[No Image Available; just envision a hard boiled existential detective]
Name: Tommy Oblivion
Origin: Greenverse - Nightside
Gender: Male
Classification: Existential Detective
Age: Unknown (possibly in his late 20s or early 30s)
Powers and Abilities: Quantum probability manipulation, reality warping, telepathy, healing, time manipulation, can achieve a form of acausality, teleportation, invisibility
Weaknesses: Using his gift at maximum capacity for too long can take a toll on his hold of reality (as in he becomes "less real"); making himself "existential" pretty much just makes him something like a spirit that can't do anything beyond wander different realities; has immense trouble focusing if fatally injured
Destructive Capacity: Street level+ (doesn't focus on raw power at all)
Range: At least several hundred meters and his ability operates across timelines and dimensions
Speed: Peak human
Durability: Peak human
Lifting Strength: Peak human
Striking Strength: Peak human
Stamina: Above average
Standard Equipment: Nothing notable
Intelligence: He's a detective, bitch; and knowledgeable of stuff like metaphysics
Notable Attacks/Techniques:
- First demonstrates a small use of his gift as a measure of subtle mindfuck.
1) They loomed threateningly over me, huge, hulking, marble forms, cold and implacable as the stone from which they were carved. They would kill without conscience, do any terrible thing they were ordered to, because there was nothing in them to care about the soft, fragile living things they hurt. Stone endures, but it has no soul. Tommy looked at me to see what I was going to do, and I looked right back at him. I had a few useful tricks up my sleeve, but I was interested to see what the famous existential detective could do. He smiled easily and approached the two statues.
“Do be reasonable and stand aside, chaps. We have business inside.”
“None shall pass,” said the statue on the left, its voice like grating rocks.
“Now that is interesting,” said Tommy. “How is it you’re able to talk, considering you almost certainly don’t have any vocal cords?”
The statue looked at him blankly. “What?”
“Well, I mean, I don’t see how you’re even able to move, old thing. Being solid stone and all. It’s not as if you have any musculature, or even joints. How can you even think to act, when you have no brain? How can you be living, when no part of you is living matter? You’re quite clearly stone, and nothing but stone, and therefore you cannot be alive, or think, or act.”
The statues had clearly never considered this before, and impressed by Tommy’s relentless logic, they stepped back up onto their pedestals and reverted to unmoving statues. I kicked the one on the left, just to be sure, but it didn’t budge. I grinned at the bewildered Eamonn.
“That’s Tommy’s gift—to ask the unanswerable question, to raise doubts on any matter and confuse any situation beyond retrieval. He could talk all four legs off a donkey, then persuade it to fly him home. Demons from Hell have been known to run screaming from his appalling logic. Which is kind of scary, when you think about it.”
- Maximum use of his gift allows for full blown probability manipulation.
2) “I deal in probabilities. In the nature of shifting reality. I persuade the world to see things my way. And since there is a small but very real chance that we could have got to Time Tower Square before the Shadow Men could find us … I believe that is what really happened.”
And in the blink of an eye, we were somewhere else. The dark street was gone, replaced by the quiet cul-de-sac that was Time Tower Square. Tommy let out his breath in a long, shuddering sigh.
“That’s it. We are here. All previous possibilities are now redundant, never happened.”
His gift shut down, like a dangerous animal reluctantly going to sleep. I looked carefully around me, but all the shadows in the Square were only shadows. A few people were strolling up and down, intent on their own business. They hadn’t noticed anything, because there had been nothing to notice. We’d always been there. I looked respectfully at Tommy Oblivion.
- Uses his gift to form an illusion.
3) The Doorman frowned as he thought about that. Thinking clearly wasn’t what he did best. He brightened up as an idea came to him.
“If you’re a Member,” he said slowly, “you know the secret handshake.”
Tommy raised an eyebrow. “There is no secret handshake, dear fellow. But there is a secret password, which I have written down on this piece of paper.”
He showed the Doorman his empty hand. The Doorman looked at it closely, moving his lips as though reading, then nodded reluctantly and stepped back to let us pass. He was frowning heavily, as though his head hurt. The oak door swung open before us, and I led the way into the lobby beyond. Once the door was safely shut behind us, I looked at Tommy.
“You made him see something that wasn’t there.”
“Of course,” said Tommy. “It’s my gift to be convincing. Besides, in some alternate time-line we probably are Members. Or at least, I am.”
- Stands toe to toe with John's gift causing the surrounding reality to be uncertain as a side effect.
4) He raised his gift, but I was already raising mine, and the whole bar shook as our powers manifested and clashed head-on. I used my gift to try and find his weaknesses, and he used his to try and reinforce a reality where I never reached the sixth century. My gift dealt with certainties, his with probabilities, and neither was really strong enough to overcome the other. We both put all our strength into this clash of wills, and reality itself became hazy and uncertain around us, until it seemed the whole bar might unravel, leaving us the only fixed and real things in the world.
- Manages to prevent John from pinpointing his secretary's position who's held up in a another dimension.
5) I fired up my gift, hoping that since I was closer to Cathy, it would at least be able to provide me with a direction. My Sight was limited, in this new dimension.
6) “I’m thinking about it,” I said. “Hello, Tommy. I should have known it was you, with your existential gift, hiding Cathy. Still sticking with the effete image, I see.”
- Once again uses his gift to manipulate probabilities as a form of teleportation.
7) Tommy Oblivion’s gift manifested subtly on the air around us, and everything became uncertain. Tommy was an existentialist, and his gift allowed him to express his uncertainty about the world in a real and very physical way. The more he thought about a thing, the more possibilities he could see, and he fixed on the reality he preferred and made it solid. By concentrating hard enough, Tommy was able to convince the world that not only were we not where it thought we were, but actually we were somewhere else entirely.
- Uses his gift as a form of invisibility to keep him and the rest of John's group hidden maddened rioters.
8) “Use your gift to hide us. Or at least hide our identities. Such a small use of your gift should slide past Lilith unnoticed.”
“Yes,” said Tommy, after a moment. “I think I could do that…”
He frowned, concentrating. It took him a while, to force his mind to deal with only one thing and ignore the madness and horror around him, but finally I could sense his gift firing up, as he imposed his existential will upon the world. Slowly and carefully, moment by moment, we became as uncertain as he thought we were, until the world couldn’t decide whether we really were there or not, and even if we were, it couldn’t make up its mind about who we were. I could feel Tommy’s gift all around us, like a fog of possibilities. Everywhere I looked, it was like seeing through a heat haze, as though we were out of synch with our surroundings. I took that as a good sign and made myself concentrate on the only thing that really mattered—getting to Cheyne Walk Station.
I took a deep breath and led the way out onto the main street, walking openly, taking my time, doing nothing to attract attention. The others came with me, sticking close but not crowding. No-one even looked at us. Crazed mobs rioted up and down the street, and swept right past us without even slowing. I led the way down the street, through chaos and murder and foulness of all kinds, and no-one touched us. Sometimes they’d step out of our way, without even realising they were doing it.
- In a last ditch effort to escape a mob he made himself "existential" (Just read the quote below).
9) “Hell, yes! There was a mob ... out of their minds, swarming all over me, trying to kill me. There was no way to escape, so ... I used my special gift and made myself existential. Neither one thing nor another, neither here nor there, living or dead. It saved me from the mob, but in that existential state I drifted out of reality, or turned sideways from it ... and became enduringly uncertain. In reality, but not of it.”
Notable OBD Victories:
Notable OBD Losses:
Other: