Silvaitos
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Crazy; Wise. Eccentric; idiotic. Unusual; Unstable. Silvaitos is a young man judged in the eye of the beholder by many different people, and getting his own analysis of himself has proven less than easy; anything more definitive than a seemingly unfocused ramble has eluded interviewers. Nevertheless, though he is not registered with the government, records give no other evidence than that he is a resolute hero, having acted little else but valiantly and even, as rumors suggest, having shown leadership during times of crises.
| File:I'll get one of these eventually, honest. | |
| Silvaitos | |
| Player: Kumoshiro | |
| Origin: | Natural |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Scrapper |
| Security Level: | 42 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Silvaitos Curaser Aniverstas |
| Known Aliases: | Kumoshiro; Anything said in his direction with enough conviction. |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 15 |
| Height: | 5' 8 (173 cm) |
| Weight: | 168 lb. (76 KG) |
| Eye Color: | Left hazel, right brown |
| Hair Color: | Reddish brown |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American (Claims to be from "Near Canada") |
| Occupation: | Superhero, supergroup leader |
| Place of Birth: | Vermont |
| Base of Operations: | Talos Island |
| Marital Status: | One half of a couple; claims to be "The woman" |
| Known Relatives: | Some references to parents, grandfather; details unknown. |
| Known Powers | |
| Spiritual manipulation of existence; details within. | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Ninjitsu training; human in physical capabilities | |
| Equipment | |
| Twin katanas, assorted clothing, throwing knives, throwing stars, small rope, cell phone, shampoo bottle (usually filled with water), disposable "Bic" lighter, wallet. | |
| I'm not done! | |
Contents |
Background
Silvaitos' background is considerably mundane. His early life up until, in fact, quite recently, consisted of a simple, perhaps spiritual life in a loving family. However, he has always harbored a great deal of care towards other people, having at times a better sense of what is best for the general whole rather than himself. Gifted spiritually, mentally, and physically, and trained in martial arts to boot, he requisitioned the appropriate equipment for bringing super-powered justice when he became well-acquainted with the need for such heroism in Paragon. Virtue is to him its own reward and then some.
Personality
Arguably Silvaitos' most definitive, identifying trait is his personality. To most he appears thoroughly ungrounded, even wanting for sanity. He presents a trademarkedly silly demeanor, appearing strange and irrelevant in a god-knows-what-he's-thinking kind of way. He constructs his words to be confusing, ludicrous, over-the-top, often designed to lure people in to trivial verbal "traps" to get them to complete some sort of joke. While genuinely good-humored and having, on record, never taken anything so far as to hurt someone (and, if done so, ceasing immediately), his strange approach on conversation has lead him to be more renowned as crazy than genius. He enjoys the unusual image he casts of himself, however, and his to this day is dedicated to toying with the dynamics of social life.
His closer friends, whom he trusts, have uncovered a more subtle aspect to his personality. To those he trusts, he is, while often maintaining a general air of silliness, often more evidently wise and thoughtful. He has proven to be excellent at understanding and helping people on personal issues and other things requiring more thought than sword-swinging. Typically this is not the side he meets people with initially, often finding he learns about people more efficiently in presenting himself as "crazy". Generally it is when he finds he can trust, confide in and/or understand an individual that this dimension of him is revealed. Enjoying his "usual self", however, even to those he trusts this side tends to emerge more out of necessity than default.
Hero Career
Motivation
Silvaitos' divining principles have largely lead to him being the hero he is. Above all, Silvaitos is simply devoted to what it means to help others. He has long regarded it as much more important to save and improve the world for those who would come in generations after rather than simply attempting to enjoy his own life. He feels direct gratification from the simple act of helping others, as something he simply enjoys doing, like a hobby. Moreover, Silvaitos has carefully forged opinions on what he believes is "right", and stands up to protect those beliefs adamantly. This has proven to be a double edged sword because, while he has never been forced in to doing something he doesn't believe in and unconditionally protects the rights of others, he will, on occasion, make a large deal over a trivial issue which he feels was approached with some minor evil. He's specific about this; he has no problem with others disagreeing with him and is willing to admit mistakes, but he would spend hours fighting against some detail he felt was "wrong", the sort who would have been sitting at the front of busses giving speeches if he were an African American living around 1950 rather than the lessened conflict that would mean sitting at the back.
Ethics
For all his nobility in word and mindset, some might find his actual combative methods surprising. If he has determined that a target needs to be disabled and, for all his charisma, can not be reasoned with, he never fears striking from the shadows, engaging in an unfair fight, and again vanishing the instant things appear bad to return when tides are more in his favor. Silvaitos does not believe in looking good while protecting what he fights for, feeling that being too fancy, too regal will very often cause injury that could have been avoided with a more ready willingness for dishonor. In situations where standing strong rather than stealthy behavior yields better results, however, such as in the case of needing to protect a target from an immediate threat, he abandons such shadowy methods.
"In word and deed, I am noble and pure-- In combat, I get the job done, and that is going to be in the way that's the safest to those besides myself and the most efficient. And it's going to look dark on your records, but note that I have costlessly saved many, many lives with my methods, and I've been defeated multiple times when I felt like I 'Should' stay, "should" be able to beat a combatant in a fair fight rather than running away and manipulating the tides. I am a hero. I save lives, and the only thing hurt by my methods is my pride, which, luckily, I tend to treat like a sandbag anyway.
Speaking of my pride, please spread the word that I am a woman. I'd like to see how far an unbelievable rumor could go if perpetuated by the right people."
(Excerpt from a mostly-serious e-mail to Hero Corps, who had demanded explanation for his methods and why he was not registered with the government.)
Et cetera
Furthermore, Silvaitos is a born leader. For politics and social settings, he carries a profound understanding and acceptance of people; for combat, a mind for tactics. For both, a sense of responsibility to his people and traits of a powerful speaker. He feels inclined to lead, being bold in nature and happily ready to take up the mantle of a team and make decisions if it would help. He tries to channel his desire for leadership constructively, and has lead more than one team to victory against uneven odds, as well as currently having organized a small community in the form of a supergroup.
All of this has lead to Silvaitos being both a hero of combat and social life. He is yet to save the entire planet from a given particular threat, but he has no doubt that he some day will from "ONE thing or another".
Tools of the trade
Abilities
Silvaitos relies heavily on the mastery of his body to keep him alive and efficient. Trained in ninjitsu, he is an expert at hand to hand combat, fighting with tightly-guarded, precise efficiency. He has some acrobatic talent and is excellent at climbing and stealth. He also has significant stamina, being accustomed to running long distances and preserving himself through extended battles. The two swords he wields are katana models crafted of a special alloy; originally they were forged of a steel and titanium composite, until Zaerek discovered he could use his rock-like body as a highly effective forge; Per Silvaitos' request, he "ate" the old swords and, over the course of a day, crafted two new blades, identical in design, but forged of a composite he called "5CR-MO-V", with diamond edges. Aside from their customized composition, there is nothing special about them. Like the rest of his fighting style he is guarded, precise, and efficient with his blades. Other than that he carries a slew of other handy equipment in his jacket or in his many-pocketed pants which may be used to address various ubiquitous situations.
Powers
Being of natural origin, it seems unlikely that Silvaitos would be party to any unique abilities that would exceed a human. However, this is not the case. Silvaitos' spiritual connection with the universe is so great, and between him and existence there is such a subtle understanding, that he can, as long as his mind is clear and strong, ask favors of the universe to achieve certain goals. If a friend is dying of cold, he can have him become a singularity for any present heat. If someone he is trying to protect becomes wounded, he can donate life energy to nourish his or her cells, and then push and pull with motion energy to sew wounds back together. It could be said the power is largely physics-based, as he is often asking the universe to bend the laws of physics to complete a necessary task; nevertheless, while limited to as much as he can concentrate on, he is, for this connection, extremely versatile.
Translation of /Dark powers to the in-character powers
Since Silvaitos, in fact, uses no negative or darkness-based energy, a moment should be taken to explain the workings of his defensive powers.
Dark Embrace and Murky Cloud: Electricity, being fairly available in almost any situation and a potent form of energy, is the basis for many of Silvaitos' powers. His most fundamental life insurance is collecting it as a magnetic field around himself to repel incoming matter or energy, and what isn't repelled is usually dampened by the time it hits him. There have been other ways he has made shields, but magnetic fields are the most common.
Obsidian shield: Resistance to being held falls under matter repelling (see above). Resistance to fear, sleep and psionic damage is attributed to the fundamental basis of his powers. His spirit being as present as it is, only in rare form can Silvaitos' mind be overwhelmed with his spirit protecting it. This is his strongest resistance. Resistance to disorient requires Silvaitos to manually realign his nervous system to his brain, thus that it may operate efficiently again, when a disorienting power has scrambled it.
Cloak of Darkness: Often just plain natural stealth. However, when needed, Silvaitos can command light to bend around him rather than reflect off him. Since light breaks off to bend around him, people looking at him when cloaked will often see a double image of whatever Silvaitos is in front of.
Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom: This time Silvaitos emits an electrical field around himself that, rather than gathering electricity in to a magnetic field, scrambles it beyond a certain point (as not to interfere with his shields). This causes a person's nerve impulses from the brain to become haywired. In the more reserved form (Cloak of Fear), it tends to only cause mild, confusing hallucinations, but a more charged field of scramble (Oppressive Gloom) can often completely wrest a person's ability to control their body from them for as long as the field can keep power over them. Oppressive Gloom is the slightly more dangerous of the two since Silvaitos runs a risk of giving himself small painful shocks.
Anything healing: Perhaps Silvaitos' specialty, healing is spawned of collecting, and presenting life energy to an injured patient. The energy flowing in restores their stamina and health, and nourishes the cells. The new energy also allows the cells to become more ready to reproduce and heal, and thus Silvaitos is even able to treat large gashes by rejuvinating the right cells, allowing them to multiply until they may seal a gap. He is poor at very minor wounds, such as bruises and swellings, lacking the scientific understanding of them to assuage them, but this is rarely a problem.
Teleport: Frankly, this should be beyond his capabilities, at least doing it so easily and in such quick succession. But I like the travel power. If I had to say, just go for the usual atomic disassembly and reassembly theory.
Them, Inc.
Silvaitos is the top leader of a currently small community of people known as Them, Inc. (Second in command being Zaerek). In no shape or form are they, in fact, a corporation; As he explains in an interview (the same one documented at the end of this article), the concept of making an organization simply referred to as "them", as though to supply a concrete reference to whenever someone vaguely reference a "Them" (such as "You know what they say" or "You're one of THEM"), amused him.
Like the name born of silliness, he also likes to breed a humorous community. Though small, every "One of Them" is, be they insane, idiotic, or just strange, eccentric. When not eccentric, they are humorous. Though Silvaitos is ready to lead a wide variety of individuals, and open his arms to one of any demeanor or background within reason, he certainly is pleased by his members being, for the most part, inclined towards enjoying what it is to be just plain silly.The group is more largely focused on community than expansion or business. As a side note, the group also smiles brightly upon public nudity.
People
This section will be dedicated to the significant people in Silvaitos' life.
Prudence: The romantic love of Silvaitos' life, which he finds amusing in itself. For reasons unclear, Prudence was abandoned at a young age and grew up fending for herself in the city. She received a home when Silvaitos offered her to join the Them community. Silvaitos sees a story of tenderness and innocence told behind her story of harsh, survival-based city life. Since Prudence joined the group and has had a home to relax in, she has adapted in part to the overall silliness of the Them community, becoming more playful and joking. Prudence is a mutant, possessing a coat of brown fur, cat like yellow eyes, and even scales plating her legs, and Silvaitos often mixes various species to describe what she is, such as "otter-finch" or "koala-crab", all deliberately designed to not quite describe exactly what she is. Their relationship is tender and affectionate as much as it can be silly.
Zaerek: It wouldn't be hard to make a case for Zaerek being Silvaitos' best friend. From the moment they met they recognized each other as similar people, both being very intelligent yet putting it towards the effort of being very unusual. Like Silvaitos, Zaerek hides his true intelligence under an image of absurd silliness. Many would distinguish that Zaerek tends to appear more of a goofy idiot whilst Silvaitos tends to appear ungrounded and insane, but the basic principles behind such feckless behavior on both of their parts are nearly identical. Sharing a very profound understanding of the other's intelligence, the two have become partners of sorts.
Zaerek was also the second member of Them, Inc. and serves as Silvaitos' right hand man.
Akina: One of Silvaitos' more longstanding friends, the two share an odd relationship. Generally Akina appears to abandon her cheery, light-hearted demeanor in Silvaitos' presence to play a sort of straight woman, one who can point out, well-reasoned, the lunacy of his words, thus that he may continue being a lunatic. Though the two are not as close at present as they have been at times, Silvaitos still considers Akina one of his most familiar friends.
Dr. Forkenshpoon: Dr. Forkenshpoon, or, colloquially, Fork, is a scientist with a die-hard devotion to non-seriousness. More inscrutable than Zaerek and Silvaitos combined, Forkenshpoon appears absolutely devoted to the practice and perpetuation of comedy. In truth, it is impossible to tell if the ridiculousness of Fork is deliberate and spawned of his wit, or simply Fork's simple, twisted nature to say the things he says and do the things he does.
Silvaitos, ever willing to take someone unseriously if they strive to be taken unseriously, has developed a friendship with Fork. Finding his unyielding silliness refreshing at worst, the two carry on a relationship founded around the joys of simple idiocy. Fork is among Silvaitos' very first friends, his only competition being Cassandra, below.
Cassandra Jacobs: Cassandra is shy, timid and sensitive, as well as attentive, caring, affectionate. When Silvaitos met her, she had been injured by a bullet to the gut and no one had treated her. Silvaitos, eager to do service, healed her (Not knowing he would cause her to feel indebted to him). Nevertheless he found her somehow appealing. Cassandra is likely the least comedic of Silvaitos trusted friends mentioned here, yet, through being with her across countless situations, he has developed a bond of trust and understanding with her he is not sure he could break if he tried.
Honorable mentions go to Toy, Four, Jacob, Bidon, Robin, Nate, and Scarlet; You know who you are.
Interview with Silvaitos
One lone reporter has currently had the opportunity and motive to interview Silvaitos, the word of whom's exploits reached and intrigued him. The article proceeds as thus beneath the headline:
"It took me a while, but eventually I was able to track this man down. As a reporter I was surprised to be the first to be interested in his story, and I might not be the last. Not being registered with the government, I had to rely on stories and gossip to discover what he had been up to rather than hard files. Eventually, however, I set out to uncover this man who had until now avoided fame, having declined an official title from longbow numerous times.
But I ramble. It was in Talos I met him at last when I was on a business trip. I called out to him immediately.
Me: Silvaitos!
In retrospect, I'm not sure if I expected his reaction or not. He ducked low as if I had mentioned someone who wanted to put a bullet in his head.
Silvaitos: Jesus! Where?! Me: That's you, sir. I'm here to ask you some questions.
I'll always remember the look he gave me. It succeeded in making me think I had said something crazy.
Silvaitos: How do I know you're not one of THEM?! Me: Who are they, sir? Silvaitos: That's for them to know and us to find out. When it's already TOO LATE.
I regret to say i was at this point struggling to remember the questions I had been meaning to ask him.
Me: Er, so, Silvaitos, you are a hero, yes? Silvaitos: Only on tuesdays. All other days I'm either vegetative or a unicorn. Me: Unicorn, sir? Silvaitos: Pays by the hour, with generous, generous tips. People positively love unicorns, they do.
I also didn't expect him to speak with such an english-sounding accent.
Me: Right. And--Er--Are you a hero today? Silvaitos: Is it tuesday? Me: Friday, sir. Silvaitos: Great Zeus, I must be vegetating. Now I feel somewhat silly running around saving the world. Working overtime for free, I am! Me: I'm sorry to hear that, sir. Silvaitos: I'm certainly not. The pay is excellent. Me: For what? Silvaitos: Unpaid overtime.
I tried to veer the subject on to a more clear path.
Me: Tell me more about saving the world. Silvaitos: Well, we live on this planet, right, and sometimes these people threaten it, right. Me: Right. Silvaitos: And saving the world is to try to save it from being threatened. Me: I meant tell me about YOU saving the world. Silvaitos: That would be ME trying to liberate it from any threats. Do the math. Me: Give. Me. Details. Tell me about a mission. Silvaitos: It's this thing where some contact says, hey, go here and clear out this warehouse, and then you're like, yay! And you bring seven friends, or just an enormous pug and get lulzy amounts of experience.
I'm sorry to say I grew somewhat frustrated at this point. I took my water bottle from my sack and drained about half of it before speaking again.
Me: Tell me about--From a personal point of view--your life as a superhero. Silvaitos: Ah, you want to learn more about ME! Me: Yes. Sir. That's the point. Silvaitos: Well, you could have just spelled it out for me as though I were a two year old. Have you noticed my puffy cheeks and still-forming, clumsy anatomy? Me: No, sir, I haven't. Silvaitos: Bugger. Being two years old can wait, then. My life as a superhero is FRAUGHT WITH PERIL! Of course, it's all very well and good, since I'm saving lives.
I noticed he has a tendency to throw his arms out in some expressionistic gesture on the words he said with the most emphasis.
Me: Thank you for giving me something like an answer. Silvaitos: You're welcome. Me: What inspired you to become a superhero? Silvaitos: I just love to help. Ever charge in to a mob of burly, sweating men who want you dead, and hack and slash every one of them in to unconsciousness until everyone is cheering and calling you their savior? Me: I can't say I have. Silvaitos: In which case, play football, that's basically what I described. Being a superhero tends to lack any real thunderous applause, but, well, knowing that I've saved thousands of lives is pretty epic, too. Me: You just answered a question straightforwardly, didn't you? Silvaitos: No, you're hallucinating. I love being interviewed. Next question. Me: Right, thank you. What are your tools of the trade? When fighting crime and bringing justice to criminals and villains, what do you DO? Silvaitos: Sometimes I banter. Mostly I leap from the shadows and try and hit people with swords and somehow not kill them. In that regard, I'm quite successful. I'm a very peaceful fighter, you know. Me: A lot of your fans would like to know what you think about your hairstyle.
He seemed alarmed at this.
Silvaitos: Good lord! I have fans? When did that happen? WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?!
...And went so far as to drop to his knees and clutch his head.
Silvaitos: WHAT'S GOING ON?! THE WHOLE WORLD'S FALLING APART! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! Me: Maybe another question is in order. Silvaitos: And while I'm yelling, here is the sound of an ewok going in to battle: (The sound he made described as well as I possibly can on paper) AAAAAAIIIIIIIEYAAHHHHHHHH
Me: Stand up, sir.
He straightened himself immediately and resumed speaking as calmly as when I had first found him.
Silvaitos: I kind of liked kneeling and head-clutching.
Me: Eh--indeed. Say, the records show that you have some supernatural powers. Is it true that you are of magical origin, as a superhero?
Silvaitos: No, certainly not. And while I'm at it, be a love and go up to the general government and slap them very hard and inform them that I do not, in fact, use any negative energy, would you? The whole "dark armor" rumor was cute at first but I'm growing irritated.
Me: I'll see what I can do, Sir. If you're not magical, how do you explain the manipulative abilities you've shown?
Silvaitos: Charisma. Let's keep it at that. Next question.
Me: ..Fair enough. (This isn't complete. Don't think it is. You'd be foolish.)
