Difference between revisions of "Astral Aegis"

The heroine known as Astral Aegis is a powerful alien who has wound up a refugee on Earth. Among humans, her natural abilities are veritable superpowers, and she has begun to use them to safeguard Millennium City - the city that has welcomed her despite her differences and become her home.

Blending her extreme strength with the telepathic prowess of her individual caste, Astral Aegis has all of the tools to be a powerful, global hero. However, between a lack of training and her own, often irrational fear of causing harm to the much more fragile world she now inhabits, she is far from reaching her potential - and the only thing holding her back is herself.

Though Astral Aegis is known among some heroes, she is arguably better known to the city under the guise of a teenage girl named Viola Reilly - a vagrant originally from Aberdeen, Washington, who now lives on minimum wage in Millennium City, working as a cleaner and shelf-stocker for a local library. This guise has allowed her to grow more accustomed to human culture, and she's used her job to learn more about society - being close to books never hurts when you're in need of a little extra knowledge.

The planet Quvanial lay on the fringes of space, a mess of arid wastes and volcanic activity. By human standards, the planet would be inhospitable due to a combination of extreme gravity and heat waves enough to burn most known life alive. However, some forms of life did flourish, most notably the Quvanian species, for which the planet was named. A splintered tribal society, the Quvanians possessed naturally high intellect and powerful bodies, allowing them to master their harsh landscape. Despite their intellect, they were also subject to strong animalistic urges, including a dangerous bloodthirst.

This bloodthirst led to considerable in-fighting among the various tribes, until technology advanced to the point that they were able to construct a series of portals allowing them to travel across the stars, without ever having to learn to navigate space. Just how such a primitive people were able to develop this technology is something of a mystery, but its effects were immediate. With access to new planets - and new peoples, the Quvanians finally began to unite under a single banner, in the name of conquest.

A combination of what amounted to ‘superpowers’ on other planets, and an unstable natural ability for telepathy that was turned into a devastating weapon when used en masse against entire populations, allowed the Quvanians to be very successful in their conquest - to the point that they caused the collapse of civilizations, and even the extinction of entire species. Worse still, these invasions served little purpose other than to satiate their natural bloodthirst. They didn’t bother with the natural resources of the planets they conquered, nor did they take much in the way of technology or even loot. They merely moved onto the next planet, ripe for attack.

This all came to an end when a man named Azeni rose to prominence in Quvanial. Claiming to have had a spiritual awakening, he was able to suppress his animalistic urges and totally quell the bloodthirst through a combination of training and focused meditation. He called this the ‘Way of the Aruvath-Quvana’, and began to spread the word. Although he certainly had his opponents, his teachings steadily transformed the deadly species into a largely peaceful society.

The core of these teachings was to resist temptation and desire, and to separate the mind from the body. The mind became associated with self-control, intelligence, morality and purity, while the body was associated with instinct, ferality, and ultimately, danger. The ultimate achievement was to live a life balanced perfectly between the duality of mind and body, but only the very highest echelon of the new priest caste (the Aruvath-Quvana) were to ever attempt this, for fear of losing the control that had been gained.

Uzira El’istia was born only a hundred and fifty years after the Aruvath-Quvana came to dominate society. She was born into the priest caste and selected for training. Displaying a natural inclination towards telepathy, to the point that she displayed a passive ability for empathy that few were able to boast, she was quickly pushed forward to advanced training. Although her ability for empathy was seen as a powerful tool, there was also some fear that it would render her more vulnerable to negative emotions should she come into contact with other species.

As she got older, her advancement ground to a halt. Her early promise was tempered by her inability to grasp fully the discipline of the Aruvath-Quvana, often neglecting her studies to explore and play with wildlife. She was threatened on numerous occasions with ejection from the caste, but these threats were empty; her curious nature brought the ire of her elders, but it wasn’t dangerous enough to warrant real punishment. She was allowed to continue neglecting her studies, living as idyllic a life as one could on a planet as harsh as Quvanial.

It wouldn’t last. Her blissful existence came to a screeching halt when a long-forgotten people arrived at Quvanial, bearing the memories of atrocities that had been committed by their people in the centuries before. These people, the Korana, had discovered that the Quvanians, despite their nigh-impervious nature, had no natural resistance to high levels of radiation. Consequently, they were able to equip their small fleet -- the last remnants of their people -- with enough firepower to gain their revenge. The Korana had first tested their weapons upon the small pockets of primal Quvanians that had been left behind on conquered planets, ensuring their effectiveness for the siege to come.

The siege that came was easier than the Korana could ever have expected. While some rose to the occasion and did attempt to fight off the attackers, many Quvanians, for fear of returning to the old ways, remained entirely passive, allowing their cities to be destroyed and their people to be slaughtered en masse. Only the priest caste showed any real commitment to resistance, but they were powerless before the radiation weaponry. The Aruvath-Quvana eventually made a decision; their destruction was assured so long as they remained on planet, and so they scattered across the stars, sending priests, academics and diplomats through the portals they hadn’t used since their conquering days.

Uzira was late to the evacuation, and had to spin up a portal on her own. Having no knowledge of how to operate them, she didn’t arrive at any of the destinations her kin had fled to; she arrived on a small, but technologically advanced planet far from Quvanial - Earth. Initially arriving in Aberdeen, Washington, she travelled across the United States, learning the language as she went. To attempt to conceal her non-human identity, she used her telepathy to fashion an illusion. She became Viola Reilly, a vagrant girl with a tendency towards wearing warm, woolen cloaks to keep dry and warm.

When she eventually arrived at Millenium City, Uzira was able to find acceptance as an alien refugee by the city’s heroes. Desiring to give back to the same people who had so graciously accepted her, she herself registered as a hero under the name of ‘Astral Aegis’, using her natural abilities to act as a guardian for the people of the city. Performing feats ranging from stopping armed robberies to saving beached whales, she has been a successful heroine thus far… but she’s yet to face a real challenge, and she had demonstrated an extreme aversion to violence, causing her to hold back in fights even more than she already has to; there are serious questions as to whether she could ever go toe to toe with a dangerous villain and come out on top.

The physical strength and durability of an average Quvanian is far in excess of any ordinary human. On Earth, Uzira displays what is considered superhuman strength, on par with the world’s prevalent superhuman strongmen. The only apparent limitation to her strength is that which she places upon it for fear of causing harm to those around her. She rarely displays even a fraction of her overall strength, even in the heat of combat.

Quvanian durability on the other hand is something she is able to make full of use of. Able to shrug off all but the most serious of blows, she lives up to the name ‘Aegis’ by allowing herself to take the brunt of the assault for both her teammates, and for citizens who find themselves in harm’s way. However, while a bullet may ricochet off her and a knife snap, there are limitations to her body which could come back to haunt her if her enemies discovered them - radiation being the one that led to her species’ near destruction.

In addition to sheer physical power, Quvanians are built as hunters. Possessing sharp claws and fangs (although Uzira has filed her claws down to the point they’re no more harmless than a human fingernail), a superior sense of hearing and smell, and the ability to see clearly in low lighting, these same abilities that originally enabled Quvanians to hunt on their harsh planet also allows Uzira to be an effective crime-fighter, whether she’s in the dead of night or the bustle of day. However, this also renders her more vulnerable to certain forms of assault - sonic waves, for instance, are particularly threatening.

Quvanians also have a natural, but unstable telepathic ability. As a member of the Aruvath-Quvana, Uzira’s telepathy was honed to the degree that she can use it in a focused way. However, due to the serious moral and ethical constraints of the Aruvath-Quvana, she believes that to invade or read a mind without express consent is a serious breach of privacy, and one that can lead down a dangerous path. As such, she will never attack or manipulate the mind. However, she is fully willing to use her powers in the form of telekinesis, to enable her to fly.

As her flight is governed by her telekinetic ability and not by her body, her speed in flight is much less impressive than her speed on the ground. However, it allows her to keep a weather eye on the city below and bypass obstacles. Flight is perhaps her most noteworthy application of her telepathy, but she also uses it for the purposes of forming an illusion. It takes an extraordinary amount of time for her to be able to master any one illusion, which is why she has taken to concealing herself with a single illusion ever time - that of Viola Reilly - and does not (and cannot) change identities to suit the occasion.

Despite the the extreme strength of the Quvanian species, there are nonetheless serious weaknesses that can be exploited by those that are made aware of them. The most notable of these is their susceptibility to radiation. While almost all living things suffer under radiation, Quvanians have such an aversion to it that it causes serious damage at an accelerated rate despite their otherwise incredible resistances. The power of their senses is also an issue, as any form of attack which relies upon one of those senses (blinding light, sonic/sound attacks and the like) is amplified to that degree.

Other than the natural weaknesses of her species, Uzira herself is also at a disadvantage when it comes to fighting a competent opponent. Though she is able to come out on top of most fights she’s in through her physical superiority alone, a trained combatant could prove too much for her as she has had no real combat training of her own. Anyone of equal strength, or with a way of bypassing the issue of strength entirely, could make short work of her.

Finally, Uzira’s personality itself can be considered a weakness. Although she has a strong desire to protect those around her and a will to carry on in the face of pain, she has no stomach for causing pain herself. Even the most violent, unrepentant criminal would find mercy from Uzira, even at inopportune times. Her own species’ history also comes in to play; she believes that anyone can find redemption no matter what crimes they’ve committed. In some cases this may be a good quality to carry, but it also means she can be naive when dealing with criminals on a personal level.

Uzira is something of an enigma to many of her peers due to her personality which, at times, can seem contradictory. When aiming to socialize, particularly while under the guise of Viola Reilly, she is cheerful and curious, always looking to meet new people, learn new things, and explore new places. On the other hand, when it comes time for her to keep up with her meditation, something she does for hours each day, she becomes reclusive and rejects all social contact, becoming annoyed when bothered, even if it’s for a serious matter.

She doesn’t always quite grasp the complexities of human interaction, either; her sense of humour is sometimes suspect as she doesn’t understand many of the references people will make, and she takes things entirely too literally. She can take something as simple as a good natured ribbing as a serious and informed complaint, and a joking dare as a genuine challenge to her own ability which she must then undertake. Despite her struggles in adapting to human social conventions, she has begun to form a human identity; while Viola Reilly began as a simple disguise, it has started to become an integral part to her own self-identification.

Although unwavering and uncompromising in her morality, there is a danger to Uzira as well; though she has never displayed any violent tendency herself, there is a distinct possibility that if she were to suffer a major emotional collapse or begin to neglect her own philosophy, she could start to revert to a more primal way of mind, like her people did in centuries past. This could turn her, an otherwise sweet and goodly person, into a threat not unlike those she’s promised to help defend against. Luckily, she’s usually too busy being fascinated by ladybugs and smelling flowers to be emotionally comprimised.

Lifewarder

An alien that Uzira met early in her time on earth, A'ri has helped Uzira adjust and has provided her with a home. The two have become friends, with the much older A'ri serving as something of a guardian, almost motherly figure to her. Unbeknownst to Uzira, A'ri comes from one of the species that hers nearly wiped out a couple centuries ago, with A'ri being old enough to remember this firsthand.