Bastard Vic, the shapeshifter

[Devilpants]

Player Nickname: Devilpants

Name: Victor Charles Brundle
Codenames: Bastard Vic, Tarrare, The Thing
Date of Birth: January 4, 1976

Height: Variable; defaults to 6'4"
Weight: Variable; between 200-300 lbs on a good day
Hair Color: Variable; defaults to brown
Eye Color: Variable; defaults to brown
Place of Origin: Yonkers, New York, United States
Nationality/Race: American, of Polish descent
Classification/Origin of Powers: Mutant

Status: Villain
Occupation: Career criminal

Personality Profile:
- Does not care about social norms or societal expectations
- Feels that due to his difficult life during childhood, society owes him
- Uses this feeling of entitlement to justify criminal activity
- Considers himself a skilled professional, tries to minimize collateral damage during fights

Physical Description:
Bastard Vic's default human form is that of a tall and lanky man with several offputting aspects. His proportions are ever-so-slightly wrong, with his limbs and neck being a little too long and the upper arms, forearms, upper legs, lower legs, and torso being just wrong enough to look off. His smile is disturbing in that his mouth is a little too wide with a few too many perfect pearly-white teeth. He typically doesn't bother growing any hair, except for eyebrows and an occasional beard.

Vic typically wears jogging pants, but rarely a shirt or shoes. On the rare occasion he does dress to blend in, he goes for sneakers, a newsboy cap, and jeans, dressing as cheaply as possible. He does this because during battle, his clothes tend not to survive his shapeshifting.

All this, combined with his height and general demeanor, makes for an unpleasant individual.

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General Power Information: Advanced Shapeshifting

Ability One: Shapeshifting

Bastard Vic possesses extremely advanced shapeshifting abilities. He is able to quickly and easily shift his body and limbs into those of various animals, or grow entirely new limbs. He can also manipulate his entire body's shape and appearance, allowing him to mimic other people. While there are many possibilities, the following are examples of Bastard Vic's most frequent shapeshifting exploits:
- Gorilla musculature to enhance strength
- Bone and joint manipulation for flexibility
- Scales, thick hide, and shells (turtle or clam) for defense
- Tail creation for balance, prehensile tails for an extra limb, scorpion tail for offense
- Extra limb growth for combat or mobility
- Additional eyes or other sensory organs
- Suction cups (frogs, octopi), tiny barbs, and sticky fluid for climbing
- Natural weaponry (porcupine spines, fangs, claws, pincers, mantis claws, talons)
- Wings, primarily for gliding or for flight under special circumstances
- Temperature regulation through fat and blood flow manipulation, fur growth, and oil secretion to resist either hot or cold
- Pressure resistance
- Colour and texture camouflage
- Gill creation for amphibious breathing
- Enhanced sight, taste, smell, hearing, and touch, which can be further enhanced by directly imitating animals (dogs and cats for hearing and smell, falcons and cats for sight, etc.)

Ability Two: Biochemical Manipulation

Bastard Vic can manipulate his body's biochemistry in a variety of ways. He primarily uses this to create various poisons, venoms, potent digestive acids, and other toxins, which can be injected, sprayed (in liquid or gaseous form), or spat upon foes. He is particularly fond of "skunking" foes to cover an escape.

Defensively, Vic manipulates his biochemistry to deal with toxins and boost his immune system, rendering him immune to most biological attacks (teargas, poison, disease), though it can take time for him to analyze and create a proper defense.

Ability Three: Biomass Assimilation

Bastard Vic can absorb biological matter and assimilate it into himself, essentially eating it. What he assimilates is converted into nutrients as well as mass that fuels his shapeshifting. More importantly, what he consumes is also added to his shapeshifting repertoire, which is why his shapeshifting is all based on real animals.

In addition, his ability to reabsorb biomass and shift it into whatever he needs combined with his biochemistry manipulation results in extraordinarily rapid healing. It takes total cell destruction or debilitating disorientation to subdue Vic. This also allows him to compress biomass (with limits) to reduce his height and change his body shape, aiding in shapeshifting.

Drawbacks & Weaknesses:
- Biomass Requirements: To create additional limbs and large body parts requires a significant amount of biomass, and severing and destroying them prevents Vic from absorbing them to recycle the mass. If he lacks the biomass, Vic's options become limited and he becomes easier to fight.
- Biochemical Synthesis: The types of biochemicals Vic can create depend heavily on his diet. To create the toxins, venoms, and poisons of the animals he imitates, he needs to recreate their physiology and diet, which sometimes isn't possible for more exotic animals. In addition, while he creates these substances much faster than the animals he is imitating, they still take time to replenish when he uses them.
- Flight Limitations: Since Vic's shapeshifting is heavily dependent on how much biomass he has accumulated, flight is typically used as a last resort because he has to shed biomass to make his bones hollow and reduce his weight enough to allow true flight, rather than just gliding.
- Human Mimicry Limitations: While Vic can change his appearance to imitate other people, it requires close, careful study of detailed images of a person and takes up to an hour to get to a passable quality. This time can be significantly shortened if he is able to directly study a person up close, whether in-person or a detailed 3D model. However, he's not a very good actor.
- Stun Weakness: While Bastard Vic is a formidable opponent, most of his shapeshifting and resilience requires active effort on his part. If he is stunned or knocked unconscious and kept that way, he can be safely transported. It's when he wakes up that his captors need to worry.

Skills:
- Combat: Bastard Vic is an absolute monster in combat, able to track and deal with multiple foes, improvise offense and defense, and think on his feet. While untrained in martial arts, Vic has a vicious, animalistic fighting style that is terrifying to deal with.
- Wilderness & Urban Survival: Vic is very skilled at scrounging and hunting, taking after the various animals he can imitate. He can survive for months at a time outdoors or in city streets.
- Biochemistry: Despite having no formal education in the field, Vic is very knowledgeable in this field thanks to his powers.
- Driving: Vic has a driver's license. He can drive well enough, but doesn't care much about road safety or traffic laws.
- Stealth: Mainly thanks to his powers, Vic is excellent at altering his appearance to blend into a crowd or to move silently.

Background:

Victor Charles Brundle was born to a poor family in Yonkers, New York, and struggled through childhood. Being undersized and poor, he was a frequent target for bullies in school. Instead of giving him empathy and teaching him good work ethic and to be thankful for what he had, he became bitter and resentful, especially toward children of wealthy families.

It was in early highschool when his powers first emerged. While he was being beaten up by bullies, he grew bull horns and accidentally killed one of them. Fearing arrest or reprisal, he fled the school, gathered up his possessions, and ran away from home.

He learned how to use his powers while living on the street and almost immediately fell into a life of crime, going from gang to gang and city to city, until joining up with a gang of mutant criminals in New York City. Over the years, he learned more and more about his powers and how they functioned, becoming very skilled and building a reputation for his fighting ability and ruthlessness.

It was when his gang attempted a high stakes bank robbery and took hostages that things took a turn for the worse: the New York-based superhero team The Rivals showed up and swiftly put a stop to them, subduing everyone except Vic, who managed to escape during the fighting.

After laying low in New Jersey for a few months, Vic decided it was time to move on. That's when he went northeast, settling in Salem, Massachusetts.

Criminal Record:
- Trespassing
- Unlawful entry
- Destruction of property
- Aggravated cruelty to animals, violating the Animal Welfare Act
- Multiple thefts both under and over $5000
- Assault and battery
- Unlawful confinement
- Murder, both 1st and 2nd degree
- Indignity to a dead body

Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts:
Despite having the nickname Bastard Vic, he works very well on teams and doesn't mind taking orders, as long as the person in charge knows what they're doing.

Vic is also a voracious reader and spends most of his downtime reading non-fiction and literary fiction.