Earth 10: Zatava

In the original discussion Kris stakes out Zatava, the daughter of Zatanna, and a third generation wizard hiding as a stager magician. It’s the standard stuff – elemental magic as the baseline power packed by a decent amount of Sorcery, which is a very versatile power in DC Heroes but beats your character up spiritually if you try to use too much of it in one place at one time (if Zatava focuses all of her Sorcery in one power at one time she can only use it 4 times before she knocked herself out). With the new skill rules it was possible to make her distinct from the Questions ritual magic and Master Bai’s awesome if seldom used Enchanting skills, while at the same time making her stage magician skills (including the slight-of-and and general deception that come from that) more noted in the character: she is an excellent actress, pickpocket, person-reader, mimic and mistress of mortal legerdemain and that should be noted. I also gave the character elemental animation powers because, well, they fit and I thought they were cool. We can easily drop them but they do make her distinct from prior generations.

I haven’t had a chance to really flesh out what Kris wants to do with the background, but there are two real areas to explore:

First, is Zatava the daughter of Earth 1’s (or Earrth 9’s) Zatanna who dimension hopped here as Zatanna did between Earth 2 and Earth 1 looking for her father (which opens the door for cross dimensional adventure) or have Zatanna and Zatara both come from Earth 10 (in which case we have secret magical super heroics going back to the 1930’s, since Earth 10 did not have public WWII super-heroics, though clearly Vigilante was doing something then). I lean towards the latter, but it’s Kris’ call.

The other one is who is Zatava’s dad? I kept her power set here pretty close to her mom’s under the idea that she married either another human or another homo magus and just kept the skills and training. However another idea jumped to mind with having her father being a Nokken, a Nordic river spirit. You see, Kris once played and quite enjoyed a V&V character who had magical water powers – the most visible of this was her pet/vehicles made out of water – and the code name Circe. It would have been trivial to give Zatava a water focus to mirror that character (and we still could still do so just by limiting her Elemental Animation to Water Animation and using some of those spare points for Water Adaptation). I didn’t do so because there’s a risk of too much overlap with Vigilante’s Sparky and Aquaman’s, well, Aquaman-ness and because it’s a very specific character definition that Kris didn’t request. I’m putting the idea out there mostly to see if she’s interested.

Player

Kris

Affiliation

Justice Alliance

Character

Zatava Zatara

Secret ID

Daugter of world famous stage magician Zatanna, grandaughter of Zatara, she is following in the family tradition.

Metaphor

Secret Generational Hero

Attributes

Normal

Enhanced

Normal

Enhanced

Normal

Enhanced

Current

Defense

Notes

Dex

4

Str

3

Body

4

Physical

7

100 lbs

Lift

Int

4

Will

6

Mind

4

Mental

7

4 MPH

Run

Infl

8

Aura

14

Spirit

11

Spiritual

11

0

Hero Pts

Initiative

16

Running

2

Wealth

4

120k

Income

Abilities

Name

Potency

V. Factor

Scarcity

Notes

Elemental Animation

10

10

30

Create beings of air, earth, fire, plant or water. Divide Potency into one score for

physcal stats and one for mystical stats, or set aside 1 potency for each extra being

i.e  1 water horse (7 Physcal/3 Spiritual) or a flight of air birds (3 physical, 2 spirit, 5 birds)

Elemental Control

10

10

25

Can manipulate air, earth, fire, plant or water - hurl it at opponents, move volumes of it

move through it (tunneling, flying, swimming at -3AP) at 128mph, and other feats.

Flame Projection

6

3

5

Can fire bursts of flame (which she can then control via Elemental Control)

Lightning

6

3

5

Her control of elemental conditions let her unleash blasts of lightning.

Sorcery

14

10

50

Mimic any power up to 14 Potency, but with spiritual damage of that level when used

Skills

Expertise

V. Factor

Scarcity

Description

Connive

8

5

Noted professional competency with slight of hand, deception, picking pockets, etc.

Invention (Enchantment)

9

8

Can enchant objects with magical effects, and she's pretty good at it

Investigation (Divination)

9

5

Can use magic and magical knowledge to investigate mysteries

Profession (Stage Magician)

9

3

renowned professional at stage magic

Origins

Earth 2

John Zatara is a Homo Magus who speaks his spells backwards and hides his power in plain sight as a stage magician as he fights evil.

Earth 1

Zatanna, daughter of the Earth 2 Zatara, came to Earth 1 looking for her lost father; she has the same magic, cover career and foes.

Earth 9

Zaratta was WWII era, Zatanna is contemporary; Zatara died in the Crisis that formed Earth 9.

Earth 10

Zatava is the daughter of Zatanna, third in a family line of heroic sorcerers masquerading as stage magicians.