LORE24 ENTRY #36 – Supers Month #5 – Black Cat

Hero Name

Black Cat

Real Name

Elizabeth “Liz” Powell

Description

Having lived outside of the normal world for decades, Liz remains somewhat stuck in time, as do many of her order, and doesn’t necessarily make much of a distinction between her true identity and her heroic one; pretty much nobody knows her outside of the order anyway.  

Though she is well into her 50s, Liz still has the appearance of a teenager, with long black hair reaching down to her butt, worn loose, with very obvious cat ears and a tail covered in black fur.  Her eyes are amber and can appear feline when she is using her arcane sight.  She is of average height and build, and still wears the kinds of clothes she wore when she was still living in the real world, namely heavy metal band shirts and jeans or jean shorts, usually accented with leather collars, cuffs, and maybe even a light chain instead of a belt, and a good pair of stout boots.

As she’s interacting with the people of Sentinel City more and more, and working with the heroes of the city, as Black Cat, she has taken up a costume of her own, going with another classic style, namely the sexy witch.  Her heroic costume consists of a wide-brimmed, floppy witch’s hat with holes for her ears to poke through, beset with various magical charms, a leather mini-dress with a cleavage-revealing bustier top and loose-fitting corset, opera-length gloves, over-the-knee high-heeled boots, and fishnet stockings.  Later, following a bit of a magical mishap involving the mysterious Kitsune, her costume would be composed of magically-infused latex instead of leather.

Powers and Abilities

Unlike the vast majority of the current wave of superpowered individuals, Black Cat is a classically trained arcanist (witch, wizard, mage, whatever the term one decides to use), giving her a wide variety of spells and a deep knowledge of the intricacies of the nature of magic that none of her companions have.  In essence, she is capable of learning and using practically any spell assuming she has the mana reserves to do so, whereas the ‘supers’ around her typically have a rather narrow specialty, their powers focusing in only a few well-defined areas.

Having bonded herself to her familiar, Black Cat possesses heightened senses, not only better night vision, hearing, and smell like a cat, but magical sight which allows her to read the flows of magic and understand their composition almost immediately.  Further, this bond allows her to cast certain spells when she would normally not be able to (such as when bound and gagged), as her familiar can take over the physical requirements in its state of existing between the physical world and the ethereal.

Due to the nature of her training and her deep knowledge of magical theory, and her access to the vast archives of the Sanctum, Black Cat can generally come up with a spell for any occasion, often improvising well-known spells to create other effects, or coming up with innovative uses for simple spells that the overspecialized ‘supers’ often can’t contend with.  She also possesses knowledge of at least one of the forbidden spells, known as the Bands of Arrnor, which calls upon the power of a demon to capture foes n a most inescapable and deeply erotic way.  Further, she also possesses enough magical aptitude to study the ways of chronomancy with the head of the Order of Hecate herself.

Background Info

A woman out of time, Liz was born in the 1970s and raised in the 1980s, growing up in a suburban, middle-class family and enjoying all the entertainment the time period had to offer.  As magic had mostly been drained from the material world, it came as a complete shock to her when, during her early teenage years, she began manifesting uncontrolled magical abilities.  It was soon after these began that Sassy, a member of the Order of Hecate, would appear and officially adopt Liz into the Order as its newest apprentice, the first one since Sassy herself, who had joined in the late 1800s.  Though she would miss her family, Liz was fascinated by the fact that magic was real and that she could use it, and dove headfirst into her studies.  Inside the order’s Sanctum, time has little meaning, and before she knew it, decades had passed, and her magical abilities had matured, though her body still appeared mostly as it did when she was taken in.  She would chose the path of bonding with her familiar instead of keeping it as a separate entity, gaining its feline features.

Then, an amazing thing happened.  Whatever force had sealed up the source of magic in the real world suddenly vanished, and with the dam broken, magic flooded the Earth.  Old leylines were suddenly bursting with power, and people across the face of the world were gaining magical powers of all kinds, kinds that had not been seen in centuries, if not completely new.  Given the Order’s nature, there was really no decisions made to investigate, only to study until the time was right.  Being the youngest of the mages, only in her early 50s, Liz did what any teenager properly raised in the 80s would have done:  she snuck out of the Sanctum and explored Sentinel City on her own, discovering that the world was almost entirely different from how she remembered it.  For the first time, she could understand why it was that most of the members of the Order avoided venturing into the material realm.

It was during her exploration that she would come upon the crime scene that Mecha Musume and Cyber Seer had recently taken care of, learning more details about the strange use of magic and picking up on the magic that was used by the mysterious Pink Pussy, her instincts telling her that there was much more going on that what was at once obvious.  She would eventually run afoul of the Sentinel City police, specifically Detective Conway, during her investigations, and would have to break out, after which she would join up with Mecha Musume and Cyber Seer to hatch a plan to capture Pink Pussy before she could complete her crime spree.  Though they would successfully capture Pink Pussy and learn of the existence of Dollface, their plans would go awry from there, and she would be defeated by the talented illusionist known only as Kitsune.

Following this incident, Liz continues to learn more of the modern world, now with the blessings of her superiors in the Order, to uncover the nature of the mysterious dark entity seeking the magical relics Pink Pussy and Kitsune had been pilfering, and acting as one of the newest heroes of the city to fight the surge of superpowered criminal activity as Black Cat.

Known Enemies and Rivals

Clean Sweep (Enemy)

The Clean Sweep Gang (Enemy)

Dollface (Enemy)

Demon Lord Kurae (Enemy)

Kitsune (Enemy…?)