OOC: Sylar is Dumb, Part 8 of a 174 part series
So! Sylar has just done a very dumb thing and agreed to be bound to a bane spirit, hailing from the ever-popular World of Darkness RPG. This means he's now something called a Fomor, which is something that shouldn't be. Basically a force of corruption has been shoved in his body, and now he's got a bunch of nifty new powers, and also a bunch of things that are killing him from the inside.
Right now he's focusing on the shiny new powers and not the hideous side effects. Let's take a look at those!
Powers:
-Regeneration: The Fomor recovers from damage in a similar way to the Garou, healing constantly. A lot of Fomori with this power tend to die of cancer before they hit their late 30s due to the metabolic strain on the "human" body though.
-Gaseous Form: The fomor can virtually boil his body into a gaseous state in a mere two to six seconds. He must expend a point of Willpower to become gaseous and another point to become solid again. The gaseous form holds together well even in a strong wind, and usually stinks of sulfur, urine, excrement, or some other horrible stench.
-Brain Eating: This potent power literally allows the Fomor to chew up a victims mind, reducing mental attributes and absorbing the resultant experience and knowledge themselves. This does no actual damage to the targets mind and is undetectable by scientific means.
-Homogeneity: The Fomor can cancel out the powers of other supernaturals around them. When active, any supernatural within five yards cannot use their powers for a short period of time.
And here's the downside he's trying to ignore. It'll get worse over time.
Taints:
-Addiction: The Fomor must engage in a particularly addictive activity, shooting up crack, drinking blood, eating babies, or even human sacrifice to an Urge Wyrm. In this particular case, his addiction is power usage. Any power will do, but the powers that come from being a Fomor will be 'better' at feeding this addiction, somehow. Failure to fulfil this addiction causes great, wracking agony and physical damage to the Fomor. Failing to feed the addiction will cause a slow buildup that will lay a penalty on the Fomors stamina, when the penalty outweights his Stamina, he dies.
-The Fading: The Fomor's psyche has only the most tenuous of footholds on reality. This is not merely insanity, the fomor's mind has an affinity with an Urge Wyrm and is actively trying to flee this reality, to "join" with that Wyrm. The fomor has an insanity equivalent to a derangement. If the fomor is ever in the presence of his particular aspect of the Wyrm (e.g. a Maeljin Incarna) his mind will be torn away to further empower that being (there's no roll for this, it happens, your char is dead). The only way this may be avoided is if that Wyrm decides to Taint the fomor for some reason. Such a pollution will permanently scar the fomor (add another Derangement, and lose two permanent Willpower). The Fomor must struggle nightly to maintain a hold on reality, when all the Fomor's temporary willpower is gone, so is his mind.
-Inner Volcano: Burn, baby, burn! Inside this Bane-ridden, temperatures rise to unhealthy levels. He has a perpetual fever strong enough to break thermometers. When he's under stress of exertion, this fever literally cooks him from within. Death by this taint is unpleasant and gruesome. Each three turns of hard physical work (combat, running, heavy lifting, etc) it inflicts one painful, unsoakable level of damage on the fomor. Naturally, anyone close to the fomor during this stage will share his pain; a person who holds, carries, sleeps with or operates on the burning fomor before he cools down will take a health level of soakable damage, unless they are insulated from the heat. In both cases, the damage is unusually painful, but not aggravated.
-Teledementia: The fomor is a powerful telepath, or so he thinks. The reality of Teledementia has been confirmed by Iliad scientists, but its usefulness is questionable. The Fomori with this power are often called Psychonauts (or psycho-nuts) and are receiving telepathic messages, but the content is garbled, sick and deranged. They believe the world to be a living hell, and are bombarded daily with the vilest of thoughts from all around them. These thoughts are furthe rtwisted in intensity, and everyone in the world is either a worthless victim or sadistic brute. There is no middle ground. Psychonauts may revel in this, but she also perceives everyone to be plotting against her. Information gained through Teledementia is almost always entirely useless though a faint, subtle truth may slip in here and there. Psychonauts often end up going on killing sprees because of the mad voices, and Pentex gives its fomori the authority to put down a fomor with this Taint as fast and hard as they can if it gets out of hand.
So, there's that. Hope you all enjoy this new and vastly unimproved Sylar. We'll see how long he lasts like this. ;-)
Right now he's focusing on the shiny new powers and not the hideous side effects. Let's take a look at those!
Powers:
-Regeneration: The Fomor recovers from damage in a similar way to the Garou, healing constantly. A lot of Fomori with this power tend to die of cancer before they hit their late 30s due to the metabolic strain on the "human" body though.
-Gaseous Form: The fomor can virtually boil his body into a gaseous state in a mere two to six seconds. He must expend a point of Willpower to become gaseous and another point to become solid again. The gaseous form holds together well even in a strong wind, and usually stinks of sulfur, urine, excrement, or some other horrible stench.
-Brain Eating: This potent power literally allows the Fomor to chew up a victims mind, reducing mental attributes and absorbing the resultant experience and knowledge themselves. This does no actual damage to the targets mind and is undetectable by scientific means.
-Homogeneity: The Fomor can cancel out the powers of other supernaturals around them. When active, any supernatural within five yards cannot use their powers for a short period of time.
And here's the downside he's trying to ignore. It'll get worse over time.
Taints:
-Addiction: The Fomor must engage in a particularly addictive activity, shooting up crack, drinking blood, eating babies, or even human sacrifice to an Urge Wyrm. In this particular case, his addiction is power usage. Any power will do, but the powers that come from being a Fomor will be 'better' at feeding this addiction, somehow. Failure to fulfil this addiction causes great, wracking agony and physical damage to the Fomor. Failing to feed the addiction will cause a slow buildup that will lay a penalty on the Fomors stamina, when the penalty outweights his Stamina, he dies.
-The Fading: The Fomor's psyche has only the most tenuous of footholds on reality. This is not merely insanity, the fomor's mind has an affinity with an Urge Wyrm and is actively trying to flee this reality, to "join" with that Wyrm. The fomor has an insanity equivalent to a derangement. If the fomor is ever in the presence of his particular aspect of the Wyrm (e.g. a Maeljin Incarna) his mind will be torn away to further empower that being (there's no roll for this, it happens, your char is dead). The only way this may be avoided is if that Wyrm decides to Taint the fomor for some reason. Such a pollution will permanently scar the fomor (add another Derangement, and lose two permanent Willpower). The Fomor must struggle nightly to maintain a hold on reality, when all the Fomor's temporary willpower is gone, so is his mind.
-Inner Volcano: Burn, baby, burn! Inside this Bane-ridden, temperatures rise to unhealthy levels. He has a perpetual fever strong enough to break thermometers. When he's under stress of exertion, this fever literally cooks him from within. Death by this taint is unpleasant and gruesome. Each three turns of hard physical work (combat, running, heavy lifting, etc) it inflicts one painful, unsoakable level of damage on the fomor. Naturally, anyone close to the fomor during this stage will share his pain; a person who holds, carries, sleeps with or operates on the burning fomor before he cools down will take a health level of soakable damage, unless they are insulated from the heat. In both cases, the damage is unusually painful, but not aggravated.
-Teledementia: The fomor is a powerful telepath, or so he thinks. The reality of Teledementia has been confirmed by Iliad scientists, but its usefulness is questionable. The Fomori with this power are often called Psychonauts (or psycho-nuts) and are receiving telepathic messages, but the content is garbled, sick and deranged. They believe the world to be a living hell, and are bombarded daily with the vilest of thoughts from all around them. These thoughts are furthe rtwisted in intensity, and everyone in the world is either a worthless victim or sadistic brute. There is no middle ground. Psychonauts may revel in this, but she also perceives everyone to be plotting against her. Information gained through Teledementia is almost always entirely useless though a faint, subtle truth may slip in here and there. Psychonauts often end up going on killing sprees because of the mad voices, and Pentex gives its fomori the authority to put down a fomor with this Taint as fast and hard as they can if it gets out of hand.
So, there's that. Hope you all enjoy this new and vastly unimproved Sylar. We'll see how long he lasts like this. ;-)