|
DOOM ENDURES!
Anyway, haven’t done the History section yet because I’m not quite sure of the specifics yet. I was thinking of having Hiram currently in some remote location in Tibet, learning to balance out his powers and perhaps trying to work through Xavier’s blocks on his mind. But I’m open to collaborations and other suggestions for now. The codename change will be explained in there, but it should be self-explanatory given the rest of the sheet.
Name: Hiram O’Dwyer
Codename: Pariah
Age: 22
Gender: M
Appearance: Hiram is, on the whole, a great deal healthier than he was six years ago. His height seems to have evened out with others in his age group, perhaps remaining just a little on the shorter end of medium (around 5’10” – he hasn’t really ever bothered to measure himself). He will always be a little on the wiry side, but has fleshed himself out well in comparison to his older self, a strict regimen of training and constant travel having contributed to a lithe, proportionally well-muscled frame suited to acrobatics. His features are austere, angular, and a little bit fey, and though he is somewhat more flushed than he was at sixteen he remains quite pale. He pays little attention to his hair, which is dark and begins to curl lightly as it falls past his browline. His eyes have grown progressively stranger, their sclera turning pitch black and irises shining with cold, starry light.
Personality: Hiram was never going to be the life of any parties, but he has in general become a lot less impassive since his Institute days. He is still a quite taciturn young man, but his receptiveness to others and his ability to emote has grown by leaps and bounds. He’s even grown back some sense of humour. His imploding, self-destructive worldview has remained fundamentally nihilistic but has outgrown many of his previous considerations about his own worth. He is still almost entirely unmaterialistic, but has come to greatly value his life and the lives of others – he is, in fact, one of the few people who can say that they need nothing for themselves other than their own life. To him, the simple act of living is the point of existence, rather than what one can cram into their life.
That said, while he wants little for himself, he is highly driven to perfect himself and maintain not only his existence but those of others. Over the years he has become something of an uncompromising taskmaster to himself – he pushes himself continually further, urges himself to be continually better, and wakes up every day with the aim of increasing his capability and developing his understanding.
History: Hiram was hurt badly during the assault on Genosha. Drawing a trio of Brotherhood mutants away from his team, he was eventually cornered amidst the infrastructure of Magneto’s stronghold. He spent much of the encounter stalling for time, but eventually it became evident that if he could not escape or defeat his opponents he would be killed and they would cut off his team’s route out of Genosha. Driving his power to its uppermost limits, he managed to incapacitate two of his opponents before loss of blood and the strain of his unchecked ability brought him down. Perhaps fortunately for Hiram, though, his power had been pushed too far to be so easily reigned in and (partly due to interference from the mutant Phantazia), his rampant abilities had disturbed enough of the surrounding building’s framework to send a good chunk of it – Hiram and Phantazia included – crashing down towards the coastline. His departure from Genosha was owed mostly to luck – he was found and brought to safety by a gaggle of mutant civilians fleeing the battle-torn isle. He never found out what happened to Phantazia, or the other two Brotherhood mutants that were caught up in the destruction.
When Hiram and his rescuers returned to the mainland, they were not given a particularly warm welcome. They were driven underground almost immediately, and, deprived of any particularly skilled medical treatment, Hiram could rely only on time and rest to get him back into shape. It was not long before the first camps were established, and Hiram had barely begun to recover from his wounds. In a show of solidarity that he has not been quick to forget, the mutants who had returned with him tried their best to remain on the run with him in tow, but were outmanoeuvred and captured within a matter of days, Hiram along with them.
Hiram would spend the next half a year in an internment camp on the West Coast, nursing his wounds and gathering what he could of what was transpiring in the outside world from new arrivals. He quickly found that, while there were a few other mutants from the Xavier Institute in holding there, he was the only one that had been on an X-team. The realization came as a sudden rush of responsibility – the flow of information from outside was chaotic, vague and incomplete, especially in the early days, and for all he and anyone else in the camp knew, Hiram had become ‘the last X-Man’. He quickly became a baffled and at first rather reluctant source of counsel, mediating between other prisoners and forming a stable, discreet infrastructure that made life generally more bearable. This period would serve to profoundly shape his future outlook, the drive to survive despite having nothing that he observed in the other prisoners forcing him to reconsider certain previous stances. Hiram had thought his life pointless, and saw his desire to continue living as paradoxical and erroneous, but existence in the camp introduced him to the idea that there was meaning in life itself, not the content of that life.
During this time, Hiram’s most enthusiastic helper was one Molly Hayes – a self-professed ‘fan’ of the X-Men and one of the younger mutants at the camp. As it happened, she was fated to be the agent of his salvation. The camps were designed to be virtually impregnable to the mutants held within its boundaries, but it turned out that Molly had friends who weren’t mutants. One of those friends, a witch of some potential, managed to complete a ritual that opened an interdimensional passage straight into the camp from the outside world (likely using one of the hell dimensions as a medium, judging by the accompany stench of sulphur). Though the window of opportunity was small, it was large enough for Hiram to oversee a complete escape, leaving the camp devoid of mutants (and, once the freed mutants were outside the bounds of the various fail safes in place, there wasn’t much camp left either).
Many of those previously in captivity scattered to the winds, moving in small, inconspicuous groups towards the coast, where they’d either make their way to one of the areas still considered neutral ground or make for the rising homo-superior empire of Mutant-Prime. A few remain with Hiram, tagging along with Molly’s friends and striking at a number of camps set up along the West Coast. When Master Mold came to ascendancy as the second great power of the world, Hiram was beginning to realize just how caustic and destructive his presence had become, and soon he chose to leave the ‘frontlines’ in search of relative isolation. He found his way onboard one the clandestine ferries transporting mutants to their blossoming empire, and, making an unfruitful attempt to convince Molly and her friends to join him (patrols of imperialistic mutants are far more fallible and easier to avoid than inscrutable machines, after all), departed from the United States.
This is where his trail goes mostly cold. He definitely passed through India, and then apparently managed to find his way to the old home of his mother’s family, Israel, where he remained only very briefly. He seemed to stalk Mesopotamia for a while, popping up in Turkey, Syria and Iraq (particularly, the tomb of Sheikh Adi ibn Mufasir, in Lalish). He had frequent encounters with the militant arm of Mutant Prime’s empire in this part of the world, and the stories they have spawned have become widespread. While, in truth, Hiram is not merely ‘radioactive’ in the conventional sense, it was this aspect of his mutation that captured the imaginations of those that came into brief contact with him. He became known to some as ‘the Oppenheimer’ or ‘the Child of the Bomb’. Others rumours call him ‘Boy Trinity’, in reference to the first recorded nuclear bomb test performed in 1945. When they passed through Russian lips, the stories began to refer to him as ‘Tsar Bomba’ – the nickname given to the only 50 megaton nuclear device to have ever been detonated. For Mutant Prime’s legions in the Middle East, Hiram was a nuclear boogieman; an embodiment of all the fears that drove the Cold War. A few rumours have circulated that assert, quite wrongly, that he is not a mutant at all, but some kind of radioactive zombie. Another tall tale – one which many of Mutant Prime’s officers believe – tells that the mysterious Boy Trinity must never be killed, only warded off, for if he were to perish he would explode with the force of a 100 megaton nuclear bomb (the exact number varies – some sources, holding to the Tsar Bomba parallel, state 50 megatons. Others exaggerate the figure to 200 upwards). From Mesopotamia he ventured further East, and for now has come to a stop at Mount Kailash in Tibet, where he spends his days meditating, contemplating, and trying to work through the blocks placed upon his mind by Professor Xavier, believing that they are preventing him from ‘balancing out’ his power.
Powers: As Hiram has grown, his powers have strayed further and further from the original, beautiful shape they had in his early childhood, and become even less about reshaping than degenerating and perverting reality. When active, his mutation is plainly visible, swathing Hiram in an aura of unsettling distortion that seems to radiate from his head. Space seems to fold and deepen, the air becoming murky and discoloured closer to his crown, where the field originates from a corona of shifting black and Cherenkov-blue radiance (a typical sign of atomic decay). There is an ethereal impression about this; he appears strangely cut-out and discontinuous with the world around him, as though he is somehow not-quite there.
The crux of his power is that he can channel it through him in a manner that acts as antithesis to the natural world. Air superheats, wood shatters and turns to ash, metal warps, and flesh melts and writhes at his touch. He can corrupt and destroy most systems with simple physical contact or project the effect into his immediate atmosphere, and has become quite adept at specifying the kind of chaos he ‘injects’ into matter (for example, he has a knack for explosively evaporating the liquid in materials). It is possible for this power to induce rapid ionization and radioactive phenomena, such as small criticality events. On several occasions Hiram has made his own body ‘antithetical’, turning it into blazing crucible of nuclear heat. As if in response to the degradation of his powers, Hiram’s body has adapted to flourish in the most poisonous of environments. While the harmful energies his own powers produce simply have no effect upon him at all, Hiram seemingly has an affinity for naturally occurring sources of hurt. He can sense harmful energies close to his location, and, oddly, purely harmful forces have the exact opposite of their normal effects upon his body – they rejuvenate and heal Hiram rather than sickening him. This trait only applies to forces that are exclusively harmful; for example, background radiation. Energies such as heat, electricity, kinetics, etc, still affect Hiram normally, as it is not their nature that is harmful but their intensity.
There is a downside to such intense destructive power. Hiram’s mutation pushes at the walls of the universe, and the universe pushes back. This is subtly noticeable even when his powers are inactive – while mutants, many superhumans, and people with a particularly elevated or enlightened state of mind seem immune, something about Hiram prompts automatic distrust and dislike from others. This can be conquered, but there will always remain a certain unease in the minds of those around him. When he openly uses his powers this unease is magnified a hundred fold. Something prompts humans (and other animals) to make life harder for him – weak-willed humans often attack with little regard for their own lives, driven to destroy Hiram with the single-minded tenacity of antibodies attacking a foreign bacteria. The more mentally stable, healthy and strong a person is, the better equipped they are to reason with and deny these urges, but excessive spectacles of Hiram’s ability can often overpower the most well-disciplined men and women. Aside from this, there are other factors that seem to place a wedge between Hiram and the general population. Exposure to his abilities, or simply prolonged exposure to him or his general vicinity, can cause harrowing nightmares (often involving Hiram). His extended presence in an area causes flora to either die or develop in strange, poisonous ways. Fauna tends to become either indolent to the point of death by inactivity or aggressive to the extreme. Crops go bad. Children come out wrong. In general, his presence is simply caustic to the world.
Other:
1. Hiram attempts to avoid outward use of his powers if he can. He is an exceptional combatant, infiltrator and general survivor, and these skills are likely to be showcased before Hiram starts hurling around any obvious uses of his mutation.
2. While rarely fluent, Hiram as picked up parts of a few languages. Unfortunately, the ones of which he has the most complete understanding are mostly dead.
3. His mother’s maiden name is Tavas.
4. Hiram’s family, on his mother’s side, has been Yazidi for several centuries, and while Hiram observes virtually none of the taboos or customs, he vaguely believes in Melek Taus and the Seven Mysteries.
5. Hiram views words as the most fundamental proof of life. He has saved and kept several rare scriptures along the course of his travels, including one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, an extract of the Mithraic Chronicles, an original manuscript of the Perfection of Wisdom texts, and two pages of the semi-mythical Goetic Gospel. These are perhaps the only physical, non-living things Hiram values.
Yes, Hiram has become a Lovecraftian horror.
_________________ 
Last edited by Fellguarde on Tue Sep 27, 2011 12:33 pm, edited 5 times in total.
|
