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PLAYER INFO:

Name: Plaid

Preferred pronoun: she/her or them/their

Preferred means of contact: AIM as BolshevikMuppet or tumblr as centralwaspmonolith

Any other characters currently in-game? ollld rosssse

 

CHARACTER INFO

Name: Zimmy/Zeta (last name unknown)

Source: Gunnerkrigg Court

Canon point: before chapter 38, “Divine”; rather than taking her dormitory to the Medium, Zimmy will receive and run the discs in a separate Court building

Gender: female

Age: 15

Colour: #F90000

Chumhandle: birminghamBodysnatcher

 

History: Zimmy was born in 1997 in Birmingham, UK. Her parents immediately discovered her strange, reality-warping abilities, and they were less than supportive; it was a relief to them when the first boarding school arrived to take Zimmy away and study her powers. The next they heard from her she was at their doorstep again, electrodes and IVs still hanging off of her.

Thus started a long string of boarding schools, “boarding schools,” and tests that led Zimmy to have a strong distrust for both authority and those who would try to determine the origin and limits of her power. Eventually, she stopped returning home after her inevitable escapes. Her parents were glad for her absence.

While she was living on the streets, she met Gamma Czarnecki, a Polish girl with whom she shares a powerful psychic link. Gamma speaks no English, relying on her link with Zimmy to translate. They were inseparable from the beginning - Gamma’s presence mollifies the effects of Zimmy’s powers, and when Zimmy is drawn into the nightmare world inside her head, Gamma is the only one able to eliminate the faceless creatures that represent Zimmy’s dark memories. They lived together from dumpster to dumpster, protecting one another, until Zimmy was approached by black-suited men representing an organization called “Gunnerkrigg Court.” They seemed like just another group of scientists wriggling at the thought of exploiting her, but then they promised that Gamma could come as well, and Zimmy could do nothing but accept.

Now, the pair of them are in residence at the Court. They are both in year 9 of Chester House, but they aren’t required to attend classes or sit exams - Jones, a sometime employee of the Court, refers to them as a “case study.” They are under observation and occasionally required to submit to tests, but mostly they are allowed to do whatever they please, and they remain together at all times often to the exclusion of keeping the company of any other students. This can only mean that whatever the Court has planned for them is not disrupted by their roaming.

 

Personality: Zimmy is hostile at worst and grudgingly helpful at best; even when people near her during a breakdown are dragged into her horrific version of Birmingham, she’s reluctant to assist them in their escape. The only person she treats with any degree of kindness beyond cautious indifference is Gamma, though others can tiptoe near the fortified boundary of her good graces by helping her. She is grumpy to the point of misanthropy; this is equal parts a natural charmingly irreverent demeanor and a reaction to the painful, maddening hallucinations she’s plagued by. Rain soothes her, washes the debris away from her eyes, and improves her disposition considerably, as long as it is natural rain.

Zimmy has difficulty making friends, not that she wants to in the first place, because of her nature as a beautiful ray of sunshine. She frightens the other students away from her - whether it’s from her attitude or her powers she doesn’t particularly care to know, just as long as they stay away. She also lies to Gamma through their psychic link to keep her by her side, translating other students’ compliments into insults so Gamma will be afraid of them and stay at her side. So far, it’s kept them together, though it’s doubtful Gamma would leave even if she knew about Zimmy’s lies.

Zimmy’s reality-warping episodes are comparable to panic attacks, and on a day to day basis she is so exhausted by the stress her powers put on her that she would barely be able to attend class even if she was required to. She has good days, and sometimes produces projects (terrifying projects) for school fairs, or manages to feed herself without Gamma’s help; she also has bad days, when she can barely get out of bed. Her worst days are when Gamma has to sleep.

Abilities & physical limitations: Zimmy is human, but her mind is “in tune” with the forces of the ether. This essentially means that she has enormous psychic reality warping abilities that are completely beyond her control - it’s all she can do to keep herself from slipping into the nightmare world that lurks just beyond her vision at all times. When her powers do break through her will - due to a blip in Gamma’s stabilization, an emotional upset, a surge in etheric energies, etc. - she can drag nearby people into a shadow version of Birmingham populated by the faceless people she sees on a daily basis. Here, they wander until Zimmy is stable again. “Zimmingham” exists only within Zimmy’s mind; the faceless people represent Zimmy’s memories. The bodies of the people she abducts remain where they are while their minds are tormented. Zimmingham is also populated by spider creatures that only Zimmy can see - Zimmy doesn’t like the spiders, who seem to be obsessed with her. They can control and distort the minds of people unfortunate enough to get caught.

The full extent of Zimmy’s powers is unknown but presumed to be extreme. She cannot consciously use any of them even in the technomagical surroundings of the Court; just living with them is almost more than she can bear. They cause her to see some people as faceless, like the memories wandering her mind. Zimmy does not, and cannot, sleep, robbing her of a possible venue of relief. Within the game, thankfully, Zimmy cannot drag herself or anyone else into Zimmingham without extenuating circumstances, but concordantly her daily hallucinations are far worse. The mysterious natural energies in the Incipisphere allow her to channel brief jolts of etheric energy for the purposes of combat, but this wracks her body and she would really rather not.

Zimmy cannot read; her powers and the black eye debris caused by them prevent her from focusing on written word long enough to learn.  

Appearance: http://www.gunnerkrigg.com//comics/00000198.jpg (Contains both black-eye Zimmy and red-eye Zimmy.)

Notable AU differences, if applicable: nop

Strife Specibus: etherkind, pipekind

Prototyping: a tic-toc

Title: Stream of Rust

 In-game abilities: The Stream is a passive class, using its powers to help itself. It has, as its name implies, an enormous amount of energy at its disposal, but not all of these powers can be unleashed at the same time in one overwhelming torrent; they must be trickled out over time. This cap and corresponding slowness may make the Stream seem like an infinite wellspring of power, but Streams are as exhaustible as any other class, and when they are low on energy their powers may backfire instead of simply not working.

The powers of Rust are similar to Zimmy’s own reality-warping abilities. The powers of a Stream of Rust affect mostly machinery, architecture, and other inanimate objects, though a living being subject to the full force of these powers might not be feeling very well. The world around a Stream of Rust will seem to slowly decay, crumbling and becoming more unlivable by most measures; if they turn their powers onto one object in particular it will be destroyed very quickly. These powers also confer upon the Stream of Rust a resistance to similar afflictions - they are far sturdier than they should be.

Planet: Zimmy resides in the Land of Static and Snow. Skyscrapers stretch to tapered points in the foggy sky, the streets between them wide and empty. Snowdrifts layer the sidewalk and slush piles into the corners, churned up by feet that have never walked there. The skyscrapers are empty inside, too, grand lobbies and perfectly functional elevators awaiting businesspeople that never come to work and hotel guests that won’t be attending. Enormous monitors affixed to each skyscraper face downwards into the streets, but they broadcast nothing but static across the grey city. At the top of the tallest tower, Zimmy’s denizen, Nergal, resides in his penthouse suite, attended by kidnapped mole consorts; he makes sure that the rest of the moles stay underground, forced to live in the sewers, and that their televisions never show anything but snow.

 

RP sample: Gamma is asleep. Zimmy doesn’t want to wake her, but the quiet static in her mind is growing louder by the minute. The tiny sleep noises Gamma makes are heartbreakingly sweet; Zimmy tucked her in carefully, pulling the blankets up to her chin, but she hasn’t climbed in next to her. She never does. She doesn’t deserve it. Gamma yawns and shifts, and Zimmy’s brain throbs like a fist hitting a television screen, the dull thud rattling through her body and crackling in her vision. She knows it’s coming, and she knows Gamma will probably sleep through all of it until she finds her and enfolds herself back into the safety of her arms. Zimmy is almost glad that Gamma doesn’t wander the streets of her shadow Birmingham - she doesn’t want to be sought. The maze there is hers to deal with. She brushes a strand of hair out of Gamma’s face and tucks it behind her ear, following her fingers with a kiss to Gamma’s temple. If Gamma awakens, she can lie to herself and say it was an accident.

She doesn’t wake up, though, and as always Zimmy wonders if she’s finally put Gamma through too much and if this will be the time she never wakes up. She stares at the rise and fall of her chest underneath the blankets, and at the way her breath ruffles the edge of a sheet. She loses another little piece of reality like a pebble down a well.

Zimmy’s fingers tighten on Gamma’s shoulder. “Wake up,” she grunts. Gamma’s eyes snap open, and the sun’s rays break through the static filling Zimmy’s mind. Sorry, she says into Gamma’s head.

I love you, Gamma says back.