Kasdaye
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
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| Kasdaye in Cap au Diable | |
| Kasdaye | |
| Player: Primana | |
| Origin: | Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Stalker |
| Threat Level: | 31 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Amelia Anne Livy |
| Known Aliases: | Amy, Kas |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 26 |
| Height: | 5’9” |
| Weight: | 150 |
| Eye Color: | Brown |
| Hair Color: | Black |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | US Citizen |
| Occupation: | Mercenary |
| Place of Birth: | Appleton, WI |
| Base of Operations: | Confidential |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Joseph Livy (father, deceased); Annalisa Livy (mother, deceased); Cody Livy (grandfather); Margaret Livy (grandmother) |
| Known Powers | |
| Can summon a sword made of pure energy, become almost completely invisible when she wishes, and has extremely high regenerative capabilities | |
| Known Abilities | |
| ' | |
| Equipment | |
| Kasdaye’s sword is not a physical object, but a manifestation of will and shard energy. | |
| Complete nutball. | |
Kasdaye is a reinvention of an earlier character, a reimagining of what it might be like, in a universe like CoX, to play a truly insane person. Not one of the goofy, loveable insane people that dominate, but really, deeply crazy. It’s meant delving into some uncomfortable topics and discovering that I am quite possibly sick myself, but Kasdaye is never, ever boring.
Contents |
Affiliations
Kasdaye is no longer associated with any formal group in the Rogue Isles, and is completely freelance. She was originally part of the Crimson Order but left after its leader, Scion, was assassinated.
Personality
Whenever you encounter Kasdaye, be aware of one simple fact: She hasn’t attacked you because you have nothing she wants. She doesn’t see or understand “power levels”, she doesn’t mind getting hurt badly, she doesn’t understand laws or rules. She understands only that she wants things, that people have things, and that the easiest way to get these things is to kill the people who have them. She was once described as an oubliette, someone into whom experiences enter and fade away into nothing.
After years of work by Thomas Cross (using his telepathy and empathy) and the shard itself, Kasdaye has made enormous strides. She is still very self-contained, but it is possible to speak with her. She may permit herself to be seen. She probably won’t try and kill you at first.
Powers
Katana
Kasdaye is a shard-bearer, manifesting the energy of the shard as a sword that appears and disappears at her will.
Regeneration
Kasdaye has a long and very unhealthy relationship with pain that will not be detailed here. Her honed ability to tolerate pain in crippling amounts has seemingly caused the shard to grant her the ability to heal from damage inflicted upon her.
Flight
Like all shard-bearers, Kasdaye can fly.
Character History
Amelia Anne Livy was on the line between a mass murderer and a serial killer. She didn't really have a specific victim type, and she didn't kill large numbers of people at once. What she did do before the shard was travel city to city, killing people for their money or their possessions, and moving when too many police started showing up.
As Amy, she used a knife. Just a simple hunting knife that can be purchased in any Wal-Mart. She would follow the person, stab them in the spine, take what she wanted, and walk off. She didn’t (and still doesn’t) like a lot of yelling, she didn’t (and doesn’t) like blood.
And that was her adult life. Shelter, food, clothing for warmth, moving place to place and living each day tending to those wants. She had no hobbies. She had no pastimes. She was, in essence, an animal with human-level intelligence.
She arrived in Paragon City from Philadelphia, where her latest string of killings had attracted too much police attention. In Paragon City, she saw her first hero. Recognizing only that he was beautiful and powerful, and having no other means of dealing with what she saw, she tried to kill him as well. He subdued her and turned her over to the authorities where her past finally caught up with her.
Her public defender engaged the services of a state-appointed psychiatrist, who found the girl fascinating. He had several sessions with her before she even acknowledged his existence, though her repeated escape attempts indicated she understood something of where she was and what was going on. He made a connection with her finally through cigarettes; if he brought her cigarettes, he could get her attention and get her to answer a few questions. When she didn’t want to talk anymore, she’d simply stop talking and nothing could make her continue.
During one of their sessions, Amy flipped over the table in the room, wedging it between the door and the wall. She then slipped her manacled hands over the neck of the guard in the room and began choking him. When the guards finally broke through the door, Amy was shot, beaten, and subdued. A judge ordered her transferred to the Zig to be held prior to her trial. On the way to the Zig, the van transferring her was attacked, the guards and her psychiatrist were shot and killed, and Amy vanished.
Her “rescue” had been orchestrated by Lucius Nigel Lord, a criminal mastermind who never revealed the reason for his interest in her. Her rescuer was a man known as Recoil. Before he could take her to Lord, he was contacted by Scion, a powerful shardbearer and the first of the “evil” shard-bearers to come to prominence. Scion gave Kasdaye a shard by killing her with it, stabbing her through the heart. The shard healed her, and when she revived she had gained several new abilities, all frightening given the girl’s lack of mental health. Her choice of weapons expressed itself as a sword most closely resembling a katana. She could render herself all but invisible at will. And she healed from physical damage at an incredible rate.
Amy, now calling herself Kasdaye (the demon of blood sacrifice who supposedly taught abortion to mankind), rarely worked alone. Instead, she was almost constantly found in the company of other members of the Order, particularly Thomas Cross.
Kasdaye was eventually captured by agents of Longbow. Kasdaye had attacked the Longbow installation when, in the middle of the fight, she abruptly stopped moving. She made no attempt to resist as they subdued her, restrained her, and had her transported to the Zig. This catatonia coincides with the moment of the death of Scion.
Ziggursky officials were alarmed by the apparent inability of the prison’s systems to restrict her powers. Although she never manifested the sword nor went invisible, her regeneration rate never abated and, oddly enough, her Order uniform never went away. All attempts to clothe her in the prison jumpsuit failed. Kasdaye did not remove the suit; it simply disintegrated.
During one of Arachnos’ breakout attempts, Kasdaye vanished from the prison. She has taken up her association with Thomas Cross again, though the two remain separate from the remnants of the old Crimson Order. Although Cross has managed to semi-redeem his reputation through charitable works, cooperation with Paragon City police, and even registering as a hero in Paragon City, Kasdaye remains firmly in the Rogue Isles. She has an apartment in St. Martial, and manages to pay her bills on time.
Insanity
Thomas has worked extensively with Kasdaye. She trusts him implicitly, both because he is a shard-bearer (and therefore she can sense him through her shard) and a telepath/empath. Since Thomas can communicate with her without making her resort to her imprecise grasp of expression through words, she enjoys communicating with him. It is unlikely that anyone would have reached inside her silence to find the girl within if they did not have his particular and peculiar combination of gifts.
Kasdaye persists in believing that most people are not, in fact, real. They are, to her, the equivalent of mobile pieces of furniture. Her association with shardbearers has only strengthened this certainty. She can “feel” shardbearers, but not other people. Therefore shardbearers are the only people she believes are real. Thomas has informed her that all people are real. She’s willing to accept this assertion because it’s Thomas who’s said it, but this acceptance is all intellectual and not emotional. Sometimes she forgets.
Kasdaye’s biggest hurdle at the moment is a complete lack of understanding of how to communicate. She barely knows how to feel, and has no idea what to do about what she feels. Most of her emotional states are mild to non-existent. She has no anger, no fury, no lust. In the rare moments when she does feel things, she generally doesn’t react to them. Only very recently has this changed at all.
Thomas has arranged for Kasdaye to get piano lessons from a member of the Cerulean Legion. After one lesson, she rejected the notion. It had been her understanding that songs could convey meaning, and that by playing a certain song, she could communicate something she felt without having to resort to words. The initial forays into music proved frustrating for her when (as she puts it) she learned that “you push the keys harder to mean different things, and there’s harder-happy and harder-angry”. She found this just as indecipherable as subtler uses of language. After later being told that sheet music will tell a performer how “hard” to play and at what tempo, Kasdaye has agreed to make another attempt.
She does not like being looked at, and doesn’t like being touched. Her default state is, accordingly, “invisible”. Looking, touching, and talking are all forms of interaction, and her dislike of any of these is tied to her inability to even understand let alone utilize the nuances of any form of communication. With encouragement from Thomas, she has begun to make the attempt to communicate, but these attempts have not gone well. Her speech is often simplistic in composition, made up of strings of simple statements of fact, with the result that she often sounds like a mental midget. Since she isn’t, she is aware of how she sounds and is frustrated by her inability to express herself correctly.
Kasdaye has voluntarily begun therapy. Her therapist is a woman who does volunteer work in the Rogue Isles, a woman who claims she cannot cure Kasdaye but has as her goal teaching Kasdaye how to control herself and how to want to do so in the first place. Kasdaye's desire to take this step has come from a growing desire to fit in better. Fitting in, she has come to realize, will allow her to pass unseen through crowds of people even better than her invisibility can. She is studying humanity and trying to pass herself off as human. Most people will notice no difference in her behavior, but with Thomas (naturally) she has become more verbally communicative, able to express complex thought and emotion.
Stories
These stories collectively tell how Amy became Kasdaye, but they were separated when I originally posted them, and so I separate them here.
Poor Little Crazy Girl : One of Amy's earlier interviews with the psychiatrist. Ask a simple question...
The Escape : Enter Recoil, exit Amy.
The Genesis of Sanity : a.k.a. Scion makes a nutball into a superpowered nutball. WTG.
