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Player NAME: Justine
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Current CHARACTERS: Stephanie Brown
» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Max Briest (previously Amelia Corelli)
Character PULL-POINT: Her crime empire is successfully running, she's made a few changes in the world, about 10 months after meeting Donny, and 5 months after meeting Asteria.
Character AGE: 24
Character ABILITIES:
Shapeshifting
Max's power has manifested in the form of shapeshifting, although of a very limited nature. She can't shift 'automatically' as it were, can't just think "I want to look like this", and have the magic work. It requires a conscious effort on her part, to make every single change, from bone structure, to muscles, to skin. She has an extremely intimate knowledge of human anatomy as a result, because if you fuck up how a joint is supposed to work and end up in agony, you're going to learn how to do it better next time. That said, the more she practices, and the more experienced she gets, she's been able to learn what are essentially shortcuts. For example, when her power first developed, if she wanted to be one inch taller, she'd have to think about changing her bones, the muscles and tendons and skin to match, as well as adjusting all the other little things that need adjusting when someone suddenly grows a bit taller. With about eight years of practice under her belt, at her current point, she can just can give herself an inch of height without having to grow through each step individually.
For this reason, she sticks to a humanoid figure. While theoretically she could shift into something more complicated, at this point in time she doesn't have the necessary knowledge to do it, though she may take on non-humanoid aspects. She's learnt a lot about animal anatomy, for example, and makes use of smaller features, such as claws/talons, jaw/teeth structures, or things like hardended skin or spikes/spines that are used defensively.
The advantage to this, is that shifting back requires just as much conscious thought. Once she's shifted to a certain form, she'll retain it until she chooses to change, regardless of whether she's exhausted, killed, or unconscious (even if her power was taken away, somehow, she'd be stuck in the form she'd been in at the time). This means she doesn't have to worry about going back to her own form, if she happens to fall asleep around someone. It also means that she can't automatically return to the body she was born with, and over the years, she consciously returns to it less and less, until she forgets what she used to look like. By the time she's twenty three, she hasn't worn her own body for years, and couldn't tell you how tall she naturally is.
She's also limited by the law of conservation of mass, much to her annoyance. If she wants to be taller, she has to be skinner, if she shifts into a form with more well defined muscle mass, she has to make sacrifices in other places. It's all a bit tedious.
It's also worth noting that she can't imitate other people perfectly. She can copy a look, going for a vague sense of a person, but up close it would be obvious that she isn't who she's pretending to be. All her tutors have told her that it should be possible for her to perfectly wear someone else's face and body, she simply can't get past the mental block of it. Sometimes her morals show up in odd places.
Other
Max also knows how to get shit done; she's competent in hand-to-hand combat and in the use of firearms, she has a fondness for Things That Go Fast which means she knows her way around an engine, and has her pilots license for small aircraft and helicopters (you never know when it might be needed). Computers aren't her strong point - she has people for that - but she can work up decent encryptions and knows how to find back doors into systems. She can speak about nine different languages at varying competency; she can hold conversations English, French, Mandarin, Italian and Spanish, and is passable in Russian, Korean, Arabic and Japanese. She was just functional in American Sign Language, but since meeting Donny, she's had a lot more practice and gotten much better.
She's good at breaking and entering, and even better at cracking safes. She also has an incredibly detailed knowledge of poisons and toxins, in part because she's capable of mimicking the glands/organs/etcs of animals that make poisons. It is a handy skill.
Character WORLD:
Throughout history, there's been stories of people with magical powers; oracles, witch doctors, demons and priests, people imbued with powers from deities or from nature or from something else entirely. As science began to develop and humans began to explain the world around them in more logical ways, much of these phenomenom were written off as flukes, liars, charlatans, or mass delusions. The world progressed much like ours has, with the culture, technology and environment turning out much the same by the late 20th Century. Sometimes in the early 1970s, these powers started to show up again.
At first, most people tried to keep it secret, but some made their abilities public, and those few ended up disappearing quite quickly off the face of the Earth, taken by governments or private organisations who were looking to use this magic for their own purposes. It was enough to make people reconsider their approach, and with comic books becoming an integral part of popular culture, they took inspiration from the heroes and villains on those pages.
It took a while for all the kinks to be worked out, and there are still a lot of problems, but gradually superheroes and their villainous counterparts became an accepted part of society (at least in the Western world, where this particular story is set). Most of the problems come from the fact that despite all the different ways the magic can manifest, each power comes with a drawback, a curse to counterpoint the gift. It isn't as easy as it was in the comic books, but those with magic also seem disposed towards reckless, dramatic and self-destructive behaviour. It's hard to say if one is a side effect of the other, or if it's pure coincidence, but there's some truth in the way that superheroes get called crazy for risking their lives, and that supervillains are often labelled mad scientists or insane psychopaths.
Somewhat fittingly, this is where the Sphinx comes into the world. A supervillain with likely borderline personality disorder and personal vendetta against almost the entire world, she's made some drastic changes since she started developing her crime empire.
Unlike our world, the Sphinx's version of America is powered by 60% renewable energy resources (she funded development of more efficient and cheaper to produce solar panels, for example), and by 2013 at least half the country is driving electric cars. The United States has universal health care, abortion is legal in every state, as is same sex marriage (among other reforms to LGBT rights), and she's elimated a large number of food deserts that exist within the country. In other countries, particularly developing nations, access to clean water is no longer an issue, there are significantly less weather extremes (thanks to weather maipulators working with a team of climatologists), and large numbers of the population in these places have better access to vaccines and general healthcare. Natural or man made disasters have a less dramatic affect, since there's specialised relief teams that help predict disasters, stop them, and deal with the aftermath.
They're differences that have taken a lot of time and effort to put into place, but she'd like to think she's made the world better, at least a little.
Character HISTORY:
CONTENT WARNING: Emotional and physical abuse, sexual assault.
To understand Max's life - or Amelia's, as she was known then - it's necessary to start with her parents, as they're the people most responsible for how her life turned out. Amelia was born into a mafia family, both her parents having come from separate lines of criminals, who'd come together for the sake of business. Her parents' marriage was a treaty, rather than something done for love, and this rather affected the relationship. Amelia's mother, Ana, had spent her entire childhood wanting to escape from her family, but when the opportunity arose when she was 17, she found herself staying, because she couldn't bear to leave her own mother. As a result, and wanting to protect her daughter from the same fate, she was distant and cold, avoiding Amelia and hoping that if Amelia ever had a chance to run, she wouldnt make the same mistake.
This might have worked, in theory, except for the sort of man her father was. Joseph... loved his daughter, but in a way that was warped by the culture he lived in - where women were seen as things to be used, rather than actual human beings - and by the simple fact that he wasn't a very nice person. He was cruel, but smart, with aspirations to move up in the world, making use of the powered people who his elder compatriots were still cautious about (this would have unfortunate ramifications for Amelia, later). For the first several years of Amelia's life, her father was even moer distant than her mother, simply demanding that his daughter be quiet and obedient. There was never any question of whether she'd go into the family business, as it were, and as she got older, Joseph began taking more of an interest in ensuring that would happen. It wasn't entirely conscious, on his part, but he subjected Amelia to a lot of emotional abuse, mainly with the purpose of convincing her that her family was all she had, that she needed her father to look after her, and that she owed it to him to behave and do what he wanted. He rarely lost his temper in any noticable way, never struck her out of anger, but he had no problem with introducing his daughter to the world he inhabited, leaving her with men and women who had lists of convictions longer than she was, and who enjoyed toying with the young girl in a variety of ways.
As a result, Amelia was a quiet child, withdrawn, who learnt that the truth was essentially meaningless, that it was better to control her emotions rather than let people see any weakness. She lied a lot, first telling the lies her father wanted to hear, and then lying to her teachers and classmates, making up stories to pretend her life was normal, as the importance of keeping up appearances was something both her parents instilled in her (for a while, she was even permitted to take ballet classes). She found out she was good at it, and combined with an aptitude for reading people, she took to manipulating the people around her in little ways. It wasn't as cruel as her father, and often she'd turn her talents on people who took advantage of others. She used to wreak havoc on the bullies at her school, picking apart their weaknesses and mocking them in just the right ways to get them to retreat. She tried to be popular, but there was always something off about her that the other kids just didn't trust, and while she could keep up an image for a while, it'd slip eventually when she'd withdraw into herself. She'd manage to get invited to parties, but end up either finding a quiet spot to be alone, or letting boys talk her into making out with them. These attempts were always kind of awkward and uncomfortable, made worse when she realized she generally preferred girls, but was too scared to do anything about it. She just hadn't quite gotten good enough at pretending yet, and as her father's abuse escalated, she had more trouble keeping up appearances at school.
The escalation came in the form of Amelia discovering she had powers that allowed her to shapeshift. She tried to keep this a secret from her father, but eventually he caught her practicing, and her life went dramatically down hill from there.
Her father had no problem using her powers the way he used the powers of other people who worked for him. She tried to reffuse, at first, mostly because it hurts to shapeshit and she was scared of what he might make her do. Joseph only ever beat Amelia once, but that once was enough to terrify her into doing anything he wanted, because it turned out that ending up in hospital and the pain her father could inflict was worse than the pain of shapeshifting.
Working for her father is where she learnt a lot of the skills that she relies on in her own career as a criminal. The first thing he taught her was how to kill, both to protect his asset and because there's an advantage to an assassin who can wear a disposible face. With Amelia almost completely under his control, he started planning to take over the family, which required him to make new alliances and contacts, and it never occured to him that making his daughter a bribe and a bargaining chip might be kind of monstrous. There were things that had to be done, she was capable of doing them, and he didn't see a problem with this.
The next eighteen months were a nightmare for Amelia. She was gradually brought more and more into the crime syndicate her father was now running, and despite how much she hated it, she learnt to play along in the hope it would make Joseph happy and keep him from hurting her again. For all her mother tried to subtly push her to escape, she was too scared to fight, and too scared to run, even if her fear of her father was turning to hate.
One of the defining points in her life happened during this time. She was working, and living, with a weapons dealer, having been told to seduce him, keep an eye on him, and eventually convince him to come work for Joseph Corelli. It didn't go well for either of them when one of New York's famous superheroes, Phasar - think Booster Gold but an asshole - tracked them down. Someone working for them had betrayed them, given information to the superhero, and left them to their fates. When a superhero broke through the front door to arrest the man she'd been working alongside, Amelia thought it was a miracle, a chance to be free.
She was, unfortunately, wrong. Phasar was more concerned with making a name for himself than actually helping people, and while Amelia tried to explain what happened, tried to ask him for help, he dismissed her, assuming she was just trying to find a way out of a prison sentence. Phasar had been told about her, the woman on the arm of a dealer, and didn't care enough to listen to her as he arrested her. She made her bed, she should lie in it. Realizing that the situation wasn't panning out like she'd hoped, and angered by the way Phasar was talking to her (she was just the dealer's little whore, after all), Amelia fought, and managed to escape.
It wasn't a turning point, per se, but it was something that would stay with her when she did finally start to break away from the fear her father has instilled in her. As Joseph gained more control in the crime world, his business expanded, and more people came to work for him. One of these people was a rather confident young woman - Pari Mehra - who'd carved a name for herself in a male dominated world by being exceptionally good at what she did. Suffice to say that Amelia, eighteen and existing as a sort of mask of herself for the sake of survival, developed a bit of a crush on the woman. It never went anywhere, Amelia barely registered on Pari's radar, but it was a chance for Amelia to see a woman who was working for herself, on her own terms, and making her own decisions. A month after Pari moved onto bigger and better things, Amelia started to come up with her own plans.
On the surface, she never pushed against her father's wishes, never did anything to raise suspicion, just kept playing the roles he'd tell her to, but in her thoughts, she was plotting the best way to take him, and his syndicate, down. She'd come to the conclusion that most superheroes were useless, and probably all self-serving assholes like Phasar, but maybe Amelia could do something good and maybe she could try to change what it meant to be a superhero.
Not long before her nineteenth birthday, she had two pieces of information; one was that her father and those high up in the hierarchy of his syndicate were holding a secret meeting at one of the drug labs they controlled, and the other was that tensions had been rising between her father's group, and that of rival criminals. Amelia, who had been squirreling away money since she was fourteen, bought a whole new fake identity for her mother, let her in on part of the plan, and told her to when to leave the city. On the night of the meeting, Amelia took the guise of one of the lieutenants of the rival group, walked into the meeting, and slaughtered everyone there. It felt better than it should have, and probably should have been a sign of what was to come. She was supposed to be there that night, and she made it look like she had been, that as the only woman there, she'd been taken by the lieutenant.
The police, the other criminals who heard whispers of what happened, could guess what her fate had been.
Joseph Corelli was dead, Amelia Corelli was presumed dead, and Ana Corelli, under pressure from the police and scared of what other criminals might do to her, fled to California, where she became Elizabeth Peters. Amelia, meanwhile, took the name of Max Briest, inspired by two fictional characters, and started the next part of her plan.
The rival gang denied the attack, but when a few of their numbers ended up dead, it could only be seen as retribution. Things spiralled from there, Max lending a hand to escalate things where it felt necessary, until the two gangs had esssentially destroyed each other.
At the time, she had no plans to be a crimianl, she just wanted to ruin everything her father had done, and when that was complete, she recreated herself as Max and as Artemis, the latter a superhero identity. She had a new face, had used the last of her funds to buy a small apartment and a costume, and took to the streets and rooftops, hoping to make a difference in the world, the way that other superheroes had failed to do. On the surface, it went well; she stopped assorted criminal, murderers, thieves, but the legal system of her world was still adapting to vigilantes, and still suffered the problems that many legal systems do. Some of the things that Max struggled the most with were prosecuting attempted rapes or murders (or both) of women, particulary in relation to domestic violence. She'd help someone, try to get the abuser convicted, but the case would fall through, or the police didn't care enough, or the other superheroes would mock her for wasting time on lost causes.
Watching a child molester walk free was the last straw.
Artemis was supposed to be a protector of women, that was why Max had taken the name, but she was also a hunter, so she spent the next week following the peadophile, waiting for him to show his true colours. He was stalking an eleven year old girl when Max's fingers closed around his throat and choked the life out of him.
Going around killing people wasn't the solution, though, as enjoyable as it could be. There was a whole fucked up system that she wanted to change, but she couldn't concieve of how to do so legally, by working within it. So she decided to do the opposite. Max had a lot of useful skills after all, when it came to committing crimes, and she'd seen how corruption within the police force and political and judicial system had been exploited by other criminals. It only made sense she could do it, too.
Building a crime empire does not happen overnight. It started with trafficking, guns and drugs, mostly, with money laundering and trading goods on the black market. There were bank heists and museum robberies, a way to get the funds she needed, she'd work as a mercenary, if the person deserved to die (by her standards), using her skills in killing people as another source of funds. She didn't really need to take a new monicker, but she'd always had a thing for stories and how they shaped people's perspectives. It took a while for her to land on the Sphinx, but there was something appealing about using the name of a monster that was also a protector, a woman shaped creature who strangled and devoured men. The Sphinx was defeated, eventually, and maybe she was signing her own fate with the name, but it fit, and she liked it, so it became hers.
The next few years of her life were spent consolodating her little corner of the crime world. By the time she was twenty one, she had considerable influence in New York, having a knack for strategy and planning, and she owned large amount of the gun and drugs trade, ensuring that illegal subtances and weaponry went where she wanted them to (namely: away from children). She bought apartment blocks to turn into shelters, using the money from her crime sydnicate to fund these projects, taking in desperate people and helping them get their lives back on track. Eventually she expanded her operations to more legitimate avenues, hiring scientists to solve problems she saw in the world and profiting from patents while ensuring that the production of these goods is ethical and environmentally responsible. She owns a variety of businesses, largely employing people who've been through her shelter system and other disenfranchised folks.
It took her a while to move onto politics, because she wanted to ensure she had a stable backing before taking bigger risks, but she's been whispering in politicians' ears or blackmailing them to support certain bills or reforms. She's kind of like a one woman lobbying whirlwind, using whatever means she thinks are necessary to get what she wants. It's not always succesful, but she's made some changes to the world.
At 23, she has herself a nice little empire, controls most of New York's crime, has her fingers in a considerable amount of political pies, and everything seems to be continuing smoothly, nevermind the fact that she's incredibly unhappy as a person, at least she's making a difference.
Things take an interesting turn when she meets Atlas, or Adonis Casey, as his parents somewhat cruelly named him. He's a superhero, but unlike a lot of superheroes in their world, he seems to be a) relatively stable and b) a genuinely good person. The first is not all that true, but the second is, and it's that part of him that Max takes advantage of. He's an awkward boy, but good hearted, and she convinces him that she's making a real difference in the world, instead of the useless efforts of superheroes. It probably helped that she was one of very few people to actually take time to talk to Donny despite his awkwardness and stutter, but eventually he ended up working for her.
This could have been perfectly fine; he made a good bodyguard, he was sweet in an amusing kind of way, and his powers were deveoping well with the help of trainers she'd sent him to. What she didn't count on was Donny's sister being a criminal, except Asteria Casey is a straight up supervillain, psychopathy and sadism included. Upon attending Asteria's wedding as Donny's plus one, Max made the connection between the woman and the Nyx/Morpheus/Hypnos identities she'd created, and promptly told Donny that his sister was fucking insane.
Unsurprisingly, this did not go well. Asteria is a powerful dreamwalker; for a few months Max was able to keep her out, having trained with psyhics to put blocks in her mind, but gradually Asteria weakened them, got into her head, and started wrecking havoc on her. At the same time, Asteria increased her torment of Donny (she'd been playing around in his dreams since he was young, explaining at least some of his awkwardness and assorted other issues), sending both him and Max into a downward spiral. Turns out they're both kind of fucked up! And that when you mess with fucked up people it just fucks them up more! Asteria takes great enjoyment from this, because she is a terrible person.
This is Max's canon point; ten months after she met Atlas, five after her and Asteria collided, and three months after Asteria broke through Max's defences and started screwing with her.
In case of a canon update, things go a little like this: shit gets progressively worse until Asteria nearly manages to kill Max by proxy, forcing Donny's hand and making him kill a mutual friend. Shaken by the fact he murdered someone he considered a friend and hoping that Asteria might leave Max alone if he's out of the equation, Donny tries to kill himself. There's a deal with a metaphorical devil to keep him alive, that actualy turns out to be a good thing, when Max manages to use the deal to kill Asteria, giving the other woman's life instead of trading her own (it's complicated).
Things are still kind of really fucked up, but both Max and Donny have been broken down enough by everything with Asteria that they're sort of given a clean slate to build themselves up again. It's a work in progress.
Character PERSONALITY:
Content warning for drug/alcohol use
Max exists in a world where people became superheroes purely because that is What Should Be Done when someone suddenly wakes up with powers (thanks, comic books), and as the 'second generation' of powered people, she's been heavily influenced, somewhat unconsciously, by the importance of stories. This was only impacted by her own personal love of literature, which provided an escape during her childhood. As a result, she tends to see the world in terms of narrative structures, and to understand her, you have to understand the roles she's cast herself in. The first, of course, is the villain. She's being playing the part for so long that it doesn't matter anymore whether or not she is a bad person, she's convinced herself that she is, and that's all there is to it. She can do whatever needs to be done - by her own definition - without question, simply because it needs to be done, and she's the bad guy who's capable of doing it. One result of this is that she 'plays up' the villainy; she can be melodramatic, she presents herself alternatively as someone with a short fuse who's a little unstable and can snap at any moment, or as the cold, hard, killer how isn't affected by anything. Neither of these facades are real, but she uses either of them as necessary, depending on which she thinks will get the best results. In her mind, this is what being a villain means, and she never stops to question whether there are other ways to do things.
That said, the villain isn't the only role she plays. There are two other main roles she relies on, the protector and the seductress. The latter is fairly simple; occasionally, in her line of work, people need to be convinced to do what she wants them to. Not everyone can be bribed, or blackmailed, or threatened with an unfortunate amount of violence until they do what she wants, and in those cases, she relies quite heavily on the fact that men like attractive women who pay attention to them. Being a shapeshifter, she can change her looks to suit a target, seduce them, and then whisper in their ear until they're on her side. She plays this role most often with rich men for their money or politicians for their power. Occasionally it takes on a bit of a black widow aspect, but she doesn't like to do that too often in case it draws the wrong kind of attention. The problem with relying on, essentially, herself as a thing to be used, is that it's left her with a really warped perspective. Sex is a tool, rather than something to be enjoyed, as is her own body, and she heavily relies on sex and seduction to get what she wants, without thinking about the consequences. She'll flirt with almost any man with the aim of getting them in a position from which she can manipulate them, even if she can't see an instant use for someone. Women are an entirely different matter. She'll flirt with other female 'villains' if she thinks it might get her what she wants, but she very, very rarely treats women as targets, and despite being mainly attracted to women, she's never even kissed another girl, because she likes them too much to inflict herself on them. The villain is still her main role, what she thinks of herself as, and she's too terrified of hurting a woman to ever let herself get close to one. Unsurprisingly, this hasn't improved her perspective on sex, and she tends to act cagey and avoidant if a woman shows interest in her.
The third and final role is the one she likes the most, even if she'd never actually admit that to herself. It's the way she deals with the people who she helps, the women living in the apartments she owns, or the girls slinking into clinics to get broken bones set or STIs treated, or the kids coming into soup kitchens looking for a meal they don't have to steal. It's a fairly distant role, she doesn't like to get involved for their sake, but she's friendly, generous, and willing to take the time to help anyone out with a problem, no matter how small it is. Despite this being her favourite 'role', it's also the one she views as being the most constructed, because she sees herself as a monster, and doesn't think that someone can take pleasure in murdering people and be kind. If she spent more of her time in this role, she might be happier.
As part of these roles, the most important thing about Max's personality is her obsession with control, both in a personal content, and in how she deals with others. The skills she learnt in childhood to keep herself safe have only improved with age, and by the time she's twenty, she doesn't have reactions that aren't controlled in some way or another. She might let her surprise, or happiness, or anger show, but only because she wants to, and it's very rare that something gets a genuine reaction out of her. It's not necessarily that she choses every single word, or expression, or gesture, but she'll decide how she wants to interact with someone and tailor her behaviour around that.
The only time she lets go of her control is with the help of alcohol, or, occasionally, illicit drugs. The latter is generally used when she's operating under other identities, particularly that of a young socialite who spends too much money on clothes and goes to a lot of parties. Since she's usually the one supplying the drugs offered to her in these situations, she knows they're safe to take, and part of her enjoys relinquishing that control. The alcohol is a more common vice; she often unwinds with a few glasses of wine or a tumbler of scotch, though it can escalate more when she's had a rough week. It's a problem and she knows it, but she doesn't let it interfere with her work, and thinks she has it under control, too.
Whether a reason for being so tightly controlled, or a result of it, underneath the surface Max tends towards rather intense emotions, both with regards to frequency and variation. Rapid mood swings are a common occurance, and she can get extremely worked up over nothing, it's just that she rarely actually lets any of it show. These intense emotions are often on the negative end of the spectrum, though she does get intensely elated when something goes right. In an attempt not to keep her control and not let her emotions overwhelm her, she can sometimes suffer from a sort of dissaffection, shutting down her emotional reactions. It's likely that she has some degree of borderline personality disorder (not a great illness for a shapeshifter to have, really), but it's undiagnosed.
In recent months, with Asteria's constant torment, Max has started to unravel, some of her carefully constructed facades coming undone and leaving Max angry and scared. Her moods have become more volatile, and she's become more self-destructive, losing herself in alcohol or drugs, because the sleep brought on by them doesn't result in dreams. She's withdrawing from all the positive parts of her life, from the role of the protector, because she thinks it's the best way to keep the people she's promised to look after safe from Asteria. As a result, she's been crueller in other parts of her work, and with most people in general, taking out her frustration on targets that she deems acceptable. Asteria has also fucked with Max's sense of worth, making her question herself and dragging up a lot of self-loathing that she thought was buried in her psyche, which is making her act out even more, and she's often overcome by periods of depression, during which she'll barely talk to anyone. This is slightly gentled by Donny's presence in her life; his belief in her has kept her from spiralling too far into self-destruction, and he reminds her how to be human, how to be someone other than the roles she's created for herself, which has helped negate some of Asteria's torment.
Still, the problem with Max, is that she's spent so long telling these lies about the sort of person she is, that she's started to believe them herself. Asteria has started stripping them away, forcing them out into the open for Max to see, making her confront all the things she hates about herself. Without the lies, Max doesn't really know how to function, so by the time she's coming to Exsilium, Asteria has started her on the path to destroying herself, and that will be reflected in the way she thinks and acts in the city.
She's a fucking disaster, basically.
» EXSILIUM INFORMATION
Chosen WEAPON: Max is going to start with one of her tactical knives, and not trusting the Initiative, she'll be reluctant to use it, but if she does, it's likely to start adapating to a situation the same way she does. Changing size, shape or sharpness to best fit a sitation.
That said, I aim to have her eventually decide to weaponize her own power, which will allow her to shapeshift more painlessly, and to gradually expand what she can do with her powers. Currently, she has difficulty with using inorganic forms (e.g. she can mimic something like snake skin, but couldn't make her skin metal) and with the law of conservation of mass; with time, she'll start to develop her powers to get past these issues, though it will be a very slow process.
Character INVENTORY: Max is wearing a pair of black skinny jeans, a white shirt, a leather jacket, and leather motorcycle boots. As for jewellery, she has a number of metal and ceramic bracelets on her wrists, red beryl earrings (they're a plan B if she ever finds herself stuck somewhere without funds), and two simple gold rings. Under the jacket is a horizontal shoulder holster, carrying a SIG Sauer P229 pistol (9mm calibre), with two extra magazines. There's also a tactical knife sheathed in each of her boots. In her pockets are her cellphone, her wallet with assorted IDs and about $500 in US dollars circa 2013, a packet of cigarettes (no lighter), a tube of red lipstick, and a lockpicking kit.
Also her dog? I've added that request in the Addtional Notes section.
» SAMPLES
First PERSON:
[The face on the screen is a young woman, that ambigious age during the mid twenties, where it's hard to pick exactly how old she is. She seems to be sitting in a nearly emptyy cafe, tablet resting against something unseen, since her arms are folded in front of her. This face is specifically chosen to be attractive, by the standards she's used to, helped by eyeliner and dark red lipstick.
The cigarette is mostly there because Max has nicotine problems.]
So we're called Transports, are we? [It's hard to tell exactly how she feels about that, but there's a general unimpressed vibe radiating from her.] Well, fellow Transports, I have two riddles for you, just to pass the time.
[She takes a drag of the cigarette and blows out smoke, as if she has all the time in the world.]
There are two sisters. One gives birth to the other, and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?
[The Sphinx's second riddle. It's not much, but if there's anyone out there who knows of her, it might be enough to ping their interest.
Another breath in, out, smoke curling through the air.]
The second riddle is 'who wants to buy me a drink?'
[Her smile is flirty, self-assured, before she shuts off the feed. Now she just has to see what happens.]
Third PERSON:
The temptation to throw a tantrum is itching in the back of her mind, a petulant rebellion at the sheer insanity of the situation she's found herself in. The woman's already handed her the tablet computer, and the first thing Max did was find the information, briefly blinking in surprise at the map of Britain displayed on the screen.
The year is 3313 B.C. The woman says, and it's only the fact that she doesn't ever show surprise, that keeps her from doing a double take.
She's in Britain, in the future, in a presumably alternate universe, judging by what the woman's told her, and most importantly, for the first time in almost five years, she's alone. It shouldn't be such a big deal, she tells herself, as she automatically follows the woman throughout the building, idling listening to what she has to say. It's not as though she has friends, but she's always had people to rely on, safe places to go, someone to stitch her up when she occasionally gets herself in too deep. Knowing that safety net isn't there feels like she's missing a limb, and she knows it's going to be hard to adjust to life without it.
Well, except for Maurice, who seems to have been brought to this world along with her, likely a result of the fact he'd been using her as his personal pillow back at home. The woman explains that it happens sometimes, that pets will get brought along with their owners, and that there will be room for him in the apartment she'll be sharing with two others (which nearly makes her laugh, as if she's going to share an apartment with someone).
On the plus side, the thought of sleep free from nightmares and the concern of having her memories ripped from her mind and twisted into something to be used against her is incredibly relieving. There's guilt, of course, that she's left the non-sociopathic Casey siblings alone with ther monster of a sister, but she recalls something being said about time stopping, and she can only hope that it's true. If not, well, at least there's nothing new that Asteria will be able to get from her, and Donny won't be subjected to any shared nightmares, at least for a while.
That can be a concern for later, though, since the woman seems to expecting some sort of response from her, talking about sentient weapons. There's a suggestion in the way she says it, that makes Max consider weaponizing herself, but she doesn't trust anything this woman says, and instilling some sort of - outside force into her body just isn't happening. She chooses one of her knives.
As soon as the woman leaves her alone, the first thing Max does is find a private, quiet spot, taking a moment to shift. Maybe it's pointless, when she's so far away from home, but until she has more information, she's not wearing the Sphinx's face. It's always better to be safe than sorry, and if there are people from all sorts of worlds, here, there could be people from hers. Wendy Campbell should be an appropriate identity, there's a driver's license for her hidden in Max's wallet, and it's a story she uses often enough that she won't trip up on details, should she need to actually talk to people. Wendy is twenty, grew up in Portland and is undertaking an arts degree at UCLA. She's shorter than Max, her face much softer, with an easy smile and bright eyes. It makes people want to trust her, look after her, and it should serve her purposes nicely.
Shifting hurts, as it always does, but she feels safer with her identity hidden away, and with a quiet whistle to call Maurice back to her side, she goes out to brave the rain.
Bonus test-drive meme link: http://dramaticshitinlatin.dreamwidth.org/24781.html?thread=10345421#cmt10345421
» ADDITIONAL NOTES
If possible, Max would like the company of her pet American Pitbull Terrier, Maurice, who is a grey pitbull with some facial scarring that's the result of fights he was in (visual reference: http://www.bulldogbreeds.com/americanpitbullterrier/pics/med_blue_pit_bull.jpg). He's a perfectly normal dog, six years old, who Max rescued from a dog fighting ring five years ago and he's endlessly loyal to her as a result. He's not a very good guard dog, because he's too friendly for his own good, but he's a good source of comfort for Max, who doesn't do great with people.
Player NAME: Justine
Current AGE: Old as balls (21)
Player TIME ZONE: GMT 10
Personal JOURNAL:
faile_neumeIM & SERVICE: failenume @ aim
Player PLURK:
Current CHARACTERS: Stephanie Brown
» CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character NAME: Max Briest (previously Amelia Corelli)
Character PULL-POINT: Her crime empire is successfully running, she's made a few changes in the world, about 10 months after meeting Donny, and 5 months after meeting Asteria.
Character AGE: 24
Character ABILITIES:
Shapeshifting
Max's power has manifested in the form of shapeshifting, although of a very limited nature. She can't shift 'automatically' as it were, can't just think "I want to look like this", and have the magic work. It requires a conscious effort on her part, to make every single change, from bone structure, to muscles, to skin. She has an extremely intimate knowledge of human anatomy as a result, because if you fuck up how a joint is supposed to work and end up in agony, you're going to learn how to do it better next time. That said, the more she practices, and the more experienced she gets, she's been able to learn what are essentially shortcuts. For example, when her power first developed, if she wanted to be one inch taller, she'd have to think about changing her bones, the muscles and tendons and skin to match, as well as adjusting all the other little things that need adjusting when someone suddenly grows a bit taller. With about eight years of practice under her belt, at her current point, she can just can give herself an inch of height without having to grow through each step individually.
For this reason, she sticks to a humanoid figure. While theoretically she could shift into something more complicated, at this point in time she doesn't have the necessary knowledge to do it, though she may take on non-humanoid aspects. She's learnt a lot about animal anatomy, for example, and makes use of smaller features, such as claws/talons, jaw/teeth structures, or things like hardended skin or spikes/spines that are used defensively.
The advantage to this, is that shifting back requires just as much conscious thought. Once she's shifted to a certain form, she'll retain it until she chooses to change, regardless of whether she's exhausted, killed, or unconscious (even if her power was taken away, somehow, she'd be stuck in the form she'd been in at the time). This means she doesn't have to worry about going back to her own form, if she happens to fall asleep around someone. It also means that she can't automatically return to the body she was born with, and over the years, she consciously returns to it less and less, until she forgets what she used to look like. By the time she's twenty three, she hasn't worn her own body for years, and couldn't tell you how tall she naturally is.
She's also limited by the law of conservation of mass, much to her annoyance. If she wants to be taller, she has to be skinner, if she shifts into a form with more well defined muscle mass, she has to make sacrifices in other places. It's all a bit tedious.
It's also worth noting that she can't imitate other people perfectly. She can copy a look, going for a vague sense of a person, but up close it would be obvious that she isn't who she's pretending to be. All her tutors have told her that it should be possible for her to perfectly wear someone else's face and body, she simply can't get past the mental block of it. Sometimes her morals show up in odd places.
Other
Max also knows how to get shit done; she's competent in hand-to-hand combat and in the use of firearms, she has a fondness for Things That Go Fast which means she knows her way around an engine, and has her pilots license for small aircraft and helicopters (you never know when it might be needed). Computers aren't her strong point - she has people for that - but she can work up decent encryptions and knows how to find back doors into systems. She can speak about nine different languages at varying competency; she can hold conversations English, French, Mandarin, Italian and Spanish, and is passable in Russian, Korean, Arabic and Japanese. She was just functional in American Sign Language, but since meeting Donny, she's had a lot more practice and gotten much better.
She's good at breaking and entering, and even better at cracking safes. She also has an incredibly detailed knowledge of poisons and toxins, in part because she's capable of mimicking the glands/organs/etcs of animals that make poisons. It is a handy skill.
Character WORLD:
Throughout history, there's been stories of people with magical powers; oracles, witch doctors, demons and priests, people imbued with powers from deities or from nature or from something else entirely. As science began to develop and humans began to explain the world around them in more logical ways, much of these phenomenom were written off as flukes, liars, charlatans, or mass delusions. The world progressed much like ours has, with the culture, technology and environment turning out much the same by the late 20th Century. Sometimes in the early 1970s, these powers started to show up again.
At first, most people tried to keep it secret, but some made their abilities public, and those few ended up disappearing quite quickly off the face of the Earth, taken by governments or private organisations who were looking to use this magic for their own purposes. It was enough to make people reconsider their approach, and with comic books becoming an integral part of popular culture, they took inspiration from the heroes and villains on those pages.
It took a while for all the kinks to be worked out, and there are still a lot of problems, but gradually superheroes and their villainous counterparts became an accepted part of society (at least in the Western world, where this particular story is set). Most of the problems come from the fact that despite all the different ways the magic can manifest, each power comes with a drawback, a curse to counterpoint the gift. It isn't as easy as it was in the comic books, but those with magic also seem disposed towards reckless, dramatic and self-destructive behaviour. It's hard to say if one is a side effect of the other, or if it's pure coincidence, but there's some truth in the way that superheroes get called crazy for risking their lives, and that supervillains are often labelled mad scientists or insane psychopaths.
Somewhat fittingly, this is where the Sphinx comes into the world. A supervillain with likely borderline personality disorder and personal vendetta against almost the entire world, she's made some drastic changes since she started developing her crime empire.
Unlike our world, the Sphinx's version of America is powered by 60% renewable energy resources (she funded development of more efficient and cheaper to produce solar panels, for example), and by 2013 at least half the country is driving electric cars. The United States has universal health care, abortion is legal in every state, as is same sex marriage (among other reforms to LGBT rights), and she's elimated a large number of food deserts that exist within the country. In other countries, particularly developing nations, access to clean water is no longer an issue, there are significantly less weather extremes (thanks to weather maipulators working with a team of climatologists), and large numbers of the population in these places have better access to vaccines and general healthcare. Natural or man made disasters have a less dramatic affect, since there's specialised relief teams that help predict disasters, stop them, and deal with the aftermath.
They're differences that have taken a lot of time and effort to put into place, but she'd like to think she's made the world better, at least a little.
Character HISTORY:
CONTENT WARNING: Emotional and physical abuse, sexual assault.
To understand Max's life - or Amelia's, as she was known then - it's necessary to start with her parents, as they're the people most responsible for how her life turned out. Amelia was born into a mafia family, both her parents having come from separate lines of criminals, who'd come together for the sake of business. Her parents' marriage was a treaty, rather than something done for love, and this rather affected the relationship. Amelia's mother, Ana, had spent her entire childhood wanting to escape from her family, but when the opportunity arose when she was 17, she found herself staying, because she couldn't bear to leave her own mother. As a result, and wanting to protect her daughter from the same fate, she was distant and cold, avoiding Amelia and hoping that if Amelia ever had a chance to run, she wouldnt make the same mistake.
This might have worked, in theory, except for the sort of man her father was. Joseph... loved his daughter, but in a way that was warped by the culture he lived in - where women were seen as things to be used, rather than actual human beings - and by the simple fact that he wasn't a very nice person. He was cruel, but smart, with aspirations to move up in the world, making use of the powered people who his elder compatriots were still cautious about (this would have unfortunate ramifications for Amelia, later). For the first several years of Amelia's life, her father was even moer distant than her mother, simply demanding that his daughter be quiet and obedient. There was never any question of whether she'd go into the family business, as it were, and as she got older, Joseph began taking more of an interest in ensuring that would happen. It wasn't entirely conscious, on his part, but he subjected Amelia to a lot of emotional abuse, mainly with the purpose of convincing her that her family was all she had, that she needed her father to look after her, and that she owed it to him to behave and do what he wanted. He rarely lost his temper in any noticable way, never struck her out of anger, but he had no problem with introducing his daughter to the world he inhabited, leaving her with men and women who had lists of convictions longer than she was, and who enjoyed toying with the young girl in a variety of ways.
As a result, Amelia was a quiet child, withdrawn, who learnt that the truth was essentially meaningless, that it was better to control her emotions rather than let people see any weakness. She lied a lot, first telling the lies her father wanted to hear, and then lying to her teachers and classmates, making up stories to pretend her life was normal, as the importance of keeping up appearances was something both her parents instilled in her (for a while, she was even permitted to take ballet classes). She found out she was good at it, and combined with an aptitude for reading people, she took to manipulating the people around her in little ways. It wasn't as cruel as her father, and often she'd turn her talents on people who took advantage of others. She used to wreak havoc on the bullies at her school, picking apart their weaknesses and mocking them in just the right ways to get them to retreat. She tried to be popular, but there was always something off about her that the other kids just didn't trust, and while she could keep up an image for a while, it'd slip eventually when she'd withdraw into herself. She'd manage to get invited to parties, but end up either finding a quiet spot to be alone, or letting boys talk her into making out with them. These attempts were always kind of awkward and uncomfortable, made worse when she realized she generally preferred girls, but was too scared to do anything about it. She just hadn't quite gotten good enough at pretending yet, and as her father's abuse escalated, she had more trouble keeping up appearances at school.
The escalation came in the form of Amelia discovering she had powers that allowed her to shapeshift. She tried to keep this a secret from her father, but eventually he caught her practicing, and her life went dramatically down hill from there.
Her father had no problem using her powers the way he used the powers of other people who worked for him. She tried to reffuse, at first, mostly because it hurts to shapeshit and she was scared of what he might make her do. Joseph only ever beat Amelia once, but that once was enough to terrify her into doing anything he wanted, because it turned out that ending up in hospital and the pain her father could inflict was worse than the pain of shapeshifting.
Working for her father is where she learnt a lot of the skills that she relies on in her own career as a criminal. The first thing he taught her was how to kill, both to protect his asset and because there's an advantage to an assassin who can wear a disposible face. With Amelia almost completely under his control, he started planning to take over the family, which required him to make new alliances and contacts, and it never occured to him that making his daughter a bribe and a bargaining chip might be kind of monstrous. There were things that had to be done, she was capable of doing them, and he didn't see a problem with this.
The next eighteen months were a nightmare for Amelia. She was gradually brought more and more into the crime syndicate her father was now running, and despite how much she hated it, she learnt to play along in the hope it would make Joseph happy and keep him from hurting her again. For all her mother tried to subtly push her to escape, she was too scared to fight, and too scared to run, even if her fear of her father was turning to hate.
One of the defining points in her life happened during this time. She was working, and living, with a weapons dealer, having been told to seduce him, keep an eye on him, and eventually convince him to come work for Joseph Corelli. It didn't go well for either of them when one of New York's famous superheroes, Phasar - think Booster Gold but an asshole - tracked them down. Someone working for them had betrayed them, given information to the superhero, and left them to their fates. When a superhero broke through the front door to arrest the man she'd been working alongside, Amelia thought it was a miracle, a chance to be free.
She was, unfortunately, wrong. Phasar was more concerned with making a name for himself than actually helping people, and while Amelia tried to explain what happened, tried to ask him for help, he dismissed her, assuming she was just trying to find a way out of a prison sentence. Phasar had been told about her, the woman on the arm of a dealer, and didn't care enough to listen to her as he arrested her. She made her bed, she should lie in it. Realizing that the situation wasn't panning out like she'd hoped, and angered by the way Phasar was talking to her (she was just the dealer's little whore, after all), Amelia fought, and managed to escape.
It wasn't a turning point, per se, but it was something that would stay with her when she did finally start to break away from the fear her father has instilled in her. As Joseph gained more control in the crime world, his business expanded, and more people came to work for him. One of these people was a rather confident young woman - Pari Mehra - who'd carved a name for herself in a male dominated world by being exceptionally good at what she did. Suffice to say that Amelia, eighteen and existing as a sort of mask of herself for the sake of survival, developed a bit of a crush on the woman. It never went anywhere, Amelia barely registered on Pari's radar, but it was a chance for Amelia to see a woman who was working for herself, on her own terms, and making her own decisions. A month after Pari moved onto bigger and better things, Amelia started to come up with her own plans.
On the surface, she never pushed against her father's wishes, never did anything to raise suspicion, just kept playing the roles he'd tell her to, but in her thoughts, she was plotting the best way to take him, and his syndicate, down. She'd come to the conclusion that most superheroes were useless, and probably all self-serving assholes like Phasar, but maybe Amelia could do something good and maybe she could try to change what it meant to be a superhero.
Not long before her nineteenth birthday, she had two pieces of information; one was that her father and those high up in the hierarchy of his syndicate were holding a secret meeting at one of the drug labs they controlled, and the other was that tensions had been rising between her father's group, and that of rival criminals. Amelia, who had been squirreling away money since she was fourteen, bought a whole new fake identity for her mother, let her in on part of the plan, and told her to when to leave the city. On the night of the meeting, Amelia took the guise of one of the lieutenants of the rival group, walked into the meeting, and slaughtered everyone there. It felt better than it should have, and probably should have been a sign of what was to come. She was supposed to be there that night, and she made it look like she had been, that as the only woman there, she'd been taken by the lieutenant.
The police, the other criminals who heard whispers of what happened, could guess what her fate had been.
Joseph Corelli was dead, Amelia Corelli was presumed dead, and Ana Corelli, under pressure from the police and scared of what other criminals might do to her, fled to California, where she became Elizabeth Peters. Amelia, meanwhile, took the name of Max Briest, inspired by two fictional characters, and started the next part of her plan.
The rival gang denied the attack, but when a few of their numbers ended up dead, it could only be seen as retribution. Things spiralled from there, Max lending a hand to escalate things where it felt necessary, until the two gangs had esssentially destroyed each other.
At the time, she had no plans to be a crimianl, she just wanted to ruin everything her father had done, and when that was complete, she recreated herself as Max and as Artemis, the latter a superhero identity. She had a new face, had used the last of her funds to buy a small apartment and a costume, and took to the streets and rooftops, hoping to make a difference in the world, the way that other superheroes had failed to do. On the surface, it went well; she stopped assorted criminal, murderers, thieves, but the legal system of her world was still adapting to vigilantes, and still suffered the problems that many legal systems do. Some of the things that Max struggled the most with were prosecuting attempted rapes or murders (or both) of women, particulary in relation to domestic violence. She'd help someone, try to get the abuser convicted, but the case would fall through, or the police didn't care enough, or the other superheroes would mock her for wasting time on lost causes.
Watching a child molester walk free was the last straw.
Artemis was supposed to be a protector of women, that was why Max had taken the name, but she was also a hunter, so she spent the next week following the peadophile, waiting for him to show his true colours. He was stalking an eleven year old girl when Max's fingers closed around his throat and choked the life out of him.
Going around killing people wasn't the solution, though, as enjoyable as it could be. There was a whole fucked up system that she wanted to change, but she couldn't concieve of how to do so legally, by working within it. So she decided to do the opposite. Max had a lot of useful skills after all, when it came to committing crimes, and she'd seen how corruption within the police force and political and judicial system had been exploited by other criminals. It only made sense she could do it, too.
Building a crime empire does not happen overnight. It started with trafficking, guns and drugs, mostly, with money laundering and trading goods on the black market. There were bank heists and museum robberies, a way to get the funds she needed, she'd work as a mercenary, if the person deserved to die (by her standards), using her skills in killing people as another source of funds. She didn't really need to take a new monicker, but she'd always had a thing for stories and how they shaped people's perspectives. It took a while for her to land on the Sphinx, but there was something appealing about using the name of a monster that was also a protector, a woman shaped creature who strangled and devoured men. The Sphinx was defeated, eventually, and maybe she was signing her own fate with the name, but it fit, and she liked it, so it became hers.
The next few years of her life were spent consolodating her little corner of the crime world. By the time she was twenty one, she had considerable influence in New York, having a knack for strategy and planning, and she owned large amount of the gun and drugs trade, ensuring that illegal subtances and weaponry went where she wanted them to (namely: away from children). She bought apartment blocks to turn into shelters, using the money from her crime sydnicate to fund these projects, taking in desperate people and helping them get their lives back on track. Eventually she expanded her operations to more legitimate avenues, hiring scientists to solve problems she saw in the world and profiting from patents while ensuring that the production of these goods is ethical and environmentally responsible. She owns a variety of businesses, largely employing people who've been through her shelter system and other disenfranchised folks.
It took her a while to move onto politics, because she wanted to ensure she had a stable backing before taking bigger risks, but she's been whispering in politicians' ears or blackmailing them to support certain bills or reforms. She's kind of like a one woman lobbying whirlwind, using whatever means she thinks are necessary to get what she wants. It's not always succesful, but she's made some changes to the world.
At 23, she has herself a nice little empire, controls most of New York's crime, has her fingers in a considerable amount of political pies, and everything seems to be continuing smoothly, nevermind the fact that she's incredibly unhappy as a person, at least she's making a difference.
Things take an interesting turn when she meets Atlas, or Adonis Casey, as his parents somewhat cruelly named him. He's a superhero, but unlike a lot of superheroes in their world, he seems to be a) relatively stable and b) a genuinely good person. The first is not all that true, but the second is, and it's that part of him that Max takes advantage of. He's an awkward boy, but good hearted, and she convinces him that she's making a real difference in the world, instead of the useless efforts of superheroes. It probably helped that she was one of very few people to actually take time to talk to Donny despite his awkwardness and stutter, but eventually he ended up working for her.
This could have been perfectly fine; he made a good bodyguard, he was sweet in an amusing kind of way, and his powers were deveoping well with the help of trainers she'd sent him to. What she didn't count on was Donny's sister being a criminal, except Asteria Casey is a straight up supervillain, psychopathy and sadism included. Upon attending Asteria's wedding as Donny's plus one, Max made the connection between the woman and the Nyx/Morpheus/Hypnos identities she'd created, and promptly told Donny that his sister was fucking insane.
Unsurprisingly, this did not go well. Asteria is a powerful dreamwalker; for a few months Max was able to keep her out, having trained with psyhics to put blocks in her mind, but gradually Asteria weakened them, got into her head, and started wrecking havoc on her. At the same time, Asteria increased her torment of Donny (she'd been playing around in his dreams since he was young, explaining at least some of his awkwardness and assorted other issues), sending both him and Max into a downward spiral. Turns out they're both kind of fucked up! And that when you mess with fucked up people it just fucks them up more! Asteria takes great enjoyment from this, because she is a terrible person.
This is Max's canon point; ten months after she met Atlas, five after her and Asteria collided, and three months after Asteria broke through Max's defences and started screwing with her.
In case of a canon update, things go a little like this: shit gets progressively worse until Asteria nearly manages to kill Max by proxy, forcing Donny's hand and making him kill a mutual friend. Shaken by the fact he murdered someone he considered a friend and hoping that Asteria might leave Max alone if he's out of the equation, Donny tries to kill himself. There's a deal with a metaphorical devil to keep him alive, that actualy turns out to be a good thing, when Max manages to use the deal to kill Asteria, giving the other woman's life instead of trading her own (it's complicated).
Things are still kind of really fucked up, but both Max and Donny have been broken down enough by everything with Asteria that they're sort of given a clean slate to build themselves up again. It's a work in progress.
Character PERSONALITY:
Content warning for drug/alcohol use
Max exists in a world where people became superheroes purely because that is What Should Be Done when someone suddenly wakes up with powers (thanks, comic books), and as the 'second generation' of powered people, she's been heavily influenced, somewhat unconsciously, by the importance of stories. This was only impacted by her own personal love of literature, which provided an escape during her childhood. As a result, she tends to see the world in terms of narrative structures, and to understand her, you have to understand the roles she's cast herself in. The first, of course, is the villain. She's being playing the part for so long that it doesn't matter anymore whether or not she is a bad person, she's convinced herself that she is, and that's all there is to it. She can do whatever needs to be done - by her own definition - without question, simply because it needs to be done, and she's the bad guy who's capable of doing it. One result of this is that she 'plays up' the villainy; she can be melodramatic, she presents herself alternatively as someone with a short fuse who's a little unstable and can snap at any moment, or as the cold, hard, killer how isn't affected by anything. Neither of these facades are real, but she uses either of them as necessary, depending on which she thinks will get the best results. In her mind, this is what being a villain means, and she never stops to question whether there are other ways to do things.
That said, the villain isn't the only role she plays. There are two other main roles she relies on, the protector and the seductress. The latter is fairly simple; occasionally, in her line of work, people need to be convinced to do what she wants them to. Not everyone can be bribed, or blackmailed, or threatened with an unfortunate amount of violence until they do what she wants, and in those cases, she relies quite heavily on the fact that men like attractive women who pay attention to them. Being a shapeshifter, she can change her looks to suit a target, seduce them, and then whisper in their ear until they're on her side. She plays this role most often with rich men for their money or politicians for their power. Occasionally it takes on a bit of a black widow aspect, but she doesn't like to do that too often in case it draws the wrong kind of attention. The problem with relying on, essentially, herself as a thing to be used, is that it's left her with a really warped perspective. Sex is a tool, rather than something to be enjoyed, as is her own body, and she heavily relies on sex and seduction to get what she wants, without thinking about the consequences. She'll flirt with almost any man with the aim of getting them in a position from which she can manipulate them, even if she can't see an instant use for someone. Women are an entirely different matter. She'll flirt with other female 'villains' if she thinks it might get her what she wants, but she very, very rarely treats women as targets, and despite being mainly attracted to women, she's never even kissed another girl, because she likes them too much to inflict herself on them. The villain is still her main role, what she thinks of herself as, and she's too terrified of hurting a woman to ever let herself get close to one. Unsurprisingly, this hasn't improved her perspective on sex, and she tends to act cagey and avoidant if a woman shows interest in her.
The third and final role is the one she likes the most, even if she'd never actually admit that to herself. It's the way she deals with the people who she helps, the women living in the apartments she owns, or the girls slinking into clinics to get broken bones set or STIs treated, or the kids coming into soup kitchens looking for a meal they don't have to steal. It's a fairly distant role, she doesn't like to get involved for their sake, but she's friendly, generous, and willing to take the time to help anyone out with a problem, no matter how small it is. Despite this being her favourite 'role', it's also the one she views as being the most constructed, because she sees herself as a monster, and doesn't think that someone can take pleasure in murdering people and be kind. If she spent more of her time in this role, she might be happier.
As part of these roles, the most important thing about Max's personality is her obsession with control, both in a personal content, and in how she deals with others. The skills she learnt in childhood to keep herself safe have only improved with age, and by the time she's twenty, she doesn't have reactions that aren't controlled in some way or another. She might let her surprise, or happiness, or anger show, but only because she wants to, and it's very rare that something gets a genuine reaction out of her. It's not necessarily that she choses every single word, or expression, or gesture, but she'll decide how she wants to interact with someone and tailor her behaviour around that.
The only time she lets go of her control is with the help of alcohol, or, occasionally, illicit drugs. The latter is generally used when she's operating under other identities, particularly that of a young socialite who spends too much money on clothes and goes to a lot of parties. Since she's usually the one supplying the drugs offered to her in these situations, she knows they're safe to take, and part of her enjoys relinquishing that control. The alcohol is a more common vice; she often unwinds with a few glasses of wine or a tumbler of scotch, though it can escalate more when she's had a rough week. It's a problem and she knows it, but she doesn't let it interfere with her work, and thinks she has it under control, too.
Whether a reason for being so tightly controlled, or a result of it, underneath the surface Max tends towards rather intense emotions, both with regards to frequency and variation. Rapid mood swings are a common occurance, and she can get extremely worked up over nothing, it's just that she rarely actually lets any of it show. These intense emotions are often on the negative end of the spectrum, though she does get intensely elated when something goes right. In an attempt not to keep her control and not let her emotions overwhelm her, she can sometimes suffer from a sort of dissaffection, shutting down her emotional reactions. It's likely that she has some degree of borderline personality disorder (not a great illness for a shapeshifter to have, really), but it's undiagnosed.
In recent months, with Asteria's constant torment, Max has started to unravel, some of her carefully constructed facades coming undone and leaving Max angry and scared. Her moods have become more volatile, and she's become more self-destructive, losing herself in alcohol or drugs, because the sleep brought on by them doesn't result in dreams. She's withdrawing from all the positive parts of her life, from the role of the protector, because she thinks it's the best way to keep the people she's promised to look after safe from Asteria. As a result, she's been crueller in other parts of her work, and with most people in general, taking out her frustration on targets that she deems acceptable. Asteria has also fucked with Max's sense of worth, making her question herself and dragging up a lot of self-loathing that she thought was buried in her psyche, which is making her act out even more, and she's often overcome by periods of depression, during which she'll barely talk to anyone. This is slightly gentled by Donny's presence in her life; his belief in her has kept her from spiralling too far into self-destruction, and he reminds her how to be human, how to be someone other than the roles she's created for herself, which has helped negate some of Asteria's torment.
Still, the problem with Max, is that she's spent so long telling these lies about the sort of person she is, that she's started to believe them herself. Asteria has started stripping them away, forcing them out into the open for Max to see, making her confront all the things she hates about herself. Without the lies, Max doesn't really know how to function, so by the time she's coming to Exsilium, Asteria has started her on the path to destroying herself, and that will be reflected in the way she thinks and acts in the city.
She's a fucking disaster, basically.
» EXSILIUM INFORMATION
Chosen WEAPON: Max is going to start with one of her tactical knives, and not trusting the Initiative, she'll be reluctant to use it, but if she does, it's likely to start adapating to a situation the same way she does. Changing size, shape or sharpness to best fit a sitation.
That said, I aim to have her eventually decide to weaponize her own power, which will allow her to shapeshift more painlessly, and to gradually expand what she can do with her powers. Currently, she has difficulty with using inorganic forms (e.g. she can mimic something like snake skin, but couldn't make her skin metal) and with the law of conservation of mass; with time, she'll start to develop her powers to get past these issues, though it will be a very slow process.
Character INVENTORY: Max is wearing a pair of black skinny jeans, a white shirt, a leather jacket, and leather motorcycle boots. As for jewellery, she has a number of metal and ceramic bracelets on her wrists, red beryl earrings (they're a plan B if she ever finds herself stuck somewhere without funds), and two simple gold rings. Under the jacket is a horizontal shoulder holster, carrying a SIG Sauer P229 pistol (9mm calibre), with two extra magazines. There's also a tactical knife sheathed in each of her boots. In her pockets are her cellphone, her wallet with assorted IDs and about $500 in US dollars circa 2013, a packet of cigarettes (no lighter), a tube of red lipstick, and a lockpicking kit.
Also her dog? I've added that request in the Addtional Notes section.
» SAMPLES
First PERSON:
[The face on the screen is a young woman, that ambigious age during the mid twenties, where it's hard to pick exactly how old she is. She seems to be sitting in a nearly emptyy cafe, tablet resting against something unseen, since her arms are folded in front of her. This face is specifically chosen to be attractive, by the standards she's used to, helped by eyeliner and dark red lipstick.
The cigarette is mostly there because Max has nicotine problems.]
So we're called Transports, are we? [It's hard to tell exactly how she feels about that, but there's a general unimpressed vibe radiating from her.] Well, fellow Transports, I have two riddles for you, just to pass the time.
[She takes a drag of the cigarette and blows out smoke, as if she has all the time in the world.]
There are two sisters. One gives birth to the other, and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?
[The Sphinx's second riddle. It's not much, but if there's anyone out there who knows of her, it might be enough to ping their interest.
Another breath in, out, smoke curling through the air.]
The second riddle is 'who wants to buy me a drink?'
[Her smile is flirty, self-assured, before she shuts off the feed. Now she just has to see what happens.]
Third PERSON:
The temptation to throw a tantrum is itching in the back of her mind, a petulant rebellion at the sheer insanity of the situation she's found herself in. The woman's already handed her the tablet computer, and the first thing Max did was find the information, briefly blinking in surprise at the map of Britain displayed on the screen.
The year is 3313 B.C. The woman says, and it's only the fact that she doesn't ever show surprise, that keeps her from doing a double take.
She's in Britain, in the future, in a presumably alternate universe, judging by what the woman's told her, and most importantly, for the first time in almost five years, she's alone. It shouldn't be such a big deal, she tells herself, as she automatically follows the woman throughout the building, idling listening to what she has to say. It's not as though she has friends, but she's always had people to rely on, safe places to go, someone to stitch her up when she occasionally gets herself in too deep. Knowing that safety net isn't there feels like she's missing a limb, and she knows it's going to be hard to adjust to life without it.
Well, except for Maurice, who seems to have been brought to this world along with her, likely a result of the fact he'd been using her as his personal pillow back at home. The woman explains that it happens sometimes, that pets will get brought along with their owners, and that there will be room for him in the apartment she'll be sharing with two others (which nearly makes her laugh, as if she's going to share an apartment with someone).
On the plus side, the thought of sleep free from nightmares and the concern of having her memories ripped from her mind and twisted into something to be used against her is incredibly relieving. There's guilt, of course, that she's left the non-sociopathic Casey siblings alone with ther monster of a sister, but she recalls something being said about time stopping, and she can only hope that it's true. If not, well, at least there's nothing new that Asteria will be able to get from her, and Donny won't be subjected to any shared nightmares, at least for a while.
That can be a concern for later, though, since the woman seems to expecting some sort of response from her, talking about sentient weapons. There's a suggestion in the way she says it, that makes Max consider weaponizing herself, but she doesn't trust anything this woman says, and instilling some sort of - outside force into her body just isn't happening. She chooses one of her knives.
As soon as the woman leaves her alone, the first thing Max does is find a private, quiet spot, taking a moment to shift. Maybe it's pointless, when she's so far away from home, but until she has more information, she's not wearing the Sphinx's face. It's always better to be safe than sorry, and if there are people from all sorts of worlds, here, there could be people from hers. Wendy Campbell should be an appropriate identity, there's a driver's license for her hidden in Max's wallet, and it's a story she uses often enough that she won't trip up on details, should she need to actually talk to people. Wendy is twenty, grew up in Portland and is undertaking an arts degree at UCLA. She's shorter than Max, her face much softer, with an easy smile and bright eyes. It makes people want to trust her, look after her, and it should serve her purposes nicely.
Shifting hurts, as it always does, but she feels safer with her identity hidden away, and with a quiet whistle to call Maurice back to her side, she goes out to brave the rain.
Bonus test-drive meme link: http://dramaticshitinlatin.dreamwidth.org/24781.html?thread=10345421#cmt10345421
» ADDITIONAL NOTES
If possible, Max would like the company of her pet American Pitbull Terrier, Maurice, who is a grey pitbull with some facial scarring that's the result of fights he was in (visual reference: http://www.bulldogbreeds.com/americanpitbullterrier/pics/med_blue_pit_bull.jpg). He's a perfectly normal dog, six years old, who Max rescued from a dog fighting ring five years ago and he's endlessly loyal to her as a result. He's not a very good guard dog, because he's too friendly for his own good, but he's a good source of comfort for Max, who doesn't do great with people.
