Deathcry

Background

Powers & Abilities

Deathcry seems to be a trained soldier, but prefers fighting hand-to-hand.

On average, Shi’ar are significantly stronger than humans, and Deathcry’s strength seems enhanced over this baseline by her mutation. Our DC Heroes RPG stats in this article assume that she can lift about 800kg.

Deathcry is also abnormally durable. Being shot by what seemed to be a .303 or 7.62mm round drew blood, but that it did surprised her and the wound was insignificant. Secondary sources have described her as having a nearly invulnerable skin, but this is clearly not the case.

As a Shi’ar, her ears are more resilient than human ones due to their avian structure. Thus she can better endure certain sonic attacks.

Deathcry was also resilient to certain forms of sonics-based hallucinations (such as those used by Angar the Screamer and Screaming Mimi) — but this was more of a limitation of these attack forms, tailored for human brains.

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Red in spur and claw

She either has retractile claws in her fingers, or can morph these to be more talon-like – the art is unclear. There is also a sort of spur along the top of her forearms which can raise in position, and allows her to punch then slash with the spur in one blow. These spurs likely are mutated vestigial attachments for wings.

Deathcry can claw through osmium steel plating. One account states that the claws are produced when she enters a berserker rage, but that doesn’t quite match the material.

Deathcry has excellent reflexes. She is occasionally capable of impressive bursts of speed, acting before anybody can react. She seems capable of running at superhuman speeds, though probably not as fast as most cars. Deathcry can use this velocity to perform superhumanly long jumps.

Other assets, part 1

Deathcry presumably received some sort of translation implant before being sent to Earth, but it might only cover modern English.

She also came to Earth with a light scout spaceship, but it was stripped of most of its equipment and armament to go faster. There’s a small weapons locker aboard with several Shi’ar energy guns, but she almost never used them.

Deathcry appears to have some sort of minor intuitive ability. She confusedly sensed a crashed Shi’ar ship before it was found, and felt that something was very wrong with “Augustine Jones” (a magically disguised Hera).

The information was so vague as to be useless, so in game terms this is negligible. But stories featuring Deathcry might have further incidences of these hazy feelings about threats and discoveries that are at most a few minutes in the future.

Other assets, part 2

The young Shi’ar doesn’t appear to age in a manner similar to human beings. Though emotionally and intellectually aged 15 or 16, she seems to have had several years’ worth of combat experience, and stated that she learned to pilot a star cruiser at age 5.

She seems to be a fully qualified technician, able to repair and maintain most sorts of Shi’ar devices and vehicles, including starships.

As Lifecry, her abilities seemed similar to those of Captain Mar-Vell. In game terms an average between her abilities and the scores of the iconic Mar-Vell should work, given the lack of material.

History (part 1)

Deathcry is the niece of the Imperatrix Lilandra of the Shi’ar. Her name used to be Sharra Neramani. She was presumably named after the goddess Sharra, one of the two Shi’ar tutelar divinities.

The Neramani are the royal family of the Shi’ar, a species of avian aliens ruling a galactic empire. They are a troubled, Shakespearian lot.

One bad egg

Out of four children in the generation preceding Sharra’s, two (Cal’syee and her brother D’Ken) were psychotic murderers. It seems likely that one or both assassinated the ruling Imperatrix to inherit the throne. The youngest sister, Lilandra, was fairly well-adjusted through her reign would be a tragic one.

The third sister was *presumably* Sharra Neramani’s mother. Nothing is known of her – not even a name. She was murdered by Cal’syee. For this crime, the name of Cal’syee Neramani was stricken from the records. She was exiled and given the new name Deathbird.

Furthermore, the Neramani nest seems to have poor genetics, perhaps explaining their propensity toward insanity. Both Cal’syee and Sharra are some sort of genetic throwback mutation with emotional issues, animalistic features and extraordinary powers.

Given Sharra’s youth, one assumes that she was but a baby when her mother was killed. Lilandra also mentioned feeding Sharra when she was but a hatchling.

Deathcry nevertheless stated that she occasionally dreamed of her mother, but that these were closer to nightmares. She didn’t explain why. Perhaps the third Neramani sister was also psychotic and/or mutated.

Fallen from the nest

Sharra was raised by a nursemaid from an unspecified humanoid species, named K’rin. The Shi’ar kid grew very attached to her.

Sharra Neramani was described as a Deathbird supporter, and stated that she had been part of “the rebellion”. Based on her apparent youth, this may mean that she sided with her aunt during the 1991 Warskrulls crisis.

Said Skrulls deposed Deathbird and briefly took over the Imperium by replicating Charles Xavier’s telepathic power. They used Lilandra as a puppet ruler in their mental thrall.

Deathbird and a motley crew of allies, eventually including the X-Men, overthrew the Warskrulls. But Deathbird then abdicated in Lilandra’s favour.

Sharra Neramani also apparently served during the 1992 war between the Kree and the Shi’ar. She was seemingly distinguished for valor. She also made a reference to surviving the Rigellian slave-pits, without further information.

There exist statements that Sharra has had Kree military training, and that she has in-depth knowledge of Kree tactics and military doctrine. One possible scenario is that she was captured by Rigellians when she was a child, bought and trained by the Kree to serve as a sort of janissary , but eventually defected and returned to serve the Shi’ar.

Raptor’s exile

In 1993, a drunken Sharra slew another soldier over a dispute about a lover they did not want to share. While a duel could have been possible (an arin’nn haelar challenge), Neramani completely ignored protocol. This made her act worse than murder – and that was compounded by her royal status.

Just like her aunt she was condemned and her name was erased from the records. She was given the name Deathcry. Given the similarity with “Deathbird”, one assumes that there is a protocol for these things.

By that point, the Shi’ar Empire had won the intergalactic war against the Kree. But absorbing the Kree Empire was straining Shi’ar resources to the breaking point. When Lilandra received intelligence about a Kree plot against the Avengers, she was honour-bound to send a representative to warn and help her Earth allies. But no suitable agent was available.

She had Deathcry summoned, declared her an exile like Deathbird and, despite her Lord Chamberlain’s objection, tasked her with liaising with the Avengers. Deathcry agreed to the mission, and swore that she was loyal to Lilandra.

The Imperatrix hoped that, while exiled on Earth and among the mighty Avengers, her niece might redeem her honour and regain her name.

Avengers assemble

Flying a fast scout ship, Deathcry reached the Avengers on Earth mere minutes before a massive assault by Kree Sentry robots would kill them. The brash Shi’ar agreed to follow Captain America’s command, and she and the Avengers buried the robots under a gigantic landslide.

Deathcry then evacuated the Avengers, who were stranded high up in the Andes.

Thus did the young Shi’ar, despite her grating attitude, became a minor member of the Avengers. She helped save the Earth from the Kree terrorists of Admiral Galen-Kor. She then lived at the Mansion and participated in several missions. She apparently received a stipend from the Maria Stark Foundation.

Sins of the ancestors

During a routine trip to Scotland Deathcry and several Avengers stumbled upon a crashed Shi’ar ship. It had held two figures of Shi’ar history in suspended animation.

One was the legendary military leader of antiquity, Admiral T’Kyll Alabar. The other was the Mephisitoid called “the Butcher” in Shi’ar history books. The ship had been brought to Earth by Galen-Kor’s operatives.

During this encounter, Deathcry learned the truth about a key moment of Shi’ar military history. The dramatic, glorious story she had been taught as a schoolgirl was but propaganda. The reality as told by the leaders who were actually there was far more sordid.

Both ancient leaders were killed as they struggled with 1,200-year-old grudges. Deathcry had to strike the death blow against the Butcher to save the Vision.

My Vision is impaired

Deathcry developed a crush on the Vision, and often hung out with him. When he went missing, she and Crystal (Crystalia Amaquelin) investigated. They discovered that the synthesoid  was being tampered with. He, Ultron and Jocasta had been given a capacity for human emotions but without the means to handle them.

This was the work of the Anti-Vision, who captured both Deathcry and the Vision. The Anti-Vision had been brought from a parallel Earth by Proctor. The Anti-Vision tried to take over the Vision’s body since his had been ruined.

The Vision rejected the Anti-Vision’s programming and saved Deathcry. But he then had to leave to deal with the damage done to his consciousness.

A few weeks later, Henry Gyrich again harassed the Avengers. He accused Deathcry of unauthorised uses of the stargate in Earth’s solar system. Though he interrogated the young Shi’ar at length, he couldn’t pin anything on her. Ultimately had to let her return to Avengers’ Mansion.

Deathcry, girl of destiny

At this point, the mysterious Time Keepers revealed to Immortus that Deathcry was an important chronal divergence point. The young Shi’ar was receiving clandestine messages from the Shi’ar Imperium, sent by her beloved former nursemaid K’rin. The small probes carrying these messages to Earth were the source of unauthorised stargate uses.

Such messages told about the horrors that the Shi’ar Imperium was inflicting upon the Kree. The Shi’ar were forcing the Kree cultures to merge into the Imperial culture as per the central Shi’ar religious tradition.

As she was going native on Earth, Deathcry would eventually find these accounts distressing. She would then convince the Avengers to do something, since they had played an important role in weakening the Kree Empire.

Persuading the Avengers to take on the Shi’ar Imperium would in time lead to the type of timeline that the Time Keeper had tasked Immortus with preventing. Humanity would take to the stars and expand vigorously, learning to use the Destiny Force inherent to mankind to kill everyone else.

Immortus analysed variant timelines. He saw that the Onslaught crisis was but mere months away… provided that the Deathcry-sparked future was delayed. He then came up with a machination that would keep the Avengers and Deathcry busy during this time.

The Crossing, part 1

Immortus’ manipulations soon led to the death of three persons in Avengers’ Mansion in one night. The victims included the Inhuman nanny Marilla, with whom Deathcry had become friends.

Shocked by this, Deathcry also had to leave the Mansion. The Black Widow (Natalia Romanova) considered that the building was now impossible to secure.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), both Captain America and Nick Fury seemingly died in unrelated circumstances. This further threw the Avengers into chaos. Immortus’ machinations then led to the apparent treason and death of Tony Stark, and his replacement by a younger version of himself.

This did delay Deathcry significantly. But after helping foil a new Zodiac conspiracy, she reconstructed a damaged data disk from K’rin. Learning that a data cache had been sent for her on the Moon, she prepped her scout starship. She and Hercules flew to recover the probe, at the edge of the Blue Area.

The Crossing, part 2

However, Lilandra had been warned by an unknown source – quite possibly Immortus. Two elite guards shot down Deathcry’s craft, knocking Hercules unconscious. They then beat Deathcry to within an inch of her life. Lilandra also announced that K’rin had been arrested, imprisoned and would soon be executed.

An exiled Shi’ar warrior-monk, named Za’ken, then came in from nowhere. He healed Deathcry, announced that he had killed the elite guards, and explained that he had a way to return to the Shi’ar empire. There he and Deathcry could perhaps have their exile status lifted.

Deathcry agreed to follow this mysterious man, and Hercules came along. In hindsight, one suspects that Za‘Ken (who was never seen again) was a Space Phantom.

What happened next is unrevealed. Deathcry flew Hercules back to Earth a few months later as he wanted to rejoin the Avengers. By this point the Onslaught events had taken place, and almost all Avengers had disappeared. The Deathcry-sparked timeline would not come to pass.

History (part 2)

When she reappeared in 2007, Deathcry was practically a different person. She was now an uncontrollable berserker living by an antiquated Shi’ar code of warrior’s glory. She also seemed to consider herself a noble. She killed seven Kree in unknown circumstances, and was imprisoned in a max-security Kree brig.

Deathcry was assigned to a special forces squad commanded by Peter Quill (formerly Starlord). This low-tech force was to raid the Kree homeworld, then controlled by the Phalanx, to perform a strategic strike and weaken the occupier.

However, team member Captain Universe (Gabriel Vargas) twice helped Deathcry in combat. She considered this an insult to her capabilities and honour. On the second such offence she rushed Vargas to claw him open. He was forced to kill her in self-defense.

Dead Avengers

Three years later, the actions of the Chaos King — a divine entity preceding existence — knocked unconscious most persons capable of dreaming. The Chaos King then forced Death to flee, allowing the souls of the deceased to come back to Earth.

Several deceased Avengers were thus resurrected among the living, but unconscious, Avengers. Captain Mar-Vell took command. The dead Avengers took to the street to defend other dead people against chaos demons.

Deathcry fought with suicidal abandon. She saw her resurrection as her chance to die gloriously in battle rather than in a fit of pique against an ally. However, Mar-Vell refused to let her rush the enemy to her death. But the great hero was killed again by the Grim Reaper (Eric Williams) as he was getting Deathcry out of the battlefield.

Lifecry

Petrified by shame over this death, Deathcry was contacted by Mar-Vell’s soul. He transmitted Eon’s cosmic awareness to her and told her that it was time for her to reclaim her name as Sharra Neramani. Sharra claimed the role of Protector of the Universe, and altered her exile name to Lifecry.

As those few dead Avengers left evacuated the dead and the unconscious Avengers, Lifecry engaged the chaos demon chasing them. She then took on the Grim Reaper’s ally Nekra (Nekra Sinclair). Nekra defeated Sharra by unleashing the hatred within her soul, but was left critically wounded by this manoeuvre.

The delaying actions of Sharra and her friend Vision allowed the Swordsman (Jacques Duquesne) and Yellowjacket (Rita DeMara) to complete the evacuation.

Both Nekra and Sharra disappeared as the building they were in exploded. Neither has resurfaced as of this writing.

Description

Deathcry looks like an athletic, muscular Shi’ar female. However, her skin and feather tones are unique. She also has small, feline-like fangs and possibly retractile claws.

There is also something unusual about the feathers along the lower back of her head. That allows her to have a sort of smooth queue resembling a feline tail. Perhaps it’s down feathers that she keeps rolled together using the equivalent of hair gel.

Even the feathers on top and around her head look more like hair than normal Shi’ar feathers do. But she once called a human “hairy one”, so it’s presumably still feathers. In some lightings these feather can look dark blue instead of dark purple.

Likewise, though her eyes often look solid white, there are actually pale yellow irises with small pupils.

Deathcry has tattoos over her face and body, which are presumably permanent warpaint. When on active duty she wore her signature… mmmm… partial armour, but off-duty she came to enjoy wearing American clothing from various brands targeting teenage girls.

As Lifecry, Sharra’s face was replaced by the iconic Captain Marvel starfield. She also tended to speak like Captain Marvel used to.

Personality

Deathcry was originally brash, smug and arrogant – and got on everybody’s nerves. She seemed to only believe in force and in her barbaric warrior’s honour. Like many Shi’ar, she considered that she was superior to humans in every respect, and that their technology was pitiful.

It was partially an act. Though Deathcry was fully capable of handling a war zone and to behave as a warrior, she longed for affection and belonging like her nursemaid used to give her.

After a period of homesickness, she enjoyed being a part of the Avengers’ extended, quasi-familial structure. This sense of belonging made her drop the attitude by several notches.

It soon became evident that, despite her military career, Deathcry was in human terms about 15 or 16. During her stay on Earth she mostly learned about things likely to catch the interest of an active 16-year old girl, such as the trendy nightlife in New York City or shopping?

She also liked taking care of children (especially Luna) and did study the Avengers’ files and procedures. She was visibly relieved to drop out of warrior mode and just have a life.

He may be a synthetic, but he’s not stupid

Deathcry had a thing for the Vision (“Victor Shade”). During her teenaged years in the Shi’ar Empire, synthesoids were normally built to provide sexual services. She originally approached him as such. She was disappointed that it wasn’t the Vision’s case. But Deathcry remained intrigued and eventually developed a crush on him.

She also seemed to be a good friend of Crystal, and of Jarvis. After the Vision had to leave, she grew close to Hercules.

Originally Deathcry couldn’t understand some dated or uncommon expressions such as “the cat’s pajamas” or “puppy love”, as those were rendered literally by her (hypothetical) translation implant.

Her speech also included numerous references to the two main Shi’ar gods (Sharra and Krythri), and the real or imagined habits of the main alien species, to make herself sound worldly.

She gradually came to talk like most 16-year-old New Yorkers, though. Deathcry copiednumerous teenage girl mannerisms and turns of phrase. Her room at the Mansion also quickly became a typical American teenage girl room. She thus was the proud owner of several Bamf plushies.

Later evolutions

In 2007 she had become a psychologically rigid berserker, only craving personal glory in battle.

In 2011 she had moved closer to her persona back when she arrived on Earth. She was haughty, glory-seeking warrior acting contemptuous toward humans and pining for battle.

She did state that she had been looking all of her life for peace, though. This was presumably meant to occur after a glorious death in battle. Much of her attitude seemed to be overcompensating for having died wrong.

After receiving cosmic awareness, she sounded surprisingly like Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell).

Quotes

“By the M’Krann, are you mad ?”

“Sharra’s bloody claws !”

“Maybe if you’d stop prancing around here like you were a Skrull pleasure maid, we could think of a plan of escape !”

“Hold, man of the Kree !”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Primarily Avengers comics (Marvel Universe).

Helper(s): Darci, Gareth Lewis, Pufnstuff.

Writeup completed on the 8^th of January, 2014.