Dissonance

Infobox
Stat Score
Hero Dissonance
Real Name Thomas Black
Class Energy Blaster
Affiliation ?
Background KC Opera Director
Infobox

Dissonance

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Core Stats
Stat Score
STR 1
DEX 3
CON 2
INT 2
WIS 2
CHA 3
Defense 12
Health 12
Stun Points 10

Powers:

  • Energy Blast - Mastery: 0
    • 1 SP: Unleash a single blast of energy with a DEX roll. It inflicts ULTIMATE damage, FAR range, and ignores traditional armor properties.
    • 2 SP: Fire an unstoppable linear beam of destruction with a DEX roll. It has a range you control up to a half mile, and does ULTIMATE damage to anything in the straight line path.
    • 3 SP: Blast energy in all directions, in missiles, a wave or dome. All targets within FAR must roll DEX to find cover, or evade, or take 3D12 damage. Those who succeed still take half the damage.
  • Phase - Mastery: 0
    • 1 SP: Make a NEAR MOVE in phased form, passing through solids.
    • 2 SP: Use phasing in combat to avoid an attack. When you are hit, roll CON. Elect to instantly phase, avoiding any damage or STUN.
  • Flight - Mastery: 0
    • 1 SP: Perform a burst of flight speed. Move DOUBLE FAR in a mostly straight line, blasting through obstacles with STR and being HARD to hit.

Effort:

  • Basic (Weapons): 1
  • Tools:
  • Guns:
  • Energy & Magic:
  • Ultimate: 3

Properties:

  • Immortal: You cannot be killed. Even if DEAD or BLOWN TO BITS, you will reconstitute, reform, or mysteriously return from parts unknown in 1D8 days.
  • Xenochemical: Your chemistry is not of earth. You are immune to acid, poison, toxins or viral contagion.
  • Volitile: Your power can be hard to control, with a destructive will of its own. Any time you roll to use a POWER, and roll a 1 or 2, the GM takes control of you for that ROUND, and may take 3 ACTIONS.

Loot:

Equipment:

Background:

🎭 Origin of Dissonance

Name: Thomas Black
Title: Conductor & Artistic Director of the Kansas City Opera
Current Form: Dissonance, a man whose body has been erased, replaced by vibration, voice, and memory.

🎼 Prelude: A Man of Passion and Precision

Thomas Black was a genius of the baton — equal parts visionary and tyrant. Under his hand, the KC Opera became renowned for its bold programming and emotional depth. He didn’t just conduct music — he inhabited it. Colleagues whispered that his presence could “pull emotions out of thin air.”

But Thomas was never satisfied. Not with beauty. Not with sound. Not even with the human voice.

He wanted to capture the divine resonance — the perfect tone that, in ancient lore, was said to split the veil between worlds.

🪄 Act I: The Lost Score

In 1947, Thomas discovered a forgotten libretto in the KC Opera archives. It had no composer, no lyrics — just markings in an unknown notation, and the title:

“Cantus Umbrarum” — The Song of Shadows

The manuscript was sealed in a lead box, wrapped in velvet, and marked with sigils traced in red wax.

A note in French warned simply:

“Ne le jouez pas. Pas une seule fois.”
(Do not play this. Not even once.)

He played it anyway.

🌪️ Act II: The Fracture

Thomas convinced the opera board to debut The Song of Shadows as part of a modernist program — an experimental piece to “challenge the audience.”
A group of handpicked musicians rehearsed it behind locked doors.

The first time they played the second movement, everyone heard something different.

  • One heard a choir of children screaming.
  • Another heard her dead mother reciting prayers in Polish.
  • The lights in the room exploded.
  • The conductor’s podium caught fire without heat.

Thomas Black vanished.
His body was gone, but a chord remained, suspended in the air like a wound in reality.

Vibration became flesh.
Sound became self.
Thomas became Dissonance.

🧵 Act III: The Binding

Unknown to Thomas, the Cantus Umbrarum was not simply a musical score. It was a ritual lattice, an arcane spell encoded in harmony, used centuries ago by witches to bind spirits.

The Sisters of the Silken Thread had been searching for the lost manuscript. They arrived too late to stop the performance, but just in time to harvest the result.

Thomas’s new form was alive, sentient, and unstable — a vortex of harmonic energy.
In his confusion and terror, he began to scream, fracturing the walls between the physical and the spiritual.

🎶 Now: The Echo Eternal

Known as Dissonance, he is displayed in Kara’s Carnival as “The Man Who Exists in Every Possible World.”

  • He phases involuntarily.
  • He speaks in voices not his own — sometimes echoing the heroes themselves.
  • His music resonates with power. If freed or stabilized, he could reshape reality through sound.

He no longer remembers who he was.
Not clearly.
Not always.

🩸 Witchcraft and Voodoo

The Cantus Umbrarum was composed centuries ago by Mère Calypso, a French-Creole voodoo queen who fused European sigilcraft with African ancestral resonance.
The witches sought it for imprisonment — but Mère Calypso wrote it as a weapon: a means to shatter spirits or bind gods in sound.

Fragments of Mère Calypso’s voice still echo within Dissonance…
whispering, guiding — or completing what she began.