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Overview[]

Havoc Bringer


File:Rowan2.jpg

Name:	Rowan Alastair Coventry
AKA:
Codename:	Poltergeist
Age:	18
Race:	Mutant
Role:	Neutral
Type:	Original Character
Registration:	Unregistered

Poltergeist

"Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what." Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses.

An expatriate Brit of noble lineage and often less-than-noble behavior. Spending a youth fearing himself haunted and possessed, it was his discovery of his mutant truth that got his father, the Earl of Coventry, to show him the door. With a trust fund full of hush money, he's pursuing life as an occult investigator and college student, poking into dark corners and hoping his unpredictable powers don't leave too much rubble in his wake.

Sheet[]

Character Sheet

Abilities: Power

Defense: 5, Eerie: 4, Hover, Maelstrom: 7

Abilities: Skill

Occult: 3

Advantages: Peerage Trust Fund

Flaws: Arrogant, Creepy, Emo, Foreign National, Manifestations, Uncontrolled

Languages: English, French, and Latin

Abilities

Power: Defense (5)

Rowan's telekinetic abilities will function on instinct if he's endangered or under attack. If he knows or sees an attack coming, it will blunt it away from him or fling it aside if it possibly can. If he were to fall from a great height, it would catch him and allow him to land...relatively safely (if not on his feet). His natural, biological instinct to survive causes these actions to be taken reflexively by his powers but, again, without conscious direction from his mind (hence, the uncontrolled and sometimes chaotic side effects of a deflection). It's basic strength is mildly less than his other telekinetic powers, as it is less likely to feed on his direct emotions.

Power: Eerie (4)

When he so desires (or, again, if upset or angered), and usually as a prelude to his powers being fully unleashed, Rowan powers cause a low-level vibration that's impossible to actually hear, but affects humans and animals in his vicinity. Interaction with this signal will cause people to feel disquieted, as if their skin were crawling, or generally spooked. Fear instincts become heightened and a sense of foreboding can overcome the subject. Particularly sensitive individuals might even flee, although most people will just be 'creeped out'. If he's calm, Rowan can activate this low-level pulse essentially at will, giving him an advantage sometimes (but, again, it can prove a negative if unconsciously provoked due to emotion).

Power: Hover

When his abilities come into use, Rowan will sometimes rise from the ground and float, to a height of up to fifteen feet in the air (from foot to ground). He can at least resist this when indoors, usually (although, if he's using his powers indoors, there might not be a ceiling for long anyway), and it won't engage until his powers reach a certain level of potency. He can move around while floating as well, although at not much more than regular walking speed.

Power: Maelstrom (7)

Poltergeist is a powerful telekinetic whose abilities are tied into his emotional and subconscious functions rather than his cognitive processes. As a result, he cannot direct or guide the actions of his psionic energies in the way a traditional telekinetic can. The primary manifestation of his power is what he's come to call the Maelstrom. The Maelstrom is a chaotic unleashing of raw psionic power which can result in whipping winds, earth trembling, objects being torn apart or flung with great velocity, all with Rowan himself at the eye of the storm. When it manifests, Rowan's eyes typically begin to glow and he will usually be lifted up in the air. When he activates this ability, it's usually sufficient to tear down a typical suburban house, manifesting in the stereotypical 'poltergeist' fashion (hence the codename), or tear chunks from the asphalt of a city roadway, bend lightpoles, tear apart cars, that sort of thing. Because his power is tied to his emotions, however, strong emotional distress (fear, anger, despair) strengthen the power and chaos of the effect, making it capable of levelling full apartment complexes or tearing through armored tanks, almost as if he became a true living tornado. While he can normally stem his powers if he's merely unleashing them, those powered by particular emotional disturbance will not quell until those emotions have been quieted or past. He can also choose, if not under emotional strain, to use his powers to a lesser degree, creating more localized chaos in a smaller area around him (down to about a ten foot diameter circle around him) and, at their maximum force, have a range of around 100 feet across all around him.

Skill: Occult (3)

Because his powers earliest manifestations resembled supernatural rather than superhuman origins, Rowan versed himself as best he could in supernatural lore and knowledge, especially on the subject of ghosts. While he'd stil be considered an amateur by most true occultists, he has a decent knowledge of arcane lore and legend without actually possessing the ability to practice magic.

Advantages

Advantage: Peerage

Rowan is the oldest son and heir of Walter Coventry, the 19th Earl of Coventry. As such, he's considered a member of British nobility and peerage. While this gives little in the way of formal power, the prestige associated with such connections can open many doors and can gain respect in places he might otherwise be barred, especially among those who do not know of his rift with his family.

Advantage: Trust Fund

When he reached the age of eighteen, Rowan gained access to the trust fund set up for him when he was born. While he isn't on good terms with his family, at the moment, he was not cut off. In fact, his trust fund was seen as the best way of getting him out of the way. In American funds, his trust is approximately 200,000 dollars and interest-bearing, enough to provide a comfortable life for now while he tries to figure out what to do with his life.

Flaws

Flaw: Arrogant

While he's certainly suffered in his time, Rowan is, nonetheless, a British noble who's rather used to getting his own way and being catered to. Slightly spoiled by his pampered youth, he tends to think of himself as better than other people and doesn't always do the most spectacular job at hiding it. His accent is also noticeably posh, for those who notice such things, and can invite certain levels of class envy and dislike, along with his attitude.

Flaw: Creepy

Between the occasional use (and sometimes misfirings) of his Eerie vibrations, to his pale skin and silver-colored eyes, to his just general demeanor (sullen, withdrawn, furtive), Rowan doesn't always seem like the most trustworthy of fellows and can suffer from general social consequences of not fitting in or seeming respectable.

Flaw: Emo

Not necessarily in the traditional cultural sense (although...okay, a bit of that as well), but in the sense that Rowan's powers are deeply tied to his emotional state. While he can consciously activate his abilities (if not direct them), strong feelings such as anger, fear, despair or helplessness can unleash the chaos within him. If he hasn't allowed his powers out, they will begin to leak under strong emotions, creating minor tremors and disturbances in his area and, if the emotions are not quelled or assuaged, these outbursts will build into a full, raging maelstrom. At full emotion, his powers are particularly destructive, but, like many teenagers, Rowan's just not in a place where he has a good handle on his feelings yet.

Flaw: Foreign National

Rowan is an unregistered mutant in the United States on a student visa and, as such, faces potential deportation if he's caught or arrested for some sort of crime. Given that his powers pretty much can best be described as "destruction of property", this can be a definite issue.

Flaw: Manifestations

Rowan's powers have a tendency to leak. These leaks were the first manifestations of his power, and most often happen when he's not paying attention or sleeping. They might be as simply as a vibrating window or a flickering light (from the wires being affected), a chair turning over or a television going to static as the cable goes out. These strange, haunting occurrences not only can cause annoyance and trouble, but can make it difficult for Rowan to hide his difference and abilities, along with making it hard for him to relax. The most common manifestation is as he sleeps, as Rowan's body usually floats about three or four feet above his mattress when he sleeps...and heaven help the apartment if he has a nightmare.

Flaw: Uncontrolled

Put simply, when he activates the maelstrom, Rowan cannot control it. The power manifests as a wild and unpredictable lashing of psychic energy that doesn't know friend from foe. He cannot direct it towards a specific target or have it perform a specific action. It will do what it does, and he has to accept the consequences or, if possible, stifle the power back inside him. Obviously, this means that Rowan has to take care if he does use this power...when he can control it.

History[]

Rowan was born the oldest son of a prominent aristocratic family. His father, Walter, is the 19th Earl of Coventry, a title to which, even now, Rowan is technically heir. His youth was one of luxury and relative ease, largely lived in the country. Rowan was educated in the very best private schools, often boarding for long periods and coming home for summers and holidays. His relationship with his family was perhaps formal, but never unhappy and everything seemed to be in order, just as the elder Coventry liked it.

At age 13, however, Rowan began to experience strange disturbances. Things in his room would overturn, doors open. Lights would sometimes flicker or books fly off shelves. It might have been waved off as overactive imagination, but others began to witness the same events...and they began to get worse. The only common thread seemed to be Rowan himself. Once a popular boy, Rowan's friends began to withdraw from the "weird" boy, muttering everything from "mutant" to "possessed" about him. It hadn't helped that he's always looked different, with pale, pale skin and eyes the color of polished silver. The Coventry's tried to simply ignore the incidentts, hoping they would go away, but they never did. By the time Rowan was sixteen, they began to get truly destructive. After getting dumped by his first girlfriend, a spritely young girl named Bonnie who just "couldn't take the strangeness" anymore, a distraught Rowan was surrounded by destruction. Fleeing the house as statuary shattered and paintings flew from the wall, he found himself in the woods, where his powers leveled trees that had been there for hundreds of years, with Rowan rising from the ground in the center of the maelstrom, his eyes glowing eerily with a flickering light.

If his parents were horrified, Rowan was far worse. Fearing the worst, he threw himself into a study of the occult, trying to sort out what sort of demon or monster could cause such occurrences (the most recurring word he found was "Poltergeist", a name he began to attach to himself). At the same time, he tried to learn how to control his powers, looking inwards, trying to find an answer. In time, he began to grow able to sense the power within him, like a raging storm, always swirling and bound, he discovered, to his unconscious mind and his emotions. Accepting that he was a mutant rather than a haunted person didn't help matters, but it at least did give him a plan. Home tutored now, he spent most of his free time trying to increase his control and learn how to use his abilities as best he could. All would have gone fine if his younger sister, Gertrude, hadn't discovered his journals and revealed his mutant conclusions to their father. While he would never stand for the formal scandal a true disinheriting would cause, the Earl, nevertheless, asked his son to leave the family home. Given access to his personal trust fund at eighteen rather than twenty one as originally planned, he was to absent himself from family affairs and functions until he either cured his affliction or learned to "stifle" it. While hurt by the rejection, Rowan has tried to embrace the opportunity, travelling to America to continue his studies and try to find a place in the world, all the while nominally beginning a course of study at a local university.

Logs[]

The following logs feature Rowan Coventry:

News[]

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Associations[]

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Description of Character Association

Wanted[]

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Rowan Coventry's Wanted List