Portrait

Characteristics

• Real Name:  Persephone Gray
  
• Age: Unknown
  
• Eyes: Green with gold flecks
  
• Hair: Ebony
  
• Team Affiliations: The Dominion
• Place of Birth: London
• Aliases: Daughter of Dorian Gray, the Painted Thief
• Base of Operations: The Painted World

 
 

  Equipment 

• Camera: Portrait's camera has been waterproofed, and shock-proofed. It is one of the instant-development cameras, allowing Portrait to use it in battle. Once Portrait has a picture of her opponent, she can control them as if they were one of the painted creatures.  
  
• Art Books:  Portrait carries several books of art. This allows her to draw various creatures, objects, or environments into the real world. She can also travel into the books or bring real world objects into them.  She also carries several magazines and photo albums.
  
•   Easel: Portrait has a small foldable easel. Art painted on an easel has considerably more power than when painted otherwise. The easel allows it to become fully three dimensional.   
  
•  Paints: Portrait carries many small containers of paints in watertight containers. They are the highest quality she can find.
  
• Paint Brushes:  Portrait carries three paint brushes of various sizes.
• Projector: The small projector over Portrait's eye contains her favorite battle items, creatures, and locations. It allows the painted objects to materialize more quickly into the real world. The projector also contains a night vision and infra-red lens. It has been shock-proofed as well as water-proofed.
• Canvas: Portrait carries super-light, super-thin canvas to paint on.
• Elder Sign: Just in case one of her summonings goes wrong, Portrait has a rock with the Elder Signs in one of her pockets at all times.

Portrait

The daughter of Dorian Gray, Portrait was born with a range of powers exceeding even her father's.  She is immortal, and is able to travel through paintings, as well as photographs. After traveling the world and learning hidden disciplines from ancient cultures hidden where mortals fear to tread, Portrait gained the abilities to bring the people and animals in paintings into the real world under her control. She also learned to control living people through photographs or portraits of them. Now, back in the civilized world, Portrait is a force to be reckoned with. As a result of her heritage, she bleeds paint. Much of her body itself is composed of paint, but the percentage constantly fluctuates. As a result of selling her soul, in addition to the boredom of immortality, she enjoys creating chaos and fear. Portrait collects rarities and oddities from around the world, ranging from captured shadows to bizarre works of art. Of course, this creates enemies...

Stepping out into the halls of the silent art gallery, Portrait crouched low and scanned for guards. The painting she had just stepped out of rippled, then settled back into its ancient scene. Portrait continued on her way to the exit of the gallery. At the sign of a light, she jumped into a painting depicting a sinking ship. For the umpteenth time Portrait reminded herself that she should stop with the maritime scenes, or at least look before she jumped. She tread the painted water until the light passed. Portrait returned to the gallery, and as the painting stabilized it drew all the water back into itself. Realizing she was in the wrong city entirely, Portrait fumbled at her eye projector. It clicked as she scanned through the scenes. Settling up one of the Yosemite Park, Portrait drew herself into the picture. She always hated jumping into photographs, but it was much more efficient than finding an actual painting. Within seconds, the museum began to fade away, replaced with trees and sandstone cliffs. The ground was warm from the heated water below the surface, waiting to soar as a fountain of water, a geyser. Portrait leaned back and reflected. She always had plenty of time for that, an eternity if she so wished. But that is what comes from being the daughter of Dorian Gray.

Portrait's mother had come to a horrible end, like everyone else Dorian had associated himself with. Dorian himself had grown mad, and eventually died, through the destruction of his painting by his own hand. Portrait grew up on the streets of London, or more accurately, in the paintings. Food was never an issue, since picnic scenes abounded. As she spent more and more time in the painted world, Portrait discovered many things. She could control the painted people and creatures, bringing them into the real world under her command. When she was younger she would often bring a ghost or ghoul where a disreputable person would see it. No one would ever believe their tale, and this amused Portrait to no end. One day, while in the real world walking along the streets she found a dropped photograph. It showed a beautiful island, with sandy beach, and many small animals. She gazed into this painting, and when she looked up, she was there. When she looked back at the photo, it seemed to fluctuate between the island and the dismal streets of London. Luckily, no one had seen her appear at the island. Over the next few years she stole all the photographs she could find. She took them and inserted them into a projector of her own design. As she clicked a button they cycled, allowing her to jump where she pleased. She carried spare photographs in her belt, as well as a few books of famous paintings, as well as picture postcards, some paint, paper, and paintbrushes (to create her own paintings to summon from), and some of the most terrifying, horrible book covers she could find. On them, creatures from worlds far removed from Earth crawled, and screamed. It was always handy to have defense at hand. Portrait frequently visited these scarred and horrid planes. Anyone lacking her control over these painted fiends would have been killed as soon as they entered.

 For years Portrait had had a problem. She needed a place to keep her own portrait. While no one else could destroy it, or even harm it, it was still a powerful weapon against her. When she saw it she would lose all control, and go into a frenzy. So Portrait hid it in the safest place she could find. In the den of slavering beasts, on a cover of the greatest horror writer of all. No mortal, and only one immortal, weapon could stop these beasts. So nestled among the twisted corpses and bones lay a picture. Yet, even with her power, Portrait was uneasy. So she trained. She learned two forms of martial arts from various painted masters. She learned spellcraft from the horrible beasts. Eventually, after years of perfecting various mental, physical, and mystical challenges, Portrait returned to the non-painted world. She had not aged a day, though the portrait stashed deep in those eldritch lairs had grown more and more hideous.

Portrait lay back on the warm ground of Yosemite, awoken from her reminiscing by the rumble of a car engine. She took out her book of paintings, and vanished into the night, the smell of paint left on the eastern wind.

Real Life Personality

Her projector lying in pieces on the floor, and her photos scattered, Portrait was slowly backing away from her opponent. The empty field stretched around her. The descendant of one of her father's victims was approaching, hatred in his eye, and a gun in his hand. The guns were all coated in paint remover. For the first time in her life, Portrait was scared of dying. She knew that a man who had followed her so doggedly for a crime against his father would not back down. A tear slid down her cheek, leaving a trail of watercolor in its wake. Portrait braced herself. As the man pulled the trigger, she started to chant. "Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn, Cthulhu R'lyeh, CTHULHU PHTNUI!"
 She continued even after the bullet entered her shoulder. Paint started to dribble down her shoulder. Portrait collapsed to the ground and wondered what she had done incorrectly in her summoning. The sky started to darken as the man loaded another shot. Portrait closed her eyes, preparing for the worst. The man raised his arm and pulled the trigger. But nothing happened. A viscous ooze came out of the gun, nothing more. Confused, the man dropped the gun. An octopoid creature rose from the ooze. It was enormous, blocking the darkened sky. Opening her eyes, Portrait began to chant again, this time the ritual for sacrifice. The wind howled as Cthulhu destroyed the man, leaving nothing where he had been. It then vanished back into the torn cover of the book from whence it had been summoned. Portrait lay on the ground, her adrenaline slowly fading. The painted blood had stopped flowing from the wound, which was starting to heal. Portrait stood up and started to gather what she could of the scattered photos and books. As was her nature, as soon as she heard sirens, she jumped into a photo, leaving only paint behind her.


HER NEMESIS

The son of the man who wanted to kill Dorian Gray. He sold his soul for powers that would allow him to kill Portrait.  Among these are superb tracking ability, the ability to bring himself back to life, shape-shifting, and extreme charisma, to the extent that he can convince non-powered people to do whatever he wants. The flip-side of this power is the ability to create extreme paranoia in meta-humans. His name is unknown.