Devilfish:Wildes Gjait
| Wildes Gjait | |||||||
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| Reputation |
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| Author | /u/PurpleDurplePlatypus (capes) | ||||||
| Civilian name | Leon Pane | ||||||
| Alignment | Hero | ||||||
| Affiliation | None (Devilfish) | ||||||
| PRT Classification | Thinker 5, Brute 2, Trump 2, Mover 2 | ||||||
| Status | NPC | ||||||
| Height | 1.72 m (5 ft 8 in) | ||||||
| Weight | 180 lb (82 kg; 12 st 12 lb) | ||||||
| Reddit Sheet | |||||||
| /u/PurpleDurplePlatypus |
Grab-bag cape native to Germany, where he was known for working alongside the police and other government agencies, but most running solo. Has had a few incidents where he's shown up at scenes with villains and apparently not fighting them but is generally considered a low-level hero. Powers include a minor brute rating, short-range teleporting, and sudden bursts of fighting ability.
Character Sheet
Appearance
Not really super tall, standing at 5'8", but well built and muscular to make up for it. Slightly soft in the stomach as he's not THAT in shape... Thick black hair that he lets get shaggy and long often, usually not completely shaved, and vacillates between being bearded and failing to be clean-shaven. Roman nose and a strong jaw along with thickly lashed brown eyes.
Cape outfit is a mix of a medieval armor outfit and something like a hunter or ranger's outfit. Carries two swords and a bow with blunted arrows.
You can often smell alcohol or weed on him. Notable German accent in his other languages.
Mentality
A hard worker but often gets caught in a cycle of overworking himself and then self-destructing once he burns himself out and decides to "let loose." In the early days after he triggered he tried to use his power to get clean, not understanding the consequences of overusing it, and instead permanently damaged his ability to refuse indulging in those particular demons. He sometimes has glimpses of his once held charming party-boy personality, but his wit tends to be more dry and restrained nowadays.
Equipment and Resources
Currently on paid leave from his job so he doesn't have to work. Car, long term motel room, a policeman's badge will get you a lot even in a foreign country.
Modern padded and reinforced armor underneath his cloth costume. Two swords, bow with about 30 blunted arrows. Grappling hook. Extra rope. Three sets of cuffs. pepper spray. Toolbelt with basic tools.
Skills and Specializations
- Speaks English very fluently and Italian semi-fluently in addition to his native German.
- Police procedure and law, use of police equipment/resources/bureaucracy
- Evidence preservation
- Street smarts, generally knows where to go to get drugs, assess their purity, signs of gang activity, identifying suspicious individuals etc
- Decent accuracy with firearms, and a wide range of firearms training thanks to police training
- Shooting bows (Hunting in general)
- Basic swordplay
- Fist fighting
- Endurance and general scrappiness
Power
Trigger type: Cluster Trigger
Wildes Gjait'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 one is the one drained, giving too much of their effort away.
Primary powers are not affected by the gimmick.
Main Power - Withdrawal Skill Thinker:
Can enter a mode where he becomes hyper-competent at one skill or towards a specific goal (broadest could be something like "coordination" whereas more specific examples could be "lock-picking" or "being persuasive to Sarah".) Losing focus on that task or changing tasks/goals ends the competency mode. When focused on an individual losing track of the target or losing sight for more than a minute will break the boost. After it ends, either willingly or by losing focus, he spends twice the amount of time with the selected skill drained to near comical incompetence. He's aware of the drain and can work around it a bit, but is not immune to some nasty Dunning-Kruger Effect and overconfidence while he's drained has to use the skill.
Due to how his power works, broader tasks or choices may be more flexible in terms of use and not losing focus, but once he's lost focus, he becomes vastly more useless as a broader range of abilities is drained. If he's boosted a skill that he has no normal base in that might not have a way to go into "negative," it will instead start mildly draining related skills or abilities. For instance, if he uses his power to boost his ability to speak Arabic fluently, once dropping out he's normally completely unable to understand it, so to make it worse he'd likely start losing his skill in his other secondary languages he knows (English and Italian) or even affecting his German. Something like boosting his computer programming skills could drain his ability to use computers or tech, turning him into your grandma on the computer.
Forcing the same skill to be used over and over without going through the full cool down causes permanent damage to the skill.
Symbiotic Tinker Secondary - Symbiotic Protections: A cooperative power. He can put a mark on someone he can see, and as long as they're in range (30ft), he shares manton protections with that person (both his own towards cold and any they have related to their own power(s).) Can also be done to objects to make them count as organic.
Boosted the cape can mark up to three other people to share manton protection with, or up to 5 objects to count as organic.
Screeching Teleport Secondary - Unseen Teleport: If cape is out of line of sight of everyone (including any sensory powers and security cameras being monitored), they can teleport to anywhere in their vicinity that is also free of line-of-sight. Distance and cooldown of teleport varies based on power exchange gimmick, nominally 30ft / 3 rounds.
Boosted, the range extends to 50ft and can be done every other round.
Icy Mace Secondary - Strength in Stillness: Standing still with both feet planted firmly and not moving causes quick (about 3 seconds) but dramatic growth in strength (pick up a standard car and throw a few yards) that instantly disappears when he walks around. Associated with sudden temperature drops where the air begins to mist and frost starts to form around him (usually stopping just below freezing), as if the cape is leaching the heat from the world around them, bottoming out at just below zero. Frost, sudden cold mists tend to happen when remaining still a long time. Always wakes up and it's freezing cold and awful. Comes with manton protection against the cold even when he's not using his power. It's enough that he can't die from cold, but he sure can be miserable (shivering and reduced dexterity, but no frostbite.)
Boosted, he has about 3 times the strength as unboosted, and complete comfort and manton protection against the cold and freezing. The temperature sap dips about twenty degrees colder, hitting 0ºF if left to sit, and surfaces that freeze are slick with ice rather than just gathering frost. He has no particular protection against slipping or keeping his footing, but frost and ice don't form directly under his feet is generally as the surface isn't exposed and the temperature stops dropping once he moves.
Example
The steel security door was sliding shut, Wildes Gjait sprinted forward to meet it. It was nearly shut when he managed to get his fingers on the edge. He planted his feet and hauled with all his might. One second, two seconds the steel door still slid down, he felt the pressure starting to crush his fingers between it and the ground. Then he felt the sudden surge of power into his muscles, his grip strengthened. With a heave, the door screeched in protest as he reversed its direction. He was careful not to move his feet as he briefly rearranged his grip to get the door above his head. He was strong but the mechanics trying to close it fought him and screamed to high hell.
His breath misted in front of him and he felt goosebumps on his skin as a chill started to set in. He could tell it was that much worse for his current team members as they slipped underneath the now open door.
"So much for the quiet entrance," Candy Jane said as she slipped underneath, her hands hugging her arms as she shivered. Cast Shadow was silent, as usual. Wildes Gjait was happy to work with other heroes when it worked out well for the mission but Cast Shadow was creepy. Both inside, Gjait took a quick step forward. The strength immediately drained from him, and the door nearly clipped him as it slammed shut behind him.
The cold didn't dissipate when his strength did, and he saw Candy Jane was shivering, her costume was barely more than a one-piece swimsuit with a tutu. Wildes Gjait glanced at her, and with a mental switch marked her. He saw her shivering slow, she was still cold, like Wildes Gjait was, but she looked more comfortable. He blinked and suddenly was aware of three thick pink glowing ribbons floating close to Candy Jane. Each constantly twirled in a straight, tight line up and down. The (normally) invisible poles that would drill through and pull up any substance like a dimensional auger. He hadn't realized that Candy Jane had them out all the time.
The rest of the villains' compound was segregated from the garage they had slipped into. There was a small security glass window, and he looked through it, good he had clear vision and–
His teleport fizzled. Damn fucking cameras.
He moved over to the security door, and focused. Electronics, security, lock-picking, carpentry, door locks... his brain hummed with little specialized slivers of information as he got really good at opening doors.
He pulled out his screwdriver and opened the face plate on the number pad. The wires inside made sense, it was as easy as looking at a well labeled map, the purpose and function of each wire pulling from his memory. He recognized this model too. Older, no chip or programming involved, it was all hard-coded wires to set the access code. Which meant all he needed was the quick glance to figure out what the code was from the wire arrangement. If that failed, there was already at least four more ways to open this particular door model and lock set up.
But he had the code from the wiring. He punched it in and heard the door unlock with a satisfying chunk. There were more doors ahead and they could be harder. Lockers, they'd be locking the hostages somewhere and-
BANG!
The gunshot went off, and Wildes Gjait practically jumped out of his skin. An instant later Cast Shadow had taken the hidden mook but the damage was done, Wildes Gjait had lost his focus on the doors.
"Is the door open?!" Candy Jane called out,.
What the fuck was he doing? His brain slipped over the concept and treid to reassert his mental focus. "I don't know??" he said, exasperated. Fuck he'd fucked up. He looked over to the other cape, helpless, what the fuck was he supposed to do it was closed so he couldn't...?
Candy Jane recognized the helplessness and ran forward and tried the handle. It was unlocked and she opened it with a sigh. For a moment when he stepped through, Wildes Gjait struggled to even remember what he was doing. He finally felt normality reassert itself, about two seconds too late as he was on the floor recovering from running headfirst into the doors down the hallway, having assumed they would open for him for a reason he couldn't fathom now that the skill had returned.
History
Leo was the son of a German native and an Italian immigrant woman. He grew up in the boonies, a hick who learned how to hunt from his dad, and skirted around the edges of the rougher and more illegal parts of his shitty home neighborhood. Despite his shitty upbringing and skirting along criminal elements as a kid, he entered college by cutting ties and intending to become a detective.
His mother had been an alcoholic, and his father abusive but less of a drinker. He fell into their shadow a bit, partying his way through college and becoming a well functioning alcoholic. He would've gotten excellent grades without the alcohol and weed (never harder drugs) but got decent ones and at 21, he entered the force.
He was a good enough cop and was charming and well-liked among his co-workers, so his drinking didn't get a second look. He was clean during work but simply went off when off-duty and occasionally came in hung over, and he'd stopped treading into drugs while drug-tests were on the table. He was good, he followed protocol and he took his job seriously. And flourished in his first years as a cop.
He was 30, and had made detective when he was informed that the department saw an opportunity for him to go undercover in the tendrils of the mob that were in Germany. His ability to speak Italian and knowledge of how things swung on the darker side from his childhood were invaluable. Leo accepted, going back to his trashy roots to pose as a young delinquent to sidle up to the young criminal gang that the police had identified.
Leo toed the line while he was undercover, dancing the razor's edge. The group was naturally suspicious of him as a newcomer, but he put his party persona to work earning trust, posing as a few years younger than he actually was. He knew if he took drugs, that any info he actually ended up getting could be questioned in court. He struggled with alcoholism, for the first time feeling like he wasn't in control of the addiction now that he'd rather kick it but part of his job involved getting drinks with criminals. He began to hate himself a bit and feeling like he was drifting too close to who his father had been. He worked hard to minimize his drinking and the weed he'd been drifting back into.
Then he had one bad day.
Julie, one of the gang members with connections he'd been sidling up to, had been talking some shit about some boy, about killing him to get the girl she liked. Leo brushed this off, thinking it was all hot air, and generally feeling Julie was still savable, redeemable and not as deep into things as she postured to be. That day, however, everyone was getting loaded, with both cocaine and heroin being passed around. There was pressure, someone joked he was a cop, but maybe not a joke. He'd worked so hard come so close to getting in and really being accepted. He compromised a line he hadn't ever crossed, just this once, this one slip was okay.
But it wasn't okay. Leo was flying when talk turned to the hit, unable to focus. He realized Julie had been serious and intended to kill. When she drew her gun, aiming at a helpless bystander, Leo went for his own piece. He fucked up, the gun going off as he tried to draw it, skimming his leg, and he watched in slow motion as she shot the young man dead, leaving the people around him screaming. It was the first time he'd lost someone to a shooting on duty, and he knew it was all because of that one. moment. where he let himself relax and let loose. He could've made that shot if he'd been sober.
He triggered.
In the aftermath of the trigger, he was pulled out of his undercover assignment, and Leo was unable to remain a detective. Capes couldn't hold law enforcement positions in Germany, and he'd quickly come clean to his department, knowing he'd be able to do more good with his new "skills" in the open than not. He took on the name Wildes Gjait, becoming a consultant cape who worked frequently and openly with mundane law enforcement, and gained a good reputation fairly quickly.
However, he had difficulty maintaining his reputation as time went on. He'd become wracked with guilt. He'd been the adult, the policeman in the situation, and failed everyone involved. He was obsessed with the case, and knew the civilian names of everyone involved. It didn't take long for him to realize that the others had triggered too, a cluster he was attached to. Alicia, the victim's friend and the one Julie had been infatuated with disappeared, having left germany, but Leo had his hands full trying to keep the remaining two members away from each other's throats. They were both considered villains, or at least vigilantes, trying to kill each other, and despite pinning them down a few times, he refused to turn them in and frequently covered for them. He needed their redemption, deeply, mysteriously drawn to them and unaware of the alien prodding his brain and stirring affection for all his clustermates. He was considered a good cape, but one too many times he prioritized his cluster over heroics and his all-consuming drive to pursue them kept him from getting big or making his own way.
He also backslid into alcoholic, and then drugs, harder than he'd ever had before. He'd tried to get clean, finally and completely, after his heavy post-trigger guilt and depression. He'd used his power to try to enhance his willpower to say no, to remain clean, and not understanding how it worked, permanently damaged his already tenuous grip on his sobriety. His performance suffered as he went out flinging powers around when high or drunk, vacillating between sober and falling off the wagon, never clean for more than a few weeks.
Lately, drunk, high, and after a string of losses to his clustermates left him low and powerless, he caught Julie leaving Germany. Alicia was finally back on the map, and the cluster was moving to find her. Leo booked a plane for the US, where the now-tinker had reappeared. He tracked her down, using his connections and skills to beat his clustermates to the punch, intending to warn her and beg for her forgiveness, make sure she was okay. Eventually, the trail lead Wildes Gjait to Devilfish, with only a few amused rumors of an obscure German cape having made their way to America for unknown reasons following him. Maybe a new chance to build a reputation.