From
a young age, Jenna Riley took her swimming very seriously, and for the last
fifteen years had always been in the top 10 ranked American swimmers in her age
group, but never quite reached the level necessary to go to the Olympics.
Still, that was never her goal, she told herself, just to challenge her own
limits, not to be better than anyone else really. She only swam in open water a
couple times a year, living in
Every year she went somewhere on a ‘summer outing,’ and
this year she had wanted to swim among the WWII-era ships sunk off of the
islands of
Swimming around a sunken ship, her hand brushed across a
section of metal that was unusually warm, and the sea-life seemed
uncharacteristically agitated. The metal felt as if the damage to the great
ships hull was *recent,* as if a cutting torch had been taken to it, and
suddenly afraid that she had stumbled across some sort of illegal looting
operation, she backed away from the wreck and rested against the sand, to get a
clearer look at the ship, to see if it was clear to return to the surface, but
her hand ran across a bit of sand that felt odd. Looking down, she saw nothing
but sand, but her hand felt a texture more like sandstone, pebbly, but quite
solid. She jumped as a hand seized her wrist, and jerked back to reveal a
humanoid figure that seemed to be composed of sand itself, clutching at her.
The claw-like hand fell away as she backpedaled along the seafloor, revealing a
humanoid figure, who was the color of the sand, but
faded, like an octopus, to a dull gray color and settled limply to the
sea-floor. The figure was sleek, like a sea-animal in the
shape of a man, with noticeable dorsal ridges fore and aft, and goggle
like eyes, but it lay limply, and the hand that had grasped hers lay open now,
revealing tiny claws and webs between the fingers. Finding her courage, she
poked at it with her speargun, and it didn’t move,
and she suddenly realized that whatever it was, it was clearly hurt. On
impulse, she hauled it to shore, her training to pull an injured swimmer to
safety briefly overtaking her common sense.
Reaching shore, she could see the tour boat she had
arrived with off in the distance, and realized that she had, as usual, gotten a
bit too far away, and that they wouldn’t be able to see her on the shore, save
as a tiny speck. Focusing her attention on the figure, who had grown surprisingly
heavy when she got it out of water, she could see it now as a clearly humanoid
figure, sexless, but male in build, with skin now inexplicably soft as silk,
and a darker shade of grey. Worried suddenly that the creature might need water
to breathe, she checked for gills, but could find no sign of breathing
apparatus, or, indeed, or breath. The webs between the clawed fingers had
receded, and splashing water on them, she noticed that they re-emerged, in
response to moisture, and then drew back as the flesh dried, leaving the
fingers free to move. The hand showed no more sign of animation, and indeed she
feared that whatever this thing was, it was recently dead. Feeling around the
chest, attempting to find some sign of a heartbeat, and flirting with the idea
of attempting a chest compression, she felt something odd around the dorsal
ridge that traveled down the creatures chest, and sliding her fingers around,
it turned out to be a *seam!*
The suit split smoothly open with a wet sound, revealing
the chest of a completely normal man, wearing nothing visible save some sort of
military dog-tags that she did not recognize. Feeling warmth now in his body,
she quickly pulled the mask off of his face to reveal a handsome young man,
eyes open, but unbreathing, and she attempted mouth
to mouth and chest compressions, but got no response. As she worked, the suit
seemed to shudder and pull away from his skin, which disturbed her, but she was
too distracted in her lifesaving attempts to really focus on this. When the
suit peeled away from his abdomen, she saw the ugly wound that had ended his
life, and each chest compression caused blood to surge sluggishly from the
hole, only serving to highlight the futility of her actions. Peeling him the
rest of the way out of the suit, to see if there was any other injury, she
found only the one wound, which traveled in through his stomach and out through
his back, and from the positioning, must have injured his spine as well. She
had no doubt at this point that he was beyond help, and she was momentarily
overtaken by shudders as she found the only other article on him, other than
the strange suit, an unadorned golden wedding band.
It was at that moment that she heard a strange sound
behind her, and turned just in time to see *something* rise from the water near
her tour-boat, something that her eyes couldn’t quite make out, only that the
water seemed to stream off of a great invisible mass, larger than the boat
itself, and then a bright light seemed to connect the two, before the tour-boat
simply flew to pieces in a fiery explosion!
Throwing herself to the sand, fairly unnecessarily, as the
force of the blast didn’t come anywhere near her distant location, she looked
up over the body of the mysterious diver to see a ripple in the air, as a
floating ship of some sort, shaped like a tentacle-less squid, shimmered into
view. She was reminded of the suits camouflage capabilities, and started to see
the strange airship turn in mid-air, and a very faint greenish light begin
playing from the bottom of the ship, sweeping over the water as the ship began
oh-so-slowly to move about, as if searching for something…
Quickly realizing that the ship had to be looking for this
diver, she immediately dismissed the idea that they could be his friends,
thinking it far more likely that they were the ones who had killed him. Looking
down, she saw that the strange suit had somehow moved, and where her hand had
fallen upon it, it had *crawled* onto her hand, sliding over it like some
grotesque glove. She tried to pull away, but it clung to her flesh snugly, and
her hand in front of her face was now sported tiny claws, and she could see the
webbing tucked away between the fingers, needing only the touch of water to
manifest. A desperate plan formed, and she shrugged out of her swimsuit and
into the strange living suit, which folded up around her bare flesh like a cold
wet tongue. Feeling the suit, she could see the entry and exit points of the
wound that had killed it’s previous wearer, but they had sealed up, and the
suit itself was effectively ‘healed’ of any signs of damage. Feeling somewhat
macabre, she grabbed the dog-tags and the wedding ring off of the body of this
unknown man, and moved into the water to swim away from the ship, which would
eventually find this place in it’s ever-expanding
search. Once under the water, she found that the suit cut the water like
nothing she’d ever worn, and the ‘goggles’ provided her with uncanny visual
acuity, again, far beyond anything she was familiar with. The small fins
unfolded from her fingers, and even toes, and she sped through the water with
unnatural speed, feeling almost like a living torpedo.
And yet there was something nagging at her consciousness
throughout her amazingly swift return to the pier her tour-company had launched
from, like a voice whispering to her, singing to her in the back of her mind.
It took months for Jenny to recognize the animalistic
intelligence of the suit, and how to communicate with it to unlock its full
potential, to control the chameleonic properties, secrete paralytic venom from
spines that would unfold from the surfaces of the suit, or even generate a
powerful electrical discharge!
Of the original diver, she ran into a dead-end when she
discovered that the dog-tags were those of a, presumably, Frenchman named Luc Barrault, who’se birthdate was listed as 15 years *in the future*…
Estimating his age at 25 from her brief glance at his body,
that would mean that he, and perhaps that strange flying vessel that was
searching for him, are from at least forty years from now!
She has no idea what to think of all of this, but she will
not give up the suit now that she has it, as it’s the most amazing thing she’s
ever experienced, and she has formed a connection with the suit’s native
intelligence that has gone beyond ‘master’ and ‘pet’ to something more like
confidant and companion.
Jenna never had any intention to be anything like a
‘costumed adventurer,’ thinking the whole notion kind of silly, but after her
job relocated to Boston, she found herself encountering more and more
situations in and around the Harbor and the Cape that called for her unique
talents. Sea-rescues, illicit dumping, stranded sea-animals, smugglers, it all
suddenly became something that she could deal with, and she didn’t even blink
an eye at the thought of canceling her gym memberships, as she was spending far
more time in the open sea, exploring her new world, exulting in her newfound
freedoms, and bonding with her new ‘best friend.’
Sea Wolf (Jenna Riley)
PL 10 (147 pp)
Abilities: Str 12/16, Dex 16,
Con 18/20, Int 14, Wis 14,
Cha 14 [28 pp]
Attack: Melee +4 (+8 with claws), Ranged +2 [4 pp]
Defense: +4, +6 underwater (+2 flat-footed) [8 pp]
Initiative: +6
Damage: +1 hand to hand, +5 with claws, +1 with spines
Saves: Toughness +6/+11 (+4/+9 flat-footed), Fort +4/+5,
Ref +6, Will +4 [5 pp]
Skills: Acrobatics 4 (+7), Bluff 0 (+3, +7 vs. those who
might find her attractive), Climb 4 (+5/+7), Computers 2 (+4), Concentration 4
(+6), Diplomacy 4 (+6, +10 vs. those who might find her attractive), Disguise 0
(+2), Drive 2 (+5), Escape Artist 0 (+3, +7 in suit), Gather Information 4
(+6), Handle Animal 2 (+4), Intimidate 0 (+2), Investigate 4 (+6), Knowledge
(business) 7 (+9), Knowledge (civics) 2 (+4), Knowledge (current events) 2
(+4), Knowledge (earth sciences) 2 (+4), Language (English, native), Language
(German), Language (French), Medicine 4 (+6), Notice 4 (+6, +10 in suit),
Perform (dance) 2 (+4), Pilot (boat) 4 (+7), Profession (administrative assistant)
8 (+10), Ride 1 (+4), Search 4 (+6), Sense Motive 4 (+6), Stealth 2 (+5, +9 in
suit), Survival 4 (+6), Swim 10 (+9, +15 in suit)
[23 pp, 92 ranks in skills]
Feats: Improved Initiative 1, Skill Mastery (Swim,
Medicine, Survival, Climb), Attractive 1, Animal Empathy, Contacts, Connected,
Favored Environment 1 (in the water), Attack Focus 2 (melee), Dodge Focus 2
[11 pp]
Powers:
Device 17 (hard to lose, 85 pp worth of powers -
The SEAL suit;
Swimming 4 (10 MPH),
Immunity 6 (drowning, environmental cold, high
pressure, entrapment (grapples / snares / bonds - half effect)),
Strike 2 (small claws, Power Feat: Mighty),
Strike 1 (long nematode-tipped frills sprouting
from head, shoulders, back, forearms, lower legs, etc. Extra: Aura)),
Strike 5 (electrical discharge, Power Feats:
Trigger – by contact of any sort, Alternate Power – Strike 5 (Extra:
Area (explosion), Flaw: only underwater), Stunning Strike (per the Feat)),
Paralyze 5 (neurotoxic
secretion, Extra: Poison, Power Feat: Trigger – when stinging spines from
Strike Aura contact another),
Enhanced Strength 4,
Enhanced Constitution 2,
Protection 4,
Concealment 4 (visual, thermal and scent, Flaw:
Blending),
Super-Senses 12 (Detect (electricity, ranged, free
action), Ultrahearing, Low-light vision,
Communication Link (suit to wearer, Extra: Affects Other – wearer to suit),
Scent, Tracking 2 (full move, but not all-out), Tremorsense
(Flaw: only underwater)),
Enhanced Feats 13 (Environmental Adaptation
(underwater), Favored Environment 2 (underwater), Endurance 1, Quick Change 1
(suit actively ‘helps’ her to put it on and take it off), Second Chance (Notice
checks, represents the suits primitive intelligence spotting something and
warning her of it), Hide in Plain Sight, Attack Specialization 2 (claws),
Improved Critical 1 (claws), Uncanny Dodge (tremorsense),
Defensive Roll 2),
Enhanced Feats 4 (Move-by Attack, Acrobatic Bluff,
Evasion 1, Diehard, Flaw: Only usable underwater),
Enhanced Skills 4 (+4 Swim, +4 Notice, +4 Stealth,
+4 Escape Artist),
Healing 2 (Flaws: Uncontrollable, Limited (only
affects the suit, not the wearer))
[68 pp]
*When bonded with its wearer, the suit’s intelligence
merges with that of it’s user. When not ‘worn,’ it ‘sleeps’ and is dormant. As
such, the ‘creature’ doesn’t really qualify for having attributes of it’s own,
and can be treated more as an organic living ‘Device,’ that enhances it’s users
senses and capabilities, more than a creature that can function on it’s own.