Lady Borgia
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
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| Lady Borgia gives the all-clear to her 'bots | |
| Lady Borgia | |
| Player: @Sofaspud | |
| Origin: | Technology |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Mastermind (Robotics) |
| Threat Level: | 8 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Jessica Borden |
| Known Aliases: | Jessie Blanq, J.B. Dodds |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 26 |
| Height: | 5' and change |
| Weight: | Approx. 100 lbs |
| Eye Color: | Brown |
| Hair Color: | Dark red |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | USA |
| Occupation: | Mercenary hacker |
| Place of Birth: | Boston |
| Base of Operations: | Rogue Isles |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | None living. |
| Known Powers | |
| Dark Miasma | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Stealing tech from those better equipped | |
| Equipment | |
| Stolen robotics and electronics from the finest labs around | |
| No additional information available. | |
Lady Borgia has escaped the Zig and now seeks her revenge. With her robotic army following her every command, she's bent on toppling the heroes of Paragon City and will let nothing, not even Lord Recluse himself, stand in her way!
Contents |
Affiliations
- Supergroup: None
Heroes
- Katy Kaboom: the little minx has interfered several times with Lady Borgia's carefully-planned technology heists. And the girl claims to have created everything she uses herself? Well, if that's true, she could be very useful... somehow, Lady Borgia must find a way to make Katy do her bidding.
Villains
Lady Borgia tends to be a loner and has shown an easy willingness to backstab her own teammates if the situation warrants it. Thus far, she hasn't formed any long-lasting alliances, or even friendships.
Personality
Cold; aloof; distant; these are all accurate, if pithy, descriptions of Lady Borgia. She has her robots for company and that's all she needs. Those attempting to 'get close' to the Lady will find themselves abruptly shut out; if they're unlucky, they may find themselves under fire by Lady Borgia's drones.
She sees no value in relationships for the sake of relationships. The only relationships she finds merit in are alliances: for power, for money, to accomplish a shared goal; these are things that make sense. But a need for companionship? Bah.
As fits someone so emotionless, Lady Borgia is meticulous and careful. She plans her strategy well in advance, lays out tactics for various situations, and attempts to predict the actions of those opposing her. As a highly trained software engineer, she knows down to her core that 'whatever can go wrong, will go wrong', and plans accordingly.
Finally, she is a consummate actress and has learned to project every emotion one could wish for, even if she actually doesn't feel anything except contempt. This, combined with her willingness to use any means available, leaves her free to manipulate others to do her every whim. One could say that her pets are not limited to her robots.
Powers
Lady Borgia has a robot army, which could be considered a power, but she can't build them herself, and instead has others do it for her before taking over the programming. She's an exceptional software engineer, probably because the cold, emotionless, logical wasteland of computer programming is comforting to her.
Her only inherent power was discovered in her late teens. She has the ability to drain energy from others and transfer it to herself and others nearby. She continues to experiment with this ability and may discover other uses in the future.
Robots
Lady Borgia relies heavily on her 'pets', and takes almost fanatical care of them before, during, and after battle. Each has its own personality, carefully crafted by Lady Borgia herself.
- C-64: her first 'bot. A brilliant young Crey engineer built it for her over six months during their fiery relationship, which culminated in a candlelit dinner served by the just-finished C-64 itself, during which the engineer proposed and Lady Borgia accepted. That night as they lay in bed, she strangled him in his sleep and cleaned his apartment of everything valuable. She had what she'd come for.
- TRS-80: a recent acquisition, Lady Borgia stumbled across the smoking wreckage of a robot and the very, very dead remains of its former master. Gathering up the pieces, she took them to a local fix-it type, who she convinced to do the job at the point of C-64's cannon arm. Impressed by how quickly he managed to rebuild the robot, Lady Borgia decided not to kill him, and may return to make use of his services again in the future.
Pulse Rifle
During the rare occassions when her robots are not around, Lady Borgia has found it expedient to be able to defend herself. Accordingly, she -- or rather, C-64 -- hijacked a Longbow convoy and stole several crates of armaments. Lady Borgia now carries a modified pulse rifle and has trained herself well in its use.
Dark Miasma
During her troubled teen years Lady Borgia discovered, quite accidentally, that she could draw the very essence of someone's life out of them and take it into herself. Her first use of this ability left her nauseous, faint, and shaky; it was all she could do to stand up afterwards. But the rush of power was invigorating, as well... and looking down at the startled expression on her dead father's face was more than enough encouragement for her. She's never managed to drain someone so extensively since that first time, but that won't stop her from trying.
Additional Powers
- Tazer: nothing like a quick jolt from a tazer to the back of the neck to ruin someone's day. Lady Borgia doesn't use it often in combat, instead preferring to employ it during interrogation sessions or when 'persuading' someone to do her bidding.
Teleportation
- Recall Friend: her skills in the limitless reaches of the computer networks led to Lady Borgia discovering a long-forgotten bit of code buried in the deepest reaches of the MediComm network. This handy snippet was originally used during development of the network, for local point-to-point testing; Lady Borgia has adapted it for her own use and can now tap the network to teleport anyone she knows to her current location. She's working on revising it to gain further access.
Abilities
Lady Borgia is supremely skilled with computers. During her childhood and teenage years, computers were the only 'safe' outlet: her parents were technophobes and didn't allow her any time at home, so she often remained at school or at the library, playing with the networks. It didn't take her long to discover ways around the barriers that kept ordinary people limited to regular access, and soon she was roaming the dataways with the best of the best.
Her programming is a hellish mix of sheer, inspired genius and complete spaghetti code. Regular software engineers will shake their head and say "it'll never work" while examining her work; for her part, she dismisses their best efforts as childs play. And for her, it is. She is a hacker extraordinaire, having financed her college education via illegal wire transfers and money laundering. Authorities chasing her on-line trail were led in merry little loops, and finally ended up arresting a low-level government worker who had no idea why he was being cuffed, stuffed, and thrown in jail. A week later he was released after the Feds realized he truly was innocent; Lady Borgia had framed him for her crimes. To this day "J.B. Dodd" -- the online persona she used for these capers -- is a wanted felon, assuming anyone can figure out who he really is.
During college she became heavily involved in theater, where her ability to completely submerge herself in her character both delighted and unnerved her drama coach. If the coach had taken any courses in psychology he might have been more concerned -- all the signs of trouble were there -- but instead he simply thought Lady Borgia was his star pupil, if a bit odd. Since college, she has kept active in the local theater scene, where they know her as Jessie Blanq, a young, enthusiastic green-scene activist and Method actor whose favorite play is Hamlet.
Weaknesses and Limitations
Lady Borgia will be the first to admit that she's not very strong. She stays behind her bots in battle and wears armor to offset her weakness, but a skinny girl with weak muscles can't carry much armor to begin with. Therefore, she tries to stay out of the line of fire whenever possible. You could say she has a glass jaw.
Her skills with technology are phenomenal, but only on the software end. She doesn't really understand electronics or the workings thereof; mechanical systems leave her baffled; and so on. She can work with all of it, and if it has a computer involved she can make it sit up and dance, but the how of it all just escapes her. She has a hard time doing basic maintenance on her robots, and it galls her to no end when she needs to turn to outside help to get them fixed.
Finally, and probably again due to her lack of physical strength, Lady Borgia is not very accurate with her attacks. Her pulse rifle misses as often as it hits, almost. While she's not happy with it, she's learned to work around it, but it can be a severe problem if the odds are against her.
Equipment
- Jump Pack: stolen from an overly-enthusiastic hero who didn't realize who he was messing with, Lady Borgia has found it very useful in getting around the architechtural canyons of Mercy Island.
- Pocket D VIP Pass: while she's not fond of socializing, Lady Borgia has found the imposed neutrality of Pocket D very useful, and therefore paid out-of-pocket for a VIP card. At Pocket D, she can put on one of her many masks, mingle, and see first-hand what she might well be facing in battle the next day. Also, with a few drinks inside them, many heroes are remarkably loose-lipped. Many's the time Lady Borgia has ambushed supposedly secret money transfers, or stolen technology that wasn't even known to the general public yet, all because some dumb hero or another wanted to chat up the pretty young thing in the bar and brag about what they were up to.
Character History
Lady Borgia was born Jessica Borden in Boston, Mass.; an unfortunate surname, though she bears no actual relation to the infamous killer. Her father was a drunkard; while he was not abusive, he was very negligent. Her mother suffered from psychological issues and was off-and-on in mental institutions throughout most of Jessica's childhood. She had a younger brother, who died when she was sixteen due to drug overdose. She, perhaps illogically, blamed her father for it.
Tension in the home escalated. Her mother and father began to fight incessantly. As much time as she was able to spend out of the house was still not enough; events came to a head one night in late December, about two months after her brother's death. She came home, retreated to her bedroom, and tried to block out the yelling match between her mother and father. Then her mother screamed. Jessica bolted out into the hall and saw her mother lying in a broken heap at the bottom of the stairs; her father was standing at the top, looking down at his wife. Jessica screamed; her father turned, and she hit him with an ability she'd never known she had.
When she came to, she felt energized, powerful. Her father was dead. She stepped over his corpse, around her mother's broken body, and calmly called the police.
The official paperwork stated that her mother died of complications from the fall; they found no evidence to indicate physical violence, though Jessica maintained that her father had thrown her mother to her death. Her father's death certificate indicated 'heart failure', coroner's shorthand for "I don't know".
At sixteen, Jessica took the meager pittance left from her father's life insurance, petitioned for emancipation and got it, got a G.E.D., and enrolled herself in college. To the outside world she looked like a brave young woman trying to overcome hardship; in reality, she was financially stable and rapidly becoming extremely well-off due to her online crimes. Her excursions into illegality had gone unnoticed, and now she had even more incentive. That rush of power when she'd killed her father had come with a sense of purpose. She needed power, power to crush anyone who got in her way. Power to achieve her goal: never again would someone else control her -- not through finances, not through physical strength, and especially not through emotion.
Never. Again.
The Zig
Jessica led a relatively trouble-free life through college and for a few years after. She graduated with a Masters in only four years and moved to Paragon City to work for Crey Industries as a software technician. In the meantime, she continued to lead the authorities on a merry chase as "J.B. Dodd" online, and she firmly established Jessie Blanq in the theater scene upon her arrival.
Perhaps awed by her own genius, or lulled into a false sense of security by the ease in which she had always penetrated before, and having enjoyed total domination in all the computer networks she'd penetrated up until now, she moved with confidence to establish her control here, too. What she failed to take into account was the amazing advances technology had made in Paragon City, in large part due to the influx of super-villains with amazing technology of their own. What should have been an easy heist -- convincing an ATM to cough up cash not belonging to her -- turned into a showdown with a costumed hero who'd been listening to his police scanner. Totally unprepared, Jessica nevertheless managed to escape, having stunned the spandex-wearing do-gooder with her ever-present tazer. The hero pursued, though, and she couldn't seem to lose him for more than a few minutes at a time. She ran as far and as fast as she could, but he knew the city and she didn't, and it was only a short while before she found herself in a blind alley with the hero at the mouth.
She used her best wiles, her theater skills, to convince him she was innocent, but he merely sighed and shook her off. "You're going to jail," he stated, and quickly, efficiently, and laughably easily knocked her off her feet with a single punch, then tagged her with a small device. She watched him disappear in a haze that clouded her vision, and then she was lying on the floor in a holding cell. Before she could react, alarms started wailing and the policeman on duty drew his sidearm, yelling about an 'unregistered super'; light filled the room and the harsh blast of some sort of stunner hit her, and she fell unconscious.
When she came to, she was in a dank cell in a hellhole she'd come to call The Zig. And the only thing she knew for certain was, she would have her freedom again, and with it, her revenge.
Battle Cries and Catch Phrases
None so far.
Trivia
None so far.
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