Background Story
It wasn't hard to say what Sicilia's first memory was. The bright light of the world blinding her eyes, slowly resolving into the light streaming through the branches of the canopy above was always vivid to her, along with the instinctual hunger and mild fear that had been present. Slithering out of the remains of her shell, still soft scales scratching along the thin grass at the base of the looming tree, and hunting her first kill were all things that Sicilia could remember. Even describe to others should they be interested and ask.
What was difficult to answer, rather, was what her first true
thought was. She had had nearly four years to ruminate, and yet it was still difficult to say. She knew it was after some event that she could not recall, some trauma that she had responded to by blotting it from her burgeoning intelligence, but that was as far as she got, usually. Everything before was clear and simple, her mind and body acting on instinct, without any real guiding intelligence behind it. After a hazy period, she had simply... understood herself.
Was it when she first enjoyed the food she had enjoyed? When she found herself congratulating herself on a hunt gone well? Maybe it was the time she had felt so cold, and consciously avoided the decision to hide away, and chose instead to move on, sure in an indistinct way that warmth was just ahead, and all she had to do was ignore her baser instinct to curl up and sleep.
Or maybe, it was when she realized just how
large she had become. In under a week, so far as she could tell, she had gone from a fairly average sized snake, eating rodents and other small fauna, to hunting larger beasts, things that she would never before considered attacking, when she found herself looking curiously down at the wolf she had killed and was preparing to consume.
She always had these curious thoughts. Returning to places to search them again, examining little oddities with interest, trying to understand them. Following the bipeds that she had previously ignored, her growing mind quickly picking up their language. Learning, watching. Given her size, it was not long before she was noticed, before she was found. By then she could speak, in a childish manner, her Italian as basic as a toddler's. She had been lucky, the hunter sent to kill her had not found a massive, aggressive snake. He instead found a fairly demure serpent, feebly asking him not to harm her with the smoking stick he held.
Hunting had never been his forte anyways. The dean of the University of Catania, Patrizio Lentini, had been yearning for a trip, and had felt the reports of a “man-eating snake” were greatly exaggerated.
They were indeed exaggerated, as he knelt with the reptilian predator that was practically twice his size, and spoke to her as he would a child. Realizing the potential this mutant animal could hold for promoting his university, along with a genuine want to help the confused creature, he offered her his help. Over the next few months, he returned again and again to where he had found her, teaching her the basics of language, math, and other simple concepts.
When he had decided she had learned enough, he encouraged her to come with him, instead of merely hiding in the wilderness. With the kindness and effort to help her he had shown, he had gotten the large serpent to follow him, and anxiously slither into the open, surrounded by the humans who had been so scared of her the last time they had seen her.
They were still scared, but with the dean calming and speaking to anyone who would stay near, the situation stayed calm enough that when the police were inevitably called in, people had been vouching for the talking snake, who had quietly been speaking with a curious child as the officers approached.
Within the year, she had been officiated as a Sicilian citizen, and after the news of her existence spread, tempered by the already present normalcy of superheroes and other such mutants, and the initial excitement had died down, she was enrolled into the very University her first human friend deaned at, and was treated as your normal, everyday student. With a few more stares than normal, things never escalated with the dean’s personal protection of her rights, despite her odd nature.
Her curious mindset never went away, and neither did her nervousness and shyness around humans. She turned the former into her focus of her collegiate efforts, learning to write for journals, articles, even online blogs, her classes about investigations and journalism. Her reptilian nature showed in her love of hunting, expanding on her body’s physical capabilities, taking multiple self-defense courses and learning how to adapt what was taught to humans to her own unique physiology.
She never got a degree, simply because she didn’t have the money or government funding to pay for her final years of schooling, but her rapid progress from animal to college-educated mutant was still impressive. Having run out of funds, she has decided to move to a place where she feels she can use her physical abilities to help others, instead of just hunting wolves or other large animals to eat when she doesn’t feel like purchasing meat in bulk from stores. A place where she could put her journalistic skills to use to write articles and expand others’ knowledge just as she was able to expand her own.
She decided quickly on one of the most prominent cities on the planet. She decided on Century Station, in the United States. Taking the time to learn English with her final courses, she made her move to begin the next chapter in her life.
Concept
- What emotion best describes your character? - Curiosity! It is what drove her to try and integrate with humans in the first place.
- What emotion does your character evoke in others? - Fear or interest. She is a giant snake, after all.
- What does your character need most? - A purpose. She feels lost without a concrete goal she can reach for.
- What is your character’s goal in life? - To figure out just what it was that caused her to become this, and beyond that where it came from.
- How does your character believe this goal can be accomplished? - Research, investigation, with the help of others and luck. She searches for those who can help her, and helps them in turn.
Background
- Where did your character come from? - The Mediterranean wilderness, she was born just a regular snake.
- When did you grow up? - When she first became self-aware, a few weeks after her encounter.
- What values does your character hold? - The freedom to be who you want to be, to not be held back because of where you came from.
- How does your character dress? - She doesn't normally, though she wishes there were things she could wear during the winter.
- What are your character’s means? - Investigation and her own natural abilities, a combination of knowledge and her physical capabilities.
Details
- What are your character’s personal tastes? - She enjoys quiet musics, and live food, though she will eat any red meats. Keeps posters of the Mediterranean isles wherever she lives, if possible.
- What are your character’s opinions? - People should be free to do as they wish, so long as they aren't harming anyone else by doing so. Life is meant to be enjoyed, experienced, and her opinions reflect that.
- What is your character’s comfort zone? - Reading or researching something, though she also thoroughly enjoys "the hunt," as it appeals to her predatory instincts.
- Who has had the biggest impact on your character’s life? - The dean of the university she went to, who accepted her for who she was, didn't judge her based on what she was, and got her placed nearly as an equal as a student of the campus.
- What are some of your character’s unexpected quirks? - She finds small, prey animals like mice and rabbits to be quite cute, and tends to prefer eating animals she personally considers "not fun to look at." Had a pet hamster while in college.
Play Details
- What kind of story does your character belong in? - A superhero campaign. The combination of her inquisitive nature, her wish to protect people's freedoms, and her natural predatory instincts make her a goal-driven, motivated hero as she investigates the ills of the world around her, and tries to correct them along the way to her more personal goals.
- What role does your character fill? - Researcher, sleuth, melee combatant, token 'animal' hero.
- What should the other players know about your character? - Might take some doing initially to get her out of her shell. Is always a little scared her reptilian nature pushes humans away from her, and is introverted because of it.
- What is your play style? - Responsive, descriptive in posts, character will be a low-tier front liner, and combat posts will reflect that. Will follow instructions/orders when given, but won't hesitate to break/ignore them if she believes she can help/protect people by doing so.
- How do you want your character to die? - Revealing and/or undoing some sort of large-scale enforcement and 'freeing the people' would be her ideal way to go, aside from simply living out her life among humans, learning more about herself as she goes.
Wish List
- Item 1: A form of transportation she could feasibly drive herself, so she doesn't have to rely on public transport/slithering about, like a form of heavily modified car.
Item 2: Coverings for her fangs that would allow her to bite harder when fighting.
Item 3: A sheathe she could wear over the end of her tail that could be used to carry simple weapons, giving her more options to defend herself.
Item 4: A light, thin armor that she could wear that wouldn't drag on the ground as she moves about.
Item 5: A heavily modified winter coat so she isn't sapped of energy by the cold as badly as normal.
Goals
Short Term Goals:
- Goal 1: Get a paying position to start funding her investigations.
Suggested Solutions (Goal 1): Find a suitable place of work that takes into consideration her limits and abilities; join some form of government position.
Goal 2: Find a place to stay that won’t have too many people staring at her on a daily basis.
Suggested Solutions (Goal 2): Use her existing funds to rent an apartment by herself; find a roommate who won’t mind a slightly telepathic snake living with them.
Goal 3: Make a friend in America who likes her for who she is, and doesn’t care that she’s a snake.
Suggested Solutions (Goal 3): Meet and greet, get past her usual initial reluctance to interact with others; if she gets a job, try and work from acquaintanceship upwards with one or more of her co-workers.
Mid Term Goals:
- Goal 1: Found an investigation/journalistic business.
Suggested Steps and Solutions (Goal 1): Learn more about running a business, acquire funding and permits that help with this; work her way up the ladder in a similar career enough that she gains contacts sufficient to start up her own operation.
Goal 2: Work with the police to obtain permission to use more direct methods to support her goals. (Hero work)
Suggested Steps and Solutions (Goal 2): Introduce herself to the local police force, and make a good impression over time; join up with an official hero outfit and get herself recognized as capable and willing to act as a hero.
Goal 3: Make a head-line worthy article.
Suggested Steps and Solutions (Goal 3): Improve and practice her writing skills, make contacts at local agencies and news foundations; go out and do her own investigations, possibly hand-in-hand with her hero work if possible.
Long Term Goals:
- Goal 1: Discover the origins of her mutation, and the reasons behind if any.
Suggested Steps and Solutions (Goal 1): Investigate oddities in Sicily, and possibly other mutant animals from that region in an attempt to map connections and slowly work her way closer and closer to the source; travel back to Italy, if only for a time, to personally look into things there and try and find possible traces to her origin.
Goal 2: Give back to the Italian university that accepted her and educated her in a meaningful way.
Suggested Steps and Solutions (Goal 2): Gain enough funding she could donate equipment/money to the university without undue harm to her own situation; make contacts and possibly convince them to share their work with or full-on join the college to support them and expand their ability to take on students.
Goal 3: Affiliate with a superhero outfit long enough to be recognized as a major figure for freedom in people’s eyes, rather than just be an awkwardly large snake that happens to be able to talk.
Suggested Steps and Solutions (Goal 3): Improve her combat skills, as well as her public presence, work and make heroic contacts and improve relations within whatever team she’s a part of; make herself a very public figure able to help improve the community not just by helping to defeat major villains and public menaces, but by also connecting her journalistic work to her heroic persona, allowing people to associate her with both, hopefully increasing her ability to not only improve public opinion of her, but also spread out her findings so more people can find and learn about what she investigates and finds important for others to know.
XP Chart
Mutant
1 0000 - 2050
2 2051 - 4100
3 4101 - 8250
4 8251 - 16,500
5 16,501 - 24,600
6 24,601 - 34,700
7 34,701 - 49,800
8 49,801 - 69,900
9 69,901 - 95,000
10 95,001 - 130,100
11 130,101 - 180,200
12 180,201 - 230,300
13 230,301 - 280,400
14 280,401 - 340,500
15 340,501 - 400,600
