Silver Gale/Character History
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
(( Silver Gale was created with next to no backstory at all. Her development was based on reacting to RP plots of other people, and throwing in various ideas that seemed fun at the time. ))
(( The following is a more-or-less chronological account of two years' worth of RPing. Enjoy! -Meagen ))
Contents |
Prodigy
Her mystical potential quickly drew the attention of Azuria at MAGI, who became Megan's mentor and the first contact of her costumed secret identity, Silver Gale. It was Azuria who gifted her with the magical belt that allowed Megan to change into her costume faster and more easily. She also taught Gale most of her spells.
Silver Gale fell in with the Do-Gooders, and became good friends with many of them. She was quite secretive, almost to the point of paranoia, avoiding any mention of her name, age, the school she went to, or any other personal details. To this day, even those of her friends who know her identity call her "Gale" out of sheer force of habit.
For many months, nothing of particular interest happened to Gale. She got involved in several difficult situations that her friends faced, and at various times demonstrated her loyalty, stubborn nature, slightly dark sense of humor, and willingness to throw money around to fix things. Once she reached security level 20 and was awarded a special permit to wear a cape, the Icon tailor Serge persuaded her to change her outfit into the lightning-patterned blue-and-silver that became her most widely recognized look.
Legacy
In the fall, the tram line to Salamanca was re-opened, and the heroes of Paragon were exposed to the mysteries of Croatoa, the Fir Bolg, and Mary Macomber's Cabal. Silver Gale experienced the first unsettling event of her career, as the witches she faced started calling her "sister" and making demands that she join them. At about the same time, she noticed that the rustle of the wind tended to convey things to her - almost as if it was speaking to her...Confused and frightened, Silver Gale turned to Azuria for answers. She was shocked when the seer refused to help her. I cannot trust you with this knowledge. Unless you agree to a pact that binds us two, as sisters, so that I may always stop you from doing something foolish, you will get no answers from me. It was blackmail, plain and simple - a choice between submitting to the other woman's control or being forever ignorant on the origin of her powers. Silver Gale rebelled, and set out to find the truth for herself.
It was not easy, and it involved facing Mary Macomber herself in all-out battle, but with the help of her friends, Silver Gale prevailed. She learned that she had a source of great power in her body - power placed there by a witches' ritual. She was a witch by birth, though not part of any existing coven, hence the attempts of both the Croatoan witches and Azuria to claim her as one of their own and gain control of that power. But with Mary's defeat, Silver Gale proved herself and could thus become the leader of her own coven - a coven of one.
Evolution
During her travels in the spirit world, her true power began to manifest. At first, it nearly overwhelmed Megan - causing her whole body to glow, her voice to echo, and even her thoughts to become less human. It frightened her, more than anything else in her entire life - the idea of losing her mind, of having her body controlled by something that wasn't herself. But even as she struggled with the thought, her friends were facing even greater dangers, and the city seemed in more peril than ever. Thus Gale tried to banish the fear from herself, to send it away.
As it turned out, her internal battles had far greater consequences than she could have imagined.
For now, she had suddenly become much calmer, her fears and anger vanishing as if drained away from her mind. She threw herself into the task of protecting the city and helping her friends. Just before Christmas, her power suddenly went out. Most of her friends blamed it on overextension, since she had spent the better part of a week using her powers almost non-stop, with only a few hours of light meditation every day as rest.
Perhaps not insignificantly, Gale first felt this temptation when she tapped the energy of Miss Megajoule, who had not long before escaped the influence of Vanessa DeVore. Although this is only speculation, some echo of the Carnival's mistress may have clung to the heroine, and flowed into Gale's mind in turn through the connection between them.
It was around this time that her evil double began haunting Perez Park (as described in the entry on Azure Freeze). Although Gale had no idea of Azure's existence, she was plagued by dreams of kidnapping people, fighting a group of heroes and getting thrown in the Zig. She kept these dreams to herself, unsure of their significance.
Gale's power eventually returned to its normal state, and she could continue her study of magic. The end of her last year of high school was close at hand, and Megan decided to apply to the Occult Studies division of the University of Paragon after her graduation.
Family
After a whole year of fighting crime as Silver Gale, Megan's two lives were slowly coming to a head. Her first attempt to explain her secret to her parents went awry, as she mistakenly admitted to being a lesbian instead. But once she finally made them aware of her powers, it turned out her father's plans for her future were quite different from hers.
This was the first time any of her friends heard her full name: Megan Knight. She was the daughter of Lucas Knight, CEO of Knight Industries and chairman of the Knight Foundation for Law and Government. As his only child, he had been planning for her to replace him in both those capacities. Megan's father firmly opposed her choice of college, going so far as to threaten to disinherit her. Faced with the prospect of becoming poor, or at least much less well-off than before, Megan did something she had never done before: she backed off.
Fortunately, the shadowy force known as Malta chose this moment to approach Megan's parents. With faked credentials from trusted sources within the government, two agents gained admission to the Knights' home and offered them a drug which they claimed would suppress her magic abilities. Lucas Knight was enchanted at the prospect of having his daughter return to 'normal', but his wife was more suspicious. Megan had told her mother how Malta agents had tricked the mother of Chris Winters into delivering her daughter to them, and she immediately noticed the resemblance to this situation.
When the Malta agents' deception was discovered, they pulled their weapons. Fortunately, Ms. Knight had been a witch herself, and managed to use her spells to hold them off just long enough for their personal security force to arrive. Silver Gale quickly used her contacts to get her parents into a safehouse, and rallied her friends to strike back against Malta.
Gemini
Eventually, Silver Gale came into contact with Foxtrot Company. It was from them that she learned of her evil side's existence, and discovered the link between them. At first, she assumed Azure to be nothing more than a projection of her mind, and attempted to assimilate it. To her considerable surprise, her double resisted, fighting desperately like any sentient creature fights for its life. On the advice of her friends, Gale attempted instead to *talk* to it, and an uneasy truce was struck.
Megan was quite impressed - even touched - when she saw in Azure's memories how the Foxtrots had treated her. She felt they had accepted the worse side of her without even knowing her virtues, and that they had a common enemy in Malta. This led her to identifying (perhaps a bit too closely) with the goals of Foxtrot Company. The link she shared with Azure became useful when the hero Super Patriot was found dead, apparently by the hands of Foxtrot Company, and his young ward Lightspeed Lad came into the care of the Do-Gooders. Only by sharing their information through Gale and Azure did the heroes and the mercenaries manage to unravel the mystery of Foxtrot Gamma and foil a grand Malta conspiracy.
It soon became apparent, however, that the connection would not last.
Silver Gale found herself troubled by the idea of losing that connection to Azure. She had certainly not purged the darker feelings from her mind - she was still as egoistic, stubborn and impatient as ever - and was in no danger of losing her humanity. Still, she enjoyed sharing a bond with another mind, and one who could relate to her worries so well, at that. She also felt slightly guilty about having caused Azure to exist in the first place. Gale tried to extend her friendship to Azure, and might have succeeded if not for the other girl falling under demonic influence.
Shortly thereafter, Megan Knight entered university, Silver Gale's power became fully integrated with her being, and the link between the two minds was firmly sealed.
Secrets
In an attempt to alienate Silver Gale from her friends, Azure revealed to them than Megan was bisexual - and in addition, she had parallel crushes on both Misa *and* Jen. This failed to surprise anyone, and nobody bought Azure's suggestion that Gale might use her knowledge of alchemy to fulfill her fantasies.
