Sadie Shear
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
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| Sadie Shear | |
| Player: @SPTrashcan | |
| Origin: | Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Tanker |
| Security Level: | n/a |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Sadishir (Beast of Law) |
| Known Aliases: | None |
| Species: | Chimaera (Unique) |
| Age: | approx. 1700 |
| Height: | 1.6m |
| Weight: | 100kg |
| Eye Color: | (n/a) |
| Hair Color: | (n/a) |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | Roman |
| Occupation: | Vigilante |
| Place of Birth: | Byzantium |
| Base of Operations: | Paragon City |
| Marital Status: | Celibate |
| Known Relatives: | Daughter of Law, Moonblaze (daughters) |
| Known Powers | |
| Invulnerability, Axe, Leaping, Heat Gaze | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Parthenogenesis | |
| Equipment | |
| Spellbreaker Axe, Iron Eyes, Heart of Lazarus | |
| No additional information available. | |
Sadie Shear is a relic from the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Byzantium. She is a chimaera - a creature created by magically blending the properties of humans and various beasts. Created around the time of the fall of Rome to protect the common people from the evil wizards and monsters which roamed the earth during the Dark Ages, she was retired and entombed in the early eleventh century. The impact of the Rikti spaceship woke her from her hibernation, and she has since served to bring order and justice to the new and alien world of the 21st century.
Contents |
Affiliations
Sadie Shear is a member of the Brigands of Light, an organization mostly composed of more traditional "magical girls". Sadie barely qualifies for membership on the grounds that she is female and magical. However, she does not advertise her affiliation with the group openly, as she feels it would be bad for their public image.
Personality
Sadie Shear is a brutal and uncompromising warrior. She is bound by arcane contract to destroy those who use supernatural power to impose their will upon others, and she takes this duty very seriously. She is also fiercely loyal to her friends and allies. Fundamentally incapable of outright deception, she is nevertheless capable of acting with surprising subtlety, a result of her long years of experience dealing with the complex and chaotic politics of feudal Europe. Underneath her tough and wily demeanor, however, she hides a great deal of confusion about the tremendous changes that have occurred since she last walked the earth. Various incidents where her rigid moral code and her ignorance of the modern world have put her allies into serious danger have left her wondering whether her time has passed forever.
Powers
Invulnerability
Sadie's body is covered in tough layers of hide and chitinous armor, and her flesh is as hard as oak. Beyond this, various enchantments placed upon her allow her to temporarily become almost completely impervious to physical force. As she was created to combat enchanters and illusionists, her mind is shielded against influence, but fending off psychic attacks places a great strain on her body.
Axe
Sadie's weapon of choice is a massive double-bladed axe. A fearsome physical weapon, the axe has also been specially constructed to disrupt the flow of energy needed to cast spells. She wields the axe without apparent difficulty, and with an expertise based on centuries of practice.
Additional Powers
Leaping
Sadie's overdeveloped legs allow her to leap tremendous distances.
Heat Gaze
To close off one channel of magical assault, Sadie was created without eyes. Instead she holds two iron spikes in her eye sockets. The spikes glow red with heat, and occasionally emit a beam of searing energy.
Abilities
Parthenogenesis
In a real sense, the true power of the Beast of Law is her limitless progeny. In the space of a week, Sadie can spontaneously form and lay a clutch of several thousand eggs. These eggs are much like frog eggs and must be submerged in a body of fresh water to grow properly. The young chimaera are all unique, as each has been formed from some random portion of the various creatures which comprise Sadie, but they tend to share her natural vigor and strength, and they never have eyes. The eggs can take as little as a day to hatch, and the young chimaera quickly devour every living thing in their birth pond - and if this is not sufficient, occasionally each other. Within a few days the chimaera leave their birth pond and spread across the landscape, guided by pheromone trails laid by their mother. They are omnivorous, and they are hungry.
Sadie formerly used this power in the commission of her duties. Entire wizard kingdoms were erased from the face of the earth by a rampant horde of ravenous broodlings. No record of their existence survived, save a few mementos Sadie kept. After the swarm obliterated their target, Sadie would call them back to her with a chemical system, and proceed to methodically destroy every single one. Her massacres were so thorough that only one of her broodlings from this period is still alive - a creature who goes by the name Daughter of Law.
Sadie has only used her power of parthenogenesis once since her awakening in the modern era. Upon request from members of the Do-Gooders, she produced a single broodling to act as a host for the discorporated Nictus named Moonblaze.
Scent
Sadie Shear possesses an extremely keen sense of smell and taste, which allows her to track as well as a bloodhound, and determine with a drop of blood whether a person has been poisoned or intoxicated.
Weaknesses and Limitations
Physically, Sadie Shear is most vulnerable to psychic assault. Although she is difficult to dominate or mesmerize, the strain of defending her mind is taxing to her body. She can also be temporarily disabled through sufficient application of ordinary trauma, although she will inevitably recover from even the most grievous of injuries. Poisons and toxins can also affect her, although they do so in unpredictable ways. Sadie will occasionally recount the story of an alchemist who tried to dose her with a love potion - the potion had no effect on her feelings, but altered her body chemistry such that she began secreting the potion from her scent glands. In the end, she was responsible for a sizable population boom in the Carpathian mountain region in the fifth century CE.
Sadie's social deficiencies are pronounced. The odd structure of her mouth and throat prevent her from speaking in tones above a rasping whisper, and this combined with her fearsome appearance and severe moral code tend to leave a negative impression on casual acquaintances. She lacks experience with the vast majority of modern technology and generally considers anything more advanced than a wheelbarrow to be "another kind of magic". She is also surprisingly impatient for having lived so long, and prefers to solve problems with the most direct and obvious method whenever possible.
Sadie's most fundamental weakness is the arcane contract which binds her. She is bound to hunt down and destroy all who would use powers beyond that of man to rule over mankind. The arcane contract also prevents her from ever actually using magic, although she is capable of learning any amount of theory. In fact, her mind is a vast repository of the magical knowledge of hundreds of lost wizard kingdoms - none of which she can properly articulate or fully comprehend.
Sadie also has a tremendous affinity for the Heart of Lazarus, the strange artifact which makes her existence possible. When she is near it, she is overwhelmed by a desire to possess it - a desire which makes her forget her friendships, her duties, and even her contract. Fortunately, the Heart is currently safely stored in a faraway dimension, the exact coordinates of which are a closely guarded Longbow secret.
Equipment
Spellbreaker Axe
Crafted by the same cabal of wizards who assembled her, the Spellbreaker Axe is a heavy double-bladed battleaxe. It is not in any way magical - in fact, it is specially designed to be so unmagical as to interrupt the flow of magical force, producing much the same effect as an iron rod thrust into the heart of a fusion reactor. This property makes it highly effective against wizards and magical creatures - its weight and keen edge make it highly effective against pretty much everything else.
Iron Eyes
Sadie uses this pair of iron spikes in lieu of ordinary eyes. They allow her to perceive as much of the world as normal sight would, although apparently in a radically different way. They also allow her to see and recognize magic as it is being worked, although her contract prevents her from comprehending what she sees.
Heart of Lazarus
The Heart of Lazarus was believed by the Byzantine cabal who created Sadie to be the still-living heart of Lazarus, the man brought back from death by the Son of God. Whether this is the case or not, it is certainly a tremendously powerful artifact. It emits an anti-entropic force which causes anything near it to spontaneously increase in organization and complexity. The wizard cabal created a channel for this force into a stew of parts of various animals, and Sadie Shear spontaneously formed from this primordial soup. Sadie shows a strong affinity for this artifact, and proved willing to go to desperate lengths - including launching a barrage of nuclear missiles at Paragon City - to obtain it. Fortunately, her allies were able to overwhelm her and transport the Heart out of her reach, whereupon she rescinded the launch code and caused the missiles to crash and sink harmlessly off the coast of Rhode Island.
Character History
Sadie was first awakened in the modern era by the impact that destroyed Baumton. She had been sleeping in a vault deep under the earth - the explosion cracked the vault and created a fissure to the surface. Sadie, awakened confused and disoriented, crawled toward the light of the surface and entered Paragon City. After a tense confrontation with the PPD, she eventually consented to be led to MAGI, where she was given a rapid orientation and taught English. The city being in desperate need of heroes at the time, she was sent out almost immediately to deal with the rising street crime, a task she found herself eminently suited to.
When MAGI investigators examined the tomb from which she had emerged, they discovered a number of noteworthy items: a wall covered in writing in an unknown language, several cultural artifacts from civilizations outside recorded history, and four empty canopic jars. MAGI deduced that these jars had held parts of Sadie, and that these parts must have been stolen as magical relics. Over the course of several months, Sadie tracked down her jaw (an actual jawbone, which she snapped into place without apparent discomfort), her "eyes" (the iron spikes), and her "skin" (a suit of black, spiny armor). However, she did not recover any memories of anything before her long sleep.
While visiting a doctor for other reasons, Sadie was extensively examined and a number of anomalies were discovered. Although she appeared nearly human, this was in fact the result of crude and brutal reconstructive surgery: many of her bones had been broken and clamped into new configurations, an outer carapace had been peeled away, and empty sockets at her shoulderblades revealed the prior presence of wings. Most disturbingly, large sections of her brain had been crudely severed from the rest of the organ.
Sadie eventually embarked on a crusade against Lord Nemesis, who she considered the most dangerous villain of the modern era. Coincidentally, Nemesis was at this time pursuing an artifact that would ensure his immortality: the Heart of Lazarus. With a group of allies, Sadie brought down a Nemesis automaton which may or may not have contained the man himself - and discovered the Heart of Lazarus sealed inside its chest. Sadie immediately cut herself in half, to the shock of her friends, then explained that the proximity of the Heart would shortly drive her mad in her desire to possess it, and that she did not know what would happen if she did possess it. Most of the group fled with the Heart, but Blazing Angel Akiko stayed behind to delay the mad creature. They fought to a standstill, whereupon Sadie played her trump card, revealing that she had already used stolen launch codes to cause nuclear missiles to be fired at Paragon City. As heroes scrambled to defend the city, Sadie continued her relentless pursuit of the Heart, but was driven back by her comrades. The Heart itself was sent to a distant dimension for safekeeping, and Sadie recovered in time to disarm the incoming ICBMs. However, the power of the Heart destroyed the changes to Sadie's appearance, reverting her to her true, monstrous appearance and restoring the memories of the atrocities she had committed.
Retired
After a lengthy and difficult career as a hero, Sadie realized she could never properly adjust to the modern era. Furthermore, her gradual discovery of who and what she was before her burial left her with a great deal of guilt over what she had done in the past, and a nagging fear that she might be forced by her contract to do such things again. Therefore, she asked the sorceress Silver Gale to destroy her and use her materials to create something better. Gale complied, and created the Sadishir. Sadie still lives inside the Sadishir, and can be called forth at will, but would prefer to slumber undisturbed for the rest of eternity.
