Psylvia
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| [[Image:|300px|]] | |
| Psylvia | |
| Player: @Psylvia | |
| Origin: | Natural |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Dominator |
| Threat Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Sylvia Daniels |
| Known Aliases: | Test Subject HF-00-714 |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 15 |
| Height: | ' |
| Weight: | ' |
| Eye Color: | Unknown |
| Hair Color: | Black |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | U.S. |
| Occupation: | None |
| Place of Birth: | Paragon City |
| Base of Operations: | Rogue Isles |
| Marital Status: | Unknown |
| Known Relatives: | Jason and Linda Daniels (father and mother, deceased) Curt Daniels (older brother, alive) |
| Known Powers | |
| Telekenisis, Telepathy, Teleportation, Invisibility | |
| Known Abilities | |
| ' | |
| Equipment | |
| Arachnos Mace | |
| ' | |
Contents |
Introduction
Psylvia is a teenage girl with powers of no discernible origin. Analyses of her DNA return as completely normal. She gives off no paranormal or psychic signatures. Extensive X-rays, CAT scans, and MRI's have found no evidence of cybernetic implants, nanotechnology, cellular alteration, or anything else. By all rights, she should not be a super-powered individual. Nevertheless, she has exhibited a variety of abnormal abilities, primarily of a violent psionic nature. She is very withdrawn, rarely speaking vocally, though she is somewhat more conversational with other telepaths. Her demeanor is imperturbable; though she will react with deadly force if provoked, she remains detached even in the midst of combat.
History
Childhood
Sylvia Daniels was born to Jason and Linda Daniels in the summer of 1993. Her parents were white-collar workers in the Steel Canyon district of Paragon City, and at first her childhood was happy and healthy. She and her older brother were loved and well-cared-for, if in the somewhat distant way of professional parents in the modern family.
At the age of seven, she began to suffer from chronic migraines. Jason and Linda sought medical treatment for their daughter, but none of the experts who examined her could diagnose the cause of her condition. Several months later, she experienced her first, uncontrolled psionic outburst. More incidents of increasing magnitude followed, and the Paragon Police Department was forced to commit her to a specialized ward of Hammond Medical Center for reasons of public safety. Powerful sedatives were used to dull her pain and keep medical staff safe from their patient, but Sylvia would inevitably develop resistances to these drugs. Complete physical restraint and isolation would then be necessary until another successful sedative could be developed. Her parents did their best to show that they cared for her, but she spent months oscillating between drugged torpor and excruciating confinement.
And then the Rikti invaded.
Invasion
Paragon City's hospitals were prime targets in the first minutes of the Rikti Invasion, and Hammond Medical was no exception. The city's defenders put up a tenacious defense, but Hammond Medical could not be held for long and an evacuation was put into effect. Sylvia was in a drugged, comatose state at the time of the invasion. Her supervising specialist, Dr. Nathan Brown, informed the hero in charge of the evacuation, Frost Vine, that Sylvia could not safely be moved; if she awoke during transfer, she could inflict terrible damage on the other evacuees. With a heavy heart, Frost Vine ordered that Sylvia and several other patients too difficult to transport be left behind. Frost Vine herself would stay with them, fighting a hopeless battle to delay the Rikti attackers and buy time for the evacuees to reach safety.
Several hours later, as Frost Vine and another volunteer, Astrothrust, fought the Rikti room to room in the darkened hospital, Sylvia awoke. Blinded by the agony of her uncontrolled powers, she made her way through the facility, a terrible, walking maelstrom of gravitic and psionic destruction. She eventually collapsed back into merciful unconsciousness. When the hospital was reclaimed by humans a few months later, pieces of Frost Vine, Astrothrust, numerous Rikti, and the other abandoned patients would be found throughout the building.
Capture
Scooped up by the surviving Rikti troops, Sylvia would have been borne off to the Rikti homeworld for vivisection if not for help from an unlikely source: an opportunistic strike team of Crey Industries scavengers, picking the battlefield for Rikti technology and dead heroes. The Rikti soldiers, weakened by their battle in the hospital, quickly fell to the Crey team's inferior but well-coordinated firepower. Sylvia, and DNA samples of Frost Vine and Astrothrust, were taken to one of Crey's many secret research facilities.
Crey Industries found Sylvia Daniels, aka Test Subject HF-00-714, to be quite troublesome. Without access to her complete medical records, their researchers often attempted to control her with drugs against which, unknown to them, she had already developed immunities. This led to several deaths among the Crey scientists and security staff. They soon changed tactics, relying primarily on physical restraints. Sylvia spent two years in chains, subjected to cruel experiments designed to test the strength and exact nature of her powers.
Although she suffered greatly, Sylvia slowly gained some measure of control over her abilities. Unmedicated, her lucid periods, though painful, became more frequent, and she started to piece together what had happened to her. She became aware of her inhuman treatment, and she quickly came to hate these doctors who treated her so differently than the doctors who had tried to help her before. She wanted to hurt them back.
But while her condition was improving, Crey Industries was not seeing a return on its investment. After two years they knew as little about the source of her abilities as the day they had captured her. All tests came back negative. Paragon Protector clones made from her tissue samples displayed no super powers and were destroyed as useless. She had demolished several very expensive containment units during escape attempts and killed personnel whenever they underestimated her strength. They were afraid of her, and they hated her for failing to yield her secrets. Top scientists were shattering their careers on her like waves on Gibraltar.
Commodity
Still, Lady Crey demanded results. Several staff members went mad from the pressure, for which Sylvia was blamed. The experiments became less scientific and more punitive. Sylvia suffered more and more injuries during tests, but her captors did not dare to kill her and her control only sharpened as they pushed her harder. Fearing a deadly end to this cycle, the head of security for the facility, Michael Drexler, arranged to have the problem taken off his hands.
Drexler struck a deal with his contacts in the Malta Group. In exchange for a large cash payment, Drexler provided them with access codes to the Crey facility and all the information the company had on Test Subject HF-00-714. Malta swept in, wiped out the personal rivals that Drexler had scheduled to work security that day, and captured Sylvia.
Thus began a cycle that lasted for the next four years. Malta could no more crack the secret of Sylvia's powers than Crey. She was sold to the Tsoo, kidnapped by the Circle of Thorns, traded to Arachnos, ransomed to Nemesis, and so on. Everyone tortured her, no one could learn anything from her, and she killed anyone she could, whenever she could. No one profited from possessing her. At last, in early 2008, at the age of 15, she escaped from Council custody, in complete command of her unknowable powers.
