Tonic de la Hideaway
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| By the power of awesome! | |
| Tonic de la Hideaway | |
| Player: @Ununnilium | |
| Origin: | Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Scrapper |
| Security Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Tonic; various surnames |
| Known Aliases: | That Meddling Girl, Lord Adamczyk (sort of) |
| Species: | Soda Vampire |
| Age: | 157 |
| Height: | 5'3" |
| Weight: | Confidential |
| Eye Color: | Blue |
| Hair Color: | Red |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | All of 'em. That's right! |
| Occupation: | Scientist Adventurer |
| Place of Birth: | Other-dimensional Plano, Texas |
| Base of Operations: | The Village on The Island |
| Marital Status: | Ooh, that's complicated |
| Known Relatives: | Confidential |
| Known Powers | |
| Superhuman strength, speed, endurance; regenerative abilities | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Martial arts training (Tae Kwon Do, Taekyon, unidentified styles) | |
| Equipment | |
| The mysteriously-filled pockets of her celery-covered labcoat | |
| No additional information available. | |
Contents |
History
1888: The Origin
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, in a small town in Texas, there lived a petty and cruel young man. The reasons for this were pretty standard; crappy parents, no friends, and so on. He decided to get back at the world by learning the eldritch secrets of black magic. If you're thinking that those would be pretty hard to get in the American West of the 1800s, joke's on you, isn't it?
So the man took on the overly dramatic name of Lord Adamczyk, gathered together a following of creeps, crooks, and disreputable ne'er-do-wells, and sought out the dark secrets of the underworld. By 1888, he was close to his ultimate goal: a ritual that would carry him from life into undeath without the messiness of actual death inbetween, transforming him into an avatar of darkness and decay, a vampire lord.
The ritual was prepared; foul potions and mutilated animal carcasses were positioned around an unholy altar, upon which an unconscious young girl, kidnapped off the street, was laid. Minions chanted blasphemous lyrics, and Lord Adamczyk, dressed in a natty men's suit, stepped up to the altar, and drank a vial of thick, brown blood.
Only... it wasn't blood. One of Adamczyk's lieutenants desired the power for himself, and had tampered with the ritual, replacing several crucial components with soda pop from the local drugstore fountain.
There was a roar, a flash of light and a burst of smoke, and the ritual erupted into chaos. When it cleared, there, on the altar, stood a young, red-haired girl, naked as a jaybird and looking around with a perplexed expression. The underlings attacked the intruder, but she easily evaded them, scooped up the other girl, and split.
Hiding in the rescued girl's basement, the red-haired girl sat, thinking. What had she been doing there? What had she been doing anywhere?
As she prodded and poked at her memory, a movie began playing in her mind, a movie about a man who sought power for its own sake. It seemed like a fairly substandard fairy tale, and she mostly ignored it, trying to unlock her history to this point. Suddenly, it turned into real-life stories of horror, as the girl saw the man disappearing, only to recognize herself appearing in his place. Wait, was that Gothic moron her?
It couldn't be -- yet it was the obvious explanation. But, if he was her, she wasn't him; these memories existed at one remove, and the tragedies that had shaped this man had no hold over her.
She was all alone, now. And yet, she felt better than she ever had before. She decided that she'd gotten a second chance, a reprieve from the mistakes and sins of the past, and that, from now on, she would dedicate her life to making the most of it. She took the name Tonic; an invigoration, physically, mentally, morally.
Her first task was to bring down the ring of black magicians that she had once raised up.
Wait, no. Her first task was to find some clothes.
She
1898: Tonic marries Leonard "Len" Field.
1901: Tonic de la Hideaway and the World of the Past
1919: Formation of the World Expeditionary Society.
1925: Tonic de la Hideaway and the Mind of Atlantis
It turns out Atlantis is a sentient island of magic, existing in another dimension; it was never destroyed, but has refused to open portals to this world after a terrible war. When a micro black hole collides with the Earth, it rips open a passageway between here and there; the Atlanteans, seeing their island in pain as an attack by Earth, mass for retaliation. Only our brave adventuress and her band of boon companions can stop the war and heal the fracture in time and space!
1928: Despite transfusions by Tonic, Leonard Field dies at age 65 of polio.
1929: World Expeditionary Society breaks up.
1947: Tonic de la Hideaway and the Nosferatu Nation
A new criminal underground is growing in post-war Yugoslavia. Tired of making the big choices in help setting up the French Fourth Republic, Tonic comes to seek the relative peace of crimefighting. But she gets more than she expected when she finds out a vampiric network is growing, seeking to turn the whole place into a country of the undead. Can the anti-vampire stop the original plague from spreading?
1949: Tonic marries
Powers/Abilities
From the book Vampires: A Spotter's Guide, written by Jedys Zutoi, published by Random House Press, 1993:
"There is one more category of vampire, and this is the rarest of them all; indeed, I have ever only positively identified one. The S-Type vampire is unique in that, among vampires, it alone is not required to drain the blood, lifeforce, or other vital compounds of normal humans to survive. Indeed, because of this, the S-Type could not be called a vampire at all -- if it were not for a startling pattern of inverted similarities.
To begin with, the S-Type does indeed have a thirst for a certain substance, a thirst it must quench at regular intervals in order to survive. Yet, instead of being stolen from the life of a human, it is a manufactured substance that can easily be bought at any grocery store. Similarly, while most vampires are weakened or actively harmed by sunlight, the S-Type is stronger during the day. The S-Type almost seems to be the opposite of the 'classic' vampire".
