Name: Damien Dane
Codename: Wyrm
Age: 21
Date of Birth: Jan, 1999
Height: 6'0
Weight: 404
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Golden
Place of Origin: San Francisco, California
Nationality/Race: African-American/ Black
Classification/Origin of Powers: Mutant
Status: Trainee
Occupation: Unemployed-College Student (Junior-year Student - Sociology/Philosophy Major), Civil-Rights Activist, Volunteer
Personality Profile: Cheerful, talkative, and occasionally brash, while internally Damien is mostly quiet, aware, and near contemplatively meditative. The best way to describe it, as that even when things are calm around him, Damien is the eye of his own personal storm. He is generally even-tempored and prone to acts of humor that are (hopefully) infectious. He has, in his own way, come to accept the nature and idiosyncrasies of his Mutation, and is troubled not so much by his powers, but by the limitations placed upon him by the all-too-real ramifications of his weaknesses. And sometimes this seriously frustrates him. At such times he often slips off to be alone.
Damien is a strong advocate of treating people with compassion, fairness, and justice, and, during his pre-mutant manifstation stage, used to spend a great deal of his time working at non-religeous soup kitchens and homeless shelters (when he wasn't simply just walking the streets after dark and helping the local street people as best as his young-self could). He still does so now, when the time is available, but now, when he does this, he mostly helps out behind the scenes, provided he has the blessings of the local civic proprietor.
Physical Description: See Pics -
Human Form -
Dragon Form -
Random 'Flaming Fire-Hydrant' Form -
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General Power Information: Pyrokinetic, Draconiform-Shapeshifter
Shapeshifter: The basic core of Damien's mutant abilities is shapeshifting. He can take the forms (but not the inherent properties) of animate and inanimate objects, ranging in size from a large elephant, to a small kitten. However he does not gain any of the innate abilities of the forms he takes, and the forms taken still conform, at a tangible/touchable level to his flaws. While most people aren't about to go stroking that flaming fire-hydrant, for example, those that do will discover that the firehydrant has suspicious eyeslits, and a strange scaly texture. All of this requires a great deal of caloric intake, but fortunately Damien can eat anything organic with little to fear from poisons and the like, as his body relentlessly burns everything for fuel. As a perk to his innate shapeshifting abilities, Damien has adjusted his physiology to the equivilant of peak health and capability. He is as agile and fast as the world's fastest man, and benches a clean ton of weight in his standard 'human' form, and usually maintains peak capacity throughout all his alternative shapeshifted forms.
Specialized Dragon-form: Damien possesses two core forms, at this time, that he has trained and perfected to the best of his current abilities: The first being his 'basic' Human-form, and the second is a mighty European style Dragon-form, that comes complete with claws, fanged teeth, horns, and the capacity for winged flight. While all of these are abilities he might manifest in his other forms, it is his only form where he has enhanced and perfected his use of his armored scales (which are, of course, obnoxiously obvious in this form, at any size), his size-related strength, and his Pyrokinetic abilities, though the latter may be more an issue of mind over matter. In this form, however, Damien's metal-based dietary requirements increase accordingly.
Solar-Based Pyrokinesis: Damien's shapeshifting abilities consume a lot of internal power. Luckily he can maintain his powers through the powerful harvesting of solar energy through a complex chemical process that starts in his armored scales, and continues throughout the rest of his physiology. This is the source of Damien's consistantly high temperature, and, as a result, has manifested in a very well controlled form of Pyrokinesis. In short, Damien can breathe out gouts of fire with pin-point accuracy, and, more importantly, he can also control flames, heat and smoke in his immediate vacinity. As a result, Damien is practically immune to fire, heat, and smoke inhalation.
Drawbacks & Weaknesses: At this time, Damien has not totally perfected his shapeshifting abilities, leading to several weaknesses, connected to the vast majority of his powers.
-Abnormally High Body Temperature: No matter what form he's in, Damien is always running 20-40 degrees <F> warmer than he should be, starting with a cool 118-128 degree temperature when he's in his base 'human' form, and isn't overly taxing any of his powers. When being tracked by heat or thermal radiation detection, Damien is an easy big-old blip to spot.
-Always Scaly: No matter what form he's in, Damien is always scaly. Even in his base human form, were all appears normal, Damien's hide is made up of very fine scales, which is the only time that his skin appears to have anything like an illusion of normality. This lasts until he is actually touched. Touch reveals that his skin is actually the consistancy of sleek but thick leathery hide.
-Constant Hyper-Density: Damien always wheighs at least twice as much as he appears, hence his base 'at-rest' weight of 404lbs. Thin ice, walkways built for only standard human variable weights, thick mud, and thin climbing ropes are not Damien's friend.
-Exponentially Increased Caloric Requirements: Damien requires at least a base-meal of 8,000 calories a day, at his base size. If he alters his size, for any form that is alrger then this, his necessary caloric intake increases (and this is not mitigatable by him spending quality time at his minimal size).
-Limited Size Variations: At this time, Damien can only change within the forms and shapes availble within the hard limits of medium cat-sized forms, to that of roughly a mighty clydesdale horse. his physiology balks at sizes larger or smaller than this, though exactly -why- has yet to be discovered.
-Obvious Tell (Luminescent/Reflective Golden Reptilian Eyes): Damien in all his forms, even those technically without proper eyes, has at least two golden, luminescent, reflective, reptilian eyes with which to look about. His only recourse, if he is supposed to be something eyeless (see the flaming firehydrant above), is to sit still with his eyes closed, and hope nobody notices that something isn't right.
-Obvious Total Internal Alien Physiology: Thanks to the needs and mutability of his physiology, Damiens internal biology is totally alien in appearance, form, and function, to modern science. Even low-impact examination devices like airport security will easily be able to ascertain that something is 'wrong-looking' with Damiens innards. Even his blood (which is unapologetically blue), does not contain the normal circulatory bodies that a human's should.
-Permanent, Notable/Trackable Smokey Odor: Damien's scales have a number of useful properties due to their variable size, and the chemical processes that occur within their cellular structure. Unfortunately, these self-same chemicals also produce a notable not-'generally'-unpleasent, woodsmoke odor, that can easily be picked up by everyone but a human without a sinus condition. Hunting dogs and other nasal-tracking animals can make Damien's life hell, and his odor may give people with major allergies a raging case of the sniffles.
-Physical Enhancements Linked to Size/Weight: Damien can enhance certain aspects of his physical attributes (such as his strength or his agility and speed), but not generally simultaneously, and not without clearly alterting his shape. If he's making himself stronger, for example, his muscles will swell, pop, and generally look steroidal and obvious as his height and weight also bloom. If he's making himself faster, however, his form either shrinks or else becomes more wiry and emaciated-looking, as his muscles tighten and so on.
-Unusual Hunger/Digestion of Metals: On top of Damien's freakish caloric needs, he is also hungry for metal: generally the shinier and rarer the better - right up on the periodic chart till just after it starts to become 'safely' radioactive. While he can chew, swallow, and digest any metallic item he can get his mouth around (sharpness be damned, though he prefers not to), he gains little if any caloric benefit for doing so. His hunger and greed for such objects can and has caused him quite a bit of distraction, at times.
Skills: (What things does your character excell at? Cooking? Swimming? Are they a survivalist? Remember to be realistic and not overdo it.)
-Parkour/Freerunning:
-Sleight of Hand:
-Sociology:
-Streetwise:
Background: Damien was an only child, born of a healthily middle-income household; his father, a civil-rights lawyer, and his mother a loan manager for local credit-union. The two parents did their best, but where somewhat unprepared for the restless and active spirit of their offspring, who started followed in his father's sociological leanings at the ripe old age of 12, but in a more direct, street-level manner. Curiously, it was almost a relief when his initial Mutation (a weak form of Pyrokinesis) first manifested at the age of 15, because it gave the young man something else to focus on, and kept him home at night (rather than sneaking out at night, to help feed the local homeless, and street-people of his neighborhood).
By the age of seventeen, however, Damien had begun to eat like a horse, and his skin had become notably rough to the touch in a manner that no moisturizer could ever fix. He also manifested the ability to sprout fangs and claws seemingly at will. He took to once again hitting the streets at night, hungry for something he couldn't exactly name, and continuing his helping of the homeless while he was at it. He took to wearing a full facemask at this time, and began to learn parkour (the hard way) as his athletic prowess began to increase. When he graduated from high-school, he took to long-distance college Sociology courses, at home, much to the understanding of his parents who figured he was just being smart about hiding his mutation.
Things changed in a major way for Damien, a few months after he turned nineteen, and gave a face to his hunger. After first succesfully defending a homeless man from a drunk and angry biker, Damien then turned around and ate all the 'safe' metal-bits of the aggressor's Harley-Davidson until he was finally sated. The battered biker sobered up and wisely ran away. Damien slunk on home after that, and deeply dwelled on his new dietary changes for the better part of the next month, during which time he continued to slip away from the house, at night, and preyed upon other metallic objects and devices. He noted many physiological changes during this time, gaining the ability to enhance the scaly nature of his skin (the first time of this, causing 90% of his hair to permanently fall out), as well as the further improvement of his pyrokinetic powers.
He assumed a draconic form, for the first time, a few months later, during the succesful rescue of people from a deadly apartment fire (which was NOT his fault, but the papers blamed some sort of monster for it, anyway). It was after that, when Damien began to seek out opportunities to self-train, as well as for outside help in the utilization of his shapeshifting abilities.
Criminal Record: Damien has been on the police radar since he was fourteen, but while he might have been occasionally stopped and 'talked at' by local police officers when out on the street (during the day), he wisely managed to avoid any real trouble. He maintains a clean criminal record.
Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts: Damien is ambidextrous and double-jointed by design.
Finding that most of the popular, nu-metal, and rap music of his era, really -really- sucked (if you can't tell one song of your genre from another, why bother?), Damien found himself listening to more fringe music. Perferably the stranger stuff that didn't always seem to hit the same themes, over and over again. While anyone who gets ahold of his playlist risks something of an auditory whiplash if they listen in, they can be sure that there are no sleepy weepy love-ballads, shamelessly self-promotional tunes, or even anti-establishment born songs that don't at least come with a reason for being so, and a solution for what to do next. Also GWAR. GWAR is a guilty pleasure.
As Damien is currently of limited resources, he wears whatever clothes that will blend for a given situation, but keeps an eye open for clothes his scaly skin won't easily abraid, and that will also be easy to shuck into and out of, as running around starkers naked is not usually a good way to make friends. When he's out helping people on the street, his usual loose-fight attire is usually indistinguishable from that of other people who are hard on their luck, with the except that his is as clean as he can keep them.
Damien is ridiculously fond of any bright variation of the colour red, and loves to either wear clothing of the same hue, or to simply just -be- that colour, often to the point of causing himself some social difficulty when amongst humans.
Damien is a caffeine addict, and bows down the the fine coffee made by the "the supreme bean."