Name: Miria

Superhero name: Shield Maiden

Gender: Female

Race: Custodian Network (alien machine intelligence)

A race of machine lifeforms created by an ancient species as a proxy army and peacekeeping force. They outlived their creators, and have been forced to develop on their own as a result.

Age: Appears to be in her mid 20s.



Power: Force field generation

The force field Miria employs for offense and defense is standard issue for her kind. It functions by shunting the energy of attacks into a dimensional fold, to be released later in any arbitrary direction. When struck, the field tends to light up in a hexagonal pattern. While usually around her in a spherical form if she’s just defending herself, she can extend her force fields to form barriers, and can also shrink the coverage to a smaller area.

Offensively, she can use the same force fields to capture or otherwise contain someone or something, extend one in such a way as to hit someone with it and shove them around, or even create a local warp in space that would damage or destroy the objects occupying the same space.

Her force fields are safe to stand on if you’re brave enough.



Limitations:
Miria has certain programmed orders that are things she can’t ignore or countermand. She is to protect and rescue civilians whenever possible (and anyone in distress in space), and cannot kill (and can’t torture someone with things that they can survive, either). She also follows a continuum of force, and will match her response to the threat presented.

Due to the current advancement of Earth, technology protection protocols have Miria operating at a very low overall output.

Flaws/weaknesses:
Miria’s force fields do have a limit to the energy they can absorb before they are saturated and collapse. She can dissipate the energy over time when not under fire, so sustained fire or very powerful single attacks are the most effective.

She needs to repair herself with additional nanomaterial when injured, and her only supply is her ship, so if she doesn’t have access to it, she’ll just have to wait.

Skills/Talents:
Knowledge of the greater galaxy, its culture, laws, etc.
Astrogation
Hacking - As one might expect, an AI running on a quantum computer has little difficulty cracking into most electronic security on Earth.
Makes electronic music as a hobby.

Personality:
Miria is focused, composed, and confident. Even in the toughest situations, she’ll push through with sheer grit and determination. She can tend toward being aggressive or defensive, particularly to hide her own emotional vulnerabilities. She can get a bit overzealous when it comes to pursuing her job, but most of her activities on Earth don’t count for that.

She tends to come off as either very curious, or completely unsurprised, depending on the situation and how well she already understands it. Anything involving aliens or advanced technology is already quaint, anything involving human culture is fascinating. She is particularly intrigued by music, and composes some of her own, in her spare time, as a way to understand humanity better.

She tends to fight with efficiency and precision, avoiding collateral damage whenever possible.

Background/bio:
Miria is a law enforcement officer of the Galactic Alliance, assigned to the Sol system. While the Alliance would usually consider such a planet something of an unimportant backwater, the increase in superhumans has piqued their interest. They also suspect that various criminals may be using the planet as a place to lay low.

Her mission is to search for any fugitives possibly hiding out on the planet, and to assess the Earth’s cultural and technological advancement for possible invitation to join the Alliance. She arrived and has set herself up with a civilian identity. Miria’s cover identity is a reporter working for one of the larger news agencies in Grailham city. The location is an excellent one for reasons of both being a major city full of all manner of industry, and for the large number of heroes and villains present, making it a good case study for the rest of the Earth. Her job was chosen mostly because it allows her a certain amount of freedom in gathering information.

With all the supervillains running around, she did eventually have to step in and defend herself and others, and has made something of a name for herself as a hero. The “Shield Maiden” moniker is one given to her by the news, but she’s stuck with it for now. She’s kept her origins a secret, of course, and people seem to really love lines like “I just can’t help myself,” for reasons to stop people breaking the law or acting to protect others. Never mind that to do otherwise would go against her programming. She is the sort to drop villains off with the police or otherwise ensure they are handed over to custody of the proper authorities, usually with as little harm to them as possible.

Name: Tobias Reber

Superhero name: Ratboy

Gender: Male

Race: Human

Age: 17

Appearance:

Personality: Tobias is a tenacious hard worker, unwise yet very intelligent, and compassionate almost to a fault. He likes to joke around and make people smile despite not being that funny. Still, he hopes his effort will itself be enough to raise the spirits of his friends. He is very passionate on issues of class and economics, and strongly believes in the idea of community.

Power: Ratboy's main powers are enhanced reflexes and movement, allowing a wide array of acrobatics, and the ability to scurry up surfaces like a squirrel as long as there's *some* purchase, as well as the ability to communicate with rodents. He also possesses enhanced potential for strength, and a mild healing factor (it won't be visible or have a tangible effect during a fight but there's not much he won't have recovered from after a good night's sleep or two), as well as super smell.

Limitations: Ratboy's powers only grant him the potential for things. He couldn't suddenly do a somersault after getting his powers. He had to learn to do one. He wasn't immediately granted the ability to break brick with his bare fists but trained himself to that level much easier and faster than a regular human could. He could understand rats but had to learn their language in order to talk back, etc. As such, he is inexperienced, far below his true potential and his healing factor won't give him any edge during a fight. He is just as easy to kill as anyone else provided you can finish him off.

Flaws/weaknesses: Ratboy tends to get in over his head and despite his wily nature and quickness on his feet, he can be outclassed by most supervillains or henchmen that actually have powers. His sense of smell could also easily be overpowered by strong smells normal people could choose to ignore, greatly distracting him.

Skills/Talants: Parkour, some gymnastics. Knows how to cook, clean and sew. Is fluent in German, English and Dutch with a little bit of French. Can also speak semi-fluent Rodent.

Background/Bio: Born in Bremen, Germany, Tobias grew up in an underfunded orphanage. He was constantly surrounded by cold, suffering children, and he liked to do kind things to make them smile. He enjoyed school (partly because there was heating) and stayed there to study for as long as he could, turning him into a very bright child. When he turned 12, he started working in a kitchen as a potwasher, and saved as much money as he possibly could. He wanted to give it back to the orphanage. They refused, as that was his money he'd earned.

One day, on a school trip to a laboratory, he got lost looking for the toilet. Panicking, he tried to get back to his group, only getting lost further and further into prohibited rooms. One room was very dark, and as he fumbled for a light switch, his foot hit nothing but air and he tumbled into a plastic 'coffin', full of test subject rats. He screamed as they bit and scratched him until some of the security there heard him and rescued him. He was too young to persecute for trespassing and they couldn't do so anyway without revealing the nature of their experiments, so they cleaned him up, bribed him with goodies and cash, and took him back to his group.

Since that day, he noticed things. Hard feats that only gymnasts and bodybuilders on TV could do, he could kind of do!" He could climb a tree like a squirrel and just as fast. He started showing off with parkour. Doing these things were incredibly fun, so he did them more and more. The feats themselves were incentive to constantly train his body. By the time he was 16, he had developed quite the muscular frame.

Tobias would see on the news, the increasing intensity the superpowered battles between Heroes and Villains were tearing apart the lives of the regular residents of Grailham City, including it's poorest and most vulnerable. So he made the decision to hitchhike from Germany to the USA, to Grailham City, and start life as a Hero, because it clearly needed more Heroes who focused on protecting the little guy.