| Black Queen |
 |
| Name: | Selene Gallio |
| Gender: | Female |
| Place of Birth: | in what would later be known as Central Europe |
| Age: | 17,000+ |
| Aliases: | Black Queen |
| Origin: | Mutant |
| Origin Earth: | 330 |
| Present Location: | New York |
| Occupation: | Black Queen |
| Team: | Hellfire Club |
| Alignment: | Villain |
| Significant Other(s): | n/a |
| Powers and Abilities: | Strong Will, Psychic Vampire, Sorcery |
| Portrayed by: | none |
Selene was born a mutant to a tribe that thought her to be a goddess of death. She killed her mother at birth, and to feed her appetites her clansmen sacrificed themselves until she could reach maturity and control her powers somewhat. By then she was alone, they were all dead, and Selene had been convinced she was a goddess, put on this earth to consume the living and be worshiped by them.
During her times as a young mutant Selene saw a great many deal of things, but the most important landmark she reached was mastering sorcery under Kulan Gath. Despite their relationship growing ever more antagonistic, the mutant learned all she could before finally parting ways with the man himself.
Selene would resurface as a force in the times of the Roman Empire, when she arrived to the capital to indulge and bask in all it's depravity. Enamored by Rome, she found herself a lover, Eliphas, someone she grew attached to over the course of their time together. At the height of Rome's power Selene planned to sacrifice it's people to become a goddess, but she was betrayed by Eliphas, burnt, staked and maimed. When she rose from her grave, Selene left.
Three places would hold Selene's attention for any relevant period of time.
The first would be Selene's eternal love: Nova Roma. Located in the jungles of South America, Nova Roma was the mutant's attempt to revive Rome, and with it all it's beautiful customs and eerie beauty. To an extent, Selene succeeded, and the people of her city grew without knowing the outside world, but that dream would be vanquished with the arrival of the X-Men and New Mutants. For this reason alone Selene swore to vengeance against them.
She would then move on to New Orleans, a place full of mystery and dark magic. There Selene would found a cult, live her nights in debauchery, but as things usually do for the immortal, they lost their luster and she moved on to greater challenges. This led her right into…
Selene arrived in New York following the lure of power. Her time in the Hellfire Club provided the mutant with all she knew she wanted, and many other things Selene never thought she would enjoy, like competition. Being around powerful and cunning creatures made her rise to the occasion, every day more dangerous than the last, the triumph over these people meaning more than the usual conquering of lesser foes.
She rose to the station of Black Queen easily enough, and ever since she has resided in the Hellfire Club of New York, corrupting powerful mortals and playing power games with the other residents until someone wins.
Selene is passionate about things and people, to the point she becomes easily obsessed and falls in love with them for no reason. She also vows vengeance easily, and hates with just the same ease.
Given her penchant for intense feelings, Selene is also dramatic and almost theatrical at points. She lacks any shame, and so when she is bored she pouts, when she is angry she frowns, and when she wants something, she wants it now. A total prima donna.
Selene is immortal, and she is frequently looking for things to amuse herself with. If it is not amusing to her, she isn't doing it, and there is no force on Earth who can make her.
Selene wants power, but she also wants to discover what is her role in the grander scheme of things. Her life taught her that godhood isn't her birthright as she once thought, and t hat maybe her role as the oldest mutant is to shepherd her children to a better tomorrow… Selene style.
She wants to have mutants and humans living in harmony as envisioned by her: servants and rulers, all under their Black Queen.
Selene is a Psychic Vampire, capable of draining the life forces of others with a simple touch. She can choose to drain only a tiny amount, or may reduce someone to a corpse-like, drained husk. The speed at which she drains life is extremely quick, and within seconds she can kill someone if she so wishes.
Her skill with the power is very accurate, and she can control the amount she drains quite easily. The initial effects of her power cause fatigue, causing one to become tired quickly. If she continues to drain, the victim will begin to feel utterly exhausted, up to the point of death.
The energy she drains is mainly used to sustain her youthful body and prevent aging, but it can also be used to strengthen her various powers, as well as serve as "fuel" for her magicks.
If Selene drains somebody to the brink of death without actually killing them, they will become a psychic vampire like her, gaining this particular power.
- Communication: She can contact minds at a range of roughly a hundred miles, communicating in any way they and she could conceivably visualize. She can also 'transfer' memories of her own to people, or grant them access to her own. She can easily affect up to roughly a roomful of people, or a small crowd, at once.
- Mind-reading: She can read surface thoughts easily, and also perform deeper "probes" into somebody's memories. She can even read suppressed and forgotten memories and peer into one's subconscious, if she so desires. She may search for specific memories or periods of time, or for concepts (like 'whom they would want to see').
- Mind Blasts: Selene can unleash her telepathic abilities in a blast, overloading one's psyche, and may cause anything from a simple stun, to unconsciousness, to virtual brain damage and / or brain death. Anything beyond unconsciousness will require a sustained attack upon the mind, however, taking time to break it down with her telepathy.
- Illusions: Selene can create illusions in someone's mind. The only true limit in this is what she can imagine, though highly implausible illusions (like the sky falling) may, of course, not be believed.
- Hypnosis: Selene may induce a hypnotic trance in others with her abilities, rendering them still and easily suggestible. She can use this state to implant suggestions and commands in one's mind.
- Mind Shield: Selene is capable of completely stopping most telepathy performed upon her by lesser telepaths, and is able to "deflect" stronger ones, greatly reducing the effects of any mental attacks or violations upon herself.
- Telepathic 'Stealth': By suppressing most of her telepathic abilities and putting up a 'quiet' mental shield, Selene can render herself invisible to all but the most skillful telepathic and emphatic scans.
- Vampiric Dominance: After she has drained the life-force from someone, she may use it to project her will over their own. This ability enables her to bypass most psi-shields and only the strongest, most indomitable wills would be able to fight off this trick of Selene's… and then, only for a limited period of time. Her dominance allows her to use any other telepathic power upon them, control their actions, edit their memories, emotions, and thoughts - in short, it's total control.
Selene is a extremely skilled sorceress, having honed her skill for several millennia. While she has not used it terribly often due to the severe drain it places upon her energies, that has begun to change with her increase in her power level. While not as skilled as the Sorcerer Supreme, she is easily more powerful than lesser mysticks such as Amanda Sefton. She can sense magick, its type, and the power level of anything within her normal sensory range, unless it is cloaked somehow from mystic sight.
She is capable of casting a wide variety of spells. With her wide knowledge of languages and arcane texts, she can cast spells from scrolls and tomes quite easily. However, the amount of spells she has memorized is much more finite, and is limited to the following:
- Astral Projection: Selene may cast this spell in order to enter the astral plane. While she does this, her body becomes inert and she is unaware of anything that goes on with it. However, upon the astral plane, her psionic and magical skills, in addition to her willpower, make her an extremely formidable opponent. While in astral form, she can contact the minds of others and use telepathy normally, as well as travel about the astral plane and manipulate its appearance.
- Binding: She may create bonds of pure magick to hold someone prisoner. They will hold most normal people, and superhumans up to Spider-Man's level indefinitely. Those of strength equal to Guido or Rogue can break the bonds if they strain from roughly a minute. Those as strong as Colossus or Juggernaut can only be bound for several seconds. Shapeshifting and ordinary escape artist skills (like dislocating joints) are useless, as the bounds will simply adapt to hold the person tight.
- Charm: Selene may use her magick to cause others to entrance them, making them friendly and cooperative in regards to her. They will be inclined to treat Selene favorably, and fufill any request that does not drastically go against their nature. Unlike her other means of control, this spell is much more subtle, and those affected will be inclined to believe that they are still operating under their own will.
- Conjuration: Selene may use this spell to place objects in a pocket dimension, making them vanish. She may retrieve them whenever she likes. She cannot store much in this fashion - only small objects.
- Demonic Summoning & Binding: Being quite skilled in the black arts, Selene is capable of summoning demons from other planes and binding them mystically to act as her servants. The variety of demons she can summon is too vast to list here, but she would have great difficulty controlling a major demon, like S'ym, and could not do it for long before she became too expended. Her control over lesser demons is largely absolute, until she banishes them back to their home dimension. She cannot control more than about one horde (several dozen minor demons, or around a dozen average demons) of demons at a given time.
- Healing: Selene may heal others with her magic, curing even serious injuries like gunshot wounds. However, things such as lost limbs and organs are beyond her without a major expenditure of her one energy. This can be done at a short distance - no farther than several paces.
- Illusions: She is capable of creating an illusion with her magic. Unlike her telepathy, this is more limited towards creating a single illusionary being, object, or message. She is capable of having her illusion spells 'hung', so that they are activated by a given set of circumstances (for example, she can cause a auditory message to sound to people when a door is opened). Such illusions affect all present at the casting time, and any affects the illusion creates (like injury), stays until the illusion is somehow "defeated" or is undone by Selene.
- Invisibility: Selene can render herself undetectable to the senses of others, and to mechanical recording and sensing devices.
- Mystical Blasts: Selene can gather up black magick in its purest, most negative form, and project it as a beam. This attack acts as a concussive, disintegrating force, and is capable of stunning even super-strong targets such as the Blob or Guido. It will bore through steel at roughly one inch per second.
- Mystical Shield: Selene can create a shield formed out of pure magick, protecting herself or someone else. This will deflect most bullets and ordinary melee attacks, but anti-tank weapons and strength on the level of Rogue will be able to shatter it.
- Scrying: Selene is capable of performing acts of clairvoyance or divination via various means. Her typical method is either Astrology, gazing into a reflective surface, or Pyromancy (divination by staring into flames). She can recieve answers to yes or no questions, or watch over a person or group of people. This is not always perfectly accurate, and using it for extended periods may drain her.
- Teleportation: This spell may be used to teleport Selene to any place she has been previously. It can only be used to transport into or out of gases and liquids. The appropriate element is created to fill the vacuum she leaves behind.
Selene has an indomitable willpower, honed through millennia of time. She does not bend to the desires of others, and is possessed of an insouciance that others may dream of. This gives her an advantage in any sort of mental confrontation, particularly magick and telepathic ones, as Selene's will is unlikely to falter under any circumstances. She may be overwhelmed in such confrontations, but it has to be through sheer power rather than force of personality.
She can also use her will to withstand enormous amounts of pain. She can take knife wounds, loss of limbs, and burns without so much as flinching, and can keep on operating as if she was uninjured.
She is the Black Queen and can command the vast resources of the Club to anything she might desire. She knows famous peoples secrets and has her hands in many places, oftenly in secret.
Selene has many cults that worship her that she barely even remembers at any given point. The biggest one is nowdays in New Orleans, and they command a lot of sorcerous resources.
Selene has in her possession numerous magical artifacts, ranging from wands and staves, to scrolls and books, to magically imbued rings and amulets, to gems that can be used in ritual magic, to vials of various liquids for spells, to her scrying glass. Basically if you can use it for magic, she likely has it, though the gems are the hardest to find, and she needs to buy them herself. All these objects, save for her scrying glass, which is described below, are for tiny plot usage only, and so are not described here. Nothing but this glass will be used in normal role-play. She simply has access to them should they be needed for a tiny plot.
Selene has been everywhere and seen a lot and so has learned a great deal about a great many things. Although the most pertinent of this is listed in individual traits, Selene has a good working knowledge of the basics of almost anything. For example, she knows the basic physics principles such as Newton's Laws of Motion and Gravity, though she does not have a great deal of knowledge of quantum mechanics. Likewise, she knows the basic chemical properties of the basic elements, but she does not know how to create non-magical elixirs unless she looked it up. In short, she has the knowledge equivalent to a first year, university course in a subject unless it is stated otherwise.
Selene has been around since the beginning of the Old Kingdom in Egypt, which was over four thousand years ago. She has seen the rise and fall of the Egyptians, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World being built, the rise and fall of the Greeks, the Trojan War, the rise of the Romans from the ashes of the Greeks, and countless other historical events since before the rise of Christianity with the birth of Christ. As such, Selene has a great knowledge of ancient history for she has been there first hand. Archaeologists and ancient historians have nothing on the practical knowledge that Selene has on this topic, and she could easily be regarded as one of the foremost experts, if not the foremost expert on the subject of ancient cultures and their history. However, as she was held within Nova Roma for approximately two thousand years, he knowledge of events after the Christian calendar took effect is much more limited.
Due to her need for precious stones for magical purposes, Selene has become quite adept at discerning the quality of gems. She is able to spot flaws in a wide assortment of gems, as well as tell their authenticity and assign them karat values. She is of the same skill level as a professional appraiser, but this is only when dealing with precious stones such as diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. Many of the semi-precious stones she does not use, and so is not familiar with them.
In the many millennia in which she has lived, Selene has learned how to handle herself in a combat situation. Even without the use of her magical powers, Selene is still able to take on a number of individuals at one time. Your standard street gang, assuming they had no guns, which is a rather large assumption, would fall easily to Selene, should she wished it to be so. She is also able to hold her own against the likes of Daredevil, Wolverine, or Captain America. What she lacks in pure, fighting knowledge, she more than makes up for in her heightened speed, reflexes, agility, and strength. Selene is rather stiff in her movements, remaining upright and dodging quickly to the side, rather than ducking and rolling under possible blows, but this is more because of her superiority complex, rather than a fighting style. Her movements seem erratic to the untrained eye, but for one who knows a great deal about fighting, her moves are calculated enough to know that she is not moving at random, but with the grace of a fighting style that has been lost to the world.
There is just something about a woman who carries herself with the amount of pride, contempt for others, and sureness while dressed in something that has a tendency to draw attention to her that seems a little unnerving. To begin with, the way that she cares not who looks upon her in this state of undress either shows that she is slightly unhinged, or that she is simply not concerned with the repercussions of what may happen to her person because she knows she can handle any situation that is presented to her. For weaker willed individuals, this can be rather unnerving. Add to that the fact that Selene tends to flaunt her looks, as well as appear overconfident, she can sometimes be a rather intimidating person to be around. Especially when one knows what power she truly does wield.
Selene has learned how to speak a plethora of languages over the years and is quite multi-lingual. In addition to English, which is the language she has most recently learned, she can fluently speak, as well as read and write, Greek, Latin, Roman, Egyptian, and Arabic, all of the major languages of her time. Also, she knows how to speak a bit of the native, Germanic tongues from the regions surrounding what was ancient Greece and later Rome. In addition, Selene knows a vast number of magical languages, which are stored within her books and scrolls.
One does rise to the top of the ranks of the Hellfire Club unless they have the ability to lead people. Although ultimately, the desire for people to follow her must be there, Selene is a capable leader, able to make command decisions and deliver orders in the heat of battle or in a conference room, whichever the situation calls for at the time. Still, whether people follow her orders is up to the individual.
Selene has a fair amount of experience with things arcane. Once the adversary of the sorcerer Kulan Gath, she was forced to learn as much about the occult as she could to better combat his magic. Thus, there is not much that Selene does not know about the occult, as she has had thousands of years to study it. Magical development, such as the creation of new spells, as well as the study of ritual magic from the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cultures, and of demons and other things arcane. She is one of the foremost experts in this field with knowledge rivaling that of Doctor Strange and Agatha Harkness.
Selene was once married to Marcus Domitius Gallio, a senator in Nova Roma. From him, she learned the ways of politics, especially that of the Roman polis. She has, however, been able to adapt the ideals of the Romans taught to her by her husband to suit her needs with her quest for power in the outside world. Although not a master of the politic world, Selene easily knows as much as someone who was studying Roman history would know about their political system, as well as being as adept at the game as your normal political correspondent for a local news program.
Selene is an attractive woman and she knows it. She also wears very little most of the time, and so draws quite a bit of attention to herself. Using this attention to its fullest, Selene is able to use her physical attributes to get what she wants out of the other sex. However, due to her nature and the way she regards humans with a total lack of respect, the people she brings home soon find out that Selene has more on her mind than what they were expecting, and they do not call again.
Selene has earned many enemies over her years of existence, both mortal and immortal. Though some of these are ineffectual, others, like Kulan Gath or the New Mutants, may be capable of crippling or even killing her. Due to Selene's disregard for the feelings and well-being of others, she has a certain talent for making new enemies… thus, she is rarely lacking for them.
Selene has a reputation among magicians both black and white as a foremost pracitioner of black magic. Though this wins her fear and respect, it also precedes her. She has no anoymity among sorcerers, and it is likely to predjuice their actions, for her benefit, or, more likely, her detriment. Though Selene is aware of her reputation, she usually does little to hide her identity. Her pride keeps her from hiding from her enemies, and the reactions of others when they realize whom she is amuses her.
Selene is quite arrogant, and is likely to underestimate others. While she's not going to underestimate those of an obviously greater power level than herself, she's not likely to hold much regard for those whom are obviously lower. Thus, she is less likely to take what might be the wise course of action regarding them, thinking them to be nonthreatening. This can also be exploited, at it means that Selene is unlikely to strike out with her full range of power right out.
This Selene is new to the Universe.
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