Postmortem
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Postmortem | |
| Player: @Wonderslug | |
| Origin: | Science |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Controller |
| Security Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Clayton Farnsworth |
| Known Aliases: | Post |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 30 |
| Height: | 6' |
| Weight: | 175lb |
| Eye Color: | Blue |
| Hair Color: | Black |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Legally none, thanks to IRS red tape |
| Place of Birth: | Paragon City |
| Base of Operations: | Paragon City |
| Marital Status: | Engaged |
| Known Relatives: | Parents, sister, brother |
| Known Powers | |
| Cryogenic and kinetic manipulation | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Medical knowledge | |
| Equipment | |
| The beepy thing | |
| No additional information available. | |
I have picked extradimensional fruit while the Eye of Sauron's bastard love children tried to eat my head. I'm good on weird, thanks. - Postmortem
Contents |
Personality
Tired. Postmortem is extremely tired, in the sense of being thoroughly fed up and in the mood for a change. Just once he would like to see a month--or even a week--go by without something exploding, imploding, warping spacetime, or eating public monuments. It amazes him how blissfully serene his life seemed less than four years ago, and how much utter chaos it manages to attract now. He looks back on normality with nostalgia. He copes by making flippant and dismissive comments about all but the most dire crises, no matter how seriously he may actually take them.
Of course, he could always leave Paragon and find somewhere quieter to live, but that would a) be cheating, b) be giving up, c) be abdicating what he sees as a personal responsibility, and as a practical consideration d) require giving up the under-the-table stipend he gets from the city, since the IRS (despite years of wrangling and many lawyers) still has him classed as legally dead and therefore unemployable.
Physiology
Postmortem is very quick to point out that he is not actually dead, although conventional medicine would be very hard-pressed to call him "alive." He possesses all the standard vital signs, but at a greatly reduced level. Additionally, his body naturally gravitates toward room temperature; he can lower it voluntarily, but it appears to be entirely impossible for him to maintain body heat in excess of the ambient temperature for any appreciable time.
His metabolism works extremely slowly; he could theoretically subsist entirely on siphoned energy for substantial periods, but his powers seem rather energy-inefficient. When he uses them extensively he needs to ingest about as much as a large and rather hungry man to maintain equilibrium.
Powers
Abilities
He possesses a degree in biology and made it through a few years of medical school before deciding that cadavers were gross and he really didn't want to root around in them anymore. He was a research assistant at Cygnus Medical Center for several years before his "death."
Weaknesses and Limitations
Physically, Postmortem is not especially imposing. He's not especially strong, bullets do not bounce off him, and being hit with a giant mallet is seriously unpleasant. He's damn hard to kill, but not very hard at all to hurt.
Equipment
One of the prototype items being tested at Cygnus at the time of his "accident" was a small, handheld first-aid device that can perform a number of basic medical functions, which his former boss encouraged him to "forget" to return. It has a cumbersome technical name, but he generally thinks of it as the Beepy Thing.
Affiliations
Postmortem is one of the founding members of the D.F.B Crew, which he is inclined to think of as average schmoes taking back the streets--except really they're not all that average, they just have a lower spandex ratio than many groups. Since the apparent demise of the group founder in the temporally-contested version of Atlas Park known as Recluse's Victory, he's found himself dealing with what few administrative duties are required to keep the group operating more or less by default.
Individual Allies
Elisa
Elisa Morales was Post's first real hero contact. It's not entirely clear how they first met, but he was one of the first to join when she decided to form her own group. He's not entirely convinced she's dead; stranger things have happened.
Brick Wilson
Never much of a football fan, Post was never wowed by working with Paragon's hometown sports-hero-turned-elemental-savant. However, they get along well together and share something of the same It's-Tuesday-so-Nemesis-must-be-attacking attitude.
Kusanagi
Kusanagi evokes mixed feelings for Post. They worked together extensively several years ago, and he saw her conquer many of her inner demons. He knows that she is not dead, despite rumors to the contrary, and has a vague awareness of where she is and some faint idea of what she's doing. But he does not at all approve, and especially does not approve of the effect her absence has had on her adopted daughter.
Douglas Smith
Post worked extensively with Doug, especially during the interesting period following his ill-advised decision to play Whack-a-Mole with the controls of a Malta device designed to implant memories stolen from the Revenant Hero Project, during which Doug believed himself to be, variously, a black hero from before the Civil Rights movement, an electrically-charged insectoid, and then a bewildering and eye-watering conglomeration of people.
Spacey
When Spacey was first starting out, Post served as a sort of mentor for a while; later, he felt obliged to keep an eye on him to make sure Spacey didn't accidentally annex any sovereign nations or get his hands on any more giant doomsday weapons than absolutely necessary.
Adversaries
Derrick Snidely
Postmortem has dealt with any number of villains, some many, many times, but the only one to develop a truly personal rivalry with him is the man responsible for the attempted murder that led to his transformation. Snidely finally revealed himself as a Crey agent about six months after his murder attempt when he kidnapped Post's fiancée--allegedly for use in the Revenant Hero Project, but more likely because he, too, was smitten by her. He was soundly thrashed by all involved and fled in disgrace, whereupon Crey terminated his employment and decried him as a dangerous rogue. His fate after that is unknown.
Character History
From a report by Indigo:
...surveillance suggests Postmortem's powers had their genesis in an unlikely alliance between the followers of Dr. Vazhilok and the branches of Crey Industries's biomedical division responsible for the development of the Revenant Hero Project. In exchange for Crey funding and cryonic preservation technology, the Vahzilok apparently agreed to reveal the techniques used in the reanimation of dead tissues and the grafting processes used to convert nonmetahumans into eidolons. The liaison between the two was one Dr. Derrick Snidely, posing as a medical researcher at Galaxy City's Cygnus Medical Center, where Clayton Farnsworth was also employed. The joint project constructed by the two groups went by the unlikely name of "Embalmatron 6000," and we surmise Snidely's decision to use Farnsworth as a guinea pig rather than a less conspicuous victim was motivated by a personal dispute over the affections of one nurse Prunella Nightingale (herself a retired hero, unknown to both of them at the time). Farnsworth was evidently not expected to survive.
The Embalmatron seems to have been some combination of cryonic preservation chamber and genetic resequencing device. The exact details of its functionality remain unknown, as at some subsequent point Farnsworth located the original and, presumably, only machine and dismantled it with a fireaxe; we do know, however, that some aspects of the technology developed in its construction saw limited use in the Revenant Hero Project itself. The process employed by the Embalmatron was evidently significantly more sophisticated than that used in the creation of eidolons, as Postmortem shows no sign of the decay and organ failure that plagues Dr. Vahzilok's creations. The unchanged decay rate and maintenance schedule of recent eidolons suggests that the Vahzilok lost access to Crey funding and technology after Snidely's disgrace...
Trivia
Post has been around since April 28, 2004, the official start day of CoH. His original costume was hideous; his primary costume now is a less retinally-damaging version of it.
