Exchange of Realities

Every now and then, an exercise works its way through the RPGBN. Last time, we created ourselves as monsters . This time, we’re trying superheroes. I like these exercises; they’re just as good for a writer as a gamer, rather amusing in their own right, and make for really fun mental images. So here’s my persona: Ravyn, kindler of ideas.

She wanders the worlds, phasing easily from one to another as the mood strikes her. Though she dresses simply for the most part, you might know her if you saw her, from her long violet coat with pockets that hold almost everything or the pencil that stays behind her ear regardless of what the laws of physics say it would do. You would certainly know her by her impact.

In some worlds, there are things that just don’t look the same. Where the things around them are round and rough, full of contours and crevices and places where secrets and ambiguities can hide, they stand out as flat, smooth, uncomplicated. Simplistic. Two dimensional. When she comes upon these, she gives them shape and nuance, letting them be the equal of their more developed counterparts.

At times, she works among those who create. In her presence, their ideas manifest as seeds, and she takes them into her hand and whispers to them. Sometimes these whispers are questions; sometimes the seed itself is a question, and she suggests answers to it. To some, she sings instead, and the idea-kernel resonates with the music. Either way, the idea grows, and when its growth has gone past the point where anything could hold it back she returns it to its owner and vanishes.

Her origin was a quiet thing. On duty with the Oakland Public Library, she went into the stacks for an assignment, but somewhere within, as happens often in large concentrations of books, she stepped between worlds by mistake to another library. Within that library she met an old woman, who introduced herself only as “Mrs. Brown”. They talked about the gaps between worlds, about the exchanges created through the books. And more, about how to kindle ideas and to create worlds. From then on, she would occasionally see this woman—in random places, in her dreams, within the stories she read, always serving as teacher. Then, one night, she vanished, leaving only a message: “Find me, and your questions will be answered.” Ravyn took this to heart, and now seeks her erstwhile mentor and ideal in everything she does; though she has come close at times, she still has yet to find her.

As she is not superpowered in the combat sense, she doesn’t have a compensatory weakness. Rumor has it, though, that she grows unsettled and frustrated when in the presence of branches of acacia. None are quite sure where this trait comes from.

But no hero, even such a low-key one as Ravyn, is without enemies. In every world to which she travels, she is hounded by Hackney and the Purple Prose, a pair of dimension-hopping overlords with tendrils in the heart of all that is created.

It’s been a while since I did superheroes, but I think I covered everything. What do you think? And what would you be if you were a superhero?