Post by Monolilith on May 10, 2016 0:13:40 GMT -5
Full Name: Mr. Nova
Nickname(s): Max, Good Doctor, Arbiter No Longer, innumerable silly pet names from Greer
Age: Undeterminable - middle aged?
Height: 5’11”, when not hunched over
Weight: Still a little underweight
Gender: Cis Male
Race: Undeterminable
Alliance: Cyclebreakers - Lawful Good
Home: A mansion in the ruins of a small town. No one really knows why he stays there - it’s a mark of far worse times. And yet he lingers.
Franchise: TTU (original)
Physical Description
To unfamiliar eyes, Nova seems sinister. Dark, grey-streaked hair is pushed back across his sharp, slightly receding hairline, curving up at the bottom in a sort of flat bob. He’s tall and slender, wiry muscles lining his lean limbs, and between broad shoulders and exceptionally slender hips and waist, he has quite an imposing figure.
But his slightly wizened, clean-shaven face isn’t cold, despite the icy shock yellow of his irises. It’s sad. His sizeable, downturned eyes are sad, and when he smiles (one beyond handsome, the kind of smile that makes the sun shine brighter and eases all pains), it’s not without a distant remorse. He only seems truly happy with Greer - as though Greer is the one thing he didn’t make a disaster out of.
Nova’s jaw is relatively long and triangular, with high cheekbones and thick brows.. Much of his body is bony and lithe, in fact, all of it is -had he hands, they’d be long and stark-knuckled. Unfortunately, both arms end at the elbow. His prosthetics are described in the next section. His legs are intact, and he has a long, graceful stride, though when sitting, he rests his feet at odd angles, and hunches over VERY harshly when working seated despite excellent posture otherwise.
Nova rarely deviates from his standard outfit - black slacks, grey button-down with the sleeves tied over his stumps, lighter grey undershirt. It’s just his Look, y’know?
Weapons and Accessories
Nova’s weapon of choice is magic or his bladed fingers, but in more dire times he turns to a simple, classical rapier with a twisting handguard. A sketch of Nova wielding it is attached.
Oh, and those bladed fingers… Harnessed to his arm stumps and manipulated with sheer force of will, Nova’s mechanical hands contain no wiring or engine. They are simply metal rods with skeleton-esque joints and basic, wire-based pulleys to act as ligaments, but they serve their purpose. Nova’s needle-like fingers can trade out for blunter ones depending on his task, and are thus as versatile as they are dexterous. He could technically modify them into just about anything - provided he has enough solid titanium.
Abilities/Powers
First and foremost, the most shameful one: Possession. Possession is generally a thing only able to be done by ghost and demon types, but Nova’s form is unique. It’s literally a willpower override, invoking paralyzing paranoia and creeping in through the back door. It’s nefarious, and when done without consent, it’s agonizing, humiliating, and traumatizing. This power’s source is Alexandra, the goddess that planted the seeds of the Arbiter. He uses it as rarely as he can possibly afford to.
Ferrokinesis is an ability he’s had since birth, though. Certainly, the loss of the vulpine perk in exchange for the override one had a horrible effect on him, and he still feels the hollow, but he still has metal manipulation. His favorites are the brass alloy, titanium, iron, and silver, and he can’t manipulate platinum.
There is another notable one. Directly prior to making the deal with Alexandra, Nova was killed, and literally forced his way back to life through an intangible process known as ‘ennobling’. Nobles are a unique form of undead whose sheer life force keeps their body regenerating and functioning even in the most extreme conditions - a Deadpool-esque healing factor is involved.
Weaknesses
Nova’s biggest weakness is honestly his past. Bringing up the topic is a good way to silence, bait, blind, or even incapacitate him. Only those closest to him have what it takes to reassure him after that - Miranda, Greer, any one of his children.
Other than that, Nova has a protective streak a mile long, and his laser-like focus may at times cause tunnel vision. He always thinks outside the box, but he won’t go looking for other boxes, you know?
Skills
Well, what arsenal would you expect at the disposal of an ex supervillain? Brilliant research skills, manipulation, resourcefulness, worldliness, interrogation tactics, fear mongering, timing, surprise, initiative… The whole package. But this time around, Nova is using them for good.
Personality
Nova’s primary goal is unwavering, permeating throughout everything that he is: Atonement. Nova’s memories of who he was and how he got there are stark in his mind even years after. They drive him, all of him, from his ambitions to his dedication to his sleepless nights in the library or the laboratory. He carries his remorse everywhere, and only sets it aside for Greer and his kids. No other.
And why not them? Nova loves them more than he’ll ever love himself - loves them more than anything. Nova’s kids are his inspiration, and Greer is his… well, his one true love. Nova would do absolutely anything for those closest to him, even shatter his morals and abandon his goal if it came to that. It’s more than a sentiment: he’s devoted.
But it won’t come to that. Not only is Nova’s family completely dedicated to helping him with research and recovery alike, but he KNOWS it - knows it well. The undying support of his loved ones is another huge driving force of his. He derives most of his strength from it - the strength to stand tall, speak clearly, invoke his powerful mind and improbable charisma. It gives him the guts to show just what a force to be reckoned with he is. And boy howdy, when it comes to what he knows, does he EVER know a HELL of a lot…
See, Nova’s a magic savant Manic biology, theoretical metaphysics, taint manipulation, edge law, you name it, he has like twenty papers on it somewhere in his file folders, and he’d be happy to find them - “Just give me a minute! … Um, maybe more than a minute! Okay, where - jesus - hell, where even”. Nova’s relationship with magical sciences is intimate and exact, yet widespread and enthusiastic, and this knowledge is his greatest weapon.
Not that his powers of observation go to waste. Nova is far from overconfident. He’s always seeking new awareness, new weapons, new allies, new anything, to augment his understanding of the world and his place in it. His flaws are based on haste and aggression, but just the same, his assets are based on vigilance and dedication: the very virtues that make his quest even remotely feasible.
And if you’re still scared of him… don’t worry. His keywords form ‘ass w’, and he laughs every time he remembers it. :V
History
Nova wasn’t always the Good Doctor. But before he was Nova, he wasn’t always evil.
Max Castillo’s first taste of freedom was long after his years spent in poverty after his father’s failed attempt to move the family to a chicken farm in Puerto Rico. Max grew up quietly ashamed of his sexuality and of his aspirations far beyond his limited money could offer, a far cry from his bouncy and boundless youth. Manic depression set in in his late teens, and he turned suicidal with it. Smalltown Oregon was a far cry from New York, where he’d spent all but a brief slice of his life, but it was a gamble he took, if only for the chance to embrace himself.
Max threw himself into it. His brilliance and ferocious work ethic nailed him two doctorates and a bachelor’s, all in scientific fields. However, higher education was only ever the frame for his real quest - Max, a casanova of nigh-legendary proportions, pegging and flinging his way across the campus, was in all honesty seeking not pleasure but a partner. He wanted love. And after college, full of heartache and some degree of shame, he regressed, limiting social contact to the small circle of devout friends he did find.
Then he got a job at a Durand-Calusa Research Facility: K1, Synthetic Life.
The rapid acclaim his forward-thinking ideas and quick mastery of the startling technology there allowed him to employ as his technicians that loyal friend group, and the three were commissioned to unite the ceaseless efforts of the entire K1 sector in a single, massive, relatively blasphemous project. They were to create life.
And they did.
When Kira opened her eyes, Max felt hope return to him. While the rest of his team toiled over ensuring she maintained homeostasis and progressed through puberty at a healthy rate, Max became her teacher, a father figure, her best influence and her closest confidante. In Kira’s eyes, Max could see universes, boundless wisdom and boundless courage, and in her laugh he found his closest grazes with heaven. She was the light of his life, his daughter, his progeny, and he felt that nothing in that time could go wrong.
I must preface, as such, his mistakes: Max has foresight, when he can see straight. Max knows, nine times out of ten, when things will go wrong, and Max is not an advocate of sacrifice. But in the wake of finally finding a lasting boyfriend on top of Kira having grown to a robust, brilliant adulthood, he made a few poor decisions. He agreed to make a few changes to the agenda when Whitford Durand himself took an interest in the project. He encouraged Dr. Captor’s courtship of her. And though he swore he’d always be there for Kira and Captor - who he regarded as his own children - maybe he was a little caught up in his romance.
Maybe he was a little too distant.
Maybe he only realized too late when things spiraled out of control.
With his team scattered and Kira living alone in the deep woods, Max had no real idea what to do with himself when Mr. Durand died, leaving his massive inheritance to his young granddaughter. His bond with his lover tightened, and in those years, he continually reached out to both Captor and Kira with little to no response. Kira finally replied only to tell Max that she wouldn’t come home for a while, and then…
And then the town blew up. It literally blew up, in a blast so hard it reduced his entire neighborhood to rubble. His ennobling was frenzied, and he awoke in agony, right elbow crushed under what was once his house, only a head’s worth of red-stained, sprawled golden hair left of his lover.
It was in his mess of blood, dirt, tears, and bile that Alexandra IX first appeared to him: cold, impeccable, admittedly haughty Alexandra, a goddess with an offering for the shattered shadow of who was but moments ago Max Castillo. She offered him the power to protect others, and he refused it. She offered him the power to undo what was done, and this too, he refused. Only when she offered control - absolute control, drawing on his insight and his aptitude, his uncanny awareness of others, to become them, to replace and destroy them - did he accept. And with it, he accepted truth sight.
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the body of his lover, splayed and shattered under the rubble like an angel wrest from life. The image was so soul-shattering that he tried to tear his own eyes out.
The sheer heartbreak and agony he suffered on that day caused a horrific withdrawal. He locked himself away in the ruins of the town, Alexandra his only visitor, and he disseminated himself. He whittled himself away to skin and bones draped in dark cloth, with a rasping voice like a broken machine and covered eyes - first sunglasses, then a mask of a live metal mail developed in K1, fused to his very skin. His hair grew long and greasy, his joints cracked and his posture hunched. He lost any semblance of humanity in the two years it took to settle on a name, to identify himself as a person once more.
He became the Arbiter.
And then, timelines later, universes later, after evading and bobbing and weaving, countless versions of him slowly retrieved from their sadistic exile, there was only one Arbiter left. He remembered everything when he seeped his way into the mind of his once-son Aurthur Captor, contorted and weakened him in the midst of a massive war, then once the vessel was his and the man was supposedly no more, he went back and started the war himself. It was all as a last resort - the Arbiter was dying, and he knew it. His last hope was to maintain a firm hold on such a critical entity, someone who could turn the tables back in his favor.
But Captor was still in there. In the final confrontation of the war, as the Arbiter held a sword to Kira’s throat in Captor’s body, Captor revolted, seizing control and shunting the Arbiter from him in a display of sheer willpower that drove Kira - willpower incarnate - to tears.
In that way, the Arbiter was pinned down, trapped in his mansion and a ghostly version of his wrecked hometown, with Captor - immune to his influence - as his warden. But one other visitor was permitted, a visitor who had loved countless Maxes, who would one day heal and soothe countless soldiers in the war, the only person who had the slightest chance of getting through to the tormented Arbiter.
His lover, Greer.
Even as a supervillain, even as the scum of the earth and the cardinal horror, even having sparked a war that almost slaughtered his children, he loved Greer - loved him enough to take a step back. Enough to, slowly, reconsider. Enough to realize that there was a way out of his pain. .
And so he became Max Nova - doctor no longer, not quite Max, but certainly not… him. He renewed his efforts to save people, to use his research for the betterment of all. To ensure that no other must bear the hatred that turned him into the Arbiter.
Why’s he on Nexus Island? Well… I’ll leave that inference to you.
Other
Greer and Max have, from timelines long since past, maintained what is known in a culture of my creation as a delavida bond. The term means second love, and its origins are a proverb: The second lover of a second lover surely forms the surest of duets. There is some truth to the delavida mythos: One’s second serious relationship comes with much more wisdom - a fact especially foundational to Clovithish, for reasons best not disclosed here. But Greer and Max are truly special. Twice, no, three, four times, they fell for each other without provocation - the bond led them together, and they gladly died for each other each time. Era, second, third, fourth attempt, series eight, series nine, that makes Nova the sixth Max that has fallen so far, so hard for Greer that he found the courage to open his heart once more.
Picture(s)
Formal Reference
Streamed Bust
Nickname(s): Max, Good Doctor, Arbiter No Longer, innumerable silly pet names from Greer
Age: Undeterminable - middle aged?
Height: 5’11”, when not hunched over
Weight: Still a little underweight
Gender: Cis Male
Race: Undeterminable
Alliance: Cyclebreakers - Lawful Good
Home: A mansion in the ruins of a small town. No one really knows why he stays there - it’s a mark of far worse times. And yet he lingers.
Franchise: TTU (original)
Physical Description
To unfamiliar eyes, Nova seems sinister. Dark, grey-streaked hair is pushed back across his sharp, slightly receding hairline, curving up at the bottom in a sort of flat bob. He’s tall and slender, wiry muscles lining his lean limbs, and between broad shoulders and exceptionally slender hips and waist, he has quite an imposing figure.
But his slightly wizened, clean-shaven face isn’t cold, despite the icy shock yellow of his irises. It’s sad. His sizeable, downturned eyes are sad, and when he smiles (one beyond handsome, the kind of smile that makes the sun shine brighter and eases all pains), it’s not without a distant remorse. He only seems truly happy with Greer - as though Greer is the one thing he didn’t make a disaster out of.
Nova’s jaw is relatively long and triangular, with high cheekbones and thick brows.. Much of his body is bony and lithe, in fact, all of it is -had he hands, they’d be long and stark-knuckled. Unfortunately, both arms end at the elbow. His prosthetics are described in the next section. His legs are intact, and he has a long, graceful stride, though when sitting, he rests his feet at odd angles, and hunches over VERY harshly when working seated despite excellent posture otherwise.
Nova rarely deviates from his standard outfit - black slacks, grey button-down with the sleeves tied over his stumps, lighter grey undershirt. It’s just his Look, y’know?
Weapons and Accessories
Nova’s weapon of choice is magic or his bladed fingers, but in more dire times he turns to a simple, classical rapier with a twisting handguard. A sketch of Nova wielding it is attached.
Oh, and those bladed fingers… Harnessed to his arm stumps and manipulated with sheer force of will, Nova’s mechanical hands contain no wiring or engine. They are simply metal rods with skeleton-esque joints and basic, wire-based pulleys to act as ligaments, but they serve their purpose. Nova’s needle-like fingers can trade out for blunter ones depending on his task, and are thus as versatile as they are dexterous. He could technically modify them into just about anything - provided he has enough solid titanium.
Abilities/Powers
First and foremost, the most shameful one: Possession. Possession is generally a thing only able to be done by ghost and demon types, but Nova’s form is unique. It’s literally a willpower override, invoking paralyzing paranoia and creeping in through the back door. It’s nefarious, and when done without consent, it’s agonizing, humiliating, and traumatizing. This power’s source is Alexandra, the goddess that planted the seeds of the Arbiter. He uses it as rarely as he can possibly afford to.
Ferrokinesis is an ability he’s had since birth, though. Certainly, the loss of the vulpine perk in exchange for the override one had a horrible effect on him, and he still feels the hollow, but he still has metal manipulation. His favorites are the brass alloy, titanium, iron, and silver, and he can’t manipulate platinum.
There is another notable one. Directly prior to making the deal with Alexandra, Nova was killed, and literally forced his way back to life through an intangible process known as ‘ennobling’. Nobles are a unique form of undead whose sheer life force keeps their body regenerating and functioning even in the most extreme conditions - a Deadpool-esque healing factor is involved.
Weaknesses
Nova’s biggest weakness is honestly his past. Bringing up the topic is a good way to silence, bait, blind, or even incapacitate him. Only those closest to him have what it takes to reassure him after that - Miranda, Greer, any one of his children.
Other than that, Nova has a protective streak a mile long, and his laser-like focus may at times cause tunnel vision. He always thinks outside the box, but he won’t go looking for other boxes, you know?
Skills
Well, what arsenal would you expect at the disposal of an ex supervillain? Brilliant research skills, manipulation, resourcefulness, worldliness, interrogation tactics, fear mongering, timing, surprise, initiative… The whole package. But this time around, Nova is using them for good.
Personality
Nova’s primary goal is unwavering, permeating throughout everything that he is: Atonement. Nova’s memories of who he was and how he got there are stark in his mind even years after. They drive him, all of him, from his ambitions to his dedication to his sleepless nights in the library or the laboratory. He carries his remorse everywhere, and only sets it aside for Greer and his kids. No other.
And why not them? Nova loves them more than he’ll ever love himself - loves them more than anything. Nova’s kids are his inspiration, and Greer is his… well, his one true love. Nova would do absolutely anything for those closest to him, even shatter his morals and abandon his goal if it came to that. It’s more than a sentiment: he’s devoted.
But it won’t come to that. Not only is Nova’s family completely dedicated to helping him with research and recovery alike, but he KNOWS it - knows it well. The undying support of his loved ones is another huge driving force of his. He derives most of his strength from it - the strength to stand tall, speak clearly, invoke his powerful mind and improbable charisma. It gives him the guts to show just what a force to be reckoned with he is. And boy howdy, when it comes to what he knows, does he EVER know a HELL of a lot…
See, Nova’s a magic savant Manic biology, theoretical metaphysics, taint manipulation, edge law, you name it, he has like twenty papers on it somewhere in his file folders, and he’d be happy to find them - “Just give me a minute! … Um, maybe more than a minute! Okay, where - jesus - hell, where even”. Nova’s relationship with magical sciences is intimate and exact, yet widespread and enthusiastic, and this knowledge is his greatest weapon.
Not that his powers of observation go to waste. Nova is far from overconfident. He’s always seeking new awareness, new weapons, new allies, new anything, to augment his understanding of the world and his place in it. His flaws are based on haste and aggression, but just the same, his assets are based on vigilance and dedication: the very virtues that make his quest even remotely feasible.
And if you’re still scared of him… don’t worry. His keywords form ‘ass w’, and he laughs every time he remembers it. :V
History
Nova wasn’t always the Good Doctor. But before he was Nova, he wasn’t always evil.
Max Castillo’s first taste of freedom was long after his years spent in poverty after his father’s failed attempt to move the family to a chicken farm in Puerto Rico. Max grew up quietly ashamed of his sexuality and of his aspirations far beyond his limited money could offer, a far cry from his bouncy and boundless youth. Manic depression set in in his late teens, and he turned suicidal with it. Smalltown Oregon was a far cry from New York, where he’d spent all but a brief slice of his life, but it was a gamble he took, if only for the chance to embrace himself.
Max threw himself into it. His brilliance and ferocious work ethic nailed him two doctorates and a bachelor’s, all in scientific fields. However, higher education was only ever the frame for his real quest - Max, a casanova of nigh-legendary proportions, pegging and flinging his way across the campus, was in all honesty seeking not pleasure but a partner. He wanted love. And after college, full of heartache and some degree of shame, he regressed, limiting social contact to the small circle of devout friends he did find.
Then he got a job at a Durand-Calusa Research Facility: K1, Synthetic Life.
The rapid acclaim his forward-thinking ideas and quick mastery of the startling technology there allowed him to employ as his technicians that loyal friend group, and the three were commissioned to unite the ceaseless efforts of the entire K1 sector in a single, massive, relatively blasphemous project. They were to create life.
And they did.
When Kira opened her eyes, Max felt hope return to him. While the rest of his team toiled over ensuring she maintained homeostasis and progressed through puberty at a healthy rate, Max became her teacher, a father figure, her best influence and her closest confidante. In Kira’s eyes, Max could see universes, boundless wisdom and boundless courage, and in her laugh he found his closest grazes with heaven. She was the light of his life, his daughter, his progeny, and he felt that nothing in that time could go wrong.
I must preface, as such, his mistakes: Max has foresight, when he can see straight. Max knows, nine times out of ten, when things will go wrong, and Max is not an advocate of sacrifice. But in the wake of finally finding a lasting boyfriend on top of Kira having grown to a robust, brilliant adulthood, he made a few poor decisions. He agreed to make a few changes to the agenda when Whitford Durand himself took an interest in the project. He encouraged Dr. Captor’s courtship of her. And though he swore he’d always be there for Kira and Captor - who he regarded as his own children - maybe he was a little caught up in his romance.
Maybe he was a little too distant.
Maybe he only realized too late when things spiraled out of control.
With his team scattered and Kira living alone in the deep woods, Max had no real idea what to do with himself when Mr. Durand died, leaving his massive inheritance to his young granddaughter. His bond with his lover tightened, and in those years, he continually reached out to both Captor and Kira with little to no response. Kira finally replied only to tell Max that she wouldn’t come home for a while, and then…
And then the town blew up. It literally blew up, in a blast so hard it reduced his entire neighborhood to rubble. His ennobling was frenzied, and he awoke in agony, right elbow crushed under what was once his house, only a head’s worth of red-stained, sprawled golden hair left of his lover.
It was in his mess of blood, dirt, tears, and bile that Alexandra IX first appeared to him: cold, impeccable, admittedly haughty Alexandra, a goddess with an offering for the shattered shadow of who was but moments ago Max Castillo. She offered him the power to protect others, and he refused it. She offered him the power to undo what was done, and this too, he refused. Only when she offered control - absolute control, drawing on his insight and his aptitude, his uncanny awareness of others, to become them, to replace and destroy them - did he accept. And with it, he accepted truth sight.
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the body of his lover, splayed and shattered under the rubble like an angel wrest from life. The image was so soul-shattering that he tried to tear his own eyes out.
The sheer heartbreak and agony he suffered on that day caused a horrific withdrawal. He locked himself away in the ruins of the town, Alexandra his only visitor, and he disseminated himself. He whittled himself away to skin and bones draped in dark cloth, with a rasping voice like a broken machine and covered eyes - first sunglasses, then a mask of a live metal mail developed in K1, fused to his very skin. His hair grew long and greasy, his joints cracked and his posture hunched. He lost any semblance of humanity in the two years it took to settle on a name, to identify himself as a person once more.
He became the Arbiter.
And then, timelines later, universes later, after evading and bobbing and weaving, countless versions of him slowly retrieved from their sadistic exile, there was only one Arbiter left. He remembered everything when he seeped his way into the mind of his once-son Aurthur Captor, contorted and weakened him in the midst of a massive war, then once the vessel was his and the man was supposedly no more, he went back and started the war himself. It was all as a last resort - the Arbiter was dying, and he knew it. His last hope was to maintain a firm hold on such a critical entity, someone who could turn the tables back in his favor.
But Captor was still in there. In the final confrontation of the war, as the Arbiter held a sword to Kira’s throat in Captor’s body, Captor revolted, seizing control and shunting the Arbiter from him in a display of sheer willpower that drove Kira - willpower incarnate - to tears.
In that way, the Arbiter was pinned down, trapped in his mansion and a ghostly version of his wrecked hometown, with Captor - immune to his influence - as his warden. But one other visitor was permitted, a visitor who had loved countless Maxes, who would one day heal and soothe countless soldiers in the war, the only person who had the slightest chance of getting through to the tormented Arbiter.
His lover, Greer.
Even as a supervillain, even as the scum of the earth and the cardinal horror, even having sparked a war that almost slaughtered his children, he loved Greer - loved him enough to take a step back. Enough to, slowly, reconsider. Enough to realize that there was a way out of his pain. .
And so he became Max Nova - doctor no longer, not quite Max, but certainly not… him. He renewed his efforts to save people, to use his research for the betterment of all. To ensure that no other must bear the hatred that turned him into the Arbiter.
Why’s he on Nexus Island? Well… I’ll leave that inference to you.
Other
Greer and Max have, from timelines long since past, maintained what is known in a culture of my creation as a delavida bond. The term means second love, and its origins are a proverb: The second lover of a second lover surely forms the surest of duets. There is some truth to the delavida mythos: One’s second serious relationship comes with much more wisdom - a fact especially foundational to Clovithish, for reasons best not disclosed here. But Greer and Max are truly special. Twice, no, three, four times, they fell for each other without provocation - the bond led them together, and they gladly died for each other each time. Era, second, third, fourth attempt, series eight, series nine, that makes Nova the sixth Max that has fallen so far, so hard for Greer that he found the courage to open his heart once more.
Picture(s)
Formal Reference
Streamed Bust
