Mutants and Masterminds: A Song in Time of Revolution - Character Backgrounds

[The Fine Balance]

Post them here. No stats, and nothing you wouldn't want other players to know.

[Abel Cross]

Abel is a senior at Swansea High School and The Student Council Vice president. He's also a member of the school's kendo club. He's very attractive, and a very personable person. The girls of the school seem to virtually worship him, and many of the boys at the school want to be like him.

Overall he's quite popular and well-liked, but beyond that he appears to be just an ordinary teenager.

He stands just at six feet tall and weighs a fairly lean one hundred and eighty pounds. He has jet black hair and fairly unique indigo eyes.

He lives with his two younger siblings and stepmother, who seems to not be very fond of him. He is the Son of Victor Cross the Black sheep of the wealthy Cross Shipping Magnate family and Cassandra Frost, his mother. His mother was involved in a hit and when he was eight and died. His father remarried a year later To Yukari Sato, and about a year later she gave birth to his younger siblings. After that the family seemed to have stabilized until Victor's death two years ago. Since that time Abel has spent a great deal of time taking care of his younger siblings, Kaien, and Lisa.

[Ryan Jackson]

Name: Ryan Jackson

Identity: public, powers unknown

Weight: ~175 lbs

Height: 6’1”

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Auburn

Age: 23

Appearance: Tall and somewhat good looking with auburn hair and blue eyes. Ryan possesses a thin wiry frame that allows him to move swiftly with superb agility.

Ryan Jackson has been many things; motorcycle courier, motor cross racer, stunt biker. The descriptor of thrill seeker would have been more than appropriate. He has toyed at Parkour, base-jumping, free climbing and other extreme sports. Never staying with any given activity or in any given location for any length of time Ryan flitted around the globe and through amongst the various thrill seeking subcultures looking for something to grab his interest and hold on to it.

Nothing ever did stick long enough though; as a result he continued to hop from place to place, sport to sport; all the while slowly sucking his trust fund dry. Mom & Dad had given Ryan more than one chance to straighten himself out and more than once he had tried and gotten bored.

Currently Ryan is between random sport excursions. He seems to have settled down somewhat but he refuses to discuss whatever it is that he's found to take the place of doing dumb things purely for the thrill of it.

[Vixen]

Name: Roxanne Richardson

Identity: Secret (paranormal form commonly referred to as "the vixen")

Eyes: Green

Hair: White

Age: 29

Appearance: In human form, Roxanne is a slender Caucasian woman with white hair (typically tied back into a twist) and green eyes. In her not-so-human form, Roxanne resembles a humanoid fox-woman with three tails, a snout, and orange, black and white fur in patterns similar to a fox's. She tends towards more buttoned-down fashions in her human form and more exotic ones as 'Vixen.'

Background: Two months ago, Roxanne was a researcher at the city's local university, studying zoology. She was paralyzed as a teenager in the same car accident that killed her father, but had adapted to her condition.

Her interest in zoology had been triggered as a child after checking out a library book on cryptids - unusual and rare animals - so when the opportunity presented itself to study a genuine cryptid she took it. The animal in question had been found in Japan by a tourist and brought back to continental America; the animal had been confiscated and her university won the bid for study. The animal in question was a fox with three tails.

After weeks of study, Roxanne found nothing unusual about the animal, apart from its tails; she'd concluded that it was the origin of Japanese kitsune legends, possibly some kind of recessive genetic fluke. Kitsunes possessed magical powers, foremost of which were their legendarily powerful illusions; for all intents and purposes a kitsune illusion was 'real.'

Recently, a fire broke out in Roxanne's lab. Her memories of the fire are hazy; she remembers nearly passing out from smoke inhalation, watching the plexiglass cage that housed the fox turn into water, and the fox walking towards her as she lay on the floor, and biting her in the shoulder.

Roxanne awoke in her apartment a few hours later. She discovered several things in very short order. The first was that her brown hair had turned white and that she was suddenly able to walk. The second was that she was wearing a dress she didn't own, but had fancied in the shop. The third was news footage of the fire, which had a picture of a humanoid fox-woman with three tails hovering over the scene of the fire, wearing the same dress she wore now, and instinctively she knew that the fox-woman was her.

The last thing she discovered, after checking the internet, was that some legends held that kitsunes made new kitsunes from human beings, by biting them and infusing them with power. Two months ago, Roxanne would have dismissed this as superstition. But the world isn't the same as it was two months ago...

Personality: Normally, Roxanne is pleasant, albeit meticulous and slightly arrogant. Presently, Roxanne is confused and defensive - her scientific worldview has no explanation for herself or for the abilities of other paranormals. She spends most of her time as a human - to date, not counting her first instinctive use of power, she has only transformed twice. She has invented a cover story explaining why she can suddenly walk, which has received some press attention that she tries to quietly shut out of her life. With no job but enough savings to last a while, her interests have turned towards the paranormal events that have hogged network news time and some kind of explanation for it.

[z-Olivia Jenings-Izumi]

Name: Olivia Jenings-Izumi

Identity: secret, largely unknown

Weight: ~105 lbs

Height: 5'5"

Eyes: Black

Hair: Black

Age: 22

Olivia Sachi Jennings-Izumi is a twenty-two year-old graduate who grew up in a loving middle-class family. Her father, Haruo (Harry) Izumi, and half-brother, Wakaki (Wacki-Z) Izumi, are naturalized citizens from Japan; her mother, Delayha Jennings, grew up in New Orleans in a much poorer mixed family. Harry is a graphic artist and professional dreamer; Wacki-Z is a rap artist trying to break into the big time. Delayha is a technical writer for a large computer company. Olivia grew up in a creative, secure environment where she was encouraged to follow her dreams. Her parents overdid it a bit.

Reality was a shock. During college, she suffered from loneliness and disillusion. She was feeling really sorry for herself when she met Daniel, who snapped her out of her self-pity and, through example, showed her how to survive while reaching for her dreams. Over time, they became closer and started to date not long before graduation.

Over the last couple of weeks, though, she's had other changes, regressing and becoming less assured and more off-kilter. She insists that she's fine, but Daniel can tell something's off.

[Velocity]

Name: Valerie "Velocity" Blake

Identity: unclear

Weight:~100 lbs

Height: 5'7"

Eyes: Green

Hair: Red

Age: 16

Valerie Blake is a school drop out. She had been formerly more on the chubby side and an outsider at school but once she got her powers that changed dramatically. Suddenly she was pretty (Attractive 2 Feat) and her body virtually transformed into a top athletes defined and leaned shape. She dropped out of school pretty fast after that thinking that with superpowers she wouldn’t need any stupid schoolstuff to do.

The real reason for her drop out is her very damaged relationship to her parents. Her father has been sent to jail when she was a little girl and her mother constantly tried to keep things together made her grow a huge grudge against them. Only her brother Daniel made her stay at home and not leave without a trace.

Daniel quickly replaced her father as her father-figure and Valerie gave him all the love she had to a point where it may got on his nerves. Especially since he has a steady GF now. Valerie understands that her brother has his own life and that he isn’t her dad but sometimes she wished he was her real dad. She never visited her dad in jail, having built up too much hatred for him being gone when she needed him the most and her mother, although a loving and caring mother just couldn’t reach her anylonger. Valerie retreated into her own world and secluded herself very much. She drowned her worries and fears with regular eating binges until her youthful metabolism couldn’t compensate any longer and she was slowly getting fat… which added more to her misery and self loathing.

After her change she literally stripped off her former live. Very much like being reborn Valerie suddenly got lively and energetic. She revels in her powers and thinks little about consequences (which is a great deal due to her lack of knowledge/education). She is not stupid or dumb, she just missed some basics at school which she never cared to learn. She could be considered clever if someone put her under his wing. Valerie is of lean, athletic built close to Olympic sprinters at their peak condition. Her skin has gotten ashen white when she changed and feels rough to the touch like Kevlar. She retained her sensibility though, it just feels like her skin is tougher than average. Valerie has intensive green eyes and red hair that reaches just past her chin, long enough to make a small pony tail with it.

[SalmonMax]

Daniel Blake

Artist

Age 22

Daniel is the only son of his working class 'white trash' family, though he has a younger sister. As the eldest child, he clashed often with his father over many issues...treatment of wife and kids being foremost among them. He couldn't compete physically with his old man, so he turned to developing his mind and imagination.

Unfortunately, his father, having fallen in with a bad crowd and having problems of his own, went for a life of crime and participated in a bank robbery in which he killed a man. With dad sentenced to a long prison term, Daniel found himself 'the man' of the house at a tender age indeed. As he got older, he faced pressure to help his mother support the family more; get a job and settle in...but he had bigger plans. He had qualified for an art scholarship to the local state university. Despite the hardship that his family had, he believed he'd be in a much better position to help if he had a college education. So, over his mother's protests, he went.

He visited home when he could, but not nearly often enough...his sister dropped out of high school despite his attempts to dissuade her from it. Around this time as well he made the acquaintence of Olivia and struck up a friendship that evolved into a dating relationship.

After graduation Daniel returned home to try to help his struggling family out while working his way around as a freelance artist. He does illustrations and commissions, and is trying to get into comics. In the meantime he has a job at Movie Knight, a local video store.

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Daniel's a good looking guy (Attractive 1 rank), tall and lean with a shaggy ruff of brown-blonde hair and a frequently-recurring shadow of whiskers around his jaw and chin. He has his father's ice-blue eyes and his mother's good natured (if seldom used these days) smile, which makes his face look boyish.

[Yamabushi]

Name: Ki Sung

Profession: Sensei

Age: 70

BACKGROUND

As a young man, Sung was a hellion. He was sent by his parents to train with the monks at a monastery that it seemed time had forgotten. His time with the monks led to a more philisophical outlook on life. It also taught him the basics of how to defend himself. He immersed himself in the various systems of martial arts, eventually reaching 2nd dan black belt level in 3 arts. He decided during his 50th year on earth to teach others in the martial arts he had studied. For several years he taught at the dojos of different people. His love of teaching eventually led him to open his own dojo. The dojo is dedicated to Jujutsu, Shukokai Karate, and most recently, Taido.

PERSONALITY

Very calm, humorous, and a little bit touched in the head.

DESCRIPTION

A small, compact, wiry man, with white hair and a goatee. He commonly dresses in embroidered shirts with mandarin collars, and loose fitting pants. His eyes display a jovial attitude most of the time. His smile is readily available, but has a couple of teeth missing. He moves with an easy grace.