Sutra-Dhara Anima
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Somehow she always looks posed, as if she thinks all the world is a stage. | |
| Sutra-Dhara Anima | |
| Player: @jarissa | |
| Origin: | Science |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Controller |
| Threat Level: | Confidential |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Hybrid Delta Series, Subject 97D |
| Known Aliases: | the Stage-Mistress |
| Species: | metahuman (human altered through scientific process) |
| Age: | Confidential |
| Height: | 5' 10.5" |
| Weight: | ' |
| Eye Color: | blue-grey |
| Hair Color: | red |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | property of Infinity, Inc |
| Occupation: | minion, crowd control specialization |
| Place of Birth: | Confidential |
| Base of Operations: | Confidential |
| Marital Status: | Confidential |
| Known Relatives: | Confidential |
| Known Powers | |
| illusion creation and kinetic energy | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Sutra-Dhara creates shadow puppets and manipulates bodies via electric field warping | |
| Equipment | |
| communications gear, spare lengths of chain and other fastening supplies | |
| Sutra-Dhara speaks very little, though she seems to understand commands given in English. She has theoretically been implanted with the gesture code language, including ability to give commands, but some sort of mental block keeps her from performing them successfully. | |
(( Editor's OOC note: information listed here is a mixture of Official Description from Infinity Inc and practical observation of the named individual during her time as a Hybrid Delta Series. For further information, please see pointertobefilledinheresoonIswear!))
Contents |
Portrait of a Shadow Puppeteer
Sutra-Dhara Anima is a moderately tall woman of Indian descent. Her head appears oversized in proportion to her body. Her short hair is a mahogany brown with red undertones. Her skin has a permanent gray tinge to it, matching the "shadow puppeteer" theme, but since her blood is normal she still has red lips and she still blushes red.
If her skin appears dark gray, she has wrapped herself tightly in shadows. She is violently enraged and preparing for a severe assault.
Infinity Inc taught Sutra-Dhara Anima to always move and pose as though she were herself a wire-controlled puppet. When she thinks of herself more in the role of "the Stage Mistress", her body language is more fluidly natural.
At any time, items in Sutra-Dhara's hands or attached to her clothing may be shadowy illusions supported by telekinetic pressure.
four excerpts from "Infinity Inc: Wishful Thinking" by @Skyburner and @Jarissa
- She sat down a couple of feet away on the roof....
- "I am a Delta," she said dryly.
- Sutra-Dhara Anima laughed, a short bark of a thing with entirely too much nose to it....
- ...the rest of the way to her feet as though pulled up by a marionette string...
The Art
Translated literally, a "sutradhara" is a "holder of strings" and an "anima" is a "soul"; Sutra-Dhara Anima explains when prompted that "sutradhara" is the word for a stage manager, and also the word for a shadow puppeteer. She claims both as the blended faces of her Art. Sutra-Dhara was implanted by Infinity Inc with the ability to manipulate the flow of light, with a little telekinetic oomph to back up key pieces of her illusions. The human template harvested for this particular living artwork was a moderately well-regarded young stage manager in a very poor region of northeastern India; when she could not find a sufficiently solvent theatrical troupe to keep herself fed, she sought out a bright light and a sheet, and performed shadow plays for the passing crowd in exchange for alms.
The young woman had her priorities backward, in the judgment of the Infinity Inc talent scouts: her storytelling in the shadow plays often displayed the kind of pure, ephemeral artistry that Simon Arkangel treasured, while they presumed any organizer with the mechanical training and the patience could probably be a part of a backstage crew in theater.
(Their target would have argued that point quite indignantly. Sutra-Dhara Anima may well manifest her axe if she hears such sentiments even now!)
The body that became Sutra-Dhara Anima was surgically whittled down two inches, leaving her skull distinctively oversized. Her skin tone was permanently changed to a greyish hue. Once her musculature settled into the desired new shape, she was fitted with a form-fitting bodysuit made from overlapping boiled leather plates, the base pieces of which attach via bolts to plastic-and-ceramic receptors installed on her torso. Many of the Hybrid Delta Series creations must be dressed and undressed by Infinity Inc employees with specific training and customized tools. The shaped suits help keep them strictly to artistic design.
The unexpected complication of her design is that a very imaginative woman was so completely detached from reality as she understood it, imbued with illusion-creating powers, and then coerced into creating three-dimensional shadow plays while maneuvering some of her peers' limbs as if they are puppets. Sutra-Dhara spends long periods trapped in her own imagination, unable to find her way back to reality.
The Stage Crew
Sutra-Dhara Anima spent about seven months of her post-debut life with no formal "unit". She had so much trouble sorting reality out from the dancing shadows in her imagination, that Behavioral Design doubted she could assist any Hybrid Alpha Series minion in managing the overwhelming flow of sensory data. Sutra-Dhara took repeated training sessions and psychic surgeries to even learn basic conversant English. She does not pronounce the encoded command syllables consistently, and she often fails to see the body motions of the minion right in front of her well enough to gather meaning from the gesture code.
During one lease in Port Oakes, Sutra-Dhara worked with a wolf-based Alpha Hybrid named Kummer. At that time, Kummer qualified as a "problem project" under consideration for recycling. Among the various abilities implanted, Kummer possessed a speed enhancement over which he had little control, causing him to frequently twitch -- which made his white fur scintillate in the light. When a passing Destined One casually referred to Kummer as a "dog", Sutra-Dhara indignantly protested that "dogs do not sparkle": Kummer therefore was obviously not a dog, he was a "poppet".
The truth is that his glittery appearance helps Sutra-Dhara to keep track of him as a real person, not an animated shadow puppet.
Fractured Fairy Tales
Sutra-Dhara feels very strongly about proper storytelling. It is the core of her shadow puppetry Art; it is integral to the craft of stage production. The story of how Sutra-Dhara Anima came to animate well-known tales, adjusting reality to suit the narrative, began at the Infinity Inc Rogue Isles facility. One of her peers, the Killing Dance, persuaded the company owner to spare an Alpha Hybrid from a small amount of suffering by claiming that the Alpha in question was a necessary component in the Delta's art form. Most of the Deltas immediately jumped onto this bandwagon -- any chance to shield fellow victims from their common oppressor was worth a try, especially at a low personal risk -- and the Stage Mistress was no exception.
Once Upon A Time in Grandville
Apparently, (or so Sutra-Dhara deduced from observation), a Delta who works with an Alpha at least once is supposed to provide certain rewards for good service. Or bad service. Or something. Brigid's Verse read epic saga poetry to the tiger Iceberia. The Killing Dance, noted instructor on incorporating Alphas into one's Art, was rumored to be reading a small amount of a pulpy detective novel to the leopard Fehral as a reward for sitting cooperatively still while he combed her hair.
Sutra-Dhara began to read public domain adventure stories to the sparkly Alpha who happened to visit her reality during some work. She began with The Wizard of Oz. Within three chapters, the Stage Mistress became incredibly disenchanted with (what she sees as) the poor storytelling logic, inadequate characterization, and lack of overall colorful vividness in the book. She's done better with dark shadows on a white sheet than this.
She started fixing the story as she continued to read it.
And, being herself, she made up for her lack of comfort with the English language by using her Illusion Control powers to animate the story on the wall, ceiling, in the rafters, and occasionally in the air between persons in her impromptu audience.
Oh, yes, the audience: at first, since Sutra-Dhara did her reading in the room that contained the Alpha cages, she attracted the attention of whatever idle Alpha Hybrids happened to be present and awake. After two sessions, some Alphas made a point of racing through their drills to be on hand for Sutra's next performance. Deltas curious about their counterparts' new motivation also rearranged their schedules as much as permitted.
By the time Sutra-Dhara Anima finished the revised tale of Oz and started on The Ring of the Nibelung, off-duty employees of the Security Division could be spotted at the rear of the audience.
Crimson-coated employees from the Behavioral Design Division split sharply into two factions: those who avoided Sutra-Dhara Anima in exasperation, and those who rearranged assignments for all property in the Grandville facility so the Observers need not miss any installment of Swiss Family Robinson from prologue to blood-soaked denouement. Their presence may have unsettled a few of the Hybrids, but not enough to decrease attendance.
Meanwhile...
By the time the Stage Crew was firmly established as a working Unit, Sutra-Dhara had begun to incorporate lease assignments as "rehearsals" of the shadow plays. Tundro choreographed fight scenes, while Kummer oversaw stunts; Stranj kept track of Sutra's physical props, when he wasn't wrangling the lights and other non-shadow special effects. They all sparkled, they all served as translators between the mentally fractured Delta Hybrid and the real world, and they all rolled along with whatever bizarre divergences she pronounced.
While an outsider (or even a "performer!") may see no rhyme nor reason to the changes Sutra-Dhara makes in the original tale, she does have a set of overall guidelines that serve her as well as any playwright's bag of tricks.
A Terrible Way to Divert a Plot!
Sutra-Dhara cannot explain the events of September 2012. She knows the work began to grow much more dangerous, much more chaotic. Outsiders might see chaos when they watch a stage crew rushing about, behind and above the scenes, as they put on a show; a skilled Stage Mistress has rehearsed the many pieces with her Crew, individually as well as in concert, until everyone knows exactly what to do when. The little unexpected surprises of any live performance are no match for the crew's expertise.
Repeated outsider attacks are not "little". They interrupted performances. They interrupted prop-gathering forays. They interrupted the narrative!
Infinity Inc eventually decided that enough was enough. Etoile Island facilities started to lock down, in preparation of evacuation. Sutra-Dhara heard snippets of discussion among the performers and the Employees, hinting darkly that some of the property had already gone missing -- and that was certainly true: she had not seen the death dancer in weeks, his space sanitized as if he had been transferred or ended. The five dholes, who spoke a language she comprehended when others did not, they were gone. The zen archer appeared in Medical howling in pain, howling until suddenly all was silent.
Added to the chaos of random attacks during leases, now the Stage Crew had to contend with the chaos of uncertain leases, pressure to finish out existing contracts too fast while snatching up any rare or delicate items a target might have neglected to nail down.
Really, it was all too much!
Yet the tale of how they went from "shepherded to one last lease before relocation" with a quintet of harried Sales personnel chanting hurry, hurry, hurry like some D-lister choral line, to the actions no one will ever discuss as the unchaperoned Stage Crew performed their own uniquely improvised horror story aboard a passenger jet ... no one can put that lost Act together. Certainly not Sutra-Dhara! She would go have a politely concerned word with the Producer's staff about it, only she is rather afraid of the Producer finding out that the Stage Crew has gone independent in Michigan of the United States.
The poppets took her red armor off her. Some of that was very unpleasant: no one had the custom tools of the employees in Physical Plant. The poppets tell her repeatedly that the locator chips are gone, that part of the "Horror in Flight" story was about destroying them. The poppets say we are safe, as long as we are careful about where we travel for our productions. That Sutra can pick out the work she thinks will suit the Stage Crew, rather than accept a Sales flunky's decree.
Sutra accepts the poppets' reality until something sinister pops up to make it otherwise....
