Name: Cerberus
Gender: Female
Age: 19 y/o
Appearance:
Origin: Transformed
Determination: 2
Stamina: 14/14
Attributes:
- Prowess: 1
- Coordination: 10
- Strength: 6
- Intellect: 2
- Awareness: 6
- Willpower: 8
Powers:
-
Danger Sense 1
-
Cerberus has a "sixth sense" for danger. This power can be used for reactions to defend against attacks or other dangers, or for Awareness Tests to notice said dangers. If Danger Sense has a lower level than the associated attribute, this provides a +1 Bonus to tests using said attributes instead.
- Range: Personal
- Duration: Permanent
- Test: N/A
- Extras: N/A
- Limits: Danger Sense cannot be used to perform Stunts. This prevents Danger Sense from counting against Cerberus' Determination Points.
-
Super-Senses 2
-
Cerberus is capable of seeing in infra-red, allowing her to see even in complete darkness and potentially detect invisible creatures with a heat signature. Additionally, her vision is sharper than most, providing her with a +1 Bonus to Awareness Tests using her eyes.
- Range: Personal (Infra-Red Vision)
- Duration: Permanent
- Test: N/A
- Extras: N/A
- Limits: Super Senses cannot be used to perform Stunts. This prevents Super-Senses from counting against Cerberus' Determination Points.
-
Duplication 2
-
Cerberus can create 2 duplicates of herself who possess all the same abilities as her, with the only difference being that they do not have the Duplication power nor can they use Determination even if Cerberus can share hers with them. Duplicates will disappear if they or Cerberus are rendered dead or unconscious, or if Cerberus is unable to maintain concentration during combat. This fact is a point of contention between Cerberus and Duplicates who have their own ego instead of being obedient automatons, and these Deviants will often prioritize their own goals for the sake of experiencing as much of life as they can before they disappear.
It is unknown what happens to a Duplicate or Deviant that exists for prolonged periods of time, and Cerberus is unwilling to find out even if she has some idea of what might happen.
- Range: Personal
- Duration: Concentration
- Test: N/A
- Extras:
- Duplication can now be used instantaneously instead of requiring 1 page of preparation.
- 2 Duplicates can be created at once.
- Limits:
- Duplicates must constantly be maintained through Concentration. Otherwise, they shall disappear.
- Duplicates are normally emotionless automatons and fully obedient to Cerberus, but sometimes a Duplicate will possess a unique personality with its own will. These Deviants will refuse to sacrifice themselves and will need to be cajoled or catered into cooperation.
- Duplication cannot be used to perform Stunts. This prevents Duplication from counting against Cerberus' Determination Points.
-
Life Support 3
-
Cerberus is capable of funtioning 24/7 for the sake of workplace productivity. Her body does not require food, water, or sleep, and she is immune to disease. Essentially, Cerberus is the perfect content machine, capable of churning out content for her fans and profits for her agency without rest or reprieve.
- Range: Personal (Eating, Sleeping, Disease)
- Duration: Permanent
- Test: N/A
- Extras: N/A
- Flaws:
- Life Support cannot be used to perform Stunts. This prevents Life Support from Counting against Cerberus' Determination Points.
- Life Support removes the need to eat or drink, but Cerberus will still feel hunger and thirst if she skips meals regularly. This raises Life Support from Life Support 1 to Life Support 3.
-
Teleportation 3
-
Cerberus and her Duplicates can switch places with one another at the blink of an eye, but this fearsome ability has strict requirements in order to be successful. Not only does Cerberus need direct line of sight with her target, said targets must also be a object or creature with roughly equal or lesser mass than Cerberus, and she must have touched them if they aren't a Duplicate or Cerberus herself. Not only that, but this only extends as far as a city block, and anyone who isn't Cerberus or her Duplicates must pass a test after teleporting or they will be stunned until the next panel. Cerberus likes to utilize her knives and those of her Duplicates as conduits for her Teleportation, ensuring the camera always captures her good side when she's out fighting crime.
- Range: Extended (City Block)
- Duration: Instant
- Test: Teleportation 2, preceded by Coordination if Unwilling
- Extras: Cerberus and her Duplicates ignore the Teleportation test.
- Limits:
- Teleportation cannot be used to perform Stunts. This prevents Teleportation from counting against Cerberus' Determination Points.
- Teleportation requires Cerberus or her Duplicates to switch with each other, or a object or creature they had touched which must also be of roughly equal or lesser mass than Cerberus.
- Teleportation requires line of sight with the target. This raises Teleportation from Teleportation 1 to Teleportation 3.
-
Super-Speed 10
-
Cerberus treats a race with the best helicopters on the market like her morning walks. It doesn't take much effort to keep up, and if she feels like challenging herself, she might even decide to do it while running up walls or across a body of water. During times of desperation, she can even push herself at the cost of her own health to go as fast as a passenger jet or even go near light-speed, risking the deactivation of this power at worst or degrading it at best. Where other speedsters might be able to disassemble a gun in the blink of a eye or finish a dense textbook in seconds, Cerberus is only able to show the same ability when it comes to beating someone senseless, dividing her Fast Attack level into additional attack tests that when used on the same target, is treated as a Combined Effort. Seeing as Cerberus is a performer rather than a fighter, she's incapable of using this with any amount of nuance, instead always preferring to go with her maximum effort for 1 more attack instead of dividing it into multiple more attacks.
- Range: Personal (Max Sustained: Fast Helicopter; Max Burst: Near Light-Speed)
- Duration: Continous
- Test: N/A
- Extras:
- Surface Speed
- Fast Attack 10
- Range: Personal
- Duration: Instant
- Test: N/A
- Limits:
- Super-Speed can cannot be used for tasks involving manual dexterity or speed reading. This raises Super-Speed from Super-Speed 2 to Super-Speed 4.
- Super-Speed 6 and above can only be used in brief bursts and cannot be sustained. This raises Super-Speed from Super-Speed 4 to Super-Speed 6.
- Super-Speed 6 and above consumes 2 points of Stamina per additional level every time it's used. This raises Super-Speed from Super-Speed 6 to Super-Speed 8.
- Super-Speed 6 and above causes Burnout, requiring a roll of 1d6 after use. A roll of 1 or 2 disables Super-Speed for the rest of the chapter. This raises Super-Speed from Super-Speed 8 to Super-Speed 10.
- Super-Speed cannot be used to perform Stunts. This prevents Super-Speed from counting against Cerberus' Determination Points.
- Super-Speed 6 and above Degrades Cerberus' Sustained Speed and Burst Speed by 1 when used, and can only recover between chapters. This prevents Surface Speed from counting against Cerberus' Determination Points.
- Fast Attack can only be used in its full effect. This prevents Fast Attack from counting against Cerberus' Determination Points.
Specialties:
- Performance (Acting) Master: What Anita lacked in natural talent, she made up for in pigheaded stubborness. She honed her craft for years in pursuit of her dreams, and though she only had one face, Cerberus is capable of flawlessly adopting multiple different personas, a fact that let Anita sell the illussion that her Duplicates were real people while they were on camera. Be it a electrifying melee on the big screen or a exhange of words to tug at the heartstrings, Cerberus could do it all. This provides a +3 to all Performance (Acting) Tests.
Knacks:
- Fight Choreography: Attacks made in melee are treated as Performance (Acting) Tests using Coordination instead of Prowess.
- Last Minute Flourish: Defensive reactions are treated as Performance (Acting) Tests using Coordination.
- One Woman Show: Performance Tests done alongside Duplicates recieve a +2 Bonus.
Backstory: Starlight Productions was a subsidiary of Syncretic Solutions, a talent agency that sought to raise the next generation of caped celebrities. Theirs was a business model centered around convincing young and impressionable graduates fresh out of senior high school into signing their life away for a shot at fame, their original names and faces discarded as their corporate given identities were streamed for the world to see.
Anita Farley was one of the many people who naively signed that dotted line to subject herself to genetic modification. She had long dreamt of becoming an actress, but she lacked the natural talent, the resources, and the connections to step foot into the world of celebrities without assistance. Fearing the prospect of being forced into a college degree she had no interest in and frustrated at her continued failures during auditions, the girl was convinced that this was her last and only shot at stardom.
After all, she had one advantage most of her peers in the agency didn't have. Many of them were naively heroic, high on the possibilities their newfound powers afforded them as the main characters of their own story. Their sincerity was endearing to the audience, but in the world of caped entertainment, such ne'er-do-wells were a dime-a-dozen and had trouble selling themselves as unique and worth sticking around for when more polished products had long established themselves in the market.
Though she was largely self-taught, years of honing her craft lent Anita a sense for how to play to the whims and expectations of her audience, and when to break it for maximum effect, a strategy made much easier by the fact that she could set-up character dynamics between herself and her duplicates to create plays and stories for her fans to follow. Where her peers' clashing egos struggled to make space for each other, she had the advantage of having fully obedient "sisters" who followed the script set for them to a tee.
The cape Cerberus was a rising internet celebrity in the scant few months of her budding career, known for her flashy fighting style when dealing with crime on stream, and for her sometimes endearing, sometimes funny, and at times even dramatic scripted content. However, much like most internet fads, it would eventually come to an end.
For Cerberus, the world came crashing down when Anita died on stream. They were used to dealing with regular robberies and the occasional street-level supervillain or monster, and while they had successfully apprehended Baron Eckhart's goons despite a few close shaves involving otherworldly monsters, the banter between Anita and one of her duplicates grew much more venomous than what was on the agreed script. Confused and frightened, Anita tried to dismiss the Deviant back into nothing but her attempts to make it disappear failed, and in response, Anita found herself under attack by someone wearing her face.
Cerberus watched, camera frozen in her hand as she saw Anita and the Deviant tear into each other, the view count rising by the second. Perhaps she should have said something to stop the two, or perhaps she should have closed the stream entirely, but the view count just kept rising and rising and rising and
RISING-
The two eventually ceased. Was Anita the one on the ground with a knife through her heart, or was she the one who bled out from numerous cuts soon after? Even Cerberus couldn't tell anymore. What she did know however, was that neither she nor the bodies were disappearing like they should when duplicates died or when Anita herself was knocked unconscious.
The implications of what that meant sent Cerberus into a panic and the camera dropped from her hands, her screams the last thing heard in the stream before it was shut down by content moderation.
Officially, Cerberus was placed on a "mandatory vacation" by Starlight Productions, management apologizing profusely on her behalf for violating the website's content guidelines. In truth, the indefinite vacation was their way of getting rid of the liability and throwing this incident under the rug. Without the constant churn of content Cerberus used to provide, she fell out of the news and the algorithm, eventually relegated to nothing but an internet horror story shared around forums and messaging apps, another tragic example of how dangerous and lacking in quality control SynTech's products could be.
Cerberus would resign from the company during the day of her career's anniversary when it became clear management wanted her to leave of her own volition instead of having to take the flak for firing her. Still, it wasn't like she could just leave. Cerberus was an investment that had yet to pay off, and since she was the one breaking the terms of her contract with the company, Cerberus would have to buy the brand from Starlight Productions and seeing as she didn't have the lump sum to do so on account of not earning any money during her "mandatory vacation", she would simply have to find other means to do so.
Starlight Production was, of course, far from cruel! As a show of generosity and acknowledgement of their brief history together, Cerberus was allowed to leave on the condition that they would receive a cut to any and all future earnings until her debt to them was cleared.
Seeing no alternative, Cerberus accepted and left the company with a mountain of debt to her name. Initially, she wondered if she should just return to Anita's parents, but would they even recognize her, changed as she was? Could she confidently say they were her parents when she had seen the real Anita die in front of her eyes? The mere idea of it made Cerberus' stomach churn in discomfort, and so she sought employment in the only organization in town that would take her in.
The Freedom League had seen better days, but they were as desperate as she was, and that suit Cerberus just fine.
Qualities:
- Celebrity Attack Dog
- There Can Only Be One
Cost: 45 Points
- Attributes: 33 Points
- Powers: 9 Points
- Specialties: 3 Points
