Astrohaunt

Astrohaunt
Artistic approximation of Astrohaunt's Breaker state
Author	/u/PM_ME_UR_SIMURGH
Pronouns	she/her
Civilian name	Seren Corbett
Alignment	Villain
Affiliation	None (Devilfish)
PRT Classification	Breaker, Shaker,
Born	(1986-03-13) March 13, 1986 Devilfish, Minnesota
Status	Active

Seren Corbett first became a household name in the late-2000s when she flew the maiden voyage of the then brand-new Pathfinder vehicle to low earth orbit and then the Moon. She would later go on to serve two tours at Argo Station before returning to Earth to take part in Project Icebox—the first step to NASA’s Ganymede mission.

Following the Icebox disaster, she testified before a closed Congressional investigation, and briefly became the target of conspiracy theorists over what they believed the classified testimony contained.

Now discharged from the Space Force, Seren has returned to her hometown to find it—just like her—has been irrevocably changed by the touch of parahumanity.

Character Sheet

Appearance

Civvie faceclaim

Seren is a woman in her mid-thirties, taller than average and quite fit. Outside of her breaker form, her costume is a dark grey flight suit with an accompanying full-face helmet.

In her breaker state, she appears as a shattered, indistinct figure in a spacesuit, almost like looking at a reflection in a broken mirror. The shards shift and move in random ways, making it difficult to tell where the figure ends and the surroundings begin.

Equipment and Resources

• Flight suit with a small amount of armor underneath (II on the stupid chart)
• Flight helmet. Oxygen mask has been repurposed as a respirator to filter out toxins, and a basic comms system has been integrated into it.
• Big Fukken Baton
• Big Fukken Knife
• Multi-tool
• Basic first aid shit

• Lakeside house on Devil’s Track Lake
• ‘67 ‘vette in Speeding Ticket Red
• P-39 Airacobra (perpetually in pieces in a hangar being modified for racing)
• Makes a living flying around the country doing flight tests for insane boomers building crazy shit in their garages who have enough common sense to have an Expert do the first flight for them.

Skills and Specializations

• Master’s Degree in aerospace engineering
• Can fly anything with wings or a rocket engine
• Working knowledge of a wide array of nerd shit, such as orbital mechanics, electronics, and geology.
• Literally an astronaut.

Mentality

Following her unfortunate trigger and subsequent disillusionment with regards to the Federal government, Seren’s leadership qualities have degraded somewhat, replaced with a burning desire to find the most thrilling and dangerous thing around and throw herself head-first into it regardless of the morality therein. However, she has retained some fraction of common sense, which is occasionally put to use if the situation calls for it.

Power

Trigger type: single, natural trigger

Astrohaunt is a shaker/breaker focused on making the surrounding environment as hostile as possible. Her power is dichotomized into two states, the diffuse state and the contained state. Unless otherwise specified, Astrohaunt is immune to all her power’s hostile effects unless she chooses to be. Everything listed is scene-distance unless specified otherwise.

Contained State

Outside her breaker form, her power is said to be in its contained state. In this form, the effects of her shaker power are more personally-focused, in some cases arguably acting more like a Striker power:

• The area she is in (room-sized) is perpetually uncomfortably cold, a chill that seemingly ignores any protective clothing or other barriers. While in short bursts this may not prove a huge hindrance, the cold by its nature saps the energy of those within its effect. In addition, with a touch she can provide a concentrated burst of this cold on a target, sapping enormous amounts of heat from them and quickly resulting in severe hypothermia. The chill cuts through almost all forms of cold resistance, even many forms of manton protections, though powers that generate cold from the body are exempt.
• Her immediate surroundings (within 10 feet or so) emit potent waves of ionizing radiation, causing vertigo, nausea, and confusion. Extended contact will cause immediate, severe symptoms of radiation poisoning. The radition is a vector for these deleterious effects, not the cause, though the radiation itself has long term side effects consistent with radiation. Actual dose is low but tangible over the long term.
• Her personal (Manton self) gravity is toggleable to 15% of Earth’s. This allows her to, for example, jump large distances with ease.
• She can cause light sources around her to inexplicably flicker, dim, or brighten.

Diffuse State

Activating her breaker form takes only a moment, as her body folds into itself and is replaced with a fractal shattered representation of a spacesuit-wearing figure. As this happens, the hostile environment of her power is fully unleashed, making her surroundings an exceedingly unpleasant place to be. Breaker state is tangible as standard for a human, visual distortions not withstanding. The effects of her contained state are reflected here, with the following additions within the scene-space:

• Light sources and communications devices begin malfunctioning and failing entirely.
• Liquids freeze over almost immediately.
• Sporadic pockets of extreme cold wander throughout the scene, popping in and out of existence completely randomly. The chill cuts through almost all forms of cold resistance, even many forms of manton protections, though powers that generate cold from the body are exempt. Roughly on par with the cold striker power from the contained state.
• Similar pockets as above form, but rather than cold these are pockets of vacuum, with no air to be found. Pockets are static rather than actively sucking/imploding.
• The environment itself takes on an odd otherworldly glow, and begins emitting a radiation-like effect, causing nausea, vertigo, and confusion. These effects are greatly amplified if the victim’s skin is exposed, which will feel like it’s burning if not covered promptly. The radiation is a vector for these deleterious effects, not the cause, though the radiation itself has long term side effects consistent with radiation. Actual dose is low but tangible over the long term.
• The gravity of the scene seems to fail, flickering randomly between Earth-standard gravity, 15% of it, or none at all.
• Inexplicably, a delay between the scene and the outside world takes effect. Calls to the outside world take minutes to even get through, and if you get through backup’s arrival is out of the question for all but the longest encounters. You are alone.

For the random effects listed above (cold pockets, gravity, vacuum, and to an extent the pseudo-radiation effects) it is recommended that the poster use !choose to determine the outcomes, especially with situations that depend on a certain effect state (such as relying on low-gravity to lift a heavy thing).

While in her breaker-state, her mentality will tend to become slightly more manic, especially over longer durations.

Backstory

Project Icebox, NASA’s simulation of a manned mission to Ganymede. For most people, it was the disaster of the week, before another tragedy claimed the consciousness of the nation. It would show up occasionally, on slow news days, as politicians used the deaths to blame the other party, but nobody really cared. For her, it was the moment everything had gone wrong. The day her entire life’s work fell to shambles around her.

The idea was simple at its core. All the infrastructure they’d use on Ganymede, locked in a specially-constructed chamber. NASA had brought Nucleus capes in from the very beginning, a cadre of Tinkers who were able to construct a perfect replica of the Jovian moon, from the crushing cold ice crust, to inhospitable radiation, reduced gravity, a thimble of atmosphere, and hours-long delays in communications with Earth. They’d live there for a year, and if all went well, she was slated to command the first manned mission.

Five months into the mission, it all went wrong. Systems failing, modules decompressing, components that had nothing to explode somehow blowing up… it was every single failure condition they’d thought of and more, happening all at once. She’d radioed a message outside, aborted the mission, ordered they turn off the machines and get them out. There was no response. Even the comms had failed.

98 minutes pass. The reactor had scrammed, backup power had failed, half the habitable space was vented, and most of the crew were dead. Her dosimeter had pegged, and based on the symptoms she had, radiation sickness had reduced her lifespan to a matter of days. All she could do was stay alive as long as possible, until help arrived to fix whatever anomaly had happened outside.

The console beeps, unexpected. She stumbles over, leaving a trail of blood and puke, her mind fogged by hypoxia. It takes her what feels like an eternity to hit the buttons, make the screen display the message, and—

“NEGATIVE ON MISSION ABORT: CONTINUE AS PLANNED”