Meluvia

Songs

• So Am I by Ava Max
• Through the Ghost by Shinedown
• What I've Done by Linkin Park
• Nightmare by Set It Off

Summary

• Name: Meluvia or Mel. No family name.
• Gener / Species:Female Springhare ( Pedetes surdaster )
• Supernatural Status: Technolich with soul in cloud server format
• Height: 4'5"
• Eyes: Brown

Technolich

As a technolich, Mel's soul is sustained in a diffuse form across a set of servers for redundancy. This offers her superior access to processing systems including the ability to hack into high security systems. Her body appears normal under most conditions especially when her docile compensatory personality is dominant. When her true self is active and agitated, her brown fur becomes black and her mouth stretches from the base of one ear to another with jagged teeth filling in the gap between her rodent incisors and her ears.

When damage, her body can be regenerated by stripping essence from captured souls. Mel will not hesitate to use bodies and souls of her enemies for her own means except for Bev.

Summary

Meluvia attended and graduated from the same university as Ivan (demon), but she took a different track. Unlike Ivan, who chose the road to hell out of utter disdain for those around him, Meluvia is genuinely mad, and she had little regard for life. She does not, however, conform to the old tales of a neglected child or one that actively tortured living things. Nor was she one of those children that were quiet and withdrawn. In fact, getting her to stop talking was always the challenge as she was one to speak her thoughts as a child. Whats he spoke is what set her apart: Meluvia was nothing short of a electrical engineering and physics savant.

Being hyper intelligent tends to earn you more enemies when you are young and specific friends when you grow older. Meluvia struggles socially in school from an early age, and accelerating her learning only make her the young, awkward one among older students later. Feeling fenced more every day with little to no outlets for her thoughts, she instead turned inwards. It was then when she started developing a second personality. Outside, she was quiet, dutiful, and productive. Everyone thought she had finally snapped out of her old ways, but inside was nothing short of a pressure cooker of maliciousness that attracted a very special kind of recruiter. Meluvia graduated high school at 14, and before she could be shuttled off to some high brow university, she ran away with one who promised her a place she would finally enjoy and where no one could make her go back to her old life.

Since then, she has been a friendly rival to Ivan in some ways, and the kind of person that can actually succeed as a mastermind super villain.

Mel and Sports

Mel was not without physical skills. As a springhare, she had an impressive vertical that made her suited to basketball and volleyball. She actually enjoyed the latter until someone suggested putting her on a real team. It was then that both sports came to the same conclusion: it was more fun for young girls to make fun of her rather than use her skill for the team. She left both sports but not without breaking a gazelle's nose with a basketball.

Even as a lich, Mel stays in shape with solo sports as a physical outlet and means to stay prepared for a fight.

Some of Mel's. sports include running, rock climbing, swimming, marksmanship with both rifle and occasionally bow. She still shoots hoops in her own private gym, but she hasn't played with anyone in ages. Her current favorite is racquetball which she plays both in and out of armor to keep up her hand-eye coordination. Said skills have even been used to flick away grenades in a fight.

Monstrous Meluvia

True to her nature, Meluvia came up with an idea gremlins and demons enjoyed testing. The concept was simple: take the idea of a lich and update it for the modern era. In this case, Meluvia engineered a means of converting her soul until a network appliance that allowed her to store it in a cloud based format. With a still connected by lightly linked body, the empty space in the mortal shell could instead be filled with something more useful such as a form of dark magic that would allow her body to appear normal, endure heavy damage, and interface with computers. The term "Cloud Lich" was coined by the project group, and Meluvia was credited with the initial design.

Meluvia took on more unassuming roles as an engineer in a number of fields where she could spend a few years stealing secrets and positioning agents. In the end, Meluvia became a true master mind behind massive physics experiments that would, if completed, likely to irreparable harm to the world. However, she always took the number 2 slot so the boss would take the fall and she could wander to the next experiment.

When Meluvia is pressed or in private, her skin tends to turn black, her eyes white, and her jagged grin goes from ear to ear. She is highly resistant to physical harm, and she often makes light of being shot. She will, when she deems it necessary, take control and either kill or force opposition into a corner. She provides high quality, malicious engineering support, and she does do with precision. What she tells you is what it is. If one does not like that, she can become violent.

Significant Relationships

Meluvia and Ivan

Ivan was a sophomore just getting into some of the more interesting topics when he and Meluvia crossed paths. He had the look of disdaining everything that she felt on the inside, and so a her facade slipped just a little as the two met by chance at the campus center. What started as a sort of data dump from Meluvia was actually received and reciprocated by Ivan, who also loved engineering. The two ended up becoming sounding boards and later teammates during class exercised. As they became upper classmen, their studies diverged as Ivan focused more on supernatural powers and she instead latched onto her strengths and found ways to bend the technological world to her whims.

Because Ivan was on the demonic conversion track, Meluvia was given a great number of chances to see what it held. Complete conversion was not in her interest, but her split personality lent it to the idea of concealed power. It gave her the idea to speak to the psychology department for a peculiar assessment. Ivan and Meluvia worked with their advisers on a project just for Meluvia. Ivan went on to a full fledged demon after graduation. Meluvia became something else.

Mel and Bev

Unlike Ivan, who actively purged any redeeming values to become a demon, Mel still has an external attachment that might as well be her kryponite. Rather than an object, Mel's weakness is a person by the name of Beverly Winston.

Bev was one of the few who could understand and converse with Mel in a constructive way. Bev shared Mel's tenancy to ramble, but she was always looking to fantasy while Mel was drawn to logic. The worlds Bev created often fell under the harsh scrutiny of Mel's scientific mind, but rather then feel insulted, Bev folded the critique into her writing. The result was the basis for s science fiction world that would make Bev a best seller.

When her childhood friend vanishes, no one was hit as hard as Bev, and characters based on their childhood interactions often appeared in her novels.

Mel never really left Bev behind. Appearing in disguise, she almost always manages to procure a signed copy of Bev's works. Mel's Lair is lined with bookshelves, and she has a copy of every book Bev wrote.

The one thing that haunts Mel is what she would think of the life she now leads. Just being present is enough to stop Mel in her tracks and delay a horrifying evil plot from coming to fruition. If Bev knew that, she might have been able to prevent a number of atrocities.

The only clues Mel leaves behind are cryptic book reviews and occasional short stories of her own that betray who she is to Bev.

Meluvia and Desiree

One might ask how a 14 year old just vanishes from sight and ends up studying in a den of institutionalized evil. To understand this required a third party that was present during Meluvia's high school years. Arriving on the scene after Bev but before Ivan, the spider Desiree, or Dez for short, became a signifiant force in Mel's later years in high school.

Being ten years old while in 10th grade comes with a lot of problems. The usual cliques and snide remarks among female teens are only amplified. It also meant that Bev, who was not some grades behind her because of Mel's skipping them, could not be a safety net any longer. Mel was smart and could ace any class, but she was alone and miserable for most of her first year in high school, but then along came a spider.

Dez had the issues of being an arachnid in a primarily mammal school, being geeky and intelligent, and being completely fine with all of this. Given Phys. Ed. was still a requirement, Meluvia was out-classed by her older follow students, and they took any chance they could to attack her especially during dodgeball. Long spindly arms and in excess meant Dez was a throwing machine, and she took great joy in planting shot to make folks fall under the battlecry of "Physics, bitches!"

Dez began watching over Mel, and they were in the same grade, so they generally appeared in similar classes and times. Even Bev was eventually introduced to her. and the trio got along. However, the rest of Mel's world was still hostile, and she was never happy. As an agent of [S.T.A.R.], this was ideal. It wasn't a kidnapper or a killer that took Mel away, but it was a spider whispering just what she needed to hear at the right times to get the young inventor away and into the grip of Hell's premier university.

In searching for Meluvia, Bev found that while others remebered Dez, no one could say where she went after hig school. No records remained of her having ever been in the school system, and even when her birth certificate was searched, the results came up blank.

Significant Projects and Technology

Blackthorn

The name refers back to a plant by the same name, and it is also the name of a villain Bev and Mel made up when they were twelve. It also has one more meaning: the armor and name under which Mel appears if she appears at all.

Bev is the only person to know the connection to Mel and Blackthorn. After being missing for eight years, most assumed Mel dead. Bev knew from a rare sightings of Blackthorn on the news that Mel was somehow alive, but she had no idea how proceed.

The only other time Bev could confirm she saw Mel was at a book signing where Mel used her suits abilities to cosplay as a character in one of Bev's books. Bev recognized Mel's characteristic nervous smile and so signed the book "To Mel, the missing chapter without which I will never be complete"

Bev tried to catch Mel, but she vanished shortly after. Neither Mel or her Blackthorn armor were seen for more than a year. Despite the risk, Mel kept that book as her most prized possession and she hid it from everyone. She also kept the armor design and name hoping the associated press would chase Bev off the trail and keep her at a distance safe for both of them.

Blackthorn Armor System

Mel's armor is a magic nano-machine based system with reservoirs typically hidden as mundane clothing. She can use then them to hide herself in a light armor suit that offers some ballistic protection as well as a fully sealed atmosphere. The nanites react to her corrupted soul, and will take forms including spines along the end of her long tail for which the suit gets its name.

Blackthorn armor and weapons have the illusion of being summoned across space or dimensions. This is because the suit, ammunition, and other components are held in a hidden site that is usually a pattern in the fabric of Mel's clothes or the smaller components of her vehicles. The truth is that she keeps her equipment under intense space-time compression using magic. Much like a bag of holding can carry more than it should, Mel's clothes and equipment are compressed versions of more powerful items. This allows her to wander with little gear and pass off any detection of her magic as just common storage spells.

Adding armor to a lich gives her a very high defensive rating such that she can sustain heavy impacts and walk away. However, she is not a trained combatant, and even with her armor the only real danger to anyone are her tail spines which can do a variety of things from poison a person to chew through an engine block.

The other advantage Mel has when in armor is enhanced communication and sensor capabilities that allow her to search as well as call in her vehicles remotely.

The armor is always near black and has a off-white five petaled flower matching the actual blackthorn plant.

Blackthorn Vehicles

Airbike

Mel's preferred means of getting around, and it can be summoned through a portal relay in a pinch. The airbike is slightly larger than a motorcycle, carries a concealed forward blaster cannon, and can fly. It is only lightly armored, and so she tends to avoid getting shot at. It is also capable of flying up and into her spacefighter.

Amphibious vehicles

Mel's car, an unassuming looking sedan, is outfitted with a variant of her Blackthorn armor system that allows it to convert from road vehicle to submersible in seconds. Mel usually uses her car when she needs to deal with cargo. This vehicle can also carry compressed matter sufficient to create her spacefighter on demand.

Spacefighter

A moderate sized ship that can be remote piloted, Mel uses this for fire support, moving large cargo, and any other purpose that may necessitate her being in space. She will also used it as a combat aircraft, and given the armor and weapons loaded on it, she prefers to use the more durable spacefighter design rather than a faster jet or rocket based vehicle. Her answer to incoming missiles and faster fighters are two high speed turret mounted front and rear.

Threat Assessment

Close combat

Mel is versed in pistols and rifles, but her training falls short of professional. In close combat, she has only slightly better than average training, but she will use her claws to her advantage, There are no records of her going so far as biting.

Ranged Combat

Mel should be considered extremely dangerous due to her use of computer assisted targeting on her weapons. If she has had time to prepare, risks to vehicles including aircraft should be considered highly likely. Mel is not known to give warning shots.

Piloting

Mel is an excellent driver with above average ground skills and many hours of spaceflight and amphibious vehicle driving behind her.

Technology

Extreme danger. Expect to encounter previously unknown technologies when facing Mel.

Defensive Rating

Mel is given a high defensive rating because of her armor, her ability to regenerate her body, and her ability to manifest even after complete destruction of a physical body

Mental Condition

Unstable with two personalities and complex moral complications. Extremely intelligent and well prepared. Is not prone to rash actions and will operate only so far as she feels she has the upper hand. She will retreat otherwise.

Resources

Extremely dangerous. Excellent access to materials. Capable of engineering new devices to get around obstacles.

Typical forms of engagement

Will rarely appear in person without a disguise or in armor. She is not typically out in front when she deploys weapons made for others. When invading an operation she is suspected to be contributing to, she will usually appear at a bottleneck to prevent access to her machines. She will use high tech, often cursed or corrupted weapons, and she will try to claim souls if she can get away with it.