Player Information

Name: Ghost
Age: 29
Contact details: GiveThemAllAVoice on plurk
Other characters: none

Character Information

Name: Althea Tesla
Canon: Originally Marvel, now Sanctuary OC
Canon Point: after end of Sanctuary, some backstory with C's Nikola
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OC
Age: early 30s

World Information: Information on the Sanctuary Network Sanctuary Network here , and information on abnormals here.

Personal History:
At 13, Althea Brooks was one of the unlucky children to hit puberty and suddenly display a hidden mutant gene, one that gave her the ability to sense, create, and manipulate electrical currents. To say her parents weren’t happy would be an understatement.

She was sent to Xavier’s school under the instruction that she would find a way to control and contain it, or even cure it, so that she could come back home and live a normal life. The teachers there didn’t approve, but couldn’t very well tell a child that their parents were making an unhealthy demand of them, and so did their best to teach control, while also trying to broaden her horizons and show that what she could do wasn’t something to hate or be afraid of. This became harder and harder to do when Althea started realizing just how far reaching her powers could be, and just how much energy she was able to create and manipulate, especially when emotional. She largely began to shut down and, though an ideal student and very quick to pick up new material, she refused to do anything that would require her abilities, wore heavy clothing that would block any electric shocks she was terrified of accidentally hurting others with, and ended up largely as a shut-in.

(This part of the backstory is mostly the only left over from the original Marvel canon I wrote her from, and while other marvel characters could be people she's heard of in a vague way, she won't have met any of them previously, or at least not extensively, unless other people want to play with that.)

When she graduated no closer to doing what her parents had hoped, she was sent to the new Sanctuary after asking another electrokinetic manipulator, Nikola Tesla, for help. Nikola was immediately intrigued, though her shut down personality and insistence rejecting her abilities led to several annoyances on his part. Still, little by little, the chaos of the Sanctuary day to day activities was able to draw her out of her shell, and as she already had a rather engineering/electrical set of interests, ended up somehow becoming Nikola’s protege (a fact which she still doesn’t really believe or understand, especially on her worse mental health days). Her day to day control, as well as what she was able to do, improved, and things seemed to be on the up and up.

Until she started questioning whether she really wanted to turn off, lose, or get rid of her powers, to never use them again. But it was what her family wanted, right? Almost 20 years of trying to be able to go back home meant she had to, right? But they had actually given up ages ago, realizing their daughter would never be normal, and deciding that they didn’t want to be known as the parents of one of the dangerous abnormal threats, cut off communication and told her that there would be nothing further, no will, and no further mention of her as related to them. She had effectively wasted her life for nothing. Nikola was apparently upset by this and offered to adopt her officially, since they’d already been working together for so long, and he was beginning to see her as a sort of heir anyway.


Personality:
Kind, hopeful, perhaps a bit naïve or optimistic when it comes to others; she almost always has other’s well being in mind before her own. Because of how often she’s accidentally zapped people in the past however, this usually means keeping her distance, and shying away from touch, as well as keeping her skin covered as much as possible. It also means she has a bit of an irrational fear towards accidentally hurting others. She isn’t likely to give anyone more than a little static shock when she’s freaking out, unless she’s actually trying to, but it all can get a bit blown out of proportion in her mind. She had started becoming more comfortable and confident thanks to some help from the Sanctuary network and especially Tesla, but being unceremoniously dumped in a new place will see her falling back on old habits again while she adjusts.


Key themes: Personal control, and being okay with not always being in control, growth and growing without stifling others or oneself, and thinking, inventing, and creating new ways to help others.

Main Motivation: Helping, mostly, and she would say that's it, but she is also very much motivated by a desire for acceptance, for being told good job or well done or even that it's okay that she messed up, because she was seriously lacking those growing up, but she might not fully realize how much that has affected her.

Skills:
Electrokinesis: Electricity manipulation and generation. She can directly throw charges ranging from slight shocks to destructive bolts generated directly from her own body, can power electronic devices, or fry them, magnetize her body to draw things toward her, and more, as well as a few theoretical abilities such as transporting herself short distances as a bolt of lightning, though actually controlling any of those is another question entirely. Can at the very least generate massive amounts of energy, even if she has quite the problem with focus or control, ‘finesse’ she’d call it. While in a fight, she’d likely be able to hold her own, in the more everyday situations, she had quite a hard time trying to keep it all shut down. Her surroundings also limit her; water can short out the electricity she tries to direct, though she won't be harmed by it shorting, and insulators can work against the amount of wattage they’re rated for.


These are the abilities she does know about, but there are many theories as to more, especially from others, though she isn’t sure of her own potential. Having absolute control over electricity is a very, very powerful thing, and frankly, the thought terrifies her. Which is likely where some of her difficulty in controlling said abilities comes from. She tries not to think about how much damage she could do, and spent most of her life trying to ‘turn it off’ as much as possible, which doesn’t help her control or confidence either. In older verses, she’s finally starting to accept that she’s not a monster, not a freak, and is working with Nikola to learn how her abilities work and gain control.
(Nikola’s current theory, though he hasn’t told Althea yet, is that she’s more electricity/energy than flesh and blood. Her creation of electricity doesn’t quite follow the laws of creation/destruction of energy, and can really only be explained by her actually having access to much more than it seems, be that some other universe/dimension, herself, etc. While she believes she generates electricity more like an eel where she turns calories into electricity, has to eat more just to maintain an average existence, and would get extremely tired or even pass out if she doesn’t. The truth is some sort of combination of both, where her ‘habit’ is to maintain a flesh body similar to what she had before puberty and would have on growing normally, but it’s actually that which makes her need to eat so much more/need so much more energy. More info on that will probably come later, unless you’re curious. I love deep diving into this stuff so I’m more than happy to muse lol.)

Very basic hand to hand/self defense, but will usually default to trying to stun any enemy before actually physically fighting. Has a desire to expand on this or improve somehow, with or without electricity, but hasn't started yet.

Because of her abilities, she has developed an interest in anything that relates to them, which includes electronics, electricity, and even some minor meteorology. She loves to tinker with what she can, and will often “storm chase” if there’s a good one around.


Item: A necklace with what appears to be two figures, one on each side, of a golden colored pendant; some may recognize Theodora of Byzantium on one side, likely no one will recognize Helen Magnus on the other.

Sample:
Sample 1
(This is a thread written with the Nikola who is responsible for basically all of this backstory and a fair amount of musing on her powers both current and potential, as I've written with him for over 10 years now)

Sample 2
(A thread from the current TDM that made it the furthest)

Notes:
She is FAR more worried/scared of her own abilities than she should be, up to a point. She would never hurt someone on purpose, and that does translate into her subconscious handling of her powers, whether she believes it or not. She was told for a very long time by her biological parents that she could only be a danger to everyone around her with those powers, and she needed to remove them. It's going to take some time for her to unlearn those thought patterns.
That being said, she has the capability to be incredibly strong, were she to grow and train, but a lot of that power will only come out in moments of extreme duress until then.