Difference between revisions of "Tiamat"
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Dr. Helen Brandt
Dr. Brandt was a researcher studying the underlying physics of metahuman abilities.
The Germans name her after the only comprehensible words she spoke before she killed eighty German reservists guarding a nuclear power plant: "Achtung! Wärmetod!" The superhero Nineveh claims that the kings of Nineveh remember stories of a being with similar powers, which they called Tiamat.
Spoiler Warning
The following details are about a player-created storyline, or is information currently unrevealed about a character.
Please do not use this information ICly unless given permission to do so.
History
In the beginning - the very beginning - something, somewhere, gained sentience. It became aware of itself and its surroundings and, eventually, of the other universes of possibility. It reproduced itself, and its children manipulated one of the nearby universes to create more life - which itself eventually gained sentience, awareness, the ability to ultimately transcend its home universe. With guidance from the original beings (one might call them gods, but that would be mistaking the face for the person behind it), they too learned of other universes, transcended the limits of their reality, and created extradimensional children.
This has been going on literally forever.
The beings eventually found one universe with a seemingly hospitable set of laws, and, roughly 13.8 trillion years after its creation, they had finally managed to create themselves in miniature. (The gods themselves may not have had this as their conscious design, but the conceptual forces behind them - the primordial beings of creation - are a different matter.) But this universe had a fundamental law, more important than any other, that states that within its boundaries, disorder always increases over time.
Life was not an exceptional burden on this law, since it was an exceptional incidence in an unclosed system. But when the gods gave a little of their power to the new life within it, this law was violated: this species now had individuals with the power to twist the laws of the universe. The stress was sufficient for the universe to choose one of the forms of life and imbue it with power, in an attempt to evict the gods and erase their influence; while this itself was a commission of a sin against the very law that made it necessary, it was deemed necessary to correct the problem. Time could then be altered to remove the infection and cure both.
This being the Sumerians called Tiamat, mistaking her for the mother of the gods themselves, seeking to destroy her own children. The gods fought a war to resist her, and ultimately destroyed it physical manifestation. The war was terrible enough, though, that they elected to retreat back to their original universe and only influence humanity indirectly, in the hopes that the universe would not spawn another avatar.
The Sumerians recorded a version of the story of the war in the Enûma Elish, which was unfortunately garbled in its later translation to Akkadian. Several times in history the universe has created a new manifestation of entropy - as Kali, as Eris, and as other beings on other worlds than Earth - trying to correct the balance. Each time it was defeated, but each iteration grew stronger, as sentient life multiplied and learned new ways of controlling the world around them.
The recent explosion of the metahuman population made another manifestation inevitable.
Goals and Means
The current incarnation of Tiamat seeks to retroactively remove the possibility of superpowers which contradict the law it embodies. Failing that, it seeks the retroactive extinction of life, her current form included. Since from the point of view of the universe time is just another dimension, simply destroying all life is insufficient for her needs;
Dr. Brandt's consciousness understands Tiamat's goals, and desperately seeks to warn anyone she comes across. Through force of will, she has managed to persuade Tiamat that destruction of all life is technically unnecessary. However, it is likely that universal extinction is an easier goal to meet, and her efforts may prove in vain.
Tiamat pursues her ultimate goal obliquely. Existing outside of time, she operates by changing small details of ordinary existence, seeing their effects weeks or months later, and altering them again to suit her needs. Her current intention is to manipulate the world into creating a device capable of sending her back to the beginning of human sentience, or of life on Earth, where she could alter humanity's destiny. The worst infection dealt with, she could then incarnate again on planets where the rift was less egregious.
Powers
Tiamat's powers are, at the core, an ability to manipulate time. She exists nonlinearly in time; when the players encounter her, she may be moving backwards, forwards or sideways through time. Her worldline, though it may loop back as needed, is anchored at both ends: she cannot travel to a time before the creation of her current manifestation, or after its destruction.
Tiamat can only cause effects which increase entropy. She cannot do anything that makes the world more ordered. She cannot create new information out of nothing; she cannot reverse gravity, though she can increase it; she cannot create anything complex, or cause heat to flow from a colder body to a warmer one. Furthermore, her powers are much reduced in the absence of superhumans, and she cannot change the other fundamental laws of the universe.
Within these bounds, though, she has few limits. She can move a person's body heat to the ground, causing instant hypothermic shock. (This is what killed the German guardmen.) She can fuse elements lighter than iron, releasing tremendous amounts of energy. She can move fast enough to evade any attack which does not move at the speed of light. She can increase gravity to immobilize enemies; if too many superhumans attack her at once, she may have the power to create a singularity, destroying the Earth in the process. (This is one of the possibilities Dr. Brandt is struggling most to avoid.)
Telepathic contact with Dr. Brandt may reveal some of Tiamat's powers and designs. Tiamat itself transcends sentience; investigation of her psyche would likely only reveal a set of equations. But Dr. Brandt understands what Tiamat is, and is using any means imaginable to contain her. She might be able to spare a little of her attention to communicate.
Roleplay
Tiamat's powers scale both to the prevalence of metahumans in the population, and geometrically with their proximity to her manifestation. Normal human beings stand as much chance against her as the most powerful superhuman. Using a team of superhumans to fight against her is worse than useless - it actually makes her disproportionately more powerful.
Dr. Brandt will seek to communicate with anyone she can, but, seeing as Tiamat moves through time and space erratically, it is likely her message will be garbled or misunderstood as a threat. Killing Dr. Brandt (but not destroying the body) would cut off the heroes' most important ally; Tiamat is now powerful enough to animate her corpse. Destroying this manifestation of Tiamat, in any event, would only be a temporary solution. With the current metahuman population, it is likely she will find a new opportunity to incarnate herself again within a few months, and the new host may be more pliable than Dr. Brant.
Truly stopping Tiamat is possible. The players could allow her to fulfill her goal of eradication of metahuman powers, though it is unlikely they'd accede to this. They could psychically strengthen Dr. Brandt to the point where she can control Tiamat, or alter the universe itself to permit metahuman powers to coexist with the Second Law. (This would result in a universe identical with current Champions continuity.) Intrusion from other realities might conceivably reawaken her, but it would require a tremendous violation of dimensional borders.
