"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology. Insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from vaporware."
Name: The Goblin Emperor (aka the Goblin Queen, the Green Mask, the Faerie Menace)
Origin:
The Goblin Emperor was a distinctive part of the "first wave" of powers in 2001, engaging on a crime spree around Europe and then New York before the rising stakes of power conflict and the rise in their own power level made clear to them both how unnecessary direct action was for their ends and how dangerous superpower conflict was. Since then he has reinvented himself as the roguish patron to a far-flung demimonde of hipsters, glitterati, hedge magicians, fey warlocks, hacker collectives, secretive military units, corporate research labs, boyfriends, girlfriends, filmmakers, drug dealers, and the occasional academic.
Appearance:
The Goblin Emperor was once Hando Neuvonen, an Estonian college student of a fairly unremarkable if stocky and smirking appearance. At some point early in their rise they began changing their appearance often, and using a polygonal green mask as their calling card instead. The mask includes something they refer to as a "cryptographic basilisk;" no matter that the mask itself takes different shapes and might appear on any number of different bodies, anyone who has met the Goblin Emperor before can tell the difference between the real mask and an imitation at the level of gut instinct.
Underneath or without the mask, the Faerie Menace now favors pretty, lanky, somewhat androgynous appearances, many of which unsubtly echo a handful of celebrity touchstones: David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, Jodie Foster, Keanu Reeves. They often wear the mask even when socializing, but even without the array of fey charms around their person is usually distinctive.
Personality:
Goblin is irreverent, ironic, hedonistic, and yet in his own rumpled way quite grandiose; an extremely Gen X superpower (they turned 30 this year). A tendency to oppositional antagonism (both light-hearted and not) has been mostly sanded down as negotiations with governments and rivals become a regular activity but it still comes out sometimes when they're upset or dealing with mortals.
"Showman" and "bargainer" have proven much more suited to his personality than bank robber or street fighter did; he gets in the media a lot even by superpower standards and genuinely enjoys the negotiations with his various clients and students.
It is a little anachronistic to use they pronouns this way at all, frankly, and I don't think he is particularly invested in them, but sometimes refers to "they" in the third person when talking about their self and have memed the usage into understandable parlance.
Agenda:
14 - Survive.
13 - Serve the terms of their bargain with the fae. (specific, secret)
12 - Serve the terms of their bargain with the fae. (specific, secret)
10 - Fill the Mycelial Network with glamour, excitement, entertainment, and good company.
9 - Protect the Mycelial Network and its prosperity.
8 - Superpowers should abide by their bargains.
6 - Estonia deserves nice things.
4 - Old world governments should be humbled.
2 - Look cool.
Powers:
Goblin is, quite directly, a Jacky Magus figure whose powers are widespread, instrumental, and inclusive of an extensive web of proxies using them on his behalf, and with an aesthetic borrowing heavily from the thieves in DIE where the fey and tron/cyberpunk are two sides of the same coin.
Basically all of it requires a material focus and preparation, though he prepares for a lot of contingencies. Most notable is his connection to an ambiguous other realm he calls faerie, and a web of liminal spaces between here and there he calls the Mycelial Network -- step through the mushroom circle and into one of his neverwheres, stuffed with cool people and good highs and the chance to maybe get some of his magic. Part hidden city, part maze of faerie groves, part teleportation network, part supervillain's lair, part Krakoa; above all, a place to find a good party at any given time.
Moving in and out of the Network quickly and unpredictably, an infamous glider that shoots out blaster bolts, the green mask, semi-illusionary "glamours," psychedelic "flash-bombs," human shapeshifting, low to mid level super-physicality, and strange fey drones delivering or operating the others are the most well-known and common manifestations.
And she has a lot of students and clients who have one or two tricks of their own after making a bargain that obliges them to work on her behalf.
How much is magic and how much is hypertech, and what other day may or may not exist, is still quite ambiguous and she seems to like it that way.
Second Strike:
watch this space i just gotta post, man
