Travis Waltman [Tremor]

[ShockArcl1te]

Player Nickname: Tremor

Name: Travis Waltman
Codename: Tremor
Age: 30
Date of Birth: 10/04/88

Height: 6'1"
Weight: 200lbs
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Amber
Nationality/Race: Caucasian
Classification/Origin of Powers: Mutant

Occupation: Freelance

Personality Profile: In spite of his rough but casual demeanor, Travis harbors a seething rage just under the surface. While he used to have trouble keeping his anger in check, time and experience have allowed him to control and even tap into it as a resource. Despite his rough spots, "Tremor" will always be a loyal friend to those who have accepted him. His time at Cobalt along with his travels around the globe have changed his personality greatly. Where before he was extremely unstable, his demeanor has calmed significantly, though when pushed he is still prone to violence. Having returned to Cobalt, he wants to settle in and help protect the sanctum he calls home.

Physical Description: Tremor is of an athletic, medium build with almost shoulder-length brown hair, and amber brown eyes. He often wears jeans, a t-shirt with some kind of band logo and brown or black leather hiking boots. Another common item for Travis is his brown leather jacket, which he prizes greatly despite the nicks and scars in places. When inspected closely, one can see a long thin scar on his head that appears in the top left within the hairline and runs at a diagonal angle towards the right eye, though as his hair is often in his face, this feature is commonly obscured. The final detail to Tremor is his shaky hands, which have a subtle way of never staying completely still.

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Mutation/Powers: Vibration

Primary: Vibration/Frequency Manipulation

Whether Tremor's powers are caused by some kind of harmonic attunement, an atomic instability, or simply an abnormal metabolism has yet to be determined, but when Travis touches an object and focuses, he is capable of literally shaking that object to pieces. The most common application of this power can be seen when he grabs something grounded, which will transmit these destructive vibrations into the earth, causing a sort of localized quake. While the full range of his abilities has not been explored, Tremor is currently most proficient at destroying solid materials such as rocks and various metals which he can warp or shatter to explosive effect. In addition, Tremor's abilities can be particularly devastating to machinery or any items held together with bolts, nails, or screws. Though he is not limited by his own mass when transmitting these vibrations by touch, his power is still finite and attempts to vibrate objects that are simply too dense or too massive will often result in nausea and a profound headache. Tests are still being done to discover how Tremor is able to maintain a stable skeletal structure in the presence of such powers, let alone how he can avoid liquefying his own internal organs. In any case, he appears to be immune to his own frequency manipulation, though when pushed beyond his limits, he will tend to be a little more "shaky" than normal.

Secondary: Vibro-Weapons

When channeling a focused, stable vibration through a sturdy object, Tremor can turn even the most mundane items into deadly Vibro-weapons. If the object in question is blunt, the kinetic force on impact will be multiplied many times over. If the object is a slashing or stabbing weapon, the vibrations will enable it to cut through almost anything except ultra-dense substances. Most items are not designed for this kind of punishment and any vibro-weapon Tremor uses will most likely shatter ether before the end of the fight or after a few collisions with a material or force that is significantly greater than the composition of the weapon itself. Like all of Tremor's vibration powers, these weapons depend on his touch in order to stay active and will stop vibrating as soon as he lets go or the weapon is destroyed.

Tertiary: Harmonically Charged Skeletal System (Impact Resistant)

Tremor's body is already largely immune to the intense vibrational physics he subjects it to on a daily basis, but his body has also adapted a new method to actually prevent critical injury from external sources as well. When a blunt force impacts Tremor's body, his skeleton will channel an opposing vibrational force to either absorb or neutralize it. This makes his bones significantly more durable and better able to protect many of his critical internal organs from harm. It should be noted that his skeleton is not actually more dense or composed of an inherently stronger material, the bones can only absorb or cancel out sudden blunt force impact. Tremor can survive falls from lethal heights, getting hit by a large truck traveling at highway speeds, being thrown through a brick wall, and so on, but will not be able to withstand being crushed under a tons of weight, cutting or piercing attacks, high velocity rounds, energy weapons, extremes of heat and cold, ect. It should also be noted that this protection is limited to the bones and the internal organs they shield such as the brain, spinal cord, heart, lungs, and to a lesser extent the stomach, spleen, and kidneys. This means his skin, eyes, muscular system, and lower internal organs are still somewhat vulnerable, and the same attacks that his skeleton can protect against will not keep his skin or musculature from taking damage. Even the bones themselves have an upper limit to the amount of force they can negate, after which they break like any other would. As an example: Most rifle shots have too great of a velocity over too small of a surface area for his skeleton to soak the blow. Unless the caliber would would otherwise be stopped by normal bone, his power can't handle it.

Drawbacks & Weaknesses: While Tremor can choose to activate his power through focus, he can lose control of them due to intoxication, severe head injures, or extreme emotional states such as intense anger. Other than his impact resistant skeleton, he is otherwise no different physiologically than an athletic 30 year old, he is susceptible to anything that could harm or kill a human being, which makes his practice of crumbling load bearing structures on top of him a dangerous habit. Beyond these vulnerabilities, he will suffer adverse effects when trying to vibrate an object that is too massive or too dense. In addition, Tremor is unable to use many kinds of conventional weapons such as guns, as any vibration he channeled through the object on accident would make it explode in his hand. This also goes for crossbows, tasers, most kinds of future tech or gadgets, and anything that requires a steady hand.

Skills: During his time in the asylum, the shadow organization known as the Obsidian Group used psyonic conditioning and indoctrination tech to implant a variety of hand to hand and bladed weapon techniques into Tremor's brain along with an alternate, deeply sinister personality which would have access to them. When Tremor expelled the shadow persona during his mental battle with the Obsidian leader called King, he retained all of the conditioning, subliminal triggers, and combat training that they had originally implanted in his subconscious. While at first it was difficult to bring these fighting techniques to the surface, he eventually was able to re-master and even improve these abilities on the conscious level. While his hand to hand technique is "good enough", his knife fighting is almost without peer. His preternatural speed, ferocity, and tactical cunning make him a nightmare with a blade. As mentioned previously, his skill with firearms is on the opposite side of the scale. Not only can he not hold his hand steady enough for an accurate shot in even the most generous of circumstances, the weapon may discharge or even explode if he accidentally channels a vibration through it, which is more probable in a combat situation than not. As a result, Tremor -rarely- uses guns of any kind, more out of self preservation than principle.

Background: Born and raised in Tucson Arizona, Travis had never been one of the "in" crowd. In addition to being somewhat socially awkward around what he called "normal people" he also had a small tremor in his hands that doctors could not determine the cause for. While initially teased for this slight handicap, Travis eventually embraced his new moniker. It wasn't until the end of his teens that Travis would discover his powers after a particularly harsh bout of teasing at the hands of the local varsity team, causing him to destroy the house where the team was holding a celebration after their last big win. While the number of injuries were few and there were no fatalities, the authorities couldn't figure out how the small quake started. Off the hook, Tremor revealed in his first victory and saw his powers as an excellent method of getting back at those who had given him trouble in the past. What began as a personal vendetta soon became random acts of violence as a dark madness took his mind. It wasn't long before the local police noticed a pattern of freak earthquakes and collapsed buildings which all seemed connected to Travis the misfit. Meanwhile, Tremor's attacks began to escalate as his sanity slipped away, resulting in a rampage that leveled three city blocks before swat teams and snipers managed to subdue him with heavy tranquilizers. Though local laws had not yet caught up to the wave of mutant related crime, the citizens demanded legal action be taken. As a result, Tremor was locked away in an asylum, drugged constantly to keep his powers inhibited. It wasn't until Travis was 22 that a mutant rights advocate publicly funded his appeal and managed to petition for his release from a mutant correctional facility on the condition that he attend one of the famous "schools for the gifted."

-The year on the run -

During his time at Cobalt Academy, Tremor was haunted by his ever escalating madness. He started to hear voices that echoed dark desires in his heart. In a few months, he prepared a plan to escape and get revenge on the hometown that had sent him away and after that, the world. His efforts were thwarted and his motives were chalked up to his own mental instability. Tremor himself managed to silence the voice for a time, but then suffered from bouts of sleep walking. One night, Tremor woke outside the academy walls and was greeted by strangers who made a proposition. If Tremor performed a hit on their specified target, they would remove the darkness that haunted his mind. Tremor accepted and ended up setting in motion a wide array of events resulting in his temporarily becoming one of the most wanted mutants in America.
As it turned out, Tremor had been recruited by a shadow organization that used mutants like chess pieces, each with specialized talents. The white chess pieces, known collectively as Calcite Industries, had long been at odds with their black counter-parts, the Obsidian Group, in a shadow war that had been raging for decades. With extensive power and influence in intelligence circles, Calcite had introduced Tremor as a sort of wild card on the board to tip the balance of power.
After finding out he had been setup, Tremor quickly went off their radar and tried to pursue a normal life in a small tourist town in New Mexico. Mistaken for a long lost brother, a girl by the name of Kelly took Tremor in and helped him acclimate to his new life waiting tables at a local diner. It was only a matter of time before mercenary forces controlled by the Calcite agent code named "White queen" tracked him to the small town. Forced out of hiding and with his true nature revealed, Tremor killed all opposition, including both white knights and a white bishop sent to put him down. Though shaken, Kelly convinced Tremor that they would never stop until he was dead. The only way to end it would be to take the fight to them. After extensive searching and interrogation, Tremor tracked the white queen to her mobile command center aboard a freighter in the Atlantic. Using a holo-watch given to him by Nick at Cobalt, Tremor infiltrated the ship and captured the white queen in an empty cargo container. In a panic, she quickly explained how she was secretly the -black- queen, working for the rival faction, Obsidian Group. She had killed the original white queen and taken her place to better determine what the white king was planning.
So far as Obsidian Group knew, Calcite had meant for Tremor to be a loose variable on the board, something to disrupt the balance of power between the two sides. She told Tremor of how they had noticed him when he was first apprehended in Tucson. They had isolated him in the asylum and used psionics and indoctrination techniques to implant a sinister personality into his subconscious and then program him with instinctual combat techniques. A riddle would be used as a trigger to bring out his dark side and the implanted combat knowledge would be used as a weapon to kill anyone or anything in the area. The black queen had determined that Tremor was a threat to their faction and had set out to dispose of him under the guise of the white queen. Her most recent discovery was far more disturbing however, but before she could fully reveal the secret Tremor shot her in the head and then left.
With Kelly's help, Tremor soon managed to find the headquarters for Calcite Industries. After an intense battle with all but a few of the remaining agents, Tremor found the white king and demanded an explanation and his life back. It was then revealed that Tremor was not actually a wild card as the queen was lead to believe. Tremor's actions had all been engineered to thin the king's own ranks so as to find the traitor and eliminate them, which he had done beautifully. Tremor's dark side had always been under the king's control, allowing him to kill necessary targets without anyone knowing who was truly responsible. This, however, was not Tremor's ultimate fate. The king, like all the chess agents, was a mutant with fairly unique powers. Among other things, the King had the ability to sense when his life was in danger and take steps ahead of time to avoid harm. While his power had allowed him to survive for many years, he was now an old man and death was knocking at his door. The king was clever though, and formed a plan to extend his life by way of possessing another's body. Secretly, he had picked Tremor with the intent to switch minds, thus cheating death and giving himself a chance to continue the game. The dark personality had been simply a place holder, a way to determine if Tremor's mind could handle the stress of the transfer, and to protect the king's "investment" when Tremor came under attack. Now that Tremor had delivered himself to the king just as planed, it was time to displace Tremor's mind with his own and start the game anew. While locked in a inner battle with his shadow, Tremor was unable to retaliate against king as he started to transfer his consciousness. The king had miscalculated however, and the dark personality turned against the king to stake claim to Tremor's mind and total freedom to wreak havoc on the world. While the two were occupied, Tremor managed to drive both his dark captor and the king's mind back into the old man's failing body by sheer force of will. In the last instant, Tremor broke free of the connection and used his powers to obliterate king's body, destroying the dark side and forcing the king's consciousness to flee into a rook agent with whom he then escaped.
Tremor was free, for the first time in years. Not only was the dark presence in his mind gone, but his criminal record had also been expunged from most major databases. (King had no intention of living as a fugitive and had made sure Tremor's files would be destroyed.) Ready to start a new life with Kelly, he confessed to having fallen for her in their journey. Kelly responded by shooting Tremor, point blank, in the chest. She had been working as a black pawn from the beginning, sent to monitor Tremor's progress and insure White king was defeated. With king gone and Calcite Industries decimated, Tremor would be disposed of and she would be promoted to the new black queen. Tremor awoke in the road where he had been shot, his wound fully healed and Kelly gone. Unsure as to who or what had saved him, he packed his things and headed back to Salem, to the only family he really knew.

-Tremor and Wormwood-

It would only be a short while before Tremor would be drawn back into the shadow war he thought he had escaped. An ex-black bishop agent known only as Wormwood had appeared in Cobalt and begun hatching a plan that involved separating Tremor from his friends. Under the threat of Cobalt's destruction, Wormwood forced Tremor to work for him, going so far as to install an explosive collar around Tremor's neck just to keep him in line. Wormwood was ruthless and calculating, using Tremor as a distraction for the Obsidian Group's agents, Kelly being among them as the new black queen code named "Riot Girl." Though his plan appeared to be to use Tremor as a sort of walking nuke on Washington DC by triggering a subliminal program left in by Calcite's conditioning, Tremor would learn that it was really a bluff used to distract the Obsidian Group's attention from Worm's real goal, to rescue his daughter. When Kelly and the rest of the Obsidian Group were defeated and Worm disarmed the collar to let Tremor go free, he returned to Cobalt for only a few short weeks before returning to Worm and offering to help him hunt down the remaining members of Obsidian as well as any other clandestine ventures Worm had to finish. The two teamed up under the loose promise that Worm would never use Tremor's subliminal triggers to control him ever again. Together, the two traveled the world hunting down shadow operatives and conducting black-book missions that dealt with the strange and surreal. From the haunted Louisiana Bayou, to the space needle in Seattle, to secret viral labs in Ireland, and the flashing lights of Tokyo, their operations took them everywhere. After a year of fighting against the secret forces that constantly threaten the world, Tremor decided it was time for him to come home to Cobalt and settle in for good. Though Worm supported the idea and wished Tremor the best, he never stopped working and to this day keeps Tremor on retainer for possible jobs both local and abroad.

Criminal Record: EXPUNGED

Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts:

Enjoys: Scalp massage, movies, and Grapefruit.

Hates: Shadow games, getting wind-punched in the throat, getting called "Travis"