Psychosus
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Psychosus is a Dark Miasma/Psychic Blast Defender on the Virtue Server.
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| Psychosus | |
| Player: @Psychosus | |
| Origin: | Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Defender |
| Security Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Alexa Roycroft |
| Known Aliases: | none |
| Species: | Homo Sapiens Psychosus |
| Age: | 28 |
| Height: | 5' 7" |
| Weight: | 143 lbs |
| Eye Color: | Blue |
| Hair Color: | Brown |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Criminal Psychologist |
| Place of Birth: | Pascagoula, Mississippi |
| Base of Operations: | Atlas Park, Paragon City, RI |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Classified |
| Known Powers | |
| Dark Miasma, Psychic Blast | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Magic based attacks that use the force of darkness to terrify, drain and debilitate as well as psychic blasts to dominate.and mentally cripple. | |
| Equipment | |
| Classified | |
| ' | |
Contents |
Background
Alexa Roycroft was raised in Plainville, Massacusetts. From a very early age she knew that she would pursue a life fighting crime, but she had no idea that her childhood ambitions would lead to a life so extraordinary. She lead a typical life until shortly after taking a job in the famed City of Heroes.
After graduate school, Alexa moved from Massachusetts to Paragon City, Rhode Island to pursue a career in criminal investigation. The Paragon City Police Department needed someone of Alexa's skill to combat the super powered villains that roamed the city and its outskirts. The city was rebuilding after the first Rikti Invasion and was in dire need of media fodder that would show that the department was helping the city recover. Alexa proved to be that fodder. Pretty and intelligent, she presented a tough on crime attitude that the people expected as well as the results to back up her cockiness.
The city loved her, but the criminal element began to take notice...and offense...to her repeated foiling of their most sinister plots. Eventually, her heavy handed justice would meet the iron fist of a Warrior leader and The Circle of Thorns.
A Hero falls, A Superhero rises
(excerpt from The Paragon Times interview with Alexa R. Roycroft)
"My fierce determination to stop the new cults attempting to take hold of the city during its reconstruction would prove fatal. I knew that I had enemies and that many of those enemies had the power to burn me to a crisp on a whim with just a flick of their wrist. There was no reason to fear them, though. The worst thing they could do was kill me, right?
As criminal investigator, I should have known better. I've seen the ways people can be killed.
Anyway, I had been working on a case involving both the Warriors and the Circle of Thorns. I had been after the Warrior leader, King Thunder, for about six or seven months because AFIS matched his prints to a boradsword left at the scene of a Circle of Thorns ritual we busted. We busted it too late. Thunder had hacked the C.o.T. to death by the time we got there.
Turns out that Thunder learned about the Envoy of Shadow. The Envoy of Shadow is the demon ambassador of the Oranbegan's supreme evil god. Thunder thought that he could bring the evil power of the Envoy under his control and use it to terrorize the City. Not knowing anything about magic, when the Envoy was summoned, he was not binded and ended up killing King Thunder and going with the Circle of Thorns to one of their caves in the Eastgate Heights area of the Hollows.
I'm still not exactly sure how I because their target. Maybe it was all the soul-stealing rituals I had stopped since coming to Paragon City. Regardless, I would meet the Envoy of Shadow in the parking lot of my apartment complex...and six .45 rounds to the head didn't phase him at all. He picked me up and threw me over his shoulder like freakin' King Kong and stomped down Hyperion Way toward the Hollows.
I was tied to a Crystal of Pain, the red hot magic searing my back while the Envoy of Shadow preached of power and immortality to the Circle of Thorns. He told them I would be the sacrifice needed to give him full power. I tried to break free of the ropes that bound me but I was weakened by the Envoy's darkness and by the scorching pain of the Crystal. I didn't know that Akarist, a defected C.o.T, was warning the MAGI about the situation. A group of superheroes was on their way, but it was too late.
I didn't want to give up, but the human body can only take so much torture and I could feel myself die and my ethereal self being pulled toward a swirling, black Abyss. I have no idea how I did it, but I was so enraged by how easily the Envoy had defeated me that I was able to project the anger as a physical weapon at him. At the moment it hit him I could...feel...everything in his mind....all the evil and heinous things he had in store for Paragon City once my soul was trapped in the Abyss. I couldn't let him, not even in death would I let him. the next thing I knew I was speaking words I didn't know, chanting something I couldn't even hear over the noise created by the Abyss. I could see the Envoy looking at me and his eyes went wide and he fell, materializing through the stone floor of the Oranbegan temple and joining me in the descent toward oblivion.
I passed out, not waking again until the faint beepeing sounds of the monitors in some guarded unti of the Chrion Medical Center roused me. I was in a chamber with a small window reminsicent of a port hole. I was able to get up and slowly make my way to the window. Suddenly, a face popped up in the window and I fell backwards back onto the gurney. Azuria, the head of the MAGI department, had come to talk to me about my ordeal. Apparently scaring the crap out of people is a customary greeting.
Azuria explained to me that I had absorbed the darkness of the Envoy of Shadow in the moments before I was to be sucked into eternal damnation. The gibberish I had been speaking was the spell of Howling Twilight and it ressurected me while also killing the Envoy of Shadow.
Cool.
I had also honed my ability to understand the human mind to forge weapons of materialized thought.
Wicked cool.
It's hard to maintain a professional attitude when describing to you the immense joy I feel at the thought that I'm a superhero. I grew up wanting to be able to do more for people than just exist and hope I did something good for someone, somewhere. I came to Paragon City and began to help it recover from the Rikti Invasion and from the crime that had tekn hold here. Now I can. I have big plans for the Paragon Police Department. Just wait until I get out of here."
Recovery
Alexa spent several weeks recovering from her death and subsequent self ressurection. It would take some time for Alexa to learn how her new powers worked, but when she did finally get control over them she found that not only had she absorbed the Envoy's dark powers but had also honed her keen psychological prowess to be able to project physical minifestations of thought as weapons. Having never seen psychic powers that were magical in origin before, the MAGI mages spent numerous hours testing Alexa's abilites and making sure that the evil she absorbed from the Envoy could not take over. Satisfied with their finding, when Alexa was released from the MAGI clinic, she immediately went public with her ordeal, her new powers and her new approach to taking on evil in Paragon City.
At this point Alexa became Psychosus, a vigilante against the evil, the deviant and the derranged.
Psi-Cop
Still a cop to the core, Alexa went to the Chief of Police and presented to him a proposal that would change the way the Paragon City Police Department would take on superpowered villains. The Department had not entertained the idea of hiring superheroes into their ranks because of the City's contract with Longbow. The Psi-Cop Program would eliminate the PPD's reliance on the Freedom Corp's paramilitary Longbow. Alexa had long advocated against the City contracting with the Hero Corp, saying it was akin to the Family's protection rackets, and now she had the ability to see that the funds normally given to a privatized group like the Longbow went to the PPD's new Psi-Cop Initiative.
Hoards of psychically super-powered men and women who had previously felt that their powers might hinder their acceptance in the PPD or that were denied by the Longbow (many of the Longbow Wardens had been quoted after Alexa's press conference as stating "psi powers are gimp") volunteered to help get the new Unit started. Villains from the Rouge Isles, who typically only had to defeat a small cadre of private security staff, now found themselves face to face with the nearly unresistable power of the Psi-Cops' power. Soon even the Longbow would have a group of Mind Control Wardens in their ranks.
With bank robberies and other violent crimes down to their lowest point in years, Alexa and the rest of the PPD thought they had finally reached a point where Paragon City could relax a little and focus on rebuilding Faultline. Of course, the peace would not last.
Powers
Psychic Powers
Psychosus has been mastering her psychic powers for nearly three years. She has the power to project thought as Mental Blasts[1], Psionic Lances that can be used from long distances away [2], Telekentic Blasts that can be used to thrust enemies away, and mind bending Psychic Screams, Wails and Tornadoes that can be used to encompass groups of enemies.
Dark Powers
Psychosus puts the dark magic she aquired from the Envoy of Shadow to good use. She use the Spell of Twilight Grap to absorb the darkness inside of her enemies to heal herself and others and cast Tar Pit, a swirling abyss of umbral energy, on the ground to slow her enemies and reduce their resistance to her attacks. She can also cast Howling Twilight, a ressurection spell, and Fearsome Stare which keeps a group of enemies entranced in total fear and unable to move. She has the ability to summon the Envoy of Shadow's Dark Servant to to her bidding. She can cast Shadow Fall to envelop herself in dakrness to help avoid detetction be enemies and can use Darkest Night to keep them shrouded in the dark so that they cannot hit her when they attack.
Other Powers
During her encounters with Paragon City's most evil enemies, Psychosus has aquired powers to help her in the fight. She has charged armor that helps deflect energy damage, enhanced accuracy, and the ability to fly through the Spell of Flight Form.
Uniforms and Equipment
The Paragon City Police Department and the MAGI have helped Psychosus develop uniforms for all manner of combat.
Uniform 1: Used during typical combat. Lightweight but durable, the uniform is made up of leather pants and a lycra shirt, shoulder pads, leather boots and gloves and a duty belt much like the one she used while a police officer. This is Psychosus' original costume developed at the MAGI clinic following her encounter with the Envoy of Shadow.
Uniform 2: This uniform was developed by the MAGI for use against enemies with superior magical abilites. It consists of armor in the Justice Sytle but keeps the trademark circle-swirled boots, albeit the boots are stiletto heeled. The wings are from the spell of Flight Form that is granted from the tiara headpiece.
Uniform 3: This uniform was developed by the Paragon City Police Department in the early stages of the Psi Cop program. It was believed that the Psi Cops would need a heavy duty armored suit to deal with energy attacks and explosive attacks from weapons. The suits were eventually developed for the PPD Heavy Units instead of the Psi Cops, but Psychosus retained her prototype version.
Notes
(WARNING: THIS SECTION DOES NOT CONTAIN MATURE CONTENT BUT IT DOES REFERENCE THIS CHARACTER'S SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND POLITICAL AFFILIATION. DO NOT READ IF YOU CANNOT HANDLE SOMEONE'S CHARACTER BEING DIFFERENT THAN YOUR OWN.)
Psychosus' name came from her college days after turning in her dissertation on serial killing. In the thesis paper she coined the name by describing the common view of the serial killer by society as "another species of human, a homo psychosus..." It did not come from the usual misspelling of the word "psychosis" as many have previously assumed.
Psychosus is a registered Independent.
Psychosus is a lesbian. She does not like to make a big deal out of it but you'll catch her at LGBT events in Paragon City. On that note, Psychosus is single and looking. Blondes are a plus.
Psychosus and the MAGI have been working closely on a set of spells to keep the Dark powers she aquired from the Envoy of Shadow from taking over. Recently, Psychosus has been experiencing unexplainable violent urges, strange voices and visions of a supervillain called Psychopath.
It is unclear if the recently spotted heroine Acute Psychosus is actually Alexa Roycroft or if it is a copycat mimicking Psychosus. This heroine can project beams of light energy and manipulate psychological powers.
