Imbroglio

Imbroglio (Scenesys ID: 1218)
Quote
"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity. I swam too far and got caught in an undertow. I think I'm still drowning."
Profile
Full Name:	Dana Derleth
Gender:	Female
Species:	Unknown
Theme:	Original (OC)
Occupation:	Antique Shop Owner
Citizenship:	{{{Citizenship}}}
Residence:	{{{Residence}}}
Education:	{{{Education}}}
Status:	Shelved
Groups:
Other Information
Apparent Age:	18	Actual Age:	18
Date of Birth	25 March 2007	Actor:	Mercy - Dolls Kill
Height:	172 cm	Weight:	Weight: 110 kg
Hair Color:	Blonde	Eye Color:	Brown
Theme Song:	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JVumrQcB3w

Profile

Dana is a strange girl. She tends to creep people out just by... being there. She gives off a vibe not unlike the uncanny valley just looking at her. She spends a lot of her time working and studying because of this.

That's not to say there isn't a reason for all this. Dana was a curious girl when she was younger, and she was never good at taking 'no' for an answer. Her father had access to books that Man Was Not Meant to Read. She read one anyway, and it fundamentally changed her in ways nobody fully understands. She feels really bad about it. So now, she lives in Gotham, nearer to where other weird stuff is constantly happening. She hopes to help people where she can, as a small matter of penance, while also remaining on the lookout for ways to control her newfound powers and urges more effectively.

Sheet

Description

ExpandClick to expand.

{{{Description}}}

History

ExpandClick to expand.

{{{History}}}

Personality

ExpandClick to expand.

{{{Personality}}}

Abilities

ExpandClick to expand.

Magic

You don't get your power from a book of forgotten and forbidden lore without getting at least a little magic out of it. In Dana's case, it's extremely minor. She has to trace a symbol (made easier when casting on herself due to her shapeshifting) and she has to chant words. The effects are generally minor, best suited to pragmatic sorts of utility. She could open a lock, transport objects, or hide herself for example (though the chanting makes this of limited use compared to just shrinking). Her clothing has symbols stitched into the lining to allow her to complete a heroic outfit change in the time it takes to say the magic words: Zi Kia Kanpa.

Shapeshifting

The nature of Dana's true form allows her body to be incredibly malleable. While she has to be able to visualize what she wants to become, and it takes some amount of concentration to maintain as long as she's awake (her form holds just fine while sleeping, for some reason), she can effectively shapeshift into anything she can imagine to varying degrees of success. When she is actively acting as a superhero, this is usually the only power she will ever display willingly. Organic forms are easier by far; the natural imperfections in organic things better mask the imperfections in her ability. Squirming flesh can hide under fur much better than it can hide on metal or plastic. It is worth noting that her mass remains the same in any form; she will make a remarkably heavy mouse or shockingly light elephant. As her shapeshifting is just a matter of adjusting the appearance of her true form, her resilience and strength and other core attributes do not change when shapeshifting, with the exception of increased or decreased leverage to utilize her strength.

True Form

The source of all of Dana's most obvious powers, such as they are, is that she is no longer human. She isn't sure what she is, and she wouldn't map too cleanly to anyone else's realm of experience either. She's either something new or so old and forgotten that it was extinct long before anyone could remember and it's far too long after any records faded into the past. All she knows is that it isn't human. It better resembles a constantly-shifting mass of limbs, flesh, and organs. It's like something straight out of John Carpenter's The Thing, but even more fluid and gross.

Her true form consists almost entirely of flesh and muscle, resembling an octopus in biology in many ways. She has no muscles and nearly no recognizable organs. Her mass is presently roughly twice that of what it was as a human, but the density can change wildly. It can change texture and color, as well. Her diet has also changed: she can consume anything organic that can be absorbed by engulfing it with her body. Her shame over her condition limits her to normal human food under most circumstances, but the mass she consumes adds almost directly to her own mass with only a little inefficiency. This also allows her to regenerate, but only so fast as she can consume material to replace what she had lost. Most injuries are non-fatal to her, given her lack of internal organs or vital points, but sufficient lost mass would still kill her. Cauterized flesh is more difficult and slow to regenerate. Her increased mass relative to her (typical) size also gives her increased strength: generally two or three times that of a peak human. She falls vastly short of the typical flying brick or brute type of superhuman in both strength and resilience despite all of these advantages.

Skills

ExpandClick to expand.

Antiquing

Between her father's work and her own (usually part-time) work in occult and antique stores, Dana has some knowledge about ancient and magical artifacts. The really obscure stuff is probably beyond her, as she's still learning, but she'd be a good first stop if you think your grandmother's broach is cursed or something.

Esoterica

Some alien part of Dana's new brain has a gift for reading old, dead, and/or forgotten languages. She can read, pronounce, and understand the meaning of (if not provide a literal translation for) texts written in ancient or forgotten languages. This subconscious knowledge only seems to work for books, though; she won't be of any use actually talking to any native speakers. She needs the written symbols to read.

Good Student

Not terribly heroic, and far from a superhuman intelligence, Dana has always been a good student. She's excellent at test-taking, and she has a broad base of knowledge that comes just shy of being considered encyclopedic. Still, she's young and never went to college. She won't be giving any true braniac superhumans a run for their money any time soon.

Resources

ExpandClick to expand.

Home

Dana lives in a small one room apartment. It often looks more like a bachelor pad than a place belonging to an eighteen year old girl, but she doesn't really have people over. When you see the face she does in the mirror every morning, it's hard to care about appearances.

Job

Dana managed to find a job for an antique dealer in Old Gotham. It isn't uncommon for magical artifacts to pass through it, and she tries to grab a hold of them when she can afford it. It's only to keep them out of the hands of the general public, really. So nobody makes the same mistake as her. It certainly doesn't satisfy some new primordial hunger that she feels but refuses to acknowledge. The pay is passable, too. She has enough to pay the bills and have a little left over for fun every now and then.

Vas Vacui

This is it. The book that started it all. This tome of forbidden lore is always on (or in?) Dana's person. She never lets it stray out of arm's reach. It is the bane that ruined her life, but it is also the only thing holding it all together. It's her greatest weakness. Taking this book is like making Bruce Banner angry, and nothing good will ever come of it. It's unclear if letting someone else read from the book would have the same effect it's had on her, but she doesn't intent on ever letting that happen.

Weaknesses

ExpandClick to expand.

Adrenaline

The Fight or Flight response is a nasty one for Dana. She's put a lot of effort into learning to keep calm in stressful situations, but there's only so much you can do with her lack of experience. It's like this: the more scared or angry she gets, the harder time she has maintaining her form. If it were just that, it wouldn't be too bad. But her true form isn't the young woman you see walking around day-to-day. Her true form is like a roiling mass of flesh and limbs and tentacles and organs. Her true form is some unholy abomination from deep within some void. She might start a dog, but you hit her on a the nose with a newspaper and she starts looking more like some Lovecraftual quaduped made of pink flesh and sharp spikes pretty quickly. Put her in a blind rage or panic, and her true form comes out in full. Good luck avoiding dozens of tentacles and devouring maws, all superhumanly strong and resilient. Not to mention that she loses herself to primal instinct whenever it happens. She is terrified of this ever happening, and she won't ever use it deliberately except maybe (only maybe!) in the most dire of life-and-death situations. She fears people simply knowing her true form as much as she fears accidentally hurting someone when she isn't under control.

Dreamless

Whatever gives the human mind dreams isn't present in Dana's own head. Instead, she's connected to some primodrial void. This is what she sees whenever she sleeps, and it tends to leave her quite unrested no matter how long she tries to sleep. Any oneiromancers who might try to help her in the realm of sleep would find it simply impossible. This might be considered an advantage, but a relative lack of oneiromancers in her day-to-day life means it hurts her more than helps.

Fire

It's not really fair to call this a weakness. After all, even if she's burned she still heals in days what would take humans weeks or months. It's still a weakness relative to her, however. It's simple: cauterized or burned flesh is harder for her to regenerate, and it's much harder for her to move the injured area. A little bit of time with a flamethrower or a superheated weapon would be enough to make her useless very quickly. It's worth noting that she isn't any more flammable than normal human flesh; getting briefly singed won't cut it.

Hunger

Dana's new body is hungry. Given that it has no stomach and can simply keep consuming (probably) infinitely, that hunger isn't really sated with food. It can only really be dulled. Worse, it hungers for anything organic, not just people food. More than once she's found herself drooling at some dumpster despite eating lunch moments prior. Even more unsettling, it seems to prefer the dead. She nearly lost it once when she saw a human corpse and wanted nothing more than to swallow it whole. Mostly she tries to deny it happens, but sometimes she feels herself drawn to eat something she finds disgusting. She usually makes a sandwich instead.

Shapeshifting

The better Dana can visualize the form she wants, the better she can hold the form. If she's only ever seen a photo or video of the thing, it'll always look fake to anything more than the most passing or distant glance. She also won't be able to do much more than walk around before losing control of the form. Best results come from things she's observed in person. It's even better if the observation was recent, as this degrades along with her memory of the thing. This limits her mostly to shapeshifting to people she has met in person, or animals that live in the area (or a nearby zoo, though you usually can't get close enough to the animals to be effective). It's also noting that she has a really hard time fooling biometric security. She'd have to examine the part to copy very closely to memorize every detail without flaw. She doesn't have photographic memory, so she can't even maintain this for more than a few minutes after doing it before the flaws in her memory start expressing themselves in her form. Her DNA remains her own (and obviously inhuman at that) regardless of the shape she takes.

Uncanny Valley

Dana is creepy. Very creepy. It isn't even her fault, really. It's been so long since she was actually human that her memory of herself has started having imperfections. Inconsistencies. Look away and look back, blink, or even just look at her for too long? You'll feel something off about her. Wasn't her eye a lighter shade of brown a second ago? No, it couldn't be. Weren't her cheekbones higher? Weird, I must be imagining things. It's unsettling to just about everyone she encounters for anything more than brief pleasantries. It's more pronounced when she shapeshifts into something not herself. You'll see a dog and just somehow know something is off about it. That bird flying in the sky will make most normal people want to get a ceiling between them and it. It makes her power difficult to use for things like infiltration. She can, certainly, but people will be on their guard no matter what guise she takes within moments of observing her. It's usually subtle enough that it amounts to gaslighting rather than anything someone could prove (though see the adrenaline weakness for a greater extreme), but it marks her and makes her constantly uncomfortable in her own (or anyone else's) skin.

Vas Vacui

What is the importance of this book? Why does Dana keep it with her always? It's simple. The forbidden tomb Vas Vacui is the only thing that allows her to maintain control. If it moves more than a couple of feet away from her, then she loses her mind. Quite literally. She becomes a primordial creature of the void in body as well as mind, completely free of her mind and sanity until it is returned or she is destroyed. In a world with people like Superman, she'd be a relatively low-level thread in the grand scheme of things, but she really isn't looking forward to seeing how that would go for her. Not to mention she's terrified of people seeing her for what she really is.

Logs

ExpandClick to expand.

To Refresh Character's Log List Click Here. Then hit the resulting button to dump the old cached list.

Title	Date	Scene Summary
Starlight, Darkness & The Window Between!	August 14th, 2017	Summary needed
You like books right	August 10th, 2017	Summary needed
Two cutes for comfort!	August 7th, 2017	Summary needed
Anything you can do...	August 7th, 2017	Summary needed
Cats & Dogs!	August 4th, 2017	Summary needed
All Magic. All the time.	August 4th, 2017	Summary needed
Purple & Black	August 1st, 2017	Summary needed
Cop vs. Octopus	July 26th, 2017	Summary needed
Old Things	July 24th, 2016	Summary needed

Cutscenes

ExpandClick to expand.

To Refresh Character's Log List Click Here. Then hit the resulting button to dump the old cached list.

Title	Date	Scene Summary
No logs submitted yet.

Gallery

ExpandClick to expand.

{{{Gallery}}}