Piteraq
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Cold Warrior | |
| Piteraq | |
| Player: @FredrikSvanberg | |
| Origin: | Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Corruptor |
| Threat Level: | 14 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Confidential |
| Known Aliases: | Peter Ache |
| Species: | human |
| Age: | 28 |
| Height: | 6'2" |
| Weight: | 150 lbs |
| Eye Color: | white |
| Hair Color: | white |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | U.S. citizen (deceased) |
| Occupation: | paramedic |
| Place of Birth: | Confidential |
| Base of Operations: | Confidential |
| Marital Status: | single |
| Known Relatives: | mother, father, ex-fiancee |
| Known Powers | |
| cryokinesis, pain control | |
| Known Abilities | |
| outdoorsman, trained nurse | |
| Equipment | |
| spirit axe, spirit staff | |
| No additional information available. | |
The Piteraq is a Greenlandic wind phenomenon. Piteraq was created to take advantage of wintery badges and other goodness during the 2008 winter event. Every year I've tried to make an ice-wielding character for this event but they all failed to stick around. Hopefully this time it'll last.
Contents |
Affiliations
Personality
"Peter" is tormented by the fact that he is possessed by a winter spirit who is interested only in spreading cold and causing pain. If he was braver he might have wanted the spirit exorcised but the fact of the matter is that the spirit is the only thing keeping him alive. He is actually a walking corpse animated through the power of the spirit called Piteraq and if the spirit was to be forced out of his body he would die. So he lingers on and tries to prevent Piteraq from causing too much destruction and killing too many people, but no matter how hard he tries the spirit always seems to find a way to break him down. The things that weighs heaviest on his conscience is that he could end the cycle instantly by ending his own life and depriving the spirit of a body, but he's too much of a coward to do it.
The spirit Piteraq is a creature of cold, pain and solitude. While it has access to this body it can feel warmth, pleasure and companionship. It is not going to give it all up for any reason, even if it means that it has to compromise its desire to freeze the world and everything in it. In fact, that desire is starting to fade away now that it has finally got a chance to experience the world instead of merely envying the mortals living in it. Ultimately Piteraq wants a new host body - preferably one that doesn't fight it and prevents it from enjoying itself - but for the moment it remains content.
Powers
Piteraq is a frozen corpse possessed by a winter spirit. He can create ice and cold and numbing pain. He is also able to relieve pain and heal injuries - the same process that lets him cause a person to feel pain can be reversed to soothe and mend.
Before he died he was a great physical specimen, an health-obsessed athlete and adventurer. Death only served to improve his strength and speed, and added greatly to his resilience.
His frozen fists and fingers are hard as ice and sharp like icicles. He can deliver a barrage of devastating punches that blinds his target with pain. His feet are hardened in a similar manner and he can run fast as the wind.
In addition to these powers he can create an axe-like weapon out of ice and spirit-stuff which is especially efficient against undead targets. He can also shoot dark energy from a long black icicle that appears as if by magic in his hand when he needs it.
Abilities
In his former life, Peter was an adventurer who enjoyed taking on extreme challenges such as skiing to the north pole, climbing the deadliest mountains or biking through the Gobi desert. He still knows more about survival in the wilderness than most people. He is a trained nurse and competent medic, once working as part of a helicopter rescue team. That is probably one of the reasons why he can use the spirit's power over pain in a positive way in order to heal and relieve the pain of other people.
As an undead creature he doesn't seem to require food or water, but he is still able to eat and drink and the spirit inside him will often force him to do so in a gluttonous manner, seeking to experience tastes and flavour it can't have without flesh. This goes for other physical urges as well and although his undead and partly frozen body is quite resilient and resistant he can still feel the effect of drugs and alcohol. So far he has not given in to the spirit's urges for sex - the fear of accidentally killing a living partner has given Peter the resolve he needs to keep Piteraq's perverted lusts at bay.
Weaknesses and Limitations
It would be natural to think that a spirit of cold and pain would be averse to fire and heat, but on the contrary, Piteraq seems to enjoy warm conditions. If anything it tries to avoid cold places and instead it seeks out warmth and companionship. Unfortunately his appearance often makes any potential companions flee or at least move to another part of the room.
The spirit is trapped within Peter's body by ancient Inuit shaman magic and can't leave it anymore than Peter could force the spirit to leave. They are bound together, body and soul and spirit, to the point where if one of them died the other will perish as well. As a creature of magic the spirit is governed by its own rules and laws, and as long as the spirit resides within him, so is Peter. There are wards he cannot pass, words he must obey and summons he must follow.
Equipment
Character History
Having bested the dangers of asian mountains, african deserts and south-american jungles, intrepid adventurer Peter Ache set his sights on the snow-covered wastes of the north-american continent. With the intent to ski across the continent starting in Alaska and ending on Greenland, he quit his job as a helicopter paramedic and set off on the planned six-month journey.
Five months later, somewhere on the greenlandic glacier, Peter was in dire straits. He lost the sled which held most of his equipment in a snow-covered crevasse and was forced to biouac in a snowdrift for several days while waiting out a storm. He was certain he was going to die in that makeshift shelter when he started to hallucinate from hunger and cold, or at least so he thought.
What he had believed to be a figment of his imagination turned out to be the manifestation of a spirit called Piteraq. It offered him a way out of the storm, to survive the cold and the hunger, in exchange for sharing his body with the spirit. Out of desperation, Peter agreed to the suggestion, still not quite sure whether it was all a dream or not.
Possessed by the Piteraq, hunger and cold no longer affected him. He left his shelter and walked into the snowstorm, running with the wind for miles until he arrived at the camp of some inuit hunters. Unaware of the spirit they let him in to share their food and shelter, treated his frostbitten hands and feet and gave him a warm bed. The next morning when the storm had passed, Peter woke up to find his shelter dark and cold and the inuits he shared it with frozen to death in their beds.
The rest of the hunters from the other igloos naturally blamed him for their demise. A wizened old shaman among them saw the spirit inside of him and ordered the others to catch him and hold him down. He tried to resist but the bond between him and Piteraq was still fresh and he was not able to use the spirit's powers properly. While chanting mysterious songs the shaman carved strange runes and symbols into his naked skin with a sharpened walrus tusk and then rubbed the wounds with a strange powder mixed with seal fat. When the ritual was complete the inuits drove him away, back into the cold waste, to die along with the spirit.
The Piteraq proved stronger than the shaman had suspected. It stayed alive, pulling the dead body of Peter along with it, refusing to give up. Peter's body may have died but his soul was still bound to it, by the same shaman magic that had bound the spirit's fate to his own. As long as they remained as one they would remain alive, but if one of them perished or their bond was torn apart, both would surely die.
Back home, Peter had been missing for months and eventually his parents and fiancée had come to terms with the fact that he was most likely dead. She found comfort in the arms of his best friend and his parents treated her like their own daughter. His disappearance had brought their two families together after all. Peter witnessed this, leaving frost flowers on their windows as he watched them from the darkness outside. Out of love for his family and girlfriend he couldn't face them as this frozen revenant he had become, but something inside him snapped and urged on by Piteraq's desire for pain he rampaged through his home town, murdering several people by freezing them to death.
When he realized what he had done he knew he could never risk meeting his loved ones face to face, if he were to lose control again. Fighting the spirit's wishes to return to civilization he made it into the Canadian wilderness and further, back to Greenland and the shaman that had cursed him. He managed to track down the old inuit in a village, but the shaman refused to undo his spell and he was once again repelled by magical wards and the guns of the hunters.
For months he wandered without goals, driven by Piteraq's desires for food, warmth, booze and companions. The spirit killed many and injured many more, spreading cold and chaos as they traveled, Peter being too weak and heartbroken to try to resist. As they approached Paragon City from the north, they wandered into a cold-plagued Croatoa where creatures from the spirit world held the village captive under a coat of ice and snow, threatening to destroy the new year and end the world.
Piteraq was disgusted by the redcaps and their pitiful plan. The spirit would not let evil gnomes destroy the world he had just begun to explore. He roused Peter from wallowing in self-pity and together they took up arms against the redcaps. They soon found allies of all sorts, gathered in Croatoa to save the spirit of the new year, and Peter discovered that he could use his power for good as well as bad. While working with members of Broken Halo he decided to join the group in order to turn the spirit's powers into a force for good, and maybe, just maybe, find a way to redeem himself and save his soul in the process.
