Twilight
(Victoria Delgado)
Context
This character is an original creation. We often call these “homemades” or “homebrewed” – think home cooking or craft beer.
Many of these characters were created to take part in tabletop role-playing game sessions. Others were invented as a creative writing exercise, often as part of a community event.
As to this specific character – I recently found the very first actual campaign character that I ever used for DC. This was back around 4 years ago or so, and she was played for roughly 5 months. I really enjoyed her too.
Here she is at the beginning of her career. I hope that this goes through – it is rather long. I’ve been missing this file for years…
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Background
- Real Name: Victoria Delgado.
- Base Of Operations: Southside City.
- Height: 5ft 4’ Weight: 106 pds. Age: 17.
- Eyes: Dark brown Hair: Black
History
Victoria Isabella Delgado was born at 10:37 AM on June 17, 1976. She’s the second child of Carlos Toledo Delgado and Isabella Maria Delgado. She lead a relatively uneventful life (aside from common childhood mishaps like wandering into the Southside sewer system and being lost for 33 long, wet, scary, and miserable hours) up until shortly after her 11th birthday.
This is when the Invasion started. She was kidnapped by a Thanagarian raiding patrol and turned over to the Dominators.
It was through the experiments that these fiendish manipulators performed on her that she lost her voice. Eventually it was the detonation of the Dominator created Mutagen bomb that triggered her powers.
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After the aliens
She has yet to tangle with any supervillians, but she gained her powers in time to help with the mop up of the invasion. She also secretly provided the military with a layout of the Thanagarian encampment.
Delgado provided an invisible backup on the mission that penetrated the base and rescued prisoners held there. During this mission she delayed a four man Thanagarian wingman squad long enough for the military party to escape with the prisoners. This was mostly done through luck and Hero Points expenditure.
A focal point of Victoria’s life is her family. She has one older sister, three younger brothers and a younger sister. Her family runs the Mexican restaurant El Nopal. Her family provides her with a reason for being a superhero and they pose a massive hindrance.
She is disturbed by the violence that accompanies drug use and is seeking to target drug dealers. She doesn’t want her younger siblings to become involved in gangs either. Yet her family places constant demands on her time that makes finding the time to be a hero difficult.
Victoria attends McIntyre high school and is doing extremely well. The school has a reputation for being a bit rough and not being the best place to get an education. Victoria is proving that it can be done. She is active in the “Adreneline Rush” club, a group that organizes activities like mountaineering, white water rafting, sponsors martial arts meets, etc.
Personality
Victoria is a serious, stern hero who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. She is a thinker and prone to being somewhat overcautious. Much of these traits are counterbalanced by her dedication and willpower.
She is determined to do the right thing – just as soon as she figures out what it is. She is capable of tremendous self discipline and disdains the easiest way out. This shows up in her skills, all of which required a degree of discipline to attain that is lacking in most people, not to mention most teenagers.
She takes a step by step approach to solving problems and prefers for others to take the credit.
Other traits
Her physical mannerisms are fairly obvious. A complete lack of voice capability (beyond a low hiss) has meant that she communicates through a lot of body language. She often uses exaggerated facial features to underscore her sign language. Emotionally she is something of a romantic.
She prefers being called Victoria over Vickie because it sounds more sophisticated and doesn’t remind her of her childhood taunt/nickname “Vickie Dickie”.
She takes out her frustrations through physical activity. It is not uncommon to see her at Jorje’s training center (Gym) pounding a training dummy into the dirt. Spanish Machismo rarely applies to Victoria – she has been known to lose her temper and knock the shit of her tormenters (especially in the last year or so when her fighting skills have developed).
Description
Victoria is almost a ravenhaired spanish beauty. The scarring on her throat definatly detracts from her looks. Her face is plain, but her eyes are stunning. They are large, brown and very expressive.
She is shy and tends to walk with downcast eyes and slightly hunched shoulders. Her shyness is more than counterbalenced by her love of physical activity. She is always active, fretting if forced to be too still for too long. The more she trains in gymnastics and martial arts the more forthright and outgoing her walk becomes – she is straightening her shoulders and looking up more.
She favors dark colored clothing, typically concert t-shirts and dark shorts. Her favorite footwear are snug, low utilatarean boots. She favors loosefitting clothing, unlike her superhero costume.
Her Costume is black with irregular thin white lines running over it to break up the outline. Her mask is similiar to a ski mask, except the material is different (almost being spandex) and it extends down to her shirt, where it clips to the shirt. She doesn’t want her throat scars to show.
Her shirt is a muscle T-shirt, leaving her arms bare. She wears gloves that extend almost to her elbows. The shirt is tightfitting because she would prefer opponents stare at her breasts than knock the crap out of her.
Her pants are tight-fitting and clip to her hard soled moccasin shoes. (She is a pugilist and is trained to kick (even barefooted) in ways that will not hurt her feet.) Her pants have a large pocket on either thigh.
Game Stats — DC Heroes RPG
Tell me more about the game stats
Twilight
A 585 Point Character
| Dex: 07 | Str: 03 | Bod: 04 | Motivation: Responsibility of Power |
| Int: 07 | Wil: 07 | Min: 07 | Occupation: Student |
| Inf: 05 | Aur: 04 | Spi: 05 | Resources {or Wealth}: 002 |
| Init: 021 | HP: 030 |
Powers:
Invisibility: 05, Dispersal: 12, Analytical Smell: 03, Truesight: 04
Bonuses and Limitations:
Invisibility: Affects Sight.
Skills:
Acrobatics: 03, Martial Artist: 05, Artist (Dancer, Writer)*: 05
Advantages:
Area Knowledge: Neighborhood, Luck, Language (Spanish), Scholar (Sign Language).
Connections:
South Side City Police (Low).
Drawbacks:
Age: Young, Serious Physical Restriction (Mute), Secret Identity, Unluck, Attack Vulnerability (Fire and Heat based attack, -1 Column Shift).
Game file
Advantages
Victoria has six advantages – Sharp eye, Luck, Scholar (x2) in Spanish and Sign Language, Area Knowledge of the Spanish and Chinese neighborhoods of Southside city and a low connection with the Southside City police department. My rationale for these advantages is :
Sharp Eye = She is simply very perceptive. Being unable to speak has meant that she cannot warn others of danger or possible accidents so she has cultivated the habit of looking for problems before they develop. This way she can head them off before they become critical. Also she has 4 younger siblings – and babysitting hones the perceptive powers.
Luck = Victoria has luck because when she puts her mind to something it tends to work out for her. This is more than counterbalanced by her streak of unluck – represented by the unluck drawback. In the DC universe Blue Devil also has the Luck advantage and the Unluck drawback.
Scholar = These are the easiest to explain. She grew up in a bilingual household so she can understand/Read/Write both Spanish and English. Since she is mute she has to have a method of communicating and Sign Language is the most common method used by mute people.
Area Knowledge = She has grown up in the Southside spanish community. It borders on the Chinatown district and while there is a lot of friction between the two groups she has wandered the streets of both since she was very young. Part of her knowledge comes from ducking down back alleys and cutting through yards to avoid the bullies that use to torment her when she was younger (and non powered).
Low connection with Southside City police department = This connection is with two cops who patrol the area as a team. Officers Hernado Rodriguez and Steven Wu were assigned to the Chinatown/Little Mexico beat around three years ago. It was felt by the upper brass that assigning mixed teams of ethnic officers would help sooth the tensions between the two neighborhoods.
For the most part the plan was a failure. Kevin and Hernado are the only ethnic pair still assigned to the area. It is doubtful that this will change because they work well together and are very popular in the area (popularity advantage within these neighborhoods). Victoria has become good friends with the pair (and had a crush on Kevin in the past). They often trade information on neighborhood activities. They know that Victoria would like to be a police officer but her disability eliminates this possibility.
Drawbacks
Victoria has five drawbacks; Secret Identity, Serious Physical Restriction (Mute), Age, Unluck and a -1 cs attack vulnerability to Fire/heat based attacks.
Secret Identity = Victoria has a large family and doesn’t want any of them to be hurt. Also her powers are much more effective if others don’t know that she possesses them. Finally, it is a superhero tradition to have a secret Id. Granted, being mute makes her secret id far more precarious than most superheroes, but she compensates by trying harder.
Serious Physical Restriction (Mute) = Simply this, she cannot speak. During the invasion (she was 11 years old) she was captured by a Thanagarian raiding party. They turned her over to the Dominators who used her in several experiments. In one of these she was part of a control group in a vivisection experiment. The dominators were examining the metahuman Thrush (who had sonic powers). Victoria was one of three normal humans whose throats were cut open to examine the human vocal apparatus.
The Dominators removed her vocal cords (in a rather crude manner that resulted in major scarring, making surgery to repair the damage extremely expensive with little chance of success). (Technically speaking the Thanagarians removed her vocal cords. A Thanagarian officer entered the Dominator lab where the Thrush experiments were going on. He was quite irate. To emphasis his point he reached down to where Victoria had her throat cut open, grabbed her vocal cords and yanked them out. The Dominators saved her life and used her recovery rate to compare to the Thrush’s when they yanked his vocal cords out.) She assumes that the Thrush died.
Age = She is 17, lives at home with a large, close-knit family, attends school and has a couple of time consuming hobbies + has to spend some time working in the family restaurant.
Unluck = She is naturally unlucky. Why else would she have been maimed by the dominators, picked on by bullies and have a pronounced tendency toward clumsiness despite being very agile, athletic and gymnastically trained? (Also, when she was created, I plain and simply needed the points to get my vision of her close to reality)
Attack Vulnerability: -1cs to flame/heat = Her strongest power is dispersal which tends to diffuse her molecular structure. Flames and heat add Kinetic energy to things which, with her degree of control makes her body harder to hold together (even when she isn’t using dispersal). Thus fire\heat tends to do a greater degree of damage.(She still gets positive modifiers to her OV/RV for active APs of dispersal.)
Skills
Acrobatics: 03 She is trained in gymnastics which aids her in dodging. Since she is trained on the various bars, poles etc. she can climb fairly well. In addition she has done some rappelling/mountaineering through a school club.
Martial Artist: 05 Victoria is a black belt in Karate and Judo. Martial arts are one of her favorite hobbies and she has participated in a couple of regional competitions. The intensive training required has honed her reaction time to a razors edge, easily making her the fastest student at her school. She sometimes teaches classes at the school during the summer – especially since she is a better fighter than all but one instructor.
Artist: Dance/Writer: *05 Victoria’s father and mother use to be a dance team that won competitions around the country. Despite retiring to have a family and run a restaurant they still love to dance and have passed their skill and passion for the dance form down to Victoria. Her writing skills are her own development.
Losing her voice frustrated her because of the relative slowness of writing and the general lack of people who can understand sign language. To compensate she has developed her ability to express herself and communicate through the medium of the written word. She has published some poetry, and regularly publishes articles in a variety of magazines. She publishes some gaming articles in Dragon Magazine.
Source of Character: Home Grown.