Broodmother

Broodmother
Author	/u/PM_ME_UR_SIMURGH
Civilian name	Katrina Bauer
Alignment	Hero
Affiliation	None (Devilfish)
PRT Classification	Master, Changer,
Born	(2003-08-23) August 23, 2003 Blanchard, ID
Status	NPC

Broodmother, a former Ward with the ability to summon and control spiders, and it's speculated that her trigger was related to a very sudden spider infestation at Nashwood High School.

She had a career of about six months in the Wards before being quietly removed from her team along with her adoptive father, Octarine. They've since gone on to start a small PI gig while doing indie hero stuff. She's also known been seen being close with the hero Mockingbird.

Character Sheet

Appearance

Kat is a smol 15-year-old girl, green eyes and dirty blonde hair with an undercut thing going on. She's often seen about school in one of a thousand different types of flannels, and would die before being put into a dress. She gives off a strong aura of gay.

Her costume is a white bodysuit-looking thing that makes her look slightly less twiggish. Has a spider motif in gold. The Image department is trying real hard to make up for the fact that they let a Ward be named Broodmother.

Equipment and Resources

She lives with Octarine in a small house in a quiet suburb. She also has a calming crystal necklace purchased from Geode.

She has the basic trappings of life, a cell phone (civ and PRT), laptop, and a skateboard she got from her dad a few years ago for her birthday.

Costume

• IIa rated body armor on the stupid chart.
• Cleverly-designed channels allow her to redirect spiders, allowing them to pop out near her hair, wrists, back, or legs. She can open the face part to vomit spiders directly, but Image was very insistent that really, don't worry about doing that, please.
• Builtin PRT comms and a hella basic HUD in the lenses of the mask. Controls in right glove
• A very basic grappling hook mechanism to give her some mobility. Not particularly fast or versatile, but supports her weight and lets her get atop a two-story building if needed.

Skills and Specializations

• Outdoorsey survivalist shit
• Shooting
• Writing mediocre Mockingbird yuri fanfiction

Mentality

Despite her appearance she's rather shy and not that outgoing, due to recent events in her life that hasn't gotten better. Violently arachnophobic. Her power pushes her hard towards violence, something she's having trouble with right now.

Power

Trigger type: Natural, single-trigger

Broodmother's power comes in two states, primarily a Master-type swarm spawner, and a secondary Changer state:

When stressed or when the shard decides there needs to be more conflict, Broodmother begins coughing and vomiting up hundreds of spiders, which are collectively under her control. These spiders vary in species, and can be small or large or anything in between. They share their senses with Broodmother, and there is no upper limit on how many spiders she can create. Note that due to both being an arachnophobe and the shard being a wee bit broken, she cannot control when the spiders happen, it's purely an automatic response to conflict and stress. The spiders aren't of any species seen before, and are generally nonlethal unless swarmed over time.

Her secondary power allows her to transform into a big fukken spider. This does all the things you'd expect a person-sized spider to do, like: weave webs, be poisonous, scuttle about on walls, and so on. Transforming to or from takes a few seconds, and any wounds on either state are preserved while that form is in stasis, until healed. While she can transform to and from this form on demand, she is currently not aware of that fact. Every time she is injured there is a 25% chance of dropping into this form, and severe injuries will trigger it immediately. In this form she has a jump height of maybe 10 feet vertical, flat-out around 20mph depending on the form. She's strong enough to flip a car ez.

As a sidenote, her power grants her immunity to all poisons and toxins. All other forms of killing her are valid, however. Finally, in her changer state, she does not vomit spiders, however she will retain control over her existing swarm, as well as any spider kids she has in this form (note that this is largely academic, as it turns out having an fear of spiders makes you not a big fan of being a spider long enough to, like, lay eggs or whatever).

Backstory

Katrina grew up the only child of a single father, her mom having moved on when she was barely a toddler. Dad was a bit of a drunkard, and it wasn't good when he drank, but thankfully someone spotted the signs, and CPS took her away. The system was working, and all was well.

She was placed in a foster home in Ashton, while her dad slipped into a downward spiral. For Katrina, it was a difficult change. Growing up in the countryside with a tiny school, to a bustling city? It didn't go well, and her first few months cemented her reputation at school as a target for bullies.

And then, one day, she decided to make a change. Being herself wasn't working, so she tried the age-old strategy of "fake it till you make it" and wouldn't you know, it was actually working! People were talking to her a little bit, and she even fell in with one of the cliques of fuckheads. Started going by Kat for short, because why not.

They decide to skip class and explore the old fallout shelter under the school, that most people didn't even know about but Gary had seen on some old school plans that had been left out. At first it was a joke, like, "hey maybe we'll find the secret wards staging room!", but they quickly found it was a spider-infested mess.

That should've been when Kat noped out of there. But that was what old Katrina would do, and new Kat didn't want her new friends to think she was like a pussy or something. So she shut up. And then her friends closed the door and locked her in there. Alone. With a million spiders. They wouldn't let her out, even as she's screaming and crying and pounding on the door and her arachnophobia is making her panic and she can feel them on her skin and---