Approved Cactuswaifu

--Was my approved Level 12 profile on the previous Althy. No updates, save for inventory.--

Name: Madison Freebird
Age: 30
Race: Briarheart (a humanoid plant monster)
Eye Color: Softly glowing amber
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 134 lbs.
Occupation: Plaguesinger, mad scientist specializing in diseases and genetic manipulation

Personality: Madison is a decent person who finds it easy to do horrible things to people who deserve them. Also does not give a fsck.

Appearance: Being burned at the stake--twice--hasn't done her looks any wonders. She looks like a lithe, gnarled humanoid mass of bone and vines. Her eyes, which haven taken on an amber glow, are joined by two smaller eyes on either side. Do not make any "four-eyes" jokes, she's pretty sensitive about this. Her teeth have been replaced by jagged, bony fangs, slightly longer than normal human teeth. If you need a visual approximation of her, this right here works. She's lately taken the fashion advice of her finest work and best friend, Hyperion. She currently dresses in a loose-fitting mixture of wraps and robes that are various blacks, grays, and purples. Her face is covered by a mythril face mask, which has four holes that allow her to see out of. During combat or operations, she opts for a black sleeveless hooded cotton tunic.

Skills:

"I was trained in the art of kicking your ass!": Madison had been training in hand-to-hand combat since the age of eleven, and has a legendary level of skill in the art. Dodging and parrying the attacks of someone of equal skill is no great feat for her, even if they are wielding a weapon or if they are faster than she is. Her strikes hit with enough force to knock most people down, stagger tougher/bigger foes, break bones and wood, crack stone, and dent metals delyn-tier and lower without sustaining any damage to herself.

Madison is an intelligent, well-learned, and highly literate individual. While she’s unable to speak anything other than Tradespeak, she is able to read and decipher most known written languages.

Knowledge of poisons, diseases, fungus, and plagues - unparalleled understanding of their causes, symptoms, and cures
Alchemy - highly-skilled
Bioengineering - legendary
Aleraran steam technology - highly advanced
Aleraran runic alchemy - highly advanced
Mace-style weapons – highly advanced
Whip-style weapons – legendary
Dagger fighting – highly advanced
Survival instincts – highly advanced
Exploration - advanced
Interrogation and torture – advanced (blame/credit her association with Aurelianus Drak'shal)
Stealth – above average
Lore – above average
Sass – expert
Apathy - legendary
Coping/Dealing With - below average

Abilities:

Poison/disease resistances: Madison is immune to all poisons, diseases, drugs, aphrodisiacs, pheromones, and any other sort of chemical or compound that would otherwise have a negative or debilitating effect on her.

One tough bitch: Due to a rather extreme endurance regimen and her own stubbornness, Madison can take and shrug off most forms of physical punishment and still get up to fight back. Several bones need to be broken before she even considers staying down. Madison is also capable of surviving in extreme conditions for a few minutes longer than others.

Maneuverability: Thanks to her extensive hand-to-hand training, she is agile to the point where she's able to duck, dodge, deflect and counter most close-range physical attacks from adversaries faster than her.

Plauges:

Freebird's Bane: Usable 5x a day or battle

- Infects the victim with intense, debilitating headaches, blurred vision, fits of vomiting, greatly dulled senses, and halved speed, power, endurance and agility. The symptoms of infection take roughly one minute (or the length of a post) to settle in. Infection can take hold if it is inhaled or makes contact with open eyes or exposed wounds. Infection will also occur if the Bane makes contact with unbroken skin, but the victim will take twice as long to suffer its effects (two posts or minutes, as opposed to one).
- She can exhale a focused jet of the purple poison that can travel fifteen feet in the direction she exhales, or a cloud four feet in diameter that only travels seven feet in the direction its exhaled in. The cloud will linger in the air for a minute or the length of a post before dissipating.
- Madison can also manifest the plague through her skin or vines, which will appear as a thin layer of purple slime.
- If the victim is not treated within four days, the infection will kill them.

Poisoned Mind:

- Whenever a being establishes a telepathic link with Madison, the corrupted nature of her physical body bleeds across the aether and infects them with a unique psionic plague. This occurs automatically and instantly with anyone who projects themselves in a way that she receives it, no matter the reason--diving into her mind for memories, working to destroy her psyche from inside, or even for just a little telepathic chat between the two.
- Symptoms of the psionic plague are immediate; first, the victim is overcome with massive psychic feedback that causes major migraines that disrupt their thought patterns. Shortly thereafter, if the connection is still present, the victim is overcome with intense nausea that forces them to suffer fits of vomiting. As their minds weaken, so do their physical forms.
- This cannot kill; symptoms will linger for one minute or post after the connection is broken before disappearing.

Nemo's Marionette: Usable 3x a day or battle

- Through fungal pods that can be extended from and retracted into the palms of her hands, Madison is able to shoot out bursts of blue spores that contain a special strain of cordyceps fungus. The bursts fire simultaneously from both hands in little blue clouds that travel four feet in whatever directions her hands are pointed. When the spores are inhaled or ingested by their new host, they undergo a couple minutes or one post of torturous pain as the fungus begins to take control of their physical form. The process is complete when small stalks with a blue base and oily purple tips start bursting through the skin of the host, usually in and around the neck area, as if they formed a crude collar or necklace.
- Once the fungus is in full control, the host can operate well beyond its normal capabilities (1.5x strength, speed, endurance and agility with a cap at 10x).
- Due to the biological means of production, Madison is able to establish a link with those infected and use thoughts and vocal commands to order around all infected hosts or single creatures within a one-mile radius. These hosts are able to communicate what they see and think back to her over this link.
- Able to infect living and dead insects, beasts, and lesser kinds of monstrosities such as Fallien harpies, trolls, goblins and ogres, as well as human and human-like beings. For human/oids that are alive: This cannot be used on player characters unless given express written permission by the writers involved.

It Did Not Happen: Usable 2x a day or battle

- In a fit of desperation, Madison is able to produce a special blood-red cloud of fungus spores that prey not on flesh, but on magic.
- These spores, when they come in contact with a magic spell of any nature or anyone affected by a spell, will instantly negate the spell's effects and cause it to dissipate entirely.
- If the spell in question is of a nature where it requires continuous action in order for it to be sustained, then the caster's concentration will be broken and the spell interrupted.

Podë's Successor:

Podë's Caress: Usable 3x a day or battle

- A gift from the Forgotten One Podë; the Caress can affect both flora and fauna of any kind.
- Humanoid and animal victims of the Caress will be mutated into a more feral version of themselves. Their size will increase anywhere up to 2x their original mass due to their mutating muscles and bone structure; and with their primal lack of inhibition they are able to push themselves to be faster and stronger than their original forms (but capped at 10x that of a normal person--someone with 7x speed would get boosted to 10x, for example).
- The mind of more intelligent victims will regress into an animalistic state--they will retain any cunning they may have had, but reactions are essentially cut down to fight-or-flight. Victims will retain all abilities they had prior to getting Cursed.
- Madison's vines will turn red when Podë's Caress is active. She must touch open skin, fur, or plant matter in order for the Curse to be passed along.
- Effects of the curse can effect player characters, but for a length determined and approved by all writers involved.

Direwasp Swarm: Usable 1x a day or battle

- Madison is able channel her hatred into the shards of Podë's soul that she claimed for herself and open a portal within her to a hellish realm whose name is unpronounceable in most modern tongues. From the depths of this realm, she can summon anywhere from several dozen to one hundred direwasps that crawl out out from between the vines of her arms and immediately take flight. Maddy's vines will turn red whenever she activates this ability, and turn back to green once the wasps are dead.
- Direwasps appear very similar to great black wasps. They are angry as all hell, and their stings are painful on the level of being shot by a firearm or crossbow bolt. Luckily, their stings do not deliver any sort of debilitating venom to its victims.
- These wasps are able to live in our plane of existence for up to five minutes or three posts, after which they will quickly die off.
- Oh, and they're fire-resistant. They are able to survive the intense heat and licking flames due to their infernal origins for a lot longer than normal insects would.
- These little "hateybugs", as Maddy likes to call them, are able to follow up to two very simple commands over the course of their lifespans in this realm.

Ruilserk Storm: Usable 2x per day/battle

- Madison can summon and command the infamous blood vines that made their home within The Red Forest.
- These vines can sprout from organic matter within a 15 foot radius, and are roughly two inches thick and covered with sharp thorns. The summoned vines grow in groups of four, and can grow to be up to seven feet long.
- Like all of her other Successor abilities, the vines on Madison's body will turn red for a few seconds whenever she activates this ability.

Acids:

Acidic Attacks: Usable 8x a day or battle

- Madison is immune to the effects of her own acid. On other organ matter, however, it begins burning and rotting away flesh, muscle, and plant matter in a matter of seconds/length of a post. The pain a victim feels severe. A victim's skin will start melting and rotting away upon contact.
- The damage will spread to within three inches from where full contact was made by Madison.
- Through any point on her physical being, Madison is able to excrete a thin layer of an amber-hued acid.
- Madison is able to store up enough acid to create an acidic burst that surrounds her in a small, misty cloud of acid droplets that has an effective radius of five feet.
- She can also spray a cone of acid from her mouth that has an effective range of 10 feet.
- Alternatively, Madison can fill both of her hands with pools of acid, which quickly crystallize into extremely brittle, razor-sharp, amber-colored shards very similar to Mukakkannati glass. She can then throw her hands forth and use a pressurized burst to propel the shards forward at 75 feet per second in a scattershot pattern that quickly fans out to being ten feet in diameter if pointed in one direction, or five feet if she aims in two directions. The shards will shatter if they hit metal or stone, embed themselves in wood, and make quick work of flesh and other organic matter. These crystallized shards will only cause an itchy, burning sensation if they come into contact with the victim's skin.

Briarheart:

Properties: Over the course of events that she cannot recall for the life of her, her human heart was replaced with a symbiotic, plantlike entity known as a Briarheart crafted from the essences of dryads and forest elementals. It is the source of her new-found plant-based powers; and as such, it acts very much like a human heart. If it is pierced, torn from her, or otherwise destroyed—it will kill her. One downside of having the Briarheart is she is now slightly more susceptible to fire--it won't make quick work of her, but it will burn her plant-based skin faster than it would normal human flesh.

Regeneration:

- Due to the very plant-like nature of the Briarheart, Madison has found that she is able to regenerate herself when injured, effectively becoming immortal.
- Small cuts and wounds will take less than a minute to close up, while more serious lacerations and broken bones can heal in under an hour. Amputated limbs might take a day or so to reform, and the missing limb will manifest itself as a tangle of vines much like her arms already are.
- Should Madison suffer enough punishment to die from her wounds, the Briarheart will work to fix everything up and have her back in action within two days.

Vines:

- Madison has discovered that she is able to sprout up to four different vines from anywhere on her body simultaneously, which can be commanded to fly through the air, grab onto things, pull her towards objects and vice versa, and tie up potential victims. Each vine has the strength to lift up, push, and pull up to 75 pounds on its own.
- The vines are up to an inch thick, and have the defensive strength of delyn. They can travel through the air and react to her thoughts with incredible speed, easily outmaneuvering humans with higher than average speed and agility. Each vine has a maximum length of 20 feet, and can be retracted at will.
- All along her vines, Maddy is able to grow and retract nasty quarter-inch thorns that have the strength of delyn at will.

Worldbond:

- Madison can dig her vines into dirt, stone, and wood, and focus her thoughts in order to sense all life forms within a half-mile radius.
- Through the vibrations against the earth and the unique energy that emits from both man and beast, she is able to identify every single species that is within range. The more and varied the lifeforms she senses while dug in, the more strenuous and draining the process is for her.
- She cannot identify a person or thing by their pulse; if she is looking for a specific person, she must have encountered them already, and know their unique signal.

Briarbane Calling: Usable 4x day/battle

- Several clusters of modified Briarbane parasites live within Madison's body, crawling around on her vines as she goes about her day to day business. With a quick mental command, a cluster of parasites can leap off her, land within five feet, and bury themselves into stone, dirt, and plant matter.
- The parasites will feed on the mana of the earth, and over the course of one minute or post, vines will erupt from where the parasites hit and wrap themselves into the shape of a humanoid creature similar in height, weight, and appearance to Madison.
- Each "summoned" Briarbane is of similar speed and strength to one and a half human beings, due to the hasty nature of their growth.
- Also, due to their modified biology and Madison's relative lack of knowledge regarding the siphoning the magic held within the soil, the modified Briarbane rapidly decompose. They have a lifespan of six posts/fifteen minutes.

Madison Freebird is also 100% immune to your bullshit.

History, in Slightly Longer Than An Elevator Pitch form:

Madison was born into a family famous in many of Corone's darker corners as a clan of reliable assassins. Raised from youth to be a vicious stalker, Madison's dreams laid elsewhere. She had always wanted to be, for a lack of a better term, a mad scientist; rather than slitting throats and stabbing backs, she wanted to be inventing artifacts of untold value and building construct both monstrous and beneficial. After a career early in life as a relatively unsuccessful assassin, she quit the business after a misunderstanding that stemmed from her brother Trevor's untimely death and escaped to the Dajas Pagoda in Scara Brae, where she spent her time as a Warrior, giving hard lessons to fighters who had come to the Pagoda to learn the art of combat.

After a severe mental breakdown brought on by nightmares of her previous profession and the stresses of being a Warrior, she resigned her post and retired to a small bookstore in the heart of Radasanth, where she quietly lived her life and spent her evenings returning to her childhood dreams of alchemy and artificing. One fateful night, however, her mother and brother arrived in the dead of night, and burned down her bookstore and all the dreams and rare tomes contained within.

Swearing revenge, Madison uncovered one tome and made a trip to a small town in the middle of Concordia, where she sacrificed an archivist to the Keeper of Knowledge, Maladim Karunungan. It was with him that she brokered an exchange of knowledge; her skills and memories as an assassin for the knowledge necessary to fulfill her childhood dreams.

Unfortunately for her, the fates had other plans. After a series of unfortunate events, culminating in the destruction of her bookstore and laboratory by a cult and her subsequent humiliation in the Citadel through the use of a pawn, Madison snapped. She decided that if her path was going to be one of death, darkness, and destruction, that she would resign to her fate and become an absolute monster. Lichensith Ulroke quickly noted Madison's vast array of skills, and assigned her to the Hands of the Mind.

Shortly after, Lichensith's campaign in Eiskalt began, and Madison brought along a slew of diseases along with her to poison the citizens and crops of that poor country. During the Eiskalt War, Madison had been abducted by a forest cult and, in a twist of fate, she was experimented upon and came out as a Briarheart; a human/plant hybrid with vines for limbs and the ability to naturally produce poisons and acids. This aided her in her quest to slowly choke the life from Eiskalt, and therefore she didn't mind terribly much.

It wasn't long after her return to Salvar and the headquarters of the Crimson Hand that her own unhappiness with the way Eiskalt was handled by Lichensith forced Madison to conspire with others to overthrow the assassin. After the discovery that Lye intended to use the death of Kyla Orlouge to rally his troups, Madison slipped the Mystic a poison that would steal her leader's prize away from him. Not long after, she staged a terrible and bloody but ultimately successful coup, imprisoning Ulrokë within the dungeons of his own castle. The Crimson Hands have yet to agree on a new power structure, in the meantime.

One evening, Madison received a letter from Duffy Bracken, asking for her help in curing the Red Forest of the curse that plagued it. Madison went, but with darker intentions. During their tough journey together, Madison was choked out by a vine within the forest. She came to in a dreamlike realm and embarked on a journey therein, which ended up with her meeting the Forgotten One Podë. The Red Witch had been keeping an eye on Madison for quite some time, impressed with her understanding of plagues and the ruthlessness with which she had infected Eiskalt. Podë gave Madison the gift of her terrible Curse and the presence of her two hated parents, who ended up being the first victims of the power that she now wields.

However, these good times were not to last very long. After completing several missions for her new employer, Madison found herself being asked to join the Raiaeran effort to eliminate the Forgotten One and her curse over the Red Forest. It was a task that the Briarheart was not comfortable with at first, but agreed to. Podë spread her remaining power among several of the other adventurers who had joined the cause, much to her agent's anger. After a brief encounter with the serial killer Sulla that shook her resolve, Madison made it her quest to take out Podë's other "chosen ones" in an effort to amass the power that she selfishly thought was hers to begin with.

This culminated in a showdown deep within the cursed wood where Podë sought to teach her disciple a lesson. By summoning Nell to the grove and using a simple illusion spell to anger Madison into attacking, the ancient sorceress tricked her into brutally murdering one of the few things she held dear in her life in an effort to teach her the consequences of letting hate and jealousy consume her. Never one to learn her lesson, Madison flew into a fit of loss-fueled rage and turned on the dying ancient, using the power she had been gifted to reach into Podë's body and tear out several pieces of her shattered soul. Madison then absorbed this power, setting the stage for the horrible things she will no doubt do in the future.

After her ordeal, Madison occupied her mind with Lichensith Ulrokë's re-education. With the help of Aurelianus Drak'shal, the two masters of the Crimson Hand worked on their former leader until he was broken and reformed to their liking. She made the decision to release him and relinquish her control of the group back to him; but not before planting an insurance policy around his heart that would kill the assassin should he get out of line again.

But it turns out that didn’t stick as well as she had hoped. Upon reluctantly accepting an invite back into the fold, she learned that he hadn’t changed his ways any--rather, the vine she wrapped around his heart only amplified his natural bone-shaping abilities in ways she couldn’t have imagined at the time. Frustrated with her ultimate failure and concerned about the implications of her experiments on the assassin, she's planning on doing what she always did best: Run away.

Inventory:

- A small leather satchel to carry anything she may pick up along her way

The Archivist's Notebook
- And indestructible 192-page leather bound notebook that is kept shut with a flap and strap. The pages can be torn from the notebook, but will then become ordinary pieces of paper. Torn pages regenerate overnight.
- Anything that is written in the notebook with be absorbed by the artifact, disappearing from its pages and stored in an ethereal archive tied to the book spiritually upon Madison's command. Madison can recall anything written in the notebook by simply opening it to a blank page and requesting the information through a telepathic link established through her ascension as Archivist.

Bone Pens (3)
- Fountain pens crafted from the strong bones of an unidentified animal
- Nothing out of the ordinary here, except they will be capable of writing in any condition or environment.

Maladim's Ink Vials (4)
- Four unbreakable small glass vials with rubber stoppers.
- Despite being a quarter of the size of Madison's fist, each vial is capable of storing ten gallons of ink through enchantments.
- Each vial's ink supply will be restored at the end of each day or battle.

Teleportation bracelet
- A small teleportation stone that would be set within simple silver bracelet that can be worn around Madison's wrist. The bracelet's magic could only be activated once before needing a 24-hour recharge, and a level of concentration and time to activate that scales upwards depending on how far away the wearer wishes to teleport.
- Anywhere within ten feet: Instantaeous as soon as the thought enters the wearer's head
- Up to 10 miles away: Up to one minute's worth of concentration
- 10 miles to 100 miles: One hour
- 100 miles to 1,000 miles: Two hours
- 1,000 miles on up: Four hours

Fragment of the Red Witch -
- A small portion of Pode's power distilled into a small, scarlet gem. 2 times per thread, this fragment is able to sense that it's holder is in danger, and will react by manifesting a powerful repulsing wave of magic. Anyone within five feet of the holder will be thrown violently backward. This concussive force is not significant enough to break bones, but can knock the wind out of an attacker.

The Erikar Special -
-A simple lead pipe and silver ring combo.
-The pipe is a 15-inch length with a pipe fitting on one end to act as a makeshift mace head. It is enchanted to have the offensive and defensive strength of a tier-five metal.
-The pipe is stored in a pocket dimension, and can be summoned and dismissed at will while in the grip of anyone who is wearing this particular enchanted silver ring.
-The ring is also enchanted to call the pipe to it, should the wearer of the ring be within fifty feet of the thing. The pipe will fly through the air in a straight line to return to the ring, but the pull is not strong enough to make the pipe go through solid objects.

- A "functionally unlimited" number of shards of Cillu glass of varying sizes

- A mythril stiletto dagger, nine inches long, enchanted to close the wounds and leave behind no mark when pulled out of its victims.

- Sleeveless black vlince-lined cotton tunic with hood, and mythril facemask.

- A standard deck of 52 cards, plus one Joker and another card marked "Oblivion" featuring a demonic face. The backs of the cards are identical in their black and grey-patterned appearance. The faces of the cards are printed with a special ink, allowing any card she is touching to change into any other card in the deck with a single thought. (Acquired here.)