Post by Ororo Munroe on Aug 28, 2009 22:00:42 GMT -5
Player name: jj
Contact Info: aim
Basic Character Information
Type: Canon mutant adaptation
Full name: Ororo Munroe
Goes by: Ororo, 'Ro
Code name(s)/Alias(es): Storm, Beautiful Windrider
Gender: Female
Age/Birth date: Eighteen; 1 May
Place of birth: Harlem, New York City, New York, USA
Hometown: Cairo, Egypt; later the plains of the Serengeti in Tanzania and Kenya; currently Bayville, New York, USA.
Height: 5'11" (180.3 cm)
Weight: 159 lbs (72.12 kg; 11 st, 5 lbs)
Hair: White
Eyes: Blue, sometimes white
Education: Twelfth year, currently a senior in high school.
Occupation: Student
Family:
Father - David Munroe, deceased
Mother - N'Dare Munroe, deceased
Criminal record/Citizenship: Citizen of the United States of America with no criminal record.
Affiliation: Xavier Institute for Gifted Students, X-Men
General Appearance: Ororo, meaning "beautiful", or so she has been known to claim, is as exotic in her physical appearance as she is in name and origin, with a lofty, statuesque bearing and features that would easily fit the accepted definition of elegantly regal. Standing at nearly a full six feet in height, she is notably tall for a girl of any age and carries herself with all of the airs and dignity of a reigning queen; her head always held high and proud and her movements poised and consciously graceful to the point of sublimity. Her build is long limbed and more lean than slender, though hardly boyish or angular at all, with a musculature that is markedly athletic whilst retaining its distinct femininity, particularly in her arms, abdomen and legs. Fine boned and decidedly aristocratic in both bearing and appearance, her countenance is just sharp enough to be considered elegant but not so harshly angular as to be labelled as forbidding or severe, with full lips resting beneath a distinguished nose and a lilting jaw line and chin sweeping gently upward to further refine the shape of her face. Her sculpted cheekbones are markedly defined and highly placed and her face itself is slender and ovular in shape, set above a gracefully arching neck. A pleasant symmetry marks her noble, Junoesque features, which some might find to fit the classical definition of beauty and Ororo herself finds to be flawlessly nonpareil.
Undoubtedly, the first thing that one would notice about Ororo upon seeing her is her unique complexion, which stands out clearly in nearly any crowd. Her skin is smooth, healthy and nearly unblemished, possessing the colour of milk swirled coffee. It should be noted, however, that this in and of itself is neither unique nor overtly remarkable as it is merely a testament to her mixed ethnic heritage. Yet it is the striking contrast of her skin against her hair and eyes that lends her such an obviously sui generis complexion overall, taking even the somewhat pedestrian hue of her skin and lifting it up beyond the norm to flights of chimerical fancy. Instead of the inky black or dark brown that one would typically expect from someone of her noticeably dusky skin tone, her hair is naturally a pure, brightly snowy white; thick, straight and worn long enough to fall down to the curve of her hips. She typically chooses to wear it swept back and over her shoulders so that it is kept out of her face and loose to cascade freely down her back, though sometimes she will put it up or tie it away, either for convenience or as the occasion would demand it. Much like her hair, her eyes aren't typically what one would normally expect from someone of her relatively dark complexion as they are a vividly azure blue – which become a solid, blinding white over the sclera when she uses her mutant abilities – and are visibly striking not just in colour, but in shape as well. They are distinctly Asiatic in appearance, thickly lashed with just the barest hint of a slanting, epicanthic cant defining the unique size and contour of them. Above her eyes are arched a pair of slender, sharply tapering brows, each possessing the same shocking white colour of her hair; however, save for their anomalous colouration they are otherwise unexceptional.
Ororo takes a great amount of care of her appearance and has begun to experiment with different varieties and types of modern cosmetics, which have up until now been completely unavailable to her. However, what little she does choose to wear tends to be lightly applied and natural in shade, not gaudy or ostentatious. Having a fair bit of common sense and experience on the subject, she is well aware that hair as inordinately fair as her own is prone to becoming very dirty, very quickly simply because of its unique colour, and can even grow dull and dingy from something as minor as a bit of dust being kicked up by the wind. As a result of this it is not uncommon to find her fastidiously washing or primping for hours in the bathroom to maintain her meticulous appearance, as she has not yet perfected the control of her mutant abilities to aid her in keeping her hair and skin free of wind born dust. In many ways such an obviously exacting attention to her physical appearance may strike others as being vain and self centred, and in that they would be partially right. She is genuinely vain about her looks – having been repeatedly told throughout her young life how visually striking, even exceptionally beautiful, she is – but it also comes from her deeply conditioned desire to maintain the highest standards of personal hygiene and cleanliness. She is obsessive about keeping herself as perfect as her former position of divinity would demand of her, finding the extra time needed to make sure that her hair and clothes are perfect and just so to be anything but a waste of her effort.
Like her experiments with cosmetics and other such vanities, Ororo is also experimenting with her appearance in regards to clothing and therefore does not as of yet have a set 'style' when it comes to her attire. Therefore, her sense of style and fashion can and sometimes will drastically change from week to week, even day to day; however, she tends to stay away from extremes and will generally keep to what is prominently en vogue. Her own personal tastes lean more towards clothing that are light and airy, being both easy to move about in and comfortable to wear, and preferably made from natural fibres, such as cotton or silk. She has a noted fondness for long, breezy skirts in clean, cool colours and other such forms of loosely flowing clothing as a direct result of that, though she does not limit herself solely to her already established predilections and will also wear more 'sporty' or casual clothing as well. Another more contemporary accessory that she had found a particular weakness for upon her arrival and integration into America are fashionably high heels. While Ororo is most comfortable in bare feet free from fetters or in a pair of elegantly strapped, open toed sandals, heels, preferably tall ones, and the added inches to her already imposing height that they provide have managed to worm their way into the majority of her clothing ensembles, and not even the 'uniform' that she had been issued upon becoming a part of the X-Men is free from them.
Ororo's uniform, like her own natural appearance, is unique in design and singular to her, bearing little resemblance to some of the more generic uniforms that have been issued by the Xavier Institute in everything save for its colour palette. Instead of the traditional full bodysuit style of uniform common among the X-Men, hers comes split into two separate pieces: possessing both a top and a bottom half, both of which are composed of the same, form fitting black material as the standard uniform of the Institute. The top has a high, fitted neckline stopping just below her chin with long sleeves reaching down to her wrists, which is cut in such a way that it leaves just the smooth curve of her shoulders exposed. The waistline of her leggings is slung just low enough to be questionable but high enough to not be overtly risqué, and the leggings themselves are sleek and snug, easily showing off the svelte contours of her legs. Her midriff is left bare, completely exposing her stomach, lower back, waist and flanks. The entire ensemble is finished off with a pair of short opera gloves, a loose belt encircling her hips with the mandatory 'X' logo in black and red, and what could only be called a pair of high, stiletto heeled go-go boots – impractical though they undoubtedly are – all in the X-Men's standard gold motif. With her as always are her ever present earrings: a small yet distinct pair of stylised lightning bolts crafted from gleaming yellow gold, each about a two inches in length, which hang from her singly pierced earlobes.
Personality: Ororo can easily be just as capricious, tempestuous and fickle as her codename might imply, particularly in these trying teenaged years as she adjusts to a completely new society and distinctly modern way of life, but underneath all of that she is a genuinely very caring, even serene young woman. As a result of her rather unorthodox upbringing, she is in some ways mature beyond her years but is at the same time somewhat immature because of it, having grown accustomed to getting what she wants and being revered by pretty much everyone she has ever met. In short, Ororo has one massively epic goddess complex. Massive. Unlike most girls who are pretty and popular in their own common, pitiably banal sort of way, Ororo was worshipped, quite literally, for the majority of her teenage years as a living goddess, and that has left quite the psychological impression on her. It is primarily for that reason that she can seem to be a bit lofty and overly domineering in her personality, often asserting herself and her opinions above others in a manner that could sometimes be considered smugly superior at best, marginally despotic and totalitarian at the worst. She has gotten so used to being attended to and doted upon hand and foot that she has come to think of it as her just and righteous due, and she is still trying to accustom herself to the reality that she is just another normal being now and no longer a living child of the divine.
However, that is not as much of a problem for her as one might initially assume. While Ororo can be a bit abrasive in personality – or conversely detached and even a little naïve or bemused at times, particularly in regards to the day to day trivialities that now plague her American high school existence – the truth is that she is honestly a very warm, kind hearted and even affectionate individual. She was revered not only for her power but for her compassion in using it freely to help others without censure, and although she is far more discreet about that aspect of herself now, her caring, altruistic nature hasn't diminished at all in the slightest. She wants to help people; it drives her and was the reason why she left her native lands to begin with, as were it not for her compassion for others she would have had no desire or reason to leave her people for America. She just doesn't have the experience yet to have perfected the art of lending her suggestions, help and advice to people with any tact, subtlety or diplomacy, which is exactly why she has the habit of appearing to be more high handed and imperious than genuinely warm or helpful to people who do not know her well. The fact that she is a mere adolescent, with everything that would entail, doesn't help her either, as no amount of human empathy or open hearted compassion can keep her from lashing out in a moment of girlish caprice or youthful impetuousness.
Another product of both her youth and her upbringing, Ororo is noticeably cocky and self assured. However, this tends to manifest itself more subtly than either her immodest conceit or her selfless altruism. Although she does not have even a fraction of the control over her powers as she would like, she has a confidence in herself and in her abilities that is distinctly evidenced in everything that she does. Every aspect of her demeanour was and is defined by her self confidence, which some might go as far as to label as arrogance, and that aspect of her personality hasn't changed at all from her time on the plains of the Serengeti to where she is now. Although she has a better understanding of herself now, she still thinks of herself as someone who should be able to live up to her former title, which is evinced by her stalwart determination and the willful, stubbornly mule headed obstinance that possesses her in the face of any adversity. Put more succinctly, Ororo refuses to back down when she feels that her cause is just or that she is in the right; ergo, she rarely backs down from any kind of challenge or confrontation, ever.
Ororo's obsessive dedication applies itself not only to her principles and self imposed standards of conduct, but also to her looks as she is openly quite vain, and most especially to her faith. It should come as no surprise given her past history that she is a deeply spiritual person, but her faith isn't like that of any contemporary religious order, let alone that which is derived from revealed Abrahamic scripture. Ororo is profoundly spiritual, yes, and intensely devoted to her faith, but her spirituality comes from within and from the very nature that surrounds her, not from any sort of human designed dogma or self professed revelation. In her faith she is vaguely shamanistic without being ritual or dogmatic as she follows no prescribed church or organised religion; however, she does openly revere an unnamed, all encompassing goddess figure. She hasn't given her beliefs enough introspection or analytical thought to really ascribe any sort of canon to the divinity that she only refers to as either the "Goddess" or the "Bright Lady", but she has never felt any real need to. She knows her goddess intimately through her heart and through her own personal experiences with her, and does not require anything more than that to know, not just to believe but to truly know, that the Bright Lady is and always shall be with her.
As much as her once formal title has openly affected her personality and attitudes, so too has the manifestation of her mutant abilities left its mark on her psyche. Ororo learned long ago from repeated first hand experience that her abilities are directly tied in with her emotional state, and to this day she still finds herself struggling to maintain a perfect harmony of enduring calm within herself to avoid creating any undue tempests or storms. It is for this reason and this reason alone that she is proud without being haughty or malicious, and is more serene in her demeanour than her typically domineering bearing would normally imply. Her outward serenity is, as a direct result, not an entirely inborn or natural personality trait and is completely calculated and conscious on her part; she goes out of her way to knowingly and purposefully affect this air of soothing tranquillity and poise, even when faced with direct conflict and open hostility. However, because of this concentrated effort she also prefers to surround herself with peace and inherently dislikes discord, finding it to be aberrant to her own sense of harmony as well as to the innate harmony that she attributes to the nature that encompasses them all.
Powers: Ororo is an atmokinetic mutant with the inborn psionic ability to directly control, influence and manipulate the weather, its key elements and other meteorological forces over limited areas on the earth's surface at will. Psionically linked to the earth's atmospheric and weather patterns, she has a full dominance and command over every aspect of the meteorological elements and can use them as she wishes in a variety of ways, both conventional and unique. Through the use of these abilities she is able to manipulate ambient temperature levels both in and out of doors to either raise or lower them, even to a relatively extreme degree, though she is limited to the naturally occurring range and level of temperatures that can be supported by the surface of the earth. She therefore cannot raise or lower the temperature level to such an extreme measure that it would be considered beyond what the earth's surface is naturally capable of engendering on it's own; however, she can induce the temperature to behave in ways that would be considered unnatural, even impossible, by the standards of its specific location, such as lowering the temperature to frigidly sub-freezing arctic levels in the heat of an equatorial desert at high noon, or conversely by raising them to gruelling heights of intense heat in the coldest polar tundra.
Ororo can also summon and consciously direct wind currents in accordance to her will, potentially to the extent where she would be capable of conjuring everything from barely felt zephyrs to powerful, gale force hurricanes of moderate size and range. Beyond just summoning and directing air currents, she can focus this control into blasts of concussive, concentrated air, accurately pinpointed whirlwinds, cyclones and funnels, and even as a form of limited wind shielding created from a dome of compressed air. This latter technique mostly serves to protect her body from flying debris and other airborne objects, which are a naturally occurring effect directly brought forth from the use of her aerokinesis. It can also be regulated to shield herself and others from her own weather effects, such as keeping her stable in the midst of raging winds or dry underneath a roiling tempest. With this near absolute control over the forces of wind and air, she can also physically move or otherwise affect objects without having to resort to touch, and also simulate flight by summoning winds strong enough to support the weight of her body, maintaining lift and manoeuvering herself through the air by hovering and/or gliding on wind power alone. Because of the incredible force of her winds and the limited shielding that they provide, she is capable of comfortably flying as high as the breathable atmosphere would allow at moderately extreme speeds and can maintain a steady top speed of approximately three hundred miles per hour (approx. 483 km/hr) for several hours without tiring.
In addition to her command over wind and the earth's ambient temperature, Ororo can also directly manipulate atmospheric conditions to summon and direct all forms of clouds – or banish them, if she so chooses – which in turn can bring forth a variety of different forms of precipitation, such as rain, snow, sleet and/or hail either singly or combined, in varying degrees of range and intensity. She can completely manipulate the thickness, size, density and darkness of any given cloud cover or precipitation, either naturally occurring or what she has directly summoned herself, and can perform similar feats of stealth with fog or mist over a moderate area of effect. The strength of her precipitation is as varied as that of her aerokinetic control, allowing her to freely summon everything from a gentle drizzle to a torrential, thundering deluge; from a light snowfall to a blinding, frenzied blizzard. She also has a direct control over the size and scope of these incited rainfalls and storms; although she is limited in how large an area she can directly affect, she is more than capable of creating incredibly small, localised rainfalls and other meteorological effects, tiny enough even to water her potted houseplants.
Similar to how she manipulates air and precipitation to create clouds, fog, storms and other weather phenomena of varying levels of intensity, Ororo can also excite the individual electron particles naturally present within the earth's atmosphere to call forth bolts of lightning from the heavens or create volleys of thunder, the latter ranging anywhere from a low, seemingly distant rumble to deafening, sky shattering booms. However, her control over and ability to summon lightning is not at all limited to the surrounding atmosphere. Just as she can summon and direct lightning by pulling it naturally out of the air, she can also create it purely from within her own body, allowing her to discharge powerful blasts of concentrated electrical force generated directly from her hands. Although she cannot completely manipulate or control the flow and/or course of this energy once it has been released and unleashed from her body, she can consciously dissipate the active electrons involved in the blast, thereby completely dispelling the effects of her directed lightning.
Despite the vast array of mutant abilities already held within her sphere of influence and available at her disposal, Ororo also has a number of different passive mutations that function to naturally aid her in a supporting capacity. What appears to be at first glance an immunity to extreme weather conditions is actually an instinctive and unconscious regulation of her body's own internal temperature, which allows her to function normally under the most severe natural temperature extremes, ranging from intense heat to deeply bitter cold. Because of this, she cannot suffer from afflictions that are purely temperature induced, such as heat stroke or frost bite, as long as those temperatures were created by either herself or naturally by the earth. Also, her own sense of self awareness and observative feelings are acutely attuned to the earth's biosphere and its natural patterns, conditions and functions, enabling her to consciously manipulate her own perception and "see", in a manner of speaking, meteorological energy and the myriad elemental factors behind different weather phenomena as a series of consistently changing, yet completely understandable on an instinctive level, patterns. She is incredibly sensitive towards any and all changes in the weather activity of her general vicinity and can consistently predict the natural patterns of the weather for the near future with 100% accuracy.
Weaknesses: Ororo's mutation has gifted her with what could almost be called an pseudo-empathic bond between herself and the primal meteorological forces of the earth's biosphere, allowing her to, essentially, feel the very essence of the earth's natural elements and physically attune herself to them completely. However, her own abilities are strongly tied to her emotional state, whether it be good or bad. When she is stressed, excited, depressed or is in any way overly emotional, she exerts an unconscious manipulation of the weather around her, which reacts accordingly. That is not to say that being happy will bring forth warmth and sunshine whilst being distressed will conjure tempestuous downpours, as regardless of her emotional state the weather will tend to react in exactly the same way: by summoning thick, dark clouds and ominous thunder that threaten to pour rain down upon anyone unfortunate enough to be in her general proximity. Because of this she is forced to keep an extreme measure of control over her emotional state, which she has unfortunately not yet fully mastered as she is still young and learning.
As her mutant abilities are so deeply connected to the earth itself, the effects that they may have in instances where she is no longer planetside – as unlikely and preposterous a situation as that may be – may become drastically different in ways that are impossible to foresee or control, and that is only under the assumption that she does not lose her elemental powers entirely. Also, despite how freely and without restriction she had used her weather manipulation in the past, she simply does not possess the experience to have fully explored, let alone have actively gained a complete control or understanding of, every aspect of her various abilities. Therefore, she suffers from the exact same weaknesses and vulnerabilities that any other young, untrained mutant would, in that she is still learning about the full extent of her abilities and what she is truly capable of.
Power Potential: Despite Ororo's already exceptionally varied and impressive array of mutant abilities, she is still at best only an adept at utilising her natural talents of weather control and is as of yet nowhere near full mastery. As such, even with the years of experience she has had to hone her skills, there is still much room for improvement. After sufficient training, she can gain a finely tuned level of elemental and emotional discipline that could potentially increase the range of her meteorological influence, the level of her physical and mental control, as well as the overall power behind her abilities to a significant degree. In addition to an increase in simple 'brute' force behind her already existent abilities, she will gain a more decisive, surgical precision over her mutation, allowing her to directly affect and manipulate temperature by touch as well as through influencing ambient atmospheric conditions. This more exact, more precise level of control will also potentially extend to her other expressions of meteorological influence, as well as to her already instinctive understanding of weather patterns as a whole.
Of particular note is how this greater level of precision would affect her flight. Although Ororo is already a deft and highly competent flier and aerial combatant, she isn't a particularly stealthy one due to her reliance on gliding on powerful winds. After further training and discipline, she will be able to fly virtually soundless and undetectable to the tactile senses by manipulating individual air molecules to such a degree that her movement passes seamlessly through the air. By utilising her aerokinesis in such a fashion, she could even prove herself capable of flying directly past or over a lit candle without visibly affecting the flame in any way, just as easily as she could lunge brashly forward on the waves of a relentless squall.
In addition to her heightened levels of power and control, Ororo's physical form will naturally grow more resistant to weather and similar elemental effects over time, both natural and affected. While her current resistances make her completely immune to her own weather effects and already quite strongly resistant to naturally occurring phenomena, at this moment in her development she can still be adversely affected by abilities of a similar nature from others. Over time, this will lessen as she gains further mastery of her mutant abilities. This will prove particularly true in regards to electrical based trauma, much of which she will eventually be able to possibly counter or redirect if given enough advance warning; not by grounding it through her body itself, but by psionically affecting the individual electrons to disperse the electricity as a semi-instinctive means of defence. However, that is not to say that she will be able to build a solid immunity against any or all forms of outside elemental damage. Exempli gratia: heat and cold beyond the earth's own naturally occurring temperature extremes can and will still adversely affect or damage her outright, despite her body's inherent physiological resistances, and she can neither redirect nor counter any electrical based assault without clear forewarning and the time to make full use of it.
History: Nineteen years ago underneath the endless blue sky over the plains surrounding the Maasai Mara, a young, outgoing African-American photojournalist by the name of David Munroe summoned the courage to ask N'Dare, a lovely Kenyan princess from one of the local tribes that he had defied convention by daring to court, to marry him. To his exultant surprise and unrelenting joy she said yes and after a traditional marriage overseen by her father and a blissful honeymoon spent admiring the natural beauty of the Serengeti, the young couple moved back to his native New York City, settling in his modest, though comfortable, 112th Street, Harlem residence. Within the year their first and only child was born, a daughter whom N'Dare chose to name Ororo, meaning "beautiful" in the language of her people. David was shocked at first by his infant daughter's striking appearance, having never seen a child with such strange and unique physical features before. But his wife, who was dark haired and dark eyed and therefore did not share the same exotic complexion of her child, understood their significance and explained to him that they were inherited features that had been passed down through her maternal bloodline over countless generations. She assured him that they were the physical marks of her maternal ancestors made flesh, who were claimed in myth and long sung oral tradition to be an ancient and powerful line of spell weaving priestesses, said to be descended from the legendary Egyptian sorceress, Ashake. As amazing and incredible as it always was to hear about the history and culture of his wife's native people, whether any of this fantastical oral genealogy was true or not mattered very little to David; all he knew was that he had the best job and the most beautiful wife and daughter in the whole wide world, and with that he couldn't possibly be any happier.
The infant Ororo spent the earliest months of her life in that modest Harlem town home with her parents in relative obscurity, being too young to do much of anything of note. When she was just shy of six months old her father received a new assignment that took his family back to her mother's native Africa, though Cairo was still considerably far from home, being more than two thousand miles away from her ancestral lands of the wide Kenyan plains. It was there, in Egypt's sprawling capital city, that Ororo spent the formative years of her early childhood, living in innocent domestic bliss with her parents until the eve of her sixth year. If was in that fateful year that a nearby Arab-Israeli conflict spiralled out of control and sent a damaged paramilitary plane hurtling into the Munroe's otherwise quiet neighbourhood, which tore itself directly into and through their house with such violence and raging fury that it killed both of her parents instantly. As for Ororo, her young life was spared but she was left buried alive under piles of rubble, which were all that remained of her former home, all alone save for the company of her dead mother's lifeless, blood spattered corpse.
To say that the girl was deeply scarred by so traumatic an experience is an understatement to the extreme.
Ororo, trapped alone in the near dark and too young to fully comprehend what was truly happening, called out to her dead mother over and over again in vain, but the woman never replied. Having no accurate perception of time, again because of her circumstances and as a consequence of being so young of age, she had no real idea as to how long she was trapped but it felt like an eternity, and slowly but surely her mind slipped away into the depths of madness as no amount of scraping, clawing or digging seemed to be helping her to escape. It was by a sheer miracle that she had enough air to not die of asphyxiation during her struggles to free herself from her destroyed house, which had for many days now stopped being a home for her and had become a veritable prison. Or worse still, a tomb.
Finally, after nearly three days of mindless digging the girl had somehow managed to free herself, pushing away the last small piece of rubble – for at her age it was impossible to move all but the smallest and lightest of obstacles in her way – with her torn and bloodied hands to emerge freely, albeit dirty, wounded and half mad, on top of the wreckage of her shattered life. All that she had left of her former life were fond, yet already distant memories of her parents and a large, oval shaped, ruby coloured crystal clutched tightly in her small, grubby fingers, which had, like her unique features, been passed down through the generations of her mother's maternal bloodline. It was the only tangible memory she had left of her parents so she held onto it dearly, refusing to sell, barter or part with it for any reason.
Parentless, friendless and completely, utterly alone, Ororo aimlessly wandered the streets of Cairo as another nameless, faceless war orphan, fending for herself and doing whatever she could to survive. The ancient capital was not a city that was kind to orphaned children but somehow she managed to scrape, steal or beg a meagre living, just barely enough to get by, and it was in this precarious hand-to-mouth fashion that she spent the next long, too long, seven years of her life. It was a hard, crushingly lonely existence and one that was made even more difficult because of her strange appearance, and she was often taunted by the other street children – many of them orphans of the same conflict that had killed her own parents, among others – for her dirty, yet still shocking white hair and strange eyes. However, she was primarily left to her own devices for that very same reason, believing to be bad luck given human form, and over the years she had managed to elude both adults and fellow urchins alike with her quick thinking and quicker feet.
Sometimes foraging, sometimes begging, sometimes stealing outright, Ororo did whatever it took to feed and clothe herself as she grew up from her fractured childhood and entered into her pre-teen years. She was now twelve years old and an adept at surviving from years spent alone on the streets of Cairo, and although she had never embraced it like some of her fellow urchins turned professional thieves had, she was no stranger to the harsh realities of her forced lifestyle. It was at this tender age that she had the sudden and irresistible urge to leave the fetid underbelly of the city that had been her home and her bane for so many years and she headed south, away from the cramped and filthy Cairo slums and towards the wide open plains that defined the ancestral homelands of her mother's people. Travelling by foot across the vast white sands of the Sahara desert on her journey southward, she nearly died from starvation, dehydration and exposure as a matter of course, but pressed onward towards the plains, managing it through sheer stubborn willpower and an instinctive, unknowing use of her newly burgeoning mutant abilities.
It was a gruelling, two thousand mile odyssey and it took her more than a year to reach the plains of the Serengeti under the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, which was where her mutant powers first fully manifested themselves. It was there that she began to consciously explore her newfound influence over the weather, learning how to better hone and harness those powerful elemental forces for both her own benefit and for the benefit of the local tribesmen, who had come to worship and venerate her as a living Goddess of Storms. However, although she was revered as a goddess Ororo was still very much so a child, and one that was only beginning to understand the full scope of her incredible abilities. In this transitional state between being a young girl and a living divinity, she was taken under the wing of and unofficially adopted by an elderly tribal woman named Ainet, who helped her to responsibly use her intricate power over the weather for the betterment of all of the local peoples.
Officially deified and gifted with a new title, the Beautiful Windrider, Ororo spent the years of her early adolescence with the various local tribes of the Serengeti Plains and the Maasai Mara, using her abilities whenever and however she could to help them by ensuring that they suffered neither drought nor floods. She became a common fixture for many of the local tribes, who loved and cherished her for her ability to consistently bring forth bountiful harvests year after year without fail. However, upon the realisation that her powers were strongly connected to her emotional state she left the tribes that had so welcomed her, choosing not to live with any of them in an effort to protect them from any potential storms that would be caused by her emotional outbursts. Despite this, out of deference and respect for her control over the elements she was still amply provided for and taken care of by her loyal 'worshippers', and was never again forced to know the suffering of true loneliness or feel the cold, cruel pangs of starvation gnawing at her belly. Instead she grew and she flourished on the wild grasslands under their care and her own soaring freedom and was later gifted with a crafted tiara of curious black metal upon her coming of age, which she constantly wore as a symbol of her divinity alongside her mother's ruby crystal.
Ororo was still living in this fashion, existing in wild harmony with the local tribes and with the very earth herself, when her world was uprooted and altered forever by the visit of an odd, yet clearly well to do American gentleman, one Professor Charles Xavier. He had heard incredible stories of the Serengeti's young Storm Goddess during his travels abroad and had ventured into her protected lands in the effort to personally seek her out and meet her for himself, suspecting rightly that she was not a goddess given human form at all, but was in fact another mutant. Upon finding her he informed her as to her true nature and tried to convince her to return to America with him, claiming that she would be able to reach so many more people in need of her help as part of his Institute than she would ever be able to whilst remaining in the provincial wilds of deep Africa. Ororo was at first staunchly unconvinced by his claims but quickly began to believe him when he revealed to her his own mutant abilities, proving to her that just like his own telepathy, her abilities were biological, not divine in origin. Understanding now that he was right and on the urging of the local tribes, who were saddened by the thought of losing their Beautiful Windrider but wanted what they felt was best for her, she accepted the Professor's kind offer and agreed to accompany him back to America as his temporary ward. Later, in the autumn of that year, she was enrolled in Bayville High School as a senior – after taking an extensive and telepathically aided crash course in remedial education to get her up to a reasonable first world standard, of course – and became the fifth young mutant to join his fledgling X-Men under the codename Storm, forever abandoning her old life as a street urchin turned third world goddess for that of a modern, American teenager.
Other: As a by-product of her misspent childhood, Ororo is very agile and swift with her hands and on her feet, and with training has the potential to put this learned survival skill to use as a dancer, acrobat or skilled hand to hand combatant. In addition to this, she has already started to finely hone her inherent leadership qualities, which are a direct result of the years that she had spent governing, in a manner of speaking, the various tribes that she had lived with as a teenager. She is also fully trilingual, being fluent in American English, Modern Standard Arabic and Kiswahili, and carries a slightly lilting accent because of it. She can speak a paltry smattering from various, 'unofficial' tribal languages as well, primarily from the Nilotic linguistic group, such as the Maasai or Kalenjin dialects, though hardly fluently.
Additionally, Ororo is a naturally very avid and skillful gardener, being quite adept in taking care of a wide variety of plants both in and out of doors. It is something that she takes a good measure of pride in, believing it to be a tranquil and highly pleasant activity, as well as one that is personally rewarding. Due to her active connection to the earth's biosphere and her own particular brand of animistic faith, she also keeps to a strict vegetarian diet. Her reasons for not eating meat or fish are both moral and deeply spiritual, but as they are completely personal she feels no need to condemn or judge others for their own dietary habits, no matter how omnivorous.
Because of the severe physical and emotional trauma that she had suffered as a child, Ororo is extremely claustrophobic and will quickly devolve into an animalistic frenzy when trapped in any small, moderately enclosed space. Also, she still possesses both her black tiara and her mother's ruby crystal but she no longer commonly wears either accessory, choosing to instead keep them safely tucked away in a plain wooden box in her room.
Sample RP: Ororo lounged idly in the tall grasses underneath the shade of a small mugunga tree, her body limp and relaxed with her arms spread out widely to either side, almost as if she was trying to embrace the sky. A thin, loose fitting kanga in brightly patterned red and violet swathed her reclining form and she curled her bare toes into the dirt at her feet, enjoying the feel of the smooth, dry soil dusting over her skin. The sun was warm overhead, placed high in the sky without any cloud cover to mute its rays, but a gentle breeze wafted over the plains, relieving some of the oppressive midday heat. The cloyingly sweet smell of flowering acacia in full bloom filled her nose with every deep breath and all around her the grass whispered, tangling in her outspread hair and clothes and tickling over every inch of her exposed skin.
It was a pleasant day. A lazy day; perfect for lying about or doing nothing at all, and Ororo could think of no reason not to oblige it. Smiling softly to herself in quiet contentment, she closed her eyes and stretched out all of her limbs before relaxing again, her body shifting in an instinctive attempt to find the most comfortable position to nap in. As busy and needed as she usually almost always was, it still seemed like the most worthwhile use of her time at the moment. There was simply nothing else for her to do; no tribes in need of her counsel or aid, no pressing concerns that required her direct attention. The plains and its peoples – her people – were well, thriving in the natural harmony that she had so come to love and adapting well to the recent changing of the seasons. Even the weather itself was calm and forgiving, warm and dry but not dangerously so, and would appear to remain as such for as long as she cared to check.
In short, Ororo was unneeded and was therefore free to do whatever she pleased without care or censure, as would suitably befit a goddess of her exalted standing. If that meant that it was time to waste the day away by napping under the sun, then so be it. The goddess has spoken, her decision made and her order decreed, even if it was only to herself.
Ororo was well into her nap when she was awakened by an oddly rumbling sound; one that was curious not for being completely alien to her ears but for being so uncommonly heard of this far into the wild, untamed plains of her adopted homeland. It was a motorised vehicle, a jeep, and stranger still, it was heading straight for her peaceful little tree. A rush of annoyance flushed through her at the thought of being so abruptly awoken from what had been a truly pleasant and well earned rest but she quickly suppressed the ill feelings before they could grow any further, calming them into a more subtly thrumming irritation. Still, there was no way she could go back to resting now so she pushed herself up off of the ground with a pouting sigh, whirling around to face the loud, mechanical beast that had dared to intrude upon and ruin her peaceful afternoon nap.
Folding her arms firmly across the front of her chest, she watched with a small, childishly put upon frown as the jeep approached ever closer, the brightly coloured glass beads woven into her long hair tinkling against each other as they resettled over her bare shoulders. She didn't move even as the vehicle stopped a mere twenty paces in front of her, it's doors opening to reveal two men that she had never seen before: a tall, dark skinned man of native extraction and another, far lighter one dressed all in khaki, obviously a foreigner. Both men were completely bald and the latter had to be helped into an odd chair with wheels before they could continue to come and further approach her, which they did with the kind of informal impunity that was usually reserved only for Ainet and the others of whom she had taken into her closest confidences.
Ororo tilted her head back with a casually imperious air as she waited for these strange men to come forward and state their business with her, or at the very least apologise for so rudely waking her up. The first man, kinsmen by blood even if no longer of any local tribe, hung back but the second wheeled forward until he was nearly within arms' reach, his smile open and genuine as he looked up at her with eyes as clear and warm and blue as the summer sky. Clearly, this strange foreigner neither knew who, and more importantly what, she was nor was he put off by her wary and coolly aloof stance, as was evinced by the hand that he had smoothly raised up towards her, his palm held open in both greeting and invitation.
"Greetings, Windrider," he spoke in English, a language that she still remembered from her early childhood in Cairo, yet no longer had any real or practical use for on the plains. "My name is Charles Xavier...but hopefully, you may come to know me as the Professor."
Activity: I'll post whenever I can and I should be able to visit the site at least once a day.
Avatar credit: Chris Bachalo, Tim Townsend, Andy Owens, Aaron Sowd and Paul Mounts; originally scanned from Ultimate War #4, published April 2003 by Marvel Publishing Inc.
Contact Info: aim
Basic Character Information
Type: Canon mutant adaptation
Full name: Ororo Munroe
Goes by: Ororo, 'Ro
Code name(s)/Alias(es): Storm, Beautiful Windrider
Gender: Female
Age/Birth date: Eighteen; 1 May
Place of birth: Harlem, New York City, New York, USA
Hometown: Cairo, Egypt; later the plains of the Serengeti in Tanzania and Kenya; currently Bayville, New York, USA.
Height: 5'11" (180.3 cm)
Weight: 159 lbs (72.12 kg; 11 st, 5 lbs)
Hair: White
Eyes: Blue, sometimes white
Education: Twelfth year, currently a senior in high school.
Occupation: Student
Family:
Father - David Munroe, deceased
Mother - N'Dare Munroe, deceased
Criminal record/Citizenship: Citizen of the United States of America with no criminal record.
Affiliation: Xavier Institute for Gifted Students, X-Men
General Appearance: Ororo, meaning "beautiful", or so she has been known to claim, is as exotic in her physical appearance as she is in name and origin, with a lofty, statuesque bearing and features that would easily fit the accepted definition of elegantly regal. Standing at nearly a full six feet in height, she is notably tall for a girl of any age and carries herself with all of the airs and dignity of a reigning queen; her head always held high and proud and her movements poised and consciously graceful to the point of sublimity. Her build is long limbed and more lean than slender, though hardly boyish or angular at all, with a musculature that is markedly athletic whilst retaining its distinct femininity, particularly in her arms, abdomen and legs. Fine boned and decidedly aristocratic in both bearing and appearance, her countenance is just sharp enough to be considered elegant but not so harshly angular as to be labelled as forbidding or severe, with full lips resting beneath a distinguished nose and a lilting jaw line and chin sweeping gently upward to further refine the shape of her face. Her sculpted cheekbones are markedly defined and highly placed and her face itself is slender and ovular in shape, set above a gracefully arching neck. A pleasant symmetry marks her noble, Junoesque features, which some might find to fit the classical definition of beauty and Ororo herself finds to be flawlessly nonpareil.
Undoubtedly, the first thing that one would notice about Ororo upon seeing her is her unique complexion, which stands out clearly in nearly any crowd. Her skin is smooth, healthy and nearly unblemished, possessing the colour of milk swirled coffee. It should be noted, however, that this in and of itself is neither unique nor overtly remarkable as it is merely a testament to her mixed ethnic heritage. Yet it is the striking contrast of her skin against her hair and eyes that lends her such an obviously sui generis complexion overall, taking even the somewhat pedestrian hue of her skin and lifting it up beyond the norm to flights of chimerical fancy. Instead of the inky black or dark brown that one would typically expect from someone of her noticeably dusky skin tone, her hair is naturally a pure, brightly snowy white; thick, straight and worn long enough to fall down to the curve of her hips. She typically chooses to wear it swept back and over her shoulders so that it is kept out of her face and loose to cascade freely down her back, though sometimes she will put it up or tie it away, either for convenience or as the occasion would demand it. Much like her hair, her eyes aren't typically what one would normally expect from someone of her relatively dark complexion as they are a vividly azure blue – which become a solid, blinding white over the sclera when she uses her mutant abilities – and are visibly striking not just in colour, but in shape as well. They are distinctly Asiatic in appearance, thickly lashed with just the barest hint of a slanting, epicanthic cant defining the unique size and contour of them. Above her eyes are arched a pair of slender, sharply tapering brows, each possessing the same shocking white colour of her hair; however, save for their anomalous colouration they are otherwise unexceptional.
Ororo takes a great amount of care of her appearance and has begun to experiment with different varieties and types of modern cosmetics, which have up until now been completely unavailable to her. However, what little she does choose to wear tends to be lightly applied and natural in shade, not gaudy or ostentatious. Having a fair bit of common sense and experience on the subject, she is well aware that hair as inordinately fair as her own is prone to becoming very dirty, very quickly simply because of its unique colour, and can even grow dull and dingy from something as minor as a bit of dust being kicked up by the wind. As a result of this it is not uncommon to find her fastidiously washing or primping for hours in the bathroom to maintain her meticulous appearance, as she has not yet perfected the control of her mutant abilities to aid her in keeping her hair and skin free of wind born dust. In many ways such an obviously exacting attention to her physical appearance may strike others as being vain and self centred, and in that they would be partially right. She is genuinely vain about her looks – having been repeatedly told throughout her young life how visually striking, even exceptionally beautiful, she is – but it also comes from her deeply conditioned desire to maintain the highest standards of personal hygiene and cleanliness. She is obsessive about keeping herself as perfect as her former position of divinity would demand of her, finding the extra time needed to make sure that her hair and clothes are perfect and just so to be anything but a waste of her effort.
Like her experiments with cosmetics and other such vanities, Ororo is also experimenting with her appearance in regards to clothing and therefore does not as of yet have a set 'style' when it comes to her attire. Therefore, her sense of style and fashion can and sometimes will drastically change from week to week, even day to day; however, she tends to stay away from extremes and will generally keep to what is prominently en vogue. Her own personal tastes lean more towards clothing that are light and airy, being both easy to move about in and comfortable to wear, and preferably made from natural fibres, such as cotton or silk. She has a noted fondness for long, breezy skirts in clean, cool colours and other such forms of loosely flowing clothing as a direct result of that, though she does not limit herself solely to her already established predilections and will also wear more 'sporty' or casual clothing as well. Another more contemporary accessory that she had found a particular weakness for upon her arrival and integration into America are fashionably high heels. While Ororo is most comfortable in bare feet free from fetters or in a pair of elegantly strapped, open toed sandals, heels, preferably tall ones, and the added inches to her already imposing height that they provide have managed to worm their way into the majority of her clothing ensembles, and not even the 'uniform' that she had been issued upon becoming a part of the X-Men is free from them.
Ororo's uniform, like her own natural appearance, is unique in design and singular to her, bearing little resemblance to some of the more generic uniforms that have been issued by the Xavier Institute in everything save for its colour palette. Instead of the traditional full bodysuit style of uniform common among the X-Men, hers comes split into two separate pieces: possessing both a top and a bottom half, both of which are composed of the same, form fitting black material as the standard uniform of the Institute. The top has a high, fitted neckline stopping just below her chin with long sleeves reaching down to her wrists, which is cut in such a way that it leaves just the smooth curve of her shoulders exposed. The waistline of her leggings is slung just low enough to be questionable but high enough to not be overtly risqué, and the leggings themselves are sleek and snug, easily showing off the svelte contours of her legs. Her midriff is left bare, completely exposing her stomach, lower back, waist and flanks. The entire ensemble is finished off with a pair of short opera gloves, a loose belt encircling her hips with the mandatory 'X' logo in black and red, and what could only be called a pair of high, stiletto heeled go-go boots – impractical though they undoubtedly are – all in the X-Men's standard gold motif. With her as always are her ever present earrings: a small yet distinct pair of stylised lightning bolts crafted from gleaming yellow gold, each about a two inches in length, which hang from her singly pierced earlobes.
Personality: Ororo can easily be just as capricious, tempestuous and fickle as her codename might imply, particularly in these trying teenaged years as she adjusts to a completely new society and distinctly modern way of life, but underneath all of that she is a genuinely very caring, even serene young woman. As a result of her rather unorthodox upbringing, she is in some ways mature beyond her years but is at the same time somewhat immature because of it, having grown accustomed to getting what she wants and being revered by pretty much everyone she has ever met. In short, Ororo has one massively epic goddess complex. Massive. Unlike most girls who are pretty and popular in their own common, pitiably banal sort of way, Ororo was worshipped, quite literally, for the majority of her teenage years as a living goddess, and that has left quite the psychological impression on her. It is primarily for that reason that she can seem to be a bit lofty and overly domineering in her personality, often asserting herself and her opinions above others in a manner that could sometimes be considered smugly superior at best, marginally despotic and totalitarian at the worst. She has gotten so used to being attended to and doted upon hand and foot that she has come to think of it as her just and righteous due, and she is still trying to accustom herself to the reality that she is just another normal being now and no longer a living child of the divine.
However, that is not as much of a problem for her as one might initially assume. While Ororo can be a bit abrasive in personality – or conversely detached and even a little naïve or bemused at times, particularly in regards to the day to day trivialities that now plague her American high school existence – the truth is that she is honestly a very warm, kind hearted and even affectionate individual. She was revered not only for her power but for her compassion in using it freely to help others without censure, and although she is far more discreet about that aspect of herself now, her caring, altruistic nature hasn't diminished at all in the slightest. She wants to help people; it drives her and was the reason why she left her native lands to begin with, as were it not for her compassion for others she would have had no desire or reason to leave her people for America. She just doesn't have the experience yet to have perfected the art of lending her suggestions, help and advice to people with any tact, subtlety or diplomacy, which is exactly why she has the habit of appearing to be more high handed and imperious than genuinely warm or helpful to people who do not know her well. The fact that she is a mere adolescent, with everything that would entail, doesn't help her either, as no amount of human empathy or open hearted compassion can keep her from lashing out in a moment of girlish caprice or youthful impetuousness.
Another product of both her youth and her upbringing, Ororo is noticeably cocky and self assured. However, this tends to manifest itself more subtly than either her immodest conceit or her selfless altruism. Although she does not have even a fraction of the control over her powers as she would like, she has a confidence in herself and in her abilities that is distinctly evidenced in everything that she does. Every aspect of her demeanour was and is defined by her self confidence, which some might go as far as to label as arrogance, and that aspect of her personality hasn't changed at all from her time on the plains of the Serengeti to where she is now. Although she has a better understanding of herself now, she still thinks of herself as someone who should be able to live up to her former title, which is evinced by her stalwart determination and the willful, stubbornly mule headed obstinance that possesses her in the face of any adversity. Put more succinctly, Ororo refuses to back down when she feels that her cause is just or that she is in the right; ergo, she rarely backs down from any kind of challenge or confrontation, ever.
Ororo's obsessive dedication applies itself not only to her principles and self imposed standards of conduct, but also to her looks as she is openly quite vain, and most especially to her faith. It should come as no surprise given her past history that she is a deeply spiritual person, but her faith isn't like that of any contemporary religious order, let alone that which is derived from revealed Abrahamic scripture. Ororo is profoundly spiritual, yes, and intensely devoted to her faith, but her spirituality comes from within and from the very nature that surrounds her, not from any sort of human designed dogma or self professed revelation. In her faith she is vaguely shamanistic without being ritual or dogmatic as she follows no prescribed church or organised religion; however, she does openly revere an unnamed, all encompassing goddess figure. She hasn't given her beliefs enough introspection or analytical thought to really ascribe any sort of canon to the divinity that she only refers to as either the "Goddess" or the "Bright Lady", but she has never felt any real need to. She knows her goddess intimately through her heart and through her own personal experiences with her, and does not require anything more than that to know, not just to believe but to truly know, that the Bright Lady is and always shall be with her.
As much as her once formal title has openly affected her personality and attitudes, so too has the manifestation of her mutant abilities left its mark on her psyche. Ororo learned long ago from repeated first hand experience that her abilities are directly tied in with her emotional state, and to this day she still finds herself struggling to maintain a perfect harmony of enduring calm within herself to avoid creating any undue tempests or storms. It is for this reason and this reason alone that she is proud without being haughty or malicious, and is more serene in her demeanour than her typically domineering bearing would normally imply. Her outward serenity is, as a direct result, not an entirely inborn or natural personality trait and is completely calculated and conscious on her part; she goes out of her way to knowingly and purposefully affect this air of soothing tranquillity and poise, even when faced with direct conflict and open hostility. However, because of this concentrated effort she also prefers to surround herself with peace and inherently dislikes discord, finding it to be aberrant to her own sense of harmony as well as to the innate harmony that she attributes to the nature that encompasses them all.
Powers: Ororo is an atmokinetic mutant with the inborn psionic ability to directly control, influence and manipulate the weather, its key elements and other meteorological forces over limited areas on the earth's surface at will. Psionically linked to the earth's atmospheric and weather patterns, she has a full dominance and command over every aspect of the meteorological elements and can use them as she wishes in a variety of ways, both conventional and unique. Through the use of these abilities she is able to manipulate ambient temperature levels both in and out of doors to either raise or lower them, even to a relatively extreme degree, though she is limited to the naturally occurring range and level of temperatures that can be supported by the surface of the earth. She therefore cannot raise or lower the temperature level to such an extreme measure that it would be considered beyond what the earth's surface is naturally capable of engendering on it's own; however, she can induce the temperature to behave in ways that would be considered unnatural, even impossible, by the standards of its specific location, such as lowering the temperature to frigidly sub-freezing arctic levels in the heat of an equatorial desert at high noon, or conversely by raising them to gruelling heights of intense heat in the coldest polar tundra.
Ororo can also summon and consciously direct wind currents in accordance to her will, potentially to the extent where she would be capable of conjuring everything from barely felt zephyrs to powerful, gale force hurricanes of moderate size and range. Beyond just summoning and directing air currents, she can focus this control into blasts of concussive, concentrated air, accurately pinpointed whirlwinds, cyclones and funnels, and even as a form of limited wind shielding created from a dome of compressed air. This latter technique mostly serves to protect her body from flying debris and other airborne objects, which are a naturally occurring effect directly brought forth from the use of her aerokinesis. It can also be regulated to shield herself and others from her own weather effects, such as keeping her stable in the midst of raging winds or dry underneath a roiling tempest. With this near absolute control over the forces of wind and air, she can also physically move or otherwise affect objects without having to resort to touch, and also simulate flight by summoning winds strong enough to support the weight of her body, maintaining lift and manoeuvering herself through the air by hovering and/or gliding on wind power alone. Because of the incredible force of her winds and the limited shielding that they provide, she is capable of comfortably flying as high as the breathable atmosphere would allow at moderately extreme speeds and can maintain a steady top speed of approximately three hundred miles per hour (approx. 483 km/hr) for several hours without tiring.
In addition to her command over wind and the earth's ambient temperature, Ororo can also directly manipulate atmospheric conditions to summon and direct all forms of clouds – or banish them, if she so chooses – which in turn can bring forth a variety of different forms of precipitation, such as rain, snow, sleet and/or hail either singly or combined, in varying degrees of range and intensity. She can completely manipulate the thickness, size, density and darkness of any given cloud cover or precipitation, either naturally occurring or what she has directly summoned herself, and can perform similar feats of stealth with fog or mist over a moderate area of effect. The strength of her precipitation is as varied as that of her aerokinetic control, allowing her to freely summon everything from a gentle drizzle to a torrential, thundering deluge; from a light snowfall to a blinding, frenzied blizzard. She also has a direct control over the size and scope of these incited rainfalls and storms; although she is limited in how large an area she can directly affect, she is more than capable of creating incredibly small, localised rainfalls and other meteorological effects, tiny enough even to water her potted houseplants.
Similar to how she manipulates air and precipitation to create clouds, fog, storms and other weather phenomena of varying levels of intensity, Ororo can also excite the individual electron particles naturally present within the earth's atmosphere to call forth bolts of lightning from the heavens or create volleys of thunder, the latter ranging anywhere from a low, seemingly distant rumble to deafening, sky shattering booms. However, her control over and ability to summon lightning is not at all limited to the surrounding atmosphere. Just as she can summon and direct lightning by pulling it naturally out of the air, she can also create it purely from within her own body, allowing her to discharge powerful blasts of concentrated electrical force generated directly from her hands. Although she cannot completely manipulate or control the flow and/or course of this energy once it has been released and unleashed from her body, she can consciously dissipate the active electrons involved in the blast, thereby completely dispelling the effects of her directed lightning.
Despite the vast array of mutant abilities already held within her sphere of influence and available at her disposal, Ororo also has a number of different passive mutations that function to naturally aid her in a supporting capacity. What appears to be at first glance an immunity to extreme weather conditions is actually an instinctive and unconscious regulation of her body's own internal temperature, which allows her to function normally under the most severe natural temperature extremes, ranging from intense heat to deeply bitter cold. Because of this, she cannot suffer from afflictions that are purely temperature induced, such as heat stroke or frost bite, as long as those temperatures were created by either herself or naturally by the earth. Also, her own sense of self awareness and observative feelings are acutely attuned to the earth's biosphere and its natural patterns, conditions and functions, enabling her to consciously manipulate her own perception and "see", in a manner of speaking, meteorological energy and the myriad elemental factors behind different weather phenomena as a series of consistently changing, yet completely understandable on an instinctive level, patterns. She is incredibly sensitive towards any and all changes in the weather activity of her general vicinity and can consistently predict the natural patterns of the weather for the near future with 100% accuracy.
Weaknesses: Ororo's mutation has gifted her with what could almost be called an pseudo-empathic bond between herself and the primal meteorological forces of the earth's biosphere, allowing her to, essentially, feel the very essence of the earth's natural elements and physically attune herself to them completely. However, her own abilities are strongly tied to her emotional state, whether it be good or bad. When she is stressed, excited, depressed or is in any way overly emotional, she exerts an unconscious manipulation of the weather around her, which reacts accordingly. That is not to say that being happy will bring forth warmth and sunshine whilst being distressed will conjure tempestuous downpours, as regardless of her emotional state the weather will tend to react in exactly the same way: by summoning thick, dark clouds and ominous thunder that threaten to pour rain down upon anyone unfortunate enough to be in her general proximity. Because of this she is forced to keep an extreme measure of control over her emotional state, which she has unfortunately not yet fully mastered as she is still young and learning.
As her mutant abilities are so deeply connected to the earth itself, the effects that they may have in instances where she is no longer planetside – as unlikely and preposterous a situation as that may be – may become drastically different in ways that are impossible to foresee or control, and that is only under the assumption that she does not lose her elemental powers entirely. Also, despite how freely and without restriction she had used her weather manipulation in the past, she simply does not possess the experience to have fully explored, let alone have actively gained a complete control or understanding of, every aspect of her various abilities. Therefore, she suffers from the exact same weaknesses and vulnerabilities that any other young, untrained mutant would, in that she is still learning about the full extent of her abilities and what she is truly capable of.
Power Potential: Despite Ororo's already exceptionally varied and impressive array of mutant abilities, she is still at best only an adept at utilising her natural talents of weather control and is as of yet nowhere near full mastery. As such, even with the years of experience she has had to hone her skills, there is still much room for improvement. After sufficient training, she can gain a finely tuned level of elemental and emotional discipline that could potentially increase the range of her meteorological influence, the level of her physical and mental control, as well as the overall power behind her abilities to a significant degree. In addition to an increase in simple 'brute' force behind her already existent abilities, she will gain a more decisive, surgical precision over her mutation, allowing her to directly affect and manipulate temperature by touch as well as through influencing ambient atmospheric conditions. This more exact, more precise level of control will also potentially extend to her other expressions of meteorological influence, as well as to her already instinctive understanding of weather patterns as a whole.
Of particular note is how this greater level of precision would affect her flight. Although Ororo is already a deft and highly competent flier and aerial combatant, she isn't a particularly stealthy one due to her reliance on gliding on powerful winds. After further training and discipline, she will be able to fly virtually soundless and undetectable to the tactile senses by manipulating individual air molecules to such a degree that her movement passes seamlessly through the air. By utilising her aerokinesis in such a fashion, she could even prove herself capable of flying directly past or over a lit candle without visibly affecting the flame in any way, just as easily as she could lunge brashly forward on the waves of a relentless squall.
In addition to her heightened levels of power and control, Ororo's physical form will naturally grow more resistant to weather and similar elemental effects over time, both natural and affected. While her current resistances make her completely immune to her own weather effects and already quite strongly resistant to naturally occurring phenomena, at this moment in her development she can still be adversely affected by abilities of a similar nature from others. Over time, this will lessen as she gains further mastery of her mutant abilities. This will prove particularly true in regards to electrical based trauma, much of which she will eventually be able to possibly counter or redirect if given enough advance warning; not by grounding it through her body itself, but by psionically affecting the individual electrons to disperse the electricity as a semi-instinctive means of defence. However, that is not to say that she will be able to build a solid immunity against any or all forms of outside elemental damage. Exempli gratia: heat and cold beyond the earth's own naturally occurring temperature extremes can and will still adversely affect or damage her outright, despite her body's inherent physiological resistances, and she can neither redirect nor counter any electrical based assault without clear forewarning and the time to make full use of it.
History: Nineteen years ago underneath the endless blue sky over the plains surrounding the Maasai Mara, a young, outgoing African-American photojournalist by the name of David Munroe summoned the courage to ask N'Dare, a lovely Kenyan princess from one of the local tribes that he had defied convention by daring to court, to marry him. To his exultant surprise and unrelenting joy she said yes and after a traditional marriage overseen by her father and a blissful honeymoon spent admiring the natural beauty of the Serengeti, the young couple moved back to his native New York City, settling in his modest, though comfortable, 112th Street, Harlem residence. Within the year their first and only child was born, a daughter whom N'Dare chose to name Ororo, meaning "beautiful" in the language of her people. David was shocked at first by his infant daughter's striking appearance, having never seen a child with such strange and unique physical features before. But his wife, who was dark haired and dark eyed and therefore did not share the same exotic complexion of her child, understood their significance and explained to him that they were inherited features that had been passed down through her maternal bloodline over countless generations. She assured him that they were the physical marks of her maternal ancestors made flesh, who were claimed in myth and long sung oral tradition to be an ancient and powerful line of spell weaving priestesses, said to be descended from the legendary Egyptian sorceress, Ashake. As amazing and incredible as it always was to hear about the history and culture of his wife's native people, whether any of this fantastical oral genealogy was true or not mattered very little to David; all he knew was that he had the best job and the most beautiful wife and daughter in the whole wide world, and with that he couldn't possibly be any happier.
The infant Ororo spent the earliest months of her life in that modest Harlem town home with her parents in relative obscurity, being too young to do much of anything of note. When she was just shy of six months old her father received a new assignment that took his family back to her mother's native Africa, though Cairo was still considerably far from home, being more than two thousand miles away from her ancestral lands of the wide Kenyan plains. It was there, in Egypt's sprawling capital city, that Ororo spent the formative years of her early childhood, living in innocent domestic bliss with her parents until the eve of her sixth year. If was in that fateful year that a nearby Arab-Israeli conflict spiralled out of control and sent a damaged paramilitary plane hurtling into the Munroe's otherwise quiet neighbourhood, which tore itself directly into and through their house with such violence and raging fury that it killed both of her parents instantly. As for Ororo, her young life was spared but she was left buried alive under piles of rubble, which were all that remained of her former home, all alone save for the company of her dead mother's lifeless, blood spattered corpse.
To say that the girl was deeply scarred by so traumatic an experience is an understatement to the extreme.
Ororo, trapped alone in the near dark and too young to fully comprehend what was truly happening, called out to her dead mother over and over again in vain, but the woman never replied. Having no accurate perception of time, again because of her circumstances and as a consequence of being so young of age, she had no real idea as to how long she was trapped but it felt like an eternity, and slowly but surely her mind slipped away into the depths of madness as no amount of scraping, clawing or digging seemed to be helping her to escape. It was by a sheer miracle that she had enough air to not die of asphyxiation during her struggles to free herself from her destroyed house, which had for many days now stopped being a home for her and had become a veritable prison. Or worse still, a tomb.
Finally, after nearly three days of mindless digging the girl had somehow managed to free herself, pushing away the last small piece of rubble – for at her age it was impossible to move all but the smallest and lightest of obstacles in her way – with her torn and bloodied hands to emerge freely, albeit dirty, wounded and half mad, on top of the wreckage of her shattered life. All that she had left of her former life were fond, yet already distant memories of her parents and a large, oval shaped, ruby coloured crystal clutched tightly in her small, grubby fingers, which had, like her unique features, been passed down through the generations of her mother's maternal bloodline. It was the only tangible memory she had left of her parents so she held onto it dearly, refusing to sell, barter or part with it for any reason.
Parentless, friendless and completely, utterly alone, Ororo aimlessly wandered the streets of Cairo as another nameless, faceless war orphan, fending for herself and doing whatever she could to survive. The ancient capital was not a city that was kind to orphaned children but somehow she managed to scrape, steal or beg a meagre living, just barely enough to get by, and it was in this precarious hand-to-mouth fashion that she spent the next long, too long, seven years of her life. It was a hard, crushingly lonely existence and one that was made even more difficult because of her strange appearance, and she was often taunted by the other street children – many of them orphans of the same conflict that had killed her own parents, among others – for her dirty, yet still shocking white hair and strange eyes. However, she was primarily left to her own devices for that very same reason, believing to be bad luck given human form, and over the years she had managed to elude both adults and fellow urchins alike with her quick thinking and quicker feet.
Sometimes foraging, sometimes begging, sometimes stealing outright, Ororo did whatever it took to feed and clothe herself as she grew up from her fractured childhood and entered into her pre-teen years. She was now twelve years old and an adept at surviving from years spent alone on the streets of Cairo, and although she had never embraced it like some of her fellow urchins turned professional thieves had, she was no stranger to the harsh realities of her forced lifestyle. It was at this tender age that she had the sudden and irresistible urge to leave the fetid underbelly of the city that had been her home and her bane for so many years and she headed south, away from the cramped and filthy Cairo slums and towards the wide open plains that defined the ancestral homelands of her mother's people. Travelling by foot across the vast white sands of the Sahara desert on her journey southward, she nearly died from starvation, dehydration and exposure as a matter of course, but pressed onward towards the plains, managing it through sheer stubborn willpower and an instinctive, unknowing use of her newly burgeoning mutant abilities.
It was a gruelling, two thousand mile odyssey and it took her more than a year to reach the plains of the Serengeti under the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, which was where her mutant powers first fully manifested themselves. It was there that she began to consciously explore her newfound influence over the weather, learning how to better hone and harness those powerful elemental forces for both her own benefit and for the benefit of the local tribesmen, who had come to worship and venerate her as a living Goddess of Storms. However, although she was revered as a goddess Ororo was still very much so a child, and one that was only beginning to understand the full scope of her incredible abilities. In this transitional state between being a young girl and a living divinity, she was taken under the wing of and unofficially adopted by an elderly tribal woman named Ainet, who helped her to responsibly use her intricate power over the weather for the betterment of all of the local peoples.
Officially deified and gifted with a new title, the Beautiful Windrider, Ororo spent the years of her early adolescence with the various local tribes of the Serengeti Plains and the Maasai Mara, using her abilities whenever and however she could to help them by ensuring that they suffered neither drought nor floods. She became a common fixture for many of the local tribes, who loved and cherished her for her ability to consistently bring forth bountiful harvests year after year without fail. However, upon the realisation that her powers were strongly connected to her emotional state she left the tribes that had so welcomed her, choosing not to live with any of them in an effort to protect them from any potential storms that would be caused by her emotional outbursts. Despite this, out of deference and respect for her control over the elements she was still amply provided for and taken care of by her loyal 'worshippers', and was never again forced to know the suffering of true loneliness or feel the cold, cruel pangs of starvation gnawing at her belly. Instead she grew and she flourished on the wild grasslands under their care and her own soaring freedom and was later gifted with a crafted tiara of curious black metal upon her coming of age, which she constantly wore as a symbol of her divinity alongside her mother's ruby crystal.
Ororo was still living in this fashion, existing in wild harmony with the local tribes and with the very earth herself, when her world was uprooted and altered forever by the visit of an odd, yet clearly well to do American gentleman, one Professor Charles Xavier. He had heard incredible stories of the Serengeti's young Storm Goddess during his travels abroad and had ventured into her protected lands in the effort to personally seek her out and meet her for himself, suspecting rightly that she was not a goddess given human form at all, but was in fact another mutant. Upon finding her he informed her as to her true nature and tried to convince her to return to America with him, claiming that she would be able to reach so many more people in need of her help as part of his Institute than she would ever be able to whilst remaining in the provincial wilds of deep Africa. Ororo was at first staunchly unconvinced by his claims but quickly began to believe him when he revealed to her his own mutant abilities, proving to her that just like his own telepathy, her abilities were biological, not divine in origin. Understanding now that he was right and on the urging of the local tribes, who were saddened by the thought of losing their Beautiful Windrider but wanted what they felt was best for her, she accepted the Professor's kind offer and agreed to accompany him back to America as his temporary ward. Later, in the autumn of that year, she was enrolled in Bayville High School as a senior – after taking an extensive and telepathically aided crash course in remedial education to get her up to a reasonable first world standard, of course – and became the fifth young mutant to join his fledgling X-Men under the codename Storm, forever abandoning her old life as a street urchin turned third world goddess for that of a modern, American teenager.
Other: As a by-product of her misspent childhood, Ororo is very agile and swift with her hands and on her feet, and with training has the potential to put this learned survival skill to use as a dancer, acrobat or skilled hand to hand combatant. In addition to this, she has already started to finely hone her inherent leadership qualities, which are a direct result of the years that she had spent governing, in a manner of speaking, the various tribes that she had lived with as a teenager. She is also fully trilingual, being fluent in American English, Modern Standard Arabic and Kiswahili, and carries a slightly lilting accent because of it. She can speak a paltry smattering from various, 'unofficial' tribal languages as well, primarily from the Nilotic linguistic group, such as the Maasai or Kalenjin dialects, though hardly fluently.
Additionally, Ororo is a naturally very avid and skillful gardener, being quite adept in taking care of a wide variety of plants both in and out of doors. It is something that she takes a good measure of pride in, believing it to be a tranquil and highly pleasant activity, as well as one that is personally rewarding. Due to her active connection to the earth's biosphere and her own particular brand of animistic faith, she also keeps to a strict vegetarian diet. Her reasons for not eating meat or fish are both moral and deeply spiritual, but as they are completely personal she feels no need to condemn or judge others for their own dietary habits, no matter how omnivorous.
Because of the severe physical and emotional trauma that she had suffered as a child, Ororo is extremely claustrophobic and will quickly devolve into an animalistic frenzy when trapped in any small, moderately enclosed space. Also, she still possesses both her black tiara and her mother's ruby crystal but she no longer commonly wears either accessory, choosing to instead keep them safely tucked away in a plain wooden box in her room.
Sample RP: Ororo lounged idly in the tall grasses underneath the shade of a small mugunga tree, her body limp and relaxed with her arms spread out widely to either side, almost as if she was trying to embrace the sky. A thin, loose fitting kanga in brightly patterned red and violet swathed her reclining form and she curled her bare toes into the dirt at her feet, enjoying the feel of the smooth, dry soil dusting over her skin. The sun was warm overhead, placed high in the sky without any cloud cover to mute its rays, but a gentle breeze wafted over the plains, relieving some of the oppressive midday heat. The cloyingly sweet smell of flowering acacia in full bloom filled her nose with every deep breath and all around her the grass whispered, tangling in her outspread hair and clothes and tickling over every inch of her exposed skin.
It was a pleasant day. A lazy day; perfect for lying about or doing nothing at all, and Ororo could think of no reason not to oblige it. Smiling softly to herself in quiet contentment, she closed her eyes and stretched out all of her limbs before relaxing again, her body shifting in an instinctive attempt to find the most comfortable position to nap in. As busy and needed as she usually almost always was, it still seemed like the most worthwhile use of her time at the moment. There was simply nothing else for her to do; no tribes in need of her counsel or aid, no pressing concerns that required her direct attention. The plains and its peoples – her people – were well, thriving in the natural harmony that she had so come to love and adapting well to the recent changing of the seasons. Even the weather itself was calm and forgiving, warm and dry but not dangerously so, and would appear to remain as such for as long as she cared to check.
In short, Ororo was unneeded and was therefore free to do whatever she pleased without care or censure, as would suitably befit a goddess of her exalted standing. If that meant that it was time to waste the day away by napping under the sun, then so be it. The goddess has spoken, her decision made and her order decreed, even if it was only to herself.
Ororo was well into her nap when she was awakened by an oddly rumbling sound; one that was curious not for being completely alien to her ears but for being so uncommonly heard of this far into the wild, untamed plains of her adopted homeland. It was a motorised vehicle, a jeep, and stranger still, it was heading straight for her peaceful little tree. A rush of annoyance flushed through her at the thought of being so abruptly awoken from what had been a truly pleasant and well earned rest but she quickly suppressed the ill feelings before they could grow any further, calming them into a more subtly thrumming irritation. Still, there was no way she could go back to resting now so she pushed herself up off of the ground with a pouting sigh, whirling around to face the loud, mechanical beast that had dared to intrude upon and ruin her peaceful afternoon nap.
Folding her arms firmly across the front of her chest, she watched with a small, childishly put upon frown as the jeep approached ever closer, the brightly coloured glass beads woven into her long hair tinkling against each other as they resettled over her bare shoulders. She didn't move even as the vehicle stopped a mere twenty paces in front of her, it's doors opening to reveal two men that she had never seen before: a tall, dark skinned man of native extraction and another, far lighter one dressed all in khaki, obviously a foreigner. Both men were completely bald and the latter had to be helped into an odd chair with wheels before they could continue to come and further approach her, which they did with the kind of informal impunity that was usually reserved only for Ainet and the others of whom she had taken into her closest confidences.
Ororo tilted her head back with a casually imperious air as she waited for these strange men to come forward and state their business with her, or at the very least apologise for so rudely waking her up. The first man, kinsmen by blood even if no longer of any local tribe, hung back but the second wheeled forward until he was nearly within arms' reach, his smile open and genuine as he looked up at her with eyes as clear and warm and blue as the summer sky. Clearly, this strange foreigner neither knew who, and more importantly what, she was nor was he put off by her wary and coolly aloof stance, as was evinced by the hand that he had smoothly raised up towards her, his palm held open in both greeting and invitation.
"Greetings, Windrider," he spoke in English, a language that she still remembered from her early childhood in Cairo, yet no longer had any real or practical use for on the plains. "My name is Charles Xavier...but hopefully, you may come to know me as the Professor."
Activity: I'll post whenever I can and I should be able to visit the site at least once a day.
Avatar credit: Chris Bachalo, Tim Townsend, Andy Owens, Aaron Sowd and Paul Mounts; originally scanned from Ultimate War #4, published April 2003 by Marvel Publishing Inc.