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Jul 2, 2013 5:24:46 GMT -6
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Individual
Granny Stephens
Character's full name: First name? Young man, I'll give you that when its time for my obituaries.
Alias/ Nickname/ Code name: Gran, Granny, That Old Woman, The She-Devil
Gender: female
Age: 72
Date of Birth: 07/13/1939
Nationality/ Ethnicity: American / Caucasian
Birthplace/ Home/ Place of origin: Rhode Island / Block Island
Appearance
Her wispy gray-white hair is usually tied to a bun atop her head or covered by a hat. She does not believe in a women wearing her hair openly, she usually doesn't at least. Slightly watery blue eyes are looking sharp through a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that were last modern a few decades ago. (She said they would come into style again. So they did.) Her knuckles are round things infesting fingers thin with age. They are ready to grab the ear of the nearest mischief to come along. Or the wooden cane she never seems to be without. Nails are in perfect state of course. Not polished though, nailpolish pff. I'm seventy-two she would say. The last time I worried with that paint was before you lived. I wanted to spare the men for your generation, though looking at what you make of them, I might as well start painting again. She usually wears a skirt and one of those old-people blouses that do not hang off the wiry frame of old women, but somehow manage to turn near-everyone who dons them into a matron. With stitched flowers. She manages to circumvent that look, barely, by simply looking like the old lady from next door. With cane. And with a purse. Frail, old and with a red-lipsticked smile that still can turn heads.
Hair color and style: white-gray, usually a strict bun atop her head
Eyes: blue
Height: 163
Build: thin, frail
Visible mutation: none
Scars/ Tattoos/ Piercings: Young man, there's some things you do not ask a woman. This is one of them. Did you mother raise you in a barn?
Other features:
Everyday clothing style: Motherly woolen things. Not frilly. And no pink, thank you. When I was born that was a boyish color. (It really was!)
Uniform: Do I look like a soldier? And I'm sure men will thank me for letting you don Latex.
Sleepwear: Nightgown, white.
Miscellaneous clothing: Cane. She carries a cane. She needs it. Really! She owns an assortment of fine hats which she carries out for Sundays.
Character
Personality: Grandma Stephens is about as grandmotherly as you go. A woman full of snark and sharp wit despite (or because of) her failing body. She usually wears a pretty smile showing off healthy teeth. She expects manners from people talking to her and will quite rudely enforce them when she feels decorum is threatened. Then (That is if you nod and promise to never do it again) she will probably give you a hug and send you on your way. Or (If you decide that nutty old Granny should be ignored) grab your ear and lecture you. Even if you are the CEO if a multinational company. Yes, she did that once. In public. He had it coming, she would say, nearly running over old women the way he did. He left properly red-faced and embarrassed. She nodded at that. Once. The smile on her face was nothing but smug then.
Hobbies/ Interests: She enjoys dancing. (She can dance Hip Hop. Really!) Cooking too. Shes currently studying Chemistry. The explosives are to much fun to pass on.
Job or part time job and description: Retired Nurse and former Hotel owner. You may try to get her out of retirement.
Fears/ phobias/ concerns: Grannys old, so her failing body naturally is a concern for her. Theres only so much water in the tap to get the pills down with. And she will swear to you that her doctor is intent on making her use it all up. Falling is also a big issue. Those bones don't bend the way they used to. (She has Arthritis) She also doesn't very well go with gunshots. They set her off in a wholesomely ungood way. Fair warning: Never threaten people she likes in her presence. She knows how to use that walking stick. Additionally she doesn't like to be alone, all by herself. Most people don't at that stage in their life.
Special talents: Shes good at baking, cooking, needlework (also with flesh) and those things older people tend to be generally good at. Like telling stories, knowing when not to appear and looking stately in a dress with stitched flowers that is two sizes too large. She also has a whole lot to tell about her life, mostly Bonmots*. Its a skill you know?
*The French way of saying “In your face!”
Morality I'm seventy-two, young man. Ill find out soon enough. Yes, she's neutral.
Good/ bad/ neutral/ other: Granny doesn't much care for people crusading the “one” good cause any more. Shes seen more wars and ugly things (not only on TV) than most other people around, so she has no illusions about righteous causes. She will give you a tight hug though, when you are feeling down, whether meanie or goodie. She will fix your socks (by showing you how to do it properly and cursing at your mother for not showing you) when you get into her good graces. And she will give you a cookie or two when you're sad. She knows what she can do.
Mutations
Mutation description: Telekinetic
Strengths: Shes a highly able telekinetic with, literally, decades of experience. (Read: In a one on one, that old lady with the cane may quite possibly kick you backside. With a car. Yes. She throws them, occasionally.) All of her workings in the physical world take a strong green hue reminiscent of emerald.
Movement of the mind
“You, Boy, need to learn your manners.”
She can grab, move and manipulate things physically without touching them, lifting ability depending on size and distance. The closer something is the easier it is for her to manipulate. Her farthest range of working is about a circle of 50m for a half-gallon of milk. Close to her she can lob cars weighting a few tonnes. An object held so will be enveloped in a green glow. She can throw these things by directionally accelerating them. Again, the closer to her the stronger. That half-gallon Milk floats no faster than Granny can walk (not fast) while the Gallon close to her can be fast as any good thrown object. Lighter things are generally easier to throw, this stays the same with mental throwing. Grabbing is adaptable in strength from the normal grab to the slap-your-face kind. (Do not let her get ahold of your ear with that. She won't be able to crush you to dust on her own though.) Manipulation is reserved to simple to moderately complex tasks. Stirring a cup of tea without touching it works fine. Brain surgery does not. Things in between might go wonky.
Touch-me-Not
”Why, isn't that – what do they call it these days – cute?”
Forcefields! For everyone! Emerald green and difficult to break by physical force. Pushes things away in a most useful fashion and stops bullies, bullets, cars and all other kinds of nasty in a most satisfyingly damaging fashion. Forms circularly around Granny. Usually encompasses a circle with a radius of five meters, her in the center. She can push that to about a radius of eight, but thats both taxing limiting the time-of-service of the shield and comes with limited warranty against things-that-go-boom. (E.g. a large enough hit and theres stalling in the past tense, finishes after 3-5 minutes depending on the strain put on the shield; meaning this lasts about two to three posts.)
Weaknesses:
Movement of the Mind
While she may throw handfuls of gravel at you, she may not juggle two cars. When she tries to lift more then one object at a time her range and strength are severely hampered. Doing two things at once increases the difficulty of both actions and halves her effective range. Three are even harder both mentally and range-wise. Juggling telekinetically is hard enough with feathers. Her ability takes concentration, so she won't be writing that paper on differential equation while she uses her power. (In other words she is distracted by what shes doing, the more power she has to use, the more zoned-out she is. Stirring that cup of tea she can carry a decent conversation. And get the milk to come over besides. Picking up a car will prevent her from even moving herself.) She has to be knowing where the thing to be effected is, making her dependent on either exact descriptions or line-of-sight, which for her is pretty short. Manipulations tend to go ooops if the task is too complex. Repairing that cars engine? Probably not.
Touch-me-Not
Its a thing of choice: Either shes throwing or shielding. Her shields have troubles dealing with many things thrown at them at once, though. You can literally overload them with a concerted effort. If her shield is breached by force, she'll drop unconscious which, considering her age, will necessitate either a healer visit or a trip to the clinic to recover from. Oh and it's a physical shield. It will not keep that tear-gas away. Nor will it keep psychics and other kind of mutant nasty out when they can act through barriers.
Fighting Style
She can swing her cane at you. And she might grab you by the ear and berate you. Shes a Granny, not a soldier. When you get on her really bad side, be advised on the steeply rising possibility of mutation induced injuries.
Explanation:
Pros for fighting style: The cane tends to hurt. Once. The Mutation tends to hurt more than once. And more viciously.
Cons for fighting style: About as effective as arthritic old people with stick are. The other takes lots of concentration. She needs to know where you are, too. This is a problem.
Faction Allegiance
Unaffiliated
History Of Your Character
Born to the manager of an Inn on an island off the Shore of Rhode Island what is now a Granny saw the light of day during a beautiful and bountiful summer. The child had dark hair and the most endearing eyes her mother could have ever wished for. She was a beautiful child...
who turned, all too quickly as things go, into a fluttery little teenager who liked to wear pretty dresses and wooing the local male populace. Considering that island populations tend to be small, her teenage rebellion at age 17 might have been understandable. She wanted to see the world and not live her life managing a respectable house for sleep and food on that Island Whence People Rarely Came. She had a problem with that respectable bit, too. Her dresses were too short, her hair was too long, her smile was too red for the island population. Ask Granny now and she will tell you that they probably thought whalebone corsets modern back then. (Yes, they were so last-century) So off she went to the big city. New York, City of many dreams and electrified image of her dreams. Her parents had to confabulate a story about her leaving for a boarding school. Everything else would have caused talk to last for generations. She had run away, yes. Every good teenager should, she now says. Just to try it. And sometimes being away from the parents made them better people. This was quite untrue in her case. She managed to find herself without much money in a muck she had no experience wading in. Though it was electrified muck. The lights were a wonderful sight. Soon she was introduced to gentlemen of less-than-respectable professions. She knew this much. And she did not care. A couple of times she was nearly arrested. But nobody really minded a pretty girl going her way for a kiss on the cheek. Those were more gentlemanly times and she was a young woman who knew how to use her assets. Things went well for a while that were a few years of living a high life.
Like everyone else she also knew it was war-time. After one close call had ended badly for one of her friends she decided that she needed a break from New York and from continental America. She signed up as a nurse-trainee with the Armed forces and was sent to a field hospital in Vietnam shortly after.
War stories are easily told: There is no hero, only a victim; Innocence dies in wars. So it was with her, though she would not have called herself an innocent woman she found out that there were things left that could be cut out. She cut things out of people, too. Things that poke and things that had gone boom before. The military found out a few things too. Among them that there was a female telekinetic among the nurses of a particular group. All had seen the scalpel coming to her hand when she needed it. And the floating tourniquets could hardly be ignored. She could move things without touching them, as she had since her early teenage years. So she was to move the enemy away, swinging people like clubs or so. The men in the upper tiers got their uniforms all slobbery over that idea. Wonderful really, those men thinking with their pants about having the bigger stick.
Oh and of course it was all classified, so she really didn't exist for a while when people that go poke and prod tried desperately training her. Forcing and pushing, hoping for something that could shift the war-tides going in their non-favor. History tells you that it did not work. What Granny did? You might ask. And not get an answer. That is still classified, by the way, so she really shouldn't talk about it. You might try setting off a gun near her though to get a taste. (Cautionary advice: She can and does throw things as large as cars.)
She moved back in the house of her parents near Rhode Island after that and lived an uneventful and unremarkable life. Except that what was now a proper hotel never lost the charm of the 20 during which it had been built, more and more becoming a staple of the island as the woman behind the counter got older and older. Food and decor were things mentioned in travel guides. Sometimes strange visitors came and went again. Nobody in the close-knit island community spoke about it, but once, it is told, no one saw them leave. They never came again afterwards.
The woman never married and lived properly alone her parents names having joined the many ones of the windswept cemetery with its old stones overgrown with ivy.
And then? She sold the Hotel when she got too old and was off again. This time it was a proper scandal, involving a young man of thirty years. They had been seen boarding the ferry holding hands. She left a legacy behind.
Roleplay
Where did you learn about this site?: Google showed me, I believe.
Do you have any other characters on MRO, if so who: Martin Stein
Sample RP:
The small woman was most certainly out of place at the bus station she was just leaving, glass door swinging shut behind her. The building was nothing short of filthy, muck aggregating in the corners in a many-colored puzzle. No one had cleaned here for quite a while. Here she had arrived, traveling from the now unbearably hot south. Her cane clicked on the pavement (broken), as she closed in on a street sign. Her eyes squinted behind her horn-rimmed glasses that slightly enlarged her eyes as she read. The slight shake head of her head probably meant that she was not where she wanted to be. Or maybe that she was disappointed of the state of the neighborhood she was now in. The shake sent the top-bun of her hair tied with black ribbon bobbing along.
Just as she was readying herself to go on, barely having taken the first step, the door of the station opened behind her. A broad-shouldered young man came rushing you. “Hey Lady!” He shouted after her, pulling a coffer for travel with him on the street. The old leather-and-wooden thing (that had once been quite normal, modern even) visibly strained his thick muscles, strands of sinew on his neck were popping out. The white haired woman turned slowly and quite deliberately. He reached her huffing and puffing like a badly kept-up machine. That head of was quite red. “You...” Huff...Huff... His shirt could barely contain his broad frame anyways and was now stretching dangerously under the laboring of his body. Huff... The woman smiled a white smile at him in that old-people way that was welcoming and made you somewhat inside warm. “Dear there's no reason to shout now.” She waggled one of her fingers at him. “See, you are all winded.” Huff...Huff... The young man in question was more than a bit ready to either shout at the woman or fall over laughing. What did she have in her trunk? At least he assumed that monster of an antiquity was her trunk. And why did she talk to him like that? “... forgot your trunk...” He finally managed to press out between deep breaths. There might have been a twinkle in the womans eyes, which lost some of their old watery character and became quite sharp and amused. A trick of the light? “I did not, but its very sweet of you to help an helpless old Lady like me.” She actually reached up and petted the boys cheek, that maybe humorous glint in her eyes. “So very sweet. You are a good boy.” The skin of that hand felt warm and thin on his, like some forms of precious papers do. You could see the veins clearly shining through skin laden with age. There were spots there, darker spots. Old-people spots. The huffing stopped quite abruptly. It sounded somehow strangled. That Granny was just petting the face of a grown man thrice her size as if she were his Granny. And he was quite unable to escape her gentle grip around his face. Another two pets followed. “Make you mother proud, Dear.” She pinched his cheek. Pinched! And she turned around again. The heavy trunk followed behind her like a good puppy. It had turned slightly green. Helpless old Lady indeed. That amused twinkle in her eye might not have been a trick of the light. Even minutes later the man stared in the direction she had gone in amazement. It was as if an avalanche had come and gone.
Not two minutes later, there presented itself a problem to that avalanches progress through the cities streets, though. She knew these streets from her youth, but they had changed somewhat. What had been once a respectable neighborhood had over the course of the years turned into something that people avoided usually even by daylight. And here an old Lady walked with a heavy trunk following her like a lost puppy, bathed in that emerald glow. Next came a crossing where she had once kissed a friend goodbye as he went out to service. He had been a good looking guy. The ones today were much broader though it seemed to her, quite acceptable really. She was musing. A really nice boy, he had been. “He Oldie, wanna donate some money?” The voice was coming from her right, where the streets crossed. A car was parked there, directly in the way of people trying to walk across the street. Granny came a few steps closer and her eyes narrowed again in concentration at the individual before her. The car, it had somehow been modified, he was wearing an undershirt. In public. And had tattoos snaking down his arms. Loud music was blaring from the speakers of his ride. This would not do. Her voice was as resolute as her body language, both hands gripping the cane and not fingering for some money. “You, Boy, need to learn your manners.” Was most certainly not the answer he had expected, as the question had not been a question. Was he snarling? Probably. Things were a bit foggy. But the music continued. Loudly. “Be a good boy and turn that down. You don't want to become hard of hearing, do you?” No please, not for him. Just a small line. Well...
He was not nice to Granny. This was his last chance. He decided not to take it.
“Wat? Crazy old Bi***! Get her, guys.” Doors opened and closed. She had not even noticed the additional people in the car. Two of them. Both larger than her. Advancing at her. The trunk settled down to behind her, glow fading quickly. ”Why, isn't that – what do they call it these days – cute? You also brought friends. Because the crazy old Lady is a danger, yes? How manly.” A sound of snarling. Almost dog-like. How uncouth. “Guys.” A simple statement. The came even closer. Both hands still rested on her cane. Both would probably not note, that the flashy car they had just been sitting in was turning green now, an energy flowing around it. The driver still sitting inside. “You will go home and leave women alone. Ruffians.” Laughing from both of them. They were now within arms reach of her. “You've never been drubbed by one, haven't you? I am told its an interesting experience.” Granny continued. And with a concentrated effort on her part the car was smoothly raised of the street and began hanging three meters in the air. It even moved so far as to hover about the heads of her two. Number one, still sitting inside noted this shift of course and began screaming quite soundly. The music was still blaring. It made her ears hurt. Pair looked up. And the car came down. Not enough to squash them to red-and-sticky goo though. Just enough to knock them on the head. The car lurched as it was caught again after metal had hit flesh and both men had fallen to the ground, the car hovering only a hair above them. Both were hopefully enjoying their panorama look of the underside of this car. And a headache. Very good.
The car settled on the street in proper parking position, a few meters from the crossing where it would not hinder pedestrians. Granny was still standing, her hands on her walking stick,a properly human imitation of Yoda. The music was blaring. A thought. A click. And it wasn't any more. Blissful silence.
Now on to find that hotel that had been good once, way back then. She walked about the now cleared crossway, her trunk trailing behind. She was smiling. Those had been good days. Granny was finally back!
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