Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  Shamrock – A case-53 (typically monstrous parahumans, amnesiac, with a specific tattoo) with no monstrous features. Combines microtelekinesis and an unconscious precognition into an effective ‘luck’ manipulation, altering outcomes on a subtle level.

  Shatterbird – A silicakinetic, capable of moving and manipulating glass, or affecting whole cities with a glass-shattering scream. Drapes herself in a costume of colored glass shards, complete with a beak-mask. A member of the Slaughterhouse Nine.

  Shielder - A member of New Wave. Blue haired, wearing a white costume with a blue shield motif, he can fly, generate laser blasts and creates forcefields. Same powers as his mother and sister, but with an emphasis on shaping forcefields and stronger forcefields.

  Sierra Kiley – A girl with red dreads who took custody of her brother after her parents became ill. Sought help from the protagonist in getting him back after he was kidnapped.

  Simurgh - A creature that appears as a freakishly tall woman with a countless number of wings fanning out from her body, some fanning out from other wings. A precognitive, telekinetic, clairvoyant with a psychic scream.

  Sirius – One of Bitch’s dogs, a black lab.

  Skidmark – Leader of the Merchants, a foul-mouthed individual with the ability to create a deflector field, a force field that pushes things through itself or pushes them away.

  Skitter – The protagonist. A bug controller, she wears a black spidersilk costume with gray-black speckled armor panels. If you’ve forgotten who she is, you have a problem.

  Sophia Hess – Emma’s new best friend, one of Taylor’s bullies, more physical than the other two. She’s an athletic African-American girl with longer hair.

  Spitfire – A member of Faultline’s crew who once applied for the Undersiders and was scared off by Bitch. Capable of spitting a flammable chemical.

  Squealer – Described by others as a trashy skank, a Merchant and Skidmark’s girlfriend. A tinker capable of creating vehicles, she makes lumbering, haphazard constructions loaded down with everything she might think of.

  Stormtiger – A white supremacist and one of Hookwolf’s subordinates, once a member of parahuman fighting rings. Wears loose-fitting pants and a white tiger mask. An aerokinetic, his techniques include drawing sounds and smells to himself, or condensing air into hard ‘claws’ that he then releases in explosive blasts.

  Strider – A freelance hero who specializes in mass teleporting.

  Sundancer – A traveler, Sundancer wears a red and black costume with a sun motif. Her power lets her create a miniature sun, an intensely hot orb that can melt concrete and turn rock to ash.

  Tagg – PRT director, ex-military, a combative personality.

  Tattletale – Gifted with superhuman intuition, the ability to fill in gaps in her knowledge, Tattletale is a member of the Undersiders, their information specialist and one of their better tactical thinkers. Wears her blond hair straight, and has a lavender and black costume with a stylized eye on the chest.

  Tecton – A Chicago Ward, Tecton has power armor capable of shattering the earth, creating fissures, localized earthquakes and pits in his immediate surroundings.

  Theo Anders – The fifteen year old son of Kaiser, described as pudgy and withdrawn.

  Trainwreck - An unwashed, greasy man who wears a crude, steam powered suit. Essentially a homeless solo supervillain, he is initially based in Brockton Bay’s Trainyards.

  Triumph – Recent graduate from the Brockton Bay Wards as of the story’s start, he’s now a member of the city’s Protectorate chapter instead. Gifted with natural strength, athleticism and durability by his powers, he is capable of delivering controlled concussive blasts with his voice.

  Ursa Aurora – A member of the New York Protectorate, Ursa Aurora creates animated forcefields in the rough shape of bears.

  Velocity – A member of the Brockton Bay Protectorate, Velocity has super speed at the expense of proportionately lowered strength and an inability to affect the world.

  Victor – A white supremacist and partner to Othala, Victor wears a black v-neck breastplate, red shirt and black slacks. His power allows him to steal people’s skills and talents, draining them temporarily or permanently (depending on the amount stolen) and giving it to himself on a permanent basis.

  Vista – A member of the Brockton Bay Wards, Vista is a young (thirteen year old) girl with a powerful ability – the ability to warp physical space. Blonde, she wears a green and blue dress with sculpted panels of body armor and a green visor.

  Wanton – A member of the Chicago Wards, Wanton can turn himself into a storm of telekinetic energy, picking up debris and loose items and having it all orbit a central point.

  Weld – A member of the Boston Wards, Weld is a metal-skinned boy, one of the case 53s (People who tend to have amnesia, a specific mark and monstrous features).

  Ziz – Another name for the Simurgh (see above).

  Cast (In Depth & Spoilerful)

  Spoiler warning! If you haven’t yet read the story up to the most current update, this page may give away story elements and surprises.

  For the regular Cast page, see above.

  Civilian Life

  Taylor Hebert, Skitter - A 16 year old native of Brockton Bay, Taylor gained the power to control arthropods and other simple lifeforms, sensing what they sense to varying degrees. With a wide range (spanning nine to fifteen hundred feet around her) and the power to individually control each insect, she relies on versatility and strategic thinking to seize the advantage in battle.Her powers manifested in January 2011, triggered by a bullying campaign by her former best friend and two other girls. She found a measure of escape with her dream of becoming a superhero, but things didn’t quite work out that way. She’s now one of the controlling powers in Brockton Bay, a villain warlord in charge of the Boardwalk, with a small contingent of followers working under her, and leader of the Undersiders.

  In civilian guise, she’s skinny to the point of being scrawny, with glasses and long curly hair she maintains as a desperate grasp at a single feminine feature. Her gawky or nerdy appearance is marked by a wide mouth and large eyes.

  As Skitter, she wears a costume of black spider silk and gray armor panels, a yellow-lensed mask that features a mandible-esque design around her jaw. Her hair blows free. Depending on the situation and the state of her costume, she occasionally wears a skirt or shawl of black spider silk with ragged or torn edges, for protection, concealment, and to offer more surface area for her bugs to crawl on. When battle ready, bugs crawl over every surface of her costume, including her hair and mask. The carapace-like panel of armor at her back serves as a utility compartment, holding her weapons and various items.

  Danny Hebert – Taylor’s dad. A single father, he worked at the Dockworkers association, as head of hiring and Union spokesperson. Given his positions, had a lesser role as an activist of sort, trying to find some way to revive the docks and promote job growth in the northern and eastern parts of the city. Has something of a temper, but has been careful not to direct it at his daughter. This repression may have, combined with her own silence, played a part in their estrangement. Since she began her career as a villain, a fact Danny is ignorant of, she’s distanced herself and left both home and school. As of late, they’ve been striving to reconnect.

  Danny is a tall man, the source of his daughter’s thin figure. Not necessarily attractive, he’s a self-professed nerd, despite his association with the more rough-edged Dockworkers.

  Annette Rose Hebert – Taylor’s mom. Not in the picture, as she died in a car crash six months before Taylor started high school. She was an English professor at the local college.

  Emma Barnes – Taylor’s onetime best friend. Around the time High School started, Emma started hanging out with Sophia Hess and Madison Clements, and began bullying Taylor as a way of distancing herself from a traumatic incident. An attractive, red haired girl, Emma is an amateur model who does occasional photo shoots for local magazines an
d department stores.

  Sophia Hess – Emma’s best friend, a member of the track and field team. Not liked by many, beyond Emma and Madison, as she’s fairly notorious for being mean spirited. Taylor mentioned that Sophia’s own brand of bullying tends more towards the physical than any of the other girls – tripping, punching, kicking, shoving, and so on. Currently in juvenile detention. Sophia is dark skinned and athletic, owing to her membership on the track and field team. See Shadow Stalker in the Wards section, below.

  Madison Clements – One of the more popular girls, a friend of Sophia and Emma. Petite, described as ‘cute’, somewhat more juvenile than her friends in the ‘pranks’ – such as pouring juice on Taylor and encouraging other girls to vandalize Taylor’s desk or her stuff.

  Mrs. Knott - Once Taylor’s homeroom and computer sciences teacher, a masculine woman. She was Taylor’s favorite teacher, mostly due to the fact that she let the advanced stream of the class study on their own. Proved sympathetic and ultimately unhelpful in relation to Taylor’s bullying situation.

  Mr. Gladly - Once Taylor’s World Issues teacher. A popular teacher for the popular students, short and gregarious, ‘Mr. G’ noticed Taylor’s problems in his class, but elected not to act on the bullying after Taylor turned down his offers for help.

  The Undersiders

  Core Group The Undersiders themselves have advanced from being a minor (if elusive) group of teenaged villains to the leaders of Brockton Bay’s underworld, first becoming one of the five major players for the city, then either surviving the incidents that removed the other players or removing their adversaries from the area. Once based under Coil, they turned on him. Each member now controls a major area of Brockton Bay

  Skitter, Taylor Hebert – See Taylor, above. Leader of the Undersiders.

  Tattletale, Lisa Wilbourn (Also Sarah Livsey) – Controls central Downtown, though she doesn’t show much presence. Seventeen years old, Tattletale possesses enhanced intuition, with the ability to close gaps in her knowledge or draw natural conclusions from related areas of knowledge. This renders her a master at obtaining information, cracking encryption and playing head games with her enemies.

  Lisa (Tattletale’s civilian guise) favors a more subdued or traditional style of dress, and makes a habit of having her hair tied back, knotted or hidden in a bun. Described as fitting somewhere in the middle of the scale between average and pretty, Lisa has straight blond hair, a smattering of freckles across her nose and a perpetual vulpine grin.

  Tattletale wears a black mask around her eyes, covering her freckles and leaves her long blond hair down, in contrast to her civilian self. Wears a lavender and black costume with thick vertical and horizontal bars of black, with the emblem of a stylized eye on her chest. Sports a belt with a holstered gun.

  Grue, Brian Laborn - Controls the West side of the city. His powers allow him to generate a darkness that consumes or dampens visual and most auditory information, as well as some specific signals. This serves to blind and nearly deafen those within, confuses the sense of touch, dampens the effects of radiation and weakens the powers of those within (to varying ends). Since his second trigger event, Grue has the ability to use a single, weaker, less informed version of a power anyone within his darkness possesses. This second trigger event proved traumatic enough that he’s stepped down from his position as group leader.

  Brian is a handsome, muscular African-American eighteen year old with a strong jaw and a boyish smile. He is a martial arts hobbyist (if not a dedicated follower of any particular style) more inclined to match his fashion to a particular situation than identifying with any one style.

  As Grue, he wears a fanged demon mask and a costume of thick, porous spider silk that lets the darkness smoulder around his body. The design of the costume allows the flow of his darkness to frame his mask without obscuring it, so that he may choose to let his opponents can catch glimpses of the face in the midst of the darkness.

  Bitch, Rachel Lindt (Also Hellhound) – Controls the fringes of Brockton Bay, and the yet-to-be-repaired areas. Bitch can empower dogs with vastly increased size (in the order of three thousand or more pounds), enhanced strength, durability and agility and an asymmetrical covering of bony plates and spikes, exposed muscle, and calcified flesh. Aggressive and antisocial, she favors the company of her dogs over people. With no secret identity, the line between Rachel and Bitch is blurry. In either case, she retains holdovers of her early adolescence as a homeless person.

  Sixteen, she likes heavy jackets with thick fur collars or hoods, heavy boots and bargain bin clothing. She’s taken to wearing a dog mask made by Skitter, emulating the appearance of one of her enhanced dogs, but has been known to wear dollar store plastic dog masks in the past.

  Regent, Alec (Also Jean-Paul Vasil) – Controls the southeast end of Brockton Bay, a shantytown area which suffered badly from the attack. Sixteen, Alec is fairly amoral, stemming from a childhood spent growing up under the shadow of the emotion controlling supervillain Heartbreaker. His powers allow him to provoke uncontrolled movements or spasms of particular body parts, but his true abilities come to bear when he can gain long-term access to a victim, decoding their nervous system and gaining complete and total control over their body.

  As Alec (civilian guise) he is described as more pretty than handsome, though undeniably attractive. Lanky, with European descent and black curly hair, he wears expensive if not particularly attention-grabbing clothing, preferring to buy new clothes rather than wash something and wear it a second time. Makes a habit of wearing white.As Regent, he wears renaissance-era clothing, with leggings and loose fitting shirts. His mask is in the style of a Venetian mask, with an attached silver coronet.

  Imp, Aisha Laborn - Controls the southernmost end of the city, up to the points the urban area ends and Rachel has her claim. Brian’s younger sister, triggered following Leviathan’s attack on the city, when thugs from one of the roaming gangs attacked her and her father. Her power renders her unnoticeable, to the point that people she attacks don’t remember she attacked them.

  As Aisha (civilian), she’s a fourteen year old girl with a decidedly trashy and attention-getting fashion sense.

  As Imp, she wears a form-fitting black bodysuit and a gray mask with slanted black lenses for the eyes and two short horns curving back over the top. Was using a taser for some time, but has taken to carrying a knife.

  Parian, Sabah – Controls the northern end of the city. Not an official member of the group, but tied to their alliance. Once a ‘rogue’, Parian saw many of her friends, family and classmates die when the Slaughterhouse Nine attacked the territory she was protecting. In the hopes of protecting and supporting others, and perhaps giving the Undersiders a more moral voice, she has joined their alliance and taken control of a territory of her own. Parian’s powers allow her fine manipulation of smaller and lighter objects, and can ‘fill’ larger vessels to render them effectively heavy, dense and heavy-hitting. She has used this to fashion cloth dolls she animates. Wears a frock as a costume, with a porcelain doll’s face for a mask, and a wig of golden curls.

  Others

  The Undersiders are supported by several underlings.

  Forrest - Skitter’s current second in command. Burly and menacing with a thick black beard, he wears thick framed glasses and tight shirts. Played a role in both stopping Mannequin and helping out in Skitter’s territory afterward.

  Sierra Kiley – Skitter’s ex-second in command. A college student with long red dreadlocks, Sierra joined Skitter and soon became her second in command, after Skitter rescued her brother Bryce Kiley from the Merchants (it was found that he’d joined the group). Left Skitter’s forces due to moral concerns.

  Charlotte – Skitter’s cook and nanny, manages mundane things and looks after the lair. Charlotte is a dark haired sixteen year old who was was rescued from the Merchants.

  Bryce Kiley – Tattletale’s underling. Serves as a scout and errand boy. Ex-Merchant and brother to Sie
rra, above. Red headed and lanky, he lost one hand before leaving the Merchants.

  Minor, Jaw, Senegal, Pritt, Dmitri, Brooks - Tattletale’s soldiers. Minor leads, Brooks is a medic.

  Barker - Bitch’s underling, has powers. Short of stature, Barker creates a smoky material when he makes vocal noise, and can alter this material into various forms, typically a concussive explosion with size relative to the amount of substance.

  Biter – Bitch’s underling, has powers. A brute with a bear-trap jaw plate as part of his mask and spiked gear, he can alter the size of individual body parts.

  WagTheDog – the online username of an enthusiastic and devoted fan of Bitch, who joined her group in interlude 19.y (Bonus interlude #2 of arc 19).

  Superhero Teams of Brockton Bay

  The Protectorate

  In exchange for government funding and legitimacy, the Protectorate has agreed to follow a special set of laws laid out for capes, to accept bureaucratic oversight and cooperate with local authorities. Works in conjunction with the PRT, the Parahuman Response Team, a police/emergency response team trained to deal with ‘capes’ and the fallout of their altercations. Brockton Bay’s team is one of many such teams spread across North America.

  Miss Militia – Current leader of Brockton Bay’s Protectorate. Accompanied by a semi-sentient energy that can transform into modern military armaments, including guns, grenades and melee weapons. A side benefit of her power is that she does not need to sleep. Is actually a Kurdish refugee who triggered at a young age when Turkish forces attacked her village and abducted the children to use as bait for landmines and traps. Dark haired and olive skinned, Miss Militia wears a scarf and sash patterned after the American flag, with stylized, fitted army fatigues.

  Assault - A kinetic energy manipulator, capable of controlling energies of movement, acceleration and motion relative to himself and things he touches. Was once Madcap, a jailbreak specialist, but was captured by Legend and Battery, and joined the Protectorate. Eventually married Battery.