From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

Don't waste my time. Come get what you come for.
Celine Dioscura
Player: @twelfth
Origin:	Mutant
Archetype:	Stalker / Brute
Threat Level:	Insider (40 - August 2009) / 10
Personal Data
Real Name:	Marceline Elvire Foyle
Known Aliases:	Celine Foyle, Selene Dioscura, Selene Foyle, Venator Foyle
Species:	Human-derived Mutant
Age:	Mid to Late Twenties
Height:	5'6"
Weight:	Athletic.
Eye Color:	Brown
Hair Color:	Rose-Aubergine (Dyed)
Biographical Data
Nationality:	French.
Occupation:	Soldier.
Place of Birth:	Rennes, Bretagne.
Base of Operations:	Itinerant.
Marital Status:	Single.
Known Relatives:	Available upon Clearance.
Known Powers
Teleportation, Morphological Resequencing, Teledimensional Empathic Contagion
Known Abilities
Skilled to excellent hand-to-hand combatant, Cross-disciplinary military training.
Equipment
Combat razors, tactical belt, prescription medication, tools and weapons as required.
Rank (PG): Venator. Rank (Resistance): Snare Weaver Agent.

The farther I fall, I'm beside you

As lost as I get, I will find you

The deeper the wound, I'm inside you

For ever and ever, I am a part of

you...

- Nine Inch Nails, "We're In This Together"

Celine Dioscura is the registered codename for an French-American female revolutionary soldier of the mutant origin, whose abilities conform to the “Stalker” archetype. While she is not native to this shard of reality, she has been forced to integrate herself as much as possible in order to accomplish her aims. It is also conjectured that Celine is the product of the warped psyche of an established hero in Paragon City. The truth is left for the reader to decide. Dioscura is a derivative of the title dioscuri, which refers to the mythological heroes Castor and Polydeuces (Pollux); twin sons of the Ancient Greek god Zeus. Despite the origin of the term, Celine does not descend from royalty, divine or otherwise.

Contents 1 Appearance 2 Personality 3 Powers 3.1 Teleportation 3.2 Morphological Resequencing 3.3 Teledimensional Empathic Contagion 4 Abilities 4.1 Martial Arts and Armed Combat 4.2 The Caul 4.3 Other Abilities 5 Weaknesses and Limitations 5.1 Limited Skills and Capacities 5.2 Lycanthropy Carrier 5.3 Mental Disorder 5.4 Other Conditions 6 Equipment 6.1 Combat Razors 6.2 Other Equipment 7 Character History 7.1 Childhood & Origins 7.2 Recruitment and Enlistment 7.3 Across the Portal 7.4 The Struggle Begins 7.5 The Truth Revealed 8 Trivia 9 Character Origins 10 Footnotes

Appearance

Celine is a caucasian female of average height, with a tight, athletic build. She does not appear, upon cursory inspection, to be distinct or otherwise remarkable from a crowd of otherwise commonplace humans. The most outstanding physical characteristic she possesses is deep violet hair, which has faint highlights of rose or pink.^[1]. She has no visible body piercings, and does not wear makeup.

Upon closer inspection, Celine is in good physical health and has the physique of an individual who practices rigourous exercise. Her complexion is bright but pale, and occasionally suffers from the effects of certain drugs in her system. Celine has several old scars across her arms, torso, and several very broad scars across her back.^[2] Celine is also missing all but the proximal phalanx of her left pinky, along with the distal tip of her left ring finger. There is also a thick scar on her right hand between the muscle between the thumb and forefinger, extending to the wrist. She wears gloves to hide this.

Celine prefers to wear light, but tight-fitting clothing. This attire is as commonly designed to distract her opponents as it is to protect her. Celine usually prefers to work unencumbered by armor or restrictive clothing, but she also concedes its occasional utility. Unlike her sister-counterpart, Celine has interest in her attire and fashion. The second-hand cast offs Selene finds comfort in are usually discarded for somewhat more fashionable and provocative attire when Celine is able to choose.

Personality

Celine's actual personality is difficult to characterize precisely, at least so far as it being independent of her significant mental health issues. She has been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder and has variously been diagnosed with dissocial personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder.^[3] As such, Celine's personality varies wildly depending on her environment and stressors both within and outside of her control. Debate continues whether her demonstrated behavior are symptoms of her illnesses or legitimate personality facets.

Typically, Celine is a brash, abrasive individual who typically confronts those around her with mockery and derision intended to provoke violent responses from bystanders. Celine appears to thrive on the negative attention this garners her, along with actively soliciting the physical altercations she commonly participates in. Celine focuses much of her effort into becoming the center of attention in conversations and social settings. She has the capacity to act in a coldly professional manner, and project a disciplined facade of control - but these moments are vastly overshadowed by her more commonplace emotional outbursts. When suffering an episode of mental instability Celine can vascilate from a calmly compliant demeanor to a starkly homicidal rage in only a few moments.

Celine has a few distinct personality habits. She actively dislikes people touching her without permission, and reacts aggressively to intrusion. As a curious counterpoint, Celine seems to also enjoy taunting others with lascivious flirtation and crude sexual innuendo. Celine greatly dislikes being in confined spaces for long periods of time and commonly complains of needing to "get out" if stressed or otherwise uncomfortable. She also demonstrates an odd neurosis for avoiding second and third person pronouns in her speech, at least in reference to herself. Lastly, she talks to herself almost constantly, although this is mostly limited to sub-audible snarling and bickering.

Powers

Teleportation

The power deriving from Celine’s mutation is commonly seen among many heroes: teleportation. However, it is innately tied to her co-habitating ego, allowing Celine to operate in more than once place at a time. She has been able to teleport single individuals as well, although this process is frequently disorienting both to the passenger and Celine herself. Theories of what might happen to the passenger should Celine lose control of her ability in mid-teleport have not been speculated upon.

Additionally, Celine has the capacity to apport items from a remote location onto her person. She is best able to do this with items she is familiar with or have some personal connection to her. Her power-therapists have been attempting to train her to obtain unfamiliar items in the same manner, although she is still inexperienced in doing this. Celine uses this ability to obtain her preferred weapons if she is unarmed, or to change clothes if desired.

Of particular interest is Celine's capacity to displace visible light around her body, using a very subtle adaptation of her teleportation powers. The spatial distortion causes light to find a different "point of least resistence". Celine's spatial warping even displaces her weight, body heat, and sound, rendering her highly resistant to infrared surveillance and pressure sensors. Detection equipment which has been specialized to detect spatial anomalies will obviously be alerted to her presence. Additionally, the distortion does not reliably displace odors and scents. It is also unable to mask her psychic signature or surface thoughts.

Morphological Resequencing

This is Celine’s ability to adapt her physical form and characteristics according to her own psychology and ego. This is far from a conscious ability and relies far more on manifestations of unconscious and subconscious desires and impulses, making this distinct from traditional metamorphic, “shape shifting” powers. Most commonly, Celine and her alter-ego, Selene, alternate control of the physical body they inhabit, tailoring its appearance to their individual residual self-image. For example, Celine has dark, purple-rose hair and an athletic physique. By comparison, Selene has dyed her hair a very vivid pink color (which is also styled differently) and has a softer, less athletic body shape. It has been established that the two forms have exclusively individual ontological inertia between the two psyches: wounds which appear on one individual do not necessarily carry over to the other. It remains to be seen if Celine will be able to further develop her powers to transform her body to more significant, drastic degrees.

As noted above, the change of Celine's clothing between her egos is not an element of this ability, but merely the clothes being teleported from storage onto her person.

Teledimensional Empathic Contagion

Unlike her counterpart, Celine alleges to have an additional psychic ability as part of her mutant genome. Celine apparently has the capacity to transfer psychic trauma or other emotional states to her alter-ego, Selene. Whatever undesired emotions or psychic damage she may experience can be consciously exchanged to her transdimensional duplicate, allowing Celine to live free of such psychological fetters. However, according to Celine, this capacity only works over dimensional distances. While their psyches are fused together, the ability is meaningless: either she has no ability to transmit to herself while in the same shard of reality, or the result is zero-sum.

Then again, facts being as they are, this ability may be completely fabricated as part of Selene's unusually potent psychosis.

Abilities

Martial Arts and Armed Combat

Celine is an accomplished martial artist and has a high degree of skill in hand-to-hand combat. Her styles are closely related to Israeli Krav Maga, with some comparison to Malaysian Silat, with exceptional emphasis on combative techniques and weapon forms. Much of her technique focuses on fast, lethal strikes with bladed weapons, but Celine's training has also equipped her to deal with ranged weapons and delbiliating injuries designed to neutralize an opponent or threat without immediate death.^[4]

The Caul

As with many individuals who have been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, Celine often demonstrates a loss of subjective time. Mingled with this symptomology is a pheonomenon whereby Celine retains a partial, vague memory of the event which transpire while her personality is not dominant. This liminal consciousness, which has dubbed "the Caul", acts as a partial buffer between the conscious personality of "Celine" and the conscious personality of her alter-ego, "Selene". As such, the Caul separates and individualizes the memories and knowledge of each alter.

However, as Celine has determined, the Caul also allows the submissive personality access to the knowledge and memories of the dominant personality. Presently, Celine can only access this subconscious "back-door" when she has lost control of the physical body to her alter-ego. It is through the Caul that Celine has learned (or, perhaps been shown) as much as she knows about "Selene" and her history. For her part, Celine is much more adept in manipulating the Caul for her own purposes.

Accessing the Caul and its potential is a voluntary act of will on the participant ego's part. Otherwise, the submissive ego will be subsumed into the sub-conscious of the mind, allowing the dominant personality to operate without observation or interference. This possibly explains why Celine less aware of her body's actions while her personality is submerged.^[5] Once the submissive personality achieves dominance, the retained knowledge obtained or gleaned from the Caul becomes vague, imperfect, and difficult to quantify. It is possible that the knowledge is retained in more detail in the dominant personality's subconscious, but no conclusive evidence to support such a theory has been discovered.

Other Abilities

Celine is a professional soldier and has the combat skills one would expect from such training. She is a competent marksman, athlete, and has significant survival skills in wilderness and urban locales. In addition, Celine was trained as a Venator infiltrator by the Praetorian Guard. Stealth movement and observation were key elements of this training, along with some respectable espionage skills.

Celine speaks fluent French, but is a little shaky on contemporary vernacular and slang. She has an "upper class" accent when speaking, and could possibly pass for a proper lady if it were not for her rather atrocious manners.

Weaknesses and Limitations

Limited Skills and Capacities

Although her mutant abilities allow her to reshape her physical morphology, she does not have the capacity to provide her physical body with more resiliency than a normal human being. This requires her to rely on external protection (armor, protective gear) in order to prevent harm. Additionally, Celine has only limited training against psionic intrusion or attacks. These techniques are rudimentary and very exhausting for her to practice. At present, she can only maintain such resistance for less than five minutes at a time.

As she has never been formally educated, Celine has only minimal literacy skills. Her military training was (obviously) more concerned with how well she could fight and kill. As such, Celine usually relies on Selene to read and interpret any written documents. Celine also has only rudimentary knowledge of basic arithmetic. Despite the fact that she can speak the language, Celine is fully illiterate in French. Her handwriting is primitive in the extreme.

Lycanthropy Carrier

Due to an overzealous sparring episode between herself and the young lycanthrope Hallow Finish, Celine was exposed to the lycan metaphage. Celine's existing egographic transmorphic physiology allowed her to assilimate the metaphage without directly contracting true lycanthropy.^[6] However, Celine was not able to adapt her body sufficiently to completely eliminate the hardy metaphage. While she is not a lycanthrope, she does remain a carrier for its venom-medium^[7] (although this appears to be only directly applicable to the area of the original bite wound she received). Most of this "venom" (a concentrated medium of phage material) was siphoned off by Facemaker at a substantial profit to Celine. Whether Celine retains enough of this contagion to infect another individual remains to be seen.

Mental Disorder

Her most prevalent weakness is her own unstable mental condition. Danger, trauma, or other stressors can cause Celine to lose control of her conscious actions, commonly allowing her co-habitating ego to obtain dominance and act independent of her desires. The relationship between the two egos is commonly adversarial and mutually contrarian. Worse still, it is frequently difficult to determine which of the two personalities is actually the least dangerous. Celine's capacity for savagery is matched in Selene's manipulative and irresponsible behavior. Celine appears to react very negatively to anyone with her name (or even similiar homophones).

For more information on Celine’s alter-ego (sensu stricto), see Selene Dioscura.

Other Conditions

It is not clear whether Celine shares her counterpart's susceptibility to unusual or unnatural sounds and speech. During the episodes in which she has been exposed to such noises, Celine has reacted violently. It is not clear, however, which of the personalities these sounds are offending. As mentioned above, Celine is missing a few fingers, which makes tasks difficult with the left hand.

Equipment

Combat Razors

Celine utilizes a pair of specialized combat blades in conjunction with her martial arts. It is not clear where exactly they were obtained from, seeing as her counterpart personality (Selene) does not have significant connections to a weaponsmith capable of creating them. Be that as it may, the blades are constructed from reinforced high speed steel which has been treated to limit conductivity^[8], and mounted on a gauntlet utilizing flexible polymer reinforcement to maintain stability and a kevlar weave to provide some protection in the absence of a hand guard. The blades are intended to be somewhat interlocking, allowing the claws to parry weapon strikes. Indeed, Celine's favored technique is to trap weapons in a parry and use the blades to break the opponent's weapon.

Celine does not usually keep the blades on her person, she tends to apport them from a storage space. Selene may occasionally carry them in a large sack or purse.

Other Equipment

Celine typically does not encumber herself with other equipment, unless specifically demanded by the operation at hand. However, she does keep a few items on hand, stored in small compartments in her boots. These include: lockpicks, a set of kelvin clips, a whetstone (which is set into the heel of her boot), a ceramic knife, and a few doses of amphetamines. Any other equipment which might be of use is kept in a specialized storage area in Selene's Skyway City apartment, and is apported as necessary.

Character History

This character history is written with the assumption that Celine is being accurate and truthful about her origins. Celine is also known to be a histronic, paranoid schizophrenic with delusional notions of reality, among other disorders. It is entirely possible that this history is completely fabricated or imaginary as a psychological defense mechanism and complex avoidance strategy designed to justify Celine's sociopathic personality and behavior.

Childhood & Origins

Celine Foyle was born in Rennes, Bretagne into a upper class family of politicians and industrial magnates, who were able to offer the child her every wish...except freedom. Such was the price of those who lived under the rule of Tyrant, the defacto sovereign of the Praetorian Earth where Celine was born.

Fifty years of rule under the thumb of Earth's most powerful beings had warped society considerably. The Foyle's were permitted a measure of luxury and responsibility only through their slavish dedication to the corrupt rulers of the Earth and their puppet nations. Celine saw nothing wrong with this, having never known any alternative in her brief life. She was schooled to respect and fear the godlike beings who crushed the weak and tolerated those strong enough or ruthless enough to claw to the top of the heap.

Celine was always considered a precocious child, and beginning as early as age six this became even more prevalent. She demonstrated the ability to intuitively sense the emotive states of her companions and family members. Her family was horrified by this discovery, knowing it would single their child out for recruitment by one of the monstrous "heroes" oppressing their society. Unfortunately, the Foyle's had plenty of enemies and it only took one call from an informer for Celine to be tested and deemed "an acceptable candidate" for training in one of Mother Mayhem's special hospitals.

Her family was well aware of the potential consequences of Celine's "training" underneath the sadistic care of the psionic punisher and stuggled with all of their influence to keep her from being taken away. Despite a small flicker of true heroism in her parents' heart, it was all for naught. Her father was abducted by the Praetorian Guard as a dissident and forcibly corrupted into a horrific mutate as a warning to those who might defy the power regime. Her mother buckled under this threat (although some unchartiably suggested it was the threat of financial ruin which proved more persuasive). Celine was swept away from her family and enrolled in Mother Mayhem's ruinous orphanage.

Celine's potential for psychic power was quickly judged to be minimal, which left her future extremely grim. Without an exceptional talent, she was deemed only worthy for conversion into a brain-raped Child of Rage. Over the next few years, a period of time incomprehensible to the young child, Celine was routinely and capriciously tortured (emotionally, physicially, and psychically) by professionals overseen by Mother Mayhem. Every effort was bent on transforming a simple, wide-eyed child into a tool of destruction and unwavering hate.^[9] The effort was not wasted; nor was it completely successful.

For what Celine lacked in raw psychic power, she seemed to make up for it in sheer resilence. Rarely would those condemned to the Asylum-Academies would emerge with their psyches intact, fewer still could be said to remain with a shred of intellect. Celine accomplished both despite a decade underneath the heel of Mother Mayhem (including a few years under her direct tutelage). No amount of psychic torture seemed to stick in the manner in which it was intended. The child was a seemingly bottomless pit of trauma, soaking up year after year of sanity-shattering pain and anguish. Celine simply would not buckle and embrace the madness her trainers forced on her.

Still, the incarceration was successful in warping Celine's personality considerably. By the time of her expungment from the Asylum, she was undeniably psychotic, socially maladjusted, and inured to the most shocking displays of violence and atrocity. However this was not directed at the world in general (although she would never integrate successfully with civilian society), but at her captors and the super-powered oppressors who had killed nearly everything that had made her human. Everything, that is, except for the need for revenge.

Recruitment and Enlistment

After ten years, Mother Mayhem and her repugnant cohorts considered Celine a lost cause for any further "development", and any further training deemed "wasteful". Her emotional state and social skills were significantly devastated, and she was turned out into the streets of Paragon City to starve or be killed by the scavengers lurking in the shadows. For a time, Celine embraced the hideous freedom of the underworld, living feral and unchecked in the city gutters and slums. No matter what violence and pain she might encounter in the wide world, it was pale in comparison to what she had already experienced under Mother's gentle tutelage. Despite this, Celine had two distinct advantages over the other brain-fried lunatics who had failed Mother's tests: she retained her intellect and cunning, and her will was focused on the destruction of her foster-Mother. ^[10] Only a few months later, she would begin building the future which made that possible.

It was the promise of warm food that brought the stinking, snarling creature out of her brick-and-iron cave into what was clearly a trap, but it was the promise of healing and revenge that made her stay. Celine's reputation as a cunning hunter among the wild scavengers of the undercity had brought her to the attention of the Resistance. Even Praetorian Earth has its heroes, flawed and strange as they may be, and Celine found herself among them. The Resistance took Celine and trained her as a soldier, carefully peeling back the layers of trauma and distrust and embedding their own rhetoric and goals in their stead. The training brought Celine's mind back from the brink of animalism, and focused her rage against the system which had so nearly destroyed her.

The Resistance was not ready to rise up to revolution, and soldiers had to be hidden carefully. Celine was separated once more from the only family that seemed to have loved her, but this time it was with her consent. Having received training under the Weaver's cyborg lieutenant, the Scarlet Scorpion ^[11], Celine enlisted with the Praetorian Guard - one of the many "law enforcement" groups who supported Tyrant's super-powered hegemony. The Resistance made no effort to provide a cover story for Celine, allowing her simply to assert that her education in the Asylums had inculcated a desire to please the rulers of the Earth. This reversal of her resistance to being indoctrinated amused those who had known her before and was accepted without scrutiny.

Under the Praetorian Guard, Celine undertook more concentrated, rigorous training in order to hone her combat skills. Eventually she was promoted out of the general foot soldiers and into the Venator Legions. The Venator, a special forces unit within the Praetorian Guard, was charged with Hunting down threats to the existing power structure. Celine was charged with the assassination of insurgents and dissidents, assignments which often brought her at odds with her own Resistance cell. However, her knowledge of Venator operations allowed her to alert the Resistance, resulting in several planned pogroms going awry.

Across the Portal

During this time, Anti-Matter began his experimentation with portal technology into Primal Earth. Almost since the moment Tyrant became aware of Primal Earth's existence, he has desired some method of transferring himself over the dimensional barriers to conquer a new world. However, knowing physically transporting Tyrant would cause a catastrophic power vacuum on Praetorian Earth, Anti-Matter searched for an alternative by which Tyrant could exist simultaneously in both dimensions. He determined that a form of astral projection might solve this problem, and he ransacked Mother Mayhem's archives for promising psychics with this potential. Eventually, he located Celine's file and speculated on the origin of her immunity to Mayhem's conditioning. Anti-Matter immediately transferred Celine from her unit into his experimentation pool.

With the sophisticated diagnostic technology he had at his disposal, and an educated guess of what to look for, the initial testing^[12] he conducted quickly confirmed his suspicions. Celine's psychic abilities were extremely specialized: she had the ability to transfer her psychic trauma to her Primal Earth counterpart. Despite this, Anti-Matter still believed Celine to be a loyal servant of the Authorities and detailed his plan in his zeal to dedicate her to his cause. Anti-Matter would build a machine which could duplicate her abilities, and transfer a copy of Tyrant's consciousness into that of Statesman, thereby rewriting it and successfully allowing the monster to control both Primal and Praetorian Earth simultaneously. All that remained was to confirm that Celine had the capacity to transmit her entire consciousness into her counterpart.

The plan was terrifying in its potential. The Resistance of Praetorian Earth had been bolstered by the rumors of a parallel universe with hundreds or thousands of super-powered beings ready, willing, and able to take on their oppressors directly. To have that world conquered and all hope of liberation crushed was too great a catastrophe to consider. The resistance leaders' decision was quick and final. Sabotage was impossible: the research was well documented, the experimentation too advanced, the equipment extensively guarded. The only hope was that Anti-Matter would succeed...and that Celine could summon reinforcements from Primal Earth before all was lost.

After harrowing weeks of waiting and preparation, Celine was at last brought into Anti-Matter's newly constructed Dimensional Projection Apparatus. Celine was prepared, sedated, and lowered into the transference tank, her brain and body having been modified to maximum compatibility with the Apparatus. With a flick of a switch, Anti-Matter blasted Celine's consciousness across the dimensional barriers and into the soul of a broken Irish girl at the mercy of fate^[13]. But, when the engines finally idled, Anti-Matter only found a brain-dead vegetable taking up space in his transference tank. Such a "side-effect" was unacceptable. The experiment was written off as an abyssmal failure, and the Praetorian scientist began to search for further alternatives.

The Struggle Begins

For Celine, the experiment was an success. She found herself swaddled in the consciousness of her Primal Earth counterpart, Selene Foyle. The triumph was tainted, however, by several issues. She did not have complete control of Selene's physical form, no accounting had been made of what would be necessary to overwrite the native psyche. Celine found she could only operate consciously with an effort of will or when Selene was otherwise incapacitated. Selene was also not any sort of soldier or trained warrior. She was a civilian, and barely competent as that. More crippling than those issues was the fact that Celine was now trapped in a mind which had borne the full force of Mother Mayhem's twisted ministrations. Selene was completely, irreparably insane. By comparison, Celine had merely been troubled. Unfortunately, this engendered no sympathy from Celine^[14], who merely felt sickened that her Primal Earth was substantially weaker and less resilent than herself.

Despite this, her course of action was clear. She had to gather an army to return to Praetorian Earth, in order to forstall the inevitable calamity. Secondary to that, to annihilate the Primal Earth counterparts of the Praetorian "heroes" - preventing Anti-Matter from using their bodies and minds as tools of conquest. Absolutely nothing could be allowed to stop her, no reinforcements could be expected and no failure could be contemplated. Victory or death: these were her only options.

At present, Celine has spent much of her energy in shaping Selene into becoming a reasonable soldier and athlete - a daunting task considering the resistance she girl is giving her. Celine cannot understand why the broken maniac won't accept her commands (and Celine does not take failure or disappointment peacefully), but pushes her to overcome her crippling weaknesses. For now, she has attempted to insinuate herselves into the ranks of the Inevitable Evolution - a paramilitary organization which might provide her the contacts necessary to take her home world back from its oppressive rulers.

The Truth Revealed

Following a disastrous confrontation between IE leader Run Riot and one of his subordinates, the entire submarine base of IE was dislodged and brought to the surface of the Rogue Isles - in the middle of St. Martial. Arachnos pounced at the chance to cripple the revolutionary dissident force, ultimately resulting in a Grand Guignol-style triple-threat brawl between IE, Arachnos, and Longbow (who intervened to stem the civilian casualities as well as to apprehend IE's notorious operatives). Celine was initially involved in the battle, fending off a few fledgling heroes who had jumped into the fray. Eventually, she was separated from the rest of the team during a brutally violent exchange with an implacable "hero" known has the Action Patriot.

By this point, the IE Base's reactors had reached critical failure and a catastrophic explosion was imminent. With time running out and options winnowing down to extreme long-shots, Team Kill expended a vast amount of power shunting the IE base into Praetorian Earth. The base was eventually repaired with assistance from the Praetorian Arachnos Army, but the time it spent in dry-dock allowed IE to interact both with the resistance army and their own dark(er) counterparts within "Natural Selection". A minor piece of correspondence between the Weaver's Army and IE revealed Celine's origins as a Praetorian to the Directors at large. This was later confirmed by Celine in a discussion with Run Riot directly, as she was rather upset that IE had "invaded" Praetoria without contacting her first.

This revelation was quickly overshadowed by the fact that Celine revealed a third co-habitating dimensional counterpart, Aurora Foyle. Aurora revealed herself to be a revoltingly disfigured refugee of an Alternate Earth overrun by bestial vampires, on top of being ruled solely by "Regent Recluse". To make matters worse, Aurora was obviously one of these vampires, although fully in command of her intelligence due to a partial vaccine she had been inocculated with. Aurora has appeared infrequently, and appears to be unconvinced that IE will assist her in finding a cure for her world. Curiously, Aurora does not appear to suffer from the same mental illness as her more familiar counterparts.

Trivia

• Despite being French, Celine cannot cook or sing, and does not find Jerry Lewis in the slightest bit funny.

• Although she speaks French fluently, she does not speak English with a French accent.

• As a component of her "preparation" to be sent to Primal Earth, Celine was psychically prohibited from explicitly communicating the identities of her masters, Praetorian Earth's primary "heroes". As such, she has to use alternative names for them (e.g. "The Warlord" for Tyrant, "The Inventor" for Anti-Matter). Mother Mayhem appears to be one of the only she can refer to directly as "Mother".

Character Origins

The kernel of Celine's inspiration and origin is discussed here.

However, playing around with CoX's Praetorian Earth was a little difficult since it is not exactly fully fleshed out in canonical sources. We have plenty of information on the Praetorian duplicates of the Freedom Phalanx and signature heroes. Not much is written about the duplicates of Arachnos or conventional villains. Virtueverse itself has been a curious resource for how I've represented it in Celine's background, offering a few obvious but inspired ideas (such as the Resistance). I also have been trying to work Praetorian Earth into less of a literal mirror world and more of a warped reflection. Celine is not necessarily an "evil" version of Selene, but one who's life was lived very differently and to much ill effect. To that end, I've tried not to make Praetoria a hackenyed Opposite Land - but rather a dim reflection of Primal Earth. It is a place where the battles are more desperate and where hope is dwindling - but is not extinct. Those in Primal Earth who are morally neutral might find their correspondent in Praetoria a zealous crusader for one faction or the other. When contemplating a City of Rogues and Rebels - it might be intriguing to see where one's character land if pushed to the brink of their own morality and ethics. Would their armor crack, or would they break out of their shell?

Footnotes

1. ↑ Her natural hair color is pink, a cosmetic expression of her mutant genome.
2. ↑ To those knowledgeable, these are very clearly scars left by being scourged, or whipped. Given that the scars are old and well-healed, she must have obtained them at an incredibly young age. Oddly, her counterpart lacks these superficial scars (although she has her own).
3. ↑ These two diagnoses are distinct, but commonly confused. Even her own mental care providers have debated the "correct" diagnosis. Dr. Perrin, her present psychiatrist, opts for DPD being as Celine has a long history of conduct disorders.
4. ↑ Emphasis on immediate.
5. ↑ Celine has mordantly commented that her sister "doesn't have the stomach" for the deeds and interactions she participates in, and chooses not to watch through the lens of the Caul while Celine is active.
6. ↑ Celine has commented that she has been attacked by zoomorphs before without contracting their conditions.
7. ↑ As with other physical oddities particular to Celine, Selene does not share this carrier status.
8. ↑ HSS was chosen over high-carbon steel due to the potential for use against opponents with extremely high surface temperature.
9. ↑ Including a rather sickening period in which her own mutated father was used as the tool of her torment. Celine's mother committed (a rather messy) suicide following a compulsory "invitation" to witness one of these "training sessions". Police footage and photographs of the scene were then recycled for Celine's "education".
10. ↑ Particularly since her own parents, whom she hated no less, were already dead.
11. ↑ "Red isn't the opposite of Black!" Yes it is; try reading some Stendhal.
12. ↑ Read: torture
13. ↑ This event has been compared to the FPS phenomenon of "telefragging". Psychic gibbitude.
14. ↑ Why would it? She had never been taught to feel pity or empathy for anyone.