Star City- The Heroes of Tomorrow OOC

Celebrity Faceclaim:
Chloe Bennet

Name:
Artemis Lian Crock

Alias:
Artemis

Base of Operations:
Star City, but has roots in Gotham.

Alignment: (Good/Bad/Antihero)
Antihero struggling towards being Good.

Affiliations:
Team Arrow, Justice Society, League of Assassins (reluctantly).

Family:
Lawrence “Crusher” Crock, aka Sportsmaster (father)
Paula Nguyen-Crock, aka Tigress (mother)
Jade Nguyen-Harper, aka Cheshire (sister)
Roy Harper, aka Arsenal(/Red Arrow?) (ex-brother-in-law)
Lian Harper (niece)

Friends:
Team Arrow, mentored by Oliver Queen and his compatriots, though Roy Harper would not refer to her as a “friend.”

In particular, Artemis has developed a bond with Felicity Smoak, who sees herself as “the cool aunt” and who is reminded very much of herself at Artemis’ age.

Her friendships with other heroes her age (such as Bart "Impulse" Allen) have been impeded by her reluctance to trust others and by her aggressive nature, and therefore are still nascent and undeveloped. Perhaps this will not be the case for long.

Age:
18

Bio:
Artemis Crock was raised by two criminals, two assassins, raised with her sister in a kill-or-be-killed, survival-of-the-fittest world in deep, dark, Gotham. Even though this gave Artemis a fierce determination and strength and aggression, she never thrived in that environment as did her sister Jade. When their mother found herself sent to jail and bound to a wheelchair because she’d taken a figurative and literal fall for her husband, however, and Jade abandoned Artemis-- embracing the life of a masked assassin even as she rejected staying under their parents’ roof --Artemis found herself more and more convinced to escape. The final icing of the cake was her mother’s return from prison and subsequent begging her father to hang up his own mask-- only for her father to dismiss this as impossible.

True, one never can retire or escape from The League of Assassins, Sportsmaster wasn't wrong about that, but Artemis swore to herself that she would never enter their grasp. She would find another road.

At 15, she took the skills that had been drilled into her-- mastery of archery, hand-to-hand combat, stealth and acrobatics --and she donned a uniform patterned after that of the now-legendary Arrow. She would be a vigilante-- perhaps one day, even a hero.

But it didn’t take long before she fell under The Shadow of The Bat, who, having discovered this new creature operating in His City, referred her in turn to a man who had experience mentoring young archers, such as Roy Harper and Thea “Speedy” Queen. Confronting Artemis about this along with her mother Paula--



--Batman and The Arrow promised to help refine her untempered temperament and to help her become the hero she wanted to be. That was three years ago.

Now 18, Artemis still struggles with the talent for murder embedded in her by her nature and nurture alike. This has been complicated by her fellow Arrow-mentee Roy having fallen in and out of love and marriage with her sister Jade-- they have a daughter together --and by continued conflicts with The League of Assassins, who insist that they are part of Artemis’ heritage and that blood will eventually win out.

Her ultimate goal is to prove to herself and to the world that she has overcome her darker nature and then leave this world of violence behind her for good-- to have the life that has always been denied her. Long road ahead.

Powers:
Artemis has no superhuman abilities, but like her father Sportsmaster and her mother The Tigress in her prime, she has conditioned herself and been conditioned to near-peak human performance. She has an assortment of gadgetry inspired and supplied by The Arrow’s own armory, including hi-tech “trick” arrows-- though she generally defaults to the standard, pointy-stick variety.

She can kick ass and take names in multiple forms of combat, is an accomplished motorcyclist, and is constantly training to expand her repertoire of skillsets.

Weaknesses/Disabilities/Vulnerabilities:
Artemis is only human against the slings and arrows that flesh is heir to, and can be goaded into making mistakes-- in particular, shooting first and asking questions later. She has a weak spot when it comes to her sister, Cheshire-- as she still desires reconciliation-- her mother, Paula and niece Lian-- as she would die to protect them --and her father, Sportsmaster-- as she would like to kill him very much.

For the very most part, her fellow heroes don’t know about her parentage and heritage, as she is reluctant for them to judge her as unworthy and untrustworthy-- Roy knows, and he tolerates her presence but does not trust her because of the mind games and broken heart that came of loving Artemis’ sister. Artemis does not often get to see her niece-- in Roy’s custody --as a result.​

Celebrity Faceclaim:
Magda Apanowicz

Name:
Victoria Rose Grant

Alias:
(Varies depending on Dialed Hero.)

Base of Operations:
Keystone-Central.

Alignment: (Good/Bad/Antihero)
Good, she hopes.

Affiliations:
None, yet. As the story develops, hopefully: Justice Society.

Family:
Ceri Grant, née Lewellyn (mother)
Christopher Grant (father, deceased)
Dai Llewellyn (great-uncle, deceased)

Friends:
Robert "Robby" Reed (childhood sweetheart/boyfriend)
Captain Jack the Cat (household pet, possibly meta-powered)

Rose will, it is my fervent hope, develop friendships with a good many characters as the story goes.

Age:
23

Bio:
Victoria Rose Grant-- though she steadfastly prefers "Rose" --had about as normal a childhood as one could expect, if there's any such thing as normal. Raised by a single mom as her father died shortly after she was born-- though she knew little about her dad-- she was nurtured most of all by her archaeologist mother's love of myths and legends and spiritual things.

Through this upbringing, however, Rose's mother would emphasize that one could not simply close one's eyes and hope for a higher power to do all the work.

"Prayer can be a wonderful thing," Ceri would promise Rose, "nurturing to the soul. But even the most ardent, sincere prayer means nothing if you're not willing to act on it. God gives, but man must open his hand. God answers prayer, but evil triumphs when good men do nothing. Faith can move mountains, but you demonstrate faith by giving those mountains a shove."

If there was one thing that Rose cherished beyond this, it was her love of music in all its forms-- though she herself lacks musical talent, she quotes lyrics like some men quote Scripture. She was also an omnivorous reader, often losing herself in books.

If there was one person that Rose cherished beyond this, it was her boy-genius-next-door, Robby. Rose never did fit in with the other kids at school, but she didn't let this bother her overmuch-- because of her spiritual upbringing, she didn't see being part of the in-crowd as something to be grasped. When Robby showed up on the first day of school in third grade as having just moved to Keystone City from Littleville, Colorado, he was an instant outcast-- and Rose just as instantly befriended him.

People would often joke about the two of them getting married-- "You'll both have alliterative initials! It's like Destiny!" --but all Rose knew, like Odd Thomas knew about Stormy, they were meant to be together. Robby, though a supergenius, took a little longer to learn this than Rose did, but he eventually put two and two together.

When the STARLabs particle accelerator went up in neighboring Central City ten years ago, Rose and Robby had been 13 years old. Neither of them were affected by the mysterious energies and forms of matter and so forth that leaked through the dimensional disturbances-- but it wasn't only humans that felt those effects.

In late 2013, Ray Palmer's company began releasing its own line of smartwatches, some models of which were paired with smartphones. Advance versions of the watch-phone pairs were shipped to various retail outlets for demo purposes, including a variety of Tech Villages in the Keystone-Central area. One such delivery-- by Kapitalist Kouriers --was engulfed in the interdimensional wake of the STARLabs disaster. As the city blacked out and the computers everywhere were scrambled-- the phone-watch pair in a cardboard box in the back of the delivery truck blinked to life, somehow transformed. Somehow-- other.

Both screens displayed bizarre, unintelligible characters-- glowed with unearthly light-- and then went back to sleep again as though it had never happened.

While lots of shipments were misdirected that day as tracking systems and RFID scanners went down in the interdimensional EMP, the box containing that particular technology was shipped by mistake with artifacts to a natural history museum in Keystone-- the workplace of one Ceri Grant-- where, its label damaged and illegible-- it wound up sitting unnoticed in the mail room and then in archives for over ten years.

At 23 years old, trying to find her way in the world with a degree in Communications that was no help in getting a job, Rose got some part-time work at her mother's museum doing inventory. In the process, as fate would have it, she was the first to stumble upon that dusty old cardboard box. The first to open it. And to marvel, with nostalgic glee, at the ancient smartphone and smartwatch found inside.

"God, I bet this is even only 4G," she laughed to herself, with the perhaps-forgivable arrogance of youth. "Practically the Stone Age. See, heh, museum humor."

When she picked up the devices, however, they flickered for a moment, grew warm to the touch-- something that should be impossible-- the charge should be long gone after all this time-- but then they quieted again.

Bemused, bewildered, Rose brought them to Robby at the lab where he was interning on the way to another doctorate-- and when Robby powered them on, he was utterly stunned.



Whatever OS these smart-gadgets used, whatever app had come preloaded on them, he couldn't make head or tail of them. A strange alphabet like something you'd see on that old show Ancient Aliens, a circle of ten-- what, runes? --orbiting a central rune.

But pressing the images didn't do anything. The touchscreens were entirely unresponsive.

Robby set the phone down to research via search engines, and Rose picked up the handset as he did so. She gazed at the images-- she could almost make them out, she imagined-- like reading hieroglyphs-- and at the center, that rune at the heart of the circle, it looked like-- to her it looked like--

"H," she breathed. And gently stroked that rune with her thumb.

In that instant, everything changed. Especially Rose.

Since then, much to Robby's fright and consternation and directly contravening his well-intentioned lectures as to safe practices, Rose has begun using "The H-Dialer" app to save lives in and around Keystone-Central. She's entirely a novice, running off her own ideas of what a hero should do and be, powered by optimism-- and while she's doing okay so far, running on instinct and intuition is running on borrowed time.

Powers/Weaknesses/Disabilities/Vulnerabilities:
Rose herself has no superhuman abilities. She has no combat training. She has only "The H-Dialer." Fortunately, "The H-Dialer" app enables her to become any one of ten (or more!) superhuman personae, each of whom has built-in awareness of their abilities and built-in muscle memory for applicable skills. Unfortunately, Rose has approximately zero control over which Hero she becomes whenever she Dials "H," and is stuck in each form until she powers back down again-- an interval which also appears random but never seems longer than 24 hours.

The phone and watch appear to be keyed not just to her genetic signature, but to her "life-force;" it has to be her that Dials "H," it has to be her that wills the change. Additionally, whenever either the phone or the watch get separated from Rose by any significant distance, they simply and without fanfare return to her, they're just there again, either on her wrist or in her pocket or on her bedside table, et cetera.

Despite being based on late-2013 technology, the alterations on the phone and watch make it so that they never run out of battery, and always have signal. Theoretically, you could call Rose on The Moon.

The phone-watch pair also appear conventionally indestructible, though understandably neither Robby nor Rose have tested this overmuch for fear of accidentally destroying one or both artifacts.

When Rose Dials up a Hero form, her body metamorphoses-- transmogrifies-- into that of the Hero-- and all of her physical belongings vanish to an unprecedented state of location, possibly extradimensional-- until such time as The H-Dialer times out and Rose returns to normal. This includes the phone and watch-- no-one knows where they go when she changes, so neither she nor anyone else can use the devices to interrupt her transformation prematurely.

Additionally, while Rose remains more or less in control of her faculties, each Hero reflects a different aspect of Rose's personality-- she essentially becomes a different version of herself depending which Hero's form she's taken.

Rose appears to transform into a randomly selected Hero from a "repertory theater" of ten (or more!):

Valkyrie M:

Named for the song "Valkyrie Missile" by Angels and Airwaves, this Hero possess powers of fire and ice-- she can create pyrokinetic flames and explosions and heat, and she can hydro/cryokinetically combine water and cold to craft and manipulate ice. She can burn as hot as The Human Torch when he is not at Nova-level, and freeze as cold as Iceman when he is not at Omega-level. She is immune to extremes of temperature-- which is to say, she is immune to burning or to freezing. She can also fly at seventy miles per hour-- much faster if she uses her pyrokinesis for rocket-boost --and perform superathletic feats approximately on the level of Captain America. Her senses are mildly enhanced, though she is particularly attuned to changes in temperature and the presence of water molecules, and she can switch her vision to infrared frequencies.

She is most like her usual self in this form, but tends to smoke and swear a little more.

Roentgen-Ray Rose:

By far Rose's most physically powerful Hero. Basically a female Thor, with near-Kryptonian strength and durability, and wielding an indestructible cosmic hammer named Taranfollt that gives her godlike atmokinetic/meteorokinetic/aerokinetic/electrokinetic abilities.

Bombastic personality, very focused on justice-- whether or not "mortal law" agrees with her. Tends to speak with an Elizabethan flair.

Redwood:


A heroine that can convert herself into plant life but with an animalistic attitude, largely reminiscent of Wolverine as she tends to sprout thorny claws from the backs of her hands and exhibit heightened "plant" senses. She's fragile, easily damaged, but extremely regenerative, able to rebuild herself from a mere frond in moments. Redwood can also elongate and shapeshift her plant-formed body, and has a very limited ability to communicate with and control plants and animals.

Has a link to both The Green (the astral plane of plants) and The Red (the astral plane of animals), hence the name "Redwood."

Always on the verge of losing her temper, unwilling to suffer fools, and unsurprisingly environmentally-inclined.

Element Girl:
Image: http://i.imgur.com/VMaErYe.png
Full Description: http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?p=84710814#post84710814
This Hero possesses the ability to copy and absorb things she touches, like Absorbing Man, or Amazing Man, or Kevin 11. She can turn into stone by touching stone, or metal by touching metal-- or if someone attacks her with electricity, she can become supercharged with electricity.

This version of her tends to be-- opportunistic. Kind of a con artist, but still a Hero at heart.

The Koan:
Image: http://i.imgur.com/mcwj5TP.jpg
Swathed in darkness and mystery, wearing a mask inspired by The Yin Yang, this hero is powerless-- but a brutal hand-to-hand combatant and traceur, a skilled detective, and a low-level exorcist/demonologist/petty-dabbler-in-The-Dark-Arts. Always has useful everyday items in her seemingly-bottomless pockets, which she often uses as improvised weapons to relatively devastating effect or as part of her extremely low-level mysticism. Also uses a grappling gun and a pair of 9mm Colt 1911s.

Tends to speak in Zennish riddles.

Cannon-in-D:

A cyborg low-to-mid-superstrong bulletproof bad-ass who can hack other systems and transform one or both arms into powerful sonic cannons. Can't fly, but has jump-jets. Can run at 120 mph for five-minute bursts given a relatively straight runway, can lift (press) 30 tons, and possesses vast cybernetic sensory enhancements (X-ray vision, infrared vision, enhanced hearing and echolocation, "seeing" radio waves, et cetera).

While portions of her head appear biological, she is entirely composed of powerful cybernetic machinery-- the only part of her that remains human is the brain housed in her heavily armored skull.

Tends to speak in song titles/lyrics (even more than usual!) and military terminology.

LodeOut:
Image: http://i.imgur.com/jiueuei.jpg
A magnetic/ferrokinetic heroine.

A true-blue hero type. Fearless and self-sacrificing to an absolute fault.

(Art by Lady Cybercat, colors by Speedforcesatori, both of DeviantArt.)

Constant-C:
Image: http://i.imgur.com/xxwguNk.jpg
A superspeedster whose body is composed of varying forms of light. Her body is intangible in this form, unless she concentrates ferociously to solidify herself with hardlight forcefields so as to interact with solid matter. Highly vulnerable to light-manipulator characters like Rainbow Raider or dark-manipulators like Obsidian.

Tends to be nervy, jittery, jumpy-- the embodiment of Rose's anxiety. Requires a level-headed influence.

ShadowPax:
Image: http://i.imgur.com/B6S8YEv.jpg

Capable of summoning and manipulating darkness and temporarily granting it solid form, and teleporting via shadows, whether the natural ones or the ones she summons. This can either be used for short jumps to nearby shadows-- never more than two miles at a time, and that's pushing it-- or she can shunt herself into the otherworld that is the source of her powers and emerge from it just about anywhere-- though these longer jumps can only be to places she has already physically been.

She's able to form webbing out of her shadows for entangling enemies or grappling across distances-- she calls this "shadow-weave" --but the swinging from buildings hasn't occurred to her yet. Capable of tremendous agility and swordfighting-- for which purposes she carries a variety of enchanted blades. Climbs walls like a spider. Sees perfectly even in absolute darkness. Can lift almost one ton.

Derives her powers from a genetic link to a twilit mystical Faerie-land subdimension; her powers are otherworldly and magical in nature.

Rather gloomy and subdued. Tends to be underwhelmed. As lethal with a deadpan snarky wisecrack as she is with a bladed weapon.

Submersive:

A merwoman Hero adapted to undersea and amphibious combat, with mystical powers of hydrokinesis and the ability to communicate fluently with sea life.

Like Redwood, she takes the environment pretty seriously, but she's cooler-headed than the plant-woman.

She basically has the Aquaman powerset-- tough as nails physically because of her amphibious abilities, eyes adapted to 6000 fathoms, able to walk at the bottom of The Mariana Trench so she's Hella strong but not Kryptonian or Martian strong, her hide is bullet-resistant but not bulletproof-- her hearing's terrible on land, though, better speak up, and she tends to shout.

Unlike Valkyrie M or Tempest, she cannot control the physical state the water is in when she unleashes her hydrokinesis, but she can manipulate a higher volume of water than Valkyrie M. She sometimes uses a mystical, watery sword-- named Benthesikyme --to enhance her hydrokinesis and engage in melee combat. Benthesikyme does not automatically manifest with her, but she can draw it out of any pool of water greater in circumference than her hand, no matter how shallow.

She can direct and communicate with sea life-- including marine birds and mammals --though of course most sea life isn't sentient and may not have anything interesting to say. If she really pushes her telepathy, she can interact with vestigial regions of the brain that land life has inherited from their marine ancestors (such as the basal ganglia) to communicate or cause ill effects.

Her powers ebb if she becomes dehydrated.

The Dayspring Antiphon:
Description: http://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=34002173&postcount=50

The Twenty-First-Century Scion of Light of Earth-2636, she describes herself as a "placeholder Messiah," a way to hold the line for Heaven on Earth until the true Second Coming.

Unlike the other ectypes, The Dayspring Antiphon remains possessed of her full original consciousness-- Rose does not assume agency over this powerset. That's probably a good thing, considering that The Dayspring Antiphon not only has the ability to perform Biblical miracles with her Omega-level psychokinesis, but she possesses healing/purifying powers, photokinesis, and empathic abilities. The Dayspring Antiphon also causes people to forget her as soon as she leaves the immediate vicinity, as she does not consider self-glory something to be grasped.

An extremely rare Dial, The Dayspring Antiphon is subtle and judicious in the use of her vast powers-- she prefers to not interfere overmuch in the natural course of events. But there are times when she will use those powers to turn the tide for the side of Good-- and, if you remember "the old Red Sea Trick," sometimes she literally turns the tide.

She has a tendency to show up, do something awesome, and then will the Dial to time back out, causing everyone around-- including Rose --to forget her existence and wonder what in Heaven's Name just happened.

The Magpie:

Full Description: http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?p=26943504#post26943504

The Magpie is from a low-magic fantasy world, and suffered a grievous injury when a magic potion was spilled in her eyes, costing her her sight-- not so much blinding her as causing her to see too much, seeing the maddening magical energy patterns that make the world work, auras and the like. In order to block these out, she wears a blindfold-- otherwise she would quickly lose her mind. Fortunately, like the legendary Daredevil, she has been given other amazing senses to balance out the loss of her sight.

Trained from a young age by a master huntsman and tracker, The Magpie in turn tempered her powerful senses to become a master huntress and archer in her own right-- able to hit the most difficult of targets despite her lack of conventional eyesight.

She does not possess fancy high-tech "trick" arrows, but she does have a couple of basic variations-- ones designed to disarm, or to whistle in flight as a signal-- in addition to the usual assortment of broadheads and bodkins.

As with The Koan, The Magpie is a practitioner of Zen, but she is the opposite side of The Koan's coin-- while The Koan twitchily struggles to maintain Zen while dwelling in her own insanities, The Magpie has successfully erected her Zen calm as a bulwark against madness, and has not succumbed. She is the epitome of grace under pressure.

Brainswarm:

Full Image: http://i.imgur.com/xAKoPYX.png
Brainswarm is a Tenth-Level Intellect, making her one of the smartest human beings in history.

She possesses the innate ability to generate electropsychic "sting" blasts that can disrupt and/or aggravate almost any lifeform without doing actual physical damage-- usually only an annoyance, but it still manages to annoy all but the most terrifying of foes. She can also shrink herself down to infinitesimal size-- usually the size of a small insect, but she can go far smaller, to the subcellular level if necessary. Additionally, she can at will sprout a set of buzzing dragonfly-esque wings that allow her to fly at great speeds.

However, Brainswarm's greatest invention is a variant on quantum-mirror technology that allows her, at the press of a button, to summon a veritable legion of her counterparts from alternate timelines. A vast array of alternate Brainswarms can rally to her aid, each as different as the universes from which they hail. Because the Brainswarms are not linked by a unifying consciousness, it can sometimes be difficult for Brainswarm to get her counterparts to cooperate with her-- but when they act of one accord, they can be as dangerous as almost any army.

Final Ectype:
LOCKED
...for now​