Hauntress
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Contents
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MAGI File Data
Real Name:
Victoria "Tori" Croft
Other Aliases:
"The Hauntrix" (totalitarian version from a parallel universe)
Occupation:
Oracle of the Standing Stones, Sorceress, Arcane researcher. Registered Hero.
Legal Status:
Canadian citizen, Honorary Avalonian.
Place of Birth
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Marital Status
Single.
Languages Spoken
English, French, Mandarin Chinese, Ancient Celt, Ancient Greek, Latin, the language of the Avalonian Fey, and the language of Dragons. Most of these languages were learned to facilitate her academic research.
Known Relatives
Alastair and Astrid Croft, parents. Both parents are currently alive and working on Vancouver Island in the Pacific Northwest. Victoria's father is a landscape designer originally from Southern England and her mother, a native Quebequois, manages a greenhouse/nursery. Victoria's father is in his late 40s and her mother is in her late 50s as of 2007.
Known Allies
Miracle Maiden, Miracle Matron, the Zen Dragon. Father Midnight.
Known Enemies
The Cabal, Circle of Thorns, Carnival.
Base of Operations
Greylock Building in Paragon City and her privately-created demi-plane containing her gothic-style libraries and arcane research center.
Physical Statistics
Height
5" 7"
Weight
135 lbs.
Eye Color
Violet
Hair Color
Raven Black
Age
30
Other Distinguishing Features
Straight dark hair. Air of seriousness, wisdom, and mystery. Dry wit.
Affiliations
Gods of the Golden Age, Avalonian Amazons, Illuminati Coven. Previously associated with the Young Gods of the Golden Age.
History
As a child, young Victoria Croft was haunted by the voices and spectres of the dead. Overwhelmed by her ability to “see dead people,” her parents desperately turned to the expertise of a talented Thai mystic known as the Zen Dragon. Zen conducted an extensive examination of young Victoria, only to discover a shocking secret. Young Victoria actually died in the womb, but her mother's mutant ability reanimated the zygote with shadow energy. A rare and odd form of animated undead, Zen Dragon was able to begin to instruct the young girl on how to control and channel her abilities. When she was of sufficient age, the Zen Dragon assisted in her enrollment in a cloistered arcane monastery high in the Zhang Jia Jie mountains of the Hunan Province of China.
It was during her tenure as an aspirant of this monastery that she came across Queen Boudicca of the Celtic Amazons; trapped for an eternity with her sisters in a torturous plane manufactured by the spiteful god Cernnunnos. Victoria aided the Amazons in their escape from this plane to the modern world. Some time later, Boudicca, now known as the Paragon City superhero Miracle Matron facilitated Victoria's entry into the Young Gods of the Golden Age. A sullen, socially isolated, and sarcastic adolescent, Boudicca thought it would benefit Victoria greatly to interact with other young heros of similar power and aptitude.
Victoria, under the superhero registry of ‘The Hauntress’, shared many adventures with the Young Gods, until the day she discovered that the portal to the Celtic Amazon’s new home of Avalon would soon be closing. Her Amazon friends Miracle Matron and her daughter Miracle Maiden were forced to withdraw from the Earth and back to their homeland. Hoping to find a way for them to someday return, The Hauntress elected to accompany them to Avalon to study the problem from this most magical place.
In Avalon, Victoria was given every comfort by the royal court while she worked dutifully on a means of return for her new sisterhood. In this plane of ancient Celtic magic, faeries, and druids, time bore no meaning on the young sorceress, who blossomed into a woman in her twenties . Many things came to pass in Avalon during her absence from Paragon City, and, during her tenure in Avalon, Victoria came to be highly regarded among the Amazons. In time, returning home seemed less and less significant, and Victoria acclimated to life in Avalon as a scholar.
Her highest honor though was when she was inducted into the Order of the Standing Stones; a group of Seers devoted to providing prophesies to protect Avalon and her citizens. During her tenure as Oracle, The Hauntress became aware of a growing darkness that would befall the universe in which the Earth resides. So terrible was the power of this darkness that neither Hauntress nor the other druids of Avalon could pin point its cause; only its vicious effects were visible to them.
Knowing at least that the evil began somewhere on Earth around the time she first left, Hauntress applied the knowledge of a means to get home she had discovered before but was previously unmotivated to use. Victoria made her goodbyes and arrived in Paragon City two months after she left; 15 years older with the most daunting of tasks.
Now, the wizened sorceress and druid of Avalon has sought out her former compatriots in the Gods and Young Gods of the Golden Age to root out and try to prevent her horrible visions from being realized.
Powers
Hauntress possesses a strong and continually developing extrasensory perception. So far this ability has manifested itself in the ability to communicate with spiritual entities across dimensional boundaries and in unpredictable premonitions. She effectively serves as a human conduit for the channeling of extra-dimensional forces. Victoria uses her extensive schooling in the arcane to help focus and refine her powers to various effects. Since she has shown a particular affinity with shadow energy, the Hauntress has chosen to focus her studies on manipulating nether and life force energy into all manner of effects that benefit the defense of her teammates.
Primary Set
Dark Miasma
Secondary Set
Dark Blast
Epic Set
Dark Mastery
Additional Powers
Travel Powers
Flight, Teleportation, Group Teleportation
Power Pool
Fitness
Other Abilities
Sharp wit. Highly intelligent. Incredibly focused and amazing will power.
Weaknesses and Limitations
Although Victoria possesses a formidable willpower, it cannot be ignored that she is nothing more than a spirit given corporeal form through shadow magic. Although her status as 'undead' grants her many immunities, she can also be affected by magic that harms beings of this category.
Equipment
Variable. Victoria often comes into the possession of magical items of varying strength and power from her frequent planar travel and run-ins with powerful magical cabals such as the Circle of Thorns. As a teenager these items were carefully stashed in her quarters, and she became very protective of her privacy so that no one would stumble upon them and risk releasing some deadly effect. In her adulthood she has graduated to storing these items in a demi-plane of her own creation.]]
