Terra Skye
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Terra Skye | |
| Player: @themightyemu | |
| Origin: | Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Controller |
| Security Level: | 50/47 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Terra Skye |
| Known Aliases: | TerTer, Ter, T |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 26 |
| Height: | Confidential |
| Weight: | Confidential |
| Eye Color: | Blue |
| Hair Color: | Brown |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Artist, Superhero |
| Place of Birth: | Dallas, Texas |
| Base of Operations: | Paragon City |
| Marital Status: | Married |
| Known Relatives: | Kyle Masters (husband), Emerie Waters (adopted daughter), Pan Masters (adopted daughter from the future), Robert and Anna Skye (parents), Cloud Dee Skye (sister), Midnight Blue Skye (brother), Eric Kurasawa AKA Shiro Kaze (adopted brother), David Radison AKA Blue Volt (adopted brother), Todd Gallahad (adopted brother) |
| Known Powers | |
| Magical spells, latent dreamwalking, snark | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Sculpting, Drawing, Sign Language, and making Catty Comments | |
| Equipment | |
| “Stupid PDA”, interdimensional pockets | |
| “Go Get ‘Em, Mister Poo!” | |
Terra Skye is my main on City of Heroes and my first 50; I’ve been playing her since June of 2004. So far she’s got two versions: the main (Earth/Storm), and the 2.0 version (Gravity/Sonic). Thanks to the ‘purchasable’ character slots, I plan to have a version with every Controller primary except for mind control.
Contents |
Current Events
((This page is greatly outdated, bear with me while I try to make corrections.))
Without Terra's knowledge, someone had managed to get samples of her genetic material (which after 4 years of heroing and the inevitable hospital trips, there was plenty to be found) and used them to create a magical clone of her. The clone, or homunculus as she labels herself, escaped and is currently hiding in the Isles under the name Terra Nightside. Terra Skye's teammate Dory James spotted Nightside at the Pocket D and relayed the information to Skye that she had a Ebil double. As if being Ebil wasn't enough, the double had totally ripped off Terra's stylishly cute boots! While Terra wouldn't arrest someone on a fashion faux pas, she is preparing a series of catty comments should she ever run across her doppleganger.
In the meantime, Terra is helping Lady Reiki round up some hexxed fertilizer Kina bought. Hopefully the enchanted zucchini that Kina grew from the hexxed garden won't cause too much trouble, as not too many people would eat pink veggies.
Terra also got a gift from Sam, AKA Taxibot Theta: a watch that opens a dimensional portal once every 24 hours. The watch now is recharged from body energy, so the portal can be easily be recharged after use. The watch was followed up by another gift, a button that can unleash one of three things: an EMP, a soundwave that can knockout most humanoids out, or an anti magic field. Terra is keeping the device secured away as a last resort.
Personality
Terra’s a woman that just can’t take things too seriously. Whether she’s making snarky comments or prattling on about her favorite movies, Terra seems rather upbeat most of the time. A closet geek, Terra peppers her dialogue with pop culture references from time to time. A self-proclaimed fashion diva, Terra’s vanity knows no limits when it comes to looking good. It’s hard for her to keep emotional restraint, much less keep her temper in check. Quite the drama queen, she can easily switch moods at the drop of a hat.
Underneath the flighty and overdramatic exterior lies a heart that simply cares too much; she’d go through anything for a friend, and has a really hard time letting go of people. After watching all the terrible things a superhero’s life can bring to her loved ones, she got rather protective of people, to the point of ‘smothering’ them. It’s only recently that she’s managed to keep her den mother instincts in check.
Terra’s worst traits make an even more terrible combination: she’s stubborn as hell, and has definite ‘rules’ that she does not cross. Ever. Commit a crime and she’ll arrest you, hero or not (though she does obey the laws of jurisdiction). Die and she won’t find a way to raise you; the cycle of life is to be respected (granted nobody stays dead in this town anyway so it’s kinda a moot point). She’s openly pro-Longbow (not only did they put their lives on the line to help her rescue her best friend, but it’s really hard to keep an objective and ‘nuanced’ view on things when well, Arachnos is beating down the walls to your city). Sometimes you can be happy or you can be right. Sadly, Terra usually chooses to be right.
Affiliations
The Phoenix Force: Terra’s supergroup. Prospective members usually leave disappointed when they find out that the group has nothing to do with Phoenixes or the X-men.
Team Thermonuclear: Also known as the ‘Cheat Codes’, Terra and her partner Oksah make a great team, not only for combat support but also on their own as well. Oksah and Terra have been together through thick and thin. They hit level 50 together, and now duo on their new licenses. Their battle cry of “Thermo!” “Nuclear!” (Usually not in that order) has struck fear in the hearts of many a criminal.
The Mai Tai Exploration Society: Terra and her friend Kina (Lady Reiki) decided to explore the bar scene of Paragon to find the perfect Mai Tai. Sadly, it’s been a long time since they’ve hit the club scene together, but Terra hopes to kick-start a barhopping safari soon.
The 36th Street Cabal: Terra’s part of a trio of occult minded people that handle all the minor magical incidents that your everyday superhero doesn’t have time for. Their main goal is to keep magical artifacts out of MAGI’s revolving door policy.
The puppies: Kryton, Hillie, and Holly. Terra adopted the puppies during her stay at the West Virginia retreat where her brother Eric was undergoing treatment over the 2007 holidays. Originally part of her own therapy, Terra took them home with her when she grew attached to them. They’re a good outlet for her controlling impulses; hence the beagle/terrier mixes are well behaved. Along with Kyle’s dog Snugglesworth, they occupy a good bit of Terra’s attention; she occasionally shows off her picture collection of the dogs.
Order of the Iron Light: Terra’s magical order: a group of very stubborn bastards notorious for usually biting off more than they can chew. Fiercely devoted to their ideal of humanity’s enlightenment and eventual acceptance of their birthright (magic), the order suffers from severe infighting due to everyone having a different method and interpretation of that goal.
Shameless Namedropping
Author’s Note: Everyone loves being mentioned on another VV page, well when the drama llama doesn’t rear its ugly head, anyway. To ward off the drama llama, I’ll only post names (and Terra’s opinion) from peeps that give their permission on the ‘discussion’ page of this article (by the way, you don’t need to reciprocate). Buyer beware though, Terra’s opinion of someone may not be what you’re looking for.
Miss Danger : Awesome on a stick. Strong, confident, and with a clever if slightly off-beat wit. Definitely someone you want on your side if you need to kick butt for justice.
Mobius Knight : Despite Terra's claims of not being the 'marrying type', Kyle Masters managed to do the impossible and put a wedding ring on her finger. Their relationship has had its ups and downs (near-death experiences, criminal investigations, nervous breakdowns-you know, the usual) they've managed to stay together. Kyle's a huge stabilizing influence on Terra: he confronts Terra whenever she's too stubborn to admit she's making a poor decision, but he doesn't judge her for the mistakes she's made. He makes her a better person; it's one of the many reasons she loves him.
Powers and Skills
Before she came to Paragon, Terra was primarily a ritual magician. Most of Terra’s powers are from her magic; each powerset is her attempt to try to work her ritual magic into something she could use in combat.
Powersets
Earth Control/Storm Summoning (1st License, Terra Skye): Terra’s first experiments in trying to speed along her ritual magic by finding a source of energy to give her spells some ‘oomph’. She found that source: the Earth. In the beginning her grasp of these spells was limited, but now her mastery of stone and the winds is quite impressive. She uses her abilities to shape stone not only in her artwork, but her ritual magic. The ability to make a ritual circle from stone in a couple of minutes really saves time when she’s doing ceremonial magic. While she’s reached the point she no longer needs to channel energy (unless it’s for something really complex) for these spells, she admits that her elemental magics are “cheating” compared to her rituals.
Gravity Control/Sonic Resonance (2nd License, Terra.Skye): After getting her 50th security level, Terra decided to try another spell set for a change of pace. This set though focuses on more ‘traditional’ applications of magic, or rather ‘ye olde tossing yon villains willy-nilly and holding them in place’ spells with some wards of protection and a curse here and there thrown in.
Flight (Both Licenses) Seriously, if Terra was going to become a superhero, she was going to travel in style. Once she learned to fly, she wasn’t ever going back.
Fitness (Both Licenses) An active lifestyle and years of taking ‘merfolk approved’ drugs has improved her physique.
Medicine (Both Licenses) Terra’s ‘stupid PDA’ has some medicinal applications built into it. Never mind the fact that it has different applications per license, it’s not like the thing worked with any sort of rationale anyway.
Indomitable Will (Psionic Mastery: 1st License) Terra doesn’t call herself a will-worker for nothing. Despite the flaky diva attitude, she’s got a will of iron when she needs it. This doesn’t mean she’s completely immune to psychic probing, however.
Hasten (2nd License) A spellcasting technique to allow her to channel spells more frequently. She doesn’t need this on her first license because as she’s got control powers out the yin-yang.
Fire Mastery (2nd License) A few firebolts here and there to give her second spellset more punch.
Other Powers
Ritual Magic
Terra was trained as a ritual magician for several years before changing her magical style for superheroing. She’s got a decent background in magic and with time and materials can scrape up a ritual if she needs to. She’s a terrible scryer and her healing spells are quite limited, but she’s good with wards and curses.
Lucid Dreaming
Around the same time Terra started learning magic, she began to develop the ability to become semi-awake in her dreams and later learned to control them. This ability grew to where she could enter another person’s dreams if they were dreaming at the same time as her.
Terra had assumed this was a mystical ability because she picked it up at the same time she was learning magic, but the truth is she’s actually a very low-powered mutant. The ability’s quite latent (the only reason she discovered it was due to her studies in meditation and focus) and usually isn’t picked up on psychic radar unless she’s sleeping as her own self-absorbed vision of herself as a magician and artist tends to be the first thing psychics pick up.
Terra hasn’t had herself tested for the mutant gene; and since her dream-meddling led to her friend Thaneval’s psyche fracturing she swore never to use this ability again even if the incident itself was years ago.
Skills
Sculpting
Terra originally went to Paragon not to be a superhero, but to study sculpture. She’s had plenty of time to refine her sculpting (since she can create her own materials) and has gained minor renown as an artist. Outside of Paragon she’s more known as an artist as opposed to a superhero. While her work is mostly in stone, she can do minor metalworking, carpentry, and glasswork. She’s accomplished in drawing, whether it’s portraits or plans for her latest project, but she rarely shows her sketchbook to anyone.
Sign Language
Terra’s older sister, Cloud, is deaf. Terra learned ASL along with the rest of the family.
Snark
With a battle cry of “Go get ‘em Mister Poo!” Terra doesn’t go for long inspirational speeches and prefers the catty comments tactic instead. Truthfully, she’s not the best orator: her one heroic monologue (against Countess Crey) ended with “I’m Rick James, bitch!”
Equipment
Interdimensional Pockets
Tired of lugging around all the tools necessary to deal with the superhero life, Terra enchanted the pockets of her clothes to be mini-gateways into her own personal pocket dimension space. She stores a lot of useful items there, ready to be pulled out at a moment’s notice.
Contacts/Relics
Terra ran amongst occult circles before becoming a superhero, she’s got a small network of contacts and a stockpile of relics. If she can’t figure out something, chances are she knows someone who can.
“Stupid PDA”
When Terra first started altering her ritual spells into something more ‘flashy’, she inadvertently unleashed the energy needed for a familiar. At the time she was just starting heroing, and had a need for a fast communication system with huge repositories of knowledge and thus her PDA was born. Of course, since it first manifested alongside her external mediport bracelet (Terra also has a Mediport chip implanted in her wrist) and her license Terra assumed it was part of her gear. It certainly provided her with much more than a typical PDA, but Terra’s lack of technical expertise caused her to treat it like an ornery machine, which in turn made it, become an ornery machine. However, whenever it’s not acting up, it does have the ability to heal her and sometimes give other people a boost.
Watch
A gift from Taxibot Theta, the watch can transport the user to another dimension once every 24 hours.
THE Button
Another gift from Theta: a device that can either send out an EMP, a soundwave that can knock out most humanoids, or an anti-magic field. Theta also gave her earplugs to negate the soundwave. The earplugs also have enchantments that protect Terra from the anti-magic field, but as 95% of Terra's magic are conjurations or other effects that originate away from her there's very few spells she can do even with the earplugs should the field go up.
History
Author’s Note: After almost four years of play, there’s only so much I can remember, so the details much less chronological order of these events will most likely be off.
The Golden Age: Life before Paragon, Arrival, The Phoenix Force Forms (coming soon)
The Silver Age: Learning the Ropes, Leading the Force, Paying Her Dues (coming not quite as soon)
The Bronze Age: Reaching Level 50, New Friends and New Losses (not really coming anytime soon)
The Modern Age: Anything after the creation of this Wiki (coming whenever I feel like it).
OOC Notes
Terra was the third character I created for CoH, the first two (a blaster created just to get me used to the interface and a scrapper that was a Sonic the Hedgehog ripoff) have long since been deleted.
The first characters Terra talked to ICly were in order: Black Dove, Cog Sprocket, and Eric AKA Suzuki Katana (though he’s been renamed to Shiro Kaze). Her first words: “Nice costume.” How I can remember this and not remember the last movie I saw I’ll never know.
Terra’s also the only character of mine that didn’t have a backstory within a week of playing her. She was just “art school major turned superhero” at first, the rest was half made up on the fly and half made up a month or two later. With the exception of an unfinished storyline back in the day, one or two forum threads, and a collaborative story, I haven’t written any plots for Terra. Everything that’s happened to her was a result of other people’s storylines or consequences of other character’s actions, which given the rich character history only proves that Virtue freakin' rocks.
