Gloria Harper
Gloria Harper is the Heavy Metal Queen of Westside Millennium City. Also she's a brick with a guitar who has taken to thunking some of the riff-raff upside the head since if she doesn't do it, who will?
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Contents
Appearance and Traits
It's hard to mistake Gloria Harper when you see her. She's a 7 feet of lean crazy woman. When she's "on the job" she tends to wear her stage clothing which involves a lot of leather and spikey bits as well as her omnipresent guitar hanging from her back. When she's off duty, some of the leather gets replaced with denim, the crazy dark makeup remains in either form.
Gloria's an imposing figure and well known for her ability to communicate via a series of sharp stares and grunts. When she does speak it tends to be a mangled form of english that has a lot of the harsh consonants abbreviated out.
Her fans have had a tendancy to create Chuck Norris-like facts about Gloria. She is unsure what to think about this.
Personality
Gloria Harper in person tends to alternate between standing around quietly and then rambling in a deep gravelly voice about the most asinine of topics. She has a wide base of esoteric knowledge on just about anything you never really needed to know anything about. She does occasionally feel the need to point out any specific thing as being "Metal". If things are especially metal she will draw forth her digital camera and snap a shot of the item in question for a future album cover.
The woman does subscribe to the thought that it's better to just do something about a problem instead of complaining about it. She's a bit older and more jaded then she looks and tends to approach things from a moderate and practical approach despite her rather extreme apperances.
She is a bit of a conspiracy theorist with little trust in the highest positions of power. She isn't very vocal about this viewpoint but if you bring up the right topics around Gloria one can be treated to some extraordinarily ridiculous conspiracy theory. She actually is rather active on a number of conspiracy theory forums under the alias "Brutal Harpy".
Background
Gloria was the daughter of Lisa and Douglas Harper. Lisa was a banker, Douglas worked the stock market. All and all it was a rather conservative family. Gloria got into her teens and got broody and into Heavy Metal. She might have had a normal childhood if she was not in Detroit when Destroyer attacked. Both her parents were out of town. Gloria thought she was done form. She saw the light building in the sky and she prayed to someone, anyone, to save her. Something responded.
Gloria was found in the rubble that was once her family's home, alive and well. Time passed the Harper family ended up moving into the rebuilt Millennium city. Douglas saw much oppertunity for profit in the reconstruction efforts. Gloria never outgrew her dark broody phase and went to more and more concerts, she started to study music on the side.
Over time she became a musician in the band The Reckoning. She ended up doing Vocals and Lead guitar. Her voice had a surprising vocal range and she is a natural at any instrument. The band so far hasn't gotten much beyond local acclaim. In her own words she needs to step their efforts up and do some touring.
The thing was, when something responded to Gloria, it was the Nascent abstract personification of the human worship into the concept of The Metal. In short, it was a diety of The Metal from the faerie world. Some scholars have pondered as to the precise state of this entity. Few have come up with any precise definitions of what it truly is. The general belief is The Metal is the bastard child of Thor and Euterpe. And this being had endowed Gloria Harper with otherworldly strength, power, and talent for music.
The state of Westside has been a bit of a thing of irritation to Gloria. She has seen the rest of the city get rebuilt after numerous disasters and sees the district she has decided to crash in as her home remain a dirty under-repaired hole of crime. One day after a concert she spotted some thugs menacing a woman and she just got fed up and took matters into her own hands. Since then she's become registered as a hero and works to thunk thugs.
She finds the lable of Hero somewhat awkward. But when one really gets down to it, she ends up fighting selflessly for others, even if she swears a lot. She more or less lives up to the title and certainly fails to be grim-dark enough to be the anti-heroic sort.
Powers
Super Strength
Gloria is strong. Gloria is very strong. She can pick up and throw vehicles. All and all she's got the strength of a brick. She tends to use her guitar to put a little more punch behind her attacks. However she is not against using her fist and she is rather fond of headbutts.
Supernatural Toughness
The woman is hard to put down. Most attacks directed at her tend to merely irritate her. Though she is slightly easier to draw blood on then most bricks out there. Her defense primarily consists of being hard to kill.
Healing Factor
Gloria has a weak healing factor. She can heal injures over the course of several hours. It doesn't help much in the heat of combat, but she does recover from the wounds of her fights much faster then most individuals. Bones and whatnot still need to be set after being broken in order to properly heal.
Long Lived
She does not know it yet, but the powers imbued to her by The Metal have left her somewhat ageless. She's too young for this to show, however if something tried to strike her with some sort of aging attack. Like The Curse's attack, Gloria and the Attacker would likely be both rather confused.
Ears of Iron
Gloria's hearing is impeccable and immune to damage from loud noise. In fact sudden loud noises don't even shake her or temporarily deafen her. This does not in any way confer immunity to damage from sonic damage sources to the rest of her body. But she will have perfect healing until the final moments of life if she were to be pummeled to death by sonic attacks. In HERO games terms, she has a strong flash defense vs the hearing group.
Powerful Lungs
This seven foot brick has one hell of a set of lungs. It serves her well on the stage, she can shout loud enough to not even need a mic at times. In combat she can't shout loud enough to damage people. But she certainly can emit a ear splitting warcry that bellows her defiance towards life universe and everything in general that can give her enemies pause.
Otherworldly Advisor
The Metal on occasion converses with Gloria and gives her advice on courses of action. Sadly, however, The Metal rarely has anything insightful to say or has useful advice. It tends to be limited to informing Gloria if something is especially metal, or the most Metal course of action, or if it would tap someone. For example. The Metal would say that Sienna the Unbound is rather Metal looking and he would tap that.
Gear
Please be advised that a lot of the lore behind Gloria's gear is collected in fact from her fans. This section may contain a lot of exaggeration and non-factual information. Anything here must be taken with a grain of salt.
Guitar
Black painted custom model Telecaster guitar. According to rumors circulating among fans. The guitar's body is in fact not wooden like most guitars but carved from a single piece of bone. This bone came from the skull of leviathan of the darkest deeps which was slain locked in battle with a horror summoned by the Bleak ones whilst eating a unicorn during the apex of the Blood Moon. When the Reaper came for her during the battle of Detroit, she challenged him to a rock off and he wielded that guitar against her. She played so well she not only won her life, she won that guitar.
While the story behind it is debateable. It is known that the guitar appears to be invulnerable to any form of damage. Gloria wields it as a blunt instrument in combat. The guitar does indeed resonate with magic of the faerie realm to those with the right means of detecting it. Gloria has also demonstrated the ability to play the guitar and have it produce noise despite lacking an amplifier. So far she's been only able to do this in short bursts.
When questioned about the guitar Gloria has only answered, "This is a guitar like no other."
Stage Clothes
Her stage clothing that she wears on the job is black leather with much studded and spikey bits. According to fans she won the pauldrons and bracer during the 2007 Millennium City Rock Off against the Death Metalist Rita Vanners. According to accounts. They played for six hours six minutes and six seconds, culminating at midnight. The rock-off was held during the winter solistice. That year there was a new moon during the solistice making it the darkest hour of the darkest night of the darkest month. After winning Rita, who was retiring, left Gloria her shoulderpads and bracer which were black spikey leather. Gloria has since worn them as a trophy ever since. The clothing actually has no special effects or features whatsoever, outside of having pockets. They just look really fucking metal.
Zippo
The Zippo is a matte black lighter with a silver skull emblem on the side. Accounts on how Gloria acquired this lighter vary wildly. Two popular theories is she was given it by a voodoo witch-doctor after rescuing him from the IRA with her superior knowledge of finance from her parents. Another theory states she found it in a mysteriously dark back-alleyway. Regardless of the tale behind it she is often prone to use this device as a means of demonstrating approval for something by lighting it and holding it aloft. Also it can be used to start fires or produce light in dark areas.
Digital Camera
The Camera's a black piece of equipment that lets her capture images as digital pictures. According to theory she acquired it from the devil himself and that any picture of the dead she takes with it captures his or her soul. Gloria, however, has stated she saw it on sale at Walmart and decided to buy it.
Skills
Perfect Pitch
Gloria can discern a hemi-demi-semi-quaiver by ear. She's got a well trained voice and can handle a wide variety of vocalizations despite what her normal deep-gravelly speaking voice might suggest.
Musical Training
Gloria is most skilled at singing and guitar. She is however proficient in use of keyboard, drums, flute, and violin. She rarely speaks of the later two. She has studied extensively into music and music history and knows a surprising amount of knowledge on subjects such as classical music.
Blunt Instrument Proficiency
It's a rather self-learned style, but Gloria is rather proficient at being people with a guitar she can even ward off attacks with decent skill with that thing. She may not be as evasive as some, but she's certainly isn't helpless.
Financial Background
Gloria's parents had groomed her to have some sort of finance related profession. It never stuck, but she is rather good with numbers as a consequence. This rarely if ever comes up.
Complications
Easy To Locate Kin
It's not to hard to find Gloria's Parents. They are rather weak vulnerable and easy to harm. A driven enough villain could easily find someone to hold hostage against Gloria. She apparently hadn't really thought this part through.
Magic Dependant
Her power stems through being empowered by a higher power. The proper use of magic may allow for seperating her from her power and leaving her a rather mortal woman.
Larger then Life
Gloria has a rather striking appearance. She doesn't do well in sticking to a disguise and tends to draw attention wherever she goes. Seven feet of crazy bitch is easy to spot.
Random Weird Fan Facts
Note: Likely none of this is true. ((also feel free to edit in any))
The Blood Moon once was delayed because Gloria Harper gave it the stare.
Gas Prices are going up because they are trying to climb away from Gloria Harper.
Daft Punk wear helmets to avoid locking eyes with Gloria Harper.
Unicorns don't exist because Gloria Harper thought they went well with BBQ sauce.
Earthquakes are when Gloria Harper burps.
Gloria Harper once busted one of those giant Destroids into Submission with a display of The Metal that was so awe inspiring that it promptly asked for an autograph.
The real reason Dr. Destroyer is in hiding is because he owes Gloria Harper money.
Gloria Harper spooks ghosts.
Gloria Harper once whacked the ground too hard with her guitar. When the basins filled with water they became the great lakes.
Lemurians live underwater because they once dissed Metal around Gloria Harper.
Quotes
((And here's the part where you, the reader add your own character quotes... if any))
