European NPCs

Ondre Debinski (“Not Captain Euro”)

Ondre Debinski, a French-Polish law student was the first truly publicly known nova of Europe. While Clare Leith did her famous flying tour before him, Ondre proved a much more telegenic and easily accessible target after he erupted during an oral exam in late 2002. When he couldn’t answer a legal question he suddenly lost control and flew out of the window, leaving his teacher frozen in place.

It was soon discovered that he was not just able to fly, but also could lightly paralyse people with his touch or voice. He became a media sensation, and was interviewed across Europe, studied by the best researchers and offered many positions. In the end he took up a position with the Polish military research institute, where he remained for little more than a year. When the EU Nova Agency was formed he was transferred to it, although still retaining a position at the institute. He is the closest thing there is to an “official” EU superhero, and his charisma, great looks, internationalism and soft-spoken wit has made him extremely popular. Ondre simply hates to be called “Captain Euro”, earning him the ironic nickname “Not Captain Euro”.

Personally Ondre is a somewhat anxious man. He has always been eager to please his parents and teachers, but now he has to please Europe, ENA and the EU bureaucracy. He does his best but feels inadequate. Being a first wave nova he is weaker than most other novas and his only advantage is that he knows his powers and their limitations much better than most.

His girlfriend Minka is driving him on. A social butterfly and clever networker, she is both his confidant and manager. He is also helped much by Eugene Karlsdorfer, the senior Europol secretary he befriended during the formation of ENA. Eugene knows everything and everyone, and likes to help his protégée to make the best out of his position. Finally, the Polish military research establishment supports him whatever he does. Ondre sometimes wonders if he is the one running his life or everybody else. Maybe it is a big feedback loop, where he convinces everyone around him to be his boss.

Nature: follower

Pacifist: -1

Str: 2, Dex: 3, Sta: 3, Per: 2, Int: 2, Wit (soft-spoken): 4, Cha (polite): 4, Man(inspiring):4 , App (good-looking): 4

Athletics: 1, Drive: 3, Firearms: 1, MartialArts: 3, Stealth: 2, Awareness: 2, Investigation: 3, Academics: 3, Bureaucracy: 3, Linguistics (Polish, German, English, French): 3, Law: 2, Biz: 2, Etiquette: 1

Allies: 2 , Mentor (Eugene Karlsdorfer): 2, Resources: 3, Backing (ENA/Polish military research): 4, Fame: 4, Contacts: 3

Willpower: 3

Quantum: 2

Taint: 0

Mega-manipulation 2 (The Voice, Perfect Guest)

Mega-dexterity 1 (Enhanced movement)

Flight: 1

Immobilize: 1

Dr Arkady Aleksevitch Operov

A well-known nova genius. Originally a materials physicist at Moscow University, he erupted gradually and quietly over the span of several months of increasing productivity.

Although the Russian government tried to keep him home, he couldn’t resist the scholarship offers from the West and left for CERN and ENA. He has quickly become the major scientist within nova quantum physics and engineering.

Operov is the almost archetypal megaintelligent and megaperceptive scientific genius. His intelligence is aimed very much at perceiving and understanding the world, and he is constantly theorizing and writing down observations. He is cheerful and unassuming, while at the same time quietly extrasperated by the stupidity of people in general and politicians in particular. He has a streak of vicious irony reserved for religious or superstitious people, as well as anybody who belittles the need of science.

He is smart enough to keep some of his thoughts and observations to himself. He is convinced that novas will become increasingly important and likely powerful over the years as they and others learn to use their powers. It will also mean that they become key parts of whatever future world order emerges. Hence it is crucial to act right now, while novas are still isolated and seeking their niche to promote the right ideas. He is seriously worried that novas could lead to worldwide disaster if misused, and would like to see the development of a fellowship between novas regardless of nationality and ideology. In the end he does not believe that any human society is stable with a few tremendously powerful and smart individuals and a large mass of ordinary people where everybody are supposed to follow the same rules. But having the novas outside or above society does not truly solve things. Rather, there is a need for a better symbiotic relationship.

But Operov does understand that he is not able to formulate such a society or make it real – for that he needs lots of nova allies. The first step ought to be to create symbiosis between novas of different kinds: let them learn to complement each other and then use the emerging nova teams to figure out a way to work together with humans without one side trying to wipe the other out. He gladly acts as a mentor and adviser, asking troublesome moral questions in passing (“Would you obey your government superiors if they asked you to spy on another nation?”) or pointing out where one nova need support (“As you saw, your force field made you quite safe from physical attack. It is just that if you got buried under enough rubble you would not be able to crawl out”).

Beside his intelligence he is able to manipulate matter molecularly in limited ways.

Anastasia Mikhailova

Anastasia was an ordinary elderly patient at the Leningrad Regional Clinic and Hospital, suffering from the effects of a small stroke and mild Alzheimers. Then she erupted. Now the hospital has to deal with a senile nova.

Anastasia gets what she wants: using the Voice she can make anybody obey her. Not only that, her empathic manipulation makes people feel as she thinks they should feel – respectful when she is telling her memories, sorry when not living up to her expectations, romantic when she thinks they ought to be in love with each other, the dear children. Add to this her stealth abilities and tendency to wander, and she is a huge problem.

Daniette Färber

Daniette erupted in September 22 2003, exhibiting dramatic light-bending effects and immense density. She immediately went catatonic and has remained so since then. She is being treated at the University Hospital of Heidelberg, but there is little hope that she will recover.

Daniette had the unfortunate experience of linking perfectly with her symbiont, becoming instantly aware of the knowledge of the symbiont network, perceiving the brane from all available dimensions and gained nearly unlimited processing power. The result was too much and her mind expanded until it was just emptiness. She is just perception now: a passive observer with no will of her own. Should a telepathic nova connect to her interesting knowledge might be gained if they can overcome the sheer alienness of her inner world.

Powers: mega-perception, mega-intelligence, total knowledge.

Isidora Franulovich

An 8-year old girl from Zagreb, Croatia. One day when she was playing she suddenly understood spinning totally (so she said) and she could handle it: she could make things spin and twist as she wanted. Her parents realized she had erupted and decided to make the most of it. Right now they are profiting her in every way they can think of – talk shows, advertising deals, movies. She is the ticket up for the family.

Isidora can change the angular momentum of things, making them start spinning or stopping them. She can telekinetically spin or twist things, but not move them. She can also spin herself at extreme speed. Fortunately she seems to be protected by a deflecting field, or she would be seriously hurt.

Eugenia Holmström

Swedish retiree who in January 2003 in front of many witnesses in Stockholm “imploded”, becoming a black rock 7 cm across. The rock weighs about 110 kg, about the same weight as Eugenia. A chemical analysis has confirmed that the sphere consists of a very dense compound with the same elemental abundances as a human body. It is believed that she compressed herself into the rock and either died or became unable to free herself.

Viktoriya Petrova, “миротворец”, "Peacemaker”

Viktoriya erupted at the age of 21 while working as an airport clerk in Moscow. During a stressful day she suddenly “made quiet” around herself, making passengers and personnel stop arguing and pressing her. The incident was quickly hushed up by the FSB, who offered her a job. She gladly accepted and became Russia’s first government nova.

After training she was sent to Chechnya to ensure peace. She can project fields sapping peoples will to act, and even drain away emotions such as violence, making her a perfect agent in the situation.

Viktoriya is a very pragmatic woman who does not care to consider the morality of what she is doing – she has a good job, respect and can spend much of her time reading. She somewhat dislikes having to go to Chechnya, but has been told it is only temporary.

Maria Gonzalez Villanueva

16 year old girl in a small Spanish village who one day erupts with massive gravity control – for halt a minute gravity is horizontal in her vicinity rather than vertical, and around herself the field is horrific. She is buried under rubble and later rescued – surrounded by an energy-absorbing black field she has trouble getting rid of. Other powers include flight and extreme resiliency. She is in fact one of the first working fourth wave novas.

Nikodem Mierzwa

Nikodem is a young teenager in Lodz, Poland. Reclusive and decidedly odd, he has few friends and his parents let him do whatever he wants. Most of the time he seems to be daydreaming or lying on the bed in his room. Nobody knows that he is one of the greatest serial rapists, serial murders and terrorists of the world.

Nikodem erupted in early 2003. Suddenly he found that he could project his will onto other people to make them what he wanted. Not only that, he could experience what they experienced. Over time he managed to extend the range beyond sight to anybody he knew, then to anybody within a few kilometres of distance, then to hundreds and eventually thousands of kilometres. He could become anybody and make them do anything. Unfortunately for mankind he is a classic sociopath.

During his early experiments he nearly got exposed when an uncle he had made undress in public and streak across the city returned home sprouting accusations. Although groundless, they hit a bit too close to home and made Nikodem terrified that the police would start investigating, discover him and send him to jail or some government nova lab. So he made the uncle rush into the street, killing himself underneath the wheels of a lorry. That experience deeply influenced Nikodem. For the first time in his lonely life he felt true power.

Over the next months several kids who had mobbed him at school committed suicide or were found guilty of rape. The authorities tried to deal with the fallout from the “Lodz tragedy” by counselling all local kids and blaming some sort of suicide pact (no doubt influenced by computer games and American school shootings). Some claims were made that a nova might be responsible, but most believed one of the dead kids was the mis-erupted victim. Nikodem considered himself a mere onlooker watching others commit suicide and indulge in their twisted sexuality rather than a murder or rapist himself.

As his powers grew he expanded his reach. He didn’t want to do anything more in his neighbourhood, so he went global. Over the next two years he refined his methods, randomly exploring the world for new sensations. Police could see no pattern in his killings since they were all distributed worldwide and mostly looked like strange suicides, often combined rape-murder-suicides. He also learned a lot from the people he possessed, including the value of money. While he realized it would be trivial to possess (say) Bill Gates and have him deposit all his money to Nikodem Mierzwa in Lodz, it would also be an obvious hint. Similarly, people would take notice if too many celebrities did weird things. So while he arranged a few indirect benefits in the form of donations “to the traumatized kids of Lodz” he set out to amass a fortune in more complex ways.

Terrorism, sabotage and assassination soon hit him as a fun game. He was the ultimate assassin and could earn enormous sums by doing impossible assassinations. So he only needed to find whoever wanted somebody killed, possess somebody to act as an intermediary, get the employer to pay for an assassination, kill the victim, and use the intermediary to move the money to wherever he wanted. Of course, the charm of the game is more setting things up (which can take weeks) than actually doing the assassination or sabotage (a matter of possessing a suitable person at the right place and do maximal damage). The money he is gathering is placed in various accounts where he can later withdraw it to fund further projects.

He is somewhat torn between his caution, that always makes him try to make his murders look like accidents and suicides, and his sadistic and thrill-seeking side that wants him to do dramatic, messy and “fun” things. He has been considering ridding the world of some world leaders for quite some time now, but have not yet decided the fun of killing them outweighs the problem that people might realize that there are mind controlling novas out there.

Nikodem has become quite good at finding anybody in the world. He uses possession together with six degrees of separation: first he uses Google or other simple sources to get a sense of who he is looking for and who might know where he is. Then he starts dipping into people, using their knowledge to guess where the target is or who might know it – quite often people in the vicinity of the target have very useful information even if they don’t know all the truth themselves. In the end he usually finds the target unless he has hidden somewhere nobody knows where he is. And in that case he might be found after some more time-consuming mental probing.

Nikodem is leery of novas. He knows enough to realize that they might resist him, and some might be able to trace him back. He has also sometimes briefly perceived minds like his own but has always quickly withdrawn – he does not wish to meet them.

Should he be discovered and confronted, he has planned and trained a trick: to quickly grab the pilot of some passenger aircraft in order to threaten his enemies with another 911.

Powers: Nikodem has the ability to telepathically possess people at a distance, either just going along for the ride, implanting suggestions or going for full control. He has begun to learn skills and knowledge directly from the people he possess, fuelling his megaintelligence. He has a reasonably strong psychic shield, but it is not extreme.