Vigil

Real Name: Jack Maroon
Super Hero Name: Vigil
Title: --
Alignment: Neutral Good
Age: 28
Gender: Male
Race: Caucasian
Hair: Dark Brown
Eyes: Brown
Height: 6’1
Weight: roughly 200 lb

Costumed and civilian appearance:
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Personality:
Jack isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. He’s bad at multi-tasking, and is generally just not that smart, being somewhat simplistic in his thinking. He’s usually friendly and helpful in demeanor , with a strong moral compass and a high respect for human life. He leaves the more difficult moral problems to others, instead just following his heart in things.

Though he usually seems relatively upbeat and social, he is actually very emotionally withdrawn; he tries not to have too many attachments in life. His sunny disposition conceals a rather fatalistic acceptance of life’s many horrors and pains. This is only further augmented by his knowledge of the effects using his powers have on his body.
Despite his alleged lack of high intelligence, Jack can have a surprisingly clear perspective on things, and has a great deal of practical wisdom.

Jack feels conflicted about the levels of recognition he gets from his costumed activities. Because he’s not the flashiest kind of superhero, and certainly not the best, having rather mediocre and unreliable abilities in comparison to others, Jack doesn’t get much gratitude or rewards from his heroism. This bothers him from time to time; the accumulated stress of having to work for a living (and a rather poor income at that) and fighting crime whilst not receiving any recognition for both activities weighs on his mind a lot. Regardless, Jack has no intention of giving up.


Powers:

Conditional Super: Jack’s superhuman abilities (i.e. SH strength, speed, durability and reaction time/reflexes) only manifest themselves when Jack consciously activates them. All it takes is a thought.

However, his powers have a major drawback; accessing his superpower for prolonged periods of time can be seriously detrimental to his health. After an hour or so the first minor side-effects will occur, such as headaches and other pains. More than that and Jack will start feeling increasingly strong pains and may become feverish. At some point he may even lose consciousness from the strain, or be forced to deactivate his ability.

These negative side-effects tend to last past activation. One could say using his powers is akin to slowly killing his body, making him in essence terminally ill. He doesn’t know how long he can keep it up, but he won’t stop being a hero until the day he dies. Which could be any day, even without the dangers of fighting criminals.

When Jack’s powers are activated, those with extrasensory perception, or any other means of uncommon perception(scientific mumbo-jumbo) can see a light purple aura surrounding Jack. He himself cannot. The true nature of his power still eludes him.

Skills:

Martial Arts Training:
Not having the resources to travel the world and train under true masters of the arts, Jack instead applied to every martial arts class he could afford, and trained in them to the best of his abilities, even though he never had much talent for it. When it comes to martial arts, Jack is a ‘jack of all trades’, but a master of none.
Peak Human Fitness:
Jack has somehow, again with extremely limited resources, managed to raise his physique to Olympian level. While he is no body-builder, nor a professional sporter, he could be considered very close to the pinnacle of human fitness. In order to achieve this, Jack has adhered to a strict training regimen and diet.

Free runner:
He is also skilled at free-running, or ‘parcours’, due to it being vital for a hero to be as mobile as possible.
First Aid:
Jack has had basic medical training and is able to apply first aid on himself and others.

Cooking:
While by no means a master-chef, Jack has become good at making healthy and nutritious meals out of even the cheapest of ingredients.

Handyman:
Jack is reasonably skilled at a lot of simple physical work, including but not limited to carpentry, sewing and plumbing.


Resources:

Police:
Jack carries a portable police radar with him all the time, which was given to him by the NYC police. Whenever he can, he offers his assistance to the force in exchange.

Contacts:
Jack has established a network of people who have minor dealings in the underworld, who can supply him with intel.

Jack’s Billionaire fortune:
If only.



Power Grid:
STR: 6
SPD: 4
END: 5
INT:2
EP: 0
FS: 5
When not using his superpower, Jack has 3 STR, 3 END, 3 SPD, 2 INT and 3 FS (the +2 FS when using his powers is due to his enhanced reflexes and reaction time).

Power Grid colours: Black and Purple.

History:
Jack was adopted as a baby. His adoptive parents were good, hard-working folks. His father was a carpenter, his mother a waitress. They never had much money, but they had enough to go by, and send Jack to school. His childhood, unlike that of so many heroes and villains, was fairly ordinary. He was relatively popular with his fellow students, and good at sports, but had little real friendships. He didn’t mind that of course. Jack was mostly content with his life. He found school difficult, but always worked hard, rarely allowing for distractions.
Jack’s hobbies consisted of playing sports, working, reading and going out for a drink with friends. He had made attempts at a relationships one or two times, but his girlfriends usually left him after a while. He was too distant, they said, and not very exciting. It was true that Jack Maroon may have had a rugged handsomeness about him and an air of masculine strength, but he was no ‘bad boy’. They may have been right in calling him boring. He kind of was.
The point in a hero’s life where everything changes; it’s usually when they gain their powers or are struck by some terrible personal tragedy. Quite often it’s even a combination of the two. Jack found out about his powers around the end of his high school period. It was quite a shock to him at first, and his mind raced through the many possibilities that now lay open to him. After telling his parents and discussing his situation thoroughly, he came to the conclusion that he should use his gifts to help people. Before becoming a hero though, he would need practice. He began regularly testing his powers in abandoned industrial areas, smashing walls and whatnot. It was during these training sessions that he found about his powers’ darker side. At first he had only noticed it lightly, the pain that came to his body when he used his power. He had shrugged it off, dismissing it as a minor price to pay for his gift.

He kept pushing his abilities, until one day he overexerted himself and fell into a week-long feverish coma during which his life was in constant jeopardy. This event dissuaded him from becoming a superhero. Besides, weren’t there enough heroes already, he thought. There was always Pain, the world’s greatest hero, and so many others. He began to doubt his destiny; if these powers were so dangerous to himself, then perhaps he wasn’t meant to be a hero. His parents wholeheartedly supported this train of thought and helped him make the decision to stay a normal man. The world didn’t need another hero.

In light of this decision, Jack eventually left his town for the big city. The Big Apple, New York City. He had hoped to be able to eke out a living there. He figured there would always be some demand in the construction business, with all the superhumans breaking things and all that.
As he predicted, he managed to get himself a job and a small apartment relatively quickly. It was hard work, and he was never sure of his position. Sometimes he’d get fired and had to find a new job. Those were the toughest times, but Jack always pulled through. In the end, he was still relatively content with life. Hard work is good work, his parents always told him, no matter how ‘low’ and ‘dirty’ it is. Instead of risking his life to help people, he was making his contribution to society in his own way. There’s always demand for hard-working and honest men, no matter what people say. For a time, as always, Jack was content.

It was only when he had already reached the age of 25 when it came. That point in a hero’s life where everything changes. It wasn’t any terrible personal tragedy, and he already knew about his powers. It was a cold day in February, and Jack was headed to the bank to withdraw some money. Turns out so was the Clockwork Crew. A man who called himself Spectrum, some kind of strange monkey-man and the villain called Johnny Snow, the latter presumably being the ringleader. They arrived only moments after Jack did. Though they acted swiftly, it didn’t seem to Jack that they were at all in a hurry, or in any way tensed. They just strolled inside, almost as if they expected everything to go exactly as they wanted. First they displayed their power by incapacitating two security guards that tried to act against them. The monkey man jumped at one of them, and dislodged his jaw. The other guard was blasted by what looked to be a particularly vivid rainbow. It emitted warmth however, and the blasted guard didn’t stand up after being hit. Not just a rainbow.
As Johnny Snow walked up to the counter and began to give orders to the teller, Jack, for just one moment, contemplated using his powers. Just this once. He could try. Maybe stall them enough until a better hero arrives, or the police.

The teller is nervous. Snow is getting impatient, the man isn’t doing as he wants.
No. No one needs to get hurt, Jack thought. It was just money. Pieces of paper. If he acted, there might be collateral damage, even casualties. Better to lay low and let it blow off.
Jack made a choice not to be a hero. The teller, whose name was Lawrence, despite having no powers whatsoever, and being a perfectly ordinary man, decided that today he would be a hero. Money was important, it was a tool society used to help people live organized in this society. Having it stolen would trouble society, it would hurt people. Perhaps not directly, but hurt them nonetheless.
He stammered some half-hearted apologies to the villain, and with his right hand’s index finger began to reach for the distress button. It had never crossed his mind that he wanted to be a hero. Lawrence just wanted to do what was right. Lawrence was a good man.
And on that cold day in February, a good man died.

Johnny Snow didn’t take kindly to Lawrence’s attempt at heroism, and before he could press the button, the young teller was blasted with a freeze-gun. Though it wasn’t put on full lethal capacity and didn’t kill him outright, Lawrence could not be thawed out in time and died. The Clockwork Crew, having fully convinced the bank employees of the gravity of the situation, eventually got what they came for and left.
The hostages were happy to be alive, and were soon comforted by the embraces of their loved ones. The event would stay in their minds for a while, for some longer and others shorter, but all would eventually forget. Then they would go out and get to know new people, learn lessons in life, and experience joy and sadness alike. Life went on.
That day however, one man’s life ended. No one would get to know him, and he would never experience joy or grief again. His life had ended, where others’ just went on. Jack never even learned his name.
It was this realization that drove Jack to finally become a superhero, despite the implications this held for him. He began training in martial arts, scraping whatever money he could spare to enroll in classes of all sorts, and going to a cheap gym regularly. As long as there was evil, no, as long as their would be injustice, so would there be at least one man holding vigil. So began Jack Maroon’s ascent into heroism, a path leading him ever closer to the end of his life.
Now he is known as Vigil, at least by those who have actually heard of him. To others, he is simply not known. While most heroes shun the spotlight, the spotlight shuns him instead. Wearing his home-made costume, and as a lone crimefighter, Vigil has managed to attract only minimal publicity. He is considered somewhat of a loving joke; a character with good intentions that never really gets to act upon them. More than often Vigil is the hero that arrives at the scene of the crime too late, other heroes having already beat him to the punch. The hero who mostly catches minor criminals or assists the police. The hero whose powers are as dangerous to him as they are to his foes. The hero who usually fails to live up to the crowds’ expectation of what a hero should be.
But a hero nonetheless.


Roleplay Sample: Taiz and Bastard.

Okay, approved.