Siren
(Mellisandre)
PL 10 (166 pp)
Abilities: Str 18, Dex 18, Con
18, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 16
[34 pp]
Attack: Melee +4 / +6 with claws, Ranged +4 / +6 with
sonic blast [8 pp]
Defense: +6 (+2 flat-footed) [8 pp]
Initiative: +4
Damage: +5 hand to hand
Saves: Toughness +8, Fort +4, Ref +4, Will +1 [0 pp]
Skills: Acrobatics 2 (+6), Bluff 2 (+5, +9 vs. those who
might find her attractive), Climb 0 (+4), Concentration 0 (+1), Craft
(artistic) 4 (+5), Diplomacy 4 (+7, +11 vs. those who might find her
attractive), Disguise 2 (+5), Escape Artist 0 (+4), Gather Information 2 (+5),
Handle Animal 0 (+3), Intimidate 2 (+5), Investigate 2 (+3), Knowledge
(streetwise) 4 (+5), Knowledge (theology and philosophy) 2 (+3), Knowledge
(earth sciences) 4 (+5), Knowledge (arcane lore) 6 (+7), Language (Somali,
native), Language (English), Language (French), Medicine 2 (+3), Notice 4 (+5),
Perform (singing) 12 (+15), Profession (singer) 4 (+5), Search 2 (+3), Sense
Motive 4 (+5), Stealth 4 (+8), Survival 4 (+5), Swim 4 (+8)
[22 pp, 88 ranks in skills]
Feats: Environmental Adaptation (underwater), Favored
Environment 4 (underwater), Ambidexterity, Fascinate (perform), Artisan, Ritualist, Attractive 1, Dodge Focus 2, Attack
Specialization 1 (claws), Attack Specialization 1 (sonic blast)
[14 pp]
Abilities 34 + Combat 16 + Saves 0 + Skills 22 + Feats 14
+ Powers 80 = 166 pp
Powers:
Comprehend 3 (speak and understand all languages,
anyone hearing her words hears them in their native language, Power Feat:
Selective) [7]
Swimming 4 (25 MPH) [4]
Protection 4 [4]
Strike 1 (Power Feat: Mighty) [2]
Super-Senses 10 (blindsight
(hearing), extended 1 (hearing), accurate (hearing), tremorsense,
ultrahearing, scent) [10]
Immunity 3 (breathe underwater, high pressure,
environmental cold) [3]
Drain (dexterity) 2 (Extras: Poison 4, Power Feats:
Trigger 2 (on a strike with either claw), Slow Fade 5 (/hour)) [17]
Morph 2 (aquatic animals, Power Feat: Alternate
Power – Morph 2 (humanoids)) [3]
Blast 10 (sonic cry, Power Feats: Stunning Attack,
Affects Insubstantial,
Alternate Power - Nauseate 7 (Extra: Area (burst),
Power Feat: Selective),
Alternate Power – Mind Control 10 (Extra:
Conscious, Flaws: Range (ranged), Sense-Dependent (hearing)),
Alternate Power - Mind Control 10 (Extras: Area
(burst), Conscious, Flaws: Range 2 (touch), Sense-Dependent (hearing), Power
Feat: Selective),
Alternate Power – Dazzle (auditory) 10 (Power Feat:
Slow Fade 2 (save / minute)),
Alternate Power – Dazzle (auditory) 10 (Extra: Area
(burst), Flaw: Range (touch), Power Feats: Selective, Slow Fade 2 (save /
minute)),
Alternate Power – Obscure (auditory) 10 (Flaw:
Range (touch), Power Feat: Selective),
Alternate Power – Illusion (auditory) 10 (Flaw:
Range (ranged), Power Feats: Selective, Progression 4 (100’ radius))
Alternate Power – Environmental Control 4 (distraction
(piercing wail), DC 10, 100’ radius)) [30]
[80 pp]
Almost a century ago, a member of a rare immortal species
of legend known as the Sirens felt the rare urge to take a mate. Sirens very
rarely feel this urge, and even more rarely act upon it, and this particular
Siren, called Uqtena, the Water-Serpent, among the
peoples she used to terrorize in the Great Lakes region of
It was then that she felt strange feelings growing within
her. She had spent centuries dropping esoteric hints to the native peoples of
‘her lakes,’ and spent more time among humans, and avoiding the company of her
own traditionally seafaring peoples, and now found herself curiously empty. She
kept the corpse of her lover in a sea-cave, and returned to it to stare at it
with feelings she knew not how to express. In a rage, she scattered his bones,
now bleached by the action of sand and surf, unable to comprehend the
sensations that tore through her once placid and eternal predators psyche.
After the birth of her daughter, she abandoned the creature, seeing in it an
aggravating reminder of the man whose name she would never know and swam off to
places unknown.
The Siren’s child found her way out of the cavern, feeding
on fish and sea-life, even as an infant, a deadly and efficient predator. She
clung to the shallows, to avoid the larger predators of the deeper waters, and
to remain close to the sea-caves that smelt of home. Things moved around on the
shore, and she discovered one evening that she could form herself to move onto
the land, in the shape of a naked girl-child of their kind, where she would
chase down chickens to feed, exulting in this strange new ‘hunt.’ Captured by
much larger peoples, she shuddered and twisted and shrieked, and fled to the
sea, dropped in shock by her captors as fangs and scales and venomous spines
pierced forth from her flesh. She stuck to the waters, but the next evening,
there were men in her caves, men with nets and ears sealed with wax, who captured her and brought her to an old woman who was
attempting to treat those whom she had poisoned in her initial encounter. The
woman used strange burning herbs to make her sleepy, and she spent months
there, learning of her father’s people from this witch-woman. The villagers
thought her a monster to be destroyed, but the old woman knew better, that this
monstrous child could indeed be so much more.
A decade passed, and the girl-child she called Mellisandre grew into a stunningly beautiful woman, tall
and sleek of limb, with unnaturally straight hair. From her ‘mother,’ she
learned much of local traditions and beliefs, but from her true heritage, she
instinctively knew deeper secrets, and after the old woman passed on, she found
herself surrounded with villagers who regarded her either as a monster, or as a
forbidden love-interest. Having no interest in either sort, she returned to the
sea, hoping to make contact with ‘her people.’
And she did. Sirens were quite active at the time,
seducing sailor and pirate alike, and she even discovered a trio of them
working together to target German U-boats, swimming alongside the great metal
vessels and singing against the hull, beguiling the men inside to open the
hatches and let the sea in, and then feasting on their bodies. Horrified by the
animalistic natures of her ‘kin,’ Mellisandre found
herself an outcast among outcasts, unable to relate to man nor beast, and
searched the seas for a place to call her own, only to find that the seas were
abuzz with ships, as a great ‘world war’ raged in the world of men. Still she
wandered, rootless and unwilling to sink into the savagery of her fellow
Sirens, sometimes rescuing boaters, even at times from her ‘sisters,’ whom she
found to be weaker and less capable of using their shapeshifting
talents or their songs as she.
The war ended and she found herself enticed to the cities
of the American northeast, hoping to find in human contact what she had not
found among her mother’s people. She spend years as a torch singer in smoky
lounges, always going home alone, unable to feel a true connection, even still,
and dragged at first into ‘adventure’ trying to help a fellow singer who had
found herself romantically entangled with a possessive mobster. Slowly but
surely, she was dragged into a life of helping others, using her seductive
songs and her shapeshifting abilities to work under a
variety of guises, as she lived in a society where a black woman wouldn’t be
seen as a credible threat, but a shadowy male figure, whose enemies found
themselves wracked with crippling venom burning like fire in their veins,
served as a suitable deterrent. Under this guise, she worked as a vigilante,
protecting ‘her people,’ using this role to stave off her eternal feelings of
being out of sorts, wandering a world with no place for her.
The world changed around her, and soon she found that more
and more of her ‘girlfriends’ weren’t so much singers as call girls and exotic
dancers and drug mules, and she grew angry to see how the men around them used
them, abused them and discarded them when they were no longer ‘pretty enough’
or ‘cooperative enough.’ Throughout the sixties and seventies, she was a local
terror, having abandoned her male role (which ended up becoming an urban legend
of ‘the Stinger’), a statuesque African beauty whose words alone could punish
those who preyed on women. It was as the Siren that she was ‘discovered’ by the
Freedom League and recruited as a member. Only the presence of Captain Thunder,
a woman, as team leader, convinced her, although a part of her also is
attracted to the notion of finding a community like herself, of people who
don’t fit in with any other group. In people like Captain Thunder and Doctor Metropolis
and Daedalus and Johnny Thunder she has found a group
of people who, like herself, are eternally searching for their place in the
world, with no ‘rules’ or ‘traditions’ or ‘customs’ pre-set to determine their
roles.
Perhaps this can be the home, the family,
that she has spent the last 60 years searching for.
Typically appearing as a supermodel-quality beauty of
African descent, Siren is actually an ageless creature of myth that can change
her appearance to disguise herself as another person, or to transform into a
sea-animal (or adapt traits of sea-life, such as just grow shark-like teeth, or
scaly skin, or venomous spines). Her ‘true appearance’ retains African facial
structures and remains tall and statuesque, but has beautifully patterned scaled
skin (green and gold), fine (weakly poisonous with a paralytic venom (Dex Drain)) claws and webbed fingers and toes, being sleek
and glistening, with 'hair' like the spined fins of a
lionfish.
The Siren's primary ‘super-power’ is her seductive song, which
can be used to lure and befuddle listeners, to navigate dark waters, or even to
generate a destructive sonic attack.