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==History== |
==History== |
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===Background=== |
===Background=== |
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| − | After triggering, Labyrinth was put into a [[Parahuman Asylum]] on the east coast where she met [[Burnscar]] |
+ | After triggering, Labyrinth was put into a [[Parahuman Asylum]] on the east coast where she met Mimi, later known as [[Burnscar]]. They formed something of a one sided attachment with Elle being used by asylum attendants to control Mimi.<ref name="11.c">[[Interlude 11c (Anniversary Bonus)]]</ref> Elle would say that she didn't enjoy her time at the asylum.<ref name="5.10 e1">Labyrinth walked like she was in a daze, with Newter leading her along by the hand like she was a child. It was interesting, not just to see that kind of interaction between them, but noting that her gloves looked like cloth, and that he was probably risking drugging her… unless she was immune. A consequence of her ability? He caught me looking, smiled and shrugged.<br><br>“Autistic?” I guessed.<br><br>He shook his head, “No, though we thought that, at first. Seems she was a normal kid until her powers showed up. Since then, she’s been off in her own little world, more or less. A little worse right now, I think, after seeing me hurt.”<br><br>“That happens?” I asked, gesturing towards my head, unable to come up with an inoffensive and simple way of phrasing it.<br><br>He shrugged, “Sometimes getting powers fucks up your body,” he gestured to himself using his tail, which was still holding the paper bags, “Sometimes it fucks up your head. Bad luck, but you deal with the cards you’re dealt.”<br><br>“Oh,” I replied. I wasn’t sure how to respond. A cold, quiet horror crept up on me. My powers had something to do with my brain. I could remember how crazy I’d felt right after my powers showed up, that torrent of nightmare images, signals and details from my bugs. I still had bad dreams about it. How close had I come to being like that permanently?<br><br>He grinned, “It’s cool. She’s really fond of us, and we’re attached to her, too. She has her lucid moments, when she’s let us know she’s cool with the status quo. Sure, she has bad days when she’s dead to the world, but all of our powers have drawbacks, yeah?” - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/hive-5-10/ Excerpt] from [[Hive 5.10]]</ref><ref name="R1">It was Labyrinth's warped viewpoint of it, her negative mental state coloring her perceptions - she hated it there and was miserable, so her frustration and anger colored her selection of what she was pulling into reality. What she was producing in Faultline's club office was the same sort of nightmare alt!asylum stuff she produced in the proper asylum. Not the actual asylum itself.<br>Burnscar recognized the changes as very much the same as they had been back then, and realized just how unhappy Labyrinth was.<br>What sort of real-world asylum would have discarded needles, barbed wire and broken glass everywhere? Silly. - [https://redd.it/3uaahd Comments by wildbow on Reddit]</ref> Elle was inadvertently broken out of the asylum by Faultline's crew, who were originally there to find information on the [[Dragonslayers]].<ref name="5.x e2">After Faultline had enlisted him and Newter, a job had taken them into a high security asylum. They had been there to question someone about the Dragonslayers, a villain group that used tinker technology stolen from the most powerful and highest profile tinker in the world for petty theft and mercenary work. Their invasion of the asylum had not gone as well as it might have, and had led to a high-tech lockdown of the facility. Not only did it extend their mission by several hours, but it had led to issues with one of the residents, a parahuman that apparently had to be moved regularly, lest her influence over her surroundings spread beyond the confines of her cell, making her a serious problem for the staff, other residents and unwitting bystanders.<br><br>In the end, after dealing with the dispatched squad from the Boston Protectorate and getting the information they needed about the Dragonslayers, they had recruited the girl. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/hive-5-1/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 5]]</ref> |
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| − | Elle was eventually rescued from the asylum by Faultline's crew, who were originally there to find information on the [[Dragonslayers]].<ref name="5.x e2">After Faultline had enlisted him and Newter, a job had taken them into a high security asylum. They had been there to question someone about the Dragonslayers, a villain group that used tinker technology stolen from the most powerful and highest profile tinker in the world for petty theft and mercenary work. Their invasion of the asylum had not gone as well as it might have, and had led to a high-tech lockdown of the facility. Not only did it extend their mission by several hours, but it had led to issues with one of the residents, a parahuman that apparently had to be moved regularly, lest her influence over her surroundings spread beyond the confines of her cell, making her a serious problem for the staff, other residents and unwitting bystanders.<br><br>In the end, after dealing with the dispatched squad from the Boston Protectorate and getting the information they needed about the Dragonslayers, they had recruited the girl. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/hive-5-1/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 5]]</ref> |
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=== Story Start === |
=== Story Start === |
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Revision as of 03:30, 3 November 2017
Elle, known publicly as Labyrinth, is a member of Faultline's Crew.
Personality
Like others with powers manifesting at an early age, Elle's ability obfuscates her personality. Though many may initially label her as a low functioning autistic, she is far more astute and cognizant than she first appears.[2][3]
Elle needs to actively explore the worlds she connects to and creates, in order to be able to draw objects and structures into her current reality, therefore she does not come across as lucid to others. This ties in heavily to her emotional state, playing a factor in how much time she decides to spend looking through her world. The worlds she finds and creates vary based on her mental state.[4]
Appearance
Labyrinth is a young girl who wears a simple dark green robe with a maze drawn on it and a mask.[5][6] Out of costume, she has platinum-white blonde hair.[7]
Abilities and Powers
Labyrinth is an incredibly powerful Shaker, the ability to alter her surroundings at will gains her a Protectorate rating of 12.[1]
However, her power comes with several limitations. While moving beyond the boundaries of her power, her range decreases to only a few feet around her; she must remain still for it to extend to its full reach.[3] Further, her power's scope changes in response to her lucidity. The less lucid she becomes, the faster she is able to affect the world around her. This limits her ability to communicate with her teammates and reduces their overall effectiveness.[8][9] She was not always in full control of her power.[9][10][11]
She describes them as pocket worlds, realities that could be influenced by her mental state to take differing forms. She was not restricted by any concrete number but the effort involved in creating a new world was prohibitive next to the cost of a building on what was already created. Some of her world reflected her self loathing while others were for successes.[4]
When her power is operating well she could cover a entire wall with her effect.[12] Further,[13] she can "anchor" people[14] to be excluded from the worlds she brings in, letting them see and pass through any obstacle rendering them oblivious to her power.[9][15]
Items she created with her power were sometimes more fragile, as a result of partly existing in two worlds at the same time.[10]
As a required secondary power, Labyrinth has the ability to sense and manipulate the interaction of various dimensions.[16][17][18]
History
Background
After triggering, Labyrinth was put into a Parahuman Asylum on the east coast where she met Mimi, later known as Burnscar. They formed something of a one sided attachment with Elle being used by asylum attendants to control Mimi.[9] Elle would say that she didn't enjoy her time at the asylum.[2][19] Elle was inadvertently broken out of the asylum by Faultline's crew, who were originally there to find information on the Dragonslayers.[20]
Story Start
She deploys against the ABB drug den where she shows her capabilities, helping to disable Oni Lee. She shows concern when she learns that Newter has been injured.
She later retreated into the sewers with Newter after the successful raid, Newter holding her share of the money.
Post-Leviathan
She participates in the assault on the Merchants.[21] Her power was functioning at or near its peak, She turned what had been a mall, devastated by Leviathans attack, into a structure worthy of her cape namesake.[22] She was able to anchor Gregor against her abilities for additional effectivness.[15][23][24]
She would later be paid a visit from an unwelcome friend. But her friend would leave without too much trouble after Labyrinth flooded the street with her power.[9]
Has part of the teams investigation into caludronn. that took them to the home of a former associate of that group. Works in conjunction with Faultline to breach the Madison Quarantine.[25]
She was there when a women in a formal suit was attacked her team. she had a knife stabbed through her hand.
Post-Echidna
She created quite a few portals and statues. Some in many parts of the world.
Gold Morning
Was instrumental, in more ways then one, in the final hours of the Gold Morning. [26]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Sentinel 9.1
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Labyrinth walked like she was in a daze, with Newter leading her along by the hand like she was a child. It was interesting, not just to see that kind of interaction between them, but noting that her gloves looked like cloth, and that he was probably risking drugging her… unless she was immune. A consequence of her ability? He caught me looking, smiled and shrugged.
“Autistic?” I guessed.
He shook his head, “No, though we thought that, at first. Seems she was a normal kid until her powers showed up. Since then, she’s been off in her own little world, more or less. A little worse right now, I think, after seeing me hurt.”
“That happens?” I asked, gesturing towards my head, unable to come up with an inoffensive and simple way of phrasing it.
He shrugged, “Sometimes getting powers fucks up your body,” he gestured to himself using his tail, which was still holding the paper bags, “Sometimes it fucks up your head. Bad luck, but you deal with the cards you’re dealt.”
“Oh,” I replied. I wasn’t sure how to respond. A cold, quiet horror crept up on me. My powers had something to do with my brain. I could remember how crazy I’d felt right after my powers showed up, that torrent of nightmare images, signals and details from my bugs. I still had bad dreams about it. How close had I come to being like that permanently?
He grinned, “It’s cool. She’s really fond of us, and we’re attached to her, too. She has her lucid moments, when she’s let us know she’s cool with the status quo. Sure, she has bad days when she’s dead to the world, but all of our powers have drawbacks, yeah?” - Excerpt from Hive 5.10 - ↑ 3.0 3.1 Labyrinth – Retains the ability to manipulate her immediate environment almost completely. While this only extends a relatively short distance around her, her influence gradually radiates outward as she remains in one place for a time. One of the more extreme examples of how powers can affect one mentally, she veers between lucidity and a dissociative fugue state. - Cast (in depth)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Pocket worlds, as she interpreted them. Realities that were a blank canvas to be altered according to her thoughts, both conscious and unconscious. They were lucid dreams that were big enough, detailed enough, intricate enough to swallow her up, as they so often did. She could make new ones at a whim, but she found it better to build on what she already had.
There was the high temple. Faultline and the hypnotist they’d hired had talked her through it, building a place that wasn’t so influenced by Elle’s negative thoughts and ideas. It was a place she associated with personal triumphs, with her inner strengths. At the opposite end of the coin was also the bad place. Of the worlds, it was the biggest by far. Nothing she could use there, she knew. She was intimately familiar with every aspect of it. She had spent a long time there. - Excerpt from Interlude 11c (Anniversary Bonus) - ↑ The other two girls in Faultline’s group were very normal by contrast; Labyrinth wore a dark green robe and mask with lines all over them. - Excerpt from Hive 5.1
- ↑ Labyrinth – A distant, disconnected individual, employed by Faultline. She possesses almost absolute control over her immediate environment. Sports a loose fitting robe with a maze covering the fabric. - Cast (spoiler free)
- ↑ The other side of the room was spartan. Nothing adorned the walls, there were no books, no computer or computer paraphernalia. There was a bed, a bedside table and a dresser. The only character whatsoever was a colorful bedspread and pillowcase. Gregor knew it had been a gift from Faultline. The owner wouldn’t have gone out to get it herself. The resident of that side of the room was seated in the corner, staring into the wall. She was blonde, the sort of platinum white-blond hair that rarely lasted through puberty. Her royal purple sweater was slightly too large for her, drooping over her hands, and her pale jeans were clearly intended to be more comfortable than fashionable.
[...]
“Elle,” he spoke, gently, “May I come closer?”
They had learned the hard way, that the more distant the girl was, the stronger her power. This made her particularly dangerous when she was so lost that she might not recognize him. Cruel irony, Gregor observed, that she had virtually no power at all when she was most herself. It was a problem they hoped to find an answer to, someday.
The girl in the corner turned to meet his eyes. He took that for consent, approached her, and pressed a sandwich into her hands.
“Eat,” he instructed her.
She did, almost mechanical in her movements. - Excerpt from Interlude 5 - ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs named5.x - ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Excerpt from Interlude 11c (Anniversary Bonus) Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "11.c" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ 10.0 10.1 If we're in world 1 and she taps into world 2 to bring a fountain into being, then what she's doing is positioning the fountain at 1.5 (or 1.25 or 1.75).
Said fountain may be more fragile as a consequence of not being wholly here.
If her power's working really well, then she can reach out, touch you, and pull/push you a little bit away from where the fountain is in the interspace, and now as far as you're concerned it's only 10% there, or .0025% there.
Now, in reality it's a little more complicated and coordinates vary on a whole two other axes, as she pulls stuff from multiple worlds and sets them at different positions. Depending on where she's at in the wax/wane of her power, she's not always deciding what gets pulled in or where stuff gets positioned, but the analogy should serve to help wrap your head around it. - Worm Spoilers Labrynth Explained Wildbow on Reddit - ↑ Yes. The mental state affects the creep of her power over the surrounding area, and the speed with which objects can be brought through, as well as her ability to search for objects in question.
In the Merchant fight, they were on the roof for a little while before they attacked. In the fight against Lung/Oni Lee, she wasn’t very lucid at all. - Comment by Wildbow on Imago 21.4 - ↑ She pointed at one corner of the mall. It looked like any other section, heavily altered by Labyrinth’s powers. The shops had been almost entirely consumed by Labyrinth’s powers, and were further shrouded by the floor-to-ceiling statues of human figures that stuck out of the walls. In the corner Lisa was pointing at, there were male and female figures, expressions solemn, hands reaching, moving so slowly I might have thought it was my imagination. The shop below was nearly gone, the entrance nearly covered up.
“Not seeing it,” I said.
“Look at how they’re standing. The male figure is sticking out of the left wall, reaching with his right hand, the female figure is doing the opposite. Look past them, at the corner.”
I did. Between the figures was the point where the two exterior walls of the shopping center joined… nothing jumped out at me. The walls were bare.
“I don’t see it,” I repeated, as she tugged on my arm and started running forward. As a group we started moving toward the corner. “What am I looking for?”
“Nothing! There’s nothing there because her power isn’t extending to that corner. She’s too far away, on the roof at the other side of the mall. Which means the interior of that shop isn’t affected by her power!”
However ominous the giant statues were, they didn’t react to our passing. The exit was small, barely three feet across. If Lisa hadn’t given me her reasoning, I wasn’t sure I would have had the guts to go through. It was spooky to think about putting myself in a smaller space like the store interior and having it close tight behind me.
The bodyguards had to go through the doorway in a crouch, and Minor dropped Bryce to let the others drag him inside, just so he could fit.
As Lisa had suggested, the shop interior was largely unaffected by Labyrinth’s abilities, though it had been trashed by looters and the effects of Leviathan’s attack. We found the back rooms, and Jaw kicked the door open. From there, we made our way to the emergency exit, cleared rubble away and escaped into the parking lot. - Excerpt from Infestation 11.7 - ↑ If her power's working really well, then she can reach out, touch you, and pull/push you a little bit away from [things she creates], and now as far as you're concerned it's only 10% there, or .0025% there. - Worm Spoilers Labrynth Explained Wildbow on Reddit
- ↑ Hive 5.7
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Infestation 11.7
- ↑ I could sense it, using the Clairvoyant and Doormaker both, using Labyrinth and Scrub. The solid space between worlds. A space that Scion had altered somehow, blocking off.
[...]
Through the Clairvoyant, through Labyrinth and Doormaker, I could sense the machine reaching through every available world.Speck 30.5 - ↑ Scourge 19.7
- ↑ Elle Labyrinth Can massively manipulate surroundings by tapping into alternate universes, selectively phasing whole sections or items into her environment. Faultline Shaker 12 -Parahuman List, bolded edit by Wildbow.
- ↑ It was Labyrinth's warped viewpoint of it, her negative mental state coloring her perceptions - she hated it there and was miserable, so her frustration and anger colored her selection of what she was pulling into reality. What she was producing in Faultline's club office was the same sort of nightmare alt!asylum stuff she produced in the proper asylum. Not the actual asylum itself.
Burnscar recognized the changes as very much the same as they had been back then, and realized just how unhappy Labyrinth was.
What sort of real-world asylum would have discarded needles, barbed wire and broken glass everywhere? Silly. - Comments by wildbow on Reddit - ↑ After Faultline had enlisted him and Newter, a job had taken them into a high security asylum. They had been there to question someone about the Dragonslayers, a villain group that used tinker technology stolen from the most powerful and highest profile tinker in the world for petty theft and mercenary work. Their invasion of the asylum had not gone as well as it might have, and had led to a high-tech lockdown of the facility. Not only did it extend their mission by several hours, but it had led to issues with one of the residents, a parahuman that apparently had to be moved regularly, lest her influence over her surroundings spread beyond the confines of her cell, making her a serious problem for the staff, other residents and unwitting bystanders.
In the end, after dealing with the dispatched squad from the Boston Protectorate and getting the information they needed about the Dragonslayers, they had recruited the girl. - Excerpt from Interlude 5 - ↑ Infestation 11.6
- ↑ I tore my eyes from the scene and we hurried toward the heaps of unconscious, bloodied and wounded that lay where the arena had been. We were halfway there when the entire mall began to brighten. The barred windows were expanding, and massive torches were lighting on the far sides. Shafts of orange light extended into the mall’s interior, patterned into diamonds by the meshes of bars Labyrinth had erected.
The wall behind Skidmark and the other ‘upper circle’ members of the Merchants began to bulge inward. Features took form: a face, ten feet tall. Protrusions below it, near the floor of the platform, marked emerging fingertips.
Labyrinth wasn’t stopping there. Minor had to catch my arm and pull me back to keep me from being caught in the path of another effect in the mall’s floor. The ground cracked and bulged upward as though a mole was tunneling at high speeds just beneath the tile.
“Get back!” someone shouted behind me. I recognized Lisa’s voice and took her advice, backing away from the hump. Minor stopped me from backing up into another hump that had appeared behind me.
Stone walls heaved upward from the mounds of broken tile, blocking my path and stopping at a height of twelve or more feet. As more walls rose around me, I saw a door form to my right, and the corridor to my left had a bend in it.
A maze. She was living up to her name.
The walls at the outside edges of the mall were altering, now, more faces and body parts making themselves apparent. Like statuary or reliefs. Limbs intertwined and nude figures decorated the interior walls of the mall, each tall enough to extend from floor to ceiling, animated so that they moved with a glacial slowness. With a surprising speed, the interior of the mall was coming to resemble some kind of temple.
I had to admit, I was spooked. That girl’s power was intimidating when she wasn’t on my side. She wasn’t all there, mentally, so the only thing holding her back was the person telling her what to do. If she could make those giant torches, she could set the floor on fire. Or she could have created spikes instead of walls, without leaving the rest of us any place to run. That nobody had been hurt was purely by her choice.
Stone poles speared down from the roof. Looking up, I saw that the edges of the crack in the roof had fanged teeth, and that figures were sliding down the metal poles. Two female, one obese male. Spitfire, Faultline and Gregor the Snail? - Excerpt from Infestation 11.7 - ↑ Labyrinth created a short pillar below the metal case and canisters, and began to extend it towards the gap in the roof. Skidmark used his power to force the things off the top of the pillar and onto the platform, where they rolled. A few stray papers fluttered from the case.
[...]
I hurried to the wall. I could use my bugs to find my way through the maze, getting a sense of the layout, but I needed something faster. Labyrinth was using her power and adjusting the battlefield with every passing second. The way things were, given how she wasn’t aware of who I was, I was included among her enemies. If I didn’t go now and the battle resolved one way or the other, I might lose my window of opportunity to get Bryce.
[...]
It was eerie, to see the changes that had occurred in our surroundings in the time it had taken me to cross the wall and wait for the fight to pass. If the attentions of the Merchants had erased any familiarity I had towards the Weymouth shopping center, Labyrinth had cremated the remains and erected something else in its place. It was a cathedral, dedicated to a goddess that was very real and having a very active hand in current affairs. Labyrinth.
Which reminded me of the fact that I needed to get through this maze. Labyrinth’s power was drawing many of the crawling bugs down into the ground as it refurbished the floors and consumed the piles of trash or rubble. I still had the bugs on the ceiling, but I didn’t want to give our presence away. Of the relatively few bugs I was willing to use, a share were being used to direct Minor and placing them in strategic locations to get a sense of the layout. As the maze took shape in my head, I showed Minor the way. - Excerpt from Infestation 11.7 - ↑ The battle was still ongoing. Gregor the Snail was here, but unlike the others, he wasn’t operating in Labyrinth’s world. He passed through the walls of the maze, spraying streams of slime at Trainwreck, who had apparently advanced halfway up the stairs by using his hands to help him walk. Trainwreck retaliated by throwing a chunk of stairs at Gregor with one hand while trying to block the stream of slime with the other. The section of stairs hit the wall of the maze just in front of Gregor, some of it bouncing over to pass through Gregor. Not real, as far as he was concerned.
What did this look like to Gregor? Was he standing in the mall as it had been, while Trainwreck seemed to stand on thin air? Or was Trainwreck on the ground? I couldn’t parse it.
Mush had started pulling himself together, but Labyrinth was making his job into a struggle. His right arm had divided, stretched, forked out and reconfigured until it looked like a mass of reaching veins and arteries. He plunged it into one of the trash cans that Labyrinth was absorbing into the floor, and when he withdrew it, the tendrils had formed the connective tissue for an oversized hand crafted out of garbage. His other arm and much of his lower body had already gathered some garbage around it, letting him stand several feet taller than he had before. The skin of his head and body was peeling off into more tendrils, reaching for more trash and distributing some from his arms to his torso.
From what I could gather, he needed some kind of loose matter to form the body of his other self. Dirt, compost, trash, maybe even sand. Problem was, however fantastic his surroundings might have been for this five minutes ago, Labyrinth was screwing him over by cleaning things up, maybe inadvertently. One upper arm, his naked upper body and his nearly bald head were all exposed and vulnerable. - Excerpt from Infestation 11.7 - ↑ Once the dust had more or less cleared, she could make out a tunnel, roughly door shaped. Her power had destroyed enough of the material that there was barely any debris on the ground.
“Labyrinth,” Faultline said, “Shore it up? Make a nice hallway? Taller and wider than this, please.”
Labyrinth nodded. It took only twenty or thirty seconds before there was a noticeable effect. By the time they were halfway down the tunnel, there were alcoves with statues in them and torches burning in sconces. - Ecerpt from 18.z (Donation Interlude 4; Faultline) - ↑ Then I tapped the reality warper’s power. I began shaping a world.
[...]
The reality warper’s world was shaped. Crude, but I could use the same piece over and over again.
A landscape of body parts, of hands and limbs, of faces.
I used my friend, the young man who could create hands and faces.
I began altering the city.
Scion was in the midst of fighting a monstrous, hulking dragon-man and the warlord with the death-eating shadow. He saw the first of the faces that the reality-manipulator had created and lashed out, demolishing it.
[...]
Hands of stone emerged from around the city. More of reality warped around us. When she’d changed everything in her range into a simulation of the ‘garden’, I turned it into a portal, changed the chan-chann- station to something where it was all solid. Rock, ice, dirt.
Then I moved her somewhere else, and started over. - Excerpt from Speck 30.6
Template:Faultline's Crew