| Aethera |
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| Portrayed by Imogen Poots |
| Statistics |
| Full Name |
Josephine Francesca Themylthorpe |
| Age |
23 (142) |
| Height |
5'2" |
| Build |
Petite |
| Eyes |
Green |
| Hair |
Blonde |
| Factions |
Fair |
| Occupation |
[Forthcoming] |
| Alignment |
Hero |
Claim to Fame
For anyone who's interested in the history of superheroes, particularly armored superheroes, or the history of MIT or electrical engineering, powered armor, or energy manipulation, Aethera and her armor would be quite familiar. Dr. Josephine Themylthorpe worked with Nikola Tesla, among others, and was a sort of early superhero/science mascot for MIT in the late 19th century. Her father, Dr. Joseph Themylthorpe, was a leader in human anatomy and physiology, seeking ways to enhance the human body (though, as historians are hasty to point out, he was one of the /nice/ genetic engineers and hardly cackled at all).
Reputation
Aethera is /supposed/ to be dead. When she was alive, she was a preeminent scientist in the field of electrical engineering and energy manipulation. She also crafted (mostly) and wore a beautiful set of armor powered by some unknown source. She took on the not-so-secret identity of Aethera as part of an outreach program to interest young people in the sciences, showing them the glories of technology—and, as it happened, fighting the menaces of the day. Stories suggested she fell in battle with Dr. Loveless, the evil scientist who murdered her father and laid waste to Cambridge with a horde of mechanical spiders, which was the sort of thing that used to happen back then.
Biography
Josephine never knew her mother. Her father told her that the woman, his only love, died giving birth to her. He'd clearly wanted a son who would be Joseph Francis Themylthorpe Jr. He got Josephine Francesca instead, but she was at least as brilliant as ever he had been. He raised her like the son he'd never had, and though she had the best tutors to teach her appropriate comportment and other ladylike qualities, she shone brightest in the pursuit of science and technology.
Partly through her own brilliance, partly through her father's influence, she was admitted as a student at MIT when she was sixteen. She studied mechanical and electrical engineering, settling more on the latter for her Ph.D. Her father, an Englishman who came to the United States for research opportunities, brought her on his travels and gave her the opportunity to meet some of the greatest minds of her day. She even worked for Nikola Tesla as a laboratory assistant for a time and had the opportunity to meet Mark Twain.
Josie's interest in electricity was not unconnected to her ability to generate it. The talent developed when she was thirteen, and the sparks and bolts that arced off her at the most inopportune moments were, at first, a massive disruption to her life. She started by wearing grounded gloves, but within a few months her father had crafted a set of metal bracelets stretching from her wrists halfway up her forearms. They were lovely and decorative, and they helped her to control and restrain her powers. Over time, she and her father developed further pieces of metalwork in the form of elaborately-decorated armor that allowed her to focus her energy as her understanding of electricity grew.
Outside of the study of electricity and energy transfer, generation, and manipulation, Josephine was passionately devoted to spurring the interest of the young for science and technology. The armor pieces she and her father created became the costume that denoted Aethera, a sort of mascot or patron saint of technology. She'd primarily worn it for demonstrations of the principles of electricity, but the day that Dr. Loveless attacked Cambridge with his fire-breathing fireflies, she found a new use for it: defending the innocent and fighting chaos and destruction.
Together with her father, Josephine developed armor that could protect her and others as well as helping her fight off enemies. Her father in particular seemed to have many nemeses, and she was called upon to battle them on more than one occasion.
It was in the final battle that Dr. Loveless murdered her father and severely injured her. He had planned to force her into marriage in order to gain control of her father's resources, but when she announced she'd rather die… well, the battle was long and brutal, but at the end of it he apparently could not bear for her to die. He sealed her in her father's stasis chamber, and whether he made his escape is unknown.
There Josephine lay from 1895 until approximately 1950, when the ruins of her father's laboratory were found by SHIELD. They documented their findings and, because she was neither an immediate threat nor an immediate asset, she was instead tucked into the warehouse of one of their labs. She rests there still, appearing to be no more than some kind of automaton in a humming, self-powered stasis pod, waiting to be brought into the world.
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Character Details
Aethera is, to modern standards, just a tad… well, Victorian. She was an adventuress in her time, pushing social boundaries and the like, but that doesn't mean she isn't also rather in a different place from modern women, let alone modern feminists. She's friendly and engaging, but she is far more likely to talk (ad nauseum) about her inventions and research than about the weather or music or politics. She also doesn't deal very well with people who can't keep up—she doesn't suffer fools well and can get rather imperious with them.
| Electricity |
| Aethera is capable of generating a great deal of electricity. Under normal circumstances she cannot be drained; she could, perhaps, power a city block if she needed to. She can also absorb electricity above and beyond this amount, making electrocution basically impossible. What goes in can come out, too: she can transfer electricity with a touch, jump-start a car by laying on hands, and fry her foes with lightning — assuming she can control her power (see Advantages: Armor and Disadvantages: Control). |
| Brilliance |
| As a side-effect of her electrical generation, perhaps, Aethera's mind processes information far more quickly than usual. Her intelligence is heightened immensely as a result. |
| Science |
| Aethera is a brilliant scientist, particularly in the fields of mechanical and electrical engineering. She was not the first female Ph.D. from MIT, but she distinguished herself in their company and made great strides in the field of energy generation and manipulation. |
| Crafting |
| Aethera made much of her own armor, though some of the technology used by her father in crafting her breastplate and bracers is a mystery to her (see Disadvantage: Armor). With the appropriate tools, she can perform repairs to her armor that it cannot perform itself (see Advantage: Armor). She can also build and repair most mechanical and electrical things made of metal — again, assuming time, tools, materials, and facilities appropriate to the task. And the time to study — even she won't know everything about how to fix your LexPhone without an in-depth examination. |
| Armor |
| Aethera's armor began as an attempt by her father to contain her ability to generate and release electricity. It expanded rather a great deal from there, but its main function is to keep her alive and to allow her to focus the energy she generates. All her ability to focus her powers (see Advantage: Electricity and Disadvantages: Control) comes from her armor rather than training. She can focus her energy enough to charge a phone without melting the battery or zap a tiny spark in someone across a room; she can focus large enough amounts of it, too, to make lightning bolts or power a city block. She can create and manipulate electrostatic fields to allow herself to levitate or even fly as well as creating electrical shields to protect, imprison, or disable. Her armor also works as a sort of life support. It uses her electricity generation to power itself and can heal her body quite rapidly. Small cuts and bruises are hardly a problem. Broken bones might take a few hours to heal and can be immobilized automatically. Organ damage is much more difficult and can require that the body be put into a state of hibernation while the life support does its work. She can certainly be killed while in the armor, but it would take a concerted effort and, most likely, the damaging of the armor. |
| Armor |
| The problem is, Aethera's stuck in here. The last battle she was in damaged both her and her armor severely, and while she can repair much of it easily, there is technology here that she simply doesn't understand. Her father designed some of the armor pieces, and she doesn't have the benefit of his notes or the materials he used. He could have used alien tech for all she knows. The armor has also melded with Aethera to an extent. While it attempted to save her life after she was nearly killed, it took over entire organs and parts of organs. It's not necessarily inextricable, but removing malfunctioning biotechnology from a mutant while keeping her alive, particularly if that malfunctioning tech is both keeping her alive and failing to do it very well… it requires a certain amount of expertise. |
| Control |
| Aethera never learned how to use her powers without the armor. As a result, if her armor is removed or sufficiently damaged, she doesn't have enough control to do much more than absorb and release electricity in a pretty unfocused, uncontrolled manner. |
| Woman Out Of Time |
| Aethera has been asleep for about a hundred and twenty years. She doesn't know any of the intervening history and, much to her chagrin, doesn't know anything about modern technology. She doesn't know that Lex Luthor is bad or Batman is good or SHIELD is… well, wherever SHIELD falls in that spectrum. She's culturally and socially completely out of touch and has no personal resources of her own. By and large, everyone she ever knew is dead and gone. |
| Dying |
| Aethera's last battle nearly killed her. Her armor has taken over major organ functions, but it was never meant to do that. Without some real work and help, the rest of her life could be measured in months, a year at the outside, with any time after that first six months involving increasing health problems—problems like organ system failure. |
Relationships
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Character Name |
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