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Printable Character Sheet
Hero Designer File
Intro Story
Van Varrett is 45 years old, though now he looks to be in his mid-twenties. He has a lovely wife named Elizabeth and two daughters, Elise and Sylvie, both in college now. Elise is a Senior and Sylvie a freshman. He lives just outside New Orleans, in a lovely two story home off Bulverde Drive. In another three years he could have concievably retired from the Hunters Green Apartment complex, where he worked as a maintenance man. But something very unusual happened to Van Varrett. Something that changed his life, and the lives of his family forever. |
| He had gone out into the Bayou, gathering mushrooms and various wild herbs for his wife. This is something he had done many times, and in almost all kinds of weather. Thunderstorms, therefore, were not that big a deal. This one seemed to be odder than most, with peculiar gold-colored lightning and almost no rain, but again - he was not concerned. Odd things happen out in the swamps all the time, anyone will tell you that. You just roll with it. He was on his way back to the boat when lightning struck the water less than a hundred feet away. A very odd-colored bolt of lightning - a sort of yellow-gold - he thought in suprise as the darkness took him. In that moment, he also realized that he had probably just been deep fried. "Who will be there for Elizabeth and the kids," were his last thoughts.
When next he regained consciousness it was dark, and there was a 'gator calmly chomping away on his right leg. He'd screamed and tried to drag himself away, but the creatures jaws had proven to powerful. After a moment of terror, he'd slowly realized the while his leg was clamped in the reptile's jaws its teeth had yet to break his skin. And there was no pain. None. A sort of dull pressure, but that's all.
Fear turned to confusion; and then he noticed the glow. It was coming from him - his entire body was emitting a soft amber light. The 'gator was also covered in a soft amber sheath of light. Van briefly speculated that he was dying and that his mind was playing tricks upon him, but after a good minute of watching the gater contentedly chomping away he decided that he was still alive. Just very, very confused. He was lying on one of the many islets that dotted the swamp, and he scrabbled around a bit until he found a good sized stick. Taking carefull aim he jabbed the gator squarely in its eye.
The stick snapped, the gator blinked a time or two then took off into the swamp. As soon as it let him go, the glow that had surrounded it went out.Van sat there a moment staring at his shredded pants leg and wondering whether to laugh or cry. His boat was about twenty feet away, floating calmly in the swamps murky waters. Since lying there wasn't accomplishing anything he stood up, and as he did so he caught his reflection in the water. "Ain't that sumthin?" he'd thought as he saw the warm flicker of golden light surrounding him. He shook his head, sighed, got out to his boat and returned home.
His wife was waiting up for him, as it wasn't like Van to be out so late. When she saw her husband walk through the front door glowing like a neon sign, her first thought was that he had died and that an angel had taken his form to break the news to her gently.
That night was the longest night the entire family had ever gone through.
Van called in sick over the next few days while trying to determine what had happened to him. When his wife and children were out, he would go down into the basement workroom and do a bit of experimenting. Drills, saws, nails and even his acetyline torch were incapable of harming him. And remembering that his aura had covered the gator, he involved the family tabbycat King Arthur in his experiments. Van doesn't say exactly *how* he involved the cat. King Arthur will no longer go near him. Such is the way of things.
Van's eldest daughter shared all of this with her biology prof., Mawbry Palmersdale. She knew Palmersdale had the metagene, and hoped he could help her father cope with what was happening to him. The two men liked each other right from the start, though they did (and still do) have their differences. It's because of Mawbry that Van has taking going to a local gym run by a friend of Palmersdale, "Atomic Al" Pratt.
And because of those early experiments, Van became the focus of Primus Special Agent Laura Pender. She convinced the Cajun that working with Primus would be the best way for him to learn how to deal with his newfound abilities, while at the same time gathering a valuable MWA for the organization. Van now spends a day or two a week at the local Primus field office, testing himself and learning what he must learn to protect himself, and his family, from those who wouldn't understand what he's become. |
