Nox
| Nox | |
|---|---|
| Author | /u/TheBluestHedgeroo |
| Pronouns | she/her |
| Civilian name | Sofia Belladonna |
| Alignment | Villain |
| Affiliation | Noncanon (Devilfish) |
| PRT Classification | Stranger/Shaker |
| Born |
October 31, 1999 Berlin, Germany |
| Status | Noncanon |
In her home country of Germany, Sofia Belladonna was an orphan and petty criminal known to be affiliated with the Billhooks (a street gang of 8 containing no confirmed parahumans). She was arrested on charges of assault and drug possession with intent to sell on May 5th 2022, but failed to appear for her trial after her bail was paid.
Very little is known of either Nox or Abigail DeSantis beyond her presence in the background of Rockstar’s 2022 world tour, appearing in a few dozen pics posted by Emmaline’s account. It may be a safe assumption to call her a personal friend, roadie, or crew member of Rockstar’s.
Character Sheet
Appearance
Abigail is a tall woman with a dense, stocky, and muscular build, similar to what one would expect a construction worker to look like. In the parlance of our times, she is “Hench AF”. Long black hair that has changed from an unruly mop to an artfully disheveled mane after months of trial and error by various stylists, which is furiously wrangled into a long braid for public appearances with Rockstar. In her civilian guise, she carefully cultivates her Look to appear as plain and unassuming as physically possible (as befitting a fugitive)
As Nox, she wears a giant, Mr. X-ass trenchcoat in a nice deep purple shade, which commonly conceals a ballistic vest and various tools of her trade. This look is accented by a pair of black stompy boots, some spiked bracers, and a metallic silver skull mask.
Equipment and Resources
- Whatever allowance/stipend she can cajole out of Rockstar for the purposes of maintaining the Retinue’s lodgings, buying groceries, paying for gas, etc. (Wealth Level ?)
- A delightful variety of outfits, cosmetics, and accessories from various feverish makeover attempts.
- Potential access to hard drugs.
- The best fake ID Emmaline’s money can buy.
- A ballistic vest, hidden under her improbably large coat.
- A pair of brass knuckles.
- A lantern.
- A mean-looking crowbar.
- A set of improvised lockpicking equipment.
- Some bandages.
Skills and Specializations
- Solid street brawler, strong enough to grab and throw/shove most normal people. Tends to go for the throat.
- Slinking into shadows.
- Lockpicking.
- Shutting the fuck up and staying out of the way when necessary.
- Thorough knowledge of various street-grade narcotics.
- Fully bilingual (German/English), just in case you were wondering.
Mentality
To put it succinctly, she is straight-up not having a good time right now.
To put it less succinctly, Abigail’s daily mood can be described as a chaotic maelstrom of fear, dread, anxiety, and stress, painted over with an outward-facing affectation of an irritable and brusque tough bitch. While this worked well enough when she was a street thug with the Billhooks, now that she is further in the public eye and suddenly finding herself responsible for handling Rockstar’s nonsense in addition to dealing with her four fellow strays, that facade is beginning to strain and crack.
She has a horribly complex and potentially toxic relationship with Rockstar which words cannot adequately explain: admiration, fear, infatuation, dependence, an urge to impress, resentment, and just enjoying feeling useful are several descriptors of said relationship, each jockeying for mental dominance.
Power
Nox is capable of linking discrete shadows in around a two-block radius into a sort of transport nexus: effectively, she can walk into a shadow cast by a streetlamp at night and seamlessly jaunt to a shadow cast by a TV in a darkened apartment bedroom. This ability ignores most physical obstructions and distances within the block itself, with the only caveat for transport being that the shadow has to be wide enough to dive into (e.g. shadows narrower than her shoulders would not admit her). While in her radius, a tell-tale trace of her presence is the shadows within the block passively lengthening and darkening into an opaque void. This “transport nexus” she creates from the shadows is theoretically usable by others: in practice, she must personally guide her allies by the hand when inviting them into the Shadow Zone, and unguided allies or enemies hurled into a shadow will experience about eight seconds of horrible disorientation and vertigo as their brain tries to navigate a monochromatic and otherworldly place before being forcibly ejected out of a random shadow within range. While Nox herself is very capable of navigating and perceiving the Shadow Zone, it is no less hostile to human existence to her: she will be forcibly ejected after ten seconds pass (thankfully, her familiarity with this mode of transport makes her able to go from one end to the other in only three)
She is additionally capable of using a broad ‘shadowsense’: showing her the rough position and presence of shadows within her area. Getting fine detail from this sense (e.g. observing a person’s moving shadow cast on the street as they take an evening walk) takes a debilitating amount of focus, thus it is best used for casing an infiltration target. The extent of the detail she gets beyond the current shape, size, and location of the shadow is a Manton effect that flags shadows with insufficient space near it to serve as an exit (e.g. she cannot exit out of a shadow cast by the bottom of the fridge, as she would be either crushed by the fridge or pinned inescapably between it and the floor)
For disambiguation purposes, a shadow is not a shadow if there is not a light source to provide a distinction between light and dark. A cavern or wholly unlit sewer system is not something she could access without introducing a light source, though it is rare for a location to entirely lack a light source from windows/vents/underneath doors/moonlight/the glow of a computer monitor. While Nox's Shaker effect deepens and grows shadows, only directly-applied bright lights (car headlights, police-issue flashlights, etc) are capable of annihilating a shadow and closing off an avenue of transport. Lesser light sources may diminish it in size.
Backstory
Sofia Belladonna was orphaned at quite a young age, and left to be raised by her ornery, intolerant, and aging grandparents. It was their position that good children were seen and not heard, and her younger life was a constant walk on eggshells, doing the best she could to satisfy their demands that she excel in her schoolwork while avoiding their anger via simply never raising any concerns to them. She became a rather independent and studious child as her guardians withdrew, which worked well enough for making her own meals and handling her own chores but faltered completely as a viable approach after her guardian’s almost unnoticed deaths. Sofia did her best to make do after various bill notices piled up and her power was shut off, frightened by the prospect of going to the police and uprooting her safe yet stressful routine yet having no idea how to manage when nobody could pay for her heat, groceries, or water.
She triggered after the pressure and scrutiny piled on, her sallow appearance and declining grades noticed by her peers and teachers. Sofia ended up fleeing the house as a pair of police showed up for a wellness check, managing on the streets before falling into a string of steadily worse influences that wished to use her power’s immense potential for infiltration and profit. The last and worst of these gangs were the Berlin Billhooks, a crew of butchers, drug-runners, and extortionists that leaned heavily on her abilities to evade the law and get product to a client that would normally be far too high-profile to approach. Her arrest occurred during the 2022 Rockstar World Tour, an almost accidental case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time as a riot broke out in the stadium and she was caught with tens of thousands of dollars worth of drugs on her. (intended to be sold to a member of Rockstar’s touring crew, presumably in a bid to obfuscate who was consuming them).
She was saved from decades of jail time by Rockstar’s almost wholly inexplicable act of charity: her bail being covered, her identification being faked (Sofia Belladonna becoming Abigail DeSantis), and her person being smuggled out of Berlin. This arrangement seemed to be made with the goal of taking her as a confidant/bestie/underling, Rockstar using her immense leverage over her to keep her in line. Still though, it was better to do the dirty work of one unhinged teenage popstar as opposed to seven unhinged convicted killers, so you won’t hear Nox complaining (at least, not where Emmaline can hear her).