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 North America, had gone many centuries without answering it’s call. Having taken up a wandering life, abandoning the waters she had haunted for centuries, she found herself preying upon the fishermen of coastal Somalia when she saw a man, lean from work and slick with sea-spray and the need filled her as never before. She sang him over the edge of his boat, seduced him there in the waters, and ate his heart, in the tradition of her people.

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.