Important Notice Regarding Images | VirtueVerse Maintenance: Fridays at 2300 EST

From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

... Yes, it's pink
Retrace
Player: @Talen Lee
Origin:	Natural
Archetype:	Fortunata[1]
Threat Level:	Warzone clearance
Personal Data
Real Name:	Reed Tracewell
Known Aliases:	Trace, Ret
Species:	Homo Sapiens
Age:	19
Height:	5'6"
Weight:	142 lbs
Eye Color:	Green
Hair Color:	Blue, naturally
Biographical Data
Nationality:	Etoile Island Native
Occupation:	Drifter
Place of Birth:	Etoile Island
Base of Operations:	St. Martial
Marital Status:	Confidential
Known Relatives:	Confidential
Known Powers
Telepathy, Extrasensory Perception
Known Abilities
Confidential
Equipment
Confidential
No additional information available.

Conceptual coitus interruptus is a damnable thing. When you come up with an idea - a really cool idea, like, say, an unconventional empath, a counterpoint to a lifestyle, or an expression of mutation through history, - it's frustrating as fuck when the people around you who you roleplay with^[3] don't give a shit about the idea and more or less wants to focus on their own things and how you make them feel about that^[4]. I might just be overly bitter at this point, but I've made more than a few conceptually diverse characters that go nowhere because they were mechanically dependent and relied on other people to open up their concepts in the thoroughly foolish move of expecting well of fellow roleplayers interacting with something on an intellectual level that didn't happen to also have a gigantic pair of tits as a carrot on the end of the string.

So here's Retrace. He's an old concept, but this time, he can actually solo. The idea behind him is different, of course; rather than a hero, put in place and carefully kept under observation from range, Retrace is one of the Rogue Isles' many runaways, an unguided individual with superpowers in a society that funnels them towards one of two rather dismal fates - part of the Top Dog organisation, or an underdog.

[edit] Character

[edit] Premise

When you're a loose youth in the Rogue Isles, it means a lot more than it does in other towns. For a start, you can hop a ferry if you have appropriate ID or a few bills^[5] for a bribe to a different island, and each island is like a little city unto itself, with all the places for a youth to get up to mischief. For some kids, this is pleasantly self-limiting: the whole of the young gangs' worlds are the islands on which they were born, and part of why the Skulls and Hellions don't get into gang wars the same way they do in Kings Row.

However, some youth aren't satisfied with that. Impish and mischievous, possessed of a pique and verve uncommon to the youth of his age, young Reed Tracewell has always been pushing ahead of the curve. But with his powers, what can you expect? Reed - known as Retrace amongst the gangs and criminal networks where he makes his pocket money, - bounces from situation to situation, always just a few seconds ahead of the curve, always just out of danger.

He doesn't know how he can do it, or why. He just figures it's a gift.

[edit] Sequel

Of course, with the gift comes some unfortunate visions. He's seen some rather painful incidents in his future in recurring dreams, visions that he feels lurchingly certain are going to happen. With this in mind, he's trying to shirk responsibilities, and certain things can set him on edge, making him skirt or avoid things that might lead to these memories coming true... purely because he wishes to prove he's free, free to carve his own destiny.

• Being stabbed in the chest with a three-bladed knife.
• Donning black fortunata armour on knee before Ghost Widow
• Waiting on a street corner in Founders' Falls, clad in a police uniform
• Being kicked in the face by an orange-haired girl in remarkably small shorts
• Bleeding, hanging face-down from a rail in Mercy, watching as below him, the Stricken gather

[edit] Prequel

Of course, what story of a precocious, supernaturally powered youth in the Rogue Isles would be complete without some sinister shadow cast across his life?

Retrace is one of fourteen clones of ██████████████, a registered hero from ███████, formerly of the ███████ ████████, █████████ and ██████████. DNA was harvested during a conflict with the ██████████████, blood samples and bone stolen after an incident explicitly engineered between ██████████████ and ███████ ██████████████, as an Arachnos field project. Technically created in Port Oakes, Tracewell was one of many abandoned projects when the Marcone-Mook family war broke out, forcing Arachnos contractors to have to close down. A mere infant, he was found by a young woman, and in an especially heartless move, was brought to a local orphanage. The woman thought she could, while offering him up, parley into some kind of advantage, and indeed, did earn herself some charity from the process.

Fortunately for young Reed, he wasn't indoctrinated into Westin Phipps' groups. Instead, he was directed as a youth as a 'gangland cleaner' - the kind of youth too precocious to fall in amongst the Fortunata of Ghost Widow. Instead, the manipulators of the orphanages of St. Martial wanted to throw him in amongst the Family-Mook war, as a kind of living IED, intent on doing a lot of harm in his attempts to achieve personal advancement.

On the other hand, the boy seems hard to pin down in the visions of the Fateweavers...

[edit] Powers

Retrace is a powerful psychic. It's not a gift he's a great power to bend, but it incarnates itself in the two most obvious gifts of ESP and Telepathy. Capable of seeing things shortly before they happen, and attacking peoples' minds the way a normal person attacks a large box of cookies, he swings his telepathic prowess around like a billyclub, bringing it to bear against people rather brutally. Because of the psychic prowess amongst Arachnos, he tends to avoid them, but he just as much can't back down from a challenge.

On the other hand, just as much as he can attack minds, he infiltrates the minds of his friends and his allies, reaching out, drawing their attention to things they might not otherwise notice. When travelling with people with whom he can cooperate, Retrace is capable of both seeing through other people's eyes and through his own, enhancing people's reaction times and in turn, strongly insulating their mind against other psychic presence.

[edit] Meta

Trivia

• Retrace is my second character to go by a name that sounded like "read."
• Retrace started as a name camp, curiously.

[edit] References

1. ↑ Finally™.
2. ↑ Never mix this name up with Garth Ennis, or let me tell you, you will have a fucker of a time managing to find the quote on Wikiquote.
3. ↑ You know, your ostensible friends.
4. ↑ "Hell with that - I've got castles to raid!"
5. ↑ I can't shake the feeling that the Rogue Isles uses the franc. Can anyone substantiate that one for me?