Name: Krathnor
Alias(es): Krath, DJ Rotter
Age: Unknkown
Occupation: Host of "Grave Matters" talk show, late night radio DJ.
Species: Demon
Appearance:Residing now in a time and place where the abnormal has become everyday, the demon no longer stands out as he once did. He has pale bluish-gray skin that has the texture of worn leather and the durability of iron. He once clothed himself in ragged robes of black, gold, and gray, but now wears a navy blue business suit complete with a dark red tie decorated with various symbols. Two black feathered wings stick out the back of his suit, and two horn-like ridges run from above his yellow eyes to the back of his head. He is also bald.
Special Abilities:Necromancy. Krathnor is greatly skilled in the art of reanimating the dead, albeit they stay risen for only an hour before bursting into ash. It comes in handy for his talk show, as there's never a short supply of guests if living people aren't available.
Rotting Touch. As he wills it, anything Krathnor lays his hands on begins to decay from where his hand touches. Earth becomes dry sand, flesh becomes rot, metal rusts.
Various spells of redirection and deception. Short-lived force shields, portals that redirect attacks back upon their casters, that sort of thing.
Weaknesses:A resurrected person that has burst into ash may not be reanimated until a full hour has passed since it's dissolution.
The rotting touch is only effective as long as the demon keeps his hand upon the person. As soon as he removes the hand, the progress of decay halts. Glancing swipes or blows at best leave only a thin scar or bruise. Additionally, while flesh rots at a steady rate and good earth dries faster, the rusting progress of metal is slower than either one.
Skills:A fast talker with a personality the size of a small moon (or space station), Krath is adept at, and prefers to talk his way out of tight places rather than fight. At first he seems almost afraid of confrontation, but he is known, when there is trouble, to keep banter going almost longer than necessary solely for the purpose of keeping everyone's eyes on him when he finally lashes out.
Combat Skills:Purely close range, Krath despises mid-long range tactics, particularly because nobody can really see who they're fighting from one side to the other.
Personality: Krath is the center of attention. At least, that’s how he would have it. He’s never happier than when every eye on the room is upon him, and takes (often lethal) measures to ensure that the present situation remains thus. he is otherwise unfailingly polite and smiling, yellow eyes locking with those he speaks with as if he actively seeks to bring the universe under some hypnotic control.
Name: Colleen Styles
Alias(es): Cyanide
Age: 21
Occupation: Security Detail - "The Nightbuzzer"
Species: Human Mutant
Status: Single, bisexual
Appearance:To look at her, one would think Cyanide a part of the crowd at the Nighbtuzzer. She wears a strapless black dress that hangs just past her knees and a red scarf. Black boots complete the look, along with far too many bracelets on her wrists. her dark brown hair hangs into her eyes and spills down past her shoulders in an unruly mess most of the time. Her skin is oddly pale and she looks to be completely out of it most of the time.
Special Abilities:Cyanide can transform any of her bodily fluids into poison and inject them into her targets through her teeth or clawed fingernails. The poisons range from mild toxins with disorienting effects to fatal venoms. Conversely, she can also render poisons within her body harmless.
Weaknesses:Because of the use of her own bodily fluids for the creation of poisons, Cyanide is easily dehydrated and must consume liquid far more frequently than the average person.
Skills:Cyanide is adept at lulling targets into a false sense of security.
Combat Skills:After years of dealing with unruly patrons, Cyanide has become an expert in hand to hand combat.
Personality: Perpetual grump. Cyanide goes through life doing largely as and who she pleases, and she makes a living at it. She has been known to show other emotions at times, though it is not often and she typically pretends afterwards that she never cracked a smile or laughed. Nope, never.
Name: Calchaxus Sengirsbane
Age: Unknown
Gender: Male
Height: 6’0”
Weight: Variable
Appearance: The dark gray-skinned man wears two distinct styles of clothing. In battle or in daylight, he keeps his entire body wrapped in dark bandages, straps, and wrappings for fear of exposing even a hint of his skin to the deadly sunlight. Beyond these wrappings, he is clad in an array of black and dark blue silks; a loose tunic, pants, and a hooded cloak that covers his entire head and hangs down to his waist. He also wears a dark gray mask carved in a charicature of a human skull with yellow lenses over the eyesockets.
Should the sunlight be of a great enough distance or not a factor however, he usually wears loose black trousers and an open crimson robe with a hood, should concealment from the sun become abruptly necessary.
-Eye Color: Red
-Hair Color: White
Capabilities:[*]Calchaxus can, upon touch, reduce a corpse to nothing and absorb whatever skills it had in life. Should the corpse have once possessed superior abilities, he retains those for a period of twenty-four hours.
[*]Superhuman physical conditioning. Strong enough to shoulder-throw a charging lion, fast enough to kill a swordsman before his blade is drawn, and able to leap a one story dwelling in a single bound.
[*]Regeneration. Though his regenerative capabilites would be outmatched by the disintegration of his body in direct sunlight, Calchaxus boasts an impressive rate of healing that enables him to recover from almost any injury within seconds.
[*]Dissolution. Calchaxus can turn his entire body into black mist or a horde of bats at will.
Weapons: Calchaxus carries an assortment of serrated knives of varying lengths concealed in various parts of his clothes.
Personality:Very much at ease with his state of being and assured of the fact that for all intents and purposes he will never die, Calchaxus is a curious mix. He is patient, easygoing, and almost good natured, though he seems to take a little too much pleasure in the spilling of blood.
When a plan is finalized however, the meticulous and calculating vampire moves rapidly to achieve his objectives, acting recklessly in the eyes of some. All his plans, laid out and prepared in advance are executed swiftly and with a viciousness that alarms anyone who once thought him mostly harmless.
History/Background: Something of an anti-, despite his vampiric state, Calchaxus feeds on the dead rather than the living. He is considered an aberration by what few of his kind from the world of Ulgrotha still exist, and truly, he no longer seems to care.
What he has done with himself after lifetimes of travel however, is found ways to accumulate vast amounts of wealth, and so he proceeds to live an extravagant lifestyle; rich because he’s rich and using his money to make even more money. By all rights he should be in the Corporation’s pocket, but he’s chosen instead to invest heavily in the IFS, finding such unrestricted entertainment and pleasure to have far greater potential for success.
GENERAL INFORMATIONName: Karla Von Schwarz
Alias: Zahnräder (“Zahn")
Age: 18 (ceased aging at 15, continued function as PEM for 3 years, robotic portions upgraded for 2 years)
Gender: Female
Race: N/A
Birthplace: Nuremburg, Germany
Birth date: July 12
Occupation: Mercenary
Martial Status: N/A
Alignment Villain
BACKGROUND INFORMATION Powers
[*]A Persistent Energy Machine has replaced Zahn’s heart and mind. The alien device houses a unique energy matrix that processes thought and movement at the same time and is wired to a series of six motors throughout her body; one in her head, and one each for her major limbs. There is an extra sixth motor directly behind the PEM that can be used to power any number of attachments/upgrades linked through her back. It is worth noting that with the location of such a central device, Zahn is perfectly capable of surviving without her “head”.
[*]Save the highly advanced PEM (Persistent Energy Machine) in her core, Zahn is almost entirely mechanical in nature. Over the years she has upgraded herself; from switches and remote motors, to gears, pulleys, and belts, and finally to more modern robotic appendages. Every area save her face, her “skin” is a tempered steel alloy. She is bulletproof, tireless, and possesses a greater sprinting speed and reaction time than humans. Additionally, she enjoys stashing odd weapons throughout various hidden compartments in her body.
[*]Flight. That sixth motor? Hooked to a jetpack.
Strengths:
[*] Having lived with her mechanical body for three years, Zahn is adept at diagnosing problems and making self-repairs. In fact, that aspect of her life has left her a highly skilled mechanic in general.
[*]While not necessarily a “strength" or a “power" per se, Zahn's flight suit contains many pockets which in turn contain odds and ends such as small blowtorches, extra wiring, clippers, pliers, and other various tools she might need for emergency field repairs.
Weaknesses:
[*]Despite the numerous advantages of her body, Zahn has her own unique set of limitations. While pieces of her body can be repaired/replaced, it is something she must do herself or have someone else do for her. Additionally, acquiring the parts may prove difficult at times, particularly if a hand or other unique part is damaged/destroyed. Also, while she doesn't tire, parts do wear out and require replacing. Such parts require visual inspection, as she cannot “feel" whether they are wearing out or not and if she goes too long without replacing them, they may break and render a limb useless at the most inopportune of moments.
[*]While the PEM possesses its own unique resistance to electrical attacks that would otherwise ravage or destroy electronic systems, lightning-based attacks will briefly scramble Zahn's functions.
[*]Even if the central location of the PEM allows Zahn to survive without her head, the loss of it will render her deaf, mute, and blind all at once.
Appearance:
[*]Hair: Black
[*]Eyes: Green
[*]Height: 5’2”
[*]Weight: 200 lbs
[*]Clothes: Zahn does her best to disguise her nature as a way to throw off her enemies. She wears a blood-red flight suit with black boots and gloves and a dark red helmet with black and white strips along its sides. The ensemble is completed with a white face mask and goggles with green lenses. Beneath the mask however, is a young girl's face that would seem cute to most people, but due to its artificial nature seems instead to exist unnervingly in the “uncanny valley". Her lips never precisely match what she's saying.
Personality: Very polite, almost apologetic towards her enemies, Zahn is a methodical and studious girl who still forgets once in a while that not everyone can fix a sprained wrist with a monkey wrench. This civil demeanor can vanish the instant she becomes stressed however, at which point she will launch into a tirade of insults that make little to no sense.
Despite even her skeletal structure’s toughness and her own exterior plating’s durability, she’s still very paranoid about being damaged and tries to avoid intense physical combat as much as possible. She prefers to rely on mid-long range tactics and weapons, or at the very least; hit and run maneuvers if punching and kicking is unavoidable.
Finally, she’s paranoid about anyone conducting repairs on herself other than...herself. “No one else gets to shove their hands into my vorkings.”
Background information: The life of Zahnräder is...to be perfectly blunt, unremarkable for much of her eighteen years of existence. Her family moved to the United States shortly after she was born, and the young Karla Von Schwarz grew up in Maine. It was dreary, rainy, and if the looney bin local author was to be believed, every town contained at least one alcoholic and one promiscuous woman whom said alcoholic was cheating on his wife with.
It wasn’t until Karla’s fifteenth birthday when she was on a nature hike with a group of friends that everything changed.
And by “everything changed”, it is meant that “she died”.
Sort of.
One of her friends caught sight of something glowing with a faint bluish light in the ground and after some digging, the three girls and four boys had dug up a strange looking sphere. The “shell” of it was a golden lattice of thin, gleaming arches and skeins that seemed to contain the pulsing light they’d spotted from a distance.
Unfortunately, as they passed it around to look at it, Karla’s fingers brushed the glow within and her body erupted in a flash of pale fire. Seconds later, her friends fleeing in terror, a scorched outline in the grass and the undamaged relic were all that remained.
And there Karla’s consciousness sat for several hours. The shock of a transfer had rendered her addled and unable to properly perceive anything. What felt like an eternity before she began to figure out her new “form” was in fact only two days. Her family retrieved her and, unable to bear looking at the alien device until an expert could be called in, left the strange relic in the back of their van.
Whether the device adjusted to the new consciousness with in it or whether Karla figured out how to “control” her new form is still unknown. The day after her family brought “her” back, the golden sphere unfolded several of its tendrils and latched them into key points of the vehicle’s interior. In that instant, she was the van. That same instant was when she realized she couldn’t remain with her family. Aside from the fact that she no longer had a proper human “body”, the idea of letting her family “sit in her” was weirder than she cared to try and understand.
And so it was that she first took control of machinery linked up to her “shell” and fled.
Or did her best to anyway. She found she could “see” through the van’s rear camera and “speak” through the radio, but steering in reverse was a task more complicated than she could properly handle and her getaway ended within an hour after she smashed through two other vehicles and shattered her camera. Steering blind, she drove herself into the ocean.
The darkness lasted for an unknown length of time before she washed up on a shoreline. It was a fisherman who found the van and noticed the strange relic in the back. Puzzling over the demolished vehicle whose radio kept screaming pleas for help in a distorted mix of German and English at him, he eventually stuck an old microphone against the sphere and pushed the cable against one of the golden tendrils that was holding Karla’s “shell” in place.
For the first time since her transformation, Karla could both speak and hear. Both abilities were limited, but the return of at least those two capabilities was enough.
She spent about two years with the fisherman, who also ran a small mechanic shop out of his home’s basement. Within a year, he’d constructed a more proper “body” for the sphere. It was rudimentary to say the least; not much more than an old mannequin with a video camera for a head, old hearing aids for ears, and a tiny speaker mounted on the camera’s underside. Of course while this “body” returned her head’s functions once the sphere was nestled inside its torso and the tendrils had hooked up to the instruments, it still lacked the capability of independent movement.
The first solution saw the torso removed from the legs and replaced with the base of a lawnmower. There was still the problem of arms, but for the time being, Karla was content to move about and explore the house and workshop of her benefactor. In that time, she began to absorb and memorize everything he did when repairing and fixing. As any teenager would, she was rapidly becoming bored.
It was another six months before the fisherman managed to rig a rudimentary arm set made of small model boat motors, pulleys, gears, and fishing line. The hands used were simply plastic grabbing claws, cheaply bought and easily rigged.
From that point on, Karla began stealing.
When her benefactor wasn’t looking, she would swipe various tools and parts from the workship, hiding them in an old box out behind the house. She was grateful for the new lease on life, but she was rapidly becoming tired of resembling a macabre toy, and was even more infuriated with the nickname he’d started giving her; Gears.
Eventually, she left the old body made from a puppet and a lawnmower. Her four foot tall new body wasn’t perfect, but it was humanoid, possessed individual fingers, and the gear and belt systems she’d rigged into the arms were stronger than even human muscle. Looting the entire shop and leaving the old body in the living room, she loaded the stolen parts into the fisherman’s truck and left.
Eight months later, the being known as Zahnräder had upgraded and added to herself, practically creating a new body with greater stature, vastly improved strength, and greater perceptive capabilities than she’d ever dreamed of. She could once again pass for a human -unless someone got a good look- and as far as she was concerned, the world was her’s to enjoy forever.
Never mind the feuds between The Corporation and the few companies that dared resist it.
Never mind the never mind the...you get the idea actually.
A fairly simple and self-manufactured robot was easy prey for the Corporation, and it was child's play to capture her, upgrade her body, and use her for their missions.