Fearful Symmetry
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| [[Image:|300px|]] | |
| Feaful Symmetry | |
| Player: @Miss Abyss | |
| Origin: | Science |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Dominator |
| Threat Level: | 34 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Pandora Leromenos |
| Known Aliases: | None |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 137 (total years: 83 in Universe Prime; 54 in Universe One) |
| Height: | 5'7 |
| Weight: | Not applicable |
| Eye Color: | Yellow |
| Hair Color: | Cyan |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | Former Member of the Socialist States of America, current affiliation with the Democracy of Free China |
| Occupation: | Physicist/Mercenary/Mad Scientist |
| Place of Birth: | Chicago |
| Base of Operations: | Confidential |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Xu (husband, deceased), Dmitrios (son), Mia (daughter), Mother & Father (deceased), unnamed siblings (4, one brother deceased, two brothers and a sister remaining) |
| Known Powers | |
| Power over the four forces of the universe: strong force, weak force, gravity, and electromagnetism (but specializing in gravitational and density control) | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Brilliant machinist and theoretical physicist | |
| Equipment | |
| GRAV (Gravity and Relativity Adaptation Vehicle) | |
| Symmetry is from an alternate and relatively soon to be doomed dimension. | |
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
~~The Tyger by William Blake
Contents |
Origin
[Note: This is being rewritten. I'm just lazy and got a crap first draft out.]
Pandora was born in the Socialist States of America. As with a true communist country, each person gave to the best of their ability. Young Pandora was found to have a brilliant mind for math and spatial relations, thus qualifying her for the Advanced Start Program. She left her home at the age of four, and rarely saw her parents or siblings after that.
When she began school, she was shy, but learned to soon overcome that as the surroundings stimulated her awakening mind. She wasn't the brightest one in her class, but she had a way of thinking around corners that garnered her attention. When the time came at thirteen to test for her aptitude, she scored high in theoretical physics and aeronautics...the perfect candidate eventually for the space program. Excited about her opportunities, she threw herself into her studies, not neglecting the body either--an aeronaut had to be at the peak of their physical form. She split her time between study and work outs.
However, as her mind grew and her hunger for knowledge expanded, she found that certain areas were lacking in her society. The older she became, the more she reasoned that a communist society would not, and never would, work properly because of the human equation. She kept these ideas to herself, however, because as much as the classes between a supposedly classless society became visible, she was one of the privileged few... the cream of the crop. While the disparity bothered her, it was not about to stop her from taking advantage of the system.
When she graduated and entered training for the space program at twenty-one, it was perhaps the happiest day of her life. Everything she had done led her to this point, and she was determined to do her best to improve the lives of her people. Because she was raised in that particular society, her mindset was one of genuine earnestness: she really wanted to help. The niggling doubt the communist society was not the best for everyone kept at her though, often leading her into debating moral quandaries internally, comparing and contrasting the various governmental styles.
Pandora was instrumental in creating the fatline, which is slang for the Faster Than Light Communications Line, meant to speed communication between Earth and the various space stations throughout the solar system. It was revolutionary, and soon made the SSA rich as the other countries of the world clambered for the technology. She was hailed as a genius with her fellow researchers, and that was when she approached the Board at twenty-nine with her theory of Faster Than Light (FTL) travel, by a means of folding space. While it worked on the same theory, the Chairman of the Board denied her request to test her theory in space, a practical test. Impossible, they told her. It would cost too much.
Disillusioned and not comprehending why the SSA would want to prevent her tests, she withdrew from her research team, citing the need to take a break. That was granted, and she went back to visit her family in Chicago. A few years had passed since the fatline was introduced and money was made on it by her country, yet she could see that nothing had really improved for the common people. If they wouldn't do it, perhaps some other country would be interested....
...which left only the Democracy of Free China. Democracy was a woefully inefficient government system, but at least they gave everyone the same shot and let them loose to see what they could make of it. It wasn't ideal... but it was also the only country who could possibly afford the craft she was thinking of making. She defected, with some difficulty, and burned her bridges behind her.
The DFC was more than happy to receive her, and after giving them the same proposal she gave the Board, gave her a research grant. If she could make this technology work, it would literally open up new worlds for the world. Pandora immediately began to work.
Ten years later, she was successful, with the help of a man by the name of Xu. He was her right hand man, grounding her idealism in practicality. The two fell in love and married, having two children. The FTL drive worked near perfectly, it was relatively cheap to make (only a few million), and it was able to be fitted to any model of spacecraft. The only problem was the fuel source: radioactive material, and a lot of it. It produced an excess of waste that was left behind at the origin point, and plutonium and uranium didn't exactly grow on trees. Still, the project was a complete success and would work for the moment until they either found another power source or another source of radioactive material on another world somewhere. This was a time of peace for Pandora, as unlike in her homeland, she was rewarded in the DFC for her hard work. Their family was set for life on a mere fraction of the trademark money. A large portion went back to the government, and the rest she insisted be set up for social programs for the masses, enabling them to improve themselves and by proxy, their country.
Years later, she would realize what a mistake inventing FTL travel was. Perhaps the socialists had seen it coming, and perhaps not, but as countries bought the technology and used it (as a side effect of the invention was to cause great strides in astronomy) to seek out new worlds, problems arose. Sometimes, there were aliens already present, and were either bartered with, or warred upon. The countries of her homeworld began fights with each other, desperate for expansion... and the fuel necessary to fuel it, which was rapidly running out. Pollution literally fell from the sky as the waste products from the FTL ships entered the atmosphere, causing acid rain in some spots, and radioactive fallout in others. Her idealistic ideas began crashing down upon her as she realized... nothing would ever work. Humanity simply could not govern itself. It was an impossible task to create things for everyone to use fairly and equally, while rewarding drive and ingenuity and punishing laziness. The idea which she thought would unite the world in exploration and knowledge began to splinter it even further.
Well, she simply had to do something about it. Pandora considered herself a great humanitarian and (having won the Prinze Prize for Physics twice) thought about her options. The very first thing to do would be to find another energy source, a limitless one. Cold fusion was near-impossible, and harnessing the power of the sun (a virtually limitless source of energy) was horribly inefficient. Pandora worked on ways to increase energy output, but it was nothing near what was needed. Her husband was the one who came up with the idea. Astronomy--now considered a vital science--had discovered a peculiar object in the cosmos, what they were calling a singularity, since it was previously unknown. She collected all the data she could about it, studying it from every possible angle. Finally, she made the move out to the edge of space with her husband to study it close hand.
The best she could figure is that it was a superdense, superpacked ball of... mass of some sort, just... sitting here. It wasn't a planet, and it wasn't a black hole (although it's gravitational pull was incredibly strong), and it wasn't a star. It was unique. Like fission, she thought if there was some way to split a tiny part of that mass off, there should be a release of energy... if that was even possible. The last years of her life were spent in a colony on Theta Two, studying the effects of this singularity.
It was possible, she decided, but there was no way to know how much energy would be released. Using up her fortune (which was considerable at this point in time, as she was seventy-eight, years of collecting outrageous royalties on her various inventions), her and her husband sank everything they had into making a very special ship. It took five years to be completed. Not knowing if this would be her last great gift to humanity, she wanted to go along. Xu, who would never let her go alone, accompanied her. They traveled to the edge of the singularity, and when the final calculations were completed, the machine was activated.
The singularity exploded.
She found herself somewhere else, with a strange landscape and people around her, people with dark skin and funny colored hair speaking an incomprehensible tongue. The rest of the crew and her husband were killed, a few surviving a few days after the blast only to succumb shortly thereafter. She nearly died the first few years she was in this universe from simple common diseases, as her body had no immunities whatsoever. It took her months to realize that it WAS Earth, just a different variety than what she was used to, an alternate dimension, an entirely different universe.
For her own good, she was tucked away and isolated. Pandora was appalled at the state of technology here, having come to Universe One (as she came to call it) in the 1950's. The government officials did the best they could, but nothing they could do really helped: their tech was too primitive, their 'magics' didn't affect her at all, and their psychics shook their heads and told the officials it was impossible.
At the same time, phenomena which was impossible happened around her. The forces of the universe seemed out of control, gravity--a constant--changing, things dissolving or exploding, items appearing out of nowhere... she was contained in a top secret facility, in a small room within layers of concrete to minimize the damage. They had no idea what was going on, but Pandora had an inkling. She wasn't only FROM another universe, but was a PORTAL back home. At least... the activity seemed to be centered on her. This was confirmed when she saw a fissure in a wall one day, and reached through it... pulling out a lamp.
A find like this the American government wasn't about to let go, and Pandora didn't care as long as they gave her space to let her do as she liked. They recorded her for years, watching the hole from which she pulled things, and put things (the objects that 'dissolved' really weren't, but rather had faded into Universe Prime, Pandora's home). It was unfortunate that what she pulled out was random--she evidently had no control over this power. She was often sick during these years, but as time went by, she and the scientists watching her realized: she was aging backwards.
It was this universe rejecting her, she reasoned, as the laws of this space/time were not compatible with the laws of her space/time, and eventually, like any decreasing system, she would simply stop, fade away. The uniqueness of her "powers" protected her from the laws of space, but it made up for it by the laws of time. Time was not a constant for her, and this effect grew worse as time passed. A second would become two. A minute would take five, or be split in half. The only thing steady was the aging, grinding her down.
The other problem with the incompatibility was her vulnerability to the utterly alien diseases. Like the Martians in the War of the Worlds, a single virus could be the end of her. Most of the food was toxic, and what she could eat was limited... every once in a while she would luck out and pull something edible from her universe, but everything else was what this universe considered poison.
It became obvious to her, after a number of years and limited communication--her and some of the top liguists around the country did develop a translator after a while--that this American government would never let her go. Not only could she do untold damage upon the countryside should she survive, but also the resources of an untapped resources were held captive at their fingertips... if they could find a way to channel it. Although they might be alien to her, they were people nevertheless... and government officials to boot. She sought a way out.
She experimented with these powers in secret as best she could, figuring out that she was drawing it through this portal inside her to negate the forces of this universe. It wasn't a perfect opposite, unfortunately, as that would have been easy to figure out but a complex balance contained within her body, her very flesh. When she bent her mind to it, she could alter that balance, either absorbing or negating some of the forces of this universe, or channeling the forces of her universe into this one to wreak havoc. In short, she found a way out, and after stealing one of their filtration suits, she simply walked out of the facility, leaving a swath of destruction behind her, in 2006, when she was twenty-eight... or a hundred and twenty-eight... years old, depending upon how one looked at it.
Pandora went immediately underground, procuring the resources she needed from her universe by pulling out piece after piece until she found suitable metals, and stealing what she needed. In that way, she created her first suit of armor, built to protect her and safely filtrate the air. She is never seen out of the armor. After securing her means of survival, she bent her mind to figuring out how to get back to her universe. The laws of physics didn't seem to apply much here, so she studied
Powers
Fearful Symmetry's powers come literally from an alternate universe. Due to the accident and a quirk of quantum physics, she channels the primal forces of that universe to alter the primal forces of this universe. In a sense, her universe is contained within her, or the portal to that universe. Even she is not exactly certain. It comes in four varieties: Strong Force, Weak Force, Gravity, and Electromagnetism.
Strong Force and Weak Force
The strong interaction or strong force is today understood to represent the interactions between quarks and gluons as detailed by the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). This fundamental force is responsible for the cohesion of particles in the atomic nucleus. The strong force is the fundamental force mediated by gluons, acting upon quarks, antiquarks, and the gluons themselves. The weak interaction or weak force affects all left-handed leptons and quarks. It is the only force affecting neutrinos (except for gravitation, which is negligible on laboratory scales). It is the weakest of the four basic forces, and short range only, noted for the ability to change flavors.
Pandora channels her universe's strong and weak force to counter this universe's strong and weak force. When channeling this power, her hands glow red. Hitting someone with these attacks often knock them off their feet, or disorient them as the energies bonding their atoms are temporarily incongruous with their universe.
In game terms, the energy blasts are Strong Force and the hand to hand melee attacks (ie, red pom pons of death) are Weak Force.
Gravitational Control
Gravitation is a natural phenomenon by which all objects with mass attract each other, and is one of the fundamental forces of physics. In everyday life, gravitation is most commonly thought of as the agency that gives objects weight. The terms gravitation and gravity are mostly interchangeable in everyday use, but in scientific usage a distinction may be made. "Gravitation" is a general term describing the attractive influence that all objects with mass exert on each other, while "gravity" specifically refers to a force that is supposed in some theories (such as Newton's) to be the cause of this attraction.
This is the most easily manipulated of Pandora's powers, as it's the most easily understood by her. Quite simply, she alters the gravitational field around a mass, or increases or decreases the force of the gravitational pull in a localized area. She uses this power to fly, by reversing the gravitational pull the Earth exerts on her, as well as encasing her enemies in bubbles of force, rendering them helpless for a short time. She is still discovering how to manipulate this power, refining her calculations to ever more precise formulas.
