Name: Jackson Sterling
Alias: Eidolon
Age: 35
Date of Birth: 8/29/1982
Hometown: Atlantic City, NJ
Height: 5'11
Weight: 180
Hair Color: Dark Brown
Eye Color: Hazel
Nationality/Race: Italian
Occupation: Currently unknown
Personality Profile: Jack tends to bottle things up inside; when he's acting cool and collected, there is usually some sort of emotion roiling under the surface. He's friendly to a point, loathe to discuss his past history, and, despite his affable demeanor and his tendency to joke his way through situations, will throw a punch to get his point across if necessary.
Physical Description: Jack doesn't often attempt to be the fashionista. Comfortable clothing like t-shirts and hoodies are his usual affair, typically wearing shirts advertising an assortment of rock groups. Jeans and comfortable sneakers round out his clothing options, rarely wearing shorts even in the dead heat of summer. He's often wearing a pair of black Oakleys with blue lenses, as well. His lightly tanned face is usually sporting a bit of a five o'clock shadow, barely bothering to even comb or brush his hair after rolling out of bed or drying off after a shower.
Character Picture:
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Mutation/Powers:
Primary : Extra-dimensional Shifting
Jackson's mutant power, originating from a specialized organ located against his brainstem at the back of his skull, is the ability to 'shift' his body into a parallel dimension existing concurrently with the real world, his 'warp organ' producing a field that envelopes his person. For Jack, the world becomes overlaid in a blue tint, with sources of light glowing in reds and oranges as opposed to whites and yellows.
For the physical world, Jack's clothing and body are replaced with a black/blue, almost smokey ethereal version of himself. Fine details of his form are lost, 'blurred' by the constantly shifting 'skin' of this form, and his eyes are replaced with ruby red, floating orbs of light. Within his constantly blurring form, occasionally you can spot a network of nerves or perhaps veins, a complex webbing of pale red light in which dots of bright ruby course up down the lines of the system.
While in this form, Jack is essentially a ghost. Physical objects float through him; if one were to move their hand through him, it would be like running one's hand through water, coming out dry on the other side. He can also walk through walls, or drop through floors if he concentrates hard enough.
Anything he holds also warps with him, coming back from the 'other side' unharmed. Electronics currently running, however, typically do not survive the dimensional shift, frying themselves during the warping. He has learned how to negate this process via focusing on the electronic item in question - however, if he were to reflexively phase himself, to dodge an attack, speeding car, etc, the item would still wind up fried.
Due to the location of the 'warp organ' that controls his powers being so close to his brain, his brainwaves are constantly in a state of flux. He is extremely well defended against telepathy, empathy, and other related abilities. It's also difficult to read Jack's mind - even moreso if he knows that somebody is doing it, thanks to years of anti-psychic training.
Secondary : Targeted/Offensive Phasing
Over time, Jack has learned to more effectively use his warping abilities. Jack is capable of 'offensively phasing', projecting his warping field onto something that he's currently grabbing/holding. Unfortunately, without Jack on the other side of the dimensional transfer to see the objects back to reality, they're incapable of returning: Smaller inanimate objects are vaporized, while a wall might find chunks of it missing.
Smaller, but equally devastating, results occur from him projecting this field onto organic matter. He can literally tear away patches of human flesh; his hands resemble the shadowy, wraith-like claws he bears in his fully warped form while attacking like this.
The longer he concentrates on extending the warp field, the larger an object he can phase out. The trade off is that the longer he spends time projecting the warp field, the more strain he puts on himself, similar to the strain resulting from phasing his own body for too long.
A minor offshoot of this use of his power is the ability to phase parts of his body (or his whole body) through electronics and disrupt their function, without needing to actively phase the entire item.
Tertiary : Extra-dimensional Time Differential
The alternate plane or dimension his physical form shifts to experiences time at a slower pace than in the real world, lagging behind slightly. For Jack, a baseball thrown at him at a high speed becomes a gentle lob, as an example. This grants Jackson much faster reaction time to events occuring in the physical plane, and his ethereal form moves a little faster than he normally would.
Drawbacks/Weaknesses :
Exhaustion is the primary drawback of Jack's dimensional shifting. Likely similar to jet lag, the bouncing back and forth between two places in which time operates at a separate speed - let alone the fact he's hopping between dimensions - is taxing on Jack's body. The longer he is shifted at one time, the more a toll it takes on his body when he shifts back to the real world. At the same time, the longer he's shifted, the harder it is to come back to the real world. This has gotten more manageable with time, but it's still rather dangerous for Jack to be shifted for prolonged periods of time; currently, he's tested being shifted for a half an hour before returning, but nearly immediately passing out from exhaustion. Jack nearly always tries to make his shifts as brief as possible.
Jack is susceptible to blows to the base of his skull, the location of his 'warp organ', a strong blow able to knock him unconscious with relative ease.
While not a 'drawback' per se, his metabolism is highly jacked up as a result of his warp organ, and requires a considerable amount of food to maintain his weight, akin to a speedster.
How do you believe this character's powers will further develop in the future? Jack will continue to train himself to stay warped for longer periods of time, as he is already quite skilled with his powers. He may also learn how to manipulate objects in the physical world while shifted, and learn how to take others to the other side with him for periods of time.
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Background: Jackson was born Jackson D'Appolito to the mob boss Vincent 'Vinny Dap' D'Appolito, one of the heads of the Atlantic City-based Falconieri Family of organized crime. When his 'warping' abilities presented themselves at age 12, he accidentally warped for far, far too long, and in coming back his young body was thrown into a coma for a year and a half. When he awoke - saying he had nightmares about monsters and demons trying to eat him - his father decided his boy would learn to use his ability for the good of the Family.
Jackson became a runner and a gopher for the Falconieri family for the next few years, while taking EMS classes in his free time.
At the age of 18, When his mother was killed in an attempted hit on his father, enraged that the 'life' had resulted in his beloved mother's death, he ran away from Atlantic City, taking his mother's maiden name Sterling, beginning 10 long years of a nomadic lifestyle. He found work for a multitude of organizations, visiting and staying at many mutant schools and sanctuaries, working for S.H.I.E.L.D. as well as S.H.R.I.N.E. briefly, and assisting in a covert mutant terrorism unit, aimed to combat mutant terrorist cells.
Crisscrossing the United States, with a brief stay in London, England, Jack returned to the East Coast and Massachusetts. Jack developed a close relationship with Cobalt Hill, employed as staff for the sanctuary as both an on-site medic, a member of the special ops team, and a close friend to many. He also dabbled in work with M.E.T.A. helping stop superpowered threats. Life had finally become 'static' for him; he fathered a child with Sisip Webster, practically adopted Seven Sterling as a sister (who received her surname from him), and repeatedly helped defend Cobalt Hill and Salem.
One day, without a word, Jackson vanished from Cobalt Hill; no messages, no goodbyes. Over the next few years, those who may have cared, or had it out for the wraith, would have found him popping up sporadically around the world, typically at sites of superpowered disasters or attacks. The most notable reemergence was being implicated in a metahuman prison break-out in Russia. In all of this time, Jack never attempted to contact the mother of his child or any of his other adopted family back in Massachusetts. Rumors traveled among the metahuman intelligence community; he was part of some black ops outfit, he'd joined a metahuman crime syndicate, take your pick. Nothing was verified, but nothing was disproven, either. His last sighting was in Japan, putting down a metahuman murderer running rampant through rural Tohoku.
There are reports he was recently seen re-entering the United States at Salem International, before immediately ghosting once more.
Quirks/Extras (Random fun facts about your character!):
-Jack has a varied educational and professional background; he attended multiple colleges and universities around the world (but never graduated from a single one), and has had involvement in numerous military, criminal, or even downright mundane organizations. He's talented with computers, and has studied field medicine/emergency medical services.
-In his time wandering the world, he's also grown to be a proficient fighter, most notably learning krav maga from a former IDF soldier, kendo, and firearms training.
-Jack is a baseball fan, his loyalty lying with the Philadelphia Phillies.
-In his younger years during his attendance at a school in the Northwest, he became a collector and painter of fantasy wargame miniatures.
-His favorite band is Coheed and Cambria, and used to own at least 20 different shirts bought at different concerts.
-Blogged under the name 'Eidolon' about mutant rights and MTF activities in the various areas he settled in.
