Widow Payne
- A wet boy has a deader, an assassin has a target, because assassins sometimes miss.
- —Brent Weeks, The Way of Shadows (October 2008)
Widow Payne was originally being developed as the partner-in-crime for Operative Rostov and his Black Ops Brigade. Unfortunately, the plan there got scrapped with the closure of City of Heroes. When the Everlasting server came about, I decided to revisit the concept, although independent of Rostov.
Teamwork
Personality
It's difficult to get a handle on Widow Payne's personality. She tends to shape it according to the people she interacts with. With her "superiors", she is cool and formal. With her friends, she is pleasant, even flirtatious at times. With her opponents, she is cold and ruthless. With her enemies...she is simply Death.
Powers
As most Arachnos Widows, Widow Payne's powers derive from a blend of natural ability, advanced technology, and a bit of psychic power.
Night Widow Training
After Widow Payne server her time as a Blood Widow, she was offered the opportunity to join the Night Widows, the assassins of Arachnos. She joined eagerly, and has refined her skills as a deadly close combatant. If she can get in close combat with someone, the claws and the venom that coat them will finish off most enemies.
Widow Teamwork
A part of Payne's training also included the ability to coordinate her skills with those of others. She also had some of her psychic potential unlocked, allowing her to use psychic powers to cloud and confuse minds, granting her considerable abilities with stealth.
Additional Powers
In addition to the standard Night Widow training and gear, Widow Payne's uniform allows her access to some other specialized abilities.
Speed
Whether in her Night Widow outfit or in uniforms worn to impersonate a hero or a "standard" villain, she can achieve accelerated speeds. She can occasionally adapt that to leap much higher than most people, but not to a superhuman extent.
Character History
Jessica Payne was a resident of Mercy Island; as such, it meant her life was constantly under threat by the villains that Lord Recluse liked to dump onto the island. Despite this, she managed to survive, and her survival was noted by a number of Arachnos operatives and widows. They recommended recruitment, and Jessica was all too ready to accept-after all, no matter how harsh the training, the benefits would get her out of the war zone and into a more privileged position.
Payne worked her way through Blood Widow training and fulfilled her assignments with skill and cunning. If her assignments involved death, she dealt it without hesitation. In time, she was ordered to infiltrate Paragon City itself and pretend to be a defector for a time from the Islands, so that she could see her enemy close up. After a few such assignments, she was promoted to the Night Widows, and thus became even more deadly. Now, Widow Payne hopes to become nothing less than the best that Arachnos can field.
Affiliations
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Organizations
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Friends
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Opponents
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