Devilfish:Tiphereth

Tiphereth
Reputation	Notoriety Criminal D / ?
Author	/u/Scrublord_Koish (capes)
Civilian name	Alicia 'Alice' Schäfer
Alignment	Hero
Affiliation	None (Devilfish)
PRT Classification	Tinker
Born	(1997-12-16) December 16, 1997 Munich, Germany
Status	NPC
Other names	Fiber
Reddit Sheet

/u/Scrublord_Koish

A vigilante biotinker that has been moving about near the forest for a while now and seems to be fine with having a chat with visitors. Criminals she takes in are generally healed of any injuries she may have inflicted before being handed off to authorities.

Character Sheet

Appearance

Most often seen in almost casual attire these days, a mask of bone and metal protecting her identity. A tail of a black, chitinous material trails behind her, often coiled around her own waist.

She's let her hair grow out a bit since her early cape days, a bit of her blonde hair spilling out over her shoulders and a grey 'scarf' made of scales. (With hood if needed.) Recently seen in a more dark, hooded outfit with various pouches strewn about.

Equipment and Resources

• A few additional burners for if the mask is destroyed.
• A small medkit containing both mundane equipment and tools + healing liquids for emergency surgery.
• Ties made out of sinew.
• A small quiver containing 15 arrows.

Tinkertech

Healing liquids

• Appearance: Either red-pink, or deep green depending on if made for healing or curing of diseases. Generally held in vials or syringes.
• Abilities: Regenerates adjescent tissues near instantly, allowing for rapid healing of wounds, limbs cannot be restored in this fashion unless the limb was made over the span of a couple days before attaching.
• If made to counter poisons and diseases, usually contains a ‘base’ set of antidotes, antibiotics and the like for the most common diseases. (Like the common cold) For anything beyond that, requires a special batch to be made for that specific disease/toxin.
• Has a shelf life of a week before turning gray and VERY toxic.
• Requires exact dosage. If too little is injected then the wounds won’t properly close and likely cause major infections. If too much is used then it will cause horrific tumors.

A 'slight' upgrade

• Appearance: None
• Abilities: Basically a ‘master’ upgrade to the body that allows future creations to integrate/interface directly with the body.
• Also some work has been done around the joints in her fingers, arms and legs to increase her body’s flexibility and more specifically, effectively allow for quadrupedal movement at a speed of 45 mph and the ability to climb up walls via an iron grip on handholds and digging the fingers into the wall.
• Futhermore, this comes with underskin layers of armor equivalent to type II armor all across the body, heavily enhanced muscles to allow for 1500 kg lifting strength and the ability to run at 35 mph on two legs. Also heavy shock absorbers in the arms and legs to not rip open limbs while in use and against higher falls.
• Comes with added desire to eat large amounts of pickles.

Tails of the Corpse Thief

• Appearance: Either one of two tails coming out from her back by the tailbone, covered in matte black carapace.
• Abilities: Can be either separate as two tails or put together into a single somewhat larger one. A single tail has 250 kg of lifting strength, both together just barely managing 550. Can coil around stuff to lift it up. Has a maximum range of 4 meters for stuff like stabbing and swiping, only 3-ish meters when coiled around something. Can be detached in an emergency if necessary.
• Due to compromises in its internal designs, attempting to crush or violently whip something with the tails will cause them to break, internal fleshy tissue being shredded.

Internal medical equipment

• Appearance: A sort of bony syringe coming out of the inside of the arm.
• Abilities: Can extend extend a needle 10 cm from the bottom part of the wrist and is used for injecting or drawing out liquids from and to a couple small storage sacks located in the upper arm section.
• Storage tanks are individually linked and can contain different liquids.
• Also comes with medical ‘scanner’ of sorts, which will scan the body of touched individuals, providing a 3d ‘map’ of sorts of the individual’s body when used in combination with the mask.

A face she prefers

• Appearance: A blank white mask with red lenses.
• Abilities: A bone and chitin based mask that isn’t quite capable of stopping a bullet, but does slow it down to reduce potential damage. Does provide somewhat decent protection against blunt force and cut based attacks.
• Has built in communicator for both verbal communication and to act as an emergency signal/beacon.
• Links to the scanner in the palms of the suit for instant results and to direct and display the liquids inside of the combat needle’s reservoirs.
• Bottom can open up, looking remeniscent of mandibles and allowing the consumption of food and drinks while still covering most of the face to hide the wearer’s identity.

Freeform scarf

• Appearance: A ‘scarf’ and ‘hood’ made of a grey ‘scales’, if still behaving like if it were made of rather heavy cloth when moving.
• Abilities: When commanded to do so, the scales will reform themselves into crude shapes as wanted, generally swords, spears, shields and hammers.
• Can either form a single two handed sized weapon, or two one handed sized weapon.
• When affected by the striker subpower, locks it into whatever weapon it currently is until fully reverted.

Emotional support spider!

• Appearance: A 'Goliath Birdeater' spider, schaled up to the size of a small cat and covered in soft, black fur.
• Abilities: Has venom that is painful, but not harmful to humans and larger creatures, and a paralytic to creatures smaller than itself.
• Will try to inject a blood coagulant when noticing an open wound on a human.
• Is mentally a fusion between an affectionate cat and a spider, having the personality of the former and clinging to walls/ceilings + hunting like the latter.
• Can purr.
• Will hunt for rodents and can be fed using a primarily meat based diet or nutrient paste.
• Is a cuddlebug!

High Tension Bow-Gauntlet

• Appearance: When unfolded, it looks to be a compound bow, the front covered in black scales with the back having a fleshy interior and a deep red tendon serving as the bowstring. When folded up, like a bracer made out of black scales.
• Abilities: Can be stored on the arm like a bracer, unfolding when pressure is applied to a spot near where the wrist would be to turn into a fully sized compound bow.
• Scales linger behind to serve as an arm guard when in use to keep the skin underneath flawless.
• Serves as a 100 pound draw weight recurve bow.
• In a pinch, the bow can be used to smack someone, but this will damage the tissue depending on the force applied, either breaking or snapping if too much force is applied.

Hive Quiver

• Appearance: A medium sized quiver covered in black scales, with 'arrows' sticking out the top.
• Abilities: Holds 20 untipped arrows made of flesh and bone.
• Internally births one of several different creatures, which will then latch onto one of the arrow tips. Up to three of each are kept in sacs within, a new one taking three minutes to grow to maturity for use.
• The first contains sacs of its own with spores held within. On impact, it detonates in about a meter radius of spores from the impact point, dissipating within ten or so seconds. Can of course be blown apart like any gas. Should these spores be breathed in, they will act as an anaesthetic. Minor exposure making a person start to feel numb, breating some in will start to make it harder to stay awake, and several breaths or more will make a person fall unconscious within a dozen or so seconds, barring brute powers.
• The second has a sharper tip, meant to penetrate through armor and reach flesh or wiring underneath, where it will attempt to deliver electric shocks to a living target like a taser or fry internal electronics.
• The third is closer to a dart in nature, drawing from a small fluid sac within the quiver itself and injecting it into the target hit.
• The sac for the third dart mixes whatever is held inside with a suppressant for her healing liquids that breaks down when in contact with chemicals released when injured, effectively covering up wounds until a person can get proper attention. It can hold enough for up to 5 shots

The Scavengers

• Appearance: Superficially resembles a condor, if with a larger wingspan.
• Abilities: For mosts intents and purposes, the Scavengers are just that. Specifically condors.
• Maximum flight speed of 100 km/h.
• Armored skin underneath the feathers. Cannot stop more than a handgun bullet.
• Can carry up to 25 kg while maintaining flight.
• Reinforced beak that can, with time, break apart steel plating.
• Enhanced intelligence and social structure. Can cooperate with other Scavengers to break down objects. Will attempt to avoid damaging wiring, should they encounter some while breaking down an object.
• Tipereth has made 8 of them. Should they breed, either with eachother or wild condors, the result will not be enhanced in any way.

Not amazing at combat against anything larger than them. Mostly intended for scouting and collection purposes.

Voice box

• Appearance: None
• Abilities: Allows Tipereth to communicate with her creations without using words using animal noises, clicks and squeaks.
• Comes with a small alteration to her own brain to be able to interpret these in return.
• Allows mimicing of animal noises. (Sounds like nonsense to the relevant animals)
• Allows Tipereth to more delicately control her voice and yell up to 3x louder than before.
• Lets Tipereth alter her voice, potentially mimicing someone else's, but not speech patterns. Requires a couple weeks of time and large amounts of reference material to mimic voices.

Hole in the ground

• Appearance: A from the outside normal looking cave.
• Holds Tiphereth's tinker lab. Housing half a dozen tanks of varying sizes and a range of medical equipment.
• Has a cot in case of overnight stay.
• Lighting provided by bioluminescent plants.
• Has a few small offshoot that can be dug out to make extra 'rooms'.
• Houses a creature that aids Tiphereth in the conversion of biomass into the stem cells she uses as the base for her work and for the creation of nutrient paste to feed herself and the organisms living there.
• Houses a hive of 'ants' that have a very similar mentally and physicality to the argentine ant that scavenge for and tear apart dead plants and animals, delivering them to the creature mentioned above. The ants eat exclusively nutrient paste. If given a specific signal, the ants will find a tree some ways away in the forest above and begin to break it down to bring back.
• Has a fungus based defense system with a nerve cluster serving as a 'brain'. Is capable of recognising appearances of and sounds made by allowed individuals and creatures. Creatures made by Tiphereth are always added to this memory upon creation.
• Plants on the surface above have been hijacked to siphon off the energy produced via photosynthesis to feed the fungus acting as the place's defense.

Fungal defense

• Appearance: A soft mycelium-esque growth covering the walls with the occasional mushroom near the entrance, with occasional tube-like growth as one goes further in.
• When an individual not known to be allowed by the nerve cluster detects a creature approaching, the mushrooms growing around will start to emit spores. These spores will cause creatures that had the spores touch their skin or breathed them in to start to fall asleep. It takes around 30 seconds to saturate the air with spores, and the more spores the spores are touched/breathed in, the faster the effects will take hold, halving the time required in the case of both.
• It takes around a minute for a person to fall asleep at the minimum density of spores, and 15 seconds at a maximum saturation.
• When a creature goes further into the cave, the tube-like growths will start to spew a sticky substance that is mildly corrosive, ceasing to be corrosive once it comes into contact with the chemicals that cause pain signals to be sent to the brain. This is intended to eat away at equipment and leave creatures with at most first degree chemical burns.
• When damaged, the mycelium releases a slippery substance intended to slow down and eventually halt the spread of flames, eventually snuffing them out unless a constant flame is applied.

Skills and Specializations

• Hand to hand combat.
• Small amounts of martial weapons training.
• Politics.
• Coding.
• Keeping calm under pressure.
• Putting on a 'customer support' voice and attitude.
• Medical jargon
• A frankly creepy ability to recall faces and appearances

Mentality

She has severe abandonment issues, resulting in her being overly clingy towards the people she trusts and having a need to either be with people who don't die easily, or make it so they won't die easily.

After a recent shot of confidence, she's become quite a bit more aggressive in her efforts in trying to 'fix' the above. Either by trying to give people her tech or going after the problem herself.

Power

Trigger type: Cluster

Tinker power (main):

• Tinker specializing in the concept of symbiosis. All tech is made to either work alongside one or more other organisms to function, or requires an exchange if the sole intended other organism is a person. Typically in the form of feeding a sort of biological 'core' food.
• For the first, this could come in the form of acid spewing turrets that are blind, requiring a completely separate drone to locate the target for the turret to shoot at, or making hundreds of tiny bug-like organisms form into an armor.
• For the latter, she can create biomechanical 'cores', maws that devour all with even the tiniest scrap of sustenance that is fed to them and turn it into energy for her usage. This usually comes in the form of an incredibly nutritious (and foul tasting) nutrient paste, alongside the occasional weirder cravings if placed within the body. These cores need to be fed often, less the tech shut off, hibernating until their next chance to feed.

Master subpower (Keira)

• The ability to emit a loud scream, seemingly getting louder as it echoes off of walls. People who hear this screech will have their fear response and desire to flee enhanced. Getting weaker the quieter the scream is to the people hearing it.
• With the power exchange gimmick, additional mouths open up on clothing and held items, screaming in concert with the main scream. (Basically it's just louder than before.)

Thinker subpower (Inky)

• Allows for alternative methods using projectile weapons that technically have a chance of succeeding to be equally effective as doing it normally would have been. This effectively allows for things such as trick shots and gun kata, regardless of actual effectiveness. In other words, any alternative ways of using projectiles shall have the same effectivity, regardless of how unlikely it seems.

• With the boost, projectiles, weapons and their own body are slightly more aerodynamic, bounce slightly better, and have other minor bonuses to facilitate the alternative methods, even allowing for close quarters fighting that looks choreographed from the outside. It also allows for parkour, though arriving at the destination will cost approximately the same amount of time.
• This enhancement happens subconsciously and only while using the alternative method.
• This power has to be consciously activated, and the cape needs at least partial control over their own movements to work. Being blown through the air won't allow it to work, but trying to do so while flying or jumping high in the air would.

Striker subpower (Shimme)

• Can designate and charges a melee weapon that leeches energy from her movements. Her movements grow far more sluggishly while wielding the weapon, just a little slower than they would normally, but in exchange the weapon can hit like a goddamn truck, the energy that would have been put into the movements instead being focused into the impact of the weapon. The weapon also enlarges and transforms after being designated, slowly turning a basic hammer into a giant mallet, for instance.
• With the power exchange gimmick, reverting a weapon back to its base state goes far faster. From slow buildoff to just a few seconds to revert. The power does not compensate for the sudden shift in weight.
• When in use, Tiphereth is slower than the average human being.

Cluster gimmick

• Tiphereth's cluster has a gimmick, allowing for their secondary powers to be boosted or drained. When two cluster members come into conflict or work together, their shards are looking for interesting, dramatic, and powerful plays. After a particularly impressive defeat of a cluster mate, or a particularly impressive demonstration of teamwork between cluster members, the shards poll the rest of the shards in the cluster (we vote OOC at the end of the thread) to decide if it was impressive enough.
• If the shards are happy with the performance, there is an exchange of power. The cape who is drained loses access to the secondary granted by the other cluster mate, while the cape receiving the boost gets a boost to their own secondary donated by the one drained. In a case of dominating a cluster mate in a conflict, the winner drains the loser, in the case of a cooperative effort between capes, the cape that was the impressively helpful is the one drained, giving too much of their effort away.
• This effect lasts for an irl month.

Backstory

Alicia had been born to a rather wealthy family in Munich, Germany.

She grew up well educated and loved… but noticed that there was always a weird undertone on how her family went about things, and she often found them speaking of people different from them with disdain. Doing some research herself, as they had taught her, brought to her the knowledge of just what her family was. A set of well connected, modern day nazis.

Of course, the fact that the family she loved could be compared to such monsters horrified her, and she got a mixture of both praise for the research… and an explanation on how deep the hatred went. How with their connections with the upper class and the consistently strong powers running in the family would secure a bright future for the ‘superior race’, which she was to aid in as well once she triggered.

She didn’t want to understand her father’s words.

Slowly, she distanced herself from them, choosing to study medicine in the capital of Berlin both because it was an occupation fit for a ‘proper lady’, as she had been taught… and so that she wouldn’t alert anyone to the fact that she didn’t share their views.

It went well, things considered. And she was well on her way to finishing her studies when getting a letter in the mail, her heart sinking as she went over the contents. Cooperate or they would release details on her connections to what in the cape community was apparantly a very brutal group of fascist capes. Blackmail.

Being blackmailed was a lot scarier than movies had made it out to be, and it had apparantly started to show on her, as the friends she had made in her time there started to get concerned for her health.

One day, she just couldn’t take it anymore, and told the guy who she had been heavily crushing on everything. About the family she had run away from, and they were now haunting her as blackmail material being held over her head. She had rarely been happier than when he embraced her and promised to help make things better.

Slowly, her mood improved again, practically being showered in attention and support. Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad after all.

And then one day she got a message from him. He was going to broker for her freedom. It would’ve made her happy if the gang he was heading for hadn’t been known for being violent in nature.

She ran out the door as fast as she could, running into gang territory despite the danger it would pose, desperately searching for any trace of her love.

Until finally, she stumbled onto a bizarre sight. Another of her friends, Julie, raising a gun to aim at him.

A loud bang echoed through the building, and her eyes found one of the gang members having raised his gun and fired at Julie. Her confusion would’ve lasted far longer if a second shot hadn’t rung out, Julie’s gun firing as well, and she watched her crush fall as she looked back.

Alicia screamed, running to his side and shaking his rapidly lifeless becoming body, then clutching it to her chest, dress being stained with blood.

She didn’t know how long she had been there when she couldn’t notice his heartbeat anymore.

Trigger.