Spite
| Spite | ||||||||||
| Player: @kampfykaufmann | ||||||||||
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| "I could tell you what this one means, but I'd rather show you." | ||||||||||
| Biographical Data | ||||||||||
| Real Name: | Arlan Damaskinos | |||||||||
| Known Aliases: | None | |||||||||
| Gender: | Male | |||||||||
| Species: | Human | |||||||||
| Ethnicity: | Caucasian | |||||||||
| Place of Birth: | New York City, USA | |||||||||
| Base of Operations: | Millenium City, USA | |||||||||
| Relatives: | Marek Damaskinos (Father), Josephka Damaskinos (Mother) | |||||||||
| Characteristics | ||||||||||
| Age: | 25 | |||||||||
| Height: | 6' | |||||||||
| Weight: | 220 lbs | |||||||||
| Eyes: | Brown | |||||||||
| Hair: | Black | |||||||||
| Complexion: | Normal | |||||||||
| Physical Build: | Athletic | |||||||||
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| Status | ||||||||||
| Fame: |
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| Alignment: |
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| Identity: | Secret | |||||||||
| Years Active: | 2 | |||||||||
| Citizenship: | US-American | |||||||||
| Occupation: | Independent journalist | |||||||||
| Education: | BA in journalism | |||||||||
| Marital Status: | Single | |||||||||
| Known Powers and Abilities | ||||||||||
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| Physical Attributes | |||||||||
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| Non-Physical Attributes | |||||||||
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| Telepathy |
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| MaekadaBoxSlim created by @Maekada | |||||||||
Contents
Spite appears to be in his early to mid-20s. His build is athletic and he would be quite handsome if not for the constant look of boredom or mild disapproval on his face. He wears his black hair in a side-swept undercut, which he sometimes complements with streaks of garish colors (his favorite is a dark purple) or complicated patterns shaved into the short parts. He also has a snake bite piercing in his lower lip. When using his powers his eyes have a tendency to gain a slight purple glow, which fades away after a while.
Spite's most distinguishing feature are the many, many tattoos all over his body. Except for his face, the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet there is not a single inch of his body not covered in them. All of them are excellent works of art; the lines are perfectly done, the colors are vivid and the designs full of detail. They also do not seem to fade, no matter what. While they do not seem to follow a particular theme or even art style, generally they are quite aesthetically pleasing.
Spite does not care for the cape-and-tights look. His main concern when it comes to outfits is exposing as many tattoos as possible so they do not rip through his clothes when coming to life (while still looking stylish of course!). Usually he wears a gray waistcoat along with gray tearaway pants, black fingerless leather gloves, a black leather belt and dark gray sneakers. When he needs to go incognito he has a dark purple bandana he uses to conceil his face. He also has a long black scarf with a white trim which he sometimes wraps around his head like a hood. Sometimes he will complement his outfit with accessories like studded bracers, necklaces or rings.
Spite's story actually began centuries ago. Most of the details are forgotten by now, but in the magical community legends go that once a well-intentioned but deluded group of mages tried to seal all the evil magic in the world - curses, ,hexes, necromancy, demonology and left-handed Hoodoo - into a single book to contain it. The group prepared the ritual for decades. Every single aspect of it had to be perfect, from the incantations used to the book itself to type of chalk used to draw the runes on the ground and the types of candles. Unsurprisingly the ritual failed spectacularly and the resulting wave of dark magics killed all of them and contaminated the area forever. It would be centuries until a living soul would ever set foot in the group's sanctuary again.
Said living souls were simple scavengers who were completely unaware of the nature and history of the ruin they stumbled in. They looted the place, taking the ancient artifacts they found there with them. Many of these artifacts had been thoroughly exposed to a multitude of dark magics and were then basked in it for centuries. And now they were in the hands of clueless grave robbers who proceeded to sell them, causing these artifacts to disperse all over the world. One of these artifacts was a small inkwell - the ink with which the book was meant to be written - which felt strangely warm to the touch...
Fast forward a few decades...
Arlan Damaskinos was the only child of Marek and Josephka Damaskinos, Slovenian immigrants who moved to the US just years before the Battle of Detroit. As an architect, Marek’s talents were in high demand when it came to rebuild the city which would become Millennium City at some point. The family moved there and some of Arlan’s earliest memories are those of a devastated cityscape rife with despair and mourning. While his childhood was largely uneventful, his father was still swept up in his sudden success in Millennium City and Marek and Josephka started to push their son hard to excell in every way, no matter what. There was only one piece of advice his father had ever given to Arlan: "Sympathy is cheap, aim to inspire envy."
This attitude was bound to cause problems down the way, and during his teenage years Arlan found himself constant victim of bullying. As to not appear weak in front of others - especially his parents and the few friends he had - Arlan kept quiet about it and focused his anger, fear and frustrations about it inwards. From that point on it was only a short way to blaming himself for being too weak to stop the bullying himself. Arlan started to push himself ever harder to reach his goals of becoming better in every aspect and that - combined with the anger and hatred for his bullies and himself - started to take a toll on his physical and mental health. When alcohol and drugs came into the mix everything got even worse. At some point the bullying stopped, but Arlan did never stop pushing himself; in his mind nothing had changed.
In college nothing got better. Even though he was popular, handsome, intelligent and talented he could never escape his own head. For himself he felt nothing but the need to become better and frustration at not being good enough. For people who bullied and harassed others he felt nothing but hatred and anger. For people who just stood by and watched he felt nothing but contempt and spite. Even though he managed to hide it all under a mask of playful arrogance, mild amusement and quick-witted sarcasm it still ate him up from the inside. The only things which made it a little more bearable were nights spent in clubs and bars, trying to numb everything with booze and drugs.
During one of those nights one of Arlan's friends convinced him to get a tattoo. Without thinking long about a spot or motive, Arlan agreed and went to a tattoo artist who happened to be a friend's friend and also a collector of the strange and supposedly 'mystic' objects. One of his latest acquisitions - a wooden box full of 'magic' knick-knacks from all over the world - also happened to contain a small inkwell. When the tattoo artist jokingly asked if Arlan wanted his tattoo done with the 'magic' ink, Arlan agreed with a laugh. He didn't believe in magic. As soon as the ink touched Arlan's skin, he knew something was not right. A decade of negative emotions had activated the dark magics which had lain dormant for centuries. The ink burned under his skin and time itself seemed to freeze as the tattoo artist went to work in a frenzy, a dark glow coming from his eyes. The small inkwell should have run dry at some point, but it seemed to refill itself again and again as more and more designs and patterns were put under Arlan's skin. At some point he just passed out.
Arlan awoke in his apartment with the worst hangover he ever experienced. His hole body was sore and when he looked into the mirror he nearly could not believe what he was seeing. His whole body except his face, the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands were covered in tattoos. All of them were amazingly beautiful works of art and already healing at an astounishing speed, but there was no common theme linking them, no sense behind their meaning. It took Arlan a few hours to make sense of what happened to him, then he became angry. This artist had just ruined his future. Arlan made his way back to the tattoo parlor. When he arrived the artist did not remember a thing and assured Arlan that those tattoos were amazing but not his work. When Arlan got louder the artist kicked him out of the door after a short scuffle.
Without a clue of what was going on, Arlan made his way home. On the way he saw a group of Maniacs harassing a group of college girls. Despite his current situation Arlan felt the anger welling up inside him. Suddenly the ink on his arm began to shift. The trio of dark, hooded figures tattooed on his arm seemed to pour out of his skin in the form of a shadowy ooze. Arlan watched in shock as the ooze formed the three hooded shadows again, this time life-sized. They proceeded to tear into the Maniacs and Arlan watched with glee as the Maniacs were beat within an inch of their lives. Only the terrified screams of the girls stopped Arlan’s shadows from killing the criminals. When their work was done, the shadows turned into black ooze again and seeped back into Arlan's arm, who ran when he heard the police sirens.
For a few weeks Arlan's time was spent coming to terms with his new powers and explaining why suddenly was tattooed from head to toe. During those weeks he started to go on nightly hunts to test his powers. He mostly targeted gang members and other criminals in Westside and around his college campus, always beating them up badly, but never killing them. When the newspapers featured the first report about a new, but brutal hero protecting the people of Millennium City Arlan just laughed. In his mind he was no hero, he simply enjoyed the fact that for the first time in over a decade he didn't feel powerless anymore and was able to make the bullies of this world pay. If the media wanted to spin that into a hero story, more power to them. At least that meant that law enforcement wouldn't infringe on his fun. With that in mind Arlan got himself a simple costume and took the moniker Spite.
Spite is an asshole. A psychologically damaged, emotionally unstable and insecure asshole, but an asshole nonetheless and possibly the worst kind of person to ever gain superpowers. For over a decade he has felt powerless and not good enough and now he has superpowers. The sudden change left its mark on Spite's attitude. The arrogance he used to mask his insecurities has now become quite real and he is very smug about having and using his powers, feeling like they are his reward for all his hard work and years of suffering. Spite is often condescending, impatient and sarcastic. He can also be quite charming, playful and friendly when the mood strikes him, but that's not too often. Underneath he is still a mess of inferiority complexes, revenge phantasies and disproportionate grudges against minor slights from years ago. The fact that his powers are fuelled by negative emotions is just the icing on the cake.
One of Spite's redeeming features is that he actually is standing up against the bad elements of society, even if it is only partly out of a sense of justice and mostly to feed his own ego and sate his revenge phantasies. While he has not killed anyone in his personal crusade yet (and has no intention of doing so, seeing the bullies suffer amuses him more) he gleefully uses his powers to turn those he considers the bad guys into a mess of bruises, cuts and broken bones. The irony of him having become what he hated so much - a bully - is completely lost on him though. The only reason law enforcement and other superheroes have turned a blind eye to Spite so far is that those Spite considers the bad guys actually are the bad guys.
- Telekinesis: Unbeknownst to him, his parents or anybody else for that matter Arlan was born with latent but extremely powerful telekinetic abilities which just needed to right trigger to emerge. Said trigger was a decade of negative emotions festering inside of him, which also greatly shaped the form and source of his telekinesis. Spite’s powers are fuelled by negative emotions of those around him and his own, but his own emotions seem to have a greater influence than any others. While all negative emotions seem to be able to fuel his powers, the most effective seem to be hatred, anger, disdain and his namesake spite. He has also learned that cold, calculated hatred and arrogant disdain work better than blind rage. In battle he is not a raving berserker but creepily calm, often recounting past slights against him in his head or imagining elaborate revenge phantasies to strengthen and shape his powers. This concentrated negativity combined with the strong psychic powers make reading or otherwise manipulating Spite's mind very difficult at best and impossibly painful at worst of telepaths.
Unlike many other users of telekinesis, Spite’s powers are actually visible. They manifest as purple, shadowy shapes, figures and objects which do whatever he hopes to accomplish. Examples are:
• If he wants to throw, a car a brutish, shadowy shape will manifest next to the car, pick it up, throw it, then disappear
• If he wants to push an enemy back, another shadowy figure will manifest and tackle the enemy in the desired direction
• If he wants to move a pile of debris, a swarm of shadowy birds appear to carry the rubble away in their claws
• If he wants to protect himself or others from a large attack armored, shadowy giant appears and uses his body as a shield
• If he wants to lift himself into the air on a piece of debris, a winged, shadowy figure appears to carry it with him on top
• If he needs to protect just himself or conceal his identity, a set of shadowy armor appears around him to do just that
- Utility Belt & Training: Due to the fact that his telekinesis are highly versatile and extremely powerful, Spite does not need much in the way of training and equipment. However he still carries a small utility belt which holds some equipment like a flashlight, zip-cuffs, a lockpick set, a small first aid kit and similar basics. He also carries a SW1911 hidden in a leg holster, just in case. Spite is a decent enough shot and has also some Muay Thai experience.
- What a show-off!: While he can turn them off completely, Spite is unable to turn off the visual aspect of his powers. Even if he just wants to open a door with them, a shadow will appear to turn the doorknob. Stealth is almost completely impossible for Spite.
- Going to my unhappy place...: For his powers to work properly Spite or his environment need to be full of negative emotions. While the battlefield is normally not an overly happy place, if the battle goes too well, Spite actually needs to force himself to think negatively as to not slip up, which can be used against him.
- Not the squishy parts!: For some reason Spite is completely unable to directly manipulate the inner workings of living beings with his powers, maybe due to a subconscious need to visualize his shadows actually doing the deed. No ripping organs apart or bursting blood vessels in brains!
