Overview[]

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Name:	Keith O'Neil
AKA:	None
Codename:	Vorpal
Age:	18
Race:	Other
Role:	Hero
Type:	Original Character
Registration:	Registered Real Name

Vorpal

"Seven impossible things? Ask me after breakfast."

Given a new lease on life through the intercession of the Cheshire Cat, this young man faces the challenging task of putting a new life together and finding his way in the world alone. He has been gifted with unusual powers, and has a great deal of courage and willpower... but will that be enough?

Sheet[]

Character Sheet

Abilities: Power

Cat Eyes & Ears: 7, Chaotic Creation: 6, Claw: 4, Feline Agility: 7, Guinan Sense, Herding Cats: 6, Power of Deceit, Rabbit Hole

Abilities: Skill

Black Tiger Fist: 4

Advantages:

Flaws: Life in Shambles, Magically Chaotic, Order in the Court, Sense & Sensitivity, Totally Unreal, Unfortunate Soul

Languages: English

Abilities

Power: Cat Eyes & Ears (7)

Vorpal's hearing is heightened to resemble that of a cat: he is capable of perceiving sounds up to 64 kHz (1.6 octaves above the range of a human.)

Like all felines, his eyes possess a tapetum lucidum, the reflective layer behind the retina which improves his ability to see in the dark, giving him a minimum light detection threshold up to seven times lower than that of humans. His sense of smell, however, is atrophiated- a remnant of the brand that the Yellow Emperor placed upon his face when he was first imprisoned. Vorpal cannot detect scents that are not within the normal human range.

Power: Chaotic Creation (6)

Drawing upon his chaos magic, Vorpal can create objects out of thin air in the shape of any simple object that he can imagine. The objects he creates can't have any moving parts more complex than a hinge. Vorpal can create objects of a volume of up to one 10-foot cube in size. These objects are temporary creations of chaos magic, of variable weight and mass and glowing purple in color. When conjured, they only last but a few seconds before their chaotic nature forces their magic to disperse--- but they last long enough to provide temporary cover or a convenient tool (such as creating marbles for enemies to trip over.) Vorpal -can- create constructs that do not disappear, but he must focus his willpower on maintaining them and they will only last for as long as he maintains his focus. Vorpal can generate the object anywhere within a 20-foot radius and can release it to the tender ministrations of gravity (such as dropping it on an enemy's head) or he can keep it suspended in mid-air. He cannot create an object and instantly release it, therefore there is a set amount of time that a target has to react. Constructs impacted by Order or White Magic disintegrate immediately

Power: Claw (4)

His claws are standard predator fare for a feline- they are best used when striking flesh and tearing clothing, but they are not durable enough to penetrate armor- they are more apt for climbing, however. They are at their most useful on porous and rough surfaces and completely useless against slick metal, marble, or similar surfaces. If they were to strike something that is far too hard for them, the claws will break or be damaged. Eventually, they will grow back again in the fullness of time.

Power: Feline Agility (7)

Vorpal's feline agility allows him to perform gymnastic feats easily- his reflexes, dexterity, balance and flexibility are vastly above those of a human being. It allows him to run over narrow surfaces such as ledges or even cables and wires without losing his balance, and to perform acrobatic jumps onto and from them.

Power: Guinan Sense (0)

Due to his chaotic nature and the fact that he technically should not be alive, Keith has a unique relationship with the continuum. Whenever reality is altered in a substantial way--- be it through time travel or through time-warpers, Keith will be one of the people who *knows* something is wrong, even if they are not consciously knowledgeable what exactly it is. He will have a nagging feeling in his gut that 'things were different,' but he will not necessarily have the knowledge to understand exactly what has happened.

Power: Herding Cats (6)

Vorpal has an admirable will due to the nature of his combined soul-- he is as willful and as easy to tame as your average feline. Most of his chaos magic requires the focus of his willpower, and as long as he does not exert himself he is quite resistant to being influenced. However, extreme uses of his power can drain this until he has had time to recover.

Power: Power of Deceit (0)

Drawing upon his willpower, Vorpal can create false sensory impressions. This ranges from visual images to phantom sounds and smells. The focus required for the illusion is directly proportional to how complex and large the required illusion is. Illusions have no substance and cannot have any real-world effect- anyone who touches one will simply walk through them. Illusions cannot provide nutrition or warmth-- thus, an illusory double of Vorpal created in combat will not register in the infra-red spectrum, although it is slightly harder to pinpoint the real Vorpal in the psychic realm due to his illusion being infused with his willpower. Active illusions will be disrupted if Vorpal's concentration slips. Vorpal can use his power of illusion to turn himself invisible, but it will not fool standard methods of detection such as infra-red. The illusions are not psychic in nature but visual, so disbelieving them will not dispel them.Order magic can dispel the illusions immediately, and any dispel spell from a magic school has a chance of dispelling them as well.

Power: Rabbit Hole (0)

The warping of reality is a basic tenet of chaos magic, and Vorpal is capable of creating 'rabbit holes' in the fabric of reality-- two connected portals that may be placed anywhere within his line of sight. Anything entering into one portal will immediately emerge from the other, maintaining the same direction and momentum relative to the portal (until gravity asserts itself, in the case of a change of direction due to portal placement).

The portal may not be closed while a living being is crossing it. Inanimate objects, on the other hand, do not have this protection and can be 'sliced' by the portals- though indestructible and magical objects such as Mjolnir are exempt from this as well.

Enchanted objects charged with Order magic will instantly cause the portals to collapse just by approaching them. The largest portal Vorpal can create has a radius of ten feet

Skill: Black Tiger Fist (4)

Keith is a competent hand-to-hand fighter, drawing upon his training as a martial artist in the Black Tiger Fist school. The school focuses exclusively on rapid, explosive movements and it is heavily tilted towards offense over defense. He is competent, but the style is not as flexible as others and thus leaves him with a weak defense.

Advantages

Flaws

Flaw: Life in Shambles

Vorpal has been absent from this world for over a year and a half. He has almost nothing left- his apartment has been rented out to someone else, most of his stuff is either gone or stolen, there is no trace of his fiance and everybody who knew him has given him up for dead after searches were unsuccessful.

He does have a very modest sum set aside under his personal account, but he's still in the process of proving that a) he is really alive an b) it is really him. Whatever stability Keith had created is gone.

Flaw: Magically Chaotic

Vorpal is magical in nature... but he himself is not a magician. His abilities are very delimited manipulations of his chaos magic nature, but he himself cannot learn proper magic-- the realm of spellcasting, rote magic, rituals and enchanting is a discipline that is beyond him. While he can participate in rituals officiated by others, he cannot perform magical spells himself. Any spell that he attempts to perform outside of his powers will backfire spectacularly.

Flaw: Order in the Court

As a creature of chaos, the spirit that inhabits Keith is extremely susceptible to the effects of Order magic. Dispelling rituals from White or Holy magic can also affect him negatively, not because he is inherently demonic, but rather because his metaphysical nature dislikes the rigid and established order found in those schools. However, it is Order magic above all others that poses a problem for him- a single charge of Order magic can be enough to dispel his transformation altogether and return him to his ordinary form.

Flaw: Sense & Sensitivity

Vorpal's heightened sense of hearing leave him particularly vulnerable to sonic attacks, which can stun him severely depending on their intensity. Light attacks can reduce net visual acuity during nighttime: in response to light attacks, his slit-like irises close narrowly over the eye, reducing the amount of light on the sensitive retina, but decreasing his perception significantly.

Flaw: Totally Unreal

Keith O'Neil was technically supposed to be dead, and it was a fluctuation of chaos that resulted in his survival. Sometimes, Keith ends up 'paying' for this by receiving a certain amount of cosmic backlash and he becomes 'unreal.' During this time, people forget he even exists and most of the tie do not even see him--- until it all passes and reality returns to normal. The Unreality bouts last for a day at most, and during that period Keith becomes as if he did not exist- UNLESS he were trying to use his for his benefit (such as sneaking past a group of thugs). At that moment, the chaos current reverses and Keith becomes NOTABLE- immediately attracting the attention of everybody wherever he goes, drawig their attention and suddenly becoming very 'Real.'

This can be a major inconvenient for Keith, as reality reasserts itself and often glosses over inexplicable memories. His employer will then upbraid Keith when he suddenly 'remembers' that he did not show up for work (even though he did, but nobody could see him)- ordinary people will not believe Keith's explanation, should he speak the truth, and are more likely to believe a made-up excuse

Magician, Mystics and other heroes might be inclined to believe him, as their experiences have brought them into contact with much stranger things. Mystics and the like may well be able to perceive him when he's 'Unreal' as well.

Flaw: Unfortunate Soul

Keith suffers the side-effects of being metaphysically linked to an entity of Chaos- he is a veritable Weirdness Magnet, attracting all sorts of unusual events both positive and negative, which constantly puts him in tight spots. This chaos fluctuation makes it so that Keith's life is marked by events of both remarkable fortune and unfortunate consequences.

History[]

Keith O'Neil was a young man from the Bronx, an idealistic and eager young

 man who, from a very early age, showed an unusual level of determination. 
 Keith's fondest memories of his mother were those in which she spent time 
 with him at night, after a long day a work, reading from a worn and       
 dog-eared copy of Alice in Wonderland. When Keith turned eleven, his      
 mother succumbed to cancer. He never knew who his father was. From that   
 point on, the boy lived with his aunt, uncle and three cousins. His only  
 memento from his mother was a necklace with a pendant in the likeness of  
 the Cheshire Cat as seen in the Tenniel illustrations of the Alice books. 
 His uncle, fearing that Keith might become undisciplined and fall into bad
 company, enrolled him into a local martial arts academy. It was through it
 that Keith discovered his love for martial arts, and he applied himself.  
 Eventually Keith moved out after highschool and continued his practice,   
 finding work in a local warehouse in order to scrape by. One night, having
 fallen asleep on-site after an exhausting day, Keith woke up to find some 
 of his fellow employees in the middle of helping some questionable        
 individuals relieve the warehouse of some of its valuables. Being a young 
 man with a sense of right and wrong, he intervened and there was a        
 scuffle. In the altercation, Keith was outnumbered and sent reeling,      
 causing some of the stocked goods to fall upon impact and crush the young 
 man to death.                                                             
  Or, at least, that is what -should- have happened                        
                                                                           
 The warehouse at the time was being used as a temporary storage space for 
 a rare antiquities dealer, and in that particular warehouse there was a   
 very rare and magical item-- a convex mirror from the Shang Dynasty,      
 exceedingly rare.                                                         
                                                                           
 Within the mirror there resided a magical entity, a feline spirit of chaos
 and mischief, but not destructive chaos. This spirit had been imprisoned  
 in the mirror by Huang-Di, the Yellow Emperor of early Chinese legend, and
 folklore called this spirit 'The Tiger Of The Mirror.' His imprisonment   
 came about after a long romp on Earth causing mischief throughout and     
 bringing about legends such as that of the Caith Sidhe in Ireland, the    
 Bakaneko of Japan, and other similar stories. The Tiger of the Mirror,    
 being a creature of chaos, saw a unique opportunity at the moment that    
 Keith was sent reeling, and used its subtle chaos magic to manipulate the 
 trajectory of the young man by just a gentle correction- the only thing it
 was capable of while prisoner in the mirror. As a result, Keith crashed   
 against the mirror and shattered it, impaling a long shard of it through  
 his chest and apparently dying. Or so it appeared.                        
                                                                           
 The Tiger of the Mirror was eager to find any vessel to escape... however,
 it had been weakened by millennia of languishing behind the mirror and it 
 could not overpower Keith's soul. Instead of the Tiger obliterating       
 Keith's soul, the two souls merged into one- the cat's chaotic nature is  
 curbed by Keith's own personality, and the young man's last thought had   
 been to stop the robbery of the warehouse. Seeking a suitable form with   
 which to manifest himself, the Tiger in the Mirror found Keith's memory of
 the Cheshire Cat, and its association with his mother, and chose a form.  
 The hero Vorpal had been born.                                            
                                                                           
 Vorpal eventually attained a solid reputation, to the point of being      
 nominated for the Justice League by Diana of Themyscyra. He made many     
 friends and enemies, even a fiance- and then he vanished from the face of 
 the earth. Vorpal was swallowed up by a chaos vortex resulting from his   
 fight with a particularly deranged chaos magician and was stuck traveling 
 through several parallel dimensions over the space of a year and a half   
 until, finally, he was able to come back home. But he came back to an     
 abandoned apartment, his fiance gone and his life in shambles as he was   
 declared MIA- presumed dead -during his absence. Most of his assets at the
 very minimum, Keith O'Neil must now once again pick up his life from the  
 ashes and rebuild once more.

Logs[]

The following logs feature Keith O'Neil:

News[]

The following news stories feature Keith O'Neil:

No news stories currently listed.

Associations[]

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Patrick

A lost link.

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Avengers

Earth's Mightiest Heroes

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Fern Fiddlehead

Fern is the first person Keith interacted with since his transformation. She took in his strange appearance without any hesitation, and her unusual openness charmed him. Keith considers Fern a potential friend and hopes to get to know her better.

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Justin Hammer

Keith started out as a friend of Fern, which Fern wanted Justin to meet. He initially wanted nothing to do with the feline given his metahuman status, but after talking with him Justin saw the Cheshire as another prime publicity opportunity. Hammer has been keeping tabs on the upcoming hero, eager to see him reach the big time (and hopefully endorse Hammer). Naively, Keith thinks Justin considers him a friend.

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Garfield Logan

Keith and Gar shared a lot- but ultimately Gar was lost to Keith.

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Booster Gold

Booster is someone Keith regards as a mentor figure, a potential friend, and always an ally. The man from the future has been very generous with his time and advice.

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Amanda Sefton

Amanda has been an invaluable source of training and advice in the mystical field, allowing Keith to understand a little more of his magical origins. She is someone on whom Keith can call upon when the need arises, and someone who seems to understand his strangeness and 'otherness'.

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Kurt Wagner

Kurt has offered to take Keith under his wing for training, in exchange for assistance. Keith took the offer, but is curious about what sort of assistance Kurt will need from him.

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Thor Odinson

How the hell did the Cheshire cat get mixed up with Asgard? It's a long story, one that started with Justin Hammer introducing the Thunderer to Keith, and one that included the cat and Patrick chasing Thor in feline form across the city. Meddling with the affairs of gods is complicated, and at times dangerous.

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Wiccan

Two young men with a lot in common-- one is a magnet for weirdness, the other one is the weirdness-filled iron filing.

Wanted[]

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Keith O'Neil's Wanted List

Keith O'Neil

Overview[]

Sheet[]

History[]

Logs[]

News[]

Associations[]

Wanted[]

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