Name: Delilah Esterfield
Codename:
Age: 25
Date of Birth: 4.25
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 165 Lbs.
Hair Color: Dark auburn, fading to deep brown at the tips.
Eye Color: Gold
Place of Origin: Clearwater, Florida
Nationality/Race: Black/White
Classification/Origin of Powers: Magic
Status: Part-time Resident
Occupation: Painter, Graphic Designer
Personality Profile: Delilah is a bit more short-tempered than the average person, but with literal monsters living inside of her mind, it makes a degree of sense -- and she doesn't use it as en excuse as much as an explanation. She has managed to mellow out significantly after a volatile period of finding herself and being essentially possessed by one of her summoned beasts. Her preference is for quiet conversation and a paintbrush, or the opportunity to break someone's nose; there's rarely an in between. Her sense of humor is dry and a little dark.
Physical Description:
A mane of soft, wavy dark hair is deep auburn and is typically tied into a single braid or ponytail with tips colored hot pink, the rest left to fall freely across her face, her expression more often than not stern or mildly displeased. She has an average, well-rounded build and smooth skin in a coffee-and-cream tone is powdered with gold dust and a number of equally gold-colored gashes and scars that tear their way across her flesh, the most notable crossing vertically over her left eye. Her molten gold eyes have been known to glow when her powers are active. Delilah decorates herself with an excess of jewelry and baubles, each tied to the creation of one of her summoned entities. She has several rings in both ears, and her eyebrow and navel are also pierced.
---------------------------------
Powerset: Ethereal Bestiary
Ability One: Creature Summoning - Delilah has the ability to harness a unique type of energy and shape it into real, semi-sentient beings. Whether these creatures already exist on some alternate plane or she is actually creating them from whatever strange energy resides on that plane is not clear -- whatever it is, she is extremely in tune with it. The act of summoning requires a great deal of mental discipline and concentration on Delilah's part.
The creatures themselves are largely controllable, but drain a lot of energy depending on their size and abilities. This means that they can choose to disobey and even turn on Delilah, so establishing a trusted rapport with each entity is necessary.
The summoning of these creatures requires both a verbal and physical component. Every creature requires some grounding in reality, and for this reason, she often carries or wears a variety of jewelry made from different materials, each creature bound to a specific object or objects.
The larger and more complex the creature, the less time she can draw upon their energies, and the greater chance that it will turn on her and attack her. The smallest can be called upon for up to two hours, while the largest can only be summoned for an hour (RP time). She can only summon one creature at a time, and must rest before attempting to summon another, depending on its strength.
The nature and personalities of the creatures that she summons are directly linked to facets of her own psyche, so the more she learns about herself, the more complex entities she could hypothetically summon. Alternatively, the more ludicrously simple and primal.
SUMMONS: Moon Koi (a glowing fish), Fairy Trio (colors of light given the form of pixies), Wind Serpent (A flighted rainbow beast that channels electricity), Skeletal Hunter ("Skelecat", a black skeletal feline the size of a puma, cloaked in transparent shadow), The Valkyrie (A winged, armored swordfighter), Dark Majesty (A dragon)
Ability Two: Chimeric Gestalt - Delilah has the ability to merge with any one of her summoned creatures either before or after it comes into existence. Either method results in agonizing pain of body as well as mind until the fusion is complete, although it takes only about a minute for the process to run its course. While melded, Delilah gains the abilities of the creature that she is linked to, though they function at about half the potency that they would when the creature itself is active.
While melded, her mind functions neither quite on the human level nor that of the creature that she has summoned, but is instead of a seamless blending of the two that seemingly results in a new personality entirely. She is unable to summon any other entities while melded. At present, Delilah can only remain melded with her summoned creature for about a half hour (at which point they will be torn from each other and the latter dismissed.)
Ability Three: Sense Magic - The years of summoning have left Delilah sensitive to the existence of the magical world. She can't always make sense of what she detects -- lights in the corners of her eyes, an unusual smell, a strange feeling at the back of her neck, but they all pull on some primal part of her that is connected to magic when it is being used in her vicinity. Delilah can recognize when someone has magic inside of them, though she can't tell what it is or their intentions for it.
Drawbacks & Weaknesses: The extended summoning of any creature is both mentally and physically draining to Delilah. Any substantial injury done to her will prematurely sever the link between herself and the creature she controls, weakening her severely in the process. Should one of her creatures decide to turn on her, she has virtually no way of defending herself short of putting herself in harm's way to make physical contact in order to cut the link and cause the energy to dissipate. If Delilah is knocked out, her summoned creature(s) will vanish. The act of summoning requires that Delilah possess some consumable item, a catalyst for manifesting the creature into reality. It doesn't need to be a lot, but all of her magic requires some kind of offering, something that she has imbued with meaning.
Skills: Painting, drawing, rollerblading
Background: The majority of Delilah's childhood could be cited as being fairly normal. She lived with her father, an ex-musician, after a decidedly painful divorce that she barely finds herself able to recall; her father always hesitantly informed her that her mother was an alcoholic, and she accepted that explanation without question. There was little tension and no protest when her father chose to remarry, falling in love with the owner of a smalltime accounting firm and taking on the responsibility of three children from her prior marriage. Delilah allowed herself to fall into the background, finding herself being the odd one out for more reasons than one, feeling that there was no niche for her in this 'new' family. Her only real friends were the ones that she made for herself, talking to them in her head. When her family found out about this, she was immediately sent to therapy.
Teased and tormented mercilessly by her new stepsiblings, Delilah took to art as an outlet for her frustrations (with a bit of a nudge from her therapist), her quiet requests to her father responded to with paints, easels, sketchbooks and any other medium she wished. For the time being, her strange 'friends' seemed to have disappeared, though Delilah was compelled to take her own form of revenge on her new siblings. Soon, for every mean word that her stepbrothers spoke, or for every time her stepsister shoved her, she would find herself painting crude images on their walls, hurtful accusations and anger-fueled swear words and graffiti. Her stepmother was the only one to scold her for this, of course.
Feeling that she no longer had a place in this family, Delilah withdrew almost completely. The endless teasing never stopped, of course, and her 'friends' began to appear again, though this time they resided not within her head, but at her bedside, by her window. She rarely speaks of the hulking, spindly beast that she called forth in a fit of frustration, never talking about its dripping fangs or sinewy form covered in greased black spines. Nor does she talk about the way this creature responded to her commands without question, clawing down to the drywall, tearing up carpet and breaking object after object before disappearing without a trace. She won't dare mention that she called forth this beast while wishing, hoping, and praying that it would make all of those problems, in this case, her stepsiblings and stepmother, go away. What she will say, however, is that she was sent to live with her mother, blamed by her stepmother for the damage caused by her 'imaginary' friend.
... Her alcoholic mother?
As it turned out, Delilah's mother was not a drunkard. No, she was the descendant of humans touched by creatures from what was only known as an "shifted plane". With a unique attachment to alternate planes, the power grew within her mother in the form of hellish foresight, and then to Delilah in the form of her 'imaginary friends'. Her mother left because of her own sense of responsibility, or lack thereof, unwilling to tell her ex-husband or daughter just what she would be exposed to in her coming years. To Delilah, she and her mother were otherwise, as different as night and day, rarely speaking and finding little common ground. Attending school as usual, coming home to silent dinners and sometimes no dinner at all, she'd realized that she would never be content to rot away in that dingy little apartment, searching for something better. Something more.
And she found it, in a small school for the 'gifted', just outside of Massachusetts.
At some point within her new home, Delilah had undergone a drastic and painful transformation, presumably for the worst. No longer acknowledging who she is or her relationships with those around her, her personality (and to a lesser degree, her appearance) has shifted to make her seem slightly less human. She spent less and less time at the school-turned-sanctum and vacated it entirely, living off the grid and trying to keep herself from slipping further into a familiar, violent state.
But every new day brings with it new possibilities, even from old homes.
Criminal Record: Assault, five counts.
Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts:
x Delilah makes art. These days it's often a bit more abstract, but she is proficient at fantasy art, many of it serving as inspiration for her summoned creatures... or perhaps it's the other way around.
x Her creatures influence her personality. For example, while her powers do not grant her any particular resistance toward extreme temperatures, she has been known to dress 'lightly' year round. She suspects it's the dragon's doing.
x Delilah has a moderate allergy to peanuts and dogs.
x The scars and gold dusting that Delilah carries are the result of too much pent-up energy not being released and bits of the same 'bleeding' off, as the beings are always gnawing to get free.
x Initially mis"diagnosed" as a mutant.
x Delilah is often more comfortable on a pair of skates than she is walking.
