and known Paragon party girl Rebecca Rousseau'. She told him the woman was his half-sister.
Rene wasted no time in planning a trip to introduce himself. He used his psychic gifts to qualify for an FBSA work visa so that if things went well he could make the visit last as long as he liked.
He adored his sister on sight, and his infant twin nephews stole his heart. He expected that, or at least hoped for it.
What he never expected was that the FBSA job he applied for just to get a long term visa would come to mean a great deal to him as well. The people of Paragon have taken to calling him 'The Gallant Esprit de Lion' and it turns out heroism suits him.
A Subtle Bias
Rene isn't an American, and more significantly he wasn't raised with the American egalitarian mindset. He was raised in an old world monarchy and all men were certainly not 'created equal'. While all men and women of good character are of equal worth that is not the same as being equal in station.
In Rene's view, Mutants with strong positive genetic gifts are the nobility of the new world. They are in fact the next step of human evolution and therefore 'better' than everyone else. They are the future of the human race and the world is in their hands.
He feels similarly, though less strongly, about psychics in general, no matter the origin of their ability. They live and move in a reality the rest of the world simply can't understand.
It's a subtle thing, nothing you could tell from his behavior and he doesn't make a habit of talking about it, but he would not, for instance, consider a long term relationship or starting a family with anyone who was not both the bearer of a positive mutation and at least a minor psychic talent.
