Synochal
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
This page is very much under construction, information will fill out and change as ideas come to me and I find time to slap them in here.
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| Synochal | |
| Player: | |
| Origin: | Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Corruptor |
| Threat Level: | 31 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Maribeth Taylor |
| Known Aliases: | Syn |
| Species: | Human (Kind of) |
| Age: | 28 |
| Height: | 4'10" |
| Weight: | 103 lbs. |
| Eye Color: | Amber cat's eyes |
| Hair Color: | Dark purple |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Mercenary |
| Place of Birth: | Seattle, Washington |
| Base of Operations: | Her apartment |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | None known |
| Known Powers | |
| Cold Blast and Kinetics | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Catlike physiology allows for better hearing, smelling and nighttime vision. Magical inclination. Tinkerer, general knowledge of mechanics, electronics and high degree of understanding of physics. Various knowledge of arcane arts. | |
| Equipment | |
| Functional armor suit with magical doodads | |
| ' | |
Contents |
Personality
To hate oneself is to invite misery.
Hate might be a strong word, but she certainly isn't her favorite person. Mainly, she dislikes the fact that she is a 'catgirl' type, and she'll often attempt to deny any accusations that she's as much. As any good self-hater, she's also a self-doubter. Though not very vocal about it, she certainly doesn't often sound bristling with confidence. Unless she's confronted about it, then she'll put up a good bit of bravado. She has a reputation to maintain, you see.
When she isn't pretending to be a hard merc, she's quiet, timid and often downright shy. While not particularly submissive, she's somewhat open to subtle suggestion. If you somehow catch her out of her armor you'll find she's very skilled at making herself scarce. Unless you've managed to convince her to get out of her armor, in which case she'll merely be more timid than normal.
As part of being who she is, she doesn't easily make friends, and even her friends are usually kept at a distance. Very few people have been to her dwelling, and fewer still have seen her in a relaxed state.
Some time spent as a freelance merc has made her very skilled at maintaining her fronts, and she rarely falters in the company of others, especially clients or 'co-workers.'
Morality
Despite being a merc, and acting as one, she has a particularly soft side. She puts up a morally questionable front, but she has a hard time finding reasons and excuses for all the things she does. She's been known to donate money to many charities anonymously as a sort of repentance.
While she sometimes takes jobs that are morally bankrupt, her independent work is typically stealing from thieves or bullies, such as Cage Consortium, Crey or Arachnos. Oddly enough, her independent work never seems to end up on the black market.
Appearance
Synochal currently has two general appearances. Firstly as she's most often in the armor, a description!
The Armor
The color scheme is an assortment of blues, from a greenish turquoise to an almost royal blue. There are a few obvious ports on the armor, the two largest of which are for intake/outtake of air from the circulation system. The smaller ones vary from power to up links for reprogramming to down links for computer interfacing.
The armor is comprised of three layers. The first is an inner lining designed simply for comfort. The second is a mesh of materials designed to absorb impacts of all kinds while still allowing flexibility. The material used is bulletproof but by itself would make for easy bruising. In areas more vulnerable and needing less flexibility there are larger sub-plates that help reduce the risk of bruises from bullets and other attacks. The last is series of plates attached to points of the mesh, designed purely for deflecting attacks.
She attached 'shoulder guards' that are spiked for aesthetics more than anything else. They are made of a more polished version of her plate armor, so are still good for something in a firefight.
The helmet is fairly plain looking, sporting twin fins that are mostly just there to conceal small bumps in the helmet that allow her catlike ears a little more room for comfort's sake. It has a front blast shield that also houses the HUD display, though the electronics are embedded into the helmet.
Occasionally her armor sports scratches and knicks and other combat-related damages. She touches up the armor every now and then, or outright replaces parts if it becomes to damaged.
While in her armor the only part of her exposed is parts of her face. Her neck and tail are both covered by the mesh. (Though the game doesn't show it)
Outside the Armor
Synochal sports actual black fur, rather than the typical very dark brown of black cats. She also carries bright, vivid yellow stripes along her sides, arms, thighs and back. The right side of her face is also dominated by a pair of the bright yellow stripes. She keeps her dark, thick purple hair short and generally does not bother keeping it tidy.
She has amber cat's eyes, and a small hint of a muzzle. She carries no whiskers but looks like she might have at one time. Two pointed cat's ears pop out of the top of her head, and she has none on the sides of her head, giving her a slightly different hairline. She has long canines but her teeth otherwise appear to be like your average human's. She has an average tail, nothing particularly fancy about it. Her build is athletic and she is actually slightly muscular, but due to her small size and fur it isn't self evident.
Her skin is black like her fur. She has no fur along her palms or the undersides of her feet or fingers. She has no visible claws, either.
She typically wears as little clothing as she can get away with. Years of living without in addition to the fur make clothing uncomfortable. If she knows she's going to be around people she is not familiar with, she'll wear more than the minimum, typically dress attire. She will not wear dresses or skirts.
Powers
All of her powers she claims, quite vehemently, originate from her armor. Anyone who can sense magic knows without a doubt that the powers are magical in nature. (Un)Fortunately, she's cleverly made magical systems into the suit that are enough to fool all but the most sensitive into thinking she speaks the truth.
Ice Blasts
She is able to conjure up a variety of icy effects, mostly by route of large chunks which she uses in conjunction with her kinetic abilities to propel at foes. But she has also been known to summon storms, or even fully encase her foes in blocks of ice.
The ice is magical, but is summoned and will exist without her continued presence. It also doesn't require any external reagent.
Kinetics
Her kinetic abilities are learned spells. Although they have no vocal reagent, they require exacting gestures. If one was out to learn her magic was not controlled by the suit, these spells would be the most obvious hint in that direction.
Her ice powers by themselves proved to be rather ineffective at doing anything in particular in the way of combat, so she took to books and learned to manipulate physics through magic. The gesturing for her spells is actually made easier by her physiology, it would have taken her considerable more time and practice to master the art otherwise.
As mentioned all of her "kinetics" powers require certain gesturing, so she makes the same movements frequently. She attributes this to the armor.
Others
Other abilities, whether evident through power sets or through some other less obvious source.
Cat-like Physiology
Her unwanted appearance offers her a few advantages over the average person. Her hearing, eyesight(especially at night), reflexes and general physical fitness are all improved over humans. Her hearing while wearing the helmet is reduced, however.
She moves like an acrobat, and has impeccable control over her body, without having to have spent time training.
"Power" Armor
Her armor doesn't actually grant her any powers or abilities, though it is functional. It has a few 'magicked' systems, but the grand majority of it is to spoof the fact that SHE is casting the magic. Some of it is actually active protective wards against various kinds of dangers, both magical and mundane. Her helmet is adorned with particularly potent telepathic warding, though it offers no particular protection to direct psionic assault it does prevent most telepaths and empaths from reading her. The suit's magical signature, or aura, or whatever you prefer to call it is quite potent as a result.
It isn't all magic, though. It has its own power cells that keep a few electronic gizmos running. Her helm has a sophisticated holographic HUD and communication device. It also has a cooling system, though its half powered by her own ability to conjure ice.
Overall the suit serves both its purpose quite well: Protecting her from harm and putting up a front that its doing all the real work.
Vulnerabilities and Limitations
Due to her learned magic's stringent requirement of gestures she occasionally fumbles or simply gets bumped or otherwise interrupted while performing them. This is the contributing factor to any "misses" she experiences. For the most part when she misses with her kinetics powers, nothing at all happens. She can conjure ice (and only ice) without any use of her hands, however for the most part this is unimpressive as the conjured ice simply falls. She can only produce ice a limited distance to her body without the use of her hands, so this ability is very limited in usefulness.
Known History
Origin
OOC information. She never speaks of this to anyone. Warning: Minor undetailed gore.
The origin of Synochal's abilities is rather unpleasant for her. In short, she didn't ask for it and doesn't particularly want it. Unbeknown to Synochal, a would-be villain with a little too much time on their hands, working knowledge of most forms of arcanery and far, far too little common sense decided they wanted a pet "Catgirl." He had a particular set of traits desired, so decided he would just have to make one. Now, creating one from nothing was entirely too much work. So, rather, he went out of his way to find an ordinary human with as many of the traits as possible and turned her into one.
A side-effect of the transformation spell used is that the subject gains an affinity for magic. To help himself out, he also used memory blocking wards and set up command words that would guarantee her cooperation. This was the beginning of how she came to be as she is now, and a large part of her resentment towards it.
The experience was mostly unpleasant, though she did learn few cantrips and about her now-innate magical control over ice from her captor. As these sort of things often go, he created something he couldn't control despite his best efforts. She eventually grew quite angry with her situation and eventually human error left her an opening: one night he slipped a little in his routine of ensuring his safety. He always commanded her to sleep before retiring himself, but not that night. She waited until he was in a deeper sleep, then quite literally bit out his throat. She had predator's teeth, but no claws to speak of, and thought it was somehow fitting. The taste was foul, and the act woke him to a terrified state.
Unfortunately for him she was considerably stronger of the two, likely in thanks to his transformation magics, and she knew the major folly of all his known magics: It all required a spoken word and/or external reagent. She quite carefully ensured no such reagent was in reach as he slept. As she restrained him and watched his terror mix with anger towards her as he slowly died, she couldn't help but feel altogether pleased.
"You stole my life and tried to keep it from me, so I've taken yours." The words came out cold, emotionless. Spoken rather matter-of-factly. He seemed to give up after that, by virtue of his body giving out or his final admission to his demise. She felt a relief like she'd never before experienced as he lay lifeless beneath her. The sounds, smells and sight of the ordeal would have churned her stomach and made her quite ill, prior to her encounter with him. Now she didn't so much as flinch.
Once her excitement died down, realization dawned and she quickly gathered what little was important to her, shrouded herself in clothing and took to the streets of the Rogue Islands to enjoy her newly earned life.
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Known Villains/Heroes
A list of all known PCs and notable NPCs, story or otherwise. Acquaintances listed here, allies and enemies below.
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