Melusine

Not your little mermaid
Player: @Darkhealz
Origin:	Mutant
Archetype:	Sentinel
Security Level:	50
Server:	Everlasting
Personal Data
Real Name:	Melusine van Velden
Known Aliases:	Mel
Species:	Human mutant
Age:	22
Height:	178cm (5’10”)
Weight:	54kg (118lbs.)
Eye Color:	Brown
Hair Color:	Dark viridian
Biographical Data
Nationality:	Dual USA-Netherlands
Occupation:	Celebmutante
Place of Birth:	Miami, Florida, USA
Base of Operations:	The Valusian Star
Marital Status:	Swipe left
Known Relatives:	Valerie van Velden (mother), Han van Velden (stepfather), Sanne van Velden (stepsister), Gabriella Morabito (ride or die)
Known Powers
Water blasts, enhanced physicality (strength, toughness, healing), enhanced senses (hearing, smell, perceives electric fields), translocation
Known Abilities
Superswimming (and to lesser extents, running/jumping), ‘shark summoning’
Equipment
Specialized mask (regulates sensory input)
No additional information available.

From her tweens through most of her teens, Melusine van Velden was the precocious Mutant star of a wholesome, eco-forward edutainment adventure series bearing her name – but that feels like a lifetime ago now, to her. Still, and despite a decidedly rough landing in the wake of the show’s cancellation, Mel nonetheless appears to have retained her desire to save both the planet and the people destroying it, cross as those purposes can often seem. And maybe that’s why the switch to costumes and punching things: nobody listened when she asked nicely.

Public Record

Melusine might not be a genuine household name, might not have even cracked that magical million-follower ceiling, but so much of her life has been lived in front of cameras that the basics of the story are readily available for those who want to go looking. This section, then, represents the kind of information floating around message boards, podcasts and archived news articles. General knowledge, if you will.

History

For much of the 2010s, Melusine: Mermaid Adventures occupied a relatively unique, perhaps even historic space as one of television’s few programs to feature a body-atypical Mutant (let alone as its star). Openly Mutant casting has often involved body-typical talent that’s at least functionally sapien at a glance – and it must be said that, undeniably different though Melusine van Velden might look, even she grew into the figure of an Immediagraph yoga model. Nonetheless, such roles had almost invariably been supporting before, or simply played by sapien actors in laughably token prosthetics and makeup. From 1985’s My Neighbor Can Fly to a number of Very Special Episodes(tm), Mutants were frequently relegated to one-off explorations of their curiosity from a sapien point of view.

Melusine, on the other hand, placed its eponymous Mutant star front and center, using her amphibious nature to casually explore the world’s oceans in ways the average human never could. Accompanied by her stepsister, Sanne, and with scientific commentary from her mother, marine biologist Valerie van Velden, Melusine sailed the globe aboard her stepfather Han’s fantastically advanced submarine, the Valusian Star. Then, halfway through season two, Mel rescued a girl named Gabriella from a shipwreck some kilometres off the Etoile Isles. Orphaned by the disaster, ‘Gabs’ soon became inseparable from Mel and Sanne, all three sharing screen time for the rest of Mermaid Adventures’ production.

Environmentally conscious and unafraid to call out governments and corporations, the show had a hard time finding an American audience; it proved most popular in Australia, New Zealand and Melusine’s adoptive Dutch homeland (along with Sint Maarten). As its star grew more vocal and obviously powerful, though, sponsors in these places became uneasy, too; well regarded critically but never a ratings bonanza even at its height, production eventually sputtered for want of distribution partnerships. Difficult to find now, Mermaid Adventures remains fiercely beloved by a small but devoted following among some Mutants who were growing up in the 2010s and for whom it may have represented one of the first times they felt truly seen.

What came next isn’t exactly uncharted territory: child star has abnormal upbringing, outgrows vehicle that brought her to prominence and then, unable to effectively move on, flames out in spectacularly public fashion. Of course, being born very obviously Mutant meant that Melusine was probably never going to have a normal upbringing no matter what. And, in her defense, the outgrowing of a show that brought her a measure of fame had more to do with network and sponsor trepidation about superpowered Mutant environmental activists than anything else.

The flaming out in spectacularly public fashion, though? Yeah, that one’s on Mel.

Walkabout

Predictably impetuous teenage restlessness combined with the show’s cancellation to see Van Velden strike out on her own following her 18th birthday. Well, ‘her own’ – it wasn’t a genuine parting of ways with her family, and indeed her stepfather’s fortune funded what quickly became a sort of bacchanalian rumspringa. Angry, adrift and unsure of who she was supposed to be without Mermaid Adventures, Melusine apparently decided the answer could only be found by getting away from everything and everyone associated with the show. And maybe such a vision quest could actually have yielded real revelations if it hadn’t almost immediately devolved into a drunken spree crisscrossing much of western Europe. Endlessly embarrassing antics ensued and the tabloids proved only too happy to document them all (in fairness, Mel was proudly posting much of it to her own social media anyway).

There were incidents in Italian fountains and on Ibizan beaches, and she’s still banned from a certain trappist abbey as well as at least one ski resort outside Montreaux, but it was in France that things went truly sideways.

Unfortunately, We’ll Always Have Paris

At the height of Mel’s European debauch, a wouldbe influencer named Sydney Raquel happened into the Mutant’s orbit. Taking a ‘gap year’ to party her way across the continent, this Los Angeles native soon became a fixture of Van Velden’s Immediagraph feed as the pair seemed determined to hit every beach and nightclub from Barcelona to Nice. After running out of (French) Riviera, Mel and Sydney turned north for the City of Lights, where it all unraveled.

Clearly shot from a surreptitiously hidden camera, the footage of a Paris hotel room is undeniably illegal under French laws requiring the consent of parties to be filmed – consent neither woman on the recording claims to have ever given. Other forms of consent, however, feature prominently in the poorly framed but undeniably explicit video that soon circulated under #tartarsauce. Though Sydney has always denied involvement, a suspicious Mel plainly blamed the American for what she came to see as a self-serving publicity stunt, and the two parted ways almost immediately after the recording surfaced. Raquel tackled the resulting furor head on, confronting it with a mixture of righteous indignation and ‘love is love’ admonitions about Mutant rights, proactively trying to seize (or manufacture) narrative high ground while Van Velden retreated to a succession of Amsterdam hotels in which she sought refuge from the paparazzi.

To the Rescue

For Sydney and her primarily American audience, the video’s content became the focus of the scandal, drowning out the violation of privacy that actually stuck in Mel’s craw. While perhaps not deliberate in a conventional sense, her Eurobender had essentially been an embittered exploration of whether she still entertained people – however misguided, the agency had at least remained with Melusine. Having that taken away was mortifying, infuriating, and it’s not hard to imagine someone with significant superhuman abilities lashing out badly from a place of darkness, but in the midst of whatever brooding Van Velden was indulging that summer in the Netherlands, former co-stars Sanne and Gabriella swooped in to save the day. Ensconced with them in a penthouse suite over the next couple of weeks, Mel came to realize just how unmoored she could become when cut off from her closest confidants, from the only people who love her without question and for who she is, no matter what. When the trio finally emerged to stride arm in arm in arm past a small collection of tabloid cameras in the lobby, the smirking, profanely snarky Van Velden of today was already on full display.

Superheroics

Mel disappeared from the public eye for some time, but late 2019 saw her attend a smattering of gala events in the Netherlands; by early 2020 her Immedia account was active again. The usual, personal posts were interspersed with pictures of the Mutant in what seemed like an aquatic-themed costume, and there soon followed an image of her ‘returning’ a number of leaking drums to the main reception area of Crey’s Nerva Archipelago offices, toxic cargo Mel claimed had been unceremoniously dumped out in the Atlantic.

She’s ranged far and wide ever since, tackling environmental disasters, rescuing the crews of stranded vessels and confronting smugglers, pirates or powered villains who endanger the seas (or those on or near them), but Melusine does seem to spend a fair amount of time around the US northeast. Likely this is due to the region’s high concentration of Crey Corporation and Cage Consortium facilities, two companies not exactly known for their sterling environmental records, but such proximity to one of the planet’s major nexuses of superhuman activity has also seen Mel engaging more in conventional, on-the-spot heroism. Turning up in response to things like Rikti bombing raids or the high seasonal weirdness that accompanies many holidays there isn’t unheard of for her.

Appearance

Though ultimately more human-looking than not, certainly more so than the likes of Mako or the Coralax, the aquatic nature of Mel’s physical mutations remains very much on display.

Most of Van Velden’s flesh is chalk white and rubbery smooth, not unlike the undersides of orcas. Her neck, shoulders, back, flanks, outer biceps and outer thighs, however, all exhibit varying degrees of coverage by dizzyingly, gray, symmetrical patterns that carve the starkness of the uncovered spaces between them into a sort of jaggedly surrealist negative of the markings seen on tiger sharks; comprised of dermal denticles similar to those found on such predators, these patches are tougher even than the rest of Mel, if also rough and sandpaper-like when touched against their ‘grain.’ Her incisors are something else Van Velden shares with sharks, these being sharp, serrated triangles that frequently fall out as new ones grow forever in (her molars remain quite sapien). When submerged, gill flaps open along Mel's sides over her lower ribs to facilitate breathing water, but her most ironic sharklike gimmick of all is probably Van Velden’s ability to roll her eyes entirely back into her head. As in great whites, this is fundamentally a protective reflex to shield the organs behind extremely tough cartilage, but the real mileage Melusine gets out of this is in dramatically punctuating her frequent exasperation.

As if all that weren’t enough, Van Velden’s ears are noticeably pointed, their tips peeking out through straight, glossy hair that grows in a dark and improbably natural shade of viridian – “exotic” is probably the most charitable of many problematic adjectives employed by the press to describe her over the years.

Demeanor

Brusque, sarcastic and standoffish, Mel can’t even with any of this. All too familiar with haters, trolls and worse, knowing full well that her appearance hijacks most first impressions outright, Van Velden treats just about everyone with the kind of disdain to which she herself has long since become accustomed; the only exceptions seem to be her family and the rest of the Valusian Star’s crew, on whom her Immedia posts often lavish jarringly heartfelt sentiment.

Such combative attitudes extend to heroism as well, by which Melusine seems more exasperated than anything else; though apparently dedicated to confronting what evils she perceives in the world, Van Velden does so with obvious annoyance. Frustrated by humanity’s habit of preying on each other, of stubbornly perpetuating malfeasance, injustice and so much more, Mel positively radiates dismissive, self-righteous contempt for a people whose short-sighted pig-headedness only serves to make her job that much harder.

Known Superhuman Powers

Melusine is probably most associated with the high-powered saltwater blasts and geysers she routinely unleashes; though limited in range when compared to actual firearms, these frigid torrents often arrive laden with chunks and shards of ice that can pack functionally ballistic force. Throw in a serious degree of superhuman toughness, modestly enhanced strength and being able to swim as fast as just about any creature ever clocked in the sea? About the only thing Mel’s missing for aqua-heroine bingo is the ability to talk to fish.

Well...

Okay, it’s never been confirmed that she actually TALKS to them – in fact, Van Velden herself denies it. Vociferously, and with obvious aggravation. What’s undeniable, though, is that she’s able to create dark, disc-like surfaces from which things leap to snap and bite and drag back to… wherever. And ‘things’ is about right, for these are nightmare caricatures of sharks, anglerfish and the like, with far too many dagger-like teeth for even their gaping maws and all of them sporting skin patterns reminiscent of Melusine’s own markings. Creatures of which deep-diving super-explorer Benthic once said, “I’ve seen everything down there, and I’ve never seen THAT.”

Nor are these portals limited to terrorizing foes with abyssal horrors; Mel’s been seen diving bodily into one only to shoot out another, sopping wet and hundreds of feet away. Objects and people can also be pulled to her from elsewhere in this fashion, by literally reaching her hand through and grabbing what’s on the other end; anything thus transported does arrive soaked and bitterly chilled, however, as if having been dragged through half-frozen seas.

When You’re a Shark

Melusine shares a number of characteristics and abilities with these savage predators – in many cases, she even improves upon them.

• Besides being just plain physically tough beyond any sapien norm (though certainly not outright invulnerable), Van Velden possesses a highly advanced immune system. Illness, disease, toxins and even outright poisons rarely have anything like their full effect, though that’s not to say Melusine simply ignores these hazards – she can still get sick or be sickened, but the duration and severity of affliction tends to be dramatically less than in your average human. Mel also seems to have the great white’s fabled ability to recover from even grievous wounds that really ought to be fatal. Well beyond the scope and speed of mundane human healing, her regenerative abilities are still far from instantaneous, and truly devastating injuries are likely to incur some downtown no matter what.
• Although the ‘core’ of Melusine’s skeleton remains bone, a not insignificant percentage of her frame is cartilaginous. There’s almost nowhere in her body that’s entirely one or the other, but cartilage is most pronounced in the extremities and ribs, rendering Van Velden unusually limber in sometimes disconcerting ways. This reduction in total bone mass also leaves her somewhat lighter than a person of similar build (though not dramatically so), and may even hint at part of why Mel’s immune system is so potent. Lacking bone marrow, most chondrichthyes produce red blood cells in the spleen and/or a structure called the Leydig’s organ, if they have one – which Van Velden does. But since Mel already has a spleen and what bone she’s got contains marrow anyway (albeit ultimately somewhat less than human norms), the plasma-like granulocytes produced in her Leydig’s organ mean she’s doubling or even tripling up on immune response in most cases.
• An impressive, almost fantastical sense of smell is probably one of the most famous characteristics of sharks, and while Van Velden certainly evinces this, the predators with whom she shares so much else actually possess a number of enhanced senses – and so does Mel. For starters, her eyes have the tapetum lucidum found in sharks (and cats); this reflective layer of cells behind the retina improves low-light vision and ‘glows’ greenish when struck by light in otherwise dark conditions. When it comes to hearing, Melusine not only perceives sound at generally greater distance than most humans, she also picks up lower frequencies, down to around 10 Hertz versus the typical sapien minimum of about 25.
• Another feature Van Velden has in common with carcharodons is something called the ‘lateral line.’ On sharks, these small pores run unbroken from snout to tail, but Mel actually has two sets. The first starts at the corners of her jaw, just below the ears, and proceeds down her neck, across the shoulders and then down the outsides of the arms, while a second set runs along her legs from hips to ankles. The lateral line(s) sense pressure changes in water, such as when waves created by Melusine’s own movement bounce off underwater features, thus allowing her to swim in darkness by mapping surroundings she can’t otherwise see; the lower density of air, however, renders this ability useless out of water.
• More peculiar still is Mel’s sort of sixth sense for electrical fields. Peculiar for humans, anyway – in many sharks this is downright pedestrian. Charges are more ‘felt’ than directly perceived as such, allowing her to intuit location down to a centimetre or two. It’s thus possible for Van Velden to, say, detect many things that are otherwise obscured in the visual spectrum (i.e. invisible), for example to ‘see’ someone hiding behind a door or wall (provided whatever’s in between causes no interference of its own). Her perception of these fields is quite ‘low def’, though, so in the above example, Mel wouldn’t be able to provide much detail of the lurker beyond general size and shape.

Terror from the Deep

Perhaps Van Velden’s most ominous (and unsettling) power is an ability to radiate or project what might be called, for lack of a better term, primal fear. In such moments, Mel unleashes waves of single mindedly predatory ‘killer instinct’ that bombard the minds of those who have suddenly found themselves her prey. Most unfortunates thus assailed are overwhelmed, frozen cowering in place by this naked, bloodthirsty savagery. Though otherwise demonstrating no talent that might be called psychic, the nature of these assaults has led some to conclude that Melusine must, ipso facto, have some degree of aptitude for such arts; psychically capable opponents have even found the Mutant’s mind difficult to, ahem, fathom on account of how her thoughts seem to lurk somewhere beneath a layer of animalistic ‘static.’ It must also be said, however, that Van Velden herself has not suggested being aware of such attempts at snooping in the first place, nor has she ever demonstrated anything even remotely like telepathy or other ‘standard’ psychic talents.

Weaknesses and Limitations

For all her superhuman attributes, Melusine is nonetheless vulnerable in various circumstances.

• Shark-adjacent characteristics may dominate Mel’s physiology, but these are hardly the only sea creatures on which her chimerical body appears to draw. Most obviously, of course, there is the downright dolphin-like nature of her skin wherever it lacks denticles, but Van Velden’s breathing is actually most similar to another order of creatures entirely: amphibious crabs. A number of these decapods can survive for extended periods out of water (several days, in some cases) so long as their gills remain moist – and gills are what Mel has, not lungs. Hers do happen to be positioned in the same place as those human counterpart organs, and she passes air over them through essentially human respiration when not submerged, but when underwater, her gill flaps open and Melusine’s exhalation shifts to them so water can pass straight through. Though closed relatively snug to trap precious moisture when not submerged, strenuous air-breathing physical activity does occasionally cause small, wet bubbles to accumulate around these flaps.
• It’s probably no surprise Mel needs to stay hydrated in a rather literal sense, and if she goes more than about a day without being submerged for at least 30 minutes or so, a number of adverse eventualities will follow; since her gills need to stay wet to function this means submerged not just in the external, ‘cosmetic’ sense, but breathing water that whole time as well. This ensures those organs are saturated for a good while after surfacing, while also refilling a number of sack-like structures which surround her gills to store (and, if necessary, release) more water. Mind you, the timing of all this isn’t an especially hard rule – there’s no magical curse at work here, no stroke of a particular hour where everything suddenly reverts to dehydrated pumpkins. Indeed, environmental factors like high humidity or dry, recycled (i.e. ‘airplane’) air can either extend or shorten the time until she needs a good soak, but Melusine will inevitably start to grow uncomfortable once out of water for long enough. This distress first presents a bit like psoriasis, with dry, irritated patches that spread, grow progressively worse and may even split the longer the situation continues, but what’s really happening is Van Velden’s body trying to reserve all available moisture for her gills. She’ll be unable to regenerate such damage until properly hydrated again, and eventually her whole immune response will falter before, presumably, suffocation ultimately results. Just how long Mel can truly endure out of water is not something she’s ever seriously explored because of the discomfort any such experimentation would surely involve.
• Modern water distribution systems typically have enough chlorine to be lethal to fish, and swimming pools, hot tubs and the like are more heavily chlorinated still. Melusine’s robust biology allows her to endure breathing such water, but the experience isn’t exactly pleasant. Akin to having heartburn combined with a light asthma attack, Van Velden can (and has) gutted through such situations but, somewhat ironically, she prefers to hold her breath like any other surface dweller when swimming in chlorinated water.
• While she can certainly heft more than any normal human of similar build, Mel isn’t going to so much as place in (let alone win) any true super strength competitions; she can’t ‘even’ throw a car, but Van Velden could probably overturn a lighter one if she really tried. More than anything else, then, this physical power is the engine behind the high speeds Melusine achieves while swimming – that it also allows her to slug a warwolf across the jaw and (barely) leap small buildings in a single bound is little more than a happy accident.
• Owing to her heightened senses of smell and hearing, Van Velden can sometimes be overwhelmed by powerful scents or extremely loud noises.

Digging Deeper (Circumstance-specific IC knowledge)

Those who follow certain communities, live in particular places or have specific areas of interest may know more about Melusine and the company she keeps...

The Internet

While the actual video of her with Sydney Raquel is practically neolithic by the standards of social media’s ephemeral attention span, that footage continues to cast a long shadow over Mel’s online presence. The fact that Van Velden’s Immediagraph regularly features the Mutant in bikinis or artfully blocked out states of undress seems to leave those unclear on (or uninterested in) concepts of agency feeling like they have free license to troll her mentions by @’ing Raquel’s account, referencing #tartarsauce or outright posting links to whatever dark little corner of the web is hosting the recording until the next threat of legal action catches up with it.

That said, Melusine’s social media isn’t entirely toxic – she has genuine fans, too, and not infrequently uses the space to promote environmental awareness or address powered issues. Combined with a lack of sponsored partnerships or other paid endorsements, this leaves her feed relatively ‘real,’ though neither is Mel exactly afraid to document the kind of luxury her stepfather’s money affords. Van Velden has also occasionally walked red carpets and runways for a handful of (primarily Dutch) fashion phenoms. Is draping your designs over a Mutant who just also happens to be conveniently lithe and leggy performative, even exploitative? Maybe. Does Mel care? Apparently not. Used to being stared at, to being made uncomfortable in her own skin, Van Velden seems happy to return the favor by showing off and claiming her looks for herself, all but daring people to take issue with it.

The United States

Online ‘culture’ being what it is, if a random American knows about Melusine at all, odds are it’s probably because of #tartarsauce. Of course there are some in the States who follow B-list capes or actually did see Mermaid Adventures, but it’s hard to compete with salacious viral content when it comes to search results. One exception may be south Florida, where Mel’s mother, Valerie, has been a well-known voice for conservation and environmentalism since the 1990s; indeed, the Van Veldens split most of the post-Rikti War 2000s between Miami and Sint Maarten before launching the Valusian Star took them all over the world to film Mermaid Adventures. The family still returns to the area with a certain frequency, and Melusine has even battled the odd supervillain here, so she does get some genuine love from the 305.

Valerie van Velden

Though born and raised in Iowa, this midwest farmer’s daughter has spent her entire adult life with one foot in the sea. Valerie Stillwater first rose to regional fame in south Florida as a wildlife and environment advocate during the early 1990s, where cynics will tell you this had more to do with the messenger than the message – while her agent dreamed of cashing the tall, tan and blonde Val in on a supermodel trend taking off at the dawn of that decade, Stillwater had other ideas. Minor modeling success did help pay for her studies at the University of Miami, but the waves were Valerie’s true passion, and she was soon leveraging her profile to start conversations about green causes instead.

That media experience is probably what eventually inspired Mermaid Adventures, though Val’s motives for putting her daughter in front of the camera were, by all accounts, a far cry from anything like the stereotypical nightmare of a stage parent. Indeed, Valerie has spoken openly and often about having wanted the show to normalize Mel’s appearance and build her confidence, to say nothing of Val’s long history of working with groups that advocate for and support Mutant children and their families; she’s even testified on the importance of those issues before United States Congressional committees and United Nations panels.

Outside the narrow context and community of those with Mutant kids, however, Van Velden remains most well known for her environmental work; with advanced degrees in fields such as marine biology, meteorology and oceanography, Valerie features frequently at academic conferences. Such expertise has also combined with her elevated profile to occasionally translate into appearances as a guest expert on Dutch or American television.

The Netherlands

As she spends so much time abroad, Melusine’s status in the continental Netherlands is closer to that of a visiting minor celebrity, and she’s still generally regarded as American there despite being a Dutch citizen. Mel has, nonetheless, battled crime and powered villainy in the Netherlands when circumstances called for such action, and while her post-Mermaid Adventures spate of bad behavior wasn’t especially well received, Van Velden remains generally welcome here, even popular; with much of the country below sea level, Melusine’s anti-global warming stance is an easy enough sell, and her show’s oceanic focus harkened to proud Dutch traditions of seafaring. Though occasionally (maybe even often) ham-handed about it, Melusine is an enthusiastic booster of most things Dutch, especially when it comes to the Indo (Dutch-Indonesian) background of her stepsister and stepfather.

Where Mel enjoys genuinely high regard, though, are the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean, as both she and the Star have histories of hurricane relief and rescue work in the region. This is particularly true on Sint Maarten, where the Van Veldens spend significant time almost every year. Ironically, other parts of the Dutch Caribbean like Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire have a more contentious relationship with the heroine – generally outside the hurricane belt and heavily involved in the refining and transport of Venezuelan oil, these islands usually neither need nor want attention from a certain superpowered someone who says a main pillar of their economy is an existential menace to the planet.

Advocacy (or not)

Though plenty vocal when it comes to environmental issues, Melusine evinces little interest in using her modest fame to benefit other causes – even (perhaps especially) ones in which some might expect her to have a direct and personal stake.

The circus that surrounded the #tartarsauce video, for example, seems to have left Van Velden viewing romantic relationships and any attendant sexuality as deeply personal matters that no one but the very closest of friends and family deserve to hear so much as a peep about; likewise, as much as Mermaid Adventures may have meant to some of her own generation of Mutants, the show’s star has never been especially interested in The Cause there, either. Not that she really cares to speak on the subject at all, but when Mel has, it’s usually been to cast aspersions at those who insist on seeing Mutants as somehow separate from, or worse, a superior ‘next step’ in human evolution. To Melusine’s mind, everyone involved is ultimately just part of the same, hapless species and they all, collectively, have bigger (environmental) issues to deal with, together.

Not that Mel’s necessarily silent when confronted with obvious, immediate examples of prejudice or discrimination in a given moment, but neither does she have any record of seeking out opportunities to leverage her profile for the benefit of demographics to which she herself belongs – much to the frustration of critics who say she's insulated by privilege and wish she would do more.

The Valusian Star

Many who make their living from the sea have at least heard of this gleaming white submarine, though whether as potential savior or antagonist is probably a matter of just how that nautical keep is earned.

The Star’s true capabilities remain disturbingly mysterious to navies (and intelligence agencies) around the globe, but Han van Velden’s flagship has few, if any equals beneath the waves. Alarmingly stealthy, especially for its apparent speed, persistent rumors swear the vessel’s also armed to the teeth. How any of this might have been achieved is a matter of pure speculation, though Melusine’s vocal dislike of nuclear energy would seem to suggest it can’t have been through the power of the atom.

Fueling further suspicion regarding the true nature of the Star is the fact that its crew seems about as rough and ready as they come. An eclectic bunch, to put it mildly, most hail from places like the Gulf of Guinea, Horn of Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Caribbean (or South and Central American nations with shores thereon); others are former human trafficking victims or Levantine refugees rescued in the Mediterranean. Some observers also claim that, in recent years, a number of women aboard the Star have adopted trappings reminiscent of the now-defunct Knives of Artemis, though the gender-integrated nature of the crew would seem to argue against any actual connection.

Whatever their backgrounds, those aboard the Star have long demonstrated an unshakeable, even zealous loyalty to Han van Velden and his family – especially when it comes to the man’s stepdaughter, Melusine, of whom they appear to be extremely protective. Mostly endearing, some believe this closing of ranks may have a dark side, particularly in regards to the death of one Thomas McClean, a director who worked on the first two seasons of Mermaid Adventures. Officially declared drowned after falling overboard, his family has long believed this impossible on a ship of such incredible facilities as the Star, let alone when it’s home to an aquatic Mutant who readily teleports herself and others. The McCleans are convinced something untoward happened to Thomas, but the Star’s crew have long since considered the matter settled, blithely observing that the sea is cold, unforgiving and no stranger to tragedy.

Han van Velden

Though invariably coy about (and seemingly entertained by) it when asked, Han van Velden is suspected by some of having been the latest (and perhaps now, last) in a line of costumed, seagoing rogues who employed the cheeky monicker of ‘Dutch Courage’ for almost a hundred years – and whose full history with piracy likely goes back much, much further.

The family name first turns up in this context with one Erasmus van Velden, an early-17th century corsair who eventually found his way to an admiralty in the Dutch East India Company, with which the Van Veldens then made a fortune. Sometimes merchants, sometimes pirates (sometimes both), the family remained mainly in the Dutch East Indies until Indonesian independence following World War II. Indeed, the years prior to that conflict saw the emergence of the first Dutch Courage, widely believed to have been one Willem van Velden. Whoever he really was, the man practiced something like ‘vigilante piracy,’ though his definition of what constituted a wrong in need of righting proved both extremely flexible and heavily influenced by a colonialist mindset. After the Empire of Japan occupied Indonesia during World War II, Dutch Courage and his crew became partisans; deprived of what had previously been exploitable safe (surface) harbors, they captured a Japanese submarine and operated from this for much of the war, beginning a tradition of underwater shenanigans that continued throughout the century.

Following Indonesian independence, the Van Veldens relocated to Sint Maarten in the Caribbean, and later iterations of Dutch Courage appear to have followed; as recently as the 1990s, a newer version of the captain (and his submarine) enjoyed a complicated relationship with Miami-based Mutant superteam Justice-X. Occasionally aiding Fathom Force, Eclipsar and Satur9 against other nautical ne’er-do-wells more vicious than himself, Courage was just as often on their bad side for other reasons. Much like his sometime-nemeses, though, Dutch Courage hasn’t been seen since before the Rikti War. The most logical answer to the why of this absence, of course, would be that he, like so many others, perished in that conflict, but there remain those who insist on combing every new picture of the Valusian Star for what they imagine are hints of design similarities with Dutch Courage’s last known vessel.

Van Velden Marine (VVM)

Begun as a mid-20th century shipbuilding concern, this firm’s focus has shifted dramatically in recent decades. During the Cold War era, VVM supplied submarines to the Dutch navy and offshore drilling platforms to Royal Dutch Shell – lucrative business which more than restored the fortunes of a family that would have otherwise been ruined by the post-World War II collapse of the Netherlands’ colonial control over an Indonesian archipelago in which they’d resided for centuries. Though their defense contracts eventually dried up, the offshore oil industry alone left the Van Veldens wealthier than they’d ever been, but current patriarch Han’s apparent dawn-of-the-millennium epiphany would radically alter the company’s course.

Previously quite content to simply grow an existing business, Han seems to have had a ‘boat to Damascus’ moment about environmentalism in the early 2000s – i.e. right around when he married Valerie Stillwater. For reasons about which Van Velden remains cagey, he abruptly and radically refocused the company away from supporting fossil fuel extraction, but neither did he exactly abandon the offshore platforms that had been VVM’s bread and butter. Instead, Han began advocating for the use of these structures as relocatable coastal housing for millions soon to be displaced by rising sea levels. This should have been commercial suicide for Van Velden Marine, but it caught the attention of certain persons in the so-called seasteading movement.

Born primarily from libertarian dreams of extraterritorial microstates, the 1990s saw some among the decade’s emerging tech elite become fascinated with the idea of havens from taxation and regulation floating freely out in international waters. While the bursting of the dot-com bubble dashed many of those hopes, enough wealthy fantasists survived to ensure that Han van Velden came to be regarded as a man of vision in some of Silicon Valley’s more eccentric quarters. These and other, associated contacts have allowed the company to keep itself more than, ahem, afloat by sharing in a number of lucrative patents involving a variety of sustainable technologies while also building extravagant (if, yes, cutting edge and eco-friendly) yachts and floating platform-mansions for the billionaires in whose circles Han now moves like something of a seasteading svengali.

Hooks

If you find yourself looking to contact Melusine, there are a few potential avenues:

• Are you on social media? Mel’s Immediagraph is mostly concerned with the sort of aimless navel-gazing and flaunting self-promotion common to many ‘celebrity’ feeds, but it does also touch on costumed matters and current events. Whether she checks her DMs is an open question, but Van Velden has definitely been known to wade into the mentions, for good or ill.
• Are you a scurvy dog? Melusine (and the Valusian Star) are most active throughout the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas, but they can turn up just about anywhere on (or under) the waves. Whether piracy, smuggling, environmental destruction or strangeness in the deep, Van Velden can likely be persuaded to at least investigate nautical matters if there’s credible information involved.
• Do you hate Crey or the Cage Consortium? Mel sure does! The abysmal environmental records of these companies are her primary peeve, but their bad behavior tends to be so widespread that she’s not picky about opportunities to mess with them.

Quirks and Ephemera

Van Velden may lead a strange, often jetsetting life, but it’s not like this provides her more insulation from hangups and peculiar habits than anyone else – if anything, it probably increases their likelihood.

• Peppers her English with fragments of Dutch, but Mel's actual command of that language is middling at a very generous best. None of which stops her from loudly proclaiming that, "I'm Dutch," but the fact of the matter is an American mother and spending significant chunks of her childhood in south Florida have long since combined to thoroughly anchor Van Velden's speech and accent in pretty standard US English.
• Dual citizenship is rare in the Netherlands, but not entirely unheard of. In Mel’s case, she became a Dutch citizen when Han van Velden legally adopted her shortly after he and Valerie married; the Dutch government’s position on such situations is that whether the adoptee loses their existing citizenship is a matter of the originating country’s laws, and the United States doesn’t consider foreign naturalization an expatriating act unless it occurs after age 18.
• The primary technical function of the 'combat' mask Melusine wears in costume is to moderate scents and sounds that might otherwise cause discomfort (or worse). Which is to say there's no functional reason for it to cover the Mutant's mouth along with her nose and all but the tips of her ears, but astute viewers of Mermaid Adventures may recall the show's star having been so self-conscious about her jagged front teeth that dialog in the show's early seasons often had to be re-dubbed due to Van Velden's tight-lipped mumbling; though she's pretty clearly learned to enunciate just fine (and then some) since, Melusine still almost never smiles with anything but a closed mouth, so the extent of her mask likely speaks to lingering insecurities – especially in situations where one might be rescuing terrified civilians who could be further spooked by 'monstrous' features.
• Wears (waterproof, silicone) earplugs when in clubs or other loud environments without her costume’s mask apparatus to dampen noise.

The obligatory playlist:
"10,000 Emerald Pools" – Børns
"Don’t Start Now" – Dua Lipa (#kisses, haters)
"High Pressure Low" – Against Me!
"Perfect Places" – Lorde
"Southern Cross" – Crosby, Stills & Nash