Victoria "Obsidian" Routhe
Victoria Catherine Routhe
600px-ObsidianOregon.jpg
Portrayed By ??
Gender Female
Date of Birth September 19, 1984
Age 24
Zodiac Sign Virgo
Aliases Obsidian
Place of Birth New York City
Current Location New York City
Occupation Vigilante
Known Relatives Gerard Routhe, Catherine Routhe
Significant Other ??
Identity ??
Known Abilities Obsidian summoning and alternate form

Victoria is at present a vigilante, prowling the streets in search of villainy to foil.

History

Victoria was born to Gerard and Catherine Routhe, a modestly well-off family living in Queens. She was an only child and was thought of as a miracle by her parents, Catherine having been thought infertile for a long time. As their little miracle, Gerard and Catherine protected Victoria as well as they could. They shielded her from all the ills and influences of the world beyond the small family. While this protected wee Victoria from harm, it did not do well for her social development.

She was home-schooled until she was old enough for high school. There, she made very few friends and no lasting ones, finding it hard to make an attachment with anyone. With none of her time occupied with social activities, Victoria had plenty of spare time for schoolwork and so she excelled.

At 14 years old, Victoria underwent an unfortunate change. The first signs that something was up was the sudden change in her hair colour, from a mousy brown to jet black. Her parents immediately suspected she was using hair dye and might have fallen in with a bad crowd. She was utterly confused and could offer no explanation. The young girl was watched much more closely after that, and her teachers were told to keep an eye on her behaviour at school as well.

This drove Victoria deeper into introversion. She stopped associating with the few friends she had in fear that her parents and teachers might suspect them of being bad influences. She withdrew into her studies and hoped that this would all blow over. Still, she had no idea what caused her hair to change. One suggestion that was given was that it was an accident in chemistry class and that it would disappear as her hair grew.

This proved not to be the case. Victoria's hair remained as black as ever and over the next few weeks, her skin and eyes began to lose their colour. Her temperature also rose to suggest she had come down with some unknown illness. Doctors couldn't figure it out, and despite the odd symptoms she remained as healthy as ever. Two more weeks and Victoria was as white as snow and just as hard to look at under a bright sun. Her eyes had lost all their life and were almost corpse-like to look at.

Grudgingly, Victoria's parents allowed her to finish high school, though they required that she cover herself as much as possible and as a explanation say it was because of a skin condition. Makeup was inadequate for making her look even slightly normal. The smell of eggs that followed her was another unfortunate symptom that was discovered after she returned to school. Dressing like a wrapped-up leper and smelling so strange, it was hard for Victoria to make a connection with anyone.

It soon became clear that something else was amiss. She would come home with her coverings torn and punctured. Her parents suspected that she was being attacked by other students, but she never said anything about it. The teachers were spoken to but they admitted being unaware of any attacks on Victoria. In the confines of her room, Victoria practiced an ability she had discovered several times when someone had given her a fright at school. She could protrude sharp, black spikes from parts of her body.

Over the last two years of school, she managed to keep it secret. The heavy coverings prevented any protruding spikes from being visible during school and at home she did not tell her parents. Eventually, she had gained enough control over the ability to coat much of her body in a layer of hard volcanic glass that was flexible only to her own movements, as well as projecting various simple and sharp objects.

Victoria did well finishing high school, excelling particularly in art. Afterward, she spent a year unoccupied, wondering what she would do with herself. It was then that she heard through her parents that an old friend, one she had known during her early years at school, had been attacked and murdered in a nearby street.

This event gave Victoria an inkling of purpose. While her parents were still unaware, she slipped out of the house at night and enshrouded herself in both the black armour and a suitably dark coat. Luckily (or unluckily), on that very night she found herself attacked by a pair of muggers. Her intent was to take revenge. They jumped her and found themselves stuck with sharp barbs and blades. The villains fled before further injury was inflicted, and this made Victoria feel good. While justice had not yet been done, she had done some small part toward making sure this street was safer.

Several more times over the year Victoria did the same, and not always did she find what she wanted. On one occasion she was shot in the chest. This knocked her flat. The assailant attempted to rifle her for valuables but finding no possessions on what appeared to be an animated obsidian statue, left her. She returned home feeling very sore. When her parents questioned the large bruise marks on her shoulder and upper chest, she said she fell out of bed onto the wooden box she kept nearby.

A few more late-night attempts at vigilantism and she couldn't keep it secret any more. Victoria's father was the first to notice her sneaking back into the house wearing the obsidian armour. At first he was horrified, dumbstruck that his little miracle had been transformed into some kind of monster. Victoria spent a few hours telling him all that had happened.

The family spent the next morning discussing what would be done. Finally, Victoria was freed from the guilt she felt from keeping her mutancy secret so long. Neither she nor her parents knew why this had happened nor how, but it was agreed that it was by no means natural. A short time was spent seeking out information on this unique condition but all that was found were rumours of other inexplicable transformations into monsters; the stuff of tabloids.

Dejected, Victoria decided to continue on with her life, thinking that she was just a thing of tabloids, a freak of nature. She moved out of home to live in an apartment nearer New York University, where she began studying art history. Her times there were much like high school. She interacted rarely with the other students and with the faculty even less, only speaking to them when necessary. As before, she kept her concealing outfit. There were often questions about what happened, and as always she deflected them with the answer that it was a skin condition she did not wish to talk about.

Victoria completed a Bachelor of Arts degree after three years. Her lack of interaction actually penalised her this time. She failed to pass with honours, something that may have been possible if she had communicated with the professors at all and asked for help when she needed it.

All the while, she continued to practice her abilities with the obsidian, and how to effectively fight with it. Like the characters in comic books, Victoria saw she could be a force for good if she applied herself to the criminal population of New York. And by that, she intended to stick pointy things in bad people. She had not yet dealt to them as they had done to her friend, and though she could not find out who did the deed so many years ago, she could find some solace in seeking vengance for others who had lost their loved ones. She never did kill (that she was aware of), only injure and disable.

So Victoria Routhe had become Obsidian, a dark and deadly vigilante. Also, not an especially competent one, being rather new at all this.

One night, everything changed. It seemed like a routine expedition into the dark streets. Some ruffian was accosting an old woman and Obsidian moved to intervene. The assailant calmly drew a double-barrelled shotgun from under his long coat and emptied it into her head at point-blank range. There was no bloody mess. Her head shattered, turning to fragments of obsidian and scattered over the ground.

For a time that seemed like eternity, Victoria felt herself drawn into the depths of the Earth. In the roiling magma below the crust, she suffused herself in its embracing warmth. It was peaceful, a seemingly infinite expanse of the stuff that empowered her. It flowed through her and she became part of it. All was well.

And then she woke up. Victoria sat up quickly and stared at the dark alley. She was right where she was before, though that memory seemed so distant now. Checking herself over, she found that her obsidian armour bore no visible damage. She attempted to dismiss the armour. Nothing happened. Examining herself again, she found that she was wearing no armour. She was obsidian, all the way through as best she could tell.

Over time, she adjusted to life as a living statue. Her powers were improved in this form, though she could not summon nearly as much obsidian as she used to be able to. She assumed that the ever-present obsidian that made up her form took up a large portion of her capacity. She no longer needed to eat or breathe and the absence of these human traits made her feel ever more distant.

After a few months, she stopped thinking of herself as Victoria. She was no longer a person. Rather, she was an elemental construct, a thing. She continued to work as a vigilante but began wondering, did she really need humanity anymore? What was the use, fighting for beings she had no relation with? Eventually, Obsidian just stopped. In this form she had infinite patience. She could stand and do nothing forever. And so that is what she did. She stood in her room and faced the mirror and ceased doing all but one thing. She turned her mind to art. To sculpture, with her own unliving body as her artwork.

Working with her ability to shape volcanic glass she shaped herself. At first into abstract forms, things of flowing and alien curves that she once saw in the depths of the Earth. She assumed countless varying forms but none of them pleased her. She would do this forever until she found the perfect shape to rest in for the remainder of eternity. It was only when she decided to take on humanoid form again that Victoria reasserted herself in the mind of the Obsidian. She knew what she wanted: To be human.

With a patience that can watch continents shift, Victoria worked on remaking herself as a sculpture of a woman. Her memory of her former self was not perfect, but she had a feeling that came from within that told her she could only do this once. Once set, she would bear this shape forever. Four months went by as she worked on herself with utmost precision. Some degree of humanity returned to her in this time, particularly a sense of human aesthetics. In particular she chose to make her final form more attractive than she had been before. Statuesque, even.

When the final touch was completed and she resigned herself to eternity of silence, Victoria felt a change come of her her. Most importantly, she felt something at all. Looking again in the mirror, she saw the glossy black of the obsidian fade away, giving way to white flesh. In moments, all the obsidian was gone and she took a breath for the first time in ages. She was human again. Or at least, close enough to it.

Victoria quickly reassumed many of her old habits and found it easy to slip into being a being of flesh and what was arguably blood again. Perhaps that she had been a rather awkward and distant human being before made it easier to reassume that state. That infinite patience seemed to lessen, too. She felt more and more a need to live and do things rather than stand in silence forever.

It took time to realise that she could now shift in and out of the obsidian form at will. Her primary shape was set now, so she could no longer use the obsidian form to redefine herself. This did not matter greatly, as Victoria was happy with her new self. Very few people get to sculpt themselves into their ideal appearance.

With increased resilience (and some ability to put herself back together), Victoria returned to the streets as Obsidian, once more acting as a dark protector of the innocent.

Powers

Victoria possesses a psionic link with an area of the Earth. The endpoint of this link determines her array of powers as well as a few cosmetic features such as eye colour and scent. At present this link is attached to a region of volcanic activity and igneous rock deep below the Earth's surface, thereby granting obsidian-based powers and causing her to give off a faint scent of sulfur. This also causes her to have no normal biological scent. She does not have the ability to change to endpoint of the elemental link by her own will. Using obsidian abilities causes a slight increase in the temperature of the air around her and induces a reddish glow while obsidian is being summoned.

Timeline

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Quotes

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Trivia

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Gallery

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