Cruach
| Cruach | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 A good approximation of Cruach's usual costume, though she doesn't usually have things in her hands. | |||||||
| Reputation |
| ||||||
| Author | ALargeHairyDerp (capes) | ||||||
| Pronouns | She/Her | ||||||
| Civilian name | Adeline Warwick | ||||||
| Alignment | Mercenary | ||||||
| Affiliation | None (Denver) | ||||||
| Age | 27 | ||||||
| Status | Active | ||||||
| Nationality | American | ||||||
| Approver | Nashoid | ||||||
| Trigger Type | Single Standard Trigger | ||||||
Publicly Available Information
Cruach is a mercenary currently operating in the Denver area. Her cape activity can be traced back to at least 2017, though earlier sightings of dubious credibility do exist. She is known to have moved often, generally operating in hubs of cape activity for roughly a year before moving on.
She is known to have a professional attitude, to avoid confrontation with heroes whenever possible, and is widely recognized to be safe to approach. The nature of her power is hotly debated among those few who are interested, and the range of abilities demonstrated coupled with conflicting reports and the general unreliability of internet debate means little is agreed upon.
The most popular theories are torn between a master ability, some sort of brute/thinker combination, or a striker ability.
PRT / Government Information
Costume Appearance
Due to her changer abilities, Cruach generally stands at 6'2" while undertaking cape activities. Her costume is owl themed, and she's made an effort to make her equipment fit the aesthetic. It is generally baggy to allow for free movement and concealment of motion or changes to the body.
Most elements are quickly removable, and have sections that can be opened in some fashion to allow for quick escape and/or use of new organs. It is made or relatively light materials and offers only the protection of a fully covering set of overlapping fabric.
Civilian Appearance
Adeline stands at 5'8", with hazel eyes and dirty-blonde hair that goes a bit past the shoulders. She weighs roughly 135 lbs. She has freckles. She has pale skin, though not to the point of being a notable feature. She is notably more fit than the norm, through she favors baggy clothes in order to make this less apparent.
Her clothing choice also generally includes articles with many pockets, and little to no adornment or jewelry. Overall her appearance tends towards the clean/well put together, but uninteresting.
Mentality
Adeline favors professionalism in the vast majority of her interactions, and is generally attentive and insightful. She favors procedure and likes having a plan, and generally dislikes loose cannons and cahotic elements in both her cape and civilain life/interactions. She holds herself to a high standard, and expects others to do likewise.
Adeline is inherently distrustful of her own impressions and perceptions, doubting herself heavily. She sees the influence of her power in the way patterns emerge within her body, and what specifically the slight extra senses seem to pay attention to; it always seems to be edging her towards violence, novel changes, and fighting capes in particular.
Adeline has latched on to the “voice” of her power, seeing it as an alternative to her own questionable impressions, and as such has grown to trust it. Her power, and the changes it has brought to her physiology and mentality, have alleviated some of the symptoms of her schizophrenia and exacerbated others; she periodically experiences minor to severe visual and tactile hallucinations, though her ability to focus and form relationships with people has improved. She is also significantly more paranoid and generally distrustful than the norm.
Skills & Training
- Fluent in English and ASL, can bumble her way through a basic conversation in German, Spanish, and French with varying degrees of success.
- A solid hand to hand fighter, mixing a number of martial arts and fighting styles, though doesn't have express mastery over any one.
- Good at blending into crowds, and generally not being noticed. This extends to a number of express techniques for remaining undetected.
- Decent at surviving in both urban and wilderness environments.
- A good climber, and solid free-runner.
- Is a decent artist, mostly with pencil.
- Biochemistry degree (bachelors)
- Experience breaking and entering (Physical PEN)
Resources & Wealth
Adeline lives alone in a relatively small house (which she owns) near Rocky Mountain Lake. She has installed a home security system, as well as making a number of changes to make a home invasion less likely to succeed. She keeps a small garden and fish pond. She owns a 2006 Acura Integra which she has taken relatively good care of. She owns a number of guns for home defense. Much of her wealth is in a safe in the basement in the form of prescious metals, though she does keep a regular bank account and a small number of low risk investments.
She makes money outside of mercenary work as a part time employee of a Physical Penetration testing company (they test the physical security of companies/places).
Equipment & Gear
- A number of burner phones (only 1 on her person at a time)
- Regular civilian phone (heavy on the privacy/security features)
- Pepper Spray (civ and cape)
- Home made smoke grenades (only cape)
- Lock picking tools (civ and cape)
- Pen, pencil, and a notebook (civ and cape)
- A very basic first aid kit (cape only)
- HAM Radio (Police Scanner) (civ and cape)
- Pocket knife (civ and cape)
- At least five energy bars, though likely more (civ and cape)
- A taser (the stabby kind) (only cape)
- Zip ties (only cape)
- Ball Bearings (only cape)
- Multi Tool (civ and cape)
- A lighter (civ and cape)
- Cloth bandages (cape only)
- Chalk Dust (cape only)
- Small Revolver (Civ and Cape)
Parahuman Power
The entirety of Cruach’s body is host to a network of mycelial tendrils which writhe, twist, and grow as though they have a mind of their own when not being actively controlled.
Cruach has total awareness of this network at all times, and so is both intimately aware with her own internal state and also prone to moments of distraction where she falls into a feedback loop. Cruach has total control over these structures when she wills it, and may use them to alter her biology in an extremely precise manner essentially at will, though the process is not instantaneous or free of resource demand.
She may make small to moderate changes (shifting the placement of organs, growing a singular new organ or orifice, cosmetic changes) with a round of focus or two rounds while performing other actions. She must spend two rounds focusing or four rounds while performing other actions to make a larger change (growing a new limb, growing a new system of organs, implementing a highly complex biochemical pathway on a system wide scale, etc).
She intuitively understands how to move and fight with new body plans.
She has a minimum weight of 40lbs, and though she doesn’t have a hard limit on maximum weight, she must acquire biomass from external sources to exceed 600 lbs. She may not imitate specific individuals or creatures, but may take on a generalized form approximating such (she could look like a man or a dog, but not Jerry from down the street or his specific border collie). If she does not explicitly spend time altering the aesthetics of the changes she makes, they appear monstrous, with a fungal and insecticide bent.
Cruach may push the tendrils of the network out through her skin in order to construct less complex but independent organisms at a rate of 12 lbs per round. These organisms (which will now be refereed to as Constructs) count against her weight limit.
Constructs usually take the form of environmental hazards, stationary sensors, or small flying bug-like creatures, but can be used in more versatile applications such as disposable gear, ablative armor, tools, or weapons among other things. Cruach receives sensory information from all Constructs as they also bear the mycelial network she does, but she only has rough motion control (she's not able to alter their biology once they're separated from her), being able to give simple mental commands and little else (this is assisted by a small degree of multitasking, but is still heavily limited by the attention she's paying to a given Construct or group of Constructs).
She tends to limit the lifespans and organs of these organisms such that they don’t last after a given mission/fight or spread/grow in any capacity, but is not hard limited to this. She is hard limited in that Constructs may not reproduce in any capacity. Constructs count as a part of her for consideration of power interactions.
The mycelial network may be used to repair damage, though this is an active process and operates through the same mechanism as Cruach’s usual changes.
As such, repair of small (Ex: scrapes) to moderate (Ex: cuts) wounds take one round of focus or two rounds while performing other actions, repair of large (Ex: broken bone) to severe (Ex: limb loss) wounds takes two rounds of focus or four rounds while performing other actions.
If she is knocked unconscious while injured the rate of repair will slow drastically, such that she’s not liable to bleed out, but even moderate wounds will take minutes to heal, and large to severe may take up to a few hours if she doesn’t become conscious.
Adeline’s metabolism has undergone a nearly total overhaul, and so while she needs to eat roughly twice what a normal person would, she can process most toxins (with varying but generally nonlethal effects from most antifungals) excepting tinkertech (which will require a ruling based on the specific case if it ever comes up), and may operate as though she got a full night's rest while only sleeping four hours out of every 24.
Cruach may use the network to make small alterations to other living things (humans included), though this process is slow and quite error prone as she does not have the internal feedback and senses from them. She has barely used this aspect of her power, but knows it could be used to heal as she does.
Mechanically, small to moderate wounds/alterations may be repaired/made with four rounds of focus, and large/severe wounds/alterations may be repaired/made with eight rounds of focus (alteration/healing may not be performed at all if other actions are being taken).
This may not be used to bring back the dead (though if they would be recoverable through immediate medical attention, this can serve that function). Regardless of time spent, alterations/healed areas always have the fungal/insectile aesthetics that are present in Cruach’s changes.
Background & Trigger
"Adeline was popular, from the beginning she had made friends easily, and as she grew she fell in with the “popular” crowd, student council, parties, sports; she fit in, she was liked, and on top of that she never let her studies slip. As she hit senior year, she began to withdraw a bit, but she told herself it was just the stress from the coming change of college, her continued studies, and the demands of keeping up her image. Things continued to get worse, and her grades began to dip near the end of the year. She’d lost friends, failed to keep up relationships, her home life was growing steadily worse as her parents put pressure on to continue to perform as she had been. She thought that finally getting away from it all, the fresh start of college, would solve everything. Oh how wrong she was. She found it hard, bordering impossible, to connect with people as the year started; she couldn’t muster the will to study properly, it was looking to be a repeat of her last year, only this time she didn’t have her previous reputation to ride on. She withdrew further into herself and the internet, looking for answers. There had to be an explanation, she was sure of it. She dove down rabbit holes, following every lead she could, not realizing in her fervor that the problem was only becoming worse. Weeks passed, and she barely left her room. She was slipping behind further and further in every class, and had nothing to show for it. Then, salvation! A new roommate, apparently a case of the university having too little housing and settling things after the initial weeks of hectic action. They hit it off, and Adeline improved, for a time. She was barely passing now, but she wasn’t as behind as she once was. Her roommate was in a different major, so they didn’t really interact on the wider campus, but they’d stay up talking late into the night, and that was enough. She still had issues talking with her other classmates, none of them got her quite like her roommate, and studying was harder than ever, but at least now she had the will.
Her wake up call came in the library, a rare study session with her roommate, different subjects, but just being there with each other was enough to help them both focus. Mid conversation a classmate approached with a strange look on his face. “Who are you talking to?” She had a moment of disbelief, and then a cascade of terror. It all fit, she’d discounted those avenues, the ones that suggested schizophrenia. She didn’t have delusions, or hallucinations, and her speech was perfectly fine, thank you very much. Now, though? The implications hit her one after another. Nothing was real, she’d never get back what she had. How much of her experiences and preconceptions were imagined from nothing? What could she trust? Who could she trust? TRIGGER.
Her power allowed the mitigation of a number of her worst symptoms, but her general unwillingness to drastically change her brain meant that some persisted. Regardless, she at least felt she was getting better, and her power assured her she was. She was still essentially friendless, but she could focus, could get through her degree, could set up a janky little mercenary business on the side to keep herself entertained and to stretch the proverbial muscles of her power. Nothing was more fun than experimenting, and she gradually grew to trust it, even over her own flawed perceptions.
After graduating, she leaned fully into her mercenary work for a time, but eventually realized that unless she wanted to join a team, she’d need something else in her life. That lead her to PEN testing. A job that allowed her to travel, to work for herself at the start, that complimented her mercenary work, and that paid well to boot.
She lived out of a van for a number of years, saving up and doing her best to find a place to settle down. Eventually she found it, Denver, and she built a life for herself there."
(Optional) Misc Lore Snippets
Parahuman Intelligence Report
- Note: The following information has been transcluded from the PRT Online Information Services SAGA Database. For more information, please see your PRT-InB point of contact.