Rose Wonder
| Rose Wonder | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Player: @UruzSix | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"The last thing my Aunt Betsy told me was that I had an incredible gift. I would always see the world through innocent eyes." 
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| Character Build | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Class Focus: | Might | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Power Level: | 31 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Research & Development: | SCIENCE! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Biographical Data | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Real Name: | Linda Thorn | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Known Aliases: | Many over the past sixty years | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gender: | Female | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Species: | Human (augmented) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ethnicity: | Caucasian | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Place of Birth: | Albany, NY, USA | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Base of Operations: | Millenium City, MI, USA | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Relatives: | Dr. David Thorn (father, deceased), Abigail Thorn (mother, deceased), Betsy Woods (great-aunt, deceased) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Characteristics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Age: | 86 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height: | 5'6" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight: | 135 lbs. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Eyes: | Brown | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hair: | Brunette | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Complexion: | Fair | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Physical Build: | Slender, if slightly muscular | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Physical Features: | Looks rather young for her age | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Status | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alignment: |
Lawful Good | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Reputation: |
Imposing | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Identity: | Public | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Years Active: | 70 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Citizenship: | American | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Occupation: | Caped Superhero and Freelance Photojournalist | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Education: | Bachelor's in Journalism | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Marital Status: | Single | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Known Powers and Abilities | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Titanic strength, superhuman invulnerability, flight | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Equipment and Paraphernalia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Burgundy dress with orange cape and accessories | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Attributes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Fighting |
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| Durability |
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| Intelligence |
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Psyche |
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| Intuition |
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| ReldinBox Template | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Rose Wonder (born 1926) is a heroine from an older Golden Age. A former sidekick of the Defenders of Justice, she quietly faded into the background of super-heroics in the early 1950s. While she hasn't been inactive, Rose has mostly kept quiet and let other more modern heroes take center stage over the years. Only recently has she finally gone public, outing herself as reclusive spinster Linda Thorn and admitting that her superpowers came with a super side effect: She hasn't aged a year since 1942.
Origins
The Happiest Days Of Our Lives (1926 to 1942)
The Beginning
Linda Thorn's life was normal once. Her parents were a loving couple, her dad working as a pharmaceutical researcher in upstate New York while her mom tended to homemaking affairs. Life during the Great Depression wasn't easy, but by and large they were very well off given the circumstances. Linda grew up with a firm grounding in morals and manners, growing into quite a thoughtful young beauty. The Norman Rockwell painting of her happy childhood didn't last forever, however. Her mother passed away from pneumonia in 1938, throwing her grief-stricken father entirely into studies of longevity medicines. Linda was all but abandoned in the care of his genteel Aunt Betsy. The payoff would be worth it, he told himself, as he would be able to save Linda from the fate of her mother.
When war broke out, Dr. Thorn accepted the government's offer to join the Haynesville Project and took Linda and Betsy with him to Kansas. Now with access to a far greater array of research materials, including old notes from Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll, the good doctor's work leaped ahead by bounds. By the winter of 1942, he achieved his greatest breakthrough: A device that could make a man as strong and resilient as any of the Army's tanks.
The Origin
Such research didn't go unnoticed by the enemy. Late one night as Dr. Thorn was perfecting his invention, Nazi saboteurs broke into his lab and mercilessly gunned him down. In their attempts to set an 'accidental' fire in the lab, they were interrupted by a late-arriving Linda who had arrived to deliver her father's dinner. The agents subdued the girl and left her tied up a midst the growing flames. What they underestimated, however, was just how far she could dig deep into her resolve. The teen struggled her way over to her father's device, placing herself squarely as a target as she activated it. A massive explosion ensued, ripping apart the lab but leaving behind an unscathed Linda. From here on, nothing would ever be the same.
As she grieved for her father and weaved a miraculous tale for the authorities, Linda quietly discovered she had gained immense strength, nigh invulnerability, and the ability to fly. She put together a burgundy caped outfit, stashed away her spectacles, and took to the skies in search of her would-be assailants. She found them plotting their next strike, and shortly thereafter delivered their unconscious bodies to Major Groves. His last words to her as she flew off stuck with her. 'That girl's a real wonder of a rose.'
We Can Be Heroes (1942 to 1952)
The War
As Betsy and Linda returned to New York, the younger Thorn mulled over her new-found power. In his diary, she had found the truth about her father wanting to use his research not just for America but specifically for her. Now she had all the power he had intended our fighting boys to have. It wouldn't be right to keep it for herself, her father had given her one last gift and she simply had to share it with the world. She would become a superhero.
With her glasses on, she would remain meek and mild-mannered high school student Linda Thorn. With her glasses on and her burgundy outfit on, she became the teen super-heroine, the Rose Wonder! Her first public move was to officially apply to join the Defenders of Justice as a junior member. Naturally, the older heroes were rather cautious of taking on a young sidekick. Once they saw her in action, however, such reservations began to diminish. It was a lot easier to let a teenage girl handle saboteurs and enemy agents when their bullets bounced off her chest, and she was strong enough to help handle even the lesser Axis villains that came upon America's shores. Her growing reputation at home gained her notoriety back in the Fatherland. Herr Goebbels himself decided this new teen heroine needed a proper Aryan counterpart, and used super science on a pair of volunteers from the Hitler Youth to create the ideal Nazi uberteens: Master Boy and Master Girl.
Their first fights were tremendous affairs. While the pair were individually not as strong as Rose, combined they were occasionally more than she could handle. She was strong, but inexperienced and the two were the first to discover Rose's superpowers temporarily drained whenever she was exposed to lightning. However, they too were not without weakness. Master Girl had an imperious air from the cream of old Prussian nobility that could easily be turned against her. Master Boy was much more grounded, though perhaps too much so. While Goebbels wished him to mate with Master Girl in creating a new race of supermen, Master Boy found himself instead falling for someone else: The Rose Wonder.
It all came to a head in early 1944. After having been foiled yet again, Master Boy finally decided he had enough and fled to reveal his true feelings to Rose. A stunned Linda found herself unable to respond, she too had seen more than just an enemy in the lad but had shelved it all in an attempt to maintain her heroic resolve. Sadly, her answer came too late, as Master Girl caught up and promptly resolved her betrayal by putting several armor-piercing bullets inside her former compatriot. As Master Boy died in her arms to Master Girl's laughter, something inside Linda exploded. Shortly thereafter, so did the Rose Wonder, leaping at the other girl to deliver an uncontrolled blow to the jaw. There was a snap, the laughter halting abruptly as the girl's eyes finally looked at Rose with something approaching sadness. Master Girl fell to the ground alongside Master Boy, the terror of the twins having ended with grim finality. It would be the first and last time the Rose Wonder had ever killed.
While Linda tried to put her grieving behind, Dr. Goebbels was furious. With Hitler Youth desperately needed in preparation of the inevitable Allied invasion of the Fatherland, he instead turned to one of his greatest geniuses to replace Master Girl: Albert Zerstoiten. As one of his last 'gifts' to the crumbling Reich, the doctor hastily re-built a prototype steambot into an approximation of what had been Master Girl. While having strength and invulnerability to match the Rose Wonder, the 'new' Master Girl was still a mindless robot controlled by undisciplined agents. After a couple indecisive fights through the end of the war, Rose finally was able to bring the robot in and place it under the secure protection of the government's Top Men.
After The War
With the fall of Germany and Japan, the great grave threats to the world had seemingly fallen with them. Many wartime heroes retired, and those that didn't found themselves with few true super threats to face. For Linda, the end of the war didn't mean the end of her powers. While she didn't have Nazis to punch there were still plenty of gangsters and robbers to fight. Sadly, such low-level threats didn't require a super team of heroes, and in 1948 the Defenders disbanded. Rose went her own way, handling minor villainy on a local scale in the New York area while Linda Thorn continued on with her college education and a professional career as a photographer for a major metropolitan newspaper. That's when she started to notice a glaring problem.
She hadn't grown an inch since the day she gained her powers.
As time continued to, it became increasingly obvious that the serum did have one drastic side-effect: Not just bullets, bombs, and sickness would fail to bring her to harm, but Father Time as well. As everyone else aged, she found herself perpetually stuck in a body and a mind that would never pass 16. She was as timeless as her father had wished her mother to have been. And what may have seemed like a truly tremendous gift was contrasted with the rapid descent of Aunt Betsy's health. Linda was confronted with the truly frightening thought of everyone else growing old and dying, while she would remain immortally sixteen.
Other events began to wear her down as well. Most notably, Captain Patriot siding with Senator McCarthy while HUAC tore down Dr. Twilight. They had all fought on the same side in the war, but now friends were fingering other friends as potential communist traitors. Linda herself had always tried to portray herself as an All-American girl, but even now she could hear the whispers about a strange girl in Red.
By 1952, she had found herself increasingly isolated from the world. While Linda Thorn held a steady job, there were growing questions as to how she could stay so young and petite. There were no threats out there worthy of the power of the Rose Wonder, only a paranoid populace that had grown scared of anything alien. For the first time since becoming a super, she truly began to doubt who and what she was. It was then that the final blow came. Aunt Betsy collapsed, and wasn't going to recover.
With her world collapsing around her, Linda sought solace in her last moments with her great-aunt. What she found, however, was her inspiration. Betsy wasn't as doddering as everyone had thought, she had known since the start that Linda was the Rose Wonder. In her last words, she told Linda that her potential immortality wasn't a curse but perhaps a blessing. Not only would she always carry the wisdom of a heroine of better times with her, but she would always would carry the innocence of a sixteen year old as well. The world needed a heroine with those gifts. As Betsy passed, Linda promised to herself that she wouldn't see them as anything but a gift.
What A Wonderful World (1952 to 2012)
A New Beginning
In the meantime, however, there were adjustments to make. 'Linda Thorn' quit her job and became a grieving recluse, taking her residuals from her father's patents and hiding away inside the family mansion upstate. The Rose Wonder quietly faded from the public view, spending the next few years helping with the odd disaster but mostly leaving the crime fighting to the police. In their stead, there was now Linda Flowers, freelance photojournalist travelling the country. She had an exemplary eye for what the teens of America saw, and when there was trouble, well, there was always the Rose Wonder there to help.
As the years passed, Linda Flowers became Laurie Redd became Leslie Vines, identities switched whenever the old one got too old for her body. Her photography made magazines and newspapers, her heroics as the Rose Wonder not as much. As the world passed into the Silver Age, the world found itself with a new generation of superheroes to take on the new challenges. The Rose Wonder was something of a holdover from the past, and she was more than happy to let the next generation take the lead in saving the world. Not that she didn't have any notable adventures of her own. Rose did, after all, help Johnny Cash in foiling a bank robbery in 1957. She also saved the Beatles from a crazed mutant fan in 1964, which netted her the autographs of all the Fab Four. The Rose Wonder somehow wound up helping a team of junior superheroes foil a mind control plot at Woodstock. In 1979, she helped an Elvis impersonator named Sebastian Haff break a coterie of vampire disco fanatics. In 1986, she punched Colonel Gaddafi, just because she could. In 1992, she paid her respects at the ruins of Detroit, just as she would nine years later at what had been the World Trade Center.
As the world passed further into the 21st century, it now seemed that everyone had a camera with an instant upload feature. And if it wasn't them, then it was Anonymous and Wikileaks digging up all sorts of information. More and more heroes were coming 'out', willingly or unwillingly. Linda found her attempts at anonymity squeezed by an increasingly smaller world. Meanwhile, most of the family she had been keeping her identity secret to protect had passed, and a new generation she had never met was wondering what was up with crazy Great-Aunt Linda up in the creaky mansion. Sooner or later, someone would poke hard enough.
And Again
By November of 2012, the Rose Wonder was something of a relic among the super media scene. A ghost from an earlier time that almost seemed more rumor than heroine. That changed when she flew into Millennium City and requested an interview with WCOC. Her first words in the segment that followed shook the world of Golden Age super history. "Seventy years ago, my father's dying wish gave me incredible powers. Since then, I've used them to protect the innocent and fight for justice. Once I was known as Linda Thorn. Now, now you know me as the Rose Wonder." The interview that followed covered her history, what she had been up to in the past sixty years, and her plans for the future. "I once thought the world didn't need superheroes. We did, but there have been so many valiant ones that I've never needed to step in front of them. But now, now I'm not hiding any more. I'm back and I'm here to help."
Her confession caught the attention of Rune, who shortly afterwards offered her membership in the Silver Age Sentinels. Having not been a member of any group in over sixty years, Rose was momentarily caught speechless, but she quickly and quite eagerly accepted.
He wasn't the only one watching that day. A group of Neo-Nazi survivalists had recovered the rusting body of the robotic Master Girl from a long-forgotten storage area. With the help of modern super-computing, they had given the robot an AI personality to match the original Aryan princess. For her and the Rose Wonder, the Second World War wasn't quite over just yet.
Personality
Powers
Trivia
Themes
- Owl City - Fireflies
- John Williams - Main Title from Superman
- Louis Armstrong - What A Wonderful World
OOC Background
Rose Wonder began at City of Heroes as my tribute to the Golden Age, her design having obvious inspirations from said age. I started with a Praetorian named 'Miss Thunderbolt' before settling on her current form, explaining her classic looks as she was time locked from the late '40s to the present day. Then I soured on Invulnerability / Super Strength as a tanking set and barely ever touched her again.
Re-starting her here, I instantly found Might everything I had hoped Super Strength to be. I thought the 'fish out of water' concept was a bit trite, however, so I went to thinking of something novel. Then it hit me just how timeless heroes like Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man were over the years. I hooked on that as not only her schtick - she was perpetually stuck at age sixteen - but as a theme I hope to explore in roleplay as well.