Calypso's Hellish Upgrade

» Name Of Character: Calypso Asthavon
» Link To Character: https://www.platinumhearts.net/t20921-calypso-asthavon-danava-of-dreams-and-nightmares-approved-1-5

» Upgrading:

Preferably a tier increase to mid to late 1-tier.

Mental Deduction: Advanced >>> Elite

Willpower/Determination: Elite >>> Master

Ego Release (Plot/Character Ability): This is a new ability that Calypso attained after her encounters with Liu and Nizhuan in the depths of hell. After being influenced by Liu's liberation flux ability, Ego Release had been born within the vessel of her body. It draws on the power of the subconscious mind by Calypso's own prowess of dreams, nightmares, and fantasy. The inner psyche of a person goes through so many different alterations, changes and thoughts when put under the guise of slumber that it is possible for her to bring these notions of the subconscious self to light.

With all of that said: how is it even possible for this ability to work? Well, firstly, she cannot forcibly pull this aspect of a person out. There has to be either verbal or mental consent for this prowess to properly work. When that is given, Calypso will then have to form a connection to that person through her energy being utilized as a medium to bridge the gap between her and the other person. Then, when that is done, her influence must put them to sleep, drag them into their dream world, and then the process of merging these selves can take place.

Once within the person’s mental space, a myriad of things could happen, but the end result is still the same - The culmination of whatever that person deems their darker, more unconscious feelings, be it an innher hollow, a part of themselves, or merely an unconscious self woven together due to her presence, regardless of how it manifests, it is brought to the forefront for Calypso to interact with. The inner ego and she may be able to discuss, to fight, to argue what’s happening, and if she manages to quell those inner aspects of another, she can bring the more conscious version of that person to formally meet what they could perceive as their more unfavorable self - in order for them to talk things out and help the person understand and learn of this aspect of themselves, to accept that they are a part of themselves, or to figure a way to otherwise better themselves.

When Calypso is able to sit there with the person, awaken their dream self and try to release the restricted aspects of a person's mind, she then holds the capacity to alter their ego forever and develop the character. As within her soul is a burning desire to help people. And, from this ambition did this power grow because she found this sense of betterment from the liberation of herself by Liu. Therefore, she wishes to spread this gift of inner release to the world and continue the cycle of karmic evolution for those who wish to have this awakened within themselves.

Living Conversion: As a sort of evolution within her ability to assimilate other’s energies and use them against them, not only can she take the energy for her own, but provided she didn’t wholly absorb it in the moment, she can actually create sort of temporary familiars to fight on her behalf. Whatever creature is created is one hundred percent made of whatever kind of energy attack (And it has to be energy attacks, such as Ceros or flames generated from energy) was attempting to do her harm. These familiars don’t gain any new powers or the ability to act on their own, rather being a way to effectively turn someone’s attack back onto them rather than her absorbing it.

Said familiars are formed from only 30% of the original attack's power.

Will-Leechers: An evolution of two previous abilities, Calypso can create moth-like entities to do one of two things - Steal energy, or put others to rest. The first action is done by the creatures flying over to their target, be it a person or even an object that generates energy, latching onto them and then proceeding to drink their energy in order to store it inside of themselves. The amount of energy they can hold depends on their size, being from a regular sized moth to something more comparable to a large dog in size.

They will drink until either Calypso gives the mental command to return, or they’ve had their fill. Once finished, they can either return the energy to Calypso, or just hold onto it for as long as they live. They cannot sap energy from active attacks, only from either passive attacks, or merely from an existing object or person.

As for the second use, these creatures have strange, patterned holes in their wings, and if they were to flap a certain way, it would sound like a song. If she were to form a swarm of these, they could wear a target down or even put them to sleep with their melody. How quickly the effects roll in is dependent on one’s Willpower/Determination, as exampled below:

Untrained: 1 Post
Beginner: 2 Posts
Adept: 3 Posts
Advanced: 4 Posts
Elite: 6 Posts
Does not work on Master or Grand Master

Energy Assimilation (Rewritten): Calypso doesn’t need to depend wholly on the insectoid creations to sap energy from other beings. Typically, she would do this by touching another being and retaining contact, being able to directly drink one’s energy away from their reserves, however, if she is able to hold an attack ay bay long enough, she can infect it with her energies, and effectively absorb it into her body. If she is unable to stop the attack via contact, she merely will take damage and will not be able to properly absorb it, as such an action takes intentional effort and focus.


Draconic Body:

As a part of her training with Liu and Nizhuan, Calypso needed to learn how to dip into the sinful, uglier parts of herself, and to come out the other end, knowing and understanding both her soft side, and her beastly one. Awakening to the darker parts of herself, she manifested the spirit and features of one of the most fearsome beasts borne of the imagination - the Dragon.

Much like the hide of the grand mythical creatures, Calypso’s body is capable of becoming very dragon-like at will. Her skin can quickly develop hard, black scales, increasing her durablility towards things such as physical attacks. As they are tougher than her normal skin, cutting through her flesh will be harder than normal, but not impossible, typically any noticeable difficulty appearing with non-spiritual weapons. She also gains claws and fangs that are a similar hardness, being viable tools in hand to hand combat if ever needed, as well as a dragon-like tail and horns.

Dream Realm: Dream Realm is an ability that allows Calypso to create pocket-dimensions for her dream space. These spaces are often no bigger than a few city blocks or so. Additionally, if used for combat, they are only capable of lasting for 3-5 posts before a 3-5 post cooldown. If used for non-combat/training threads, she can take the time to make them more permanent.

With that said, the spaces are often used to contain various objects, energy or to create pocket realms that have her elements of dreams infused in them. Primarily they are used for her to train herself/others in, but it can be useful for trapping various types of attacks in combat. If a person in a combat thread gets trapped within it, they can still exit the realm if they destroy it or wait for 3-5 posts for the realm to disappear.

Destruction of one of these spaces will require a level of energy mastery and output similar to or greater than Calypso's own - A skill level of Expert or greater in any race's respective energy-related mastery stat (Ex: An Iramasha's Aether Control or a Shinigami's Kido stat) is required to break the space, in a combat situation to break it before the post limit is reached.

Dream Write: This taps into Calypso's ability to use her dreams to alter reality. Dream Write is used to heal and restore a character's various mental, physical, and metaphysical injuries. Effectively, Dream Write occurs when a great deal of energy is siphoned from her inner core. When this takes place, her energy must be used as a medium to induce its effects. As, when she mentally visualizes this power, she needs to focus on a person, understand the scope of their injuries, mentally internalize her dream of helping them and infuse that will into existence to try and overwrite the injuries done to them.

Now, this has a few stipulations to it. If this is done in a combat thread? It is often limited to surface level injuries. These range from cuts, bruises, gashes and similar injuries, transferring her energy into them to replace their stamina and things like that. This is to prevent it from being too overpowered in a combat setting and she can only use this power 1-2 times per post and it must be focused on this alone; as she won't be able to use her offensive powers while it is active (but defensives are ok), as doing things such as restoring limbs or organs amidst combat would simply take too long to be reasonable or practical.

Additionally, if it comes down to deeper mental/spiritual damage, that will often require a separate thread as it takes more intense focus, development, bonding, and understanding for her power to work in this way. So this will otherwise incur deep character development because it will force the characters to understand the trauma, go over it, have them connect, and otherwise try to resolve it.


ATMA VATOU


Staff of Duality: This weapon created amidst the training in hell she received from Liu is a powerful one, as it represents the full realization and manifesting of both her concepts into one weapon, tasked to work together in order to survive and thrive. The weapon is a literal extension of Calypso herself, and thus it doesn’t operate like a typical weapon - She can abruptly change it’s shape and path of directory, call it back to her hand immediately, and wield it as if it were a part of her own body. Calypso is the only one who is capable of touching or wielding this weapon, as it is a manifestation of metaphysical concepts - It would just pass through the hands of anyone else who would attempt to wield it.

This weapon has three distinct forms, all of which have their own abilities, being the following:

Neutral/Combined State: This state of the staff is well balanced, and as such is used as a focus point and amplifier for Calypso’s magic abilities. For example, if she wished to use her ability Bladed Agony, rather than forming a crystal-like wing, the crystallization of her energies occurs at rapid real time around the top of the staff, and once swung would release a rapid barrage of focused needle-like crystals at an opponent. However, she would sacrifice the sheer amount of crystals the traditional use of the ability would create for more a smaller, more potent, focused and easier to conduct version of the ability. While this same manner of effect wouldn’t ring true for each and every ability, the main idea is for Calypso to have much better control over the ability, as well as higher potency as a result, using the staff as a focus point, rather than using it how she typically would.

Nightmare State: This version of the staff morphs it into the weapon that the feared Demon Queen, Mana, typically wields - A scythe. However rather than being a cut and dry scythe, the weapon’s blades are instead made of malleable purple energies that can be grown, shrunk, or increase in number at will (As in, the actual number of blades manifesting upon the single weapon. Ex: Can shape itself to become a full double-sided scythe), as well as the shape of the staff. Regardless of size, the scythe is a potentially deadly weapon, capable of causing serious damage in direct combat situations, being scaled to her skill in the demonic magics.

Dream State: This state of the staff is empowered by one of Calypso’s more intense desires converted into power - The fervent desire to live, defying death itself. Her staff gains the ability to wield and only wield the Light of Defiance that exists within her, at a greater potency than she can typically wield it. Whatever abilities the Light has grown and developed, this state of her staff can wield them with greater strength than if she performed it normally.

Now, Calypso cannot cycle between these states endlessly. The neutral state of the staff is the default and is always the default upon summoning, but if she, for example, switches to the Dream State, she cannot just flip back to neutral or switch to Nightmare State willy nilly. The staff's switching state is forced into a cooldown of 1 post before she's able to switch again, meaning the state of the staff is locked in whatever state she switches to until the cooldown is over.

Ex: (START)Neutral -> Dream -> Cooldown -> Nightmare -> Cooldown -> Neutral

ALINGANA STATE


Hell's Influence: These are upgrades given to her by Nizhuan and Liu from their training. From pouring their hellish energies into Calypso's body, as well as bonding with and being the catalyst of awakening this state, her basic abilities would reflect this hellish bond, in all of their combined desire to see the demon grow in strength and power. As a consequence, it is possible for Calypso to use the following abilities gained from Nizhuan and Liu's influence in this form:

Familiars Of Sin: This is just an NPC based ability. Essentially, Calypso can call upon different bodies of sinners or creatures of hell with the approval of Liu/Nizhuan. For the most part, she can summon various types of hordes of low tier sinners, different types of demonic familiars, and so on that are around the 4 tier level, the masses being low to mid 5 tier. At most, she can only summon one-hundred 4 tier creatures, and nine-hundred 5 tiers. This can lead to more powerful familiars, but those would still have to have an NPC based profile made.

Hell Bond: It is possible for Calypso to remain in contact with both Liu and Nizhuan at any moment if she should request a private channel of thought with them. This is important because if they are able to fixate on her location, it is possible for them to summon and produce different types of equipment, attacks, or supplies to her. This will require energy on their part, but if the circumstance is dire, they will be willing to assist with her through this bond. This should only be used if Calypso is in grave danger and is more of a form of assistance than an outright ability.

Hades Summon: Hades Summon is the capacity for Calypso to summon up different portions of hell into the thread. This can be useful because it can have different types of weapons, equipment, or familiars for her to use. Additionally, the miasma of hell can sicken or weaken other characters as it can make it harder for them to endure the toxifying effects of hell. Though, it can be mitigated by characters if they are able to form some type of shield or barrier around it or be made into neutral effects if some type of purifying agent is summoned. Granted, if Calypso's energy is more potent at the time, it may overpower that.

The area of effect for this ability is limited to half the size of a town given the scale of her current tier. However, it is recommended to only do a few city blocks at a time in most circumstances. Additionally, it has a time limit of only five posts or so before a four post cooldown is given before it can be summoned again. This is because of the fact that it can be used as an enhancement to a degree for herself and other demons in the area if she desires. It is capable of boosting another character's capacity by 1.5x times when it comes to their will, strength, and abilities, so it needs a limit.

Hell Aura: Hell Aura acts more like an exoskeletal force and is an extension of both Hell and Liu's influence over Calypso. Essentially, Cali can tap into this power at will and summon a scarlet aura around herself. From there, different types of appendages, tendrils, and hell-infused abilities can be made from it. For example, if she were to fire off a magic-based spell, she could incorporate elements of hell to either enhance the potency of the attack, potentially infuse elements of Liu/Nizhuan's restrictive/liberating power or use the tainting power of hell to corrupt and infuse the opponent with various elements of its negativism. So, with that said, there are a variety of ways to use this ability.

With that said, this ability has no set time limit, but it will take a physical/mental strain because of the focus that is needed in order to channel its effects. So whatever actions are taken while Hell's Aura is active will drain various levels of physical/energized strength based on how complex or immense the attacks launched from Calypso in this state are. Furthermore, she is limited to only using one or two attacks from Hell Aura per post in order to further limit it. And, if her health dips to 1/4 of her energy, it will stop working since there won't be enough energy to stimulate its effects.


» Why:

For this entire arc, Calypso has had her ideals directly challenged, some parts dropped, others changed, but overall she has grown a new strength of character and realized what she should be doing, as a result of experiencing pain and tragedy.

Algos’ attempts to forcibly make Calypso her’s were a failure - Not because someone managed to save her or fix her, but through her own mental fortitude she was able to overcome such sinful attempts at taking her for herself, even surviving the traumatic shock of Algos tearing out Resolve Flame. Such an interaction with Algos taught her a valuable lesson - That not everything can be solved with loving words and giving herself up to be used. She needed to be stronger, more fierce in order to survive in this world, else those wishing to possess or trample her would be able to do what they wish with her.

Even if she wasn’t in a conscious state for the interaction, Calypso’s ideals had still become strengthened and full of resolve as a part of her consciousness went to Algos in a dream to force her to realize the wrongs in her actions, and to seek a better path from the pain her desires caused the younger of the two. From her very core, her desire to help and better others existed, though now an assertiveness was growing within her to exact such ideals when the odds were against her.

Perhaps such desires to gain more strength is what lead her to end up in the dream of Pharsita, the Heart of the Demon God, of whom forced her to see the uglier parts of her own soul, and pushed her to bring them to the forefront in order for her to confront, understand, and utilize them. Then sending her off to Nizhuan would she be forced to continue to experience the uglier parts of herself, even coming close to a point where the allure to snap and crush any and all who opposed her almost swallowed her whole. Through the guidance of Nizhuan, and the liberation of those darker parts of her mind through Liu, the demon learned to confront and then accept those parts of her, leading to her further growth as well as the intensive training Nizhuan performed with her, pushing her to even conjure a whole new section within a portion of hell.

https://www.platinumhearts.net/t21035-venomous-contempt-algos-cali
https://www.platinumhearts.net/t21069-venomous-love-minatumi-city-invansion-by-the-princess-of-demons
https://www.platinumhearts.net/t21176-ebbing-toxicity-eris-asthavon-family-only
https://www.platinumhearts.net/t21242-is-there-hope-in-you-accursed-children-private
https://www.platinumhearts.net/t21311-do-eldritch-beings-dream-of-monstrous-sheep-private
https://www.platinumhearts.net/t21332-devil-s-delight-nizhuan-calypso-training


» Extra:

Just for record’s sake, removing the following from her app:

Calming Body
Despite being more horror-like in appearance and abilities, Calypso still retains her good heart and instincts to comfort others. With her opening the floodgates, although not her full power unleashed, her body has gained an increase in it’s comforting nature. Her energy and mass are one in the same, though only a portion of it is capable of being corporeal, with this corporeal mass, Calypso can give comfort and safety to those in need of it. Resting against her body is a comforting experience, within a few seconds one would feel themselves melting into relaxation, and, not much unlike a bed you don’t want to leave on a monday morning after your alarm blares at 6 AM, those lying on her almost wouldn’t want to get up. If one lies on her for a minimum of 2 posts, they begin feeling refreshed, regardless of any injuries or tiredness, and any prolonged contact with her will only help them feel better. Being tied with a few other abilities, she can use this to get someone back up to proper health in a few posts if their injuries aren’t life-costing.

Possessive Mass Manipulation
Originally in a rather underpowered, immature state, Calypso has now allowed herself to unravel and reweave this ability to be far more liquid and malleable. She has many uses for this ability now, concocting several new ways with her latent potential within her mindscape to form this. From bodily weapons, to more limbs, the following abilities have been forged by the demon in order to draw out more use of the sea of mass within her.

Lucid Butterflies/Dragonflies
Calypso can spawn these creatures whether in the real world, or within dreams. She can amass a large swarm of either butterflies or dragonflies, both creatures being golden in color with a soft glow and intricate body patterns. These have absolutely no offensive purpose, instead being used to soothe whoever is engulfed within the swarm.

Any wrapped within their golden embrace begin to feel mentally at ease, the rhythmic flapping of their wings even giving the illusion of a lullaby being sung. Physically, this can make the target lose the will to engage in strong, elaborate emotions, and gets them to chill out to the point they could even forget what they were getting worked up over.

Largely, they are capable of bringing someone’s overwhelming or troubling thoughts down a few notches into a more manageable state, though any outstanding effects are more player decision dependent; Don't want your character fully subdued? That's fine.

Energy Assimilation
Matter cannot be created nor destroyed, only it’s state of being changed. Unearthing this ability under the push of her elder sibling, Calypso is able to spawn an entity to be used to assimilate the energy of other beings. Not necessarily eat, but remove the energy from another thing or person and convert it into her own. She can only accomplish such a thing by spawning separate entities from herself, which take the form of something tick or leech-like in order to fulfill the task. She molds this creature from her own flesh, and thus her own energy reserves, and it is sent to drain whoever or whatever the target is.

The creature latches onto the most immediately convenient spot, sinks it’s teeth in, drain energy, and latch off if danger is imminent, forcibly ripped off (though this causes physical damage to the tearer if forced off, since it would be biting down on their flesh), or it becomes ‘full’ (The creature cannot endlessly feed). And then, when it gets what it can, it rushes to return to it’s maker, normally leaping into Calypso’s chest and re-fusing with her body. However, even if it can feed off of inanimate objects, it has a far easier time assimilating energy (And as a result making the energy harmless to her) from being with a will. Energy that isn’t completely assimilated can have negative effects upon her, depending on it’s strength and intended effects.

However, the creature cannot totally suck something dry in, say, a combat situation. Cali would have near to no time to possibly make enough to accomplish that in a fight without severely taxing her mental and energy reserves. It’s best used as a method to snag as much as it can carry and take it back to her.

Now, Calypso doesn’t have to fully rely on these creatures to assimilate energy, she can perform the transference with her own body with no seeming end to the amount she can realistically take in (before overindulgence effects take hold), same rules attributed to the creatures applied to herself.

However, at the very bottom line, attempted assimilation of more energy-focused, willful beings (such as demons, or those heavily in tune with their own energy), can be potentially dangerous, as feeding off the wrong being who can have fluent control of their energy outside of their bodies, or generally very corruptive energy, can then run wild in the girl’s body unless expelled.