[ooc] profile | x_villainous_x
Real Name: Persephone
Alias: The Iron Queen / Margaret Smith
Fandom: Original Character / Greek Mythos
Approximate Age: Ageless! Physically in/around her mid-to-late teens. Mileage may vary.
Personality:
Before Persephone had gone to the Underworld, she was a generally cheerful and happy girl. Cheerful and happy so long as things went her way. Persephone can be incredibly selfish and haughty, oftentimes running over the feelings of others in favour of her own. This isn’t to say that she didn’t have friends; if one can get past the goddess’ self-centered attitude, she can be a loyal and trustworthy person.
She has a wild attitude, often lapsing into fey moods as they would take her. She’s not afraid to go splashing through rivers, scaling the tallest trees, playing by ravines, or roll through mud. Persephone is certainly not the prissy sort of clean goddess and is actually oftentimes caked in a layer of mud or possessing a haphazard crown of twigs and flowers. The girl is happiest when surrounded by nature and will feel claustrophobic around what are considered normal city things (asphalt, skyscrapers, etc).
Persephone also possess a horrid temper. When she gets pissed, she gets pissed and lets you know it. Right away. Usually in the form of lots of yelling and potential dismemberment via angry plants.
The young goddess’ personality does almost a complete one-eighty once she returns to the Underworld for part of the year, seeming to reflect the change in seasons up on the surface. While initially stubborn and headstrong, she eventually becomes more reserved and quiet, thoughtful. Death is not something that bothers her, being immortal, but it’s the cold and dark that get to her the most, Persephone finding it the most awful thing in existence.
After her visit, this does carry over with her when the goddess returns for spring and summer. It’s like a scar, reflecting her change in having to grow up so fast. Though she manages to remain mostly cheerful and sunny on the outside, within she eventually morphs, over the years, into a bitter and angry young woman, wanting nothing more than to be free from the Underworld to once again do as she pleases.
This carries over with her when she makes her arrival in Gotham. Lacking everything that made up her home, Persephone focuses on the one thing that is the same -- nature and the earth. Of course, it being the modern day, a lot of it is polluted and Persephone channels her anger into this, motivating her to become the vigilante that she will be in game, trying to take it back for her own rule. She’ll be hesitant to form alliances with anyone unless she can immediately see what the benefits are for herself and will definitely be prejudiced against mortal beings.
And though she is a goddess, there is a small, nearly squashed part of her that wishes, more than anything else, to just be normal and have her old life back, before she was taken and before she had made it here, to have her friends and family close by again.
Hero / Anti-Hero / Villain / Civillian: Anti-Hero
Powers:
Immortality | Basically encompasses the general parts of godhood: living forever, aging slowly, etc, etc. The gods age at their own pace and speed/slow it up/down as they want. Due to living in human society and being cut off from her pantheon, Persephone will probably age a little closer to the lines of humans.
She also doesn’t function like a regular person, having no need to eat or sleep. Stick her out in the sunlight, watch her grow!
This also includes smiting which, for the sake of the game, I’m saying she can’t do quite yet. She will still definitely threaten it, though.
Plant Control | Given her heritage as a nature goddess, Persephone has complete control over plants, sometimes even going so far as sharing emotions, the plants around her often reflecting the goddess’ mood. The most common way in that she uses this particular power is summoning vines for attack purposes, but the uses are almost endless. (Making trees grow taller to get to higher places, bark for armor, etc.)
Sunlight | Persephone gets her energy and most of her power from the sun. When in the sunlight, she’s definitely stronger and a lot more happy.
Telepathy | This only extends to her plants and nothing else. It’s how she communicates with them, usually in the form of mental pictures/feelings.
Speech | The gods function as human translators. While not able to pick up a language right off the bat, if given the right amount of time, Persephone will be speaking it fluently. (Her current languages include Ancient Greek and English, though.)
This only applies to Earth languages. Any alien language will be left up to the discretion of the other mun after gaining permission.
Abilities:
Intellect | Persephone is fairly smart and quick on her feet. Unfortunately, she lacks common sense. Like, by a lot.
Athletics | You don’t go running through the Greek countrysides without getting pretty good at athletics. This is mostly limited to swimming, running, and tree climbing, though.
Paraphernalia:
Persephone usually carries on her a variety of seeds. It makes it easier to grow things/takes less energy than making plants grow out of nowhere and leaves more energy for fighting.
Oftentimes a knife for close range combat, especially useful for nighttime excursions.
Weakness:
Technology | Persephone SUCKS with technology. She finds it fascinating and can grasp fairly simple things easily (telephones, little things like that, but they’ll frustrate her to no end), but if you try to get her to do something complicated like toss her in front of a computer, she’ll stare it blankly before letting it explode into plant life and walking away.
Night / Dark | Being a goddess of nature, Persephone’s powers are heavily tied into the power of the sun. While she can function at night, her power is greatly weakened and it takes more of an effort to use her plant control. Also, if left in the dark long enough, she’ll essentially revert to a ‘human’ state. That is, she’ll be powerless until she’s had time to recharge into the sun. The way it manifests is, if left long enough, similar to the symptoms of hypothermia.
Belief | The ancient Gods essentially are based on the Tinkerbell System. Basically, clap if you believe. The less one believes in them, the less their powers are. Being tossed into the modern world, though not slumbering like her relatives (timewarp shenanigans!), Persephone’s abilities are toned down in this sense, so she is not all powerful. The reason she doesn’t slumber like the rest of the gods is because she still has that tie to the ancient world, literally ejecting herself from it to the modern day. This is also in part to give her more of a handicap when it comes to in game play.
Immortality | Just because the goddess is immortal doesn’t mean that she’s impervious to damage or death. She can 'die', technically, in the human sense and be dispatched that way, but due to her regenerative abilities, will come back eventually. Depending on the damage done to her, though, greatly affects how long it’ll take to full regenerate.
Age | Persephone is also fairly young in her pantheon’s timeline and therefore not as skilled in her abilities as, say, her mother, Demeter.
Brief History:
Theoi | Wikipedia | Myths RETOLD
Persephone was the first daughter of the goddess, Demeter, and definitely not the first (nor last) child of the god, Zeus.
Though Demeter possessed a palace on Mount Olympus, as most of her siblings, did, she chose to raise her daughter in the forests and countrysides of Greece, wanting to protect her and keep her away from potential suitors or anything that would come to harm her child.
For a goddess allowed to run rampant through fields and meadows, Persephone grew up fairly normally. Her companions were the nymphs and spirits of trees and rivers, and she reveled in her freedom to do as she pleased.
All good things come to an earth shattering end, though, and in some cases, quite literally. While playing in a field with a group of nymphs one day when the earth split open beneath them and the god Hades, ruler of the Underworld, enraptured with Persephone, pulled her down into the Underworld to make her his bride. Their marriage was never a happy one. Persephone hated Hades, no matter how much he doted on her, wishing only to be back with her mother and family up on the surface.
While Hades tried (unsuccessfully) to win his new bride over, Demeter was pitching a fit up on the surface. Unable to find her daughter, the older goddess despaired, causing the crops of farmers and nature in general to wither and die. Zeus, realizing that this was a very Not Good thing, went down to talk with Hades, eventually convincing him to release Persephone back to her mother so that the world wasn’t destroyed and so that they wouldn’t have to find a whole new group of believers.
Hades wasn’t pleased with this and, in order to ensure that his bride would return to him, tricked her into eating six seeds from a pomegranate in his grove. If one ate the fruit of the Underworld, they were bound to it and had to return. In this case, for six months out of the year, Persephone must return to her husband and hated new kingdom.
Decades of this continued until finally, Persephone had had enough. She had always been a willful girl and with the help of Hermes, god of travel (amongst other things), devised a plan. For the gods, time flows differently than it does for mortals. While the human timeline is straightforward, time exists all at once for the gods, like a lake as opposed to a singularly flowing stream.
Together, they found a way to slip Persephone into this lake, basically taking a crapshot into the dark as to where she would end up.
Final destination? Gotham.