Melody Hartmann

Author	/u/DaughterofHallownest
Alignment	Villain
Affiliation	None (Devilfish)
Born	(1998-09-08) September 8, 1998
Status	NPC

Character Sheet

Appearance

Melody is a fairly tall young woman – it’s clear that she’s used to wealth, with her bearing and clothes of choice. Her hair is a naturally bright blonde colour, and her eyes darker blue. At the moment, the only clothes she really owns are a pair of torn-off jeans and crop-top, with slight tears in the fabric. She’s also wearing red sneakers, covered in dirt and grime.

Her power’s appearance varies, but usually involves brown fur, horns, and a fluffy tail.

Equipment and Resources

• A set of clothes – torn-off jeans, crop top, and shoes.

Skills and Specializations

• An adequate level of training in gymnastics and physical fitness.
• Knows how to play the piano so it doesn’t sound terrible.
• Well-versed in managing her image, when doing it intentionally.
• Knows the basics of how to use a knife and set simple traps (mainly snares).
• Proficient with makeup, though not particularly specialised versions.

Mentality

At the moment, she’s feeling guilty, angry, and confused about where she’s going – always a good combination of emotions to make a very mentally healthy person. There’s a largely repressed streak of sadism there, mixed with a desire to be proper and famed. Generally speaking, she’s going to be naturally isolating and anxious. Her power tends to influence her towards more angry emotions, and practical brutality.

Power

Trigger type: Single, natural trigger.

Melody is a changer, able to gradually transform into a brutish fur-covered bruiser. This form theoretically doesn’t have a hard limit, and can vary in minor ways (both appearance and minor physicality wise), but in practice is considerably more limited.

She transforms by setting goals for herself – for instance, one goal might be “escape”, while another might be “enter the PRT headquarters without getting seen or hurting anyone”. Over time, her body shifts into its alternate form, progressively becoming stronger, more durable, and more suited to completing the task set out. However, this isn’t perfect. The more general the goal is, the faster the transformation takes place, but the less control she has over the instincts of her alternate form. This means that the command “escape” would result in a close-to-peak transformation fastest (within an hour) but leave her with little control over the methods taken. However, “enter the PRT without being seen or hurting anyone” would likely require the better part of a day to reach the rough peak of her power, and the transformation would more than likely fizzle out as she made no progress in achieving her goal.

EDIT: She has theoretically the same intelligence, but reduced enough inhibitions and a tendency to take the direct path that it rarely comes up.

Goals can be chained, but multiple goals cannot be made at the same time – if another goal is set, it supersedes the previous. Goals must be concrete, achievable things – “become faster”, “turn invisible” or “fly” are not suitable goals, but “get to [X] location as quickly as possible”, “hide my identity” or “survive this fall” would be. [EDIT: Impossible goals cannot be made.]

Her usual peak – at which point progress on transformation slows drastically – tends to stand at around eleven feet tall, weighing a ton, and takes three hours working towards a goal to reach. This form is unnaturally strong, fast and tough – able to lift up to three times its body weight with effort, equal a galloping horse for extended periods of time, and able to resist small arms fire without injury and armour piercing rounds without immediate death. Her more usual peak, during an average day, stands eight and a half feet tall, weighs around seven hundred and fifty kilos, and takes about an hour of continuous progression.

Her secondary aspect has to deal with a slight Master aspect of her power – her “true form” is visible through cameras and reflections while she’s transformed, and viewing this image causes others to slowly adopt forms and reduced inhibitions the longer they’re exposed. Typically taking up to half an hour before the transformation can no longer progress, this effect doesn’t confer any inherent powers beyond that which their physique would naturally give. (For example, a winged creature would likely be unable to fly, but might be able to use their wings to slow falls or push air.

EDIT: Transformations revert at a standard rate -- typically, it takes about an hour from full transformation to revert back completely to normal.

EDIT: The above applies to all transformations caused by her power. The final forms are determined by the character's player, but tend to be thematically appropriate to their personality.

It's about a minute of viewing before any noticeable effect, about five you might start to notice some physical changes, about ten you might start looking pretty weird and starting to feel the mental effects, about twenty you'd be mostly transformed and essentially pretty damn drunk in terms of mental control.)

It won't force them to do anything, and they're not going to do anything they wouldn't normally do -- like above, imagine if they're black-out drunk with none of the associated lack of physical coordination or anything. You can still control yourself, it just takes a concerted effort, and the idea might not occur to you.

Backstory

She knew that she was sick – ordinary people didn’t do what she did. It’d started young, when she found a mouse caught in a trap inside her house. It hadn’t died, and she’d opted to put it out of its misery. It’d felt strangely good – guiltily so. She knew that if anyone were to know what she was, it’d ruin the reputation her father worked hard to build. She kept doing it, though – always lowkey, always subtle – and escalating as she did. Eventually, she found a decrepit shack with a basement where she could exercise her urges whenever she needed to. On one such occasion, as she was torturing a rabbit she’d caught, she saw a friend of hers filming the entire thing. Faced with the idea that her attempt to live a secret life had failed, and she’d likely be ruined by the two colliding, she triggered.