Woodsman

Woodsman
Reputation	Notoriety Criminal F /
Author	Turncoat (capes)
Pronouns	He/Him
Civilian name	Andrei Morozov
Alignment	Unknown
Affiliation	None (Denver)
Age	26
Status	Active
Nationality	Russian American
Approver	Leah
Trigger Type	Single Standard Trigger

Publicly Available Information

Recently, a new parahuman has been sighted in what is now either being assumed to be a permanent Changer form, or merely an example of someone who doesn't care about their identity. Because of this, his identity is a matter of public record, and not long after his first sighting it was leaked to the public. Andrei Morozov is a former park ranger, noted to be decidedly skittish of social contact and attention, though his Changer form seems to be ironically the least of his observed abilities.

Andrei, calling himself 'Woodsman', is a xylokinetic, with a mixture of observed ratings in various parahuman classifications. Able to warp and fundamentally alter trees, shrubs, and lianas, with observed expressions being wooden armor he can carry and cocoon himself in, to causing widespread alterations such as grappling branches and roots. This effect is much more diffuse at range, leading to much slower activation and movement, though the current hard limits to functionally all facets of his power is currently unknown.

Currently classified as Unaligned, due to his newness to the Cape scene, lack of reputation, and general absence of further information to build an online profile on.

Costume Appearance

Most often Andrei can be seen in a biologically modified tree, wrapped around in like armor, and faintly reminiscent of old, knightly armor. The suit itself is a living tree, modified to the point where it is comfortable enough to wear, and sturdy enough to be equivalent to kevlar, while also allowing for a certain amount of modability.

Civilian Appearance

Decidedly ethnically ambiguous, especially after his permanent Changer form came into play, Andrei stands around six feet tall, six inches, with broad shoulders and a body laden with muscle. Light brown hair covers his head and makes up his beard, where it darkens to some degree. More often than not he wears clothing that is easy to get on considering his horns, so either button up shirts, or shirts with large head holes to allow for that sort of thing. From there, it’s mostly just other practical clothing that allows him to indulge in his more outdoorsy hobbies.

Mentality

As someone who has had dysarthria from birth, and from which the condition played such a highly specific avenue in their trigger event, Andrei suffers from a deep desire for communication with other people. Unfortunately, his medical condition keeps him from properly speaking, meaning he more often than not has to communicate via ASL, or writing things down.

Andrei is someone who is inherently reactionary, who has a tendency to get comfortable and set in patterns that by no means are healthy for him. Working as a firewatch allowed him feed into the worst of this, as he neglected most of his social relationships in favor of isolation, all while thinking himself a social person. This certainly fed into the circumstances that led up to his trigger event, but also likely would have inevitably caused him to trigger with if his worldview had been properly shattered by other people, rather than a tree falling on him.

Wry, observant, expressive in his expressions and movements in a way his words can’t be, Andrei is often more conversational in his thoughts and inner monologues, feeling safer there in a way that his butchered words can’t quite compare to. Polite enough, he tends to be adversarial to those he perceives as bullying others with less power or some sort of disability, with the hostility scaling sharply the closer the victim is to his own origins.

Skills & Training

• Fluent in English, Russian, and ASL.
• Basic firearms training. He knows enough not to shoot himself with a gun, but nothing particularly on the grade of a professional.
• Highschool diploma, and some certification for his firewatch job.
• Basic first aid training, along with wilderness survival skills.
• Currently studying dendrology and botany.

Resources & Wealth

Currently an aggressively middle class lifestyle. Lives in a fine apartment, and drives a jeep that might be a little cramped at his current height, but he’s not really broke or anything yet. He is between jobs, though, and looking for work. When you’ve got parahuman powers, it’s practically a crime not to try and profit off them.

Equipment & Gear

Tree Suit: Decidedly not Tinkertech, but still more advanced than most might assume. While Andrei does not have tinker knowledge whispering in his ear, he does gain a frankly startling amount of biological information when touching trees. This, paired with his biological manipulation of them, allows him to warp and twist them into shapes and add features that most people would never dream of.

The tree suit is designed as an armor and costume for Andrei, but that’s something of a starting point rather than the end point. With enough scientific knowledge and experience, chances are he’ll be able to filter out toxins and improve the hardness of the suit, while also making it lighter and easier to use.

Parahuman Power

Everything Andrei can do comes back to his basic, Xylokinetic abilities. When touching a tree, and some species of plant that produce wood, he gains an engrossing and instinctive understanding of it’s health, biological makeup, and capabilities. From there, he can wildly begin to start altering the biological processes and composition of the given tree, performing evolutionary jumps and transitions to such staggering genetic changes that it does not even count as the original tree anymore.

Thankfully, this process also basically sterilizes the plant, by the dint of each one being a functionally unique individual with no ability to reproduce, at least not without some work on his part. This control can also be done at range, specifically 40-60 meters, rising and lowering with how active he’s been with power usage.

Tree growth will range from rapidly moving as fast as a sword swing when being touched, to half as fast when relying on his Shaker powers. Ways to get around this, he’s noticed, is creating a root and then touching that to effect things at range. Applications of the power include binding, surging forward with piercing branches, or creating on the fly barricades and constructions out of wood.

If you squint, you could potentially make a case for bio-tinkering given his proclivity to modify trees for purposes like housing, armor, and other pursuits like food.

His most troublesome ability, however, is the permanent Changer power that’s turned his features sharper, grown curling black horns from his skull, and made his ears inhuman. The improved hearing truly wasn’t worth the inability to shift back, at least from his perspective, even if he enjoys being a little taller and sturdier at times. This provides him with somewhere in the range of a Brute 0, Brute 1 rating, with his horns being particularly hardy and ranging up to Brute 3.

Background & Trigger

Andrei was born to an Russian immigrants, their second child, and in his own opinion? Most likely their most disappointing. Born with a congenital birth defect that made it difficult, or near impossible to speak, his father Alexi all but spurned him growing up, lavishing most of his attention on his first, comparatively perfect child. In comparison, Andrei can definitely be said to be a mama’s boy, though even she was somewhat inclined towards his brother Konrad than him. This sort of experience, his lifelong awkwardness and struggles to socialize in school, and his disability made it difficult for him to adjust after graduating highschool. Bouncing between minimum wage jobs, he didn’t really hit his stride until he became a firewatch operator, sending signals and automated alerts in British Columbia, to alert the park services of possible fires. Unfortunately, this sort of isolation only was slowly increasing the unknowing duality within his mindset, as he slowly began to crave social contact increasingly, while eschewing it entirely through his job. Likely enough it would have been something that could have and would have, caused him to have some sort of Changer or Thinker trigger when the realities of his social isolation finally shocked him, combined with his intense desire to actually communicate and his physiological inability to. Thankfully, he missed that build-up entirely, when a tree fell on him in the woods. A bit more of a blunt trigger event than might have been expected. The worst part was that it wasn’t even lethal, but it was a pinning event, where he fumbled desperately for the radio that had fallen off his belt. Just out of reach, as the hours dragged on and his panic mounted, desperate and malformed cries for help spilling out into the lonely wooded space. A crescendo of stress hit a fever point, and that’s when he triggered. Which was where things went from bad to worse for him. Waking up encased in a cocoon of wood, he panicked again, a deluge of genetic information flooding his mind until he ripped his way out. Like being born again from a chrysalis, Andrei was dumped onto the forest floor, his life forever changed. Needless to say, his job being a park services employee came to an end, as his inability to hide his status as a parahuman led him to flee British Columbia, lest he be forcibly recruited. Now he’s moved to Denver, with some vague idea of getting his life together, without the faintest clue of what that actually looks like. Hero, Rogue, Villain? He’s got no clue what he is yet, but he’s hoping here’s going to be the place to find it out.