Merle Wagner

{{CharacterPage
 * image1=Blue headshot.jpg
 * image2=Merle01.jpg
 * caption=Portrayed by Natalie Dormer
 * fullname=Merle Margali Wagner
 * aka=Merle or Blue
 * codename=Blue
 * position=Timelost X-Men Scion


 * age=21


 * race=Mutant


 * role=Hero


 * type=Marvel FC


 * reg=Unregistered


 * quote=


 * overview=Merle is the daughter of Kurt and Amanda Wagner and a member of Excalibur from an alternate future where, as a member of a global X-Men team, she helped fight the attempted spread of Sentinels from the Americas across the globe as well as other threats to humanity's safety. Due to a magical mishap, she finds herself in a world not her own unable to return.



Source: Days of Future Present storyline (specifically New Mutants Annual #6, Uncanny X-Men Annual #14; pages can be viewed in the gallery.)

Marvel Wikia Entry: Blue (Earth-811)


 * sheet=

Character Sheet

Abilities: Magic

Basic Magic Info: 4, Eldritch Energy: 5, Elixirs: 4, Incantations, Magic Sense: 5, Teleporting: 6

Abilities: Powers

Exceptional Agility: 4, Low-Light Vision, Shadow Blending

Abilities: Skill

Chemistry: 4, Combat: 6, Disciplined Will: 5, Educated: 3, First Aid: 3, Freerunning: 6, Occult: 5, Stealth: 5, Technology: 4

Abilities: Gear

Protean Staff: 2/6

Advantages: Languages Secret Lore

Flaws: Displaced, Dual Powered, Light Sensitivity, Neyaphem, Odd Appearance, Temporal Anomaly

Languages: English, German, Latin, and Romani

Abilities

Magic: Basic Magic Info (4)

Merle is a mage and thus is capable of weaving the magical energy of the world into diverse effects by casting spells or creating alchemical elixirs; this is limited only by her imagination, time required to manifest the effect, and either her own vitality or the use of appropriate materials in the case of alchemy. She has some quick incantations that she has mastered with their own little ritual to enact (which are described in other traits) and ritualistic magics -- which can be either improvised or prepared ritualistic effects.

Limitations: Casting spells strains Merle as she channels mana to create her desired effects; she can mitigate this strain though the use ritualistic trappings, taking extra time and/or the use of arcanely 'appropriate' materials.

Mishaps: Mistakes or interruptions while performing magic can lead to undesirable results which can range from simply amusing to painfully disastrous.

Magic: Eldritch Energy (5)

Merle has two practiced incantations that are built to take advantage of her mutant tie to the Brimstone Dimension to channel energy for offensive and defensive purposes.

Merle's Eldritch Blast can generate a force of variable intensity: from the barest touch to the impact of a heavy military weapon. This arcane energy can be channeled though melee attacks with her hands or wielded weapons or shot as a bolt out to a range of twenty yards.

Merle's Eldritch Shield is a field of energy which can block or deflect attacks. It is able to withstand forces up to and including those produced by assault grade military weapons or their equivalent.

Limitations: Both incantations require Merle to be able to speak and move one of her hands. The channeled energy has a dull purple glow which emits black light causing vibrant fluorescent effects which make stealthy use of these spells nigh impossible.

Magic: Elixirs (4)

Given the appropriate materials and equipment, Merle can leverage her arcane knowledge to brew elixirs to produce supernatural effects. The formulas Merle knows best fall into the categories of buffs and healing. Access to an appropriate tome or another expert could expand her options greatly, however working with unfamiliar formulas or experimenting will take longer and increases the risk of mishaps. All elixirs, regardless of form, loose potency over time and while proper storage can lengthen this time an expire elixir can fail to function or, worse, become toxic or have unexpected effects.

Limitations: Elixirs take time to mix, require ingredients (sometimes rare and exotic, sometimes available at local "megamarts"), and proper equipment is required.

Mishaps: Alchemical mishaps can occur and range from amusing quirks in an otherwise successful elixir to disastrous or sometimes even explosive.

Magic: Incantations

Below are Merle's well practiced incantations:

Apparel Transformation: Transforms clothing from one form to another. Clothing made from unstable molecule are easier to change.

Binding Spells: Glowing magical ropes flow through the air to encircle an indicated target.

Cleansing: Cleans surfaces areas, freshens the air, etc.

Disguise Features: Creates illusionary disguises on the target of the spell. The less the spell has to change the longer the spell will last.

Ignite Flame: Starts a small fire, equivalent to a magical cigarette lighter.

Slumber: Induces targets to fall into a deep, natural sleep. Resisted by willpower and certain states of mind (anger, intense agitation, etc.) make the target immune. Lasts until target wakes or is awoken naturally.

Magic: Magic Sense (5)

Merle can shift her perceptions to allow her to sense magic. She often calls it "witch's sight", but it is not dependent on her eyes and can work with total darkness. With it she can sense and analyze auras and magic energies.

Related Stat: Perception

Magic: Teleporting (6)

Like her father, Merle teleports though the Brimstone Dimension but unlike him she can only do so though an incantation which requires her perform dance-like motions while focusing on her destination (which involves concentration if she cannot see it). The farther she intends to travel and the greater the mass she intends to take the more energy is required (she can mitigate this as described in her magic trait).

Due to the nature of the Brimstone Dimension, Merle can use this power to travel to other dimensions as well. This calls for an extended ritual and is best done with an external energy source she can draw upon as well. (Dimensional travel can only be used in staff approved plots.)

Limitation: Due to a sulfurous cloud and audible 'Pamph' this cannot be used stealthily.

Powers: Exceptional Agility (4)

Like both of her parents, Merle is extremely agile and flexible -- partially due to training and partially due to her peculiar inherited body structure -- making her more graceful and limber than most humans.

Related Stat: Dexterity

Powers: Low-Light Vision

Merle's eyes are more sensitive to light than a normal human's, allowing her to see twice as far and well in dim lighting -- such as starlight, moonlight and similar conditions. (see also Merle's Light Sensitivity Flaw)

Powers: Shadow Blending

Merle was born with a link to the same Brimstone Dimension her father teleports though. She can manifest a film of material which causes her to blend into shadows to the point of invisibility. This material can be rubbed off onto others but it only acts like eye black in such cases. When she turns this off the substance desiccates and falls away as a powder. While this masks Merle from sight, other senses can still detect her and the faint sulfurous smell of the brimstone gasses alters her scent slightly to those with enhanced olfactory senses; also, others with links to the same dimension can see though her invisibility (as she can theirs).

Skill: Chemistry (4)

Alchemy and Chemistry are closely related disciplines and it is impossible to study the former -- in the modern world -- without absorbing knowledge about the latter. Merle's grasp of chemistry puts her on par with professional chemists around the world in practical application of this knowledge, although she falls shy of matching the book learning possessed by doctors of chemistry.

Skill: Combat (6)

Having been instructed by a number of experts on the subject -- her parents and various "aunts" and "uncles" from the X-Family -- Merle is a skilled combatant whose personal unarmed style is fluid and flashy able to alternate from graceful and beautiful in one moment to brutally aggressive the next. She is also trained in a number of weapon forms -- including fencing, knife and spear fighting -- but her primary armed style is a blend of bojutsu, jojitsu and hanbo, which covers the use of her staff weapon in all of its forms.

Skill: Disciplined Will (5)

Related Stat: Willpower

As a part of her training -- both as a mage and a martial artist -- Merle has developed a disciplined mind granting her a greater than normal ability to withstand psychological stress (brainwashing, fear, hypnosis, torture, interrogation, seduction, etc.) and resistance to supernatural attacks (magic, psionics, etc.).

Skill: Educated (3)

Merle possesses a well-rounded liberal arts education making her knowledgeable of a wide variety of subjects including hard and soft sciences, history and the humanities. However, this is more a jack-of-all-trades education and while she can hold her own in a conversation with experts, they will always outshine her in their specific fields.

Skill: First Aid (3)

Merle is skilled at first aid -- from bandaging wounds to performing CPR -- allowing her to treat the injured even without any healing elixirs.

Skill: Freerunning (6)

As the child of two master acrobats, is unsurprising that Merle received such training herself. As she grew she embraced the related sports of freerunning and parkour -- although she favors the former's emphasis on freedom of expression over the latter's highly controlled techniques. She applies these skills to the navigation of obstacles as well as enhancing her combat skills.

Skill: Occult (5)

As a student of the occult, Merle possesses a wealth of esoteric lore covering a wide range of arcane matters beyond those related to her alchemy and spell casting. This covers facts about cryptic beings and creatures, mystical dimensions and otherworldly realms, ghosts and spirits (which are not necessarily the same thing) as well as other curious and unconventional things. While she is knowledgeable on these subjects, and can easily impress laymen or dabblers in the arcane, she is far from being a master of this body of knowledge.

Skill: Stealth (5)

Despite being able to become invisible in shadows, Merle had to learn to move silently to truly be stealthy. This, as well as the ability to hide without shadows and to conceal objects on her person or in various environments came easily to her and she is highly skilled at these activities.

Skill: Technology (4)

Coming from a near future alternate timeline, Merle is accustomed to technology at least equal to (sometimes a bit better) than what can be found on Earth today. However quaint modern technology may sometimes seem to her, it is not so different that it is alien to her. She can use any tech she may come across and can even make passable repairs -- at the 'skilled home owner' level.

Gear: Protean Staff (2/6)

Merle owns an enchanted white oak staff which she can mentally will to change into any one of four different states: a nearly six-foot long bo staff, a roughly four-foot long jo staff, a nearly three-foot long hanbo staff and a nearly six-inch long yawara; these changes are fast enough to be used in combat but not so fast that they cannot be observed by the naked eye. Additionally, it has been enchanted to be tougher than steel while it maintains the density and flexibility of natural wood. Merle has also arcanely tagged the weapon so that she can effortlessly divine its location as long as she is in the same dimension as it -- instinctively knowing what direction it is in and roughly how distant it is (in an approximation of the largest applicable unit of Imperial measurement); by meditating on this knot of knowledge she can refine the information as needed.

Stats: Damage (2), Toughness (6, tougher than steel)

Advantages

Advantage: Languages

Merle was raised in a multilingual home, speaking her parents' native German and Romani in addition to English. As part of her magical training, she was taught Latin as well as the written forms of Celtic ogham, ancient Greek and old Norse runes (while she cannot speak these she can read and translate text to and from them with ease). Additionally, to prepare her for various trips to the Savage Land she was imprinted with many of the languages spoken there.

Advantage: Secret Lore

Coming from an alternate future, Merle possesses information about people, places and things that aren't public knowledge in the future. While focused primarily on the canonical "X-Family", this can extend beyond to anyone or anything. However, because this is not her timeline, Merle's information could be inaccurate. (These inaccuracies represent a mechanism that allows other players to retain OOC control over their character's secrets. This advantage requires express approval to use.)

Flaws

Flaw: Displaced

Coming from another reality and another time, Merle finds this world confusing. For everything she finds familiar there seems to be something completely alien to her. Because of this, there will be times when she is completely caught off guard by things that natives of this time and world take for granted.

Flaw: Dual Powered

Having two sources of powers (genetic mutation and magic) means that Merle can be detected as special in more ways than most and her powers can be suppressed or interfered with by a wider variety of means. Additionally, her eldritch blast and shield and her teleportation depend on both sources so she looses access to them if either source is suppressed.

Flaw: Light Sensitivity

Merle's enhanced sensitivity to light is only a problem in situations where sudden changes in light would have an impact on a normal person as well -- flash bombs, running out of a darkened space into direct sunlight, etc. In such circumstances the duration of the effects are doubled.

Flaw: Neyaphem

Merle is a child of the Neyaphem mutant subtype -- effectively making her demonic and has the following effects: she can experience prejudice from those who remember the ancient conflict between the Cheyarafim and Neyaphem and certain magical effects will target her. Additionally, the healing properties of the blood of a Cheyarafim -- like Angel of the X-Men -- don't work on her, instead acting like an acid on her tissues.

Flaw: Odd Appearance

Merle's natural appearance -- light blue skin, dark blue hair, elf-like ears, sharp incisors and eyes with yellow sclera and dark purple irises -- is unusual and memorable.

Flaw: Temporal Anomaly

Merle is not a native of this time or world. Anything keyed to sensing dimensional or temporal-spacial anomalies will detect her as one.


 * associations=

Family
While these are not people from her own world they are parallels of her actual family.


 * history=

Merle's home dimension is an alternate version of the Marvel Universe known as Earth-811 or colloquially as the Days of Future Past.

In this timeline, after a Mutant Control Act is passed, the US government reactivated the Sentinels and programmed them to find a final solution to the 'mutant threat.' Unfortunately for the human controlled government, the robots determined that the best way to do this would be to take over the whole country %(in the end they extended this to most the continent, taking over Canada and most of Mexico%). During their take over of North America they killed not only mutants, but other super-powered beings including most members of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four; surviving but defeated powered beings were sent to concentration camps all over the continent.

The robots' southern spread was stopped in the mountains of Central America by a coalition of powered beings -- a mix of former villains and heroes, all of whom survived the Sentinels' purge or from various foreign lands -- which began opperating under the banner of the X-Men. This lead to a nearly decade long war against the Sentinels which lead to mutants gaining acceptance globally and a stalemate in the Americas. This stalemate resulted in a cease fire agreement which neither side ever totally respected (the Sentinels occasionally make moves to spread towards South America or to cross the Bering strait which the X-Men had to stop while at the same time they would make forays into North America to perform relief, reconnaissance and rescue missions).

Merle Margali Wagner is a third generation mutant and a witch -- the daughter of the X-Man Nightcrawler and Daytripper (his wife in Merle's world). Her parents named her after their mothers but her childhood nickname, which she adopted as a code name as she grew up, was always based on her unusual coloration -- simply "Blue". She grew up immersed in the coluture of the X-Men, as the "First Daughter" of Excalibur. Her mother detected her magical potential when she was quite young and, after expressing a desire to follow in her parents footsteps at an early age, she began receiving training to help her fulfill that wish.

Merle's childhood home was Excalibur's headquarters -- Braddock Manor in Maldon, Essex, England -- which was also the new home for Xavier's School. She grew up there with a number of other legacy "X-Children", being educated in both the traditional sense as well as recieving training to become an X-Man. She and her peers even had "summer camp" in the Savage Lands where she interacted with the United Tribes and learned survival skills.

When she was fourteen -- the same age Shadowcat had been when she joined the X-Men -- Merle was allowed to become an active member of the team. Initially, her parents requested she not partake in missions into Sentinel-occupied America (the X-Men had replaced the Avengers as the world's guardians so there were other tasks she could fulfill) but by the time she was sixteen she and her childhood friends began to see action against the robots, operating under the group designation Generation X2. On one such mission, while teleporting to avoid being injured in an explosion, Merle accidentally pierced the barriers between dimensions and ended up in an entirely different world!

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