~*~ Personal Information ~*~

Name: Elana

Age: 18

Email address: Alienne4@lycos.com (this one)

Alts on XTP: none

MU* experience: I’ve been roleplaying on various types of MU*s since 1997. From 1997-2001 I was dedicated to fantasy MUSHes, mainly Dragonlance MUSH. I dabbled in other fantasy MUSHes until I got into superhero MUXing with Mutatis Mutandis MUX in 2001, where I still play today. In that interim period I was invited to become staff on a Greek mythology-based MU* called Shadow of Olympus, but I decided that I did not have enough time to put in the amount of effort such a job deserves. I’ve played on a couple different superhero MUXes, including Marvel Unlimited where I was part of the villain team the Agents of Apocalypse, and I have an FC as a sailor senshi on the mainly anime-based Cosmic Muffin MUX. I actually contributed to some of the building projects on XTP MUX before it moved addresses and got its whole new staff outfit. I have built personal apartments and such on various MUXes.

Player’s availability: Bleah. University is hard. But roleplaying is an addiction I just can’t quit. You’ll see a lot of me.

~*~ Character Information ~*~

Name: Emma Frost

Alias/Codename: the White Queen

Physical Description:
The White Queen’s physical appearance is always what she wants you to see... and the flavour that she nearly always exudes is the exquisitely classic beauty of an finely crafted ice sculpture. The white blonde hair and sky blue eyes are, in all likelihood, gifts of birth, but the way she uses them makes them more than just genetic flukes. Always immaculately styled in a chic, Parisian manner, her white locks are a tool to state her social status. Her cerulean eyes become a signal of her untouchable supremacy in the subtle way she narrows them at men who look too long, or when she simply doesn’t look at all. She has a flawlessly formulated facade of smooth white skin, the cheekbones resting just high enough to provide remarkable image versatility; she can dress it up like a dignified royal, push for an intimidating power businesswoman, or soften her look to become an alluring sex kitten. One thing about her face that never changes is the rich red painted on her sophisticated lips; the furthest she’ll deviate is a frosted pink gloss, and that only rarely.
She’s a curvy woman, and she has no problem flaunting it. Her clothing is often reminiscent of kinky bondage costumes despite her penchant for wearing white, and as such their designs are usually geared to draw the eye - particularly to her overflowing bust. When she’s not wearing white leather corsets, she’s in trendy low-collared power suits, skintight bodysuits, or long filmy white dresses. She’s a sexually charged woman, and psychic overflows and wardrobe choices cause her to have a sexually charged presence in any room.

Background:
Emma owes much of her personality to her mother, Nicole Frost, having lived alone with her since her father left them when Emma was ten. Not much of a relationship was cultivated before his departure; mentally, he had already left. Even when unemployed, he spent much of his time out of the apartment, drinking with his friends. He was largely a pitiable man, and even at that young age Emma recognized that in him; her mother was also quick to express her derision, which Emma quickly copied. Overweight and with a weakness for various vices, he would come home only to indulge in cigarrettes, television, and his wife’s distracted arms. It was Nicole’s iciness towards him that finally drove him away; he had married her when she got pregnant with Emma, and once within the constraints of marriage he revealed a vulnerable side that his bride couldn’t palate. When he finally left for good, Nicole was so impassive about it that her young daughter figured that it wasn’t a big deal. He had never really been part of her life to begin with; when she was very young he tried to cultivate a relationship with her, but he saw too much of her mother in her and it soon became too painful. In the weeks before he left, he had become something of an alien to Emma, a large vegetable accessory in their living room, a curio. Even before her psychic sensitivity developed, she could almost detect the relief felt by her mother upon being freed from him, and her father of being liberated from that barrage of disgust. Marriage became to Emma an idea that certain antiquated people feel obligated to participate in, a sick pretense of codependence when in truth, one half of the couple inevitably claims the power and drains the other dry. Overall, an unpleasant, unnecessary, and hopefully transitory chapter of life if one should inexplicably be possessed of it.
Nicole was determined not to be overcome by the odds of raising a daughter from nothing, and so she marched to the bank, took out a loan, and opened her own strip club. The first few years she was her own biggest act, working day and night to keep the place open and the best it could be. Payoff was slow and steady, but soon enough the place became a respectably profitable enterprise. It was where Emma got her real education, and shaped her personality distinctly. It was a unique place; Nicole made sure of that, coaching her girls on strength of character and ethics. It was a little feminist club behind the curtain, while classic testosterone-laden lechery was going on outside. Emma learned the power not only of the female sex, but of sheer determination from her mother and the club girls, watching them push and push until they finally propelled themselves to success - whether it was fame and fortune, or her own mother’s little triumph of climbing to the middle class and moving into a residential area.
The middle class wasn’t such a triumph for Emma, though. After the spice of growing up in the inner city, the switch to a decent school in suburbia was mindnumbing. Suddenly, people were taking school somewhat seriously, and driving themselves blindly to what Emma concluded was the drudgery of a professional career. Doctor, lawyer, dentist... she found her peers’ greatest ambitions to be totally uncreative and mortally boring. She detested the lot of them. High school might have killed her, if it weren’t for the sudden development of her mutant powers.
Things started getting interesting when Emma discovered that she could read minds. It’s always come too easily for her; there were no headaches, no traumatic overflow of too many minds at once... just useful thoughts plucked out of the air that she could easily put to use, whether for test answers or blackmail. For a week she feared for her own sanity, for she had been quite literally hearing voices — but the origin of those voices became clear very quickly. Every thought contains a little package of identity, like a DNA signature, because every thought we have includes a sense of self. On a couple occasions she would turn and answer the questions of people’s thoughts, thinking she had heard them aloud; their shocked and sometimes horrified reaction also made her realize that these were no hallucinations. Another consequence, of course, was that she gained a reputation as a witch. Her peers told her in no uncertain terms that she would be unwelcome anywhere they were; so she took the opportunity to walk home every lunch hour and opt out of any extra-curricular activities. Instead, she would hop on the bus and ride downtown, concentrating on reading the minds of her travel partners. In this laborious way, she built up her skills.
School got really easy over the next year or so; she would sit during an exam and just read the answers from the teacher’s neurons. Without needing to study or suffer the usual stresses of academic life, that left a lot of time for Emma to explore her powers extra-curricularly. It took less than a year of riding the bus for Emma to master mindreading, and the time it took to achieve more capabilities only decreased as she grew more and more powerful. Her accelerating development is due to both the increased manifestation of her mutant ability as she aged, and increased dedication of time and effort. Of course, the more experience she gained, the better she got at improving. Her more dangerous abilities, however, would have to wait until she meets the Hellfire Club.
Endless opportunities arose to utilize her new skills to self-serving ends, but even theivery and deception weren’t exciting enough for the ambitious young woman that Emma had become. Despising the static limbo of the middle class, Emma felt that she needed to break out, and pass beyond the limits of what her mother achieved. Emma was destined to fame and fortune.
The academic world was already conquered, as far as Emma was concerned. Exams were a breeze, she could easily manipulate others into doing her assignments and then forgetting all about it, and she was soon at the top of the class without cracking a book. Bored by the lack of a challenge, Emma opted out of the scholarships she was offered, and chose instead to become an intern at a successful corporation that had a piece of most of the local industries. Her lack of credentials was magically overlooked, and with a few psychic pushes (and push up bras) in the right direction, she was soon dating her way up the corporate ladder. Later in her life, Emma would go through tthe motions of getting her business degree, just to keep up appearances.
Not to say that Emma wasn’t deserving. She was a natural manager, with or without the psychic powers, able to motivate people under her and keep them happy and productive. Her loathing of monotony ensured that she was constantly striving for the most efficient possible methods of fulfilling any project, to minimalize to the very least any unnecessary labour or grunt work. That and her daringly short skirts kept her rocketing up and past the glass ceiling to find herself in a posh executive position.
Once mingling with the big fish, whole new opportunities arose. Emma had discovered that she found business thrilling; it was all a game of who could manipulate whom, and it was a game she could never lose. The inner circle of businessmen was a whole new psychic resource for her to mentally plunder, and by the time she had settled into her new office, she was a repository for every business secret possessed by that company. By the next week, she knew every business secret belonging to a different company who had been represented at a meeting that day. Emma never had to open a newspaper to check her stocks; however, she did have to open a Swiss bank account just a few years later. She was 25.
A woman like Emma Frost does not long escape the attention of the Hellfire Club. Wining and dining top executives and fluttering her eyelashes while she drained their minds dry, she soon stockpiled enough secrets and tips and amassed enough stocks to own several multi-million dollar companies. She never made a single bad move. To those who are in the know, a success story like hers screams ‘mutant’. Sought out at a luxury gala and invited to one of their mysterious meetings, Emma was delighted to be part of the secret club - and they were equally delighted to entertain her.
As mysterious as the Hellfire Club can be, Emma is not a woman from whom one can keep secrets. She soon caught wind of the arcane nucleus of the Hellfire Club - the Inner Circle - and nominated herself for entry. The challenge she was given, although unsurmountable to most, was a snap for the cunning woman. She toppled a century-old oil firm in the southern United States by devising a scandal so appalling and so precise that, once linked to the owner and top executives of the business, they were driven to the point of confessing to a crime they did not commit. At that point, Frost Enterprises stepped in and looted the corpse of the slaughtered firm. She was appointed the next White Queen.
Working with the Inner Circle provided Emma with the opportunity to conduct global projects on a grander scale than she ever thought possible - and exposed her to a level of abject cruelty that blackened her soul. Having such a powerful telepath in their society provided them with new potential for acts of villainy, and Emma was able to use Hellfire resources to increase her own power. The Inner Circle installed a Meditation Room for her benefit; slaves taken from their operations in North Korea were mindwiped and used as psychic storage facilities. If Emma stole the knowledge and memories of a competitor or a law enforcer who got too close to discovering their activities, their minds would be placed in these artificially-autistic zombies for indefinite storage. Two copies were always kept in case of host death. Weak telepaths, purchased from SHIELD as part of the uneasy alliance between the organizations, would also be placed in this room for Emma to use as psychic fodder to increase the range of her powers, networking their mutant abilities into a Hellfire version of Cerebro. With these captives as a tool, she was able to conduct large-scale telepathic operations from the comfort of New York City - and so her career as a supervillainess began.
One example of an atrocity committed by Emma Frost in the name of the Hellfire Club was a massacre in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Inner Circle had been irritated by the ongoing protests against capitalism and the power of multinational companies, and had decided to do a little stunt to simultaneously make a mockery of their movement and deter others from following in their footsteps. An international march was taking place in Johannesburg against the growing power of corporations on developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and tens of thousands of people from around the world were migrating there to participate. Representatives from dozens of civil society groups were also participating, and preparing to present a list of demands to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan regarding the environmentally destructive methods of business giants and demanding that more opportunities be provided for developing countries to break into the developed world.
The Hellfire Club does not appreciate being told what to do. Emma and five psychic vegetables purchased from SHIELD ensconced themselves in a private jet flying from New York to Sydney. As they passed over the Republic of South Africa, Emma directed their joint psychic abilities to temporarily hijack the minds of the protestors. It started with one individual, who grabbed the gun of a police officer and started shooting at other law enforcement officers. Emma and her team prompted thoughts of approval and loyalty in twenty or thirty nearby participants, causing them to cheer on the shootings and copy the first man’s actions; forty others were driven into a frenzy of violent urges, howling and attacking random bystanders and police. The rest of the crowd, already terrified, suddenly found it horribly difficult to think rationally and went into a state of panic, overrunning the city. In self-defence, police were forced to shoot and kill over twenty people. To top it off with a bit of trademark absurdity, Emma incited a handful of people to engage in random acts of public copulation. The whole bizarre episode concluded with a bang, as fifteen protestors gathered and committed simultaneous ritual suicide - but no two ritual suicides were the same. Upon their deaths, everyone went back to normal - if you count sobbing over their sudden and inexplicable lack of control as normal.
The massacre took two hours to take place.
There were no more world trade protests. The Hellfire contingent landed safely in Sydney and proceeded to throw a grand gala that was two weeks of drug binging and psychic rape.
Emma had begun to realize - or believe, at any rate - that her power was growing limitless. It was only a matter of time, she believed, before the world was truly within the Inner Circle’s possession. It was time to prepare for the future. Now into her late twenties, she was able to look back on her teen years and decide how she wanted to improve the world once it belonged to her. One thing about which she still felt strongly was the suffocating atmosphere that children and teens must endure, and the intolerable effect it had on them: conformity. It became Emma’s mission to seek out those youth who could rise above the mindless formula of high school - university - boring professional career. She wanted to uncover their ambition and thereby allow their potential to bloom. She was especially interested in mutants, whom she considered automatically and genetically endowed with more potential for greatness than the run-of-the-mill Homo sapiens sapiens. Essentially, she wanted a dozen young Emmas to coach and mould into unstoppable tycoons and tyrants - to create them in her own image. She perceived herself as the next level of her mother’s acts of charity, rescuing young mutants instead of young women, and providing them with cunning and ruthlessness rather than economic stability. Her mother gave those women financial growth; Emma planned to offer her kids the world. It would also help to have a class full of dedicated young students willing to do her work in the name of education.
It was fitting to call those kids the Hellions, because they would become the world’s most powerful troublemakers.
To enforce the elitist feel of the institution, the Hellions’ institution is physically nothing more than a luxurious penthouse apartment in the Upper East Side. Attendance is invitation-only, and the class size is ideally only five students at a time. They would be handpicked by Ms. Frost herself, and then transported away to her pocket of the world, residence and meals provided. They would be immersed in her little universe, their egos stroked, their mutant abilities stoked. They would be given assignments that would slowly increase in difficulty, but at a fairly constant level of thrill and sensuousness. Despite their being essentially Emma’s lackeys, it would all be in good fun for them, and an overall attitude of entitlement and confidence would prevail. At no point in time would they feel used or manipulated, despite that reality - due to no psychic intervention on Emma’s part. They would be the pawns that Emma is marching steadily up the board to reach the other side, to shape them into the queens (and kings) of the Hellfire Club.

Powers:
Emma’s only power is telepathy. She has NO secondary mutations. Therefore, she’s spent a lot of time focusing on her telepathy and has developed a variety of skills.
The principle upon which her powers operate is a finely focused sensitivity to and capacity to manipulate electromagnetism in the brain. Synchronous electrical signals within the gamma frequency band of 30-90 Hz (commonly known as “brain waves”) signify the relations being created within the brain to form perceptual thought. Emma operates like a human electrode, able to register gamma frequency activity. The difference between Emma and the current level of brain research technology is Emma is able to mentally process and interpret this gamma frequency activity as if the synapses were being stimulated within her own mind.
Of course, gamma frequency activity emitted by the brain is very, very faint, dropping to levels undetectable by modern technology not more than inches from the scalp. Ambient “white noise” is also very disruptive to measuring these very specific brain waves. If these principles applied to psychics, however, Emma would have to be forehead-to-forehead with her subject in order to extract even the vaguest memories. Fortunately, she is sensitive *only* to gamma frequency activity and none of the other ambient radiation. Instead of distance from her subject, Emma’s shortcomings depend on time. Brain wave emissions, when far away from their source, disperse and are disrupted as they travel through space. Even a good distance away (say, an acre), Emma can detect and decipher them — but she needs time for enough waves to arrive to make sense to her. The time issue is doubled when she has to send feedback to the source, if it is to be two-way communication or manipulation. Hence, occasionally Emma has problems with “psychic lag”; if she is a great distance away from her subject, she will be receiving thoughts that occurred minutes or even hours ago. The lag when within twenty or thirty metres is negligible; thoughts whiz by so quickly that their chronology is irrelevant most of the time. However, thoughts from a kilometre or more away is received a second or so late. The lag increases at a ratio of 1 km.:1.3 sec., since the waves radiate and disperse from one another at a fixed rate and it takes more time for Emma to assemble them. So, for example, if Emma were to try to independently transmit psychic information from Toronto, Ontario to Sacramento, California, each transmission would take approximately an hour and sixteen minutes.
Fortunately, Emma doesn’t need to work independently; over long distances, she has the option of utilizing the astral plane to cut down psychic lag. That will be explained in the appropriate section.
Most psychics are at least partially immune to all of these abilities because of their own innate control over their synapses: more explanation in section 10: psychic defence.
Non-psychics can protect themselves by using a helmet like Juggernaut’s that blocks gamma frequency transmissions, or by achieving a Zen-like state in which the mind and body are totally relaxed. This requires much specialized training, and will not protect them from memory reading (section 1) , telepathic communication (5), or brain death (8).
Emma can exhaust herself after overusing her abilities, but it is not the duration of use but rather the complexity of the operation. Inciting a complex illusion (4) is more tiring than mindreading, but less tiring than the highest level of telepathic communication. The level of effort directly corresponds to the diversity of neural connections needed to be manipulated, ie. the number of cortex she must access, or the specificity of the neurons she needs to access. Digging up an obscure childhood memory is more tiring than a psychic blast (11). Manipulation over long distances may test her patience, but can actually be easier on her, since the psychic lag allows her to take breaks between transmissions.
When Emma gets tired, her own psychic defences lapse slightly, as does her mental coherence. She begins finding it difficult to think clearly and becomes quickly confused, as if under the influence of a narcotic. This is surely when she is at her most vulnerable.

1. MINDREADING: She is able to experience other people’s thoughts as they are thinking them. That is the principle upon which she is able to mindread.
Memories, and thoughts that are not simultaneously being experienced by the subject, can still be retrieved by Emma by forcing the synapses to fire, using her ability to manipulate electrical activity in the brain. Just as she can receive gamma frequency activity, she can project it in a sort of electrical circuit between the brains to stimulate certain neurons. While she was still young and unskilled, this process required Emma to stimulate every clump of neurons systematically until she found the memory or thought that she sought, and the subject was aware of a series of memories and sensations that suddenly arose to their attention for no discernable reason. Over time, Emma learned to simultaneously suppress certain connections to the frontal lobe, damping some synaptic connections while stimulating others, so that she could rifle through their thoughts without their knowledge. Effectively, she was able to do her work in their unconscious rather than their conscious mind. This was the method she used to uncover business secrets and launch herself upwards in the corporate world.

2. PERCEPTUAL INVISIBILITY: The ability to dampen certain synaptic connections to limit a subject’s perceptual ability leads to her capacity to render herself invisible to human eyes. She simply sorts through their neurons and severs the series of neural reactions that enables the human mind to make the relation between seeing her and realizing her presence. Their eyes register her, but their brains are rendered unable to make the connection between seeing her and understanding that that is the shape of a woman.

3. PERCEPTUAL CONFUSION: In the same way, Emma can reroute these neural reactions so that despite seeing a woman, relations will be made that correspond to ‘police officer’ or ‘thug’ or ‘bear’. They will see Emma, but she will cause the wrong synapses to fire, so they will only be able to think of what she wants rather than what their brains would naturally perceive. Whatever they naturally relate to ‘police officer’ or ‘bear’ will be what they see; if asked later, they would describe what they believe epitomizes that concept, because the visual perception was effectively ‘imagined’ by their own brains. Any two subjects would perceive a slightly different mental image but would end up using the same words to describe it.

4. ILLUSION: Of course, this can also be achieved without an object like her own body to create perceptual bait. Illusions can be made as complex as she desires simply by stimulating sets of neurons to create relations that allow that person to imagine what she wishes.

5. TELEPATHIC COMMUNICATION: Emma’s ability to telepathically communicate can function on a few levels. Basic concepts can be conveyed in an efficent but non-specific fashion. She can stimulate the synaptic connections that network together to form concepts like “Run!”. She can convey strings of those concepts in a non-grammatical form, sending a message like, “steal”, “Louvre”, “Mona Lisa”, and tack on the synaptic connection in charge of recognizing Emma as a sort of signature at the end of her message. (Each independent concept or “psychic trigger” counts as a single transmission, so in our example crossing from Toronto to Sacramento, the concept “steal” would take its own hour and sixteen minutes, then “Louvre” would take another. Before transmission can begin in the first place, an hour and sixteen minutes would have to transpire for Emma to attain a psychic “grasp” on her subject’s neural structure by receiving an introductory set of brain waves and establish contact, as it were.) To communicate in full sentences and convey more complex ideas in a grammatical form cooperates with the parts of the brain responsible for making relations between auditory experiences and understanding language. The same way we can have a song stuck in our heads, or hear someone’s voice while reading a letter, Emma can force-stimulate the synapses that create these ‘ghost’ auditory experiences to string together experiences of the various sounds of words to form sentences that resonate in their minds. Someone who has spent enough time listening to the sound of her voice - an HFC member, for example, or a Hellion - would even experience these ‘ghost sounds’ in her own tones. In principle it would function the same way a great composer experiences his next symphony in his head before he begins to write it down, as previously unrelated neurons form connections to create new sounds before he even hears them. This experience, however, would be externally stimulated, which is nowhere near as miraculous as the composer’s sudden independent inspiration. (This type of communication, requiring an intricate assembly of vocal and auditory memories, is too complex to be attempted across long distances, since a single word is comprised of several linguistic and aural cues, without taking syntax or inflection into consideration.)

6. ALTERATION OF MEMORY: Altering memory requires Emma to create and remove lasting perceptual connections. The trick to creating a memory is to allow the person to experience the entire false memory without noticing it, maintain it in their short-term memory without their conscious attention, and then allowing the brain to naturally transfer the experience to long-term memory. This is very difficult while the person is conscious, because it requires a psychic strobe effect. Emma must rapidly manipulate synaptic connections to alternate between ongoing “real” experiences and the false experience she is trying to insert. The person’s brain would be experiencing two events at the same time, one being real and the other an illusion. The illusionary experience must occur in such rapid and miniscule partitions that the person does not have time to properly register it, and is still absorbed by the real experience. Due to these difficulties, real experiences and illusionary experiences often get confused when Emma uses this method, so false memories become warped and imprecise. To make it go a little more smoothly it is useful to ensure that the real-life experience is very distracting and intense, so that it is harder for the person to register the strobe flashes of an illusionary experience passing through. Emma’s favourite methods of distraction are high levels of physical torture, or extreme sexual experiences - especially since if she slips up and they are able to consciously experience a blip of the passing memory, the eyeblink of being transported elsewhere can be explained away by the intense experience. (Because of the necessity of rapid transmissions, Emma must at least be within a couple metres of her subject — although usually she is much closer, since she always prefers to be the one administering the extreme experiences.)
To avoid all these complications, Emma prefers simply to install new memories while the subject is asleep. That way she can allow their short-term memories to fully cycle through the entire illusionary experience, file away the experience in long-term memory, and the whole activity would actually be no different than dreaming. The person would wake up with a new experience in their long-term memory and with no memory of having a dream that night, despite that they’d been in what seemed to be the REM stage of sleep for an unnaturally long period. The constraints on distance are also relaxed considerably, since Emma can induce the person to continue to sleep for as long as would be required; however, if the illusionary memory is particularly long and complex, and the psychic lag is too long, someone would surely notice that her subject has been asleep for far too long and awake him or her before Emma will have finished, and the entire project will be botched.

7. ERASURE OF MEMORY/RECOVERY FROM TRAUMA: Erasing memories and healing mental trauma is a process that is actually quite destructive to the subject’s brain. It requires the systematic electrical overstimulation of neurons responsible for those memories, resulting in mass cell death. Due to the innate inability of brain cells to regenerate, an operation that requires wiping out extensive memories or traumas that span much of the person’s consciousness will actually result in a slight depletion of IQ. In worse situations, using this ability can have the same effect on the subject as a stroke.

8. BRAIN DEATH: It was the above method that allowed Emma to create her little zoo of psychic vegetables: selective cell death in the frontal lobes. Kicking up the stimulation by a notch in a variety of cortex simultaneously will lead to the neurons “burning out” and dying. When in the company of her psychic zombies, Emma can focus enough electromagnetic power to “burn out” an entire brain, killing a person with one blast of electrical overstimulation — although this method is overkill (if you’ll excuse the pun), because just a few choice explosions is enough to effectively reduce the subject to a vegetable state. The cause of death would be brain death, although heart and lung activities also cease immediately when the cerebellum dies.

9. COMPULSION: Emma is able to compel others to behave in a certain way. This ability can also function at a few levels. At the most basic (and traumatic) level, Emma simply hijacks the lower portions of the brain and stimulates neurons responsible for motion while the frontal lobes remain untouched. Subjects will be fully conscious of their mutinying muscles. At a higher level, Emma can stimulate certain instinctual inclinations, such as “protect” or “flee” or “destroy”. She then suppresses any higher brain functions to prevent the subject from analyzing their own actions in any logical way. This method is rather obvious when it is employed, because normally rational human beings will suddenly abandon all sense and behave in a motivationally inexplicable way. At the highest level, Emma can create synaptic connections that behave similarly to hypnotic suggestion. Upon seeing a specified object or hearing a keyword, subjects would make an uncontrollable association that would compel them to do something. They would fulfil whatever task was endowed to them using all of their available resources, and in a way that is logical to them. Emma has essentially given them a higher command; the details and logistics are left to the person. For example, Emma would simply plant the suggestion, “unlock the door”. It would be unnecessary for her to explain, “take the keys out of your pocket, walk over to the door, place the key in the lock and turn”. If the person did not have the key, he would go get it. If it was someone who had no access to a key, that person would alternate to the next logical course of action and break open the door in a different way, invented by the best mental faculties of that subject. Cyclops would use his eyebeam. Wolverine would use his claws.
Distance significantly decreases the effectiveness of this technique, because during periods of lag the subject will gradually come to. It would be similar to the effects of Parkinson’s Disease, except moments of unconsciousness would be replaced by moments of compulsion.

10: PSYCHIC DEFENCE: Emma defends herself from psychic attacks simply due to her enormous power over her own synaptic activity. She is psychically able to manipulate others electrical activity, and so it goes without saying that she can solidly maintain hers. It would require a telepath of unforseen power to have more control over a foreign mind than Emma has over her own.

11. “PSYCHIC BLAST” EFFECT: The often unexplained “psychic blast” is actually a wide variety of effects that Emma can cast. The most basic is a sudden jolt of stimulation to neurons in charge of registering pain of all kinds. This is effective not only because it is a form of torture, but because pain is one of the most distracting experiences in the human condition, and it can leave the subject stunned for long moment afterwards. But in principle, a “psychic blast” is merely heavy stimulation on any specific cluster of neurons. It could be a “blast” in the auditory cortex, causing the person to reel from the experience of a sudden explosive sound; it could be a “blast” in the visual cortex, to overwhelm the person with thousands of visual images simultaneously. The effect of distance is simply a reduction in potency of the attack, because Emma’s own electromagnetic “blast” will disperse as it travels, halving its effectiveness every ten metres.

12: ACCESS TO THE ASTRAL PLANE: The astral plane is simply a level of perception available only to those with the ability to manipulate gamma frequency electrical activity. It is a “psychic world” existing in the joint imaginations of all the psychics participating in it, as their gamma frequency activity cooperates to allow cross-brain neural relations - electrical connections that travel from the neuron of one individual to a neuron belonging to another. It is a vast, neural network, operating like a single, living brain. It is a dangerous place for psychics; possibilities are limited only by the imagination, but they are simultaneously left extremely vulnerable to foreign psychic attacks. Two psychics dueling on the astral plane are essentially waging war within their own minds. No more hacking is necessary; whoever wins is free to plunder the other’s defenseless mind.
The astral plane is useful for reducing psychic lag, because a signal can be redirected through the astral plane so that the transmission will go from a closer psychic to the intended target. It operates like a satellite system. However, it requires a tremendous amount of trust to allow someone to use your brain as a foreign satellite, because it means granting them temporary control over your own psychic abilities. Only the closest of friends utilize this option.

Skills:

1. LEADERSHIP: Emma’s primary skills are in business, particularly in managing human resources. She is a natural born Machiavellian leader due to her contempt for inferiors and need to direct them, although she operates a little more subtly than fear alone. It is a fear and respect that she inspires, tinged with jealousy and sexual desire, that leaves people helpless to obey. They push themselves to unknown limits seeking approval and appreciation that they know will never come. Emma does provide positive reinforcement to those beneath her, but always with a cool detachment that only leaves them more dissatisfied and more driven to please her. This is not dependent on her psychic abilities, but rather the combination of her blatant sexuality and general disdain for the rest of humanity. She is the unpleasable one you yearn to please.

2. SOCIAL SKILLS: If this could be considered a skill, Emma is also a remarkable socialite. Now practically a celebrity in her own right due to her obscene wealth, she can work crowds at parties and worm her way into the most tightly-knit cliques with barely a psychic nudge: armed only with a white smile, a ready laugh, and impeccable style straight off New York’s runways. Her confidence is what makes her irresistable, even without her psychic influence.

3. INTELLIGENCE: Both of those skills are mainly symptoms of advanced intelligence, which is a far more valuable skill than both combined. Her form of intelligence is a more intuitive one that comes from being within the minds of thousands of people. She is certainly not booksmart or classically analytical, but she knows how people work better than the greatest psychiatrists could ever dream, so she can predict behaviour on various levels, from individual to national. Her business sense comes from knowing exactly what will be successful among the masses.

4. MODERATE STRENGTH AND AGILITY: Emma is also physically robust, and although she does not possess the fighting skills of Psylocke, she possess comparably more physical strength which allows her to hold her own in a fight. She owns a wide variety of different weapons and has a vague idea of how to use most of them, but they are collector’s items more than resources. Fights rarely happen with her, as she prefers mental exercise instead, but if it comes down to it, she can run really fast.

5. PUBLIC SPEECH: Emma is also a teacher. She is a powerful speaker and lecturer, forcefully articulate and deeply persuasive. Having been within all those minds, she knows which chords to hit and which words are the appropriate triggers. All of her bad experiences at high school converged to teach her valuable lessons in education, making her a very effective youth supervisor, inspiring love and respect.

Personality:

Confidence. Emma loves herself. She knows herself to be irresistably sexy as well as one of the most dangerous mutants on Earth, and expects her kingdom as White Queen to someday extend to the rest of the planet. This is an unquestionable fact to her. The world is practically in her hands already, as far as she cares. Her confidence is what motivates her to run the Hellions, as a sort of preparation for world domination.

Ruthlessness. It’s a job requirement for the Inner Circle - and some might say the business world as well. Ethics have no place in the dog-eat-dog environment of competition and those who have them get left in the dust. By Emma. No act of manipulation, seduction, blackmail, cheating, lying, or even violence gives Emma even the faintest butterfly in the stomach. She is so immutably goal-oriented that the ends don’t just justify the means - the means are practically irrelevant. Unless the means are especially exciting, in which case they mean everything.

Hedonism. Why does Emma want to own the world? Because she can. Because she deserves it. But most of all, because it would feel sexy. Emma strives for sensual pleasure every moment of every day, because she can, because she deserves it, and because it feels sexy. With such limited patience, things need to be intensely pleasurable for them to keep hold of her attention.

Impatience. Emma needs to own the world and she needs it now. Ever since her psychic powers manifested in high school, she has rarely been denied what she wanted. She’s never failed a test, never had to wait for the boy to ask her out, never had a raise turned down, never lost a job, never failed to get the promotion first, never failed to come out on top during a merger, never failed to gain the position she wanted in the Inner Circle. She can buy what she wants, gain the information she wants, go where she pleases, sleep with whom she chooses. Sometimes it is literally impossible to say no to her.

Intuition. As a woman with the ability to anticipate the acts of others before even they are aware of them, and as a woman with an unsinkable self-esteem, Emma is very confident in her own abilities. While others might consider the way she operates to be “spontaneous” and “on a whim”, Emma trusts her instincts more than any kind of scientific analysis, and has no patience for such.

Feminism. Power is the ability to manipulate. Men are as manipulable as Play-Doh. Far from the mythic bra-burning feminist cliche, Emma uses her sexuality to prove time and again the superiority of her sex. Her feelings are deeply rooted in backstage cultlike meetings with her mother and the strippers. She doesn’t hate men; she just thinks they’re pathetic. Of course, to her, most people are pathetic.

Intolerance. Emma has absolutely no patience for failure, weakness, hesitation, lack of ambition, or lack of creativity. She has zero tolerance for monotony and boredom. People who are not exciting enough get ignored. People who fail to produce get fired. People who show signs of weakness get squashed. People who hesitate get replaced. She is sickened when people are content with their lot in life and deems that that is all they deserve, and has no qualms with simply removing it and seeing if that provokes unhappiness. She would kill to liven up a boring party.

Resources:
Emma’s resources as CEO of Frost Enterprises and as White Queen of the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club make a very, very long and very, very extravagant list.

1. ONGOING PROFIT: First, her income is more than any one person could ever conceivably spend. She owns several multi-billion dollar companies that she is guaranteed can never fail - and if they do, she’ll know long before it has a chance to hurt her. She spends her money on more resources, like hosting parties that ensure her ongoing connections with the rich, the famous, the rich and famous, and the rich and famous to be. That provides her with another resource:

2. INFORMATION: Almost nothing in the business world escapes her, and since business has such a hand in politics, she can anticipate George Dubbya’s next actions as well, without even having to suck his brain dry on the multiple occasions that she’s met him. Very little in the entertainment business escapes her either, but that’s purely due to interest.

3. BEASTS: She owns a veritable zoo of exotic animals, and even though she has a house in every possible climate, she always moves the animals to the location most opposite their natural habitat. “Otherwise, what’s the fun in it?”

4. ARTIFACTS: She has amassed a museum’s worth of ancient artifacts spanning from thirty thousand years ago to the Victorian era, works of art including original Picassos, Van Goghs, Michelangelos, and Bodicellis, several libraries’ worth of books, many of which are first edition, and various miscellaneous curiosities. These are not only for her own personal entertainment, but as investments.

5. FASHION: Entire wings of houses are devoted to storing her vast wardrobe of designer clothing, designer shoes, and antique and priceless jewelry.

6. REAL ESTATE: She owns multiple properties on every continent.

7. ILLEGAL NARCOTICS: She is closely connected to several internationally operating drug rings and has access to their best quality products.

8. HELLFIRE CLUB RESOURCES: She has access to the Hellfire Club’s resources, including residence in their chateau, and the previously mentioned Meditation Room. She has their cooperation in most projects and there is free exchange of assistance between members of the Inner Circle. She helps them out when they need her, and in return, if anyone wrongs her, they have the whole Inner Circle to deal with - and that’s a group of individuals each with a developed country’s worth of international power. Nothing to shake a stick at.

9. THE HELLIONS: She owns the Massachussetts Academy that is the home base of the Hellions, and those impressionable yet dangerous youth are another resource at her disposal. Originally based in Massachussetts, she decided to move the project to New York City.

10: SERVING STAFF/ACCOMPLICES/MINIONS: She also has a vast cast of serving and maintenance staff for each property, including butlers, chauffeurs, maids, tech experts, personal trainers, kitchen staff, wait staff, a troupe of entertainers, security guards, interior decorators, photographers, gardeners, on-call fire fighters, makeup artists, hairstylists, pet breeders, fashion counselors, librarians, ninjas, biographers, drug designers, and even some sex slaves in the private dungeons.

Technology:
With Emma’s limitless budget, she’s bought a lot of toys.

1. MEDITATION ROOM: The contents of the Meditation Room vary according to Emma’s needs at various times, and according to the available supply of captured psychics within SHIELD’s collection. At all times there are at least three psychics available for Emma’s use; each of them increases Emma’s power by a third, so the three of them double the potency of her abilities. With them, she can engage in multiple functions simultaneously and construct more complex illusions and memories than she could have on her own, with half the amount of exhaustion.
A psychic zombie can also be deployed and stationed somewhere to serve as an astral satellite, if long-term, long-distance communication is necessary.

2. SECURITY SYSTEMS: All of her properties are outfitted with the absolute latest in security systems, including the Massachussetts Academy.

3. TELECOMMUNICATIONS: She possesses the cutting edge of telecommunications in each property as well, including telescreen communication and a T1 Internet connection on networked supercomputers that keeps her in constant communication with the Hellfire Club.

4. ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEMS: Every property is outfitted with the absolute latest in entertainment systems, with house-wide sound systems (and they’re big houses), theatre-size screens (and one OMNIMAX in her Melbourne residence), and prototype virtual reality gaming that she never uses.

5. VEHICLES: She owns over a hundred sports cars, thirty limousines, fifteen mopeds, fifteen horse-drawn carriages, three horse-drawn sleighs, a supersonic jet, two helicopters, two military helicopters, five seados, five skidos, one dogsled, and a prototype hoverboard designed by Osborn Industries.

6. WEAPONRY: She has an armoury of weapons ranging from medieval broadswords to prototype laserguns. That isn’t to say that she knows how to use them all; “They’re just sexy-looking.”

7. SEXY STUFF: She has the absolute latest in Japanese sex toys and a vast stockhold of pornography.

How can one avoid being a hedonist in such an environment?

Flaws:

Misguidedness. Emma Frost honestly feels that she is doing what is best for the world, despite the indescribable cruelty she inflicts on countless innocents. She deplores the drudgery that characterizes the lifestyles of almost every human being on Earth, and blames it on the mediocrity of world leaders. Intensely childishly, she believes that she would truly do a better job of ruling the planet, as sole queen and conqueror.

Philosophical indifference. Emma Frost is highly intelligent and pragmatic, but she is no intellect. Due to her overall scorn for academics, she has no interest in philosophy. She feels that anything she cannot deduce from her own intuition is not worth knowing, deeming philosophy to be flighty, pointless intellectual exercises. She lives very much in the here and now, dealing solely with physical rewards - somewhat of an irony, given the nature of her powers.

Evil. Let’s face it - Emma’s evil. She’s a villainess. She is cruel, immoral, ruthless, selfish, and seeks world domination. She fits the bill perfectly. She has cheated, lied, murdered, massacred, tortured, seduced, and committed nameless psychic atrocities - and she sleeps like a baby.

Overconfidence. She thinks she’s queen of the world, untouchable and supreme. She walks through South Bronx alone in full Gucci-wear. Doubtless she can protect herself, but she has yet to encounter a threat that didn’t make her laugh. This makes her more vulnerable than ever.

Celebrity. As a (very colourful!) figure in the public eye, she constantly has journalists poking about her. Most of the time she gives them what they want by fabricating a harmless scandal or two (many directed at her father), but occasionally there is a serious threat of one uncovering one of her more insidious projects. It has reached the point where the Hellfire Club is on the verge of considering her a liability to maintaining their secret status. The operations of the Hellions are also under threat of exposure simply by association to Emma herself.

Psychic powers. A flaw? Well, due to the mental nature of her powers, the only force she can combat is human. Sentinels? Hurricanes? Nukes? Undead zombies? She is as defenseless as a pathetic flatscan. Not to mention that the specificity of her powers means that anyone with a psi-blocking helmet and a gun could take her down.

~*~ Additional Information ~*~

Interest:
I’ve only ever played one FC in my life, and I’m having so much fun with her that it’s time to try another. Also, I’m all about doing things in the MUX’s best interests, and since the MUX needs an Emma Frost to represent the Hellfire Club and organize the Hellions, I’d love to be the one to help out. It was an absolute delight for me to have the chance to take such an outlandish character and put her in the real world - particularly the explanation of the nature of telepathy. I’ve never reworked a canon character before, and this looks like the beginning of some great fun.
I can also relate to Emma a lot, being a complete snob myself, as well as being rather overly sensual and having plans for world domination. I mean... umm... you didn’t hear that.

Plans:
First order of business is recruiting Hellions. While that is going on, Emma needs to start mixing it up with other characters who actually pose a real threat to her. She’s never been confronted with a competitor she couldn’t squish, and she’s so rarely surprised by things, that the X-Men, SHIELD and the Brotherhood are going to be wonderful revelations to play. Once the Hellions are in place, and particularly if more characters join the Hellfire Club, real powerplays and political struggles can start brewing between Emma’s affiliations and the previously mentioned institutions. Anyone with power is a competitor for Ruler of the Universe, after all, so it’s Emma against the world for a little bit. Whoever wants to wage war with me first is welcome to do so, but I think the Brotherhood is first to go. She laughs at the philosophically pensive X-Men, and the Hellfire-SHIELD alliance should not be breached until the last second.

Special Needs or Wishes:
Please forgive me if sometimes I am drawn away from the game for a short period, i.e. for exams. This will be my first year of university and I anticipate some turbulence.

Thoughts About the MUX:
I’ve been with it since its infancy and I fully intend to nurture it well into adulthood. You have my full support.
Also, that guy Scud is sooooo cute, can I get his phone number?