Scandal

Aline Mineiro as Scandal Savage

Name: Scandal Savage Codename: Scandal Faction: Thunderbolts Position: Second longest-standing recruit Age: 87 Hometown: Acre Province, Amazon Basin, Brazil Gender: Female Height: 5'9" Build: Toned curves Skin: Olive Hair: Black (usually dyed) Eyes: Green

Details

Background

Scandal's father is an immortal warlord, who dreams of ending the world and claims to be so ancient that he inspired the legend of Cain. Her mother, a native of Brazil's most remote region, was the one woman he ever loved and married… though being who he is, he fell for her precisely because she fought so hard against his conquest of her village. Scandal believes that she inherited her superhuman abilities from her father, but often longs to be more like her mother.

Over the past 75 years, she has variously studied under, fled from, and fought her father. He was responsible for her spending nine years in one of Stalin's Gulags (as an "educational experience"), while she freely chose the technological and financial studies that have been a key part of her life since then. Her devotion to the arts of war is less happily embraced, being something she thinks is 'in her blood' and often tries to hold in check.

After being blackmailed into an extensive career in illicit black ops - first as 'middle management' in charge of money, planning and technical support, and then increasingly often as an active field agent - she is now a 'volunteer' with the Thunderbolts, trading her services for a clean slate. She has deep doubts about both the nobility of the powers that be and of those with whom she might have to work, but her aberrant slant on morality might well help her to find a new family among the other misfits in the programme. She has also signed up as a part-time student at NYU: she hopes to explore some of her father's interests (in conflict and social organisation) in a manner that doesn't involve waging war or becoming an immortal god-king. After all, she thinks that the concept of "life-long learning" might be vital for her to embrace; that it might also serve as proof of a desire for "rehabilitation" is a welcome bonus.

Powers

• Durability: Sharp things slice, bullets puncture, bones can break… but Scandal doesn't fall apart remotely so readily as a human should. A burst from a 50-cal machine gun is a viable means of (temporarily) subduing her.
• Endurance: Scandal can maintain high levels of activity for hours at a time, even while regenerating minor injuries. Mentally, she's even more persistent - though she has little additional resistance to mind-affecting superpowers.
• Long Life: In spite of her youthful appearance, Scandal's closing in on her first century. She does not yet know if she actually has a finite lifespan, or if she's truly ageless.
• Magical Potential: She possesses an almost-entirely latent talent for the mystic arts. Thus far, she has only demonstrated an ability to deal amicably with magical creatures, and an aptitude for responding to oneiromancy: she can hold wholly-lucid conversations and defend her mind when contacted in her dreams.
• Regeneration: ”Hate. Regrowing. Organs” sums up Scandal's views on this aspect of her talents. What a top-end regenerator might heal in seconds she'll restore within minutes; what would take him minutes might take her hours. It's unclear if it is possible to truly kill Scandal, or if her regenerative abilities will always bring her back at some point: she has repeatedly regrown vital organs and limbs.
• Strength: When properly braced, Scandal could perhaps lift a ton. Most visibly, this lets her launch straight into her acrobatic maneuvers from rest.

Skills

• Acrobatics: Scandal has a talent for flipping and tumbling her way through combat, favouring an aggressively mobile style that takes advantage of her strength to keep her moving in unpredictable directions. She's also perfectly capable of performing such graceful maneuvers without attacking anyone en route.
• Bikes, Planes, and…: In her long life, Scandal has picked up considerable skill with most forms of transport. She can ride a motorcycle at speed over rough terrain in inclement weather, gallop a horse cross-country, perform aerial insertions into hostile territory, and once even piloted a super-villain's personal submersible.
• Computers and Technology: Scandal is an exceptional hacker, confident of tackling the security of even a major corporation's computers (though she prefers to do so on-site). Similarly, teams she has worked with have relied upon her to assess and counter technological traps and devices. Such abilities are, however, wholly mundane in scope: she's neither a technopath nor a gadgeteering genius.
• Finance and Business: Formerly the 'middle management' for a team of off-the-books operatives and later a fixer of covert contracts, Scandal has the skills required to create lavish (legitimate) investment portfolios and to secretly channel money to and from individuals and groups of varying levels of legality. She also has a roster of contacts suitable for both finding work and conducting illicit transactions.
• Languages: Scandal was raised to speak her mother's tribal language and (Brazilian) Portuguese as her native tongues. Since then, she has added (at least) Czech, English, French, Latin, Russian, Spanish and Thai.
• Tactics & Command: Though she has planned and led successful metahuman operations, Scandal tends to be professionally competent rather than inspired - albeit with occasional flashes of real creativity when things fall apart in the field.
• Violence: With her Lamentation Blades, Scandal's comparable to some of the most renowned blademasters of her day. Without them, she's still exceptionally capable, especially in dirty fighting and improvisation: she once took down a team of agents while armed only with her shoes. This is again wholly mundane: she has no innate ability to understand strange new devices or unique weapons, simply natural talent and decades of exposure to techniques and styles.

Advantages

• Lamentation Blades: A childhood gift from her father, these artefacts are thousands of years old and seem to be unique. They take the form of silvery metal bracers covering her forearms and the back of each hand, from which retractable blades spring out as needed: either two long spurs (primarily used for stabbing), or a trio of shorter and thicker blades around the wearer's fist.
• Rich, but not Super-Rich: Before joining the Thunderbolts, Scandal's fees per job ran well into six figures and she knows how to invest and protect her money. By most standards she's extremely wealthy, though compared to celebrity businessmen she's virtually broke. Much of her reserve is likely to remain untouched for as long as she remains with the Thunderbolts, lest the IRS take an interest.
• Royalty, of a Sort: Mostly, being the daughter of an insane immortal warlord brings Scandal nothing but trouble. But it does have occasional perks: others with similarly unconventional backgrounds tend to regard her as worthy of respect for her bloodline and upbringing, while her father's followers address her as "Princess."
• Supervillain Gear: Scandal's adventures brought her a range of supervillain-developed items, including tailored outfits designed to negate technological surveillance. Her eclectic collection might or might not contain anything of relevance to a given situation (as best works for any particular story); if it does, it will tend to be on a par with advanced spy gear.
• Thunderbolt: Offered a "work for us, play nice, and we'll only sometimes keep you on the Raft" deal, Scandal is now a member of the Thunderbolts. The promise is that if she doesn't cause trouble for the authorities and helps to tidy up their messes, they'll quietly forget about all the reasons they have to lock her up.

Flaws

• Legal and Illegal Misfit: Having spent much of her long life at odds with a host of different organisations, mundane and otherwise, Scandal is on a lot of !&*-lists around the world.
• Misandrist: With the primary influence upon her life having been an immortal psychopath, Scandal's faith in the male sex tends to be fragile. She's often tempted to short-cut straight to expecting the worst.
• Noble Arrogance: Whether it's a matter of relaxing without restraint or an inclination to judge people by her idiosyncratic code of noble vs ignoble actions, Scandal is prone to acting without regard for the wishes of local powers-that-be. At times, this can lead to things such as the freeing of slaves and the defeat of tyrants; it also frequently gets her into trouble with the law. And backing down from even a seemingly-hopeless fight is only to be done in pursuit of a clear goal, or to protect a loved one: cowardice would be ignoble, after all.
• Paternal Problems: As his sole legitimate child Scandal is prone to receiving her father's 'help' and 'education' regardless of her own wishes. This has indubitably developed her strength and skills, but she dreads the next time he comes up with an idea to match 'throw her in a Gulag'. On top of that, some of her father's foes might try to strike at him through her.
• Savage by Name and Nature: Though she usually manages to seem calmly level-headed, Scandal sees herself as split between her beloved mother's influence and the genocidally insane passions of her father. It takes a lot to crack her resolve, but when it breaks, she can be driven to some very dark places indeed. Even without such trauma she often lets her empathy slip: 'out of sight, out of mind' all too often applies when she makes plans.

Contacts

• Alison: Aspiring singer. Friendly and helpful.
• Eve: Quietly amiable Goth; comfortably associates with people of evident power.
• Junko: An hereditary yojimbo; a fellow temporally-misplaced oddity?
• Kori: Honest, she's Maltese. Charmingly eccentric. In need of protection?
• Mera: A lovely redhead even more out-of-place than I am.
• Sarah Rainmaker: Nameless, First Nation, and keen to avoid the police. I think I put my foot in it with her.
• Sunny: Another nameless beauty: strong, fast, and not afraid of firearms.
• Thorn: Who was this underclad whirlwind of trouble?
• Venom: A fellow voluntold Thunderbolt, Mr Brock is also trusted to venture out into the city. Perhaps a kindred spirit?

Timeline

Chiefly for personal reference, though ties that would foster RP are very welcome indeed!

• 1932: October: Following a failed attempt to violently seize control of Brazil's government, an immortal warlord flees to the country's most remote region: Acre province, in the far West of the Amazon. There, he conquers a native village to serve as a hide-out, and finds himself unexpectedly impressed by the resistance of the locals - especially of one young woman, whom he opts to take as his bride.
• 1933: 11th of November: A daughter is born to the couple: she is given the name 'Scandal', seemingly as a private joke by her father, given that none of the locals speak English. She is raised in luxury, albeit of a very isolated kind, with her father and mother providing radically different styles of education.
• 1942: 11th of November: On her ninth birthday, Scandal is forced to run a gauntlet (of club-armed men), having been told that only by reaching the end can she save her mother's life. She fails, but her father presents her with the Lamentation Blades and some advice for a second (and final) attempt: instead of viewing the gauntlet's members as threats to be avoided, she should view them as vermin to be exterminated. Aided by the strange physiology inherited from her father, bloody success follows - and she thereafter starts formal training in her sire's beloved arts of violence.
• 1947: Leaving her remote corner of Brazil for the first time, Scandal is brought to Bohemia (in Czechoslavakia), where her father has an underground network of supporters who believe that he is the subject of ancient prophecies regarding an immortal warrior-king. There, in Soviet-occupied territory, she is treated as royalty and learns just how important her father is to some people in the wider world.
• 1950: 11th of November: Providing another truly memorable birthday for Scandal, her father has her picked up by the NKVD. Taken to one of Stalin's Siberian prison-camps, she spends what might have been expected to be her 'university' years receiving a very unconventional form of higher education. Forging friendship with other unusually-gifted female prisoners, she becomes one of the "Terrors of the Gulag". She also learns a great deal more about her regenerative capabilities and starts to suspect that she shares at least part of her father's resistance to ageing.
• 1960: January: The official closure of the Gulag system results in Scandal regaining her freedom; though he returns the Lamentation Blades to her, she opts thereafter to do all she can to avoid her father and forge her own path. Choosing to embrace modernity, she leaps at her first real chance to live life on her own terms, free of insane dictators' rules.
• 60s onwards: Technological development (especially computing) becomes a field of particular interest… though she remains profoundly arrogant and morally limited in her dealings with other people. As her agelessness becomes increasingly apparent this is only reinforced: long-lasting bonds with mundane humans are dangerous to forge, and she tends to move from city to city and country to country every few years. Only her beloved mother remains a constant and welcome presence in her life; her father primarily tends to intrude via unwelcome meddling out of the blue. Quite consciously, she tries to control and restrict the impulses towards violence that she regards as being 'in her blood', courtesy of her paternal heritage and the culture of the Gulag system. Increasingly, she manages to restrict her criminality to targeted events that serve to support her lifestyle and researches. Combat-training becomes a way to daily burn off steam, rather than an ever-present need.
• 2005: Threats to her aged mother's life are used to blackmail Scandal into helping to set up a black-ops unit of unconventionally-gifted individuals. Initially serving solely as 'middle management', she manages to spend some time handling nothing more bloody than paperwork and investment portfolios for her team - but when a mission goes awry, she is forced to reveal her less genteel capabilities. Thereafter, she works in the field alongside her team, and becomes their technical expert - tackling traps, hacking computer systems, and analysing defences. She also gains new insights into her own capabilities: even the Gulag guards had never used a 50-cal machine gun as a 'suppressive' weapon against her.
• 2019: May: Scandal cuts a deal with the US government to bring an end to their growing interest in detaining her. 'Voluntarily' joining the Thunderbolts, she receives a promise of indemnity in return for helping the USA with some of its superpowered and criminal problems. Permanent residence in the Raft is on hold so long as she behaves herself; indeed, she's encouraged to sign up for formal university study as part of her 'rehabilitation'.

Gallery

Logs

2020-08-09 - Seeking Out Scandals
Summary: So Carol meets Scandal and mistakes might be made. Log Info: Storyteller: None Date: Sun...
(carol-danvers scandal social)

2020-07-19 - Fusion in Subdued Rage
Summary: Pris and Scandal bump into one another again and get reaquainted with music. Log Info:...
(nyu priscilla-kitaen scandal social)

2020-06-19 - Teatime in the DZ
Summary: Ivy and Scandal have a nice cup of tea. Log Info: Storyteller: None Date: Fri Jun 19...
(pamela-isley scandal social)

2020-06-15 - Issues and Incense
Summary: A discussion of issues affecting New York, between a (marginally) reformed ageless...
(eve scandal social)

2020-05-22 - There's More Than One
Summary: Why are Dark Elves raiding a boutique bank? Log Info: Storyteller: None Date: Fri May 22...
(dylan-grey greer-nelson plot scandal wild-hunt zatanna-zatara)

2020-05-21 - Thunderbolt Recruit and Rescue
Summary: An officially-dead vigilante receives a rather unconventional rescue and job-offer Log...
(jane-vasko scandal social thunder)

2020-05-19 - All Natural Coffee, Honest!
Summary: A convenient meeting of the Thunderbolts in the coffee shop Log Info: Storyteller: None...
(pamela-isley scandal social sunny)

2020-05-09 - After The Gore Has Gone
Summary: After a certain Goth called for aid while drenched in monster-gore, Scandal and Eve wind up...
(eve scandal social)

2020-03-30 - Things Got Messy
Summary: A call for aid results in Scandal receiving some gory hints as to quite how unusual Eve...
(eve scandal social)

2020-03-24 - Nothing Wrong With Tea
Summary: A chance meet-up of acquaintances leads to a defence of tea, and an offer to arrange a...
(eve scandal social sunny)

2020-03-05 - Tea and revelations
Summary: Genteel tea-drinking and potent revelations Log Info: Storyteller: None Date: Thu Mar 5...
(eve scandal social)

2020-02-25 - A Preference For Purple
Summary: Scndal and Voodoo run into one another shopping for NYU gear at the campus store. Log Info:...
(priscilla-kitaen scandal social)

2020-01-27 - Rehab and Scones
Summary: Tea, scones, and careful talk of both rehabilitation and mysteries. Log Info: Storyteller:...
(eve scandal social)

2019-12-28 - Mechanical Monstronsities
Summary: Just another day in Central Park Log Info: Storyteller: None Date: Sat Dec 28 22:19:51 2019...
(anya-corazon dylan-grey keiko lydia-dietrich peter-parker rebecca-gadison scandal social thea)

2019-11-30 - Bikes of Future Past
Summary: Mutual appreciation for obscure motorcycles; a meeting of minds Log Info: Storyteller: None...
(posse scandal social)

2019-11-07 - The Subway Part 2
Summary: Scandal investigates the mysterious tunnel. Log Info: Storyteller: n/a Date: 2019-11-07...
(mera scandal social)

2019-10-12 - The Subway
Summary: Mera requests Scandal's assistance in investigating unusual activity. Log Info:...
(mera scandal social)

2019-08-19 - Tentacular Peril
Summary: A Kraken appears on the shores of NYC and gets turned into Calamari by Scandal, Remy and...
(chava-kang plot remy-lebeau scandal)

2019-08-19 - Professional Courtesy
Summary: A mission is discussed and orders are issued. Log Info: Storyteller: None Date: Mon Aug 19...
(able plot scandal thunder)

2019-08-01 - A Library Scandal
Summary: Mera is looking for information at the library and encounters a Scandal. Log Info:...
(mera scandal social)

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