Canonization: Quinn Sullivan

Finally decided to stop wasting time and actually canonize Quinn Sullivan's final power list, so here it is:

Corpse Marionette- modified to include falsifications of life (dummies, puppets, etc) as well           as living people
Mediumship
Dark Speech
Familiar
Clairvoyance
Gas Creation
Void
Psychometry
Dark Matter Manipulation
Astral Projection


Obviously, her powers aren't meant to make her a force on the battlefield so much as they are meant to control the battlefield itself as well as its inhabitants.


As an added note, Quinn has actually experimented with several other powers during her research to help other people whose powers make their lives difficult or complicated. These powers include, but are not limited to:
Nullification
Chronokinesis
Dream Eater
Kinetic Manipulation
Umbrakinesis

considers switching out either clairvoyance or psychometry for power shaper
so that she could create complete human puppets, and use their powers, too

quinn was part of project caedo, which was meant for combat, and tends to make people psychologically unstable
it is very possible that this is what caused Quinn's aspects to start pushing against her psyche, Cyrus in particular

Okay, here we go:

I developed Quinn as a character for Tim's resurrection of the Post-UnHonorable War, which never really got anywhere.
I had a really in-depth story arc that Quinn was going to go through, and a really good explanation for all the weird stuff in her posts, none of which I had the chance to extrapolate or explain

Well, it's been long enough now that I don't mind putting it all out there- i know where her story goes, and how it ends, and I'm okay with it.
Plus, well, she is one of my favorite characters I have ever created, and I want the chance to show her off

That said, here goes
In the next couple of posts

Okay, first and foremost point:
Most people here remember Quinn's backstory from tim's rezzed PUW campaign- grew up pretty normal and shit until her mother died in a car crash with Caroline right next to her. Little Caroline was never the same

Here is what I don't think I mentioned:
At that moment, Caroline Sullivan really did die
At that moment, seeing her mother perish in front of her shattered her young mind into many, many pieces

The individual known as Quinn is what, for lack of a better term, remained of Caroline's personality. She is not, however, alone in her head. There are many other individuals there as well, manifestations of a creative and intelligent mind broken away form rhyme and reason.
while most of them are just bits and pieces, there are many others that did develop as personalities, usually manifestations of individual personality bits.

Okay, that is enough backstory. now i'll get to the actual notes:

Quinn’s Fragments

-The Rage- Quinn feels anger just like everyone else, but she sent that emotion trickling down into a deep pool, and there it stewed and seethed and steeped, and from that pool was born the Rage. Hatred incarnate, it seeks the destruction of everything around it, especially Quinn, if it could get its hands on her in any meaningful form. It neither knows nor cares that destroying her would cause its own downfall; after all, since when is pure anger thoughtful or mindful of the damage it wreaks?

-The Animal- The primal instincts, survival, hunger, fornication, marking and protecting territory; all of these things, in Quinn, are embodied by the Animal. Her mental image is of a great cat, a monstrous tiger or something prehistoric and far larger. Because of the violence that is first nature to it, Quinn keeps the Animal caged, so it has grown mangy and mad over the years, and much of its ire is directed at her, which is unfortunate, as she is very fond of cats. She would like to reconcile with it, but that is highly unlikely.

-The Deceiver- Quinn has become very familiar with this fragment in recent years. It is the part of her mind that takes delight in bending and twisting the truth and non-truth. It enjoys word games and riddles, especially when they have no answer. It is a swindler and a shark, and does whatever does good for it. Quinn and the Deceiver are on decent terms, if not the best, and sometimes when she is staring off into space she is actually deep in an internal verbal duel with the Deceiver

-The Deviant- The Deviant is the manifestation of all the ‘bad thoughts’ Quinn has had over the years (read: sexual thoughts). Some, in fact many, of Quinn’s fragments have far removed themselves from Quinn’s image, but the Deviant still looks much like her, and there is a reason for that: it wants to experiment with all sorts of depraved acts, but most of all, it wants to answer the question of whether screwing yourself is considered incest or masturbation. Even if it isn’t the most dangerous part of her mind (not by a long shot), it is one that she is particularly disturbed and scared of, so Quinn has devoted a lot of time and energy into studying sex and sexuality in attempts to understand and appease it.

-The Horror- It takes many forms, but is most commonly a cloaked and hooded figure with no visible face or defining features, and that is the point. The Horror is the total embodiment of every single thing Quinn has ever been afraid of, everything she has ever feared. The darkness, baby dolls, men with chainsaws, it is the sum of all her fears. It always has a seat if Quinn ever calls council, but she never talks to it, and when she encounters it she tends to either run away or close her eyes, curl into a ball and wait until it passes by. She has sometimes done this for hours.

-Cyrus- Cyrus is the only fragment that has an actual name, and that is of significance, but he is also known as the Sophisticate, the Psychopath, the Serial, and the Strangler. It is his domain to walk among ‘normal’ people, to blend in with them, and retain the capacity to, at any moment, wrap his hands around a throat and watch the life drain from his victim’s eyes. A representation of all that is terrible in the hearts of man, that which is often unseen and unspoken, this one speaks quite often, and is rather a gentleman (like Hannibal Lector was). He scares Quinn, and she has never seen him angry. She isn’t all that sure she really wants to.

-The Torched- Much like the Savior and the Hunger, the Torched was born in direct connotation to the Crash. However, while both of those fragments have admirable qualities, the Torched was born, screaming in delight, from the gasoline fire that consumed the family car with her mother’s corpse still inside. It is representative of Quinn’s fascination with fire, and the arsonist tendencies that she has fought long and hard to repress. Whenever the priest or preacher or reverend come over for dinner, and whenever her father does something more than mildly irksome, it is the Torched who whispers plots of vengeance and suffering in her mind’s ear, cackling with hideous glee.

-The Monster- There are numerous fragments in Quinn’s mind that seek bloodshed and violence, but the Monster is something special. It seeks to destroy not Quinn herself but the things that make and keep her human. Civilization, technology, literature, friendship; everything that keeps Quinn above the tidewaters of madness and her primal nature is a target for the Monster, and that is how it earned its title.

-The Builder- The Aedificator- Where the Architekt is a planner of things, the Builder is a maker of things. A manifestation of the human love for building and creation, it is also a demolitionist, tearing down the old and building anew atop its ruined bones. Stranger things have been seen, but the Builder is not all that fond of Quinn; it built much of the world inside her head, and she keeps taking it apart and remolding, repurposing all its work. It is a recurring daydream of the Builder’s to kill Quinn and use her body for mortar, and it has told her as much. Despite all of that, it is the sum of all of Quinn’s creations and designs, and many of her fantasylands are places built by its hand, and she tries to treat with them as much respect as she can.

-The Architekt- “I am the architect of my own destruction” is the phrase behind the Architekt. It is a brilliant planner, landscaper, writer, a change-maker, but it is also an image of Quinn’s self-destructive tendencies, including the suicidal thoughts she dealt with in those first few years after the Crash. Ironically, it also works out plans to help Quinn plan her escape, because it wants her death to be of its own, beautiful design, and no one else’s.

The Savior- When the Crash occurred, Quinn came close enough to death that saw it in front of her face. She expected to die, but was suddenly saved by an EMT. The image of that young woman, with her kind eyes and face set in a mask of determination, became the fragment known as the Savior. Dedicated to getting the job done and helping others, it and Quinn get along swimmingly, especially because until she can help herself, Quinn is powerless to help others.

-The Victorian/the Countess- the comitissa- The Victorian is the fragment that originally embodied Quinn’s transition into Gothic culture, and helped steer her in the right direction when she had no other role models to turn to. Even now, when Quinn’s interests have gone astray from her original designs, many qualities she took from the Victorian- manners, etiquette, courtesy, love of literature and fine art- are still major pieces of Quinn’s own personality.

-The Hunger- In the days after the Crash, Quinn became very familiar with the truck driver that accidentally killed her mother. A rather rough and rotund fellow, he was a softie at heart, and was in as deep a state of grief as she was in the aftermath of the disaster. His demeanor (begging for forgiveness, sadness, apologetic, ashamed) became the skeleton for the fragment known as the Hunger. It seeks her attention, attempts to lavish feelings upon her, and get her to enjoy the material things in life, like sleeping and eating until she is unable to do so anymore. When Quinn is in a state of depression, the Hunger tries to make her feel better, but its constant toadying tends to fray her nerves, despite its good intentions, and its desire to consume and sample every bit of life’s platter makes her sick at times.

-The Angel- Quinn has often thought of the Angel in conjunction with Azrael, the Angel of death, and so has thought of this fragment as a purifying destroyer. Her friendship with Zeke in recent years has caused a rather significant change to this piece, as it has taken on some of her good friend’s more merciful qualities. It is still a calculating and merciless fighter however, and that is more than mildly offsetting. Quinn often pictures the Angel as an androgynous figure with a massive pair of black-feathered wings, often in an ornate suit of armor. Some days the Angel takes on more masculine qualities, becoming larger and more muscular, and some days taking on more feminine traits, growing larger breasts and hips and taking on a softer voice, but there is never truly enough difference to say one or the other.

-The Ring Bearer- the Page- the one who stands on ceremony, the Ring Bearer is a demonic figure. Quinn’s best guess is that it was born from the nightmares she got from her aunt’s wedding, specifically from an older cousin who admonished her for every misstep and raged at every mistake she caused (she was 6, and wasn’t even a part of the wedding). A creature of grotesque formation, the Ring Bearer is obsessed with time and punctuality, ritual and manners. Everything must be in its proper place, as it constantly reminds Quinn. Still, it is capable of being a decent fellow (when it wants to be), and in its fine suit it often comes across as an old butler.

-The Watcher- a silent figure, the Watcher does exactly what its name implies: it watches. Everything. Its form is reminiscent of a Lovecraftian horror, a mass of watching eyes in the darkness, and it or statues of it are present everywhere in Quinn’s mind. Still, despite its disturbing appearance, Quinn fears nothing of it; indeed, when she wants to get away from the chattering and howling elsewhere in her thoughts, it is the Watcher she seeks out, for there she can find peace and silence, and it will watch over her. Still, it does not speak, and its comfort is a cold one.

-The Agony- Quinn is rather familiar with pain, both physical and emotional. That intimacy gave birth to the fragment known as the Agony. Strong, statuesque, and outfitted like the classic dominatrix, one might expect this fragment to be a close cohort of the Deviant, and it is, but not for anything sexual. The Agony wants to feel the raw edge of the razor, feel splinters of wood dig in under the fingernails, hear the wet rending of flesh under its hands. Whether it inflicts pain to itself, to another, and especially to Quinn, is irrelevant; it exists for that rush of euphoria. It grew a lot when Quinn started her menstrual cycle, and a constant companion, wanted or not, during “that time of the month”

-The Bewulf- the bear- All creatures have protective instincts, whether they be for young, food, territory, or fellows. The Bewulf is Quinn’s representation of those protective instincts (just the protective ones, as opposed to the Animal, which is most all primal instincts). This might have been a good thing, if it didn’t feel it had to protect everything and everyone else from her. That’s right, the Bewulf sees Quinn as a threat to everything else, and seeks to end her in order to protect the world from her madness.

-The Nightingale- most people have iPods or mp3 players or even CD’s to store their music collections; Quinn has the Nightingale. Often pictured as a classic lounge singer, the Nightingale has an impossible range, from gravelly male bass to high, feminine operatic falsetto, and contains the vast wealth of music Quinn has listened to over the years. However, it enjoys taunting her with little bits of her favorites, and then playing something she hates on a loop, until Quinn forcibly changes the song. More passive-aggressive than outright violent, but needless to say the two don’t really get along.

-The Princess- Every little girl wants to be a princess, and Quinn was no exception. After the Crash, all her innocent dreams and high ideals went into the formation of the Princess. Like the Victorian, the Princess has been a constant companion and those rare moments of care-free fun Quinn has enjoyed in the intervening time have likely been aided by it. Unlike the Victorian, the Princess has changed a lot in recent years, a reflection of Quinn’s own transmuting values. The Princess has always been pictured much like Rapunzel, but has become a raven-haired member of punk royalty. She is a great mix to the party, but her enthusiasm and high energy wears Quinn out rather quickly.

-The Advocate- The Advocate was originally based on the lawyer that prosecuted against the truck driver in the days after the Crash. A stunningly calculating and relentless individual, he used his wits and legal might to destroy whatever remained of the poor fellow’s life, and Quinn could only watch in horror at the proceedings. The Advocate shares many of the same qualities: it is intelligence without purpose, zealous without emotion or direction, an abomination before nature with its cold, mechanical mind, and had Quinn not known better, she might have believed it to be the Devil himself. She does know better though, and it tends to keep to itself, buried in books and endless paperwork, and she is quite happy to leave it to its studies, for that allows her to do the same.


Quinn doesn’t think about it much, but if she were to try and organize her fragments, it would look something like this:
• The Destroyers- for one reason or another, these fragments want to cause direct harm to Quinn, and will kill her if possible. These include-
o The Rage, The Animal, The Monster, The Bewulf, The Builder, The Architekt
• The Council- out of all the fragments that have emerged from her fragmented mind, these are the ones Quinn feels she can at least halfway trust-
o The Deceiver, Cyrus, The Savior, The Victorian, The Princess, The Hunger
• The Mob- the wide variety of fragments that are either subtly or completely against Quinn, or else just want something from her, but not likely to do anything truly violent, unlike the Destroyers-
o The Advocate, The Nightingale, The Agony, The Ring Bearer, The Torched, The Deviant, The Angel

The Watcher simply watches everything, it takes no sides, not really

The Horror is not associated with anyone or anything. It exists, and that is enough to make even the Rage tremble at the mention of its name, but no one fears it quite as much as Quinn.


Obviously, the fragments are just bits and pieces of a less than perfect whole- Quinn is the one who holds everything together. Nor are they alone- Quinn’s imagination, combined with her books and movies, have created a wide array of characters to fill the world between her ears. They are simply larger figures in her headspace.

Final notes: The Rage, the Animal, the Deceiver, the Deviant, and the Horror were the first concept fragments I imagined with this character, and I still think of them as the ‘primaries’. If a fragment is going to make an appearance, chances are it will be one of these first, and most anything else a second. Just a roleplaying note for you as DM, Quinn can put out a call to any fragment, and that one may respond, another may respond, several may respond, or none may answer.
Finally, unless Quinn has actively locked up or avoided a particular fragment, it is completely possible for the fragments to seek her out, instead of the other way around

Okay, now let's talk headspace for Quinn:

Quinn can enter her world from many places, her most common entrance usually involves her falling into a deep pool of blood. She can feel the cold warmth, the slick stickiness upon her skin, and the scent of copper and iron fills her nose. Still, when she pulls herself up and crawls out, she is completely dry. She looks out among the vast marsh, countless such pools like the ones she has just climbed out of, yet they are all somehow a similar distance from the central lake, for there dwells the Rage, which will consume her if it can.

So, she finds a single spider strand between two straggling trees and breaks it, and the two bone-shelled arachnids grudgingly pull they halves apart, creating a hole through which Quinn walks through.

From there, she could appear anywhere. She could appear under the Red Light beneath the ground, in the nightclub and lounge, and the maze of disc jockey paraphernalia that the Nightingale holds sway over. If the current music is not to her liking, she may very well make her way down there.

She might appear far from her center, in the Outlands, those massive jungles where the Animal used to roam. After she imprisoned it in the warrens, it is filled with all manner of strange beasts, from mechanical squirrels and inside-our rabbits to mangy dragons. She might in fact enjoy a walk among the trees, either in the catwalk of branches, or astride a creek of ink, occasionally stopping to draw patterns on the rocks.

She might appear far above, in the Angel’s aviary in the sky. Gleaming silver floors and stained-glass mosaics stand as much a pleasant backdrop to the beautiful purple and green skies as the skeletons impaled on barbed steel poles do not. A circular armory with lovingly-tended, surgery-quality implements houses a ladder to an open-air observatory, and there the Angel keeps small treats of lost ideas and macabre fantasies on plates of porcelain and hammered gold.

She might even appear even farther above, dancing upon strings and strands in empty space as the main mass of the Watcher drifts, barely visible, in the black void behind her.

This afternoon she walks out of the forest into the courtyard of the manor. A Victorian estate that could put Biltmore to shame, this was where the Countess held court. Here were the libraries and studies and closets that Quinn spent most of her time. The long, winding gardens and arched dining halls looked out over stables of six-legged horses and a hexagramic chess board that utilized full-sized mobile statues.

Down a set of stairs, Quinn can kick a bottom stair and walk into the endless corridors of the Advocate, a gigantic warehouse with full-sized towers packed with books and scrolls and overburdened shelves of notes, as well as ‘real’ replicas of everything from cars and motorcycles to dinosaur skeletons, suits of armor, and old paintings. There are doors that lead to more books, doors that lead to walls, and somewhere in the mess is a door to the drawing room of the Architekt, hung with maps and charts of all shapes and sizes. There are many artists tables covered with beautiful, hand-drawn, half-complete projects, and a long conference table littered with reams of paper and many half-burned candles. A wrought-iron chandelier and snaking chrome lights add additional illumination.

Quinn pulls on a dark, jagged rock sticking out of the wall, and the floor beneath her shatters, spilling her into a void in the solid ground. She floats down, as if on a parachute, surrounded by nonsensical patterns of glass. Her boots tapped the stone floor as it materializes around her, and the void fades like fog, revealing a great volcanic vent converted into a forge. Off in the distance she can hear the Builder perfecting a new world, and could see it begin to rise into the sky. Leaving him to his work, she opens a submarine hatch leaning against the wall, and walks into the conference room.

A gigantic table surrounded by subjective selections of chairs. The hooded figure of the Horror incorporates from the corner of the room. Quinn makes her usual decision and sprints out of the room, and upon exiting finds herself atop an Aztec temple. The door disappears behind her, and below her are catacombs filled with the rooms of the Agony. Across the deep dodgeball pit stands the pulsing pillar of the Deviant. Hordes of humanoid figures wander around aimlessly, shuffling to and from the tower, no thoughts of their own drawn from her to run them.

Off in the distance, yet only a skip away, are the snow-capped mountains encircling the high spires of the Princess’ castle. Once a place of endless order, her compatriot in conundrums and cacophony has booted out the Ring-Bearer and draped the whole place with chains, posters, and banners. A place where the party never stops, that.

The new world of the Builder’s rises to join the floating towers and serpents in the sky as the statue of the Watcher keeps her in sight, walking down a new set of stairs, the world around her distorting to static, fading as the labyrinth appeared before her, stretching out beyond the horizon, and here she let her thoughts wander, playing out before her. Images appear as ghosts and illusions, fading as soon as they appear. She is used to this, and the black and white world allows her some measure of calm.

When she finally looks up from her reverie, the plain has turned dark, the ground to glass.
The floor ripples, her familiar coalesces at her feet, and her power is once again at her fingertips.


Addition:
This was an addition I made for Best, for the sake of trying to make Quinn's internal world a tad bit more understandable:

The Victorian Estate is the most ‘central’ point around which everything revolves. The other one would be the Disney-style grand castle that the Princess inhabits, which is in the middle of a heavily-wooded mountain range. Somewhere down the range is the Aztec-style temple housing the chambers of the Agony and the Tower of the Deviant.

These are on the most prominent and well-traveled sections of her mind, and are in and of themselves endless, yet still finite, planes. They are interconnected with dozens of others, some bare outcroppings of rock and statuary (some of which being relics of the Watcher), and others are fully-fledged cities or even worlds.

These would include the museum-like warehouse inhabited by the Advocate, which would be a cross between every college library ever built and Warehouse 13. The studio of the Architekt, which is built off this larger piece but is still ‘elsewhere’, is much smaller, but could still encompass enough hallways and sectionals that it would seem as big.

A lot more is contained ‘underground’, the most prominent being the Red Light, the name Quinn gave to the realm inhabited by the Nightingale. This is a rat’s maze of hallways lined with shelves upon shelves of CDs and vinyls, branching off at irregular intervals into crammed radio DJ sound rooms. Ladders, hallways, or even the hallways themselves will take her onto the floor, sprawling gentleman’s nightclubs and jazz lounges built and crammed one next to another, in such a way that it would seem impossible at times for a stage to be where it is, but it all somehow works.

The realm of the Builder is one that kind of doesn’t make sense, because it wanders with the fragment wherever new worlds are being built. An impossibly high cathedral, this immense space is filled with everything from hardware stores-worth of building material, to tools, to actual buildings, statues, and machines, most of which are in various states of repair.

Drifting in the skies between worlds are a variety of towers and small castles, as well as a great deal of debris and wildlife, but nothing compares to the Aviary, a small, tower-like palace housing the Angel. It glitters in the odd light, and clatters from the bones hung about it. Keep in mind that none of this should be floating in empty air, it just is.

Back down in the underground are also the Warrens, systems of tunnels, maintenance, sewer, new, old, tunnels, that seem to go everywhere, but still go nowhere. It is down here that Quinn tosses a lot of things, random bits of trivia and random ideas, but it is also where she hides things from herself and from the rest of her mind. The Animal is one of these, trapped in a circle of iron and salt in a deep, dusty tunnel in the darkness. The circle is massive, stretched out over many tunnels, but it is still a cage…

Finally, in the void between all of these separate planes and spaces there is void, empty blackness. However, while one might float, they can also swim, will, or walk themselves from one world to the next, or do as Quinn does and dance on the hair-thin strands and strings that connect them. And in this void there is the entity of the Watcher, who uses this space to keep eyes on all that happens.

Now, these are the most prime of the planes, and the Builder has gone to great lengths to make ways between them: ladders, stairs, poles, doors, even rock-levers that Quinn can pull to shatter the world beneath her and ‘jump sideways’ between worlds. However, these are not the only worlds. There are many more- like the marshes of blood of the Rage, the Labyrinthian Wasteland, her Looking Glass, the forests of the Outlands, the Great Walls of Flesh, or anything else Quinn can imagine.

Okay, now for the actual Story Arc I had planned for Quinn:

How shall I describe the mind of Quinn Sullivan? I say that it is tipping, tottering, balancing barefoot abreast a balance beam of broken bottles. I do say that it is ripe for take-over.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Quinn has survived as long as she has by placating her fragments, and by keeping them as far from the operations side of things as possible. With the advent and rise of these new powers, her control is going to loosen.

Using her keen intellect, she will eventually devise the fashion of creating the Alpha serum, and with no one else to test it on, she will inject herself with it. A dangerous undertaking to be certain, and she is vaguely aware of the risks, but the payoff is by far worth it. And so she does it again, and again, pumping herself with as much power as her body is capable of ingesting, pushing her fragile form to the fullest of its power elasticity.

She will become addicted to that power.

Not in the fashion that Austeria is beginning to display- no, no, never that. That would be too obvious, and her rational mind would force her to seek help. No, Quinn’s addiction sneaks up on her slowly, teasingly, not displaying its intentions until she has weighed herself down too much, then pushing her off the deep end.

Even so, it cannot do so alone.

Quinn is betrayed from within her own mind, her own sanctuary, the only way such a bastion could ever be taken. She has no shortage of enemies, but she is betrayed by none other than Cyrus, whom she trusted.

The Strangler, you see, has long longed to explore and take the world as his own, to live out his fantasies, use Quinn’s temple for his own purposes. He sees her friends, her comrades, and wishes for nothing so much as the chance to make them suffer, to quiver in agony, and make them beg for death. Quinn would never allow this, Cyrus knows, so he has bided his time, waiting for a chance to wrest control from her. With these new powers, he thought the time was right.

He went to the darker corners, to the Deceiver, to the Architekt, to the Be-wulf, and to the Builder, and made a plan. Returning to her sanctum, under the continued guise of a confidante, he urged her to press forward, challenging her to do more with this knowledge she now possessed.

The plan will work perfectly. Quinn will spend her waking moments stretching her brain to solve the mystery, and then to perfecting the use of her powers. So engrossed will she be that her folly will not be realized until the last possible moment, and it will be too late. The Animal will chase her, throughout her mind, somehow always, impossibly at her heels, and in her running, she will fall, over a ledge and down into a hole that shouldn’t be there.

She will try to hold on, desperately, for it is not just she who is in danger now, but her very sanity as well. She will grasp the ledge and try, so hard, to pull herself up. And standing there, looking down at her, will be Cyrus. She will beg him for help, beg as she has never done in life, and he will smile and reply flatly, “Not today”, and will break her fingers, and kick her into the pit.

In the pit, Quinn will be trapped, boneless and helpless, lying in a pool of her own thoughts, incapable of any rational thought, but still able to watch Cyrus destroy her life, injure, incapacitate, and torture her friends. She begins to shake, quiver, as for all her intellect and supposed discipline, this is her fate.

Finally, she hears padding behind her. The Be-Wulf stands over her. She averts her eyes, and wills her demise to be quick. Instead, the great ursine picks her up in its maw and carries her away.
It meets up with the Animal, and they nurse her back to a sickly, but healthier state.

Then, the Horror arrives, and draws back its hood.

It explains to her that she and her fragments are still one and the same, born from the cataclysm of the Crash. They have taken on different spheres of influence, but it was still her responsibility to take part in and of them, and it is only because she has shirked and hidden and cowered from her own truth that this situation has arisen.

But she can still fix it.

To this end, she gathers what little strength she has, and approaches the pool of the Rage. It thunders forward as it always does, but this time, she waits calmly for it. It stops, confused, and thus by tranquility she gained her strongest ally. She calls together the rest of her fragments, including those who had originally allied with Cyrus, because in his bloodthirsty debaucle he has neglected the rest of them, or otherwise made life unbearable for them. With her allies thus gathered, Quinn storms the castle, freeing her Council and taking the fight to Cyrus himself, just as he approached Denver. The battle was fierce, and much blood will she lose, but she will finally absorb Cyrus back into herself, bringing at least a temporary peace to her mind.

She will release her friends from their bonds, and sitting them down will explain to them what happened, who and what she is, and the fullness of the events. She will hope for forgiveness, but will not expect it, and will leave her life in their hands to decide, to take or return,

But that is not a part of the story that can yet be predicted…


Basically, for those who got lost in my poor attempt to be dramatic, Quinn got shoved off her administrative pedestal, and one of her more unpleasant Fragements took over and, using her powers and intellect, captured the rest of the party and began subjecting them to all sorts of physical and psychological torture.
Quinn eventually took everything back over, kicked that Fragment's ass, and such.
Released everyone, and sat them all down to explain pretty much Everything listed above

And then
with the information given to them
Quinn basically put her life in the hands of the party, and it would have been up to everyone involved as to whether or not Quinn died right then and there or if she would be allowed to continue working with them

Aaand, yeah

Debating whether or not I should boot up the 50+ pictures I had gathered for all this shit, but yeah
This is Quinn
In all her glory and tragedy

Quinn's epithet is currently a toss-up between:

Effigy- the surprising 11th hour submission
the Hunted- a reference to her mental state rather than something she actually does
The Puppet Master- the generic every-use name I have been using up to this point

Another possible epithet:
The Silent Stage

which references the scene of any battle Quinn decides to take part in. Once she has gone into her meditative state, she takes control of all enemy combatants, powers and all. In pretty much any case with low-to-mid-level powers, the battle just stops as Quinn just has them wordlessly kill themselves with their own weapons and abilities, or else just snuffs them out with non-breathable gases

More commonly after the states of the Post-UnHonorable War is her tendency to use this ability in a clinical setting where she doesn't have enough assistants who know what they are doing, so she just takes command of any willing bystanders and, using her own knowledge and skills, gets the job done. All of this is done in complete silence, as Quinn doesn't need to talk to herself to take care of almost any surgical procedure.

Eh, it's okay, but still a toss-up

Can't believe I actually forgot to mention this (probably because I was just covering what was in the storyline of the RP, but in any case)

after the events of the Post-UnHonorable War, Quinn continued her education, went to med school, did a bunch of graduate research, and eventually became a doctor, working with Zeke under the Element of Fire (totally blanked on his name right now). I see her doing a lot of surgeries, but considering her degree of intelligence performing the duties of pretty much every practitioner was well within reason

Her underground project, which she got some help from Mike with (if I am remembering right), entailed her working in underground hospitals to try and reverse the effects of detrimental powers. This is not to say she was trying to remove powers indiscriminately, just powers that were undesired or were harmful to the user and those around him (like the kid whose sweat turned to chlorine gas, or pretty much anyone who got nullification and didn't like it). When i mentioned she injected powers into herself, this is what I meant, because she did not run tests on anyone that she was not willing to run on herself.
So basically, it was like the Pits, except with willing volunteers, and with the inverse goal

Finally, as a sad capstone to this list, I decided that Quinn would not live past the events of Book 7

If you don't want spoilers, don't open this:

I'll get a little more detail on this later, but here goes:

I had the sudden urge last night to come up with an unrequited love story involving Quinn
and since i had already established part of the scenario already (for other reasons), it actually wasn't that hard
Also, note: Quinn can enjoy sex, and is perfectly okay with the act for the sake of the act, but she is very heavily aromantic

Sooo, here goes:

This happened a number of years after the events of the PUHW, and Quinn was either a grad student or a fully-fledged doctor who also taught a university to give herself grant money to work with
She was walking to class early one morning when she came across two students- one a girl, a student she might have been teaching, and the other an aggressive stalker. Stalker has gotten to the point he is physical, and the girl is very obviously frightened. Quinn pulls her revolver and scares the guy off
Note: yes, it is canon that Quinn carries a gun. It didn't take her long to figure out her powers only worked while she was in a trance, so she picked up a gun so she could defend herself normally. If the game had lasted that long, she would have picked one up then

Quinn takes the girl by the arm and guides her to her office so she can calm down. Girl stays there most of the early morning while Quinn communicates with campus security. When it is time for the girl to go to class, Quinn escorts her there personally, and allows her to shadow in her own class until the police finally pick the guy up later that day

Girl (okay, that is getting really annoying... Deidre, her name is Deidre
Deidre is incredibly grateful, and essentially kick-starts her life, changes her major and springs into Quinn's classes, trying to spend as much time around her as possible
Quinn realizes that Deidre is obsessed mostly due to hero worship, and she slowly made the the girl realize this

over time, Deidre did come to grips with the savior aspect, but because of the way in which Quinn treated her- with utmost care and respect as a person- she came to respect Quinn even more, and became determined to enter the field so she could stay in Quinn's presence.

fast-forward just a little bit, to where Deidre is either a grad student in her own right or is actually interning with Quinn
Deidre gets drunk one night, stumbles her way to Quinn's office, and confesses that, after all this time, she is officially in love with Quinn, and attempts to make sexual advances
whether or not they actually have sex is still up in the air; either way, it doesn't matter too terribly much

the next day, Deidre wakes up and remembers what happened, and feels downright terrible, absolutely guilty, for what she remembers or thinks she remembers doing to Quinn. She rushes in and desperately apologizes for her actions the previous night
Quinn...sits her down
gives her a cup of coffee
and politely tells her to stop pining after her

Deidre thinks she fucked up majorly and begins to panic, but Quinn holds up a hand to stop her

It is then that Quinn calmly explains that while she can and sometimes does enjoy sex, it means relatively little to her. Moreover, in terms of romance, she not only has little time for it, but she feels absolutely zero complusion or romantic feelings towards anyone. For that reason, Quinn is trying to gently let her down now so that she does not have her heart broken worse later on down the road, either from Quinn eventually putting her down when Deidre's feelings have gotten more intense or from Deidre finally realizing after years of silence and rebuffs that Quinn doesn't romantically love her back


This... honestly stuns Deidre, because she has been in and out of bad relationship, romantic and otherwise, with people for years, and yet this person, who has been nothing but kind and courteous to her, has essentially saved her once again, and expects nothing in return but for Deidre to live her own life

...and so, life goes on. Deidre actually doesn't change majors or pursuits; she continues to strive towards and eventually does end up working in the Alphas medical field, working under Quinn
because even though she realizes that she will never be with Quinn, she still can't deny that she both respects her and still has feelings for her, and though she may never be involved with Quinn romantically, she still wants to be near her, to be in her calming presence for the rest of her life

Spoiler: