V&V A to Z: Lorelei

Character Name: Lorelei     Secret ID: Louise Shaw     Side: Evil

Gender: Female     Height: 5'3"     Weight: 110 lbs     Age: 25

        

Physical Description: A short, somewhat mousy-looking woman with blond hair, blue eyes, and rather plain facial features. If possible, she is usually wearing extremely expensive dresses, and has no small amount of high-end jewelry being worn, as well.

STR: 8     END: 12     INT: 13     AGL: 14     CHA: 10

Level: 1st     XP: 674     Basic Hits: 3     Hit Points: 5     Healing Rate: 0.9/day

Movement: 34”    Power: 47   Carrying Capacity: 94 lbs     HTH Damage: 1d3

Damage Modifier: +1     Accuracy: +1     Detect Hidden: 10%     Detect Danger: 14%  

Inventing Points: 1.3     Inventing: 39%     Reaction Modifier: -     Training: Agility  

Powers/Talents

Emotion Control (love) - 13" radius, PR=8, CHR is x2 only for purposes of determining attacks with this power, those with a heightened sense of smell have their CHR score effectively halved for purposes of resisting this power, if anyone trying to break free of her control rolls a '00' on their percentile roll, then at the GM's option they may be permanently under Lorelei's control.

Heightened Defense: -4 to be hit in combat

Heightened Expertise: +4 to hit with Emotion Control

Drawback

Power Limitation – Emotion Control is based on Lorelei's pheromones. To use this power on someone, they must be able to smell the pheromones (so someone wearing a space suit, or having no sense of smell, would be unaffected). This power only works on people attracted to females. Aliens may or may not be affected, depending on how non-human their physiology is.

(note - originally this character was written up with a combination of Mind Control and Heightened Charisma; after giving it a few days thought, I realized Emotion Control worked better for the character concept than Mind Control, and I made the Heightened CHR only applicable as an attack modifier for the power)

Areas of Knowledge

Secretarial

Character Notes/Origin/Personality: Louise Shaw had been ignored by pretty much everyone her whole life. It wasn't that she was ugly, but rather that she was very, very plain, in both appearance and personality.

As an adult, she got a secretarial job for Ikol Enterprises. The job was okay, but she was constantly getting passed over for promotion, in favor of more attractive and outgoing women. When the local branch was downsizing recently, it didn't really come as a surprise to Louise that she was one of the first ones let go.

More than a little bitter, Louise engaged in some minor office theft during her last hours at the company. Most of what she took was of no real consequence, but she also grabbed a small bottle of what appeared to be some sort of perfume, labeled 'prototype 2112'. Later that night, she decided to try the perfume, to see if it would suit her.

The prototype biological agent reacted to Shaw's unique body chemistry, triggering a change in her DNA, granting her the ability to control others through her pheromones. After her initial confusion, and then some later trial-and-error experimentation, Louise realized that after all those years of being ignored, she could finally have men dote on her, and that they would give her whatever she wanted.

The next few months went wonderfully for Louise, until someone figured out what was happening. When the CHESS until showed up, Shaw found out that not only were they going to take away from her all those nice dresses, fancy jewelry, and other expensive gifts that her boy-toys had given her, but that she might actually be sent to jail! They said she was using a superhuman ability to extort wealth from others. That made it sound so... criminal. It wasn't her fault that these men liked to give her nice things, was it? After all those years of being ignored, she certainly deserved everything they could give her.

Not fully understanding her powers, CHESS had her held under minimal security with female guards, until she could be transferred to a facility that could study and contain her powers more thoroughly. One of the female guards fell under her sway, and set Shaw free.

Now she finds, to her consternation, that she is a wanted criminal. That said, her standard operating procedure hasn't changed that much. She usually finds a rich target to seclude herself away with (along with a few bodyguard types for protection), staying with them until their funds run low, or until law enforcement agents or pesky superheroes get a little too close... then she moves on to find a new target to live off of.

Campaign Use: Lorelei might be a good foe for a beginning solo hero – while she poses no real physical threat, she should have just enough goons around to give the hero a decent workout. Hopefully, the hero would have some way to resist her power.

While she has no interest in working with other supervillains, she might find herself getting dragooned into joining a supervillain group by an extremely forceful leader, both to help keep the secondary villains in line, and also to possibly bring any superheros under the villains' control.