SoulTrain 2020
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
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| Dharma in Flight
(C) 2008 by Peter Almeida | |
| SoulTrain 2020 | |
| Player: @SoulTrain2 (@SoulTrain) | |
| Origin: | Mutant/Technology |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Blaster |
| Security Level: | Confidential |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Dharma Parker-Blades |
| Known Aliases: | DharmaSoul, Soul II, Kid Soul, Mender Dharma |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 19 |
| Height: | Confidential |
| Weight: | Confidential |
| Eye Color: | Honey-Brown |
| Hair Color: | Dark Brown |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | United States citizen |
| Occupation: | Heroine |
| Place of Birth: | Paragon City, RI |
| Base of Operations: | Haven, CT |
| Marital Status: | single, no relationships |
| Known Relatives: | Dr. Kashaye Parker, Ph.D Dame Chastity Blades |
| Known Powers | |
| Confidential | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Confidential | |
| Equipment | |
| Confidential | |
| Dharma Parker-Blades is the daughter of SoulTrain and Agent 3-X, via nanite rDNA transfer | |
Mender-Acolyte Dharma Parker-Blades, shunted back through time nearly to her tether point, now must work to repair the rips and tears in the timestream. Her powers are nearly vanished from temporal scaling, while her "past" self is still a newborn.
Her cover identity? SoulTrain 2020!!
Contents |
Affiliations
Powers
Dharma can wield raw kinetic force either in melee or at range. She also uses it as a shield of sorts, along with meditative techniques that improve her reaction times, increase her power, and provide the means to perform 'superhuman' feats.
Energy Blast
Dharma manifests 'bolts' of raw kinetic force, which she projects at her opponents. Her power level varies depending on what point in the timestream she's currently working "in", but at her highest output levels, her force bolts carry the same striking power as an M1A1 Abrams tank shell.
She's also not limited to single targets. Like her mother, she's able to 'shape' this force in many different ways, including groundwave attacks, projections that simply repel away, to a devastating point-blank detonation.
Energy Manipulation
Dharma also uses her kinetic force control as a 'kinshield' and as a means to augment the power of her muy thai boxing.
The 'kinshield' absorbs or diverts incoming attacks, of all energy types, and 'ablates' before Dharma's body is harmed[1]. However, sustained damage will wear it away, and she will usually fall unconscious when it finally 'pops'.
Her melee attacks are tightly controlled pockets of kinetic potential, that detonate when she strikes an opponent with her fists. Often the force of these augmented blows will knock an opponent silly... or slam them down to the ground or up into the air and away.
Fitness
Like her parents, Dharma uses Tantric Yoga techniques and meditation to master her mind and body, allowing her to run faster, jump higher, heal faster, and recover faster than a normal human girl. She is also host to a colony of the "O'Tech nanites", which feed off of her prana energy flow and in turn, add to her abilities.
Abilities
Dharma uses a variant of Muy-Thai boxing that has been adapted for her kinetically-charged body.
Personality and Background Details
| R |
Mature Content The following section(s) contain prose, images, or concepts of an adult nature. Those under the age of legal consent, or those who may be offended by such content, should refrain from reading.
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Dharma is sunny, fun-loving, and always willing to throw herself into helping others. She's inherited Soul's accent and sense of self, along with Chastity's no-nonsense, head-on approach to problems. However, Dharma is also very familiar with the Tantric Yoga philosophy. She has foresworn meat (except for ritual purposes) and lives a simple lifestyle. She believes fully in the Kharmic Wheel, and sees herself as an agent of cosmic balance, even to the sacrifice of her own enlightenment[2].
Like her parents, she wears a chastity belt, preferring to reach bliss through means other than physical. She has earned the right to carry her own keys, and thus decide when, where, and with whom she will share her body. These keys are not kept on her person; instead they are 'summoned' via a temporal transporter from her Ouroboros retreat.
As a Mender Acolyte, she's not privy to the Mender top echelon's knowledge, but knows enough to function as an emissary.
Weaknesses and Limitations
Dharma has few defenses to speak of, and can be knocked unconscious fairly easily, once her 'kinshield' is worn away.
Origin
I suppose y’all wanna know about how I came about. Momma Shay an’ Momma Chastity, well, they call me their “immaculate misconception” cos I was a TOTAL surprise to them. I mean, they were thinking of how they could have a child, but, two women, you know? Not exactly compatible.
And then Momma Shay misses her period. An’ then she turns up pregnant. The docs do their tests… an’ lo and behold, Momma Chastity’s genes are in there too! So… somethin’ weird happened. Speculation is that Momma Chastity’s nanotech had somethin’ to do with it. People tell me those itty-bitty robots ain’t all that smart… but you ask me, they got more of a hand in things than folks know about.
So, uhm, yeah, Momma Shay bore me, an’ both she an’ Momma Chas raised me, an’ I was one happy kid. And yeah, right around the time I started developing, I started noticing some power abilities, similar to what Momma Shay can do with her energy blasts. So Momma Chastity, she starts teaching me to fight, and both of them started teaching me what bein’ a heroine is all about.
Then that whole Ouroboros timeline mess happened. The three of us got tangled up in time, ‘mending’ this, that and the other. Man, I swear, the temporal fabric is like a real thin-rolled pie crust, you patch it here, and you stretch it and tear it there. We were all OVER the place. Which made things really tricky when it came to “the Real World”. What was 16 years to us, was only a few months here. So as far as all my friends was concerned, I grew up FAST. Some say I popped out as a full-blown heroine, but that’s not th’ truth.
Anyhow, I went and registered with City Hall. They class me as a hybrid, I can do the blaster thing, or get in close an’ lay th' smackdown almos’ as good as a scrapper. Which makes Momma Chastity real proud. Momma Shay jus’ smile, and says “be careful, Dharma”. She’s always been the protective type.
Peter Almeida is using SoulTrain 2020 in some of his fiction, which is outside the CoH milieu. I may repost some of those stories here, as an 'alternate reality' that Dharma finds herself in sometime between 'now' and the date of her birth (12/07/08 12:23pm Paragon time).
Trivia
- Dharma was conceived as a result of Chastity's nanites building an rDNA chain from Chastity's chromosomes, and 'mating' it to one of Soul's ova. As for why they did this... well, those nanites were not of earthly origin... or were they?
- Dharma has spent most of her young life in the Ouroboros timestream, having aged 19 years in the space of only a few realtime months. Also, those months are backwards - theoretically she could be attendant at her own birth.
- Both women have met their future daughter; the first encounter was the day AFTER Soul conceived.
- In a live-action CoH movie, Dharma would be played by Kerry Washington.
Rumors
Heard something juicy about SoulTrain 2020? Why not add it here?
Music
- Yoko Kanno, "Inner Universe" (Opening theme, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Season One)
- Weekend Players, "21st Century"
- Thievery Corporation, "Focus on Sight"
- Swing Out Sister, "Not Gonna Change"
- Bond, "Shine"
Artwork Credits
"SoulTrain 2020" - (C) 2008 by Peter Almeida
Footnotes
- ↑ This is Dharma's HP bar - ever wonder why she can get shot and not bleed?
- ↑ Of course, it's this selflessness that will reap great rewards, once she's wise enough to realize it.
