Lady Diamond
by Miguel Sostre
Art by andi jones
Appearance (normal form): White male, age 25, 5' 11", 165 lbs., brown hair, brown eyes, neatly-trimmed beard, average appearance.
Appearance (super form): Female (yes, female!), 6' 0", 1,165 lbs., appears to be a stunningly beautiful statue of living diamond (smooth, not faceted). Costume is a light blue body stocking with a white diamond chest monogram.
ST: 10 [0]
DX: 12 [20]
IQ: 15 [60]
HT: 11 [10]
Speed: 5.75
Move: 6 in normal form, 4 in super form
Damage: Normal Form: Thrust 1d-2, Swing 1d Super Form: Thrust 7d-1, Swing 9d (Both forms get +2 from Boxing skill; super form gets +2 from Claws if used)
Dodge: 7 normal, 5 super Block: n/a Parry (Boxing): 8Point Total: 750
Advantages: Charisma +2 [10]; Lightning Calculator [5]; Mathematical Ability [10]; Unusual Background: Super [50].
Disadvantages: Charitable [-15]; Guilt Complex [-5]; Heroes' Code of Honor [-15]; Klutz [-5]; Pacifism (Cannot Harm Innocents) [-10]; Secret (gender-switching Transformation) [-5]; Secret Identity [-10]; Sense of Duty (Students) [-5]; Susceptibility to Poison [-5]; Unique [-5]; Xenophilia [-15].
Skills: Boxing-14 [8]; Chemistry/TL7-14 [4]; Cooking-15 [1]; Geology/TL7-15 [4]; Physics/TL7-15 [4]; Prospecting-14 [1]; Research-15 [2]; Running-13 [8]; Science!-13 [2]; Teaching-14 [1].
Quirks: Acts like an "ice queen" in super form to discourage romantic attention [-1]; Attentive [-1]; Careful [-1]; Doesn't suffer fools gladly [-1]; Tends to be a loner in super form [-1].
Super Advantages: Absorption: 5d vs. Light [40]; Appearance: Very Beautiful [25]; Body of Stone, level 12 [96, gives PD 3, DR 8, looks like smooth diamond]; Claws [15, adds +2 to damage]; Costume [15]; DR 32 [96]; Enhanced ST 60 [190]; Increased Density/10 [50]; Transformation [15]; Vacuum Support [40].
Super Disadvantages: Vulnerability: 4d vs. Sonics [-40].
Super-Powers: Flash-14 (5) (Instantaneous +20%), Power Cost: 24 points, Skill Cost: 4 points; Illuminate-13 (12), Power Cost: 12 points, Skill Cost: 2 points; Laser-13 (6), Power Cost: 54 points, Skill Cost: 12 points.
Background
Lady Diamond's origin is one of the odder ones, as superheroine origins go. It started with Professor Mark Williamson, a well-liked physics teacher at a local university. Unknown to his students and colleagues, the good professor had a goal . . . he wanted to discover a method of producing artificial diamond fibers cheaply and easily, to allow the creation of stronger materials for construction. He was working in a university lab late one night when his Klutz disadvantage reared its ugly head.A few nights later, a stunningly gorgeous new metahuman of living diamond made her debut on the local crimefighting scene by stopping a bunch of juvenile delinquents on a "wilding" rampage. Their best efforts to hurt her -- or even move her -- failed miserably. A few light taps of Lady Diamond's painfully solid knuckles ended things, and the punks were turned over to the cops.
Lady Diamond has been seen at the university late at night; Professor Williamson has explained her presence with the simple statement, "She's been kind enough to let me study her to further my research, and my diamond fibers form part of her costume." Some of the professor's students and colleagues suspect that the relationship between the two is more intimate than either has stated, though none of them has ever seen the two together. They're right, but not in the way they believe.
Lady Diamond and Professor Mark Williamson are one and the same.
Mark's accident in the lab did very little damage to the equipment and local geography . . . he'd cleaned it up in ten minutes. The diamond fibers he'd inhaled would have killed him if his Seeder genes hadn't activated then, making the fibers a part of his system and giving him the ability to transform to a powerful metaform of living diamond, though Mark has absolutely no idea why his metaform is staggeringly female. Using some of the fibers to manufacture a costume (which functions as the Costume advantage, but provides no extra protection), he decided to fight evil as Lady Diamond.
Personality
Mark Williamson is basically a good man, with a strong sense of responsibility to others. It was this that persuaded him to become a super crimefighter, despite the handicap of being an average-looking -- and definitely heterosexual -- male in his normal form and a magnificently-formed female with the same personality in "his" super form. Due to the unwanted male attention Lady Diamond gets, Mark prefers to fight crime alone, despite the danger, and acts as frigid as possible when around men. Some men see "her" as a challenge; Mark puts up with it reluctantly, since revealing the Secret of his gender-bending change would attract a lot more unwanted attention. Things could get really uncomfortable if he meets a woman he finds appealing while in his super form . . .
Battle Tactics
Lady Diamond isn't particularly fast, so she relies on her Flash ability to blind normal foes long enough to allow her to wade into their midst, then uses light taps of her fists to knock them cold, relying on her DR to protect her and her Increased Density to keep herself from being knocked down. Preferring to keep the casualty list short, she only uses her razor-sharp fingernails and Laser when absolutely necessary, and tends to only use them on other supers.
Article publication date: September 10, 1999
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