LogFAQs > #973408288

#32 - Ros
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Okay, this might take a little explanation.

Cynthia Redford, once upon a time, donned the costume of Ros, a plant-based wine-drinking superhero desperate to earn the respect of California icon Blue Devil. However, after being spurned countless times, something apparently snapped in Ros. Suddenly, she went from aspiring sidekick to psychotic supercriminal stalker, hunting down Kid Devil (Blue Devil's actual sidekick) and torturing him, among other innumerable vicious crimes. Along the way, Ros coopted the veteran villain Bolt, turning him into a simpering lackey. But as her crimes grew more blatant and gruesome, Bolt sought out Zatanna and convinced her to mindwipe Ros.

Thus, Lush was born, and the story of Ros became a distant, forgotten memory.

Distant, however, is the key word. Though Lush was mindwiped like a myriad of villains before, the personality of Ros remained, bottled inside of a small whisper of memories kept in Shadowcrest Manor, the ancestral home of Zatanna Zatara. This vial of memories would eventually be gulped down by the hapless Misty Kilgore and begin to reside as one of the 52 personalities ingrained in the teenager's brain. And slowly, Misty began to demonstrate that some personalities were more independent and active than others. The thoughts and memories of Ros began to manipulate the world outside of Misty's many-minded noggin, and eventually, Ros finally confronted herself, the husk that had been shambling, half-formed from Zatanna's magicks and half-built on her preexisting self.

And thus, we were off to the races. For months now, there are those who can't quite escape the orbit of the original Cynthia Redford. Bold, manipulative and often easily swayed by her mercurial emotions, Ros desperately seeks to return to the forefront of Cynthia's mind. She sees herself as - perhaps rightfully so - an aggrieved party, forced to serve an interminable prison sentence in an inescapable jail cell. Floating in and among tattered shreds of her own thoughts, Ros is visited time to time by those who rely upon Mento's telepathic strengths. And what they find... is a woman teetering on the edge, desperate to experience something real.

Ros, for me, has been an absolute treat to roleplay. Her story has kept multiple players guessing at every turn, Scare included. The secrets of Ros, why she chooses to do the things she does, when she chooses to rear her head, have been delightful little sprinkles throughout the last year of the campaign. You never quite know just what Ros has in store, but she's a personality that I sink into like a glove. Whether she's trying to seduce Saoirse or Lush (that latter of which she was actually able to score with, would you believe it), or whether she's protecting Misty and demonstrating the faculties of leadership that Lush has openly admitted being impressed by, Ros continues, in dribs and drabs, to reveal just a little more of the textured history of DC to the party.

I'll be sad to see her go, I admit. Every PC's tale is one with a unique voice, a unique tone, characters that feel entirely theirs. Saoirse's tragic tale of familial love. Roz'etta's pull between two worlds as a diplomatic envoy. There's Brennus' legacy tale of two morally gray parents. Minerva has a destiny to fulfill in the name of a king long gone. Bloodfruit is a stranger in a strange land, possessing extremely powerful blood running through her veins, the nature of which has every magician in the campaign taking sides. Spirit's kid-doctor tale leaves him a little corner of the campaign to play in. Pepper's drug-dealing past - and present - gives her access to seedy underbelly of the campaign. Xander is connected significantly both to Gotham but more recently to the President's cabinet. And if you haven't figured out where Data 7 fits in, you really haven't been paying attention at all!

But Lush's story has been an opportunity for me to take a single attribute on a character sheet - Forgetfulness - and just go nuts. Absolutely wild with what that single disadvantage entails. Ros will fade away soon enough, but the opportunity to take this phantom, this whisper of a character and allow her at least a little time in the sun has been immensely rewarding. I'll miss her.

#31 falls next, marking the last undrafted character on our list!