Cemetery |
|
Portrayed by Katy Perry |
Statistics |
Full Name |
Bethany Durant |
Age |
38 |
Height |
5'10" |
Build |
Athletic |
Eyes |
Blue |
Hair |
Black |
Factions |
N/A |
Occupation |
Special Effects Wizard |
Alignment |
Hero |
Claim to Fame
Armor-crafting, SFX-producing, ghost-pacifying vigilante.
Reputation
Bethany Durant: Renowned special effects artist, masterful armorsmith, and in high demand for movies and theatrical productions, and her high-quality armor. Respected in her field and known by many. Cemetery: Relatively new to the heroic scene, and not necessarily known to be a hero. Most people aren't even sure WHAT Cemetery is, let alone who or what her motives are. As many people think she's an actual vengeful ghost of some kind as some kind of dangerous vigilante.
Biography
Bethany Durant is a professional special effects artist, who has an electrical engineering degree, and was trained by her grandfather — one of the last remaining true master blacksmiths — in the art of working a forge and armorcrafting. She had pursued her love of working with her hands and the mystery of theater and "movie magic" almost her entire life, and enjoys her job, even if it keeps her very busy. Unfortunately, while researching a cemetery in Gotham City for inspiration and accuracy for theatrical scenery, she came across a sight she shouldn't have been there for. Some criminals dumping a body. Further, she was spotted, and chased. The terrifying pursuit through the dark ended with her falling and hitting her head on a gravestone. While her pursuers lost track of her in the unlit cemetery, she lay there, dazed and bleeding, and experienced the awakening of a latent psychic ability through a combination of the adrenaline and the physical trauma. In an instant, she psychically "read" the complete history of the deaths of every speck of terrain in a vast radius around her — essentially the entire cemetery. A cemetery in Gotham being what it is, there were many violent and wrongful deaths.
And those deaths, and the specters of those who died, were imprinted upon her. When she awoke with a scream, she was surrounded by the visions of the dead, and they haunted her until she began working to investigate and resolve their deaths. She employed her knowledge to construct advanced armor, various theatrical gizmos, non-lethal weaponry, and to take the name "Cemetery" for a vigilante identity, that she would use to investigate the wrongful deaths of those who haunted her, and bring peace to both them and herself.
Again, Gotham City being what it is, there's no shortage of wrongful deaths that can be added to the pile, and seemingly no end to the ghosts that seek justice, and wish to use Cemetery to obtain it.
|
Character Details
Bethany enjoys manual labor, working with her hands, creating and shaping things. She learned of this enjoyment thanks to her grandfather, and pursued the road of a blacksmith for years in her youth, and even when she got into college. However, blacksmithing took a partial back-seat to her other love, of film, theater, and "movie magic". The illusions, the drama, the mystery, the way that something as simple as a change of lighting could stir emotions in viewers or change how something looked, all of it fascinated and thrilled her. She followed her heart's desire and become a prominent SFX artist for theatrical and movie productions, mastering animatronics, make-up, costuming, and various others. And she loved every second of it. Her work was her play.
Then she discovered her "gift", and her life is stress, sorrow, terror, and pain — and most of it isn't even hers. Too much of her time is taken up tryng to figure out how to get RID of all this anguish than in actually enjoying what she has trained her whole life to do. It is not that she has no empathy for the dead, but she hates them, as well. Bringing justice to them is a fine and noble ideal, but the unrelenting horror of all they have been through and what that is doing to her and her life has caused resentment, and now hatred. And yet she helps them despite that hatred, half in the hope that one die she will be free of these ghosts if she brings them peace, and half because she actually wants them to find justice, and she can't just go to the police and talk about all the details of these deaths without either looking like a crazy or implicating herself as a murder suspect.
Bethany was already donating to many charities before all this, simply because she cares about other people that much and can't stand to be doing so well while others have so little. However, though she feels for those who have suffered so much, she does not wish to be enslaved to their sorrows, and is mainly helping them to cleanse them from both her mind and this world. Unbeknownst to her, these ghosts might not even be there, and may infact be hallucinations or some form of psi-trauma that is all in her head. Either way, for the time being at least, she sees no other option but to pursue justice for the dead.
Athletic |
Cemetery is beyond merely physically fit, but actively works out, and further does so intensively. Running, climbing, gymnastics and acrobatics, swimming, weight lifting, and various other exercises are part of her daily routine, and they show in what she is capable of. She is not at peak human ability, but she's up there. |
Combat |
While Cemetery is not, by profession or lifestyle, primarily a fighter, she has had to learn more than just the basics of self-defense in order to follow her new creed of seeking justice for the wrongful dead. She is not an expert, but in hand to hand combat she is more skilled than an average person, and can usually at least avoid getting hurt. She far prefers restraining opponents, trapping them, or otherwise defeating them through indirect, non-lethal methods, but she can — with effort — potentially beat the bad guys by actually beating them instead of just outsmarting them. Against other trained opponents, however, she is much less likely to fare well, and against a true master she stands almost no chance. Her best best is usually to go completely on the defensive — her specialty — and avoid attacks to get her opponent to mess up, rather than try to attack or counter-attack. |
Crafting |
Cemetery is a skilled craftswoman, able to work a forge, and perform various types of metalworking, provided she has the raw materials. In particular, she has been trained in armorcrafting by one of the last remaining grand masters of blacksmithing in the world, and it shows. Most of her works are for theater and display, rather than practical combat use, but she is absolutely capable of producing sophisticated modern armor in a variety of impressive designs. |
Intelligence |
Bethany is both extremely intelligence and very imaginative. She has both the knowledge and the learning capacity to solve problems and puzzles, and come up with innovative solutions and creations of her own. |
Psychometry |
Bethany has the passive psychic ability to read the full history of whatever she touches. Unfortunately, this power is both completely uncontrollable and only pertains to a particular TYPE of history. Specifically, that related to deaths and the dead. She must make direct, physical contact with what she wishes to read, and she can not control how much information she receives. She may read all the gruesome details of a serial killer, or the final moments of a drowned corpse before it became a corpse, or the euthanasia of a family pet, or nothing at all if there's nothing to read. This ability does not work through her armor, and requires direct, bare-skin contact with the subject. Further, it may sometimes not function for unpredictable reasons, or be blocked by those with the proper protections.
Bethany is NOT a powerful or diverse psychic. However, this does aid considerably in at least getting information and clues that can help her investigate a death or killing, or realize that someone is bad news if they have a lot of deaths on their hands. A significant blind spot in her ability and one that she is not presently aware of, is that someone who has never directly killed anyone, even if they have done so indirectly through other people or methods, would produce no reading whatsoever, making them seem to be innocent even if they are not. Relying on this ability to solve every investigation, or even most of them, is not feasible. |
Sfx |
Bethany is highly educated and experienced in mechanics, electrical engineering, robotics, theater, make-up, and various other elements of special effects. Her proficiency is such that she is much sought-after for her sophisticated animatronics, costumes, and robotic "actors", and her innovative use of a mix of decades (or centuries, in some cases) of proven make-up techniques, along with modern technology and methods, can achieve truly amazing illusions. Further, she is able to employ them in ways outside of merely entertainment, convincing others of the realness of things that might not even be there in order to fool, confuse, trap, terrify, or otherwise influence the behavior of others. For her more grandiose and convincing feats, she requires adequate preparation time and an area where she can set up props, devices, scenery, and so on.
Since none of this is supernatural, the ability to see through magical or mental illusions has no affect. This may tip off that it's fake, or merely "prove" that it is "real", or cause some other assumption on the part of such powered observers. Ultimately, however, it is trickery and the clever use of technology — just very, very convincingly. |
Cemetery Suit |
The outfit worn by Cemetery is a combination of ancient, masterful armorsmithing, modern materials and techniques, and advanced cutting-edge technology. It's not power-armor or anything, but it has an array of useful devices and enhancements, primarily oriented towards mobility, non-lethal weaponry, defense, and convincing illusions (via theatrical SFX). It is equipped with air jets that can be used to frighten through noise or suddenly moving or knocking over objects, as much as it can be used to blast someone stingingly in the face to blind or distract, or to produce a brief boosted jump. It has its own sound system that can produce a variety of noises from bird calls to the moan of the wind to a thundering hearbeat to the moans of the dead to whispering voices, doors slamming, blaring music, or all manner of other things.
A light system includes holographic projectors that can generate 3-D illusions, especially convincing in darkness and with the addition of other props or trickery, and can make the eyes, mouth, and joints of the Cemetery armor glow or project blinding light. A compact, portable fog-machine is also built in, which can quickly generate a cloud of smoke to obscure vision or aid in an escape, or a creeping mist that gradually fills an area. Combining these features together is possible, but the Cemetery suit's range on some of them is limited to the immediate area around it, or within a few yards (obviously sound and light travel further, but a hologram might only be effective as close-range, and whispers might be blocked out by other sounds further away or based on the environment).
The cloak is fireproof and retractable, the claws on the gloves are capable of delivering a non-lethal but painful electric shock, in addition to being used as weapons or climbing tools on their own, and the armor has its own air supply and filtration system. The armor is capable of resisting most physical strikes from mundane sources, as well as reducing the damage suffered from bullets, due to both is construction and its materials. Because of its superior craftsmanship, it can endure assault weapon-grade fire without being destroyed or allowing lethal harm to come to its wearer, but it is nowhere near indestructible, and it requires repairs after sustaining damage. Further, bruises, burns, cracked bones, and so on may still be suffered by the wearer even with the armor if the beating is serious enough. |
Gear |
Bethany has various personally-designed devices, such as hologram projectors packed into durable steel spheres she can roll, throw, or place, portable compact fog generators, micro-sound systems, tangle-wire launchers, quick-set-up "stages", advanced animatronics, costumes, make-up, disguises, a vast array of theater and movie props, cameras, microphones, and so on. She typically has to make them herself, which is a time-consuming process, and setting them up is necessary for the large-scale ones, but she at least has them to use. |
Reputation |
Bethany has a pretty solid reputation as both a professional at special effects, and an armorcrafter. She is very good at both, and in high-demand. This can earn her favors, gifts, contacts, or a variety of other things that other people might not get, assuming she is recognized for who she is. |
Wealth |
Bethany has money. She's no multi-billionairre, but with the work she does both as an internationally-renowned special effects wizard, and a skilled armor-crafter who sometimes takes commissions and custom orders, she could afford to live extremely well if that was her wish, on TOP of financing her crime-fighting. Instead, she lives modestly, pouring most of her funds into her work, her OTHER work, and donating to charities. |
Haunted |
Bethany's initial awakening of her psychic ability was profoundly more powerful than it has been following such, and further, it occurred in the middle of a Gotham cemetery. In essence, she read the full history of death for every single grave and square inch of the place, unwillingly, and imprinted that information in her brain. This has made her a bit of a "medium" for her perception of the "ghosts" of these individuals. Whether they are actually ghosts or some form of psychosis resulting from the trauma, she doesn't know. The fact that magic users can't detect any phantoms hanging around her indicates the latter, but the fact that other psychics with the right abilities CAN see faint impressions of ephemeral forms around Bethany at times lends credence to the former.
However, they don't help Bethany at all in either case. The ones who suffered wrongful deaths appear, to Bethany, as gruesome, anguished ghosts, who pressure her to resolve their deaths, bring those who were responsible to justice, find their remains, inform loved ones, or what-have-you. Bethany can't control these visions, and there's no telling when they might happen. They tend to appear less frequently, however, when she is actively pursuing the resolution of one or more deaths, possibly due to her mind being more focused.
The only sure way to make them go away is to resolve their deaths. Every time such is resolved, the respective "ghost" or "ghosts" or "crazy hallucinations" go away and don't come back. |
Reputation |
Bethany is in high-demand for her expertise and renown… And that means the needs of her work may conflict with her desire to use her time on an investigation or stopping criminals. When she is stuck doing work on a movie for several months or even a year, she can't just take several weeks off to track down bad guys or try to figure out why someone bricked up a little girl in a basement to die. This conflict between the work she honestly loves doing, and the unpleasant and yet desperate NEED to see justice brought to the dead is a very stressful one, added to by the fact that while she is NOT pursuing leads or trying to help the dead, she is subject to their visitations, which can have an impact on her work. All in all, it's a nasty situation, and her "job" has actually become the closest thing she has to a vacation from her part-time role as a vigilante. |
TMI |
The graphic, full-sensory experience of violent or unpleasant deaths that Cemtery can read with her Psychometry ability can leave her shaken and emotionally disturbed for some time afterwards. They may haunt her nightmares, distract her during the waking hours, and are likely to never quite leave her. Further, in the case of people who have suffered wrongful deaths, they simply serve to remind her of the trauma they — and she, through her reading of their histories — have suffered, making her sleep fitful (if she can sleep at all), possibly causing her to "space out" at times, and just be exhausted, stressed, and in general suffering from the collective horror of several hundred wrongful deaths. |
Relationships
Image |
Name |
Relation |
Information |
|
Character Name |
Friend |
Insert a description of the relationship here. |
Theme Songs
Song |
Artist |
Subject |
Meaning |
URL |
Forest |
Akira Yamaoka |
Gotham Cemetery |
Where I was cursed with this "gift". Where I discovered the many wrongfully dead who deserved and demanded justice. I don't regret helping them. But I wish they would leave me alone. And I'm glad they don't, even when I hate them for it. It's still where things are most clear. When I need to remember why I'm doing this, why I suffer for them, and with them, going back to the place it all began is what lets me center myself. I need to remember who I am. If I don't, I might become them instead of me. I might literally become the Cemetery and its restless dead, instead of a woman who dons a mask. |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am1xalkhhjg |
Song |
Artist |
Subject |
Meaning |
URL |
Ashes and Ghost |
Akira Yamaoka |
Pursuit Of The Wicked |
When I chase down the wicked, the fury, pain, and despair of the dead flows through me. Is it almost like being possessed… But willingly. Their goals, and mine, align and combine into a single focused objective: To punish those who have caused wrongful death. And some part that is still me and only me, tangled up in all the rest, enjoys the terror I cause more and more. Oh god, what's happening to me. |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hQ0-9Iy6I4 |
Hometown |
Akira Yamaoka/Joe Romersa |
Gotham City |
This whole damn city is haunted. |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyOsyy_nDxU |
Character Gallery
Logs
Back to: Current Cast
|