Voodoo

Dominique Simone as Priscilla Kitaen

Name: Priscilla Kitaen Codename: Voodoo Faction: The Guardians (defunct?) Position: The Seer Age: 22 Hometown: Baton Rouge, Louisiana Gender: Female Height: 5' 11" Build: Vavoom Skin: Mocha-colored Hair: Raven black, very long, full and curly Eyes: Purple

Details

Background

Some stories are difficult for defining the right starting point. This one seems like one of those.

It could begin with vast cosmic entities, Celestials, visiting a mudball that would someday be called Earth, choosing to experiment upon the monkey creatures evolving there, creating the Eternals and Deviants and laying the seeds for the future of mutantcy and metahumans.

It could begin with the approach of the Kree, already involved in a galactic war against the Skrulls, choosing to follow the prior example of the Celestials in their experimentation, creating the Inhumans to be powered soldiers in that war and then losing control of those they sought to enslave, and their own advanced installation.

It could begin far from what would be called Earth, when a sect of the Skrulls chose to split from their people and travel the vast void of space to find a new home and seek the power to overcome their own people, as well as their long-time enemies in the Kree empire. That sect of onetime Skrulls, Celestial-altered Deviants as they were, would take up the derogatory name given them as a badge of pride and become the Dire Wraiths. They would settle upon a planet in a dark nebula orbiting a black sun, and it would become the key to their magical as well as technological evolution.

But the best place to begin this particular story is likely the point, hundreds of years ago, when a group of Inhuman guardians, watching over Atillan against the ever-growing spread of humanity, encountered something not at all human hiding amongst them: a Dire Wraith. Their dangerous enemy did not last long under questioning, and certainly did not willingly divulge much, but they learned enough to be concerned: a race of magic-using master shapeshifters had infiltrated Earth, and had begun manipulating humanity towards their own ends, including searching for supposed Kree-bred super soldiers and technology there which might serve their ends, or endanger it.

To avoid panic, the circle of those who knew was kept small. One of the Inhumans, gifted with a limited prescience, delivered a series of prophecies on the matter, and the guardians who had first encountered the dire wraith were tasked with leaving Atilan, exploring Earth and seeking out the dire wraiths to eliminate their threat. They were ordered to keep their fight secret, to avoid informing or panicking the humans at all costs. And so it began.

These guardians continued their quiet war for generations. Given a precious collection of Terrigen crystals and guided by the prophecies, they would at times seek out one of the dormant and unknowing humans with the Inhuman gene, engineer their exposure and Terrigenesis, and recruit the survivors into their war, replenishing their ranks. And whenever, wherever they might find dire wraiths, they would seek out the means and methods to battle them and destroy them while leaving no witnesses able to truly describe what had happened or how.

Our story picks up jus shy of two dozen years ago, when the latest (at that time) iteration of those Guardians watched a known dormant Inhuman, who happened to also be a key Naval Intelligence officer serving in Louisiana, fell in love with an amazingly beautiful schoolteacher. That naval officer could not know what the Guardians suspected, based upon investigating another of their guiding prophecies: that the schoolteacher was in fact a dire wraith operative, getting close to the officer to gain access to his intelligence. Normally, the guardians would have killed the wraith and left the man to mourn; but their prophecy, vague as it was, indicated that they must wait. And so wait they did, watching even as the two were married, and even had a child.

It wasn't until the child, a girl named Priscilla, was five years old that the guardians took action. In one night that girl's entire life changed forever, her world, her family disappearing in a terrible fire. Yet the girl survived, and despite being a mixed-race child in the deep South, she thrived - after a fashion. Raised in the foster care system, she moved from home to home, always striving to do her best. But as a poor, unloved and unwanted child of mixed race with no family 'from the wrong side of the tracks', there was a limit to how well she could thrive. Schooling was hard, while - despite her disadvantages - social situations were easy for her. She was always vivacious, friendly, a magnet to her peers. A gifted young athlete, she excelled in dance, a fateful talent that would shape her future. As she matured into a gorgeous teen with few prospects, facing the approaching end of care as a ward of the state and avoiding the worst of what could befall such a lovely young woman in her circumstances, she struck out on her own to use her obvious talents of beauty, charm and dancing skill to make her way in the world.

And that is where her story intersects once more with the guardians. They had always kept tabs on the child of that fateful union, never interfering but rarely too far away. And as the last elements of this particular prophecy seemed to fall into place, so did their plans, watching the secretly underage dancer work her way up in the performing circuit, waiting for their opportunity. Yet Fate intervened once more, and events rushed ahead nearly out of their control, as a dire wraith agent entered the club where the girl was working. When they then noticed the girl's behavior change, all at once confused and afraid of the stranger, they had to act. The club was consumed in another terrible fire, though many of the patrons and staff successfully escaped the furious battle that erupted. And no one asked where one particular dancer had gone; all simply assumed she had been slain in the fire.

Swept away by the guardians, Priscilla was actively recruited. They explained - slanted in their own way - their mission and purpose, and offered a girl who had no one and nowhere a chance to belong, a chance to be important and special. She leapt at the chance, never really considering the possibility that terrigenesis could kill her. But it did not, and she emerged as the prophesy had foretold she might: a child born of dormant seed and vile betrayer shall dance through the Mists and emerge with the Sight, to See and hunt the enemy of many faces.

Priscilla trained with the guardians extensively, and became a warrior in their cause. Her ability to See the dire wraiths for what they were regardless of their forms proved key, not only in battle but in intelligence gathering. And meanwhile she built herself up to become a respected member of their team, capable in her own right, while also finding the sense of belonging and purpose she had never found in her life before her chrysalis.

After two and a half years, all of that fell apart for Priscilla again. An operation in eastern Europe went sideways quite badly, the site exploding quite spectacularly. Priscilla managed to resiliently crawl out of the mess, recover and heal. But she lost all contact with her team. Her attempts to reestablish contact failed. She has tried to have faith that they are still alive out there, somewhere. But she has to go on with life without them.

So Priscilla has returned to the states, using the training and resources they gave her access to as she resumes her old life as an exotic dancer. Yet this time that is not her life, only her cover. She has not abandoned her mission, her calling. But without their stash of crystals, she cannot recruit others as she was herself recruited. And without the book of prophesies she can rely only on herself until she can reconnect with her team. If she can.

So the hunt continues.

Powers

• The Sight: Pris can see the face and form of a possessing entity within a possessed body, including those being controlled by a spirit, mind control, or magic. Pris is even able to see the truth through video and still images. Pris can usually tell something is 'not quite right' with someone on sight at a glance; divining the truth of what is going on - seeing the true image of an active controller takes seconds more of concentration and effort. All of this requires visual acuity for detail; with the naked eye this is a hundred feet or so; with a telescopic sight or binoculars this could be as far as a mile or more.

• Empathy: Pris is constantly aware of the feelings of others around her, both good and bad. She can pick up the emotions of others in a range of about one hundred feet. Exceptionally strong feelings may reach out to her from as far as two or three times that range. Pris' empathy makes her a natural 'people person' and a gifted performer; it also makes her a natural lie detector except for those devoid of emotions. However, this ability can be blocked by magic or psionic abilities.

• Attraction: A relatively minor effect but usually ongoing and largely automatic is an empathic projection around Pris which tends to make her enticing and attractive to those around her, if they are capable of being attracted to a woman. This is not a compulsion; and anyone is capable of resisting this suggestion.

• Telepathy: Pris emerged from her chrysalis with powerful telepathic abilities, and she has spent a lot of time since then training to understand and control them. Among these telepathic abilities are:
  • She is able to block out the thoughts of those around her to keep her own mind clear
  • Hear thoughts of what others are thinking
  • Project her thoughts into others, including networking up to 1 dozen minds to communicate
  • Alter perceptions of her target
  • Enhance psionic protection of another person's mind
  • Delve into another's memories

Anything beyond communication requires increasing levels of concentration which can include using her bodies own energy to provide her power to fuel these abilities which can rapidly lead to exhaustion. She cannot reach a mind more than 300 miles away with the effect decreasing the further away from herself the target is.

• Exorcism: Pris has a powerful ability to exorcise controlling thoughts or entities possessing or controlling another. The most significant limitation to this ability is that at least one or the other - the 'host' or the possessor - must be willing to be freed. If either party does not wish to be freed then the ability will not work. . Pris ability with empathy makes this more difficult for her and it is easier when she can maintain physical contact. The experience is painful, disorienting and exhausting and leaves all three vulnerable afterwards for a short time.

• Hybrid Physiology: Priscillas alien heritage grants her a physiology with ability beyond human, making her a good bit stronger, faster, more agile and more resilient than a humans.
  • Strength: Able to lift 400 lbs and deliver blows with 1 ton of force.
    
  • Speed: Able to run 60mph for 10m or 30 mph for 4 hours.
    
  • Agility: Dodge thrown weapons or bullets as long as she is aware of them.
    
  • Stamina: Maintain combat level exertion for 1 hour or high athletic effort up to 6 hours.
    
• Shapechanging: Pris is able to change her shape from minor changes such as skin color or markings (natural or tattoos) to her outwardly apparent sex or other features. She has limited ability to add claws, chitinous armor, or gliding wings but it is far more difficult for her to maintain these additional changes rather than the smaller and she can only maintain them for up to 30 minutes. While she can add to or diminish her height or appearance or weight, she will always maintain the same mass.

• Healing Factor: As a dire wraith, her body is constantly regenerating itself to some degree. Utilizing this with her shapechanging ability she can heal faster at will, provided she is conscious. She can will her body to repair itself in almost any fashion, though doing so requires energy and biological fuel. Small wounds such as impact injuries or minor damage can be healed in seconds. More invasive wounds will take longer and take more energy/effort to heal. Due to this, she has an increased resistance to toxins, but is not immune.

• Magic-Sense: Based on her dire wraith heritage, Pris can sometimes feel magical effects, or magical power in objects or other people. She cannot really tell what that power might be capable of doing, only the sense of its presence as 'not right'.

Skills

• Languages: Pris is naturally multilingual, raised speaking English, French and Creole. She has since learned several other languages, mostly from prolonged telepathic contact with those native to those languages, including Spanish, Russian, Manadarin, Kree, Skrull, Greek, Syrian and Japanese.

• Dancing: Pris is an exceptionally skilled and talented dancer, from jazz and tap to ballroom and swing, ballet and club dancing. She has parlayed that skill, talent and experience into a profession as a headliner-quality exotic dancer, and she has fallen back on that line of work more than once.

• People: Pris is a really gifted people person. She understands how people think, how they feel, how they will react. She has a great talent for both psychology and social dynamics which are bolstered by her empathic and telepathic abilities.

• Athletics: Pris has always been somewhat athletic. Since discovering her heritage and her training she has maintained extensive athletic efforts; running, swimming, various weight training, stretching and isometrics.

• Combat Training: Pris has been extensively trained by the best of the best of the guardians who recruited her. This included extensive martial arts training, various melee weapons, and training with energy- and slug-launching weapons. She has put that training to use repeatedly, and has proven quite talented with tactics, strategy and guerilla warfare methods.

• Stealth: Part and parcel of Pris' guardian training is stealth: how to move quietly in a variety of environments, how to adapt to the visuals of various environments to pass unseen. She's not necessarily a super ninja, but she's pretty good at moving unnoticed, given a chance. She also knows how to engage another in combat while maintaining quiet, subtlety, and leaving as little evidence as possible.

• Driving: Pris has however had a moderate bit of training from former teammates in handling a car, passenger truck, or motorcycle in less than ideal conditions or stressful situations. Most often, she just proves herself to be a daringly competent motorcyclist.

• Piloting: Priss still has exceptional reflexes and coordination, and she has been trained how to pilot a few exceptional aircraft - and even a spacecraft - used by the guardians. She's a decent pilot with a good bit of talent. Her experience includes jet-propelled and prop-driven planes, helicopters, hoverbikes and a small non-standard attack fighter.

Advantages

• Resources: She has access to 12 safehouses spread across the east coast of the United States and mainland Europe, ranging from small defunct two-story auto garages to small warehouses to apartments. Most have the basics - power, running water, etc. - and a couple have high-end near-military grade subtle security embedded, like panic rooms and security sensor networks. She also has access to several different accounts in various countries, comprising approximately 4 million dollars in total funds.

• Gear: She has a 4 sets of military-grade body armor, two dozen various military-grade firearms, and 8 high-grade melee weapons consisting of 4 swords and 4 daggers of higher durability and make than standard steel. There is a limited cache of explosives consisting of 9 grenades, evenly split between frag, stun and incendiary as well as two semtex satchel charges; and two breaching charges.

• Motorcycle / Hoverbike: Pris has a specially modified motorcycle.The motorcycle can operate as a completely normal high-end sport motorcycle capable of speeds up to 200mph but its special nature is an onboard antigravity engine and propulsion system, enabling the bike to fly; it can achieve speeds up to 300 hundred miles per hour. Because it does not have a closed cabin, she must keep it under 20,000 feet.

Flaws

• Memorable: As beneficial as it can be to be exceptionally beautiful and memorable, it isn't always a great thing. Pris finds it very difficult to go low-key or pass unnoticed unless she can literally stay out of sight. People tend to notice, and remember, her.

• Hybrid Physiology: Priss isn't baseline human, much as she looks it. She isn't purely Inhuman or dire wraith either. She is instead a hybrid, a mixed-up unique blend of all three. It means she is not nearly as resistant to alien toxins and pathogens as a dire wraith would be. It also means that if she were seriously hurt in some way that her regeneration could not take care of the problem, it is quite likely she would need very specialized medical attention to her specific DNA. It also means that Pris just doesn't entirely belong and she often has trouble because none of the three can entirely believe in or trust her.

• Psychic Loudness: Pris is a great deal more powerful psionically than her skill level alone. As such, when she uses her powers, she uses a great deal more psionic energy than a more skilled, better-trained user would, and that 'makes a lot of noise' in a psionic sense. Others with a sense for such energies can pick her up very easily, as if she is firing off the telepathic equivalent of an air raid siren.

• Overwhelmed Empathy: Pris' empathic talents can be quite a blessing, but they can also be a bit of a curse. She is as subject to feeling others' negative emotions as they are, and potentially overwhelmed by them. This can be especially so with others' pain and suffering. In addition, large crowds with focused powerful emotions can overwhelm her, even sweep her away into the same emotional state.

• Forgeries and Cover Identities: Pris' original legal identity has been declared dead, believed burned to death in the fire that consumed the club where she worked. She has no other legal identity, only a collection of forged documents and cover identities arranged by the guardians. She could potentially be discovered in any number of different ways; even a traffic stop could be a problem if the cops detect her forged ID. So she really cannot afford to come to the notice of the authorities, which requires she be willing to slip beneath the radar and not make waves except when absolutely necessary, and be willing to accept having to run afterwards.

• Weirdness Magnet: Pris tends to just attract weirdness. An alien or interdimensional being is more likely to appear near her than somewhere else; more likely to be drawn towards her than in a different direction unless something else is going on; etc. Delicate machinery and technology is likely to malfunction just when she needs it to work. Weird crap just always seems to happen around Pris, and often at the worst and most inconvenient times.

Contacts

• Contact 1: Something about them.
• Contact 2: Something about them.

Gallery

Logs

2019-09-05 - Sarah Go Boom
Summary: Mari and Priscilla call for Sarah Black as a mystic expert, and encounter Something Else...
(cib hank-mccoy hostile-takeover jimmy-baxter mari-mccabe plot priscilla-kitaen sarah-black)

2019-09-02 - Monsters, Ninjas and a Sun at 3am
Summary: Eve encounters a monster and calls for help from Sunny and Voodoo Log Info: Storyteller:...
(eve plot priscilla-kitaen sunny voodoo)

2019-08-29 - A Magical Connection
Summary: Tommy visits the Obsidian Club, and is rather stricken by their headlining dancer. Log...
(priscilla-kitaen social tommy-wisdom)

2019-08-28 - Rational solutions to an elliptic curve.
Summary: Priscilla Kitaen stops a fight from breaking out on the subway. Then kindly offers to help...
(nadia-van-dyne priscilla-kitaen social)

2019-08-25 - Revengeance
Summary: Whitestar at last has located Starfire and the fact she's at a university sponsored welcome...
(jimmy-baxter johnny-storm koriandr mary-jane peter-parker plot priscilla-kitaen susan-richards whitestar)

2019-08-14 - Queens of Brass Poles and Concrete Jungles
Summary: Emma and Sharon encounter Priscilla while shopping. Log Info: Storyteller: None Date:...
(catseye emma-frost priscilla-kitaen social)

2019-08-11 - Zappy Bats And Misunderstandings
Summary: Mayhem ensues at the Baxter Building when a Negative Zone portal unexpectedly opens on a...
(johnny-storm plot priscilla-kitaen reed-richards susan-richards)

2019-08-11 - Voodoo Origins
Summary: Priscilla opens up to Jimmy about her past and her worries. Log Info: Storyteller: None...
(jimmy-baxter priscilla-kitaen social)

2019-08-06 - Its Pris
Summary: Damian looks for someone in the Obsidian Club. He comes face to face with Voodoo. Log Info:...
(damian-wayne priscilla-kitaen social)

2019-08-05 - Jazz Festival in Blue
Summary: Two music lovers enjoy quality music in Central Park and each others' company. The magic...
(beast hank-mccoy priscilla-kitaen social voodoo)

2019-08-04 - Obsidian Introductions
Summary: Jimmy, Darcy, and Laynia take Priscilla's invitation to the Obsidian. Log Info:...
(darcy-lewis jimmy-baxter laynia-petrovna priscilla-kitaen social)

2019-08-03 - At Face Value
Summary: Laynia foils a theft, and meets Jimmy and Priscilla, who take her joking confessions as...
(jimmy-baxter laynia-petrovna priscilla-kitaen social)

2019-07-19 - Afterparty
Summary: Mari and Voodoo discuss the fight. Log Info: Storyteller: None Date: Fri Jul 19 01:09:40...
(hostile-takeover jimmy-baxter mari-mccabe plot priscilla-kitaen)

2019-07-18 - Fashion Show Turns Violent
Summary: A brawl breaks out on the catwalk. Log Info: Storyteller: jimmy-baxter Date: Wed Jul 18...
(hostile-takeover jimmy-baxter mari-mccabe plot priscilla-kitaen)

2019-07-14 - Comparing Notes
Summary: Jimmy and Priscilla discuss the attack and investigation. Log Info: Storyteller: None Date:...
(hostile-takeover jimmy-baxter plot priscilla-kitaen social)

2019-07-11 - Angry Hour at the Obsidian
Summary: A curse of rage starts a big fight in the Obsidian Club. Priscilla, Daredevil, Eve, and...
(eve hostile-takeover jimmy-baxter matt-murdock plot priscilla-kitaen)

2019-07-05 - Pool and Onion Rings
Summary: Pris and Kate meet up at a bar in upstate New york. They get to talking about mutal...
(kate-kane priscilla-kitaen social)

2019-06-18 - Secrets of Dance
Summary: Kori is improving at her new job, and decides to catch up with the friend who got her the...
(koriandr priscilla-kitaen social)

2019-06-18 - Lady's Night?
Summary: At the end of a long night partying, Ren ends up at Priscilla's club. Log Info:...
(priscilla-kitaen ren-kimura social)

2019-06-15 - Rise of the Freakshow
Summary: A random convergence of Rose, Priscilla, Piotr Isis encounter a mad mutant during first...
(cib hank-mccoy isis-marik mild-squick piotr-rasputin plot priscilla-kitaen rose-wilson)

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