Silead the Lament
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
 On the PCS. | |
| Silead the Lament | |
| Real Name: | Unknown |
|---|---|
| Origin: | Natural |
| Archetype: | Stalker |
| Security Level: | 34 |
| Room for additional notes. | |
Contents |
Biography
Real Name: Unknown.
Age: 15
Occupation: Mercenary, specializing in assassination, intimidation, and theft.
Citizenship: Rogue Isles
Place of Birth: Unknown.
Base of Operations: Cap Au Diable.
Known Relatives: None.
Affiliations: None.
Former Affiliations: The Sinister Society.
Physical Attributes
Height: 4'6"
Weight: 98 pounds
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Dark blue.
Appearance
Short, wiry, and tomboyish, Silead doesn't look like much. Her face and skin tone suggest a Middle Eastern lineage. Her hair is kept in an unkempt, boyish cut--not that that really matters, since she spends 95% of the time that she's in public wearing her 'work clothes,' a gauzy black silk pair of pants, top, and hood, with a bandolier containing her poisons, a whetstone, and a small set of knives and scalpels. The pants and top are usually covered in small tears, since silk isn't exactly the ideal material for combat clothes.
Personality
Typically standoffish, though this is more a product of her powers than her actual feelings. She sticks to herself, only rarely working alongside other villains. She usually seems to be crying softly, especially when not in combat. She tends to be more accepting of company from the undead and constructs, who usually find her to be relatively friendly and talkative, if far too serious for her age. She's a sadist out of necessity, but at heart, she just wants to get rid of her 'gifts' and join society peacefully--not that that's likely to be an option any time soon.
Powers
Despite being registered as a Natural origin, Silead is, in fact, slightly mutated. The only apparent outcomes of this mutation were her odd hair color, and what she calls 'reverse empathy'--that is, whatever emotions the people around her are feeling, she feels the opposite. This actually proves detrimental to her more often than not, but most of her combat abilities evolved as a result of it. (See History )
Claws
Her weapon of choice is a pair of strap-on titanium alloy claws, which she's known to poison with batrachotoxin when facing especially tough opponents.
Ninjitsu
In addition to near-superhuman dodging abilities, Silead's training involved the creation and use of simple diversionary devices such as smoke bombs and mental techniques for self defense from various schools of ninjitsu. Her dodging abilities are far better than most (read: she dodges way more than the game would have you believe), but she's also far easier to incapacitate when hit.
Super Jump
Another skill gained from her study of ninjitsu.
Weaknesses
Sensitivity
As a result of Silead's training and indoctrination as an assassin, she's incredibly sensitive to pain. Just wearing normal clothing chafes her enough to be incredibly uncomfortable, and any sort of body armor isn't even an option. Likewise, though she shows supernal dodging skills, even a shallow flesh wound or grazing punch is enough to make her scream in pain; anything more serious is often enough to put her into shock.
Reverse Empathy
While not entirely a weakness, the effects of Silead's reverse empathy are dubious at best. It makes it irritating, if not downright painful, to be around people who aren't unhappy or in pain. Even the brief elation she gets when somebody around her is in serious pain can be a problem--having wild mood swings in combat can make it difficult to concentrate.
History
When Silead was young, her reverse empathy wasn't a problem--as it was caught and diagnosed very early in her life, her parents had plenty of opportunities to guide her. However, when her parents died and the girl was put up for adoption, she gained the attention of a now-defunct underground mercenary organization named the Iron Liberation, which thought that the trait would make it very easy to train her to be a compliant killer. After kidnapping the girl in the night--and giving her the name that she bears today--they began training her to be the ultimate assassin.
Unfortunately, they overestimated the benefits of her reverse empathy. The euphoric rush that being around somebody in intense pain--such as her assassination targets--gave her was well beyond the levels of pleasure that a normal person ever felt. The incredible floods of dopamine and endorphins that resulted from her wild transitions between pleasure and pain completely threw off her body's hormonal balance, making her highly sensitive to pain. Their attempts to counter this effect by just having her kill more people did temporarily alleviate the pain, but also made the imbalances that caused it even worse.
The upside to this pain sensitivity was that it gave rise to her impressive reflexes--facing the prospect of going into shock if she let a single solid blow fall, she trained rigorously for years to perfect her sense and dodging ability. However, she still saw the sensitivity that the organization had inflicted on her as a very good reason to not remain loyal to them. In 2004, at the age of 12, she fled the compound at night.
The girl briefly tried a peaceful lifestyle, but her body had become too accustomed to the endorphin rushes she got from the pain of others. Without them, she was in constant pain severe enough that not even her mental discipline would let her act through it. After she snapped and began committing several assaults every day to alleviate her suffering, she was quickly captured and thrown into the Ziggursky maximum security prison. Not long after that, Arachnos raided the prison and freed the girl as part of Project Destiny. Now, having given up on living a peaceful life, she lives as a hired murderer.
