ColdFire
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Total Powers & Skills Cost: 360 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Total Cost: 538 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Total Disadvantages Points: 150 |
Background/History: Abby Alexander was enjoying her sophomore year at Cal State San Francisco. She'd made a lot of friends, and despite being a Computer Science major, she was pretty popular. One of her best friends was a girl named Lucy, who was majoring in nothing in particular. One winter night found Abby talking to Lucy, who was trying to talk her into going to a party where another friend, who was supposedly some kind of a medium, was going to conduct a seance.
"No."
"Oh, come on. It'll be fun!"
"It'll be stupid. I can't believe you actually want to do something like that."
"Hey, I've always been fascinated by stuff like that."
"You've always been fascinated by people who try to con little old ladies out of their Social Security checks by claiming they can talk to their dead relatives? You should major in marketing."
"Quit trying to change the subject. You're coming to the party, and that's final."
"Oh, really? How do you figure that?"
"Because I'm going to keep bugging you about it until you say you're coming. Like this: Are you gonna go? Are you gonna go? Are you gonna go? Huh? Are you? Are you? Huh? Huh? Are you gonna go? Are you gonna go? You know you wanna go. Are you gonna go? Are you gonna go? Are...."
"STOP IT! Fine, I'll go, just leave me alone!"
"See, that wasn't so hard. Relax, you're gonna have a great time, I promise."
"Yeah, well, I hope you don't expect me to light candles or chant or anything like that."
"Oh come on, Abby, that's what makes it fun. That's the whole reason to go in the first place. You've got to get into it!"
Abby sighed. "Lucy?"
"Yeah?"
"You do know this isn't real, right?"
"Of course it isn't real, that's why it's fun!" And for a moment, she looked a little more serious. "If it was real, it'd scare the hell out of me."
There was only one problem: in this case, it was real. Whether she knew it or not, Lucy's friend did have a small bit of very real magical talent. When all the girls got together on the night of the party, she did manage, somehow, to open a portal to the realms Beyond. Something really did come through to visit. And when it left, that Something took Abby with it.
Fomri was an Entity that could best be described in earthly terms as an Ice Spirit. He had been to the Earth realm on a handful of occasions and found that he liked it. He liked it so much, in fact, that he decided he wanted to rule it. The only problem was that he didn't have a reliable means of travelling between his realm and Earth. But he was patient and inventive, and after years of study, he found a way.
He needed a Gateway, and the best was to create one was to bind himself to the Earth realm in some fashion. So he devised a spell that would allow him to travel freely on Earth, if only for a few moments, the next time a portal was opened. While he was there, he would capture a human female. Once he had her back in his own realm, Fomri would transform her into a life form compatible with his own, take on corporeal form, and mate with her. Then he would pluck the nascent life from her and use it to establish his Gateway.
So far his plan had worked perfectly. He had spotted the portal the moment is was opened and made his presence felt. He found a human female that had all the quantities he was looking for: beautiful, strong, intelligent, and spirited. He had taken her before any of her friends knew what was happening. Now sedated on the altar of his inner sanctum, Abby lay waiting for his spells to transform her into his ideal mate. And transform her he did. When he was finished, she was exactly what he wanted: cold, beautiful, and remarkably powerful. She was a wonder to behold.
There was one problem, though. She awoke knowing exactly what he had done to her, and why. She now hated him with every fiber of her considerable being. She attacked immediately.
The ferocity of her attack caught him off guard, and he was unable to keep her from escaping. But he recovered quickly and went after her. He had invested years of planning and work into making her what she now was, and he wasn't about to give up on her just because she couldn't stand him.
They fought a running battle for most of the next two days. Fomri thought he had Abby trapped several times, but she always managed to find an escape. She was smart, cunning, and increasingly desperate. He knew he had to capture her soon if he wanted to take her alive. Then his moment of victory came. He had trapped Abby on a perilously high ledge deep within an icy cave. There was nowhere for her to go. The only way out was through him.
As he closed to take her, Abby lashed out with savage power, and Fomri began to realize that he had made a critical mistake. In creating her in the image of his perfect mate, he had inadvertently infused her with some of his own ferocious nature. He had made her too well. An attack as strong and brutal as anything he cold have mustered slammed into him and knocked him backwards off the icy precipice. Gravity gave him only a few seconds to ponder the depth of his error.
The sight of her captor flying off the narrow ridge seemed to shake Abby from her rage. She stood and watched, half in horror and half in satisfaction, as Fomri fell hundreds of feet to the cave floor below. Then she realized with relief that she had broken his hold on her. His demise meant her freedom. She stood and watched for several more minutes to make sure he didn't move again. Then she started thinking about what to do next.
She spent the next several months trying to find her way out of the hellish, frozen realm in which she'd been imprisoned. She had ample opportunities to hone her new-found powers and to learn to control what she could do. Then, just as she was starting to get used to her new home, she saw a glowing light that seemed vaguely familiar. In a flash of inspiration, she recognized it as a portal like the one that had been opened in San Francisco so long ago. She had no way of knowing where the portal might lead, but she figured that anywhere had to be better than where she was. She jumped through.
She found herself in a dark, smoky room filled with strange odors. She was surrounded by five people in dark robes, each holding a black candle and standing at one point of a pentagram. And there were men with big guns standing next to the only apparent way out. One of the robed figures shouted, "She's usurped the place of the Dark One. Destroy her!" She defeated them all easily, but took special care to ensure that they weren't permanently harmed. Evil and twisted though they might be, they were still human beings, not demons like Fomri. She knocked out the last armed man and let herself out through the door he'd been guarding.
Abby walked out into the warehouse district of Atlanta--and into a situation as surreal as any she'd faced in the Ice Realm. None of the other people at the seance had been able to describe exactly what had happened or what her captor looked like. (The fact that some of the girls at the party had been experimenting with hallucinogens may have had something to do with that.) Nobody knew where she had gone or who had taken her. So a nationwide manhunt had begun. Her disappearance had become a national media event. In the seven months since she'd vanished, her name and face had been splashed over newspapers, billboards, Internet sites, and cable news channels. State and local police departments, the FBI, and even Homeland Security had become involved in the search. And Lucy had suffered a breakdown and spent the last seven months in a mental institution.
So, after countless media interviews and talks with various government and law enforcement agencies, Abby Alexander made her way back to the City by the Bay to try to put her life back together. It was not to be so easy, however. Groups like VIPER wanted to exploit her new powers, and DEMON wanted revenge for what she had done in Atlanta. Reluctantly, she came to admit that she probably couldn't make it on her own. That's when she met a certain group of freaks....
Personality/Motivation: Abby has always been a little headstrong, and her experiences in the Ice Realm only served to strengthen that trait. She has never been one to take the easy way out or to run from a confrontation. Now she's become extremely self-confident and stubborn. She doesn't let anyone push her around, demon or otherwise.
At the same time, though, Abby is a little scared of what's happened to her and what she's become. She's not sure exactly what she is now or what her place is in the grand scheme of things. She can feel herself becoming isolated from the rest of humanity. She knows she'll never be quite like her family and friends again. Consequently, she carries around a lot of repressed anger and frustration. Heaven help anyone who gives her an excuse to vent them.
Nonetheless, she faces her uncertain future with confidence and fascination. She has always loved to learn as much as she can, and now she has a chance to explore the word in a way she never could before. She sees her situation as a challenge to be mastered, and she's looking to make the most of it.
Quote: "'Cold hands, warm heart'? Don't count in it."
Powers/Tactics: While all of Abby's powers look like flames, the effect is actually bitter cold. She is constantly surrounded by a field of blue-white flames that protect her from harm. Unfortunately, they can also cause harm to anyone who touches her. As hard as she's tried, she hasn't yet found a way to turn these flames off.
Abby has a strange and powerful array of powers that help her in a fight. She is able to produce icy flames for a number of offensive purposes and effects. She can also use the flames for defense, for movement, and for healing. One critical side effect of her powers is that she has to be careful not to use them at too high a level; if she does so, it can bring out the ferocity she inherited from her transformation by Fomri.
Appearance: Abby was a pretty enough girl before her transformation, but now she's nothing less than stunning. The icy blue-white flames that constantly surround her only serve to add to her mystique and beauty. She stands five feet six inches tall with an athletic build and a classically beautiful face. Her skin has become pale blue, almost white, and is painfully cold to the touch. Her hair is icy blue, and her blue-grey eyes sometimes shine with an inner white light.
Since Abby's name and face are widely known, she doesn't bother to try to conceal her identity. She doesn't have a specific 'superhero' outfit; when trouble strikes, she wears whatever she happens to be wearing at the time. She is most often found wearing casual clothing like jeans and T-shirts, though she has developed a small penchant for punk and gothic clothing since she returned from the Ice Realm. She can be found barefoot as often as not.
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