Clare

The Amethyst Avenger / Clare Woodcock

Catalyst:  Grimm Foundation:  The Center for Circumferential Navigation Concept:  The Amethyst Avenger (Aspiring Iridium Sentinel) Virtue:  Justice Vice:  Wrath Age:  21 Favored Axioms:  Prostasia, Katastrofi, Skafoi

Physical Description:  Clare isn’t very attractive by popular standards. (Or at least, she doesn't consider herself to be very attractive. Other people might disagree.) She’s too thick around the waist, too muscular, and her… chest… isn’t very impressive. She tends to wear loose clothing that doesn’t reveal much skin, generally in some shade of purple or blue.

Personality:  At first glance, Clare doesn’t seem to fit the Grimm stereotype. She is usually bright, cheerful, and a little bit boisterous. Underneath that is a layer of self-esteem issues, which become apparent if there’s ever a conversation about dating. But there is another layer underneath that, a layer of frustration and determination. She has been the bottom rung of the social ladder for a long time, and she doesn’t see much chance for advancement. She learned to keep her temper buried a long time ago, but when it does come out she can be as violent as anyone else with her Catalyst.

Backstory:  Clarence Woodcock’s parents can’t have been thinking straight when they named their daughter. Maybe it wasn’t their fault that Woodcock is possibly the worst last name a kid can have, but they have just no excuse for the name Clarence. That’s not really even a girl’s name.

With a name like that, it’s not all too surprising that Clare wound up on the nerdy end of the social spectrum. Especially since Matt, her older brother, was also in that group. Clare idolized him. Everywhere he went, she tried to follow. At first, Matt wasn’t too pleased with it, as would be expected of a 10-year old boy with a tagalong sister of 6. But after some highly unpleasant tantrums, their parents convinced him to let her come along to the comic shop with him. She surprised him with her knowledge of his favorite characters (she had been sneaking off with his comic books and reading them), and over time the two became very close.

The Woodcock family lived in one of the seedier parts of Philadelphia. It wasn’t exactly a crime-ridden hole, but people still wouldn’t leave their doors unlocked overnight. Matt never liked how passive people were about crime in the area, and as he went through high school he and Clare fantasized about doing something about it themselves. One day, things came to a head when he was returning home from a medieval recreation group over in New Jersey. He had a personally modified longsword on him when he saw a guy being mugged in an alley. At that moment, he made a decision. He pulled the sword out of its bag, and advanced down the alley, but as he neared, another thug with a baseball bat appeared behind him and swung. The sword, however, which Matt had been told was too off-balance to wield properly, met the bat perfectly, slicing it in half. He frightened off the muggers, and found himself Catalyzed as a Hoffnung. Over the next few months, Matt learned about being a Genius, and began going out to purposefully try to stop criminals, clad in a suit of clockwork medieval armor. He began to build an reputation around the area, as the avenging Knight. Of course, Clare couldn’t help but notice that her brother was changing drastically, and spending more and more time off on his own. She eventually followed him out one night without his knowledge, and saw him in his maniacal outfit. She was excited at first, that her own brother was a genuine superhero. Her brother, on the other hand, was extremely worried. He knew that if she so much as touched his devices, she could be seriously hurt by the Havoc. Furthermore, she could tell people about his activities. He told her that she would have to help him preserve his secret identity by staying well away while he was out “in costume.”

As time went by, however, Clare became resentful of her brother’s insistence that she stay behind. She began plotting ways to join him on his patrols, thinking up suits she could wear, and occasionally sneaking in his laboratory. Between the increasingly ill-tempered daydreaming and daily exposure to her Inspired brother, she was slowly Catalyzing. One day, Matt walked into his lab to find Clare there, holding his sword. After a brief moment of panic, he realized that wasn’t trying to eat her brain and hadn’t blown up, so she must not be a mere mortal anymore. He thought that she had become a beholden and treated her as such, letting her assist him in the lab, but still not letting her go out on patrol with him. So she remained back in his lab, tinkering, being frustrated that the devices she tried to build on her own never seemed to work the way his did. Determined to live up to her brother, she tried to do as much research as she could, looking through every crack theory she could get her hands on.

Eventually, she latched onto an idea from an unexpected source – an art teacher. They were learning about making jewelry, and the teacher showed them an amethyst necklace, and mentioned that some people value them for their supposed ability to focus healing energy. Something clicked in her mind. By the end of the week, she was convinced that by using crystals to manipulate energy patterns, she could adjust their physical properties. She got as much amethyst she could for the money she had, and designed her first device that was really hers: a little array that could focus celestial light into bolts of stunning energy. But even with this burst of inspiration and Inspiration, it still wouldn’t work just right. She labored over it all night in Matt’s lab, desperate to build something that actually worked before he got back from the night’s patrol. It was almost 3 in the morning when she stepped out the door to attempt yet another test, and saw her injured brother running toward the lab, pursued by a pair of strange-looking women with claws. She also saw what her brother couldn’t: a man with a large knife, waiting around the corner that Matt was sprinting towards. In that moment, Clare’s entire being seemed to fill with one thought.

Oh  hell  no.

Almost without realizing it, she snapped the crystals into a configuration she hadn’t thought to try before. With a cry of “Hey, asshole!” she blasted him directly in the face moments before Matt ran past his hiding spot. As she helped her brother fight off the uncanny assailants, she realized that her device had worked perfectly. She had completed her Breakthrough.

From then on, she insisted on joining her brother on his patrols, and he finally agreed that she was competent enough to do so. He got her introduced to the Peers of the area, and joined the Navigators. She was also told about the Iridium Sentinels, the fellowship of armored crimefighters that Matt was quickly working his way toward joining. She was his faithful sidekick, and he taught her how to fight, particularly the Langshwert sword fighting style. She made a suit of amethyst armor, and whenever she wore it she introduced herself as The Amethyst Avenger.

Over the next couple of years, the two of them advanced a great deal in the realm of mad science. Matt officially joined the Iridium Sentinels. Clare submitted her first Thesis: demonstrating that she could operate independently of her brother. They became acquainted with many of the weird, threatening things that Mania could produce. At one point, they worked with a group of mere mortals who had taken up arms against the things that go bump in the night, which were apparently in much greater supply than the pair had realized. Matt graduated from high school, just as Clare begun slogging her way through.

For Clare, everything was great. Sure, they put themselves in danger far more often than any sane person would, but they were freaking superheroes. It was a fantasy come true. Unfortunately, it could not last. Their parents inevitably found out about what their kids actually did, and were as displeased as one would imagine. Matt wound up moving out of the house to live on his own. Clare, on the other hand, was left to explain what being a Genius was, and that she could take care of herself out there. Besides, they couldn’t stop her. Eventually, they agreed, but only if they were kept informed.

Amid the stress of dealing with their family, Clare didn’t notice that her brother was becoming unhealthily obsessed with crimefighting. He began having trouble holding down jobs as he started patrolling more often, sometimes even during the day. In fact, she didn’t notice until he showed up at the exit of her school to berate her for being unavailable when a bank robbery took place. She tried to reason with him, saying that they couldn’t spend all their time fighting crime, but he refused to listen. The argument escalated, and it became clear that he had lost his grip on reality. He had gone unmada. The argument ended with him storming off, saying that they could no longer work together. When she got to the lab that night, she found that he had taken all of his things and left.

Equal parts worried, sad, and angry, Clare carried on with her life. She graduated from high school, and began vocational school, learning to make jewelry. She only saw Matt when she had to go to other parts of the city, and when they did run into each other he refused to talk about anything but the immediate job. The worry really set in, however, when she saw him working with members of the monster hunters they had met before. They had last left on unfriendly terms, when the hunters found out that the Inspired were somewhat removed from humanity themselves. So it was strange that they would work so readily with him again, even taking direct orders. Upon further investigation, she found that Matt had turned the whole bunch into beholden. Furthermore, he seemed to be going further and further into madness. He had left the Peerage, though he retained his connection with the Sentinels. Even worse, he seemed to be gaining closer ties to a group of Lemurians. His acts of heroism weren’t motivated by a desire to protect the people of Philadelphia, but by a compulsive hate for the criminal element. He pursued even petty criminals, hounding them until he was content that they would never break the law again. He still tried to avoid killing, but Clare was afraid that it wouldn’t be long before that changed.

She thought long and hard about what to do. Matt had to be stopped from sinking further into madness, before he was completely lost. She doubted that he could be simply persuaded, but she didn’t want to hurt him. As she thought, she realized that this would be excellent fuel for a Thesis. No matter how this turned out, she would certainly be changed by the experience. But she couldn’t do it alone. She hoped that it wouldn’t get to a fight, but recognized it as the most probable outcome. She also recognized that there was no way she could take him on in a fight. Besides, she didn’t know how to bring someone out of being unmade, or even if it was possible.

So, Clare went to a number of Peers in the area who she knew weren’t too unstable, and asked them for help. Once informed of how dangerous Matt was becoming, they readily cooperated. In a stroke of luck, Dr. Lucio, a Director, had a colleague who ran an unmada rehabilitation clinic of sorts, studying the state of madness. He would love to take on such a notable patient.

After a considerable amount of planning, Clare led the group to confront Matt outside of his new lab, meeting him as he returned from a night’s patrol. At first things seemed to be going well. He at least was talking to her directly, and said he missed working with her. Everything went south, however, when he realized that Dr. Lucio was using a mind-affecting wonder to encourage peaceful, cooperative emotions. He accused Clare of betraying him, and attacked the group. His beholden attacked and cut off the other Peers, leaving Clare to fight her brother all but on her own.

Matt had become just as powerful as she thought, and she had a hard time even fending off his attacks, much less subduing him. She only barely managed to hold on long enough for one of the others to break through and give her a hand. It took a great deal of effort and way too much attracted attention, but they eventually managed to bring him down without killing him. Clare had successfully stopped her brother from bringing terror down on the town he wanted to protect, and completed her second Thesis.

Matt, under sedation and medical attention, was sent off to the clinic. A few days later, Clare decided to leave Philadelphia. If Matt took a turn for the worse and tried to exact some sort of revenge, it was probably best that she not bring his wrath down on their parents by mistake; it would also give her more time to prepare. Besides, their showdown had been none too subtle, and it was probably best that The Amethyst Avenger avoid attention in the area for a while.

Clare packed up her things, promised to keep in touch with her parents, and set out. She decided to move out to State College. She couldn’t say exactly why, but it just seemed right for her. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be too boring.

Pseudoscience Justification:  As science has told us, matter and energy is the same thing; matter is simply more constrained. The only thing that gives matter different properties is the arrangement of its component energy. Therefore, if energy itself can be manipulated, then the physical properties of objects can also be manipulated.

Of course, everyone knows that crystals are very good at focusing and retaining energy. By rearranging the energy patterns in crystals (or other objects, though crystal retains the patterns most easily), Clare can change their physical properties to whatever suits her needs.