Amy Embers
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
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| Amy Embers | |
| Player: @Tever | |
| Origin: | Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Controller |
| Security Level: | 22 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Amelia Laughlin |
| Known Aliases: | Amy Embers |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 25 |
| Height: | 5’1” |
| Weight: | 278 |
| Eye Color: | Glowing orange |
| Hair Color: | Red |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | Confidential |
| Occupation: | Cashier |
| Place of Birth: | Missouri |
| Base of Operations: | Confidential |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | None living |
| Known Powers | |
| Fire and Forcefields | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Can run a cash register; can avoid setting fire to irate customers | |
| Equipment | |
| None | |
| No additional information available. | |
Why do so many people create characters who are God’s gift to badass superheroing from the moment they step foot in Outbreak? A friend of mine once said that I said “The fun is in the journey.” I don’t remember saying it, honestly, and I was probably quoting someone else anyway. Still, it’s true.
Amy is a character who was played as starting at level 1. She had no skills to speak of and was terrified of the Contaminated she was fighting. She hides behind her PFF and lets her companions do most of the work, seldom doing more than providing magical shields from a safe distance because she’s too scared to let her own shield down for long.
This is her beginning. I’m looking forward to the journey.
Contents |
Physical Description
Short and overweight, though game mechanics forced me to use a muscular body type instead of just letting her be fat. As you can see by her picture, her hero outfit is a bunch of stuff she pulled out of the closet. Her civilian clothes are shirts and pants, all baggy and dark colored.
Character History
Pre-Paragon
Amy was born in 1983. Six months later, her father heard a knock at the door and opened it to find her abandoned on his doorstep with a note reading “She’s yours, you asshole.” As an unmarried soldier whose one-night stand had gone horribly wrong, he decided the best thing to do would be to ask his mother, Agatha, to care for her. Since she had always wanted a daughter, she readily agreed.
Agatha was an ex-member of the Cabal and a master of storm magic. She began teaching Amy at a very early age, though Amy quickly showed more of an affinity for fire rather than wind and rain. Fearing that such a skill was too dangerous and destructive for such a young child, Agatha taught her control her powers by teaching her to make force fields. They were small, of little use for anything but an impromptu ball to play with, but Amy had little enough else to play with and so worked very hard to make them unbreakable.
In December of 1990, her father, hardly a presence to begin with, was killed in the Gulf War. This affected Amy’s life only insofar as it affected her grandmother’s. Lost in grieving, Agatha began to neglect Amy’s magical studies and, to a lesser extent, Amy herself. Her homeschooled education came to a screeching halt. Since the only time she saw other people was when her grandmother took her grocery shopping, she became extremely introverted. And because Agatha no longer cared for much besides watching TV, Amy went on a diet of candy and junk food.
Agatha might have snapped out of it in time (she reacted poorly when her husband died, as well), but in 1991, she suffered a stroke. Amy was placed in foster care, the first time in her life that her glowing eyes were an issue. She lived in the home with three boys, one of whom bullied her relentlessly. The house parents could never have been called abusive, but it was a small town and they had their own prejudices. Amy was a mutant for all intents and purposes, and was outcast accordingly. Her physical needs were met, her nutrition corrected, but she was frowned on if she took her sunglasses off in public and was punished if caught playing with her force fields.
In 1993, she was moved to a slightly more friendly atmosphere, where she finally found out that her grandmother had been dead for almost a year. Her previous house parents had been told, but had never cared enough to break the news. In 1994, her new caretakers had their own baby, and she was moved a third and final time, this time into the neighboring Kansas City. Once again, her house parents were distant and cold, and she took to wearing her sunglasses (a habit she had been discouraged from in the last home) once again. The children of her hometown had been cruel, but the preteens in her new school were practically abusive. She learned little more than that she was a useless freak, and responded by keeping her head down and running at the first sign of trouble, even if she was in the middle of a class. High school was little better.
Paragon History
As soon as she turned 18, Amy hitchhiked to Paragon City, having heard that it was a place where mutants were welcome. Once there, however, she learned that being welcome as a mutant didn’t necessarily mean she would be welcome as a person. With no skills and little education, she got the only job she could, working at a giant, well-known retail outlet. She lived in a seedy motel and survived on fast food for almost two months, when she finally had enough money for a seedy apartment in Atlas Park.
Seven years later, in 2008, she realized that she was a 25 year old woman who ate fast food, worked as a cashier for minimum wage, and lived in a crappy apartment in a crime infested city…full of the most amazing people that she wanted to be. Enough was enough and she registered with Freedom Corp under the name Amy Embers, figuring that she could just use her magic against the bad guys and they would run away. Sadly, most criminals have seen much scarier things than a would be goth hiding in an impenetrable bubble and tossing a weak little fire spell at them occasionally, and she would have quit heroing for good five minutes after walking into the Outbreak Hotzone if a few fellow newbies hadn’t been kind enough to help her.
Personality
Amy is cowardly, but willful. Though she’s terrified of being hurt or killed by the thugs she fights, years of being told she was useless have given her a need to prove them all wrong, even if she’s the only one who knows it.
On the other hand, those same years have also made her a socially maladjusted introvert who spends most her time daydreaming or reading trashy romance novels. She smiles and laughs quite a lot because that’s her response to nervousness. “Look happy,” she thinks, “look normal, and they won’t know there’s anything wrong.” She blushes and stammers whenever her customers try to talk to her. She ignores her coworkers whenever possible and hurries to get away from them whenever it’s not.
Anonymity doesn’t change her much, though she does loosen up a bit in less dangerous situations. However, she still has to be prompted to speak and only does so in short sentences.
Abilities
Primary Powers
Fire-based magic. Though this is her innate magical ability, it's weak from a lifetime of neglect. She can make a cage of fire around someone, but it relies on the victim’s own fear of fire to actually keep him trapped. The blaze is thin and does little more than burn for a moment or two, which means that the fearless and mindless just walk right through. Slightly more effective is her ability to create a small, choking cloud of smoke. Again, however, there’s little actual fire involved.
Secondary Powers
Force fields. The skill she learned and has practiced the most. Her tiny bubbles have become one large one that she can hide inside, and she is very adept at making it stay unbreakable. Being around other people, she has necessarily learned how to protect them as well, using a weaker version of her own bubble (can’t fight a thing if you can’t penetrate your own defense, after all) and a second shield designed specifically for mental defense.
Weaknesses and Limitations
Her fear is her greatest weakness. She is used to running, not fighting, so just being a hero is an exercise in willpower. She won’t fight at all without someone to help her, which is it’s own kind of battle since no one wants a teammate who’ll panic and flee at the first sign that things are going south.
Of considerably less consequence, though definitely limiting, is her Personal Force Field. It may be so impenetrable that even bullets can’t get in, but that means that she can’t get anything out of it, either, including magic spells. She has to drop it in order to help, and it takes her a little while to cast the spell that put it back up. As a result, she doesn’t do it often, and only when she’s well out of melee range.
Trivia
Her eyes glow orange. Though she’s been told that makes her a mutant for most of her life, it’s actually the result of her inability to properly control her fire magic. She might even figure that out one day.
Creator Contact Information
Global: @Tever
Official Forums: Raven Lord
VirtueVerse: Wrath
