Post by Crisis on Oct 13, 2009 3:10:44 GMT -5
Claudius Richard von Neumann
Mutant Name: Lemegetton The Lemegetton is an ancient spell book, listing the hierarchies of demons and the procedures for casting black magic. Often times Claude's powers seem as if he's using magic and the accompanying darkening of his eyes also add to this illusion.
Age: 17
Height:5’9
Eye Color: black, completely black when channeling his powers.
Physical Appearance:
Claude is alluringly and mysteriously handsome, as opposed to the masculine and heroic type handsome, or the excessively pretty type handsome that most women get attracted to immediately. His beauty carries with it a mystique, and a confusing attraction that can be compared to how people can’t help but look into the darkness, despite the inherent feelings warning them to look away.
Starting from the top, Odie’s jet black hair is almost always what could be perfectly described as perfectly messy . He never fixes his hair, and he doesn’t even own a brush it just seems to fall out of place everytime, though ti does so in a way that suits him perfect. The most he can do to style his hair his flip his bangs away from his eyes. His face is more or less always exposed, showing everyone the boyish good looks that would be of more than its fair share of swoons and sighs. His eyes are pools of darkest ink and seem to pierce while at the same time draw you in, whenever you look into them. He is almost perpetually seen squinting them, as if deliberating something of great importance. He is quite pale in complexion, as he often prefers to keep indoors. His expression almost often bears a crooked smile and it only fluctuates as to whether or not it’s amused or mocking.
His skin a pale, as he is rarely touched by the sun. His build is that of a quite-strength, nothing overly muscular but his shape is distinct and athletic enough. He is toned enough to satisfy what society would deem as desirable.
Celebrity Face Claim: Tom Sturridge
Strengths:
- Calm
- Doesn’t Fear Death
- Alluring
- Keenly Observant
- Persistent
- Intelligent
Weaknesses:
- Distant
- Grim
- Selfish
- Anti-Social
- Deeply Holds Grudges
- Rude
Random Abilities:
- Speed Reader
- Master of Psychological Warfare
- Master Strategist & Tactician
- Genius Level-Intellect
- Photographic Memory (nothing super human)
- Honed Spatial and Physical Intuition (eg. He can easily estimate the weight and other physical aspects of objects)
History:
The von Neumanns were a family that could be considered something along the lines of royalty among the academics. Cristoph von Neumann was a senior consultant and advisor to Harvard University while his wife was part of the board of directors in Standford University. When they had their first child, a son, they named his Claude, and expected nothing short of grandeur from him. As a child, Claude exceeded the expectations of both his parents and their peers. He performed quite well, proving to be quite the child prodigy of the century. At the tender age of three we taught himself how to play the piano and quickly turned into a virtuoso. His leaps with his academic prowess were simply amazing, everybody attributed it to good genes and even better breeding.
However, the true reason that Claude performed so well, was because he subconsciously was already using his powers to distort his own mental entropy, giving him a genius-level intellect. This was extremely dangerous however, as he treaded through a razor thin line, and at any moment could either fall into insanity
As he grew up, Claude was eaten up by the media. He resented this, but could do nothing about it. It was not only his reputation on the line, but also his family’s. So he made do with grinning and bearing it. Outwardly at least, that was the only thing that Claude could do. But he needed some form of escape, and he found this through a life of underground crime. Running under the secret alias of Guise de’Bouvant, the shadowy head of the Marseilles gangs, he managed to conduct feats of organized crime. This developed into a hidden lifestyle that nobody except Claude was aware off. He didn’t care much for the money he stole, or the havoc he caused, he just wanted to get away from the lifestyle he was forced to live in the presence of his parents.
Unknown to even Claude himself, this part of being the criminal underground caused his powers to exponentially increase in activity. In accordance with his schemes and criminal enterprises, things went well…that being the gravest understatement of the century. Things went amazingly well, as if God had a deft hand in the scheme of things. How else could you explain a jump in a radio signal that made it virtually impossible for the police to communicate? Or an ideal short circuiting of an entire city, just as a high stake robbery took place?
Being naturally observant and curious, Claude delved into these scenarios trying to find their root…Only to find that the root was actually himself. Through his pragmatic research and attempts to prove things empirically, he was able to deduce how to make his powers function. Indirectly, Claude created a block within himself, as he was bound to the limits of mathematical logic. He theorized that he didn’t need the math to make his powers function, but could not find the key, and was therefore stuck with his current process.
Using his new found ability, he became an agent in the field of his criminal enterprise. He manipulated the forces, so that things would go more smoothly…perhaps that was his biggest mistake, perhaps it was the best mistake he could have done in his life.
Mutation: Entropy Distortion, also known as Entropy Projection or Entropic Magnification is the ability to manipulate the amount of energy that is unavailable to work within a system. By increasing entropy, one with this ability could decrease the amount of energy in electronics, causing them to short-circuit. By decreasing entropy within the brain, one could cause a foe's mind to work at an unstable 100% capacity, instead of the normal 10 or 11%, causing foes to go insane or die. One with this ability could even negate entropy entirely to induce power surges in engines or electrical appliances or induce entire entropy in a body to shut it down, killing a foe.
Entropy is the amount of energy unavailable to do work, or potential energy. It is essential to an efficient living/working environment, and the disruption of such can wreak havoc on any given system.
There are several types of entropy:
Physical Entropy: the most common type of entropy, the amount of physical energy within a system; the less physical energy present, the more likely things are to go wrong (collide into each other, explode, melt, etc.)
Mental Entropy: The unused portions of the mind make up the entire of this type of entropy; the more entropy, the lower a foe's intelligence and higher consciousness (one who distorts this could turn calm, intelligent situations into full-out riots)
Spiritual Entropy: The deeper parts of the soul are normally dormant; if the deeper part of the soul is awakened, it could cause a massive emotional/psychological (personality) overload, or do massive damage to the subject's life force (inundating the body with life force, thus ironically killing the subject).
Superhuman Entropy: The raw part of a superhuman ability; if entropy is used directly on a superhuman, their powers go haywire and possibly do damage to the user and all around
Situational Entropy: The ordered stochastic energy of any given (non-chaotic) situation; when this is distorted, potential energy turns to (harmless) kinetic energy, setting objects in motion and initiating chaotic, usually-unfortunate events
Power Limits:Claude has to be able to see things or at least have some awareness of an object whose entropy he’ll distort. If Claude doesn’t know that a certain object exists, or is in his vicinity, then he can’t warp it. An example of this is a large group of people, he is unable to touch the people at the back or hidden among the crowd, only those within his immediate line of sight. His subconscious also plays a much more dominant role over the uses of his ability, meaning that stray thoughts and distraction could warp the events of the situation away from what Claude desires. His powers also require a deft amount of concentration, meaning that he can’t exactly be as maneuverable as he uses them. Being physically tired also decreases the productivity of his powers. Claude’s powers are also alpha-numerically dependent, meaning he needs to do the Math, before he can consciously exert his influence over a particular system. This therefore means that he can’t directly control his entropy distortion skills over mental entropy, spiritual entropy and superhuman entropy, as there are no quantitative values for him to use. This limits his conscious control over situational entropy, and physical entropy. However, the other three aspects of entropy he can still affect subconsciously, such as a severe want or need. An example of this is Claude’s superhuman intellect; he is at a constant state of distorting his own mental entropy and keeping his own brain functions at maximum capacity. Another such example is when he first manifests his powers to overload the life force of his captors, and also when his captors chose not to kill him as he subconsciously altered the stochastic forces to induce the unlikely.
Mutation Key: Tinkerbell
Report of Mutant Capture:
Things at Harvard were at the simplest, boring as hell. Seriously if you were a genius of Claude von Neumann’s caliber, even Harvard turned into an absolute and utter joke. The world had never seen genius like Claude before, but that was because the world had never seen a person who could manipulate and warp entropy to his will either. Claude snapped a thick leather bound book with a snap before he pushed back the high backed wooden chair, with a distinctive scraping across the marble floor. The book was entitled "Entropy production theorems and some consequences," and as of late, Claude had gone through cover to cover for the umpteenth time. There were little books out there that spoke about entropy as something malleable, possibly because entropy was not. So Claude had to make do with what he could find. Sure enough he could have written his own, but to what use? Who else could use it aside from him? Who else could distort entropy?
Claude walked towards the shelf and deftly inserted the book at the gap it had occupied before. He wanted to let out a sigh but decided against it. He did find it ironic how of all abilities that could have been gifted to him, he had to receive something so difficult to comprehend…for most people at least. An average John Doe with this ability, would be none the wiser about its existence, and could live his entire life believing he was nothing more than extremely lucky. It was just God’s deft hand in the scheme of things that connected this ability with Claude. Even the discovery of the ability had been totally random, Claude couldn’t ignore the amazing and truly ideal coincidences that occurred with his crime enterprises, he was under the impression that the FBI, CIA, or Interpol was aware of his existence and was playing with his head. Probability, what were the numerical factors that such things could happen to him? He did the math, and through his computations he found one thing off-shot, the entropy equations. The Boltzmann constant was diluted, wrong…it couldn’t be wrong. It was a constant after all. So perhaps…it had something to do with him. And like the first domino tile being blicked, the series of events followed until Claude was right where he stood there today. In front of a bookshelf, trying to understand the nature of his abilities. A slight mischievous smile found its way across Claude’s face…well not exactly. He squinted his eyes in concentration, estimating the mass and weight of the bookshelf, introducing it into the equation, calling the values of energy and temperature adjusting them as he searched for a viable and empirically correct formula, the stochastic forces taking an effect in the variables, and the logarithm of a binary system. At once all the books came flying out of the shelf as if they magnets repelled by an immensely greater polar force, only to stop in midair as the air seemed to solidify into a second shelf, albeit one that was invisible. The reason for that was that Claude adjusted the energy needed to break the surface tension of the air, ordinarily it was miniscule and negligible, but now the surface tension of the air around the books were comparable to that of steel.
Claude’s smile widened slightly, it truly was like magic, and it was just that Esoteric Incantations were replaced with mathematical formulas. He looked towards the door, of course he didn’t forget about the other factors of the situation. It would be quite troublesome if someone walked through that door and found him levitating a row of books across the air. It was an entirely different equation he used there. Simplified, there was about a 54.53456 chance that a person would walk through that door. Using the probability equation, Claude adjusted that chance to 0.0000000000024. It wasn’t as simple as that of course, but Claude made it seem so.
Suddenly, a stab of pain jerked Claude awake. It originated between his eyes, as if some pressure was building there. He tried to go through the equation mentally but the pain was disturbing and the levitating books began to teeter in the air. He fumbled for a pencil and began writing across the wooden surface of the table, more equations it was always an aid in concentration if visuals were involved. Slowly, much too slowly for Claude’s comfort the books returned to the shelf. He slumped on the floor, his back resting against the table. He couldn’t help but begin chuckling to himself, despite the fatigue. “Some Genius you are Claude, exhausting yourself for what? So that you’re mental rhetoric would be more appropriate? And here you are talking to yourself.” Suddenly a person crashed through the window. Not just one person, there were a dozen of them. All clad in ominous black, coming down from rappelling lines, carrying guns that practically screamed death.
He heard more crashing sounds from the outside, but none seemed to choose the door to this particular room. So his powers over the door were still in effect, he cursed himself for not doing the same with the windows. The black clad men fired their guns and Claude instinctively raised his hand and the bullets began ricocheting off an invisible wall. Claude’s mouth tightened, more luck on his side. It was a good thing he still remembered the equation he had used to increase the surface tension of the air, he managed to use it like a shield. Who were these men? Did they find out that he was Guise de’Bouvant? Was he finally to pay for his sins? Claude surely hoped not, his eyes squinted in concentration but anger furrowed his brows. He looked straight at the men in front of him, and they gave guttural screams before their knees buckled under their own weight and for some reason Claude knew they were dead. He inspected them again, they weren’t wearing the same black armor as the others…the others who weren’t affected.
There was a loud explosion as the east wall came down in rubble of plaster. Well maybe Claude’s luck wasn’t holding through, he knew one thing about probability it wasn’t linear…sure they didn’t go through the door, but the wall was another matter. He made a mental note, that should he get out of this alive he’d place his non-entry ward across the entire room. He scrambled up as the new arrivals sent a rain of bullets in his direction. Claude clenched his teeth as one of the bullets grazed him across the shoulder.
He placed his hand on the shelf, just one correct equation and he could hurl this 2 ton piece of wood without any problem. The pain in his shoulder and the stress of the situation made math rather difficult. Claude tried desperately, but he couldn’t even wrap his mind around the concept anymore…there was too much going on. He ran down the row of shelves, knowing full well it would lead him to a dead end, but he had nowhere else to go. He finally reached the end; his father’s portrait looked down on him as if afraid for his fate. He spun on his heel, clutching his arm and bearing his teeth. He was like a wounded fox backed against the corner, and of all the animal behavior books that Claude had read, foxes fought until the end. He controlled his features, smoothed them as best as he could if he was going to fight, he wasn’t going to do it like some half-crazed Neanderthal.
The black clad men walked slowly forward, the red dots of their guns finding places across Claude’s person. ”I’m not going to be killed today…” Claude thought, and he repeated that thought as if it were a mantra. One of the men walked forward, and despite himself Claude stepped back, but he did manage to force out a mocking smile.
“So what are you going to do? Kiss me?” he punctuated his sentence with a chuckle. But it was cut short as the butt of the gun slammed against his temple and knocked him out unconscious.
