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From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

Live like you're dying
Entangler
Player: Talen Lee
Origin:	Science
Archetype:	Controller
Security Level:	Confidential
Personal Data
Real Name:	Eric Noble Tangier[1]
Known Aliases:	Noble
Species:	Homo Sapiens, augmented
Age:	19[2]
Height:	6'6"
Weight:	195 lbs
Eye Color:	Blue
Hair Color:	Green-blonde
Biographical Data
Nationality:	Confidential
Occupation:	Confidential
Place of Birth:	Confidential
Base of Operations:	Confidential
Marital Status:	Available[3]
Known Relatives:	Confidential
Known Powers
Abiogenesis
Known Abilities
Skilled cryptologist
Equipment
None
No additional information available.

I found myself, after all that time playing Battlebriar, getting acquainted with his powersets and how those powers functioned in the context of the City Of X universe, considering how those powers weren't explored. As Battlebriar was a dangerous terrorist with the potential to inflict untold harm on a massive scale during the worst parts of his career, he actually had very little play to actually do any such thing^[4]. Taking those powers into consideration, I thought about what a more irresponsible, less cerebral character would do with those powers.

At the same time, I was reading Daniel Dennett's writing on determinism and the idea of the human brain as a Quantum Determinancy engine. The sequids from Invincible also came into my reading at this point, which made me consider the idea of a telepathic microorganism that formed a potential psychic engine of a colony. This struck me as kinda cute, when you considered it as a potential avenue for entirely organic manipulation of otherwise high-end physics.

The net result^[5] was Entangler. I wanted to give the same powers a spin in a more relaxed fashion, and the dangerous, psychotic angle that Battlebriar had and never really backed up could be excised in favour of a more social creature. A friend added to the idea, pointing out to me that typically, women manipulating men in comics was either an evil act (your classic cherchez la femme scenario, with a dangerous seductress dragging a male to an evil act through his weakness for base, physical pleasure), or a neutral act. Occasionally, a woman makes a sexual sacrifice, allowing some evil, wicked man to enjoy himself in the name of some greater good^[6]. It was never an act done for a good reason, by someone who actually enjoyed sex - taking some fringe benefits in the same manner as your classic thug hero who fights for a good reason, but also happens to fight because he likes fighting.

[edit] Affiliations

At this point, Entangler is a loose tether across Paragon. A fresh arrival in the city, he's found himself mostly operating in pick-up operations, where he's been in the right place at the right time, listening to the right frequency on his radio.

[edit] Personality

Moreso than many heroes, Entangler has deliberately crafted a personality for his hero identity and tries to keep his heroing life and his normal life separate^[7]. It's entirely possible that his real personality lies somewhere between the two personalities, but for all intents and purposes, there are some aspects of Eric Tangier that don't have any impact on Entangler, and some aspects of Entangler that have no connection to Eric Tangier.

[edit] The Mask

Entangler is a fast-paced, wise-cracking, mobilist, who sets a fast pace and assumes people will keep up. Determined to never be behind the curve, Entangler is proactive, aggressive, and light-hearted. He cracks jokes and keeps conversation flowing even in the midst of combat. This is deliberate, of course - he wants to seem like he's not putting forth much effort, as though he's always got a quip to distribute.

[edit] The Man

What does a young man in a city of heroes have to look up to? Every TV screen, every newspaper page, all talk about the heroes. In a world like this, a woman is not so wooed by a leather jacket and a motorcycle, or a nice haircut and snappy dress. Oh, sure, there are girls who'll be caught by that, but when one of the guys in the bar can punch through six inches of steel, it becomes very tricky to really be impressive.

So what of Eric Tangier? In a city of heroes, as a mere normal person, Eric does what most inferior men do. He lies, a lot. His typical line of fiction is simple - he pretends to be a superhero's secret identity, then, for security reasons, refuses to give out too many more details. This level of mystique is paper-thin, but it works. Eric can pull off the style, the suaveness, and has no small amount of pieces that can be used to hint at a superheroic identity - a blanked-out old Hero Corps identity, for example.

Eric seeks to maintain a chain of women - and is more often than not made a link in another woman's chain

[edit] The Mystery

The dual persona is not perfect. A few individuals who knew Entangler before he'd really established his presence in Paragon City have heard his full name, including the middle name he uses when he wants to lay low. Noble, a much more personable name that he gives to his close friends, has no blatant connection to Eric Tangier or Entangler.

Those who know Noble know that he's both these other identities. Noble's degree of sophistication in his disguises is quite good, but he doesn't hold any hopes that it's perfect. Plus, despite chemical stimulants protecting his system and psyche in general, he can't ever be certain there's not someone who can't crack his defenses.

Noble is much more timid and personable, though just as tractable by the fairer sex as Eric Tangier.

[edit] Powers

While the core of Entangler's powers have been touched upon elsewhere, his powers can be summarised as abiogenesis. He creates organisms that are short-lived, and uses a series of fast-acting retroviruses to force changes in his nearby surroundings. The effect is to cause minor-scale changes in his allies and opponents^[9].

Entangler uses these powers fairly directly. His command of retroviruses and toxins is fairly undeveloped, and his powers only respond to the most simplistic of mental commands. He gets around the city by using long strands of vines, swinging like an urban Tarzan. Another subform of life he can create is a kind of psionic bacteria, capable of siphoning momentum from one point and increasing it in another - not that he understands how the colonies work, merely seeing it as a good way to improve his own reaction speed and penalise a target's.

In addition to this, he has a vague, intuitive sense of people's lifesigns and relations, picking close relatives as a reliable guess. This is how he fights with his mask on. When adrenaline runs through his system in high amounts, such as during sex or combat, his senses are heightened to an almost painful degree, hence his mask. This mask nearly blinds him and makes it almost impossible for him to smell anything, letting him operate in a more neutral mode.

[edit] Abilities

Entangler is a skilled, though untrained, cryptoanalyst, and has an intuitive grasp of English-language cipher and encryption systems. He's not very good with foreign languages, and he tends to refer to codes as 'hopeless.' Most of his experience in this field has been breaking safe codes and electronic code systems across the Rogue Isles' many security formats. Codes broken by Entangler have been responsible for breaking into Arachnos bases, Longbow listening posts, and RIP security programs.

Beyond that, a lot of common skills, such as housekeeping, cooking, budgeting and time management are somewhat underdeveloped, having spent the past six years hospitalised. Unfortunately, the only things that really interested him during this time of his life were mathematical and puzzling in their nature.

[edit] Weaknesses and Limitations

The most significant weaknesses Entangler has are his susceptibility to genetic tampering. His base mutation is to absorb other genetic data, letting him add to his own DNA strands any more efficient traits. This disorder has been held in check by the addition of other mutant DNA to his own in a transfusion that kept his body from slowly transforming itself into a protoplasmic mass of stem cells.

[edit] Character History

Entangler's tale begins in a hospital bed. Six years ago, Eric Tangier was a bedridden invalid, his freshly-awakened mutation starting a war within his own body. Initially, he was diagnosed as having a kind of lupus strain, but rather than being subjected to his own immune system, it was instead found that his whole body was at war, each individual cell trying to take on the best traits of all the cells around it. This homogenization process was slow and painful, often halted in fits and starts, and a variety of treatments were attempted by his parents, draining their resources.

Eventually, some two months ago, Eric was given twenty-four hours to live, before being offered another, revolutionary technique that would involve fusing his cells with an extensive sample obtained from the Rose Paladin^[10]. This DNA synthesis worked, and where Eric was once at death's door, he found his life revolutionised. Instead of struggling for every breath, he took on many of the physical traits of the impressive hero, including his physical dimensions and his level of muscle tone. The treatment also stilled his own mutation, the cells finding an 'optimal' configuration that involved interdependence instead of aggressive absorption.

So, finding himself alert, awake, and able to actually lift his own head, Eric went out and started a hellbent lifestyle that featured more abuse of his powers than use. While avoiding actual criminal behaviour, he did separate himself from his family and squandered his new free time. During this burst of misbehaviour, he came to realise that he owed it to the society that had kept him healthy and kept him alive to fight for justice, to use his newfound powers for good.

Assuming this 'great responsibility', Eric went forth to register, and take up the name of Entangler, and to be a hero.

[edit] Skeleton in the Closet

The reason Entangler's powers resemble Battlebriar's so much is that they are Battlebriar's - a large cellular infusion from Battlebriar himself combined with Eric's own consumptive mutation. Battlebriar's mutation is much more aggressive than Eric's native one, which ran Battlebriar's heavily-altered DNA through his system and provoked a synthesis. Eric's body shifted, inheriting many physical changes from Battlebriar, such as a lack of facial hair, and he found himself steadily developing the same abiogenetic powers Battlebriar has. The net effect was to turn an invalid shut-in into a tireless superpower, which he therefore immediately used to run around and have sex with as many girls as he could find in as short an amount of time.

The twist in the tale, however, is that during his nights enjoying his wild and reckless lifestyle, granted from the blood of Battlebriar, Eric was lured to Paragon City and stranded by a shapeshifting heroine^[11]. This individual successfully stealthed him past Paragon's security troops, then immediately left him bereft of assistance. Clearly she^[12] correctly gauged him, and Eric spent his time panicking and hiding, afraid that his connection to a group like Riot Gear would come out and bite him on the rear end, hard. After a small amount of skulking, and an incident where he struck upon a pair of Hellions who had stolen a purse, he found himself put at a moral choice - and he returned the purse to its surprised owner.

That experience crystallised his approach and made him realise the realities of his situation. Considering the life of the Rogue Isles, and the villain he might have become, he decided to take a stand, resolving to move in the opposite direction, and registered as a Hero. He attempted to file under his real name and initials - E. N. TANGIER - his terrible handwriting actually scored him a better name than he was expecting to get. From that day on, he took the name - and the identity.

[edit] Trivia

• Entangler's name isn't the 'real deal.' He's actually entangier. If the real Entangler wants this page, let me know.
• Entangler is a bit of a pastiche of homage:

1. The disease in his backstory touches on my own thoughts on the hop-skip-jump biology of the City of Heroes universe.
2. His powers are derived from Battlebriar's.
3. His movement and style bespeaks Spiderman.
4. His outfit design is extrapolated from a combination of Rapace's and Laurel's.

• Entangler's handwriting is awful. Just awful.

[edit] Footnotes

1. ↑ His surname is actually Angier.
2. ↑ Biological age 25.
3. ↑ 'Easy And Lacking In Good Judgement'
4. ↑ For numerous reasons, including the limiters I put on him myself.
5. ↑ Okay, this was the catalyst event.
6. ↑ Consider the Queen's sacrifice in 300.
7. ↑ Sorta.
8. ↑ He lived.
9. ↑ What he doesn't realise is that his powers actually have developed something of an effect on quantum differention - that all organisms he creates except the duplicates of himself have an element of quantum causality to them, and can tip the physics of the universe by moving the tiniest of particles.
10. ↑ No, not that one. THAT one.
11. ↑ Or hero, for all he knows.
12. ↑ Or he, you know. Just saying. Eric has no idea.
13. ↑ He doesn't know D-38 very well.