Sage

Sage
A.K.A.	Tessa, Lady Tessa, Diana Fox, Britannia, Ambassador Sage
Age
Voice Actor
Relatives	None.
Series	X-men
Player	Cinnie aka Gubaba

• Name: Tessa
• Character Tier: 1
• Age:
• Sex: Female
• Birthday: -
• Parents: -
  • Place of Birth: Balkans, Europe
  • Nationality: American Citizenship
  • Specialty: Mutant

• Physical Stats
  • Height: 5'7"
  • Weight: 135 lbs
  • Eyes: Blue
  • Hair: Black
  • Special: Tattoos under her eyes

Appearance

Wears black leather and usually has her hair up in a secretary-like bun. She also wears her usual glasses.

Personality

Serious.

Background

Little is known of the life of the woman known as Tessa except that she had lived in a small village in the Balkan region of Europe whilst still a young girl, and that she had spent time in a harem under unrevealed circumstances. Just prior to her teenage years, Tessa found herself caught up in the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. She was forced to learn to fight to survive encounters with both soldiers and local bandits, and took weapons and equipment from the bodies of fallen combatants. One day, Tessa felt herself compelled to enter a cave in the nearby Hindu Kush mountain range. There, she found the powerful telepathic mutant named Charles Xavier, who had been trapped under a massive stone block by the alien being named Lucifer. Initially wary of him, Tessa rescued the critically injured mutant but soon after they encountered a United Nations aid convoy being attacked by bandits. Tessa drove off the attackers and then avenged the death of one young U.N. worker by brutally murdering the bandit that had raped and killed her.

Years later, Xavier recruited Tessa at the same time that he formed his original team of teenage mutant students he called the X-Men. Xavier kept Tessa's presence at his mansion a secret as he intended to utilize her own mutant telepathic talents as a spy in his fight for peaceful coexistence between mutants and humans. Tessa's first mission was to infiltrate the organization for the rich and powerful known as the Hellfire Club and to gain the trust of Sebastian Shaw, leader of the Club's Inner Circle at its New York branch. For years, Tessa acted as Shaw's familiar, advising and counseling him in both his legitimate and illegal business practices, all the while gathering information for Xavier. Shaw found Tessa's ability to function as a living computer invaluable and kept her in his employ for many years, even during the time he was deposed as leader of the Club.

Early in Tessa’s time with the Club, its renegade White Bishop, Donald Pierce, attempted a coup of the Club's leadership. Pierce kidnapped Tessa, believing that without her Shaw's position could more easily be compromised. She was rescued by Xavier and his team of New Mutants and, upon her return to the Club, Pierce was expelled.

Later, Tessa ran afoul of one of the Club’s regular and valued patrons, a reclusive billionaire named Elias Bogan. Shaw had made a wager with Bogan during a game of cards whereupon if Shaw lost, Bogan would win the Club's then-White Queen, the telepathic mutant Emma Frost. Bogan had never lost a game before, but with Tessa’s help Shaw won the bet. Bogan honoured the wager, but knew who was truly responsible for his defeat and exacted his revenge on Tessa, capturing her and branding her face with facial tattoos. Rescued by the X-Man Storm, Tessa soon affiliated herself with the X-Men, acting as part of their support crew. In order to shield herself from detection by Bogan, Tessa consciously shut down her telepathic abilities, relying solely on her computer-like mind to assist her new teammates.

When Senator Robert Kelly announced his intention to run for the Presidency on an anti-mutant platform, Tessa met with him to persuade him otherwise by convincing him that his actions were no different to those of the mutant terrorist Magneto. Kelly was not so easily swayed, however, and it wasn’t until a mutant sacrificed his life to save Kelly that he realized his folly.

Soon after, Tessa was given the codename Sage by Storm who recruited her into a splinter group of X-Treme X-Men who set out to search for the diaries of the blind mutant seer named Destiny that predicted the future of mutantkind. On the new team's first mission, Tessa was instrumental in saving the life of her teammate the Beast after an encounter with the self-professed enhanced human named Vargas. Sage used a heretofore-unseen ability to advance the Beast's evolution to its next stage, healing him of his injuries and activating his latent secondary mutation.

Eventually learning of Tessa's deception, Shaw allied himself with Lady Mastermind, the daughter of former Hellfire Club member Jason Wyngarde, to exact revenge on his former assistant. Lady Mastermind trapped Tessa in a convincing illusion, making her believe that she was once again Shaw's assistant back in the Hellfire Club. Tessa was freed thanks to the efforts of Heather Cameron, an Australian mutant with the ability to manifest various super-human powers depending on what the current situation called for, and the X-Men defeated Shaw once more.

Tessa later catalyzed the latent mutant powers of Heather’s brother Davis, who subsequently joined the X-Treme X-Men as Slipstream, as well as evolving her teammate Rogue's mutant ability to grant her control over the manifestation of the powers and abilities she has absorbed over the years.

Tessa often used her computer-like mind to assist her teammate Bishop in his activities as a homicide detective, such as when they were called upon to investigate the attempted murder of Emma Frost, now a member of the X-Men and an instructor at Xavier’s school. Later, when the X-Treme team encountered Bogan once more after a murder at his Alaskan estate, Sage and Bishop were called in to investigate. A young mutant named Jeffrey Garrett was wanted for questioning after Bogan had his family killed and, in retaliation, he teleported Bogan's associates onto the nearby glacier where they froze to death. Garrett fled to the Xavier Institute where he came under the protection of Frost. However, Bogan had secretly possessed the young boy and when Frost scanned his mind, Bogan took possession of her. Sage and Bishop followed the trail to the mansion where Bogan captured them, but the timely arrival of Storm allowed them to escape and defeat the villain.

Bogan returned to plague the X-Treme X-Men soon after when he captured and mentally enslaved Bishop, hoping to use him as a weapon against his teammates. With the aid of several of their former allies the X-Men were able to rescue Bishop, which allowed Sage to defeat Bogan once and for all. Sage then accompanied her teammates back to New York to assist in the rebuilding of the mansion following an attack by Magneto, after which they rejoined the core X-Men team. Later, Sage joined a new incarnation of the British super-team Excalibur and later joined the Exiles, however, she was absorbed by the Crystal Palace, recently.

Skills

(These include all learned skills, as well as a relative rating from Abyssmal to Amazing. The character's level of mastery in something that can be taught or at least rated by other people follows the scale: Abyssmal, Novice, Good, Very Good, Incredible, Amazing)

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PUT A RANK FOR -EVERY- SKILL. Just fill out the stuff you think your character would have! Feel free to add other skills that you think your character should be noted for. (Ex: Speaking French)

Physical Skills:

• Alertness - Incredible +4
• Athletics - Very Good +3
• Stealth - Incredible +4

Social Skills:

• Subterfuge - Very Good +3
• Streetwise
• Intimidation
• Leadership
• Expression - Good +2
• Etiquette - Very Good +3
• Performance - Good +2

Mental Skills:

• Computers - Amazing +5
• Investigation - Incredible +4
• Medicine
• Law
• Occult
• Politics - Very Good +3
• Science
• Technology - Incredible +4

Other Skills:

• Driving - Very Good +3
• Survival
• Empathy - Very Good +3
• Animal Ken

Special Abilities

(These are skills, things that can be learned or trained, like martial arts techniques, Jutsu or magic spells. Abilities that are outside the norm of regular humans, but only because they have not had access to them.)

Martial Arts - Sage is skilled in the martial arts, and is a formidable hand-to-hand combatant thanks to her having complete conscious control over her own body. Her analytical skills and facility with probability also extend to combat situations, allowing her to predict an opponent's attacks and initiate the optimal counter-attack. Sage is also self-taught in a wide range of firearms, which she can use with considerable skill and accuracy. She is intelligent. Her computer-like mind makes it easy for her to learn new skills.

Powers & Merits

(Unique, or hereditary, in-born powers, whether due to genetics or magic, things that can't be taught to others or simply gifted to this person from an outside force. Powers based on weapons should go in the Items. Merits can also go here.)

Cyberpathy (Computer Brain): Sage is a mutant with incredible advanced intellectual capabilities, her mind works in the same way as a computer with unlimited storage capacity, only much faster than it will be possible for generations and without losing the particular complex processing capabilities of the human brain. She is able to perform several mental functions at once without losing focus on any of them. Her mind allows her to instantly recall specific information with incredible speed and accuracy. She is able to store everything that she experiences in a photographic memory and retrieve it immediately without the typical human pause for thought. The speed of her thoughts augments her analytical ability so that she is able to make snap decisions about her surroundings and create complex scenarios at high speed. Sage is also able to track the probability of an event by piecing together stored data.

• Multitasking: able to perform multiple tasks at once by allocating a portion of her brain to each task. Sage can use her mind to replay a movie she has seen, play a game of internet chess, and focus on battling an opponent simultaneously without any one task distracting her from another.

Genetic Sight: Sage is also able to 'see' a person's genetic code, reading complex DNA sequences for latent and manifested mutations, thereby allowing her to sense mutants and, in many cases, understand how their powers work more thoroughly than they themselves do.

• Jump-start: after analyzing the DNA of another superhuman mutant, Sage is able to selectively evolve their existing genetic traits as well as catalyze the untapped genetic potential of latent mutants. Once begun, the procedure is irreversible and can often result in unpredictable side effects.
• X-Factor Sense: ability to sense the presence of the mutant gene in others who are in close proximity to herself.

Firewall: possesses protection against telepathic attacks. Achieved this state only by permanently shutting down her own low-level telepathic abilities. (She did this originally to protect herself from Elias Bogan - the man responsible for giving her the scars on the edges of her eyes.)

Telepathy: Currently Unavailable. Sage possesses a degree of telepathic ability allowing her to communicate with others over short distances, project psionic energy blasts, create illusions, and release an astral form within a limited range. In Exiles her telepathy appears to resurface.

Unique Items

(Madougu, magical weapons or other unique or special weapons, as well as all techniques related to them, as without it technically the character is NOT able to use these abilities.)

Cybernetic Sunglasses: Sage wears a pair of custom-built cyber shades that function as a wireless broadband computer network among like models. The shades provide an audio/video feed via an in-built computer system outfitted with miniaturized conventional microphones and cameras, and can also project a three-dimensional image into the visual field of the wearer that can be expanded to allow others to see with whom the wearer is communicating or information they are reviewing. The shades provide input by means of a virtual reality iconographic keyboard, and have an alternate visual input system for when a user’s hands are otherwise occupied. The shades can be interfaced with any external data network whether terrestrial or alien in origin. The shades also possess various sensors for detecting telepathic resonance patterns, tracking energy trails, and analyzing electronic circuitry, among others.

Items Of Note

• Sage uses a pair of cybernetic sunglasses that allow her to access and interface with computers and data networks.
• She frequently carries and uses firearms and edged weapons (like throwing knives), and is highly skilled in their use. Her firearms are sometimes loaded with stun ammunition.

Weaknesses & Flaws

Flaws can go here. Balance is key!

• Sage cannot use her telepathy if she has the firewall ability up. If the firewall lowers, she can be sensed by other telepaths and even mind controlled then.
• There is often a misconception that Sage is able to control computers with her mind (cyberpathy), or that she is a cyborg. Neither is the case. Sage must interact with computers in a normal fashion, or through her virtual-reality glasses. Though she has been referred to as a cyberpath at times, this refers to her mental processing abilities and not control of computers. Though she possesses computer or machine like attributes, these abilities are all functions of her mutant powers. Sage is fully human (or mutant) without any cybernetic enhancements.

NPC(s) to go with char

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