Game name: Shade
Character Name: Seth Downton
Character Aliases: N/A
Gender: Male
Age Bracket: 14-16



Cast Description:
Seth is an average looking teenager with pale skin and red hair.  He is of average build for his age and currently looks neither athletic or scrawny.  His mutant ability is always ‘on’ (he can mute it a little for a while with effort) and seems to sheathed in a gray, shimmery, smoke-like energy.  In direct light it is very pale (as the light burns away the energy he is producing) but it gets darker and thicker the less light there is. Despite being ‘shadowy’ his grin can be illuminating.  Also, while his eye color is a normal brown, his eyes go completely black when consciously using his powers.

Personality:
Seth is a teenage boy evolving into a teenage man.  He likes basketball, movies, and starting to find girls interesting.  He is often child-like but he is not childish.  He also is much smarter than he believes he is.  This is due to being around VERY smart people and an excellent education with nothing to compare it to.  Because children came through his home, he got very good at making friends and is fairly social.  Most of the adults in his life were fairly kind so he gets surprised when people are deliberately mean or hateful because “that’s not how grown-ups are supposed to be.”  Still, he wasn’t sheltered and he has seen it, but it doesn’t scare him or make him angry.  Just…. Disappointed.

Mutant Powers:
 = Dark Force Generation/Manipulation
Seth is literal Dark Force Energy generator.  He is constantly surrounded by a field/shield of dark energy.  He can easily increase the amount of energy but can’t stop it from completely seeping out.  It is slightly cool to the touch.  He can also manipulate the energy to interact with the world.

Currently, he has developed the following feats:
- Personal Force Field: Seth can intensify and thicken (Darken) his personal Dark Force Field to be a nearly impenetrable barrier.  It is bullet proof and can withstand most forms of energy including light attacks, but that is dependent on the relative strengths.  He is still subject to mass and physics and can be knocked around. Note: when he is not darkening it, the field is quite permeable and he can easily touch things and be touched.
          UPDATE:  He now has an Asgardian locket that dampens his field so you can't see it
          unless he projects.  Seth does not like it because he is VERY susptible to sunburns
          with-out his aura.  He could also extend his aura into a protective sphere that can
          easily hold 3 other people (like Magneto) but it is solid Dark so only he can see
          through it.  Since it is filled with Dark Energy those in it feel slightly held in
          place and it is a little chilly (Although it keeps everyone from being bounced
          around.)

- Dark Force Blasts: A blast of force that is also quite cold (It won't quite freeze water).  It has enough force to break bricks.
          UPDATE: He has since blasted a schoolbus to pieces and sent it's wreckage the
          length a football field.  He can also blast through basic Sentinal armor.  Also,
          his ranges seems to be line of sight with his blasts.

- Dark Tendrils:  Seth can send out arms of energy to grab, through, pick up things, and strike.  He can currently create and control two tendrils.  In total, either as on large one or two smaller, he can lift 600lbs. and apply that amount of pressure if he has wrapped something and squeezes.  He can reach about 50 feet and he can make them as fine as he wants but he can only output enough energy to make one as thick as his leg.
           UPDATE: He can lift 600 lbs with EACH tendril and with both he can lift/press
           almost 1500 lbs.  Seth also has developed fine contol over the tendrils and can
           make basic shapes and manipulate very small items.  It also seems he gets some
           sort of senory data (touch?) through the tendrils.  The effective range is about
           100 Yards.  Anything beyond that  and he loses the ability to control them (they
           are just blasts at that pount).  In addition, he can now use them as locomotion by
           extending them, latching on to something, and retracting.  Which moves him very
           quickly.  He managed to create a 'sonic boom' when moving (after all, he moves at
           "the speed of dark.")  Seth can also extend tendrils with-out using his hands.

- Dark Vision: Seth needs absolutely no light to see.  To him, the dark radiates like the light.  Different sides of the same coin.

Non Mutant Abilities:
As a kid in high school, Seth has not really developed a lot of specialized skills but he is good at basketball.  Seth enjoys reading. He also likes board games.  The more complicated, the better.  Fortunately, no one has introduced him to role-playing games yet.  Music was required at his old home, and while he has a passible singing voice, he can play the piano and is trying to learn how to play the guitar (“Because it’s cool!”)

Weaknesses:
He is constantly exuding dark energy at low levels.  So, his power can be usually seen. He is less powerful in full sun or bright lights. Since he has never been in contact with sunlight he has almost no melanin.  So, if his field goes down, or there is more light than he is out-putting Dark, he can get skin damage…second degree burns in minutes.

Equipment:
Seth never really felt ownership of anything.  He does, however, have a silver necklace that has a cross in a circle that he got as a going away gift from Susan and over a dozen Friendship Bracelets given to him by various siblings over the years.  David and Susan also let him keep the beat up guitar he is trying learn how to play.

Previous History:
Seth went right into the foster care system from the hospital as his teenaged mother died in the ER giving birth after a car accident.  She had no ID but gave her name as Laura Downton and told the staff to “save my Baby Seth.”  There was no other people with her and all searches regarding the girl came back with nothing.

He was raised at Crossnore School and Childrens’ Home* in Winston-Salam, NC.  While his "siblings" rotated out, he had the same guardians (Susan and David) until he left.  He lived in a "family unit" and the school itself is considered to be exemplary.  Outstripping even the most prestigious  private schools in the area.

His powers emerged at age 11 when he fell down stairs into the dark basement and his Dark Energy shield went up before he cracked his head on the concrete.  Seth lucked out in that David’s brother was a mutant.  So, the response was less fearful and more concerned.  It became kind of an open secret and some of the other kids thought it was cool that their ‘brother’ could see in the dark.  Not all of them, of course.  He did get into a few scraps for being ‘too different’.  To his credit, he didn’t use his powers to attack back.  Although he did strengthen his shield enough to not really get hurt and he did throw a couple punches of his own.

As his powers intensified, however, his guardians grew worried and the school administration could no longer purposely ignore Seth.  Instead of quietly shunting him into the regular foster care system, David reached out through his brother to the Xavier Institute.  After several rounds of phone calls and an interview (not of Seth but for the school.  Susan wanted to make sure the place was good enough for Seth) Seth’s guardianship was transferred to Xavier’s School for the Talented and Gifted.

(*Based on a real place.  Children are raised in Cottages with two ‘loving adults’ trained as caregivers and between 3-5 other children.)