The Silversaint

[[Image: A mugshot of the Silversaint |300px|]]
The Silversaint
Player: @Steampunkette
Origin:	Natural
Archetype:	Brute
Security Level:	30
Server:	Everlasting
Personal Data
Real Name:	*Secret Identity* Kalliopi Niarchos
Known Aliases:	Silver
Species:	Human
Age:	37
Height:	5'8"
Weight:	172lbs
Eye Color:	White
Hair Color:	Blonde
Biographical Data
Nationality:	Greek
Occupation:	Superhero
Place of Birth:	Athens, Greece
Base of Operations:	St. Martial
Marital Status:	Single
Known Relatives:	Extensive family in Europe
Known Powers
None, though she uses relics and devices to mimic powers.
Known Abilities
High grade combat training, heightened senses and reflexes, acrobatics, and dance.
Equipment
Anti-grav system, ring of warding, various trinkets.
Character's secret identity is only held in private air-gapped FBSA computers with no access to the internet.

Silversaint is a superhero of the Etoille, colloquially known as the Rogue Isles. She's been an active hero over off and on over the past twenty years, though her early career was in Southern Europe. A Mediterranean superhero, she first appeared on the crime fighting scene in 2003 after the initial Rikti War. At the time she was largely a street level heroine fighting crime on her own. After a devastating battle with the villain Tzimisce, she vanished from the public eye for several years before returning to active crime fighting duties in 2017 in the Rogue Isles. Since then, she's been a stalwart defender of the common folk of the island chain, though has made practically no change in the character of the Rogue Isles.

Hero Registration

While she is recorded in several databases as a 'Natural' superhero, there is some contention on the point by various groups who believe she would more accurately be described as a 'Technology', 'Magic', or even 'Hybrid' superhero. Wielding technological gadgetry is often a grey area, after all. But she's also very adept at using magical spells, charms, and amulets. Even though she doesn't do so as a primary component of her combat effectiveness.

Traditionally, one's classification would determine which threat groups one would be expected to combat. Mystical heroes, after all, are far better suited to handling cursed objects with the skill and care required to avoid triggering their deletrious effects in the same way a technologically focused hero is better suited to disarming dangerous explosives or doomsday weapons. But the Silversaint often wound up battling against Witches and Demons in Europe alongside the more traditional Nazi remnants and mad scientists taking control of abandoned castles.

For FBSA purposes, she is classified as a Natural heroine.

Known History

Shortly after the final days of the Rikti War, in late November and early December of 2002, Silversaint registered as a hero with the internationale surhumaines activités registre, though it would be an additional four months before she would be approved for action within the EU. In her initial forays, she fought alongside various European superheroes around Athens, Paris, and Berlin.

Her primary targets were smugglers, drug dealers, and the occasional foray into fighting occultists, though the ISAR did not provide initial contact points or casework on such activities. As she gained skill, power, connections, and gizmos, she became entangled in Interpol activities. Often acting as an international liason for extradition of criminals. Her greatest nemesis as a young heroine, Meistergeist, even retired under her relentless pursuit.

Though that may have been entirely coincidental, as Meistergeist -was- an elderly supervillain at the time and had largely ceased being internationally relevant by the time their rivalry began.

In late August 2012, however, the Silversaint was critically injured during a fight against Tzimisce, a quasi-necromancer with a disturbing control over flesh and bone. During the fighting, much of the supergroup Silversaint was assisting, the Centurions, were injured or killed. As Tzimisce lorded over them, he used his powers to break many of Silversaint's bones and left her, screaming, in the darkness.

It would be January of 2017 before she would resurface in the Etoille. Older, wiser, but still as strong, fast, and resilient as ever. Since her reappearance she appears to be far more reliant on magical and technological gadgetry, things she largely eschewed in her early career.

In the Rogue Isles she does her best to fight against all forms of fascism. The Council of course, Arachnos without hesitation. But also Longbow and their secretive, and murderous, cousins in the form of Wyvern. Each of whom now hold long records of Silversaint's actions against them. The FBSA in particular keeps a threat sheet on the Silversaint which updates with new magic and technology she procures or older items she has discarded or lost access to. This file includes a mug shot, in point of fact, from an attack in 2022 when the Silversaint wrecked a Longbow Operation seeking to eliminate Shock Treatment.

Over the past six years, the Silversaint has been seen working with various heroes in the Isles, most are deceased at this point, as well as various thieves. Apparently unwilling to work with murderers, abusers, and brutes she is not opposed to seeking aid from less scrupulous sorts when the situation calls for it. Indeed, nearly two dozen supercriminals have earned rewards at her side, fighting everyone from Arachnos to the Warriors. Two have even chosen to leave their lives of crime behind them and move to the United States.

In March of 2024, the Silversaint was accepted onto the roster of the Global Defense Force as their first and only Etoille member. While the GDF's charter, mandated by their United Nations backers, includes an explicit prohibition on traveling to the Etoille to engage in crime-fighting, violence, or acts of rebellion and revolution against Lord Recluse, the Silversaint stands an exception to that rule as a native of the Isles. She does not, by the letter of the charter, travel to the Etoille to engage in crime-fighting. She instead resides within the Etoille. In time, this may make her a particularly useful asset to the GDF.

Classified Information

Born to the wealthy Niarchos Family of Athens, Kalliopi Niarchos is a child of immense privilege. Like her sisters and brothers, she was raised with the presumption she would one day serve the family business. However, rather than throwing herself into the socialite scene, as her elder siblings did, young Kalliopi sought to become a superhero, having spent her childhood enamored of their endless variety and idealistic goals. With the wealth of her family at her back, she was tutored by some of the finest educators of Eurasia, trained in various martial arts, and even able to secure superheroic combat training from several retired superheroes.

However, as the child of a shipping interest, she was forced to move quite often in her childhood, disrupting her studies and training repeatedly. It did, however, allow herself to learn a variety of languages through the immersion method in the various countries where her father needed to make, or maintain, deals. Her parents used these breaks in the training to try and convinces young Kalliopi to pursue Olympic dreams or something safer than superheroics. Undeterred, she simply added gymnastics and track and field to her already exhaustive learning schedules. Very little, however, could have prepared her for the battle against Tzimisce, in Rome.

The Silversaint was blinded in her battle with Tzimisce. In an act of brazen cruelty, the supervillain stood over Silversaint and made an offhand remark about being displeased with the defiance in her eyes. His response to that defiance was to utilize his flesh-sculpting powers to collapse the pupil and iris of both of Silversaint's eyes. He then extended the sclera over the eye, making it impossible for her to see, even though the cornea and other mechanical components of her eyes function normally. At this point she is able to distinguish between light and darkness in much the same way any other person might while their eyes are closed, but does not see shadows, colors, or blurred images.

While it is theoretically possible to reconstruct her eyes through some form of ocular surgery, or replacement in part or in whole of the eye through cybernetic implants, the Silversaint has, thus far, sought to offset her disability through various aids. Such as a screen reader within her goggles connected to a bone-conduction headset hidden in the band of her goggles.

Nemeses

Baron Alkahest

Decades ago, the Niarchos Foundation pulled their investments into various research and development companies after their investments yielded no results over a 10 year period. One of the researchers, an esoteric alchemist named Dr. Vasilis Moros, had been seeking a method to mass-produce alchemical mixtures for wide-spread use. His funding cut, the Research Group shuttered, the Niarchos Family reclaimed their investment of materials and sealed the research pending review.

Incensed, Dr. Moros spent years in legal battles against the Niarchos Foundation in an attempt to use the law to force them to returning his work and laboratory to him. But ultimately the Niarchos Family's pockets were deeper, and he was unable to continue his pursuit of a civil remedy. Disgraced, and destitute, Dr. Moros disappeared from the public eye for several years. In time, he would seek his shuttered laboratory in secret, sneaking in to the old Niarchos Foundation lab, left to rot during the years of legal battles. There, working in secret, he used alchemical processes to create the first of his minions, the Alchemic Thralls.

For months he toiled within the laboratory, and every nighttime security guard who kept the place was captured, drugged, and forced into silence on his actions, with a few growing ill after months of being dosed on a nightly basis. When one perished, the Silversaint sought to investigate the lab for chemical spills or other dangers that would explain the mysterious illness plaguing the guards. What she found, instead, was Dr. Moros. Enraged by her trespass in his sanctum, Moros ordered his Alchemic Thralls to attack the young heroine, and asked questions only once she was detained. As things cooled, and the two began to understand one another, a massive alembic condenser that had been damaged in the fighting gave Silversaint was unable to save Dr. Moros and had to flee from the burning laboratory and the noxious fumes that threatened to overwhelm her. In the chaos that followed, Dr. Moros was changed by his own concoctions, his psyche fractured, and Baron Alkahest was born.

When Baron Alkahest attacked the Niarchos Foundation, and the Niarchos Family, the Silversaint opposed him at every turn. In time, she became the physical representation of the Niarchos Foundation's corporate greed. A Superheroine clearly on their payroll, to protect them from him. In their last battle, shortly before Silversaint lost her sight to Tzimisce, saw Baron Alkahest left for dead in the blazing inferno of his alchemical laboratory. Silversaint had tried to save him, but deeper into the flames he fled.

Madame Mirage

The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique is the largest scientific research organization in Europe. Located in Paris, it is one of the highest echelons of reason and study in the world. And among its honored host was Dr. Elena Hegzova, a leading scientist in both Holography and Quantum Computing. The brilliant doctor was preparing to unveil her latest work, a quantum entanglement field that could allow holograms to interact with the world around them as if they were solid objects, up to and including fooling biometric scanning equipment.

However, on the eve of her grand presentation to the scientific community and potential investors, a tragic accident occurred. A saboteur, motivated by a rival corporation's greed, infiltrated her lab. The ensuing chaos not only destroyed years of her research but also left Elena trapped in her own experimental quantum field. The accident should have been fatal, yet, by some twist of fate or perhaps a quirk of her technology, Elena survived. But she was changed. Emerging from the ruins of her lab, she found that she no longer required devices to weave her illusions; the quantum field had merged with her very being, granting her the ability to manipulate perceptions and reality with her mind. The world, however, was not kind to her transformation. Her peers shunned her, labeling her research as dangerous and unethical, and her once-promising career was in ruins.

Embittered by betrayal and the loss of her life's work, Elena Hegzova vanished from the public eye. In the shadows, she reforged herself as Madame Mirage, using her powers not for enlightenment but for manipulation and personal gain. She delved deeper into the potential of her abilities, discovering she could not only create illusions but also manipulate minds, weaving complex scenarios that made her an untouchable phantom in the criminal underworld of Europe.

Silversaint would eventually cross paths with Madame Mirage in Germany, and through their battles and her own research, came to understand the fine line that Hegzova had stood upon between savior and sinner before her downfall. In turn, Madame Mirage recognized in the Silversaint the woman she had once hoped to be: an earnest hero of the people trying to help whoever she could. Time and again their clashes were philosophical in nature. With Madame Mirage seeking to show the Silversaint her now-twisted perspective on the world she could manipulate with a wave of her hand, while Silversaint tried in vain to reach the dormant heroism within Elena Hegzova.

The Technomage

Around the world there are covens of witches. Many hold to old traditions and old ways of using their magics. However, in the 90s there was a radical movement of Cyberwitches who sought to use cyberspace as their magical medium, co-opting technology for mystical purposes. While the majority of witches who engaged in internet use were protective and kind, a sizable minority were as wicked as any supervillain. In 2001, a global Anarcho-Commune cult with members from Singapore to So-Cal performed a terrible hacking ritual to unleash a demonic entity into the internet in an attempt to destroy the internet capabilities of banks, militaries, and major corporations worldwide. Opposed by similarly skilled witches, however, the ritual did not have its intended result.

Instead, the entity called forth was, itself, a child of the internet. Of demonic power and protective magics. In the first years of its existence, the Technomage sought to protect its domain from external threats. But as it grew and came to understand that its domain was merely one of theoretical billions of internet domains, it sought to expand its influence. As a result, it gathered truly staggering quantities of information over the course of a few short years. Sadly, much of that information was controversial, violent, illegal, or some combination of the three.

The Technomage grew to be a true terror for the Silversaint and, indeed, much of Europe when it created for itself a humanoid body to explore the world outside of the internet. Too complex and mystically bound to leave a 'copy' of itself online, the entity enacted the plots of various movies, songs, and books involving supervillains and their activities. Initially understood to be a copycat, the truth would be far more confusing. Currently its physical form is stored in the Ziggursky Penitentiary, while the entity itself has retreated deep into the internet.