[OOC] Character Reference
Mar. 12th, 2010 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
watchmakers_sonEverything You Wanted to Know About Sylar's Powers But Were Afraid to Ask
(sort of)
NOTE: As of December 26, 2007, which marks Sylar's entrance into season two, all of his powers are completely gone. This section will remain up as a reference for past threads; however, it's no longer meant to be an accurate, up-to-date catalog of his superhuman abilities. He's just an ordinary human being for now (albeit still a violent, unpredictable, and extremely unstable one).
First, for those who don't watch Heroes, the necessary background info: Sylar's main targets in his killing spree are other evolved humans, and by examining his victims' brains, he's discovered a way to acquire their superhuman abilities. At the very least, this involves slicing off the top third of their skull and removing the brain; it could also, possibly, extend to Sylar eating the brain (hence all of the zombie jokes he tends to inspire *g*), but the Powers That Be have purposefully kept that vague and refuse to commit either way. Therefore, I'm going to keep it vague, too.
All of the abilities displayed on the show so far can be classified as either "active" or "passive." Active powers are ones that can only be triggered through conscious effort, or, possibly -- though this hasn't occurred canonically for Sylar -- involuntarily under moments of extreme stress. Passive powers are always "on" to an extent, though they can be amped up through deliberate concentration.
With that said, below is the full list of Sylar's known abilities and some explanations thereof, current as of episode 1x22, "Landslide."
Intuitive Aptitude: This is Sylar's baseline "I can see how things work" ability, the one he had long before he became a serial killer (though neither he nor Chandra Suresh considered it a proper superpower). It's passive, and it's also probably the trickiest of all of them to describe. Mostly because the writers haven't explained it very well yet. *shakes fist at them, with all due love* The way I've been playing it in Milliways is as having some passing resemblance to synesthesia: when looking at someone or something, he can "hear" how it's working and almost instantaneously translate that into "seeing" any flaws it might have. That’s oversimplifying it a bit -- in truth, "hearing" and "seeing" are little more than convenient terms for what’s going on, and the reality may also have some mild psi-like elements to it -- but it works as a basic model.
However, this does not mean he instantly knows how to repair those flaws. Take a broken car, for instance. Sylar doesn't have the first clue about car repair, but if he looked at a car that was on the verge of breaking down, he'd be able to pinpoint what was going to cause the breakdown, offer some insight into why it'd be responsible, and probably extrapolate some way of going about the repair. Without consulting professional resources like repair manuals or someone knowledgeable in car mechanics, though, he wouldn't be able to fix it to his satisfaction. Make a decent go at it, sure, and with a lot more success than an ordinary human, but his work wouldn't be on the same level as a trained mechanic's.
Humans, being infinitely more complex, are harder to figure out. As another example, if someone had cancer, Sylar would only be able to "hear" a flaw in the general area of the tumor. He wouldn't know the precise reason why he was hearing it, and would never know unless he were able to get a closer look, whether through very intense concentration (which still leaves a reasonably-sized margin of error) or outright dissection (the only one hundred percent way to know for sure).
In general, he can only use this ability on something that's still capable of being fixed. With other evolved humans, that means he'll usually only know that they have superpowers, and exactly how those powers work, if they use said powers in front of him. Dead people or objects beyond repair register as just that: dead and beyond repair, no sound at all.
Which brings us to how it behaves in-game. At first, Milliways severely distorted his intuitive aptitude to the point where it was effectively useless inside the bar -- with time stopping for some people and the dead behaving as if they were alive, it led to an enormous clash of conflicting information that Sylar could barely decipher. As of this OOM, though, it now works almost as well as it would in the real world; there's still a background "static" or interference from Milliways itself that can scramble what he sees, but not nearly to the same extent as before. In turn, anybody who's sensitive to that sort of thing might notice a very, very faint residue of the Dark on him, of the same sort that they might've noticed coming from Blodwen Rowlands once upon a time.
Telekinesis: Taken from Brian Davis in April 2006. This was the first power Sylar acquired, so it's both his strongest active power and the one he falls back on the most frequently. It allows him to move things with his mind; this can also extend to tricks like brief bursts of levitation, cushioning himself from physical impacts, immobilizing moving objects, and splitting people's skin (and bones, if he's trying hard enough) apart.
Usually, Sylar accompanies any telekinetic movement with a small, descriptive hand gesture -- pointing at something he's trying to cut, for instance, or twitching his fingers sideways to pull an object out of someone's hands. This is purely psychosomatic; it helps him concentrate, but it's not necessary for the ability to work.
Cryokinesis: Taken from David Berman in July 2006. This is an active power that lets Sylar remove heat from matter and the surrounding air, allowing him to freeze objects, generate ice, and call up frost. It's accompanied by a blue tint/glow to his skin that intensifies in direct proportion to the power's intensity. Not much is known about its range, but it's assumed to be at least a couple of feet.
Total Recall: Taken from Charlie Andrews in October 2006. Basically, Sylar remembers everything. This is a passive ability.
Liquefaction/Atom Destabilization: Taken from Zane Taylor in October 2006. This is an active power that allows him to emit a concentrated pulse of energy through his hands, disrupting an object's atomic structure and eventually making it collapse into a puddle of goo. The range is quite short (limited to six inches or less) and so far it's only been demonstrated on inorganic items; theoretically, it could work on organic ones as well, but there's no conclusive evidence either way yet.
Enhanced Hearing: Taken from Dale Smither in October 2006. This passive ability gives Sylar a hearing range far beyond that of a normal human being. Canonically, Dale describes being able to tell when a rainstorm's coming forty miles before it hits, hear a cockroach crawling over her neighbor's floor like it's "a marching band parading through [her] house," and read someone's moods via the changes in their heartbeat. Some measure of control is possible, but only after practice -- and only after suffering through intense migraines due to nearly being deafened by the surrounding ambient noise. Sylar's finally reached a point where he's more or less used to it, but loud sounds (and sometimes not so loud ones) will still catch him off-guard every so often.
Precognition: Taken from Isaac Mendez in November 2006. When using this active power, Sylar enters a trancelike state where he can see the future: his eyes cloud over, he is completely unaware of his surroundings and actions, and he has very little or no memory of what he's seen upon returning. The only way to recall the visions in full is by painting or drawing them as they're happening. It can also be a bit of a crap shoot when it comes to what he sees -- he has no control over the visions once he's initiated one, and thus cannot limit them to a specific time, place, or person on request.
Induced Radioactivity: Taken from Ted Sprague in November 2006. Because of this power, which is one of the most unstable passive abilities seen in canon, Sylar constantly emits low, generally harmless levels of radiation, manifesting under normal circumstances as a slightly higher than average body temperature. When boosting it through concentration, though, he can emit much stronger bursts at several different wavelengths, including gamma radiation, electromagnetic pulses, and microwaves -- and at sufficient strength, he has the potential to turn into a living nuclear bomb with the power to destroy half a city. While it's been shown that this ability can sit on a hair trigger in other individuals (Peter and Ted have both had it rendered uncontrollable by simple circumstances like injury or strong emotion), Sylar seems to have a solid grasp on it; it's not outside the realm of possibility, though, that this grasp might slip in times of extreme duress.
So what's going on with Sylar right now?
While under the Company's "care" after Kirby Plaza, Sylar was deliberately infected with a neurodegenerative disease known as the Shanti virus. There's a lot of backstory about this virus involving Chandra Suresh's dead daughter, the man who used to call himself Takezo Kensei, and a plan to wipe the earth clean in a plague of Biblical proportions, but the most relevant portions as they apply to Sylar are these:
1) It attacks the central nervous system. In superpowered individuals, that means their abilities are the first thing to go.
2) It's one hundred percent fatal if left untreated.
3) There are at least three known strains in existence. Sylar's strain was engineered by the Company with the primary goal of suppressing an evolved human's abilities: it can't infect normal humans, it's only spread through blood-to-blood contact, and aside from said suppression, it's pretty much asymptomatic during its lifespan. It's also far more difficult to cure than other strains.
I've decided to Millicanon that the Company hadn't quite perfected it when they tested it on Sylar, though (hence why he was the ideal subject), so while the primary symptom of ability loss appears immediately, secondary symptoms -- fever, muscle weakness, tremors, and confusion -- exist as well. Those take eight to ten months to present; once they have, they trigger a rapid decline that kills the victim within one to two weeks. This means that Sylar has about four to six months to live as his world's timeline reckons it.
While Sylar knows that he's infected, he does not yet know for certain that it's fatal. I'd like to keep it that way for the time being, if at all possible. Therefore, if your pup would be able to detect that he's going to die soon, please contact me before it comes up in a thread. Thank you!
What does all of this mean for your pup?
First and foremost, Sylar will never inflict physical harm on your pup without advance communication, permission, and/or planning OOCly. There are ways to keep him in check, and I will always do my best to exert them if you don't want your character to be hurt. At the same time, though, I need to stress that Sylar is sociopathic, violent, unpredictable, and rather insane, which means that there is sometimes only so much I can do while still remaining IC. Ending a thread peacefully may mean sticking an abrupt wrap on it; if he's sufficiently provoked, he may also suddenly lash out with more minortelekinetic attacks like shoving someone, immobilizing them, or throwing objects in their direction.
The good news is that I can usually tell when a thread is about to head in this direction, and I will immediately ping with a warning so we can discuss possible alternatives if desired (i.e. the aforementioned abrupt wrap, putting Security on call, backtracking a tag or two in an attempt to divert the problem, or just following through on the attack to see where it goes). I have no problem with Sylar ending up in the cells if it comes down to it -- IC actions are always going to have IC consequences -- but having him perpetually imprisoned isn't any fun for me, either ;) So to sum up, I am always, always delighted to thread with anybody you want to throw his way, but please tag with caution and the understanding that things have the potential to go downhill very quickly depending on the circumstances.
Also, thanks to his intuitive aptitude, Sylar will be able to "read" your character to an extent. This is not an "I KNOW EVERYTHING MWAHAHA" thing -- far from it -- but at a bare minimum, he will usually be able to tell if your pup's human, dead, or Bound. If they have a special ability, he may be able to pick up a vague sense of that as well, though he won't really know anything about it unless the character uses their powers in front of him. However! Thanks to the wacky time hijinks Milliways perpetuates, any and all of these things can be easily masked by the bar's background static if you'd prefer. All you have to do is say the word. No longer applicable.
Which leads into to the last part: I am so, so very not in any way, shape, or form a nasty, mass-murdering supervillain. Trust me. *g* If you're nervous about the way a thread's going, or you're uncertain if tagging with a particular pup would be a good idea, please don't hesitate to ping me. Whenever I'm threading with Sylar, I'll be online and available under the AIM screen name "watchmakers son." You can also find me at "ironic segue" if you can't reach the other one for some reason, and if the AIM network's completely down, there's a contact post in this journal.
(sort of)
NOTE: As of December 26, 2007, which marks Sylar's entrance into season two, all of his powers are completely gone. This section will remain up as a reference for past threads; however, it's no longer meant to be an accurate, up-to-date catalog of his superhuman abilities. He's just an ordinary human being for now (albeit still a violent, unpredictable, and extremely unstable one).
First, for those who don't watch Heroes, the necessary background info: Sylar's main targets in his killing spree are other evolved humans, and by examining his victims' brains, he's discovered a way to acquire their superhuman abilities. At the very least, this involves slicing off the top third of their skull and removing the brain; it could also, possibly, extend to Sylar eating the brain (hence all of the zombie jokes he tends to inspire *g*), but the Powers That Be have purposefully kept that vague and refuse to commit either way. Therefore, I'm going to keep it vague, too.
All of the abilities displayed on the show so far can be classified as either "active" or "passive." Active powers are ones that can only be triggered through conscious effort, or, possibly -- though this hasn't occurred canonically for Sylar -- involuntarily under moments of extreme stress. Passive powers are always "on" to an extent, though they can be amped up through deliberate concentration.
With that said, below is the full list of Sylar's known abilities and some explanations thereof, current as of episode 1x22, "Landslide."
Intuitive Aptitude: This is Sylar's baseline "I can see how things work" ability, the one he had long before he became a serial killer (though neither he nor Chandra Suresh considered it a proper superpower). It's passive, and it's also probably the trickiest of all of them to describe. Mostly because the writers haven't explained it very well yet. *shakes fist at them, with all due love* The way I've been playing it in Milliways is as having some passing resemblance to synesthesia: when looking at someone or something, he can "hear" how it's working and almost instantaneously translate that into "seeing" any flaws it might have. That’s oversimplifying it a bit -- in truth, "hearing" and "seeing" are little more than convenient terms for what’s going on, and the reality may also have some mild psi-like elements to it -- but it works as a basic model.
However, this does not mean he instantly knows how to repair those flaws. Take a broken car, for instance. Sylar doesn't have the first clue about car repair, but if he looked at a car that was on the verge of breaking down, he'd be able to pinpoint what was going to cause the breakdown, offer some insight into why it'd be responsible, and probably extrapolate some way of going about the repair. Without consulting professional resources like repair manuals or someone knowledgeable in car mechanics, though, he wouldn't be able to fix it to his satisfaction. Make a decent go at it, sure, and with a lot more success than an ordinary human, but his work wouldn't be on the same level as a trained mechanic's.
Humans, being infinitely more complex, are harder to figure out. As another example, if someone had cancer, Sylar would only be able to "hear" a flaw in the general area of the tumor. He wouldn't know the precise reason why he was hearing it, and would never know unless he were able to get a closer look, whether through very intense concentration (which still leaves a reasonably-sized margin of error) or outright dissection (the only one hundred percent way to know for sure).
In general, he can only use this ability on something that's still capable of being fixed. With other evolved humans, that means he'll usually only know that they have superpowers, and exactly how those powers work, if they use said powers in front of him. Dead people or objects beyond repair register as just that: dead and beyond repair, no sound at all.
Which brings us to how it behaves in-game. At first, Milliways severely distorted his intuitive aptitude to the point where it was effectively useless inside the bar -- with time stopping for some people and the dead behaving as if they were alive, it led to an enormous clash of conflicting information that Sylar could barely decipher. As of this OOM, though, it now works almost as well as it would in the real world; there's still a background "static" or interference from Milliways itself that can scramble what he sees, but not nearly to the same extent as before. In turn, anybody who's sensitive to that sort of thing might notice a very, very faint residue of the Dark on him, of the same sort that they might've noticed coming from Blodwen Rowlands once upon a time.
Telekinesis: Taken from Brian Davis in April 2006. This was the first power Sylar acquired, so it's both his strongest active power and the one he falls back on the most frequently. It allows him to move things with his mind; this can also extend to tricks like brief bursts of levitation, cushioning himself from physical impacts, immobilizing moving objects, and splitting people's skin (and bones, if he's trying hard enough) apart.
Usually, Sylar accompanies any telekinetic movement with a small, descriptive hand gesture -- pointing at something he's trying to cut, for instance, or twitching his fingers sideways to pull an object out of someone's hands. This is purely psychosomatic; it helps him concentrate, but it's not necessary for the ability to work.
Cryokinesis: Taken from David Berman in July 2006. This is an active power that lets Sylar remove heat from matter and the surrounding air, allowing him to freeze objects, generate ice, and call up frost. It's accompanied by a blue tint/glow to his skin that intensifies in direct proportion to the power's intensity. Not much is known about its range, but it's assumed to be at least a couple of feet.
Total Recall: Taken from Charlie Andrews in October 2006. Basically, Sylar remembers everything. This is a passive ability.
Liquefaction/Atom Destabilization: Taken from Zane Taylor in October 2006. This is an active power that allows him to emit a concentrated pulse of energy through his hands, disrupting an object's atomic structure and eventually making it collapse into a puddle of goo. The range is quite short (limited to six inches or less) and so far it's only been demonstrated on inorganic items; theoretically, it could work on organic ones as well, but there's no conclusive evidence either way yet.
Enhanced Hearing: Taken from Dale Smither in October 2006. This passive ability gives Sylar a hearing range far beyond that of a normal human being. Canonically, Dale describes being able to tell when a rainstorm's coming forty miles before it hits, hear a cockroach crawling over her neighbor's floor like it's "a marching band parading through [her] house," and read someone's moods via the changes in their heartbeat. Some measure of control is possible, but only after practice -- and only after suffering through intense migraines due to nearly being deafened by the surrounding ambient noise. Sylar's finally reached a point where he's more or less used to it, but loud sounds (and sometimes not so loud ones) will still catch him off-guard every so often.
Precognition: Taken from Isaac Mendez in November 2006. When using this active power, Sylar enters a trancelike state where he can see the future: his eyes cloud over, he is completely unaware of his surroundings and actions, and he has very little or no memory of what he's seen upon returning. The only way to recall the visions in full is by painting or drawing them as they're happening. It can also be a bit of a crap shoot when it comes to what he sees -- he has no control over the visions once he's initiated one, and thus cannot limit them to a specific time, place, or person on request.
Induced Radioactivity: Taken from Ted Sprague in November 2006. Because of this power, which is one of the most unstable passive abilities seen in canon, Sylar constantly emits low, generally harmless levels of radiation, manifesting under normal circumstances as a slightly higher than average body temperature. When boosting it through concentration, though, he can emit much stronger bursts at several different wavelengths, including gamma radiation, electromagnetic pulses, and microwaves -- and at sufficient strength, he has the potential to turn into a living nuclear bomb with the power to destroy half a city. While it's been shown that this ability can sit on a hair trigger in other individuals (Peter and Ted have both had it rendered uncontrollable by simple circumstances like injury or strong emotion), Sylar seems to have a solid grasp on it; it's not outside the realm of possibility, though, that this grasp might slip in times of extreme duress.
So what's going on with Sylar right now?
While under the Company's "care" after Kirby Plaza, Sylar was deliberately infected with a neurodegenerative disease known as the Shanti virus. There's a lot of backstory about this virus involving Chandra Suresh's dead daughter, the man who used to call himself Takezo Kensei, and a plan to wipe the earth clean in a plague of Biblical proportions, but the most relevant portions as they apply to Sylar are these:
1) It attacks the central nervous system. In superpowered individuals, that means their abilities are the first thing to go.
2) It's one hundred percent fatal if left untreated.
3) There are at least three known strains in existence. Sylar's strain was engineered by the Company with the primary goal of suppressing an evolved human's abilities: it can't infect normal humans, it's only spread through blood-to-blood contact, and aside from said suppression, it's pretty much asymptomatic during its lifespan. It's also far more difficult to cure than other strains.
I've decided to Millicanon that the Company hadn't quite perfected it when they tested it on Sylar, though (hence why he was the ideal subject), so while the primary symptom of ability loss appears immediately, secondary symptoms -- fever, muscle weakness, tremors, and confusion -- exist as well. Those take eight to ten months to present; once they have, they trigger a rapid decline that kills the victim within one to two weeks. This means that Sylar has about four to six months to live as his world's timeline reckons it.
While Sylar knows that he's infected, he does not yet know for certain that it's fatal. I'd like to keep it that way for the time being, if at all possible. Therefore, if your pup would be able to detect that he's going to die soon, please contact me before it comes up in a thread. Thank you!
What does all of this mean for your pup?
First and foremost, Sylar will never inflict physical harm on your pup without advance communication, permission, and/or planning OOCly. There are ways to keep him in check, and I will always do my best to exert them if you don't want your character to be hurt. At the same time, though, I need to stress that Sylar is sociopathic, violent, unpredictable, and rather insane, which means that there is sometimes only so much I can do while still remaining IC. Ending a thread peacefully may mean sticking an abrupt wrap on it; if he's sufficiently provoked, he may also suddenly lash out with more minor
The good news is that I can usually tell when a thread is about to head in this direction, and I will immediately ping with a warning so we can discuss possible alternatives if desired (i.e. the aforementioned abrupt wrap, putting Security on call, backtracking a tag or two in an attempt to divert the problem, or just following through on the attack to see where it goes). I have no problem with Sylar ending up in the cells if it comes down to it -- IC actions are always going to have IC consequences -- but having him perpetually imprisoned isn't any fun for me, either ;) So to sum up, I am always, always delighted to thread with anybody you want to throw his way, but please tag with caution and the understanding that things have the potential to go downhill very quickly depending on the circumstances.
Which leads into to the last part: I am so, so very not in any way, shape, or form a nasty, mass-murdering supervillain. Trust me. *g* If you're nervous about the way a thread's going, or you're uncertain if tagging with a particular pup would be a good idea, please don't hesitate to ping me. Whenever I'm threading with Sylar, I'll be online and available under the AIM screen name "watchmakers son." You can also find me at "ironic segue" if you can't reach the other one for some reason, and if the AIM network's completely down, there's a contact post in this journal.
