A Villain messing around in my head.

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Thrythlind
Shelled Plebeian
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2014 8:35 pm

A Villain messing around in my head.

Post by Thrythlind »

Malaya Destra
Armored 1
Beautiful 2
Attack 3
Combat Expert 3
Evasive 3
Sixth Sense - Minds 2
Knowledge: Disguise 3
Smart 2
Intuitive 3
Resistance 5 - Poison
Resistance 5 - Transformation
Magic, Arcane 4
Magic, Witchcraft 4
Vigorous 4
Tough 2
Iron-Willed 3

Infamous 3
Impulsive 1
Arrogant 2
Overconfident 2
Bizarre Appearance 2
Quirk 3 - Sadist
Wanted 3
Obsession 1 - Reputation
Compulsion 3 - Won't Kill Survivors
Rude 2

Boss Powers: Extra Actions, Health Reserve

They say that by the time Perseus killed Medusa, that she was so filled hatred for everything that her gaze was always fatal and that she no longer even needed to be aware of a person for her visage to turn them into lifeless stone. It was no wonder that she was feared and hated in the ancient world.

Malaya would love to have that kind of reputation and she's working on it. But it is a difficult job. Medusa's reputation spread over half the globe during a time that lacked the internet. Getting the same sort of proportional reputation in the modern time, without attracting so much attention that she drowns in enemies before getting her goal, that is a legendary task.

As supernatural creatures go, Malaya is reckless, she doesn't particularly care if people, or even governments, learn about her existence. It spreads her reputation, after all. She has been actively spreading her legend in rumors and whispers, in fact. She has avoided doing anything that would create a general awareness of the supernatural in the world. Several governments in fact are aware of her existence and have various theories about who and what she is, several attempts to kill or acquire her by various agencies have been made. All great fun in her mind.

Malaya engineers mysterious tragedies which leave hints of her presence. She tries to avoid leaving direct witnesses, but she's not Medusa. She isn't so mad with hatred for life that she can't do anything but kill, she simply enjoys killing. More than that, she enjoys inflicting pain and revels in fear. It's a very different sort of madness. Sometimes her control slips. Sometimes, she leaves someone alive. She's developed a habit of checking the stone husks she leaves around and a supernatural sense for when there's a living mind inside that will eventually escape the stone. However, she doesn't kill these leftovers, she has something far more interesting in mind for them.

Every gorgon has different abilities, variations on the body, the gaze and assorted other magical abilities. Malaya has one unique gift that no other gorgon is known to have: she can change targets that are currently trapped in stone. Normally someone trapped in stone is safe from any gaze until the change fades away and leaves them unprotected. This is not proof against Malaya and she uses that to apply a gaze that every gorgon has and considers sacred: she turns the witnesses to her deeds into new gorgons. At least the ones that used to be human, the non-humans she just leaves to stew and hopes they'll hunt her later.

This has two effects: it isolates the witnesses from the rest of the world as they must hide from sight, and it creates someone that will always remember her and spread her reputation. And eventually, some of these gorgons track her down and try to kill her which is always quite invigorating.

Nobody knows quite how old Malaya is, gorgons live until something kills them, though it seems she's only started her crusade for infamy in the last fifty years. The public story is of a beautiful woman with a shawl covering her hair being spotted in fuzzy videos at places left empty of people and mysterious stone debris scattered about. It is considered a pure urban legend and numerous versions and theories have spread around, most as idle silliness like the variations of Bloody Mary. However, she's gotten bored with just repeating the same scenario over and over and has started to make plans of a more apocalyptic nature. Very recently, she managed to kill a man possessed by a demon, leaving the demon trapped in the stone head. She can sense the demon's mind and knows it can hear her, but it can't talk to her. She is looking for a way to remedy that and thus unlock creative new ways to become an object of myth, legend and terror in the world.

Personality: Malaya seems to be easy going, even playfully childish at times. She likes to take time after a fight to praise any of the survivors on whatever tactics they used while they're trapped in stone. Whether this is a pair of teenagers that almost escaped or a soldier that managed to come close to killing her. She is dangerously manipulative and intelligent and quite vain. There is condescension in almost everything she says. Her habit of changing survivors after a battle rather than killing them has become a compulsion, if someone survives a battle then she feels they've earned that survival.

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Concepts for gorgons: They're all female. If they were male before they become female when changed. They do not age and are immune to poison. If they have children, the children usually appear to be normal humans but occasionally have magical or psychic talents. A gorgon's attractiveness usually relates to how they feel about themselves. A vain, sadistic and arrogant gorgon like Malaya can be very beautiful but with a sharp, dangerous edge. Medusa hated herself and everything else and was hideously ugly. Some gorgons look more human than others, but all have snakes for hair and usually have scale patterns somewhere.

The gaze can be turned on and off in most cases. Each gorgon has three basic gazes and these require eye contact for the most part. One turns person into a statue, which usually wears off after a few hours depending on the resilience of the victim. The second is a killing gaze, which is really just the first gaze with a killing intent behind it. The statues of dead subjects are fragile and easily shattered while still living statues are almost impossible to hurt. The third causes the other person to become a gorgon themselves and usually requires both parties be completely focused and relatively still for several minutes. Usually this used with willing partners in close relationships like comrades, lovers, children, relatives, students and the like.

The gaze is a fairly flexible transformative ability however and they can learn to adapt it to several effects.

Most gorgons develop some unique power eventually. This is often some original variation of the gaze but is sometimes something like shapeshifting, poison or the like.

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Curious to see what sort of characters people would create if that character was the focus villain at the end of things.
Clay
Dangerously Sane
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Re: A Villain messing around in my head.

Post by Clay »

Always interesting to see new interpretations of classics! It’s easy to make very boring spins on the gorgon, but I feel like this is a very contemporary look at the idea.
Thrythlind
Shelled Plebeian
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2014 8:35 pm

Re: A Villain messing around in my head.

Post by Thrythlind »

She came out as a sort of gorgon version of the Joker in ways.
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